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Comments on "Reflections on Sri Aurobindo's THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY" (cont.)
Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Fri 27 Oct 2006 03:10 PM PDT
Re: Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji
Rich,
To speak of the doxa of 19th c. Enlightenment idealism as undergirding Sri Aurobindo's formulations of an Ideal of Human Unity is to assume that such ideals (rationality, continuous progress, enlightenment, evolution) are unquestioned categories in his thinking. This is clearly not the case, since though he uses these categories to express his views, the views themselves are quite an alternate formulation with other bases and experiential conclusions. Since you raise the question of a post-structuralist take on this, Gayatri Spivack, a leading postcolonial and feminist thinker (and the translator into English of Derrida's "On Grammatology") has a coined a term "strategic essentialism" to speak of the need to accept the essentialized frames of feminist discourse as a strategy to be heard, but to deconstruct it from within and bring to birth within its boudaries, that which is alien to it. To my view, this is exactly what Sri Aurobindo does to the ideals and assumptions of the Enlightenment - appropriate them to the experiential praxis of a psychic and supramental integrality pushing towards the unification of psychology, culture and world through a "free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression." The assumptions that undergird his appropriation are rather those of the Indic discourse of darshan (ontological knowledge by identity) and a social neo-Vedantic evolutionism based on this. The deceptive similarity between the evolution of Spirit in Matter proposed by Hegel and that of Sri Aurobindo is a similar case in point as is the notion of a "religion of humanity" when compared to Enlightenment Humanism (whose misguided rational charities Heidegger rejected calling himsef an anti-humanist). This I have tried to bring out in my relfections above, since Sri Aurobindo is anything but a liberal rationalist in his understanding of human unity. In a sense, yes, of course, Sri Aurobindo is speaking to those who are calling out to him with their own doxa, as a variety of Homi Bhabha's mimicry - the language of the "west", but "not quite/not white," his alienness perturbing subtly from below the surface the smooth texture of his Victorian-sounding Overmental prose. What unites then is hardly a structure, a religion, a rational convention however encompassing, but rather the supra-human sources of integrality which culturally he has a right to assert both through his experience and through the Indic discourse within which equally if not more properly he situates himself and which he extends. Our hopes, dreams, ideals may be speculative nonsense masquerading as Truth and forcing themselves onto others through strategies of power which is why any foundationism is looked suspiciously upon by most anti-foundationist post-structural thinkers. But the discourse of darshan begins by asserting its non-speculative basis in supra-rational experience and a subjective objectivity. To situate Sri Aurobindo in a western discourse it is first necessary to take him on his terms, and he spells these out in the chapter "Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" in The Life Divine. This does not make it unaccountable to anything other than its own assertions of relative experience. Darshana based philosophies (and yogas) have succeeded one another without displacing or invalidating any throughout Indian history using a method of vitarka (argumentation). It is interesting to note that the grounds of such a process are not restricted to "reasonableness." When Chaitanya sat in debate in the centers of Indian scholarship, what made his philosophy fly was not just the coherence of his interpretations of the Vedas and the Upanishads, but the fact that his speech and his appearance connoted something far greater than their content. This invisible component of language spoke to the supra-rational faculties of knowledge latent within the human, awakening him/her to visions, experiences and spontaneous understandings which can best be called overmental. I believe this is the case with Sri Aurobindo too, which is what makes those who are open to his word, bypass the grammatology and awake to the Truth-validity behind its address.
Regarding Foucault and the construction of the personality by intersecting and contested discourses, it is not true that Foucault takes the human being as fully determined by these and nothing outside of them. In his later writing and particularly in his essay "What is Enlightenment?" where he engages with Kant's essay of the same title, he makes a strong case for practices of individual creativity in everyday life arising out of a critical consciousness stretching the limits of the discursive determinants and thus pushing them towards rupture or innovation. To think of creativity in this manner, I believe, is certainly to give subjectivity an incalculable dimension beyond the constraining power of discourses. Sri Aurobindo is no stranger to the radically fragmented nature of the human personality, and though he may have emphasized more its psychological than its social constitution, the social is never far from his analyses. In practical terms, though, what I think Sri Aurobindo is saying in his chapter "The Religion of Humanity" is that the psychic element in humankind is pushing through processes both of painful struggle and rapturous communitas for emergence and disclosure of its supra-rational integrative capacity and only when this makes itself properly recognizable and functional can the ideal of human unity become a reality. However, as you say, this may be effectuating itself through unpredictable ways. In cultural processes a discourse expands through fragmented realities being forced to share a world. These processes forge new vocabularies, if not of translation, at least of doublespeak, so that doxa are dislodged from reified states and move towards universalities of understanding while maintaining specificities of taste and life-ideals. Such creative acts of intersubjective practice may also further the emergence of the psychic element in humankind. And yes, I agree, that the beliefs of the faithful in the apotheosis of privileged spaces and times may be a dangerous anodyne and substitute for growth of consciousness through critical and creative practice.
