Our Qualitative Existence
This Passage Changes Everything
2 Nephi 2:11
For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
"In Our Qualitative Existence, William Call has uncovered a missing piece to the enigmatic and controversial Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. Smith, according to Call, inserted his philosophical core in short, pithing epigrams, unrelated to surrounding material. These epigrams are philosophical riddles that invite the reader to explore beyond the verbal puzzle. Call explores a few of these epigrams, such as the saying in the Book of Mormon: there must be opposition in all things: everything exists only if it has an opposite as part of a compound in one. In this dualism, Call argues that Smith came up with a novel way of distinguishing between knowledge and belief. Here Call treads on a fundamental reason for the success of Mormonism in the modern world: its novel views on certainty. In this small book, William Call has supported Harold Bloom’s thesis: that Joseph Smith is a folk genius."
-Mark Thomas