“Yet I still believe in another possible perspective on life: one that does not separate the whole and the parts, one for which the category of the whole and parts is not applicable to life at all but that takes life to be a unified process whose nature it is to exist only in moments that can be differentiated by their qualities or contents. Life … is an absolute continuity in which there is no assembly of fragments or parts. Life, moreover, is a unity, but one that at any moment expresses itself as a whole in distinct forms. This cannot be deduced further because life, which we attempt to formulate here in some way, is a basic fact that cannot be constructed. Each moment of life is the whole life whose steady stream — which is exactly its unique form — has its reality only at the crest of the wave in which it respectively rises. Each present moment is determined by the entire prior course of life, is the culmination of all preceding moments; and already, for this reason, every moment of life is the form in which the whole life of the subject is real.”
Georg Simmel, Rembrandt