Debashish
To speak of the doxa of 19th c. Enlightenment idealism as undergirding Sri Aurobindo's formulations of an Ideal of Human Unity is to assume that such ideals (rationality, continuous progress, enlightenment, evolution) are unquestioned categories in his thinking. This is clearly not the case, since though he uses these categories to express his views, the views themselves are quite an alternate formulation with other bases and experiential conclusions. Since you raise the question of a post-structuralist take on this, Gayatri Spivack, a leading postcolonial and feminist thinker (and the translator into English of Derrida's "On Grammatology") has a coined a term "strategic essentialism" to speak of the need to accept the essentialized frames of feminist discourse as a strategy to be heard, but to deconstruct it from within and bring to birth within its boudaries, that which is alien to it. To my view, this is exactly what Sri Aurobindo does to the ideals and assumptions of the Enlightenment - appropriate them to the experiential praxis of a psychic and supramental integrality pushing towards the unification of psychology, culture and world through a "free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression." The assumptions that undergird his appropriation are rather those of the Indic discourse of darshan (ontological knowledge by identity) and a social neo-Vedantic evolutionism based on this. The deceptive similarity between the evolution of Spirit in Matter proposed by Hegel and that of Sri Aurobindo is a similar case in point as is the notion of a "religion of humanity" when compared to Enlightenment Humanism (whose misguided rational charities Heidegger rejected calling himsef an anti-humanist). This I have tried to bring out in my relfections above, since Sri Aurobindo is anything but a liberal rationalist in his understanding of human unity. In a sense, yes, of course, Sri Aurobindo is speaking to those who are calling out to him with their own doxa, as a variety of Homi Bhabha's mimicry - the language of the "west", but "not quite/not white," his alienness perturbing subtly from below the surface the smooth texture of his Victorian-sounding Overmental prose. What unites then is hardly a structure, a religion, a rational convention however encompassing, but rather the supra-human sources of integrality which culturally he has a right to assert both through his experience and through the Indic discourse within which equally if not more properly he situates himself and which he extends. Our hopes, dreams, ideals may be speculative nonsense masquerading as Truth and forcing themselves onto others through strategies of power which is why any foundationism is looked suspiciously upon by most anti-foundationist post-structural thinkers. But the discourse of darshan begins by asserting its non-speculative basis in supra-rational experience and a subjective objectivity. To situate Sri Aurobindo in a western discourse it is first necessary to take him on his terms, and he spells these out in the chapter "Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" in The Life Divine. This does not make it unaccountable to anything other than its own assertions of relative experience. Darshana based philosophies (and yogas) have succeeded one another without displacing or invalidating any throughout Indian history using a method of vitarka (argumentation). It is interesting to note that the grounds of such a process are not restricted to "reasonableness." When Chaitanya sat in debate in the centers of Indian scholarship, what made his philosophy fly was not just the coherence of his interpretations of the Vedas and the Upanishads, but the fact that his speech and his appearance connoted something far greater than their content. This invisible component of language spoke to the supra-rational faculties of knowledge latent within the human, awakening him/her to visions, experiences and spontaneous understandings which can best be called overmental. I believe this is the case with Sri Aurobindo too, which is what makes those who are open to his word, bypass the grammatology and awake to the Truth-validity behind its address.
Regarding Foucault and the construction of the personality by intersecting and contested discourses, it is not true that Foucault takes the human being as fully determined by these and nothing outside of them. In his later writing and particularly in his essay "What is Enlightenment?" where he engages with Kant's essay of the same title, he makes a strong case for practices of individual creativity in everyday life arising out of a critical consciousness stretching the limits of the discursive determinants and thus pushing them towards rupture or innovation. To think of creativity in this manner, I believe, is certainly to give subjectivity an incalculable dimension beyond the constraining power of discourses. Sri Aurobindo is no stranger to the radically fragmented nature of the human personality, and though he may have emphasized more its psychological than its social constitution, the social is never far from his analyses. In practical terms, though, what I think Sri Aurobindo is saying in his chapter "The Religion of Humanity" is that the psychic element in humankind is pushing through processes both of painful struggle and rapturous communitas for emergence and disclosure of its supra-rational integrative capacity and only when this makes itself properly recognizable and functional can the ideal of human unity become a reality. However, as you say, this may be effectuating itself through unpredictable ways. In cultural processes a discourse expands through fragmented realities being forced to share a world. These processes forge new vocabularies, if not of translation, at least of doublespeak, so that doxa are dislodged from reified states and move towards universalities of understanding while maintaining specificities of taste and life-ideals. Such creative acts of intersubjective practice may also further the emergence of the psychic element in humankind. And yes, I agree, that the beliefs of the faithful in the apotheosis of privileged spaces and times may be a dangerous anodyne and substitute for growth of consciousness through critical and creative practice.
Debashish
Re: Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji
Deb
wrote:
What unites then is hardly a structure, a religion, a rational convention however encompassing, but rather the supra-human sources of integrality which culturally he has a right to assert both through his experience and through the Indic discourse within which equally if not more properly he situates himself and which he extends. Our hopes, dreams, ideals may be speculative nonsense masquerading as Truth and forcing themselves onto others through strategies of power which is why any foundationism is looked suspiciously upon by most anti-foundationist post-structural thinkers.
so this implies that Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics would not be admitted in post-structuralist or even in post-Wittgensteinian discourse. But if all discourses (liberal, romantic, marxist) have had doubt cast upon them by post-modernism (even for that matter, the validity claims of the postmodernist themselves) can we also find a strategy to admit the darshan discourses to the ivory tower of the Academy,
And is this what you wrote regarding recent subaltern scholarship just that ticket?
(to the claim that has to do with indigenous folk hearing god speak)
Deb wrote:
Guha has to dismiss this claim as a case of "a massive demonstration of self-estrangement (to borrow Marx's term for the very essence of religiosity) which made the rebel look upon their project as predicated on a will other than their own." Dipesh Chakrabarty, another founder-member of the Subaltern Studies group, calls Guha up on this, pointing out that if the subaltern studies project is to recover subaltern agency, ie. to allow him "to speak," as Gayatri Spivack says, then his assertion that it was not his agency at all but God's, also needs to be taken seriously.
???
regards Foucault on individual and creativity, here is a related quote from him, in reference to the function of the author, and notice he does not say the author, rather he describes a process e.g. the author function
The first author function regards the appropriation of property and ownership e.g when copyright laws appeared, the second function the literary author's function which requires an author's presence to validate it,
The third point concerning this "author-function" and here is Foucault: "is that it is not formed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourse to an individual. It results from a complex operation whose purpose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Undoubtedly, this construction is assigned a "realistic" dimension as we speak of an individual's "profundity" or "creative" power, his intentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Nevertheless, these aspect of an individual, which we designate as an author (or which comprise an individual as an author), are projections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way of handling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extract as pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we practice. In addition, all these operations vary according to the period and the form of discourse concerned. A "philosopher" and a "poet" are not constructed in the same manner; and the author of an eighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the modern novelist."
So in my reading that Foucault is not so much ascribing creativity to a heroic individual but rather to a process of consciousness, which is in itself dependent on the text for validity.
