Anticipation

The chapter distinguishes two experiences often conflated in discussion of anticipation, a commonplace pre-experience of the future accompanying every appearance, and an experience of promise that gives ground for a hope. In “enjoyment” present experience takes possession of consciousness and prevents real anticipation; but enjoyment is intermittent, and when it is gone there can be a fidelity to the experience, born of desire for permanence, and a sense of absence, which may convey the thought of a reappearance. Presence cannot be “parousia.” Anticipation is lived out in unfulfilment. But the idea of conclusive experience is not ruled out, and may have a critical role in exposing incomplete experience. We may receive anticipations of what cannot be given definitively within world-time, and “the” end may be the only key we have to the status of nearer ends.