Undoubtably creative imagination is at play however, and since I agree with the esoteric wisdom of Sufi masters who say: "the eyes of the soul is creative imagination", to my mind it indicates that true individuality is not necessarily a human quality. As Plotinus says we dwell in the soul. The soul is much larger than we. It is only the ability of the human being to make soul as Keats would say, that grants a true individual formation, as the psychic entity comes forward. (e.g. not dependent on any surface social discourse)
rich
What unites then is hardly a structure, a religion, a rational convention however encompassing, but rather the supra-human sources of integrality which culturally he has a right to assert both through his experience and through the Indic discourse within which equally if not more properly he situates himself and which he extends. Our hopes, dreams, ideals may be speculative nonsense masquerading as Truth and forcing themselves onto others through strategies of power which is why any foundationism is looked suspiciously upon by most anti-foundationist post-structural thinkers.
so this implies that Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics would not be admitted in post-structuralist or even in post-Wittgensteinian discourse. But if all discourses (liberal, romantic, marxist) have had doubt cast upon them by post-modernism (even for that matter, the validity claims of the postmodernist themselves) can we also find a strategy to admit the darshan discourses to the ivory tower of the Academy,
And is this what you wrote regarding recent subaltern scholarship just that ticket?
(to the claim that has to do with indigenous folk hearing god speak)
Deb wrote:
Guha has to dismiss this claim as a case of "a massive demonstration of self-estrangement (to borrow Marx's term for the very essence of religiosity) which made the rebel look upon their project as predicated on a will other than their own." Dipesh Chakrabarty, another founder-member of the Subaltern Studies group, calls Guha up on this, pointing out that if the subaltern studies project is to recover subaltern agency, ie. to allow him "to speak," as Gayatri Spivack says, then his assertion that it was not his agency at all but God's, also needs to be taken seriously.
???
regards Foucault on individual and creativity, here is a related quote from him, in reference to the function of the author, and notice he does not say the author, rather he describes a process e.g. the author function
The first author function regards the appropriation of property and ownership e.g when copyright laws appeared, the second function the literary author's function which requires an author's presence to validate it,
The third point concerning this "author-function" and here is Foucault: "is that it is not formed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourse to an individual. It results from a complex operation whose purpose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Undoubtedly, this construction is assigned a "realistic" dimension as we speak of an individual's "profundity" or "creative" power, his intentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Nevertheless, these aspect of an individual, which we designate as an author (or which comprise an individual as an author), are projections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way of handling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extract as pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we practice. In addition, all these operations vary according to the period and the form of discourse concerned. A "philosopher" and a "poet" are not constructed in the same manner; and the author of an eighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the modern novelist."
So in my reading that Foucault is not so much ascribing creativity to a heroic individual but rather to a process of consciousness, which is in itself dependent on the text for validity.
Undoubtably creative imagination is at play however, and since I agree with the esoteric wisdom of Sufi masters who say: "the eyes of the soul is creative imagination", to my mind it indicates that true individuality is not necessarily a human quality. As Plotinus says we dwell in the soul. The soul is much larger than we. It is only the ability of the human being to make soul as Keats would say, that grants a true individual formation, as the psychic entity comes forward. (e.g. not dependent on any surface social discourse)
rich
Re: Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji
Rich,
You ask whether Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics can be admitted into post-structuralist discourse -
> so this implies that Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics would not be admitted in post-structuralist or even in post-Wittgensteinian
> discourse. But if all discourses (liberal, romantic, marxist) have had doubt cast upon them by post-modernism (even for that
> matter, the validity claims of the postmodernist themselves) can we also find a strategy to admit the darshan discourses to the
> ivory tower of the Academy
Post-foundationism is one aspect of post-srtructuralism (brought forth most strongly by Foucault) which can and has been deconstructed by other post-struicturalist thinkers (such as Derrida) since to limit the human to a rational epistemology is also a foundationalist structuralism. However, the difficulty of admitting Sri Aurobindo into this discourse is that "The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" are somewhat culturally specific and as such alien to the western traditon of knowledge seeking. However, texts such as those of Sri Aurobindo or Coomaraswamy, for that matter, need to be looked at as culturally hybrid texts and a new language needs to be created to adequately theorize them in the academy. This language is in the making, I believe, and the post-structuralists themselves have taken the first steps to make this possible. Heidegger's later writings on poetry, for example, and, in spite of his leaning on the side of the restriction and plurality of meaning in the written text, Derrida's musings on language, can be seen as important steps in this direction. But post-colonial writers, such as Dipesh Chakravarty, whom I mentioned in the quote you referenced are taking this hybrid discourse further. Ranajit Guha himself, whom I mentioned in that quote as not taking seriously the divine agency of peasant rebel leaders, has now written a book, "Hostory at the Edge of World History" where he raises issues of cultural hybridity in English texts written by authors of other cultures, viz. Indians, and the cultural ontologies backgrounding these texts. The fiedl of cross-cultural philosophy, which makes the hermeneutics of cultural hybridity its business, is also gaining much greater prominence n the academy. It is efforts of this kind, not least of all, I hope, efforts by Ausrobindonian scholars themselves, that may openm up the way to a new languaging which will not have the present difficulties in accomodating Sri Aurobindo.
Re. Foucault, his essay about the author is a famous one but (a) it is an early essay; and (b) what he is saying here is more that the authorship of texts is discursive. By saying this, he is debunking the cult of genius associated in the modern mind with authorship (as a consequence of post-Renaissance "man is the measure of all things" thinking), the attachment of divine status to human beings in a world which has done away with god and needs some vestige of Him to glorify. However, he is saying nothing about whether behind the discusrively bound author-finction there is any agency or not. He has been, even in his lifetime, criticized for this, and his late writing on "What is the Enlightenment" represents the view that it is not so much in texts but in the creative acts of everyday life that human agency is to be sought, stretching the boundaries of constraining discourses. And, in texts (as in life seen as a text), it is the immediacy of its engagement with its historicity which constitutes the temporal locus of the creative agent. To really learn something from "an author" it is not the ahistorical meaning of his/her texts that matter but the meanings that may be found in the process of its engagement with the histories of its own time as with the histories of the present.
Debashish
You ask whether Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics can be admitted into post-structuralist discourse -
> so this implies that Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics would not be admitted in post-structuralist or even in post-Wittgensteinian
> discourse. But if all discourses (liberal, romantic, marxist) have had doubt cast upon them by post-modernism (even for that
> matter, the validity claims of the postmodernist themselves) can we also find a strategy to admit the darshan discourses to the
> ivory tower of the Academy
Post-foundationism is one aspect of post-srtructuralism (brought forth most strongly by Foucault) which can and has been deconstructed by other post-struicturalist thinkers (such as Derrida) since to limit the human to a rational epistemology is also a foundationalist structuralism. However, the difficulty of admitting Sri Aurobindo into this discourse is that "The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" are somewhat culturally specific and as such alien to the western traditon of knowledge seeking. However, texts such as those of Sri Aurobindo or Coomaraswamy, for that matter, need to be looked at as culturally hybrid texts and a new language needs to be created to adequately theorize them in the academy. This language is in the making, I believe, and the post-structuralists themselves have taken the first steps to make this possible. Heidegger's later writings on poetry, for example, and, in spite of his leaning on the side of the restriction and plurality of meaning in the written text, Derrida's musings on language, can be seen as important steps in this direction. But post-colonial writers, such as Dipesh Chakravarty, whom I mentioned in the quote you referenced are taking this hybrid discourse further. Ranajit Guha himself, whom I mentioned in that quote as not taking seriously the divine agency of peasant rebel leaders, has now written a book, "Hostory at the Edge of World History" where he raises issues of cultural hybridity in English texts written by authors of other cultures, viz. Indians, and the cultural ontologies backgrounding these texts. The fiedl of cross-cultural philosophy, which makes the hermeneutics of cultural hybridity its business, is also gaining much greater prominence n the academy. It is efforts of this kind, not least of all, I hope, efforts by Ausrobindonian scholars themselves, that may openm up the way to a new languaging which will not have the present difficulties in accomodating Sri Aurobindo.
Re. Foucault, his essay about the author is a famous one but (a) it is an early essay; and (b) what he is saying here is more that the authorship of texts is discursive. By saying this, he is debunking the cult of genius associated in the modern mind with authorship (as a consequence of post-Renaissance "man is the measure of all things" thinking), the attachment of divine status to human beings in a world which has done away with god and needs some vestige of Him to glorify. However, he is saying nothing about whether behind the discusrively bound author-finction there is any agency or not. He has been, even in his lifetime, criticized for this, and his late writing on "What is the Enlightenment" represents the view that it is not so much in texts but in the creative acts of everyday life that human agency is to be sought, stretching the boundaries of constraining discourses. And, in texts (as in life seen as a text), it is the immediacy of its engagement with its historicity which constitutes the temporal locus of the creative agent. To really learn something from "an author" it is not the ahistorical meaning of his/her texts that matter but the meanings that may be found in the process of its engagement with the histories of its own time as with the histories of the present.
Debashish
Re: Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji
Deb wrote:
I hope, efforts by Aurobindonian scholars themselves, that may openm up the way to a new languaging which will not have the present difficulties in accomodating Sri Aurobindo.<
well I certainly think you are lighting a candle to help illuminate that path.
(setting aside the reductionist approach of those who still hang on to the project of arche-reductionism, like Crick and Dennett )
I take it Habermas and his followers who remains committed to an overhauled enlightenment project, might question admitting any validity statements that would be based on metaphysical premises. I take it they certainly have a point, since Habermas has categorized these as
"romantic" and I would even say he justly criticizes philosophers who followed romantic beliefs in the early to mid 20th century, which according to him wound up in the excesses of Nazi Germany. He holds Heidegger particularly responsible. ( and in this regards he does have a point MH never really renounced National Socialism and his collaboration with them was pretty shameful, especially his treatment of his mentor, Husserl)
So if the hermeneutics of cultural hybridity is gaining prominence in the academy, perhaps the best we can hope for is the acceptance of the normative cultural valuations these "other" societies make, while not necessarily admitting the truth of their metaphysical claims.
rc
I hope, efforts by Aurobindonian scholars themselves, that may openm up the way to a new languaging which will not have the present difficulties in accomodating Sri Aurobindo.<
well I certainly think you are lighting a candle to help illuminate that path.
(setting aside the reductionist approach of those who still hang on to the project of arche-reductionism, like Crick and Dennett )
I take it Habermas and his followers who remains committed to an overhauled enlightenment project, might question admitting any validity statements that would be based on metaphysical premises. I take it they certainly have a point, since Habermas has categorized these as
"romantic" and I would even say he justly criticizes philosophers who followed romantic beliefs in the early to mid 20th century, which according to him wound up in the excesses of Nazi Germany. He holds Heidegger particularly responsible. ( and in this regards he does have a point MH never really renounced National Socialism and his collaboration with them was pretty shameful, especially his treatment of his mentor, Husserl)
So if the hermeneutics of cultural hybridity is gaining prominence in the academy, perhaps the best we can hope for is the acceptance of the normative cultural valuations these "other" societies make, while not necessarily admitting the truth of their metaphysical claims.
rc
Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
I agree about the irresponsible personal acts
of Heidegger and Foucault which casts a questonable light on their
philosophies. But I also believe their texts are far more pregnant with
potential than a reading of them against certain life-indiscretions or
misjudgements may suggest. In fact as brought home by Foucaut himself,
the text in its "author function" has a life far exceeding its "origin"
in an "author" (though to me the author's complexity and trans-personal
agency also far exceeds his/her conscious intentional
judgements/misjudgements).
On the question of Habermas and his followers, Habermas remains committed to the Enlightenment project of a rational universality, a position that limits the definition of the human within a western metaphysical epistemology. Truth claims based on metaphysical asusmptions may justly be criticized as "romantic" but Habermas' enemy is not metaphysical assumptions as such but any non-rational foundations of experience or judgement. By clubbing any assumptions outside of the rational as "romantic" and bolstering his case with the evidence of German Nazism, he is failing to distinguish between what Sri Aurobindo calls "true and false subjectivism" in The Human Cycle and in Sri Aurobindo's language "throwing out the baby with the bath water."
"Validity claims based on metaphysical statements" are exactly what Heidegger and his descendents (Foucault, Derrida) are catigating as "onto-theology" and which they are trying to repalce with a phenomenologically based hermeneutics. Arguably, Derrida goes one step further than Heidegger in this, showing Heidegger himself to be a prey to onto-theology and also pointing to the inescapable limits ("margins") of metaphysics, without relinquishing a basis of action in messianic mysticism.
On this topic of metaphysical assumptions and the cultural bases of truth validity, I had an interesting conversation around Sri Aurobindo's "Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" with Jim Ryan and Kundan of CIIS yesterday. If you recall, the "methods" of Vedantic knowledge are based in experience. The questions asked are not what one thinks but what one "sees". This idea (or philosopheme) of "seeing" is central to Indian cultural theory and philosophy as "darshan". The word "seeing" is a poor translation for darshan due to the western epsitemological boudaries of seeing, which requires a seer and a seen, and brings in immediately the probem of "objectivity" and "correctness" of seeing. But darshan describes a non-dual state of experience, where subject and object disappear and what remains is a state of transcendental identity as "seeing". This is why a visit to a guru (such as the four-times-a-year visits to "see" Sri Aurobindo) are called "darshans." The realization of an universal ontology would be just such a "seeing", which is why philosophies in India are known as "darshans". But what goes even further is that the "method" of discursively establishing Vedantic knowledge also rests on "darshan". This is what I was indicating in my discussion of Sri Chaitanya earlier - i.e. philosophical arguments, however hair-splitting, cannot arrive at truth validity unless there is granted the conviction which comes with "direct seeing" (prataksha) - and it is this which "he who has seen" can and does transmit as experience through "darshan." To equate this to a "metaphysical assumption" may be Habermas' and the western academy's disciplinary distortion based on fears of irrationality, but it is basic to the cultural ontology of Indic reality where Truth is not thought of as speculative metaphysics but as experience. With the insufficiencies of "rational" solutions quite evident today, and rabid irrationalisms aggresively staking their claim on the "gobal" life-world, we are left with little option for the future but to take more seriously the alternate methodologies of cultures to which truth is a matter of experience and the human is
not a fixed, but a transitional being with a direction and destination in which he/she has some choice.
Debashish
On the question of Habermas and his followers, Habermas remains committed to the Enlightenment project of a rational universality, a position that limits the definition of the human within a western metaphysical epistemology. Truth claims based on metaphysical asusmptions may justly be criticized as "romantic" but Habermas' enemy is not metaphysical assumptions as such but any non-rational foundations of experience or judgement. By clubbing any assumptions outside of the rational as "romantic" and bolstering his case with the evidence of German Nazism, he is failing to distinguish between what Sri Aurobindo calls "true and false subjectivism" in The Human Cycle and in Sri Aurobindo's language "throwing out the baby with the bath water."
"Validity claims based on metaphysical statements" are exactly what Heidegger and his descendents (Foucault, Derrida) are catigating as "onto-theology" and which they are trying to repalce with a phenomenologically based hermeneutics. Arguably, Derrida goes one step further than Heidegger in this, showing Heidegger himself to be a prey to onto-theology and also pointing to the inescapable limits ("margins") of metaphysics, without relinquishing a basis of action in messianic mysticism.
On this topic of metaphysical assumptions and the cultural bases of truth validity, I had an interesting conversation around Sri Aurobindo's "Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" with Jim Ryan and Kundan of CIIS yesterday. If you recall, the "methods" of Vedantic knowledge are based in experience. The questions asked are not what one thinks but what one "sees". This idea (or philosopheme) of "seeing" is central to Indian cultural theory and philosophy as "darshan". The word "seeing" is a poor translation for darshan due to the western epsitemological boudaries of seeing, which requires a seer and a seen, and brings in immediately the probem of "objectivity" and "correctness" of seeing. But darshan describes a non-dual state of experience, where subject and object disappear and what remains is a state of transcendental identity as "seeing". This is why a visit to a guru (such as the four-times-a-year visits to "see" Sri Aurobindo) are called "darshans." The realization of an universal ontology would be just such a "seeing", which is why philosophies in India are known as "darshans". But what goes even further is that the "method" of discursively establishing Vedantic knowledge also rests on "darshan". This is what I was indicating in my discussion of Sri Chaitanya earlier - i.e. philosophical arguments, however hair-splitting, cannot arrive at truth validity unless there is granted the conviction which comes with "direct seeing" (prataksha) - and it is this which "he who has seen" can and does transmit as experience through "darshan." To equate this to a "metaphysical assumption" may be Habermas' and the western academy's disciplinary distortion based on fears of irrationality, but it is basic to the cultural ontology of Indic reality where Truth is not thought of as speculative metaphysics but as experience. With the insufficiencies of "rational" solutions quite evident today, and rabid irrationalisms aggresively staking their claim on the "gobal" life-world, we are left with little option for the future but to take more seriously the alternate methodologies of cultures to which truth is a matter of experience and the human is
not a fixed, but a transitional being with a direction and destination in which he/she has some choice.
Debashish
Re: Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
I am posting here Rod Hemsell's comment apropos this portion of the discussion:
" As for Heidegger, in his later writings he pored
praises on Husserl and credited him with making his
own development possible. And he renounced National
Socialism repeatedly in his understated philosophemes,
eg. On Humanism. Let those who have an ear hear.
As for Habermas, he has adopted a Christianized
stance on natural Philosophy. End of story.
Debashis's comments on Heidegger and Derrida seem to
me to be quite accurate and complete. Postmodernism
may have gotten to the verge of discovering the
vedantic method, as I have suggested in my essays,
indicating progress toward the integral philosopheme.
Postmodernism is in its best lights still only what it
is."
" As for Heidegger, in his later writings he pored
praises on Husserl and credited him with making his
own development possible. And he renounced National
Socialism repeatedly in his understated philosophemes,
eg. On Humanism. Let those who have an ear hear.
As for Habermas, he has adopted a Christianized
stance on natural Philosophy. End of story.
Debashis's comments on Heidegger and Derrida seem to
me to be quite accurate and complete. Postmodernism
may have gotten to the verge of discovering the
vedantic method, as I have suggested in my essays,
indicating progress toward the integral philosopheme.
Postmodernism is in its best lights still only what it
is."
Re: Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
Deb wrote:
But what goes even further is that the "method" of discursively establishing Vedantic knowledge also rests on "darshan". This is what I was indicating in my discussion of Sri Chaitanya earlier - i.e. philosophical arguments, however hair-splitting, cannot arrive at truth validity unless there is granted the conviction which comes with "direct seeing" (prataksha) - and it is this which "he who has seen" can and does transmit as experience through "darshan." To equate this to a "metaphysical assumption" may be Habermas' and the western academy's disciplinary distortion based on fears of irrationality, but it is basic to the cultural ontology of Indic reality where Truth is not thought of as speculative metaphysics but as experience.<
Well thats just it and I think we can find a word in the Western tradition which expresses a value which exceeds
anything that can be produce in a rational argument. It also denotes a quality by which one might also judge one's position superior to anothers even though they battle to a draw in rational argumentation.
The word derives from integral and its called integrity!
It is by virtue of integrity that the full valuation of ones assertions become fully accepted (even beyond what any rational resolution of the issues can conjure)
So for example Martin Heidegger was perhaps one of the greatest thinkers Germany produced last century, but as a human being who makes moral choices, he pales before the integrity of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died for his moral beliefs. So who do we follow the man of ideas of the man of action who lives his philosophy in the streets and in the prison?
So I do think there are appropriate academic terms in which we can lend validity to experiences other than rational, and explicate the authenticity of cultural ontologies foreign to the Western academy through communicatve reason. To do so however we have to open up the rational to an experiential dimension which does not reduce to mere
philosophical or scientific formula.
rich
But what goes even further is that the "method" of discursively establishing Vedantic knowledge also rests on "darshan". This is what I was indicating in my discussion of Sri Chaitanya earlier - i.e. philosophical arguments, however hair-splitting, cannot arrive at truth validity unless there is granted the conviction which comes with "direct seeing" (prataksha) - and it is this which "he who has seen" can and does transmit as experience through "darshan." To equate this to a "metaphysical assumption" may be Habermas' and the western academy's disciplinary distortion based on fears of irrationality, but it is basic to the cultural ontology of Indic reality where Truth is not thought of as speculative metaphysics but as experience.<
Well thats just it and I think we can find a word in the Western tradition which expresses a value which exceeds
anything that can be produce in a rational argument. It also denotes a quality by which one might also judge one's position superior to anothers even though they battle to a draw in rational argumentation.
The word derives from integral and its called integrity!
It is by virtue of integrity that the full valuation of ones assertions become fully accepted (even beyond what any rational resolution of the issues can conjure)
So for example Martin Heidegger was perhaps one of the greatest thinkers Germany produced last century, but as a human being who makes moral choices, he pales before the integrity of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died for his moral beliefs. So who do we follow the man of ideas of the man of action who lives his philosophy in the streets and in the prison?
So I do think there are appropriate academic terms in which we can lend validity to experiences other than rational, and explicate the authenticity of cultural ontologies foreign to the Western academy through communicatve reason. To do so however we have to open up the rational to an experiential dimension which does not reduce to mere
philosophical or scientific formula.
rich
Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
Rich,
"Integrity" in general pralance and as you have used it is a moral quality. While it certainly carries more conviction than the word of somone whose acts defeat the principles he/she espouses, this is not exactly the kind of conviction referred to in the awakening of conviction through darshan. Methodologically, I would say, darshan is the awakening of an inner faculty which can recognize truth as self-evident and not dependent on any external criteria. Vide "The Future Poetry", the overmental word if channeled even by a scoundrel, can carry this effect (though it may be debated whether the scoundrel would have inner access to this quality of speech. I'm not sure, though without evidence to the contrary I couldn't rule it out). On the other hand, a man of intergity may lack the inspiration to open to the trans-subjective oracle. Of course, in the likes of Chaitanya or Sri Aurobindo it is both the integrity of being and the trans-personal power of revelation which combine. Re. Heidegger vs. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I don't know enough about either as a person and about the second as a writer to pass judgement. Heidegger's word may be ambiguous, when read in the light of his political lapse, but there is enough of a higher opening in it for the future to discriminate its productive potential. And then, as Rod says, the castigation of Heidegger may be overdone.
Debashish
"Integrity" in general pralance and as you have used it is a moral quality. While it certainly carries more conviction than the word of somone whose acts defeat the principles he/she espouses, this is not exactly the kind of conviction referred to in the awakening of conviction through darshan. Methodologically, I would say, darshan is the awakening of an inner faculty which can recognize truth as self-evident and not dependent on any external criteria. Vide "The Future Poetry", the overmental word if channeled even by a scoundrel, can carry this effect (though it may be debated whether the scoundrel would have inner access to this quality of speech. I'm not sure, though without evidence to the contrary I couldn't rule it out). On the other hand, a man of intergity may lack the inspiration to open to the trans-subjective oracle. Of course, in the likes of Chaitanya or Sri Aurobindo it is both the integrity of being and the trans-personal power of revelation which combine. Re. Heidegger vs. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I don't know enough about either as a person and about the second as a writer to pass judgement. Heidegger's word may be ambiguous, when read in the light of his political lapse, but there is enough of a higher opening in it for the future to discriminate its productive potential. And then, as Rod says, the castigation of Heidegger may be overdone.
Debashish
Re: Re: (Revised): Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
yes I realize that integrity in its normal
meaning does not invoke the same notions of trans-subjective
experience, I was trying to follow it back to its roots of true
integration. e.g. integral
in the true sense. and perhaps not applicable today as some of those who lately espouse integral practice appear to lack integrity
But there is an essential element I find lacking in western academics with its unbalanced leaning toward mental realization, and perhaps a more
cross-diciplinary approach is needed, or at least
a way to address other parts and planes
Moreover in an cross-cultural dialog integrity can easily be verified through experience , whereas transpersonal is still in the realm of metaphysics
for most. I am re-reading Merleau Ponty Primacy of Perception, in which he demonstrates that perception certainly precedes intellectual formulations.
Of course for quite some time there have been many who feel uncomfortable letting reason be the final arbiter. Bergson focused on legitimizing intuition almost a century ago.
Regards Heidegger versus Bonhoeffer, to me there is no comparison as to their integrity as determined by their choices they made in time of crisis:
In short Heidegger was a Nazi collaborator who banned all Jews including his own dear mentor form from his university and its library, I am not sure if any later apologizes he made to Husserl maker up for this. Also in the opinion of most historians he never sufficiently renounced the romantic idealism that lead him to endorse the notion of recovering the organic soul of the German race. He also stayed a party member until 1945 so he was in it for the full count
On the other hand Bonhoeffer flew back from New York in 1939 to aid the victims of the 3rd Reich and to fiercely resist it, for which he was imprisioned and executed. He also advocated an extremely inclusive/progressive form of Christianity
Its only real if you live it, and Heidegger certainly fell short here (and of course his affair with Hannah Ardent in the 1920s also complicates the matter, and I certainly do admit I too seperate his writings -which are brilliant- from his personal choices, because on has to live in this reality and this this world is certainly a mixed up place)
But these 3 biographies are of extreme importance I think in assessing intellectual responses to crisis, in this case totalitarianism
Heidegger - the intellectual collaborator
Ardent - intellectual in exile
Bonhoeffer - intellectual as resistance fighter
if one combines Bonhoeffer's moral courage with Heidegger's pioneering thought perhaps one begins to approach the stature of Sri Aurobindo
in the true sense. and perhaps not applicable today as some of those who lately espouse integral practice appear to lack integrity
But there is an essential element I find lacking in western academics with its unbalanced leaning toward mental realization, and perhaps a more
cross-diciplinary approach is needed, or at least
a way to address other parts and planes
Moreover in an cross-cultural dialog integrity can easily be verified through experience , whereas transpersonal is still in the realm of metaphysics
for most. I am re-reading Merleau Ponty Primacy of Perception, in which he demonstrates that perception certainly precedes intellectual formulations.
Of course for quite some time there have been many who feel uncomfortable letting reason be the final arbiter. Bergson focused on legitimizing intuition almost a century ago.
Regards Heidegger versus Bonhoeffer, to me there is no comparison as to their integrity as determined by their choices they made in time of crisis:
In short Heidegger was a Nazi collaborator who banned all Jews including his own dear mentor form from his university and its library, I am not sure if any later apologizes he made to Husserl maker up for this. Also in the opinion of most historians he never sufficiently renounced the romantic idealism that lead him to endorse the notion of recovering the organic soul of the German race. He also stayed a party member until 1945 so he was in it for the full count
On the other hand Bonhoeffer flew back from New York in 1939 to aid the victims of the 3rd Reich and to fiercely resist it, for which he was imprisioned and executed. He also advocated an extremely inclusive/progressive form of Christianity
Its only real if you live it, and Heidegger certainly fell short here (and of course his affair with Hannah Ardent in the 1920s also complicates the matter, and I certainly do admit I too seperate his writings -which are brilliant- from his personal choices, because on has to live in this reality and this this world is certainly a mixed up place)
But these 3 biographies are of extreme importance I think in assessing intellectual responses to crisis, in this case totalitarianism
Heidegger - the intellectual collaborator
Ardent - intellectual in exile
Bonhoeffer - intellectual as resistance fighter
if one combines Bonhoeffer's moral courage with Heidegger's pioneering thought perhaps one begins to approach the stature of Sri Aurobindo
Re: Re: (Revised): Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
Rich,
I see the importance of "integrity" as you draw it out in the enterprise of cross-cultural understanding. Thanks for the biographical references. I need to inform myself about Bonhoeffer (whom I know next to nothing about). About Heidegger, though, I feel the future will forget his biographical details but be able to derive light from his texts even treated anonymously. That is, "darshan" may arise from an anonymous text without any referent in biography (due to the transpersonal power of the "word").
You write about Merleau-Ponty that according to him "perception certainly precedes intellectual formulations." This is exactly the basis of phenomenology and in your statement, one can draw the direct relationship with the "methods of vedantic knowledge" vide Sri Aurobindo, since the primary ground of that method is the question "what do you see" rather than "what do you think" - i.e. literally, "perception precedes intellectual formulations." In western philosophy this is a turn, since in classical (Aristotelian) philosophy which dominates until this point, metaphysics precedes thinking and thinking precedes seeing - i.e. metaphysics first, then epistemology, then phenomenology. But Merleau-Ponty is one of the initiators of the trend away from metaphysics by pointing out that our seeing conditions the categories of our thinking (phenomenology precedes epistemology). Heidegger takes it one step further in that ontology precedes phenomenology - our mode of being conditions our seeing. This mode of being is a given and thus invisible, we live in it as a fish in the sea; as a being-in-the-world, we are already conditioned by it (its discursive limits, as Foucault will put it). But it is not fully determining. We can become aware of its conditional boundaries and evan play a part in its transformation through this awareness. Rubbing against other and alien modes of being makes this disclosure of our own ontological discursive limits more possible and may facilitate transformation. But for this, a new language needs to be fashioned through a reappropriation of old vocabularies in a transformed frame.
Here, I find what you said in an earlier comment very fertile:
" So I do think there are appropriate academic terms in which we can lend validity to experiences other than rational, and explicate the authenticity of cultural ontologies foreign to the Western academy through communicatve reason. To do so however we have to open up the rational to an experiential dimension which does not reduce to mere philosophical or scientific formula. "
In the formulations of Indic (Vedantic) knowledge, not only does ontology precede phenomenology, which precedes epistemology, but technologies (tantra, yoga) or spontaneous possibilities (grace, anugraha) are culturally accepted as providing means (upaya, kushala) to altered ontologies (realization, darshana). These in turn consequently alter perceptions of reality (pratyaksha, darshana) and following this, categories of knowledge (epistemology) and their systematic formulations (metaphysics, darshana). This then expresses itself discursively in philosophical argumentation (vitarka) part of whose method includes transmission of experience (anubhava) through the power of ontological integrality (conviction, darshana). This would be one way of attempting a cross-cultural hermeneutics of knowledge which relocates metaphysics in experience.
DB
I see the importance of "integrity" as you draw it out in the enterprise of cross-cultural understanding. Thanks for the biographical references. I need to inform myself about Bonhoeffer (whom I know next to nothing about). About Heidegger, though, I feel the future will forget his biographical details but be able to derive light from his texts even treated anonymously. That is, "darshan" may arise from an anonymous text without any referent in biography (due to the transpersonal power of the "word").
You write about Merleau-Ponty that according to him "perception certainly precedes intellectual formulations." This is exactly the basis of phenomenology and in your statement, one can draw the direct relationship with the "methods of vedantic knowledge" vide Sri Aurobindo, since the primary ground of that method is the question "what do you see" rather than "what do you think" - i.e. literally, "perception precedes intellectual formulations." In western philosophy this is a turn, since in classical (Aristotelian) philosophy which dominates until this point, metaphysics precedes thinking and thinking precedes seeing - i.e. metaphysics first, then epistemology, then phenomenology. But Merleau-Ponty is one of the initiators of the trend away from metaphysics by pointing out that our seeing conditions the categories of our thinking (phenomenology precedes epistemology). Heidegger takes it one step further in that ontology precedes phenomenology - our mode of being conditions our seeing. This mode of being is a given and thus invisible, we live in it as a fish in the sea; as a being-in-the-world, we are already conditioned by it (its discursive limits, as Foucault will put it). But it is not fully determining. We can become aware of its conditional boundaries and evan play a part in its transformation through this awareness. Rubbing against other and alien modes of being makes this disclosure of our own ontological discursive limits more possible and may facilitate transformation. But for this, a new language needs to be fashioned through a reappropriation of old vocabularies in a transformed frame.
Here, I find what you said in an earlier comment very fertile:
" So I do think there are appropriate academic terms in which we can lend validity to experiences other than rational, and explicate the authenticity of cultural ontologies foreign to the Western academy through communicatve reason. To do so however we have to open up the rational to an experiential dimension which does not reduce to mere philosophical or scientific formula. "
In the formulations of Indic (Vedantic) knowledge, not only does ontology precede phenomenology, which precedes epistemology, but technologies (tantra, yoga) or spontaneous possibilities (grace, anugraha) are culturally accepted as providing means (upaya, kushala) to altered ontologies (realization, darshana). These in turn consequently alter perceptions of reality (pratyaksha, darshana) and following this, categories of knowledge (epistemology) and their systematic formulations (metaphysics, darshana). This then expresses itself discursively in philosophical argumentation (vitarka) part of whose method includes transmission of experience (anubhava) through the power of ontological integrality (conviction, darshana). This would be one way of attempting a cross-cultural hermeneutics of knowledge which relocates metaphysics in experience.
DB
Re: (Revised): Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Ontology, Habitus, Interpellation, Darshan
Deb,
So if our mode of being influences our seeing which then influences our thinking, and it is the practice of inner technologies e.g. tantra,yoga,
which opens one to ones original mode of being then:
How does one seperate out pure being from those unconscious social formulations of being in the world which also underlie both our seeing and thinking, (eg phenomenology and epistemology)?
And here I will instance Bourdieu and his notion of habitus ( I will place a wikipedia
reference below) So if not only a pure ontology but a habitus as well, underlies our perceptions and actions in the world, does Darshan or direct seeing resist or dissolve habitus?
(e.g. even the habitus which is internalized from
the doxa of Indic discourse and its methodology of darshanic seeing?)
In other words are these inner technologies antecedent of Vedantic social constructions? or is there something parculiar to its methodology which can penetrate its own partcular cultural doxa, to presence an authenticity of being which could be universally interpreted?
Is Indic darshan discourse and its resultant technologies somehow resistant to what in Althusser's terminology is the interpellation of a subject? or the assertion that it has already socially constructed an imaginary ideological subject to which it addresses itself?
If I understand you correctly the Vedantic meditative practices which transmit the experience of ontological integrity would have to express a hermenuetic of knowledge which would resist any particular cultural doxa and could be universally represented.
from wiki:
Bourdieu's influential concept of habitus was developed to resolve the paradox of the human sciences: objectifying the subjective. It can be defined as a system of dispositions: lasting, acquired schemes of perception, thought and action. The individual agent develops these dispositions in response to the objective conditions they encounter, but they remain subjective things. In this way Bourdieu theorizes the inculcation of objective social structures into the subjective, mental experience of agents. Having thereby absorbed objective social structure into a personal set of cognitive and somatic dispositions, and the subjective structures of action of the agent then being commensurate with the objective structures of the social field, doxa emerge. Doxa are the fundamental, deep-founded, unthought beliefs, taken as self-evident, that inform an agent's actions and thoughts within a particular field. Doxa tends to favor the particular social arrangement of the field, thus privledging the dominant and taking their position of dominance as self-evident and universally favorable. Therefore, the categories of understanding and perception that constitute a habitus, being congruous with the objective organization of the field, tend to reproduce the very structures of the field. Bourdieu thus sees habitus as the key to social reproduction because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life.
approach to sociology:
Bourdieu insists on the importance of a reflexive sociology in which sociologists must at all times conduct their research with conscious attention to the effects of their own position, their own set of internalized structures, and how these are likely to distort or prejudice their objectivity. The sociologist, according to Bourdieu, must engage in a "sociology of sociology" so as not to unwittingly attribute the object of observation the characteristics of the subject.
For Bourdieu, sociology was a combatant effort at exposing the unthought structures that underly the somatic and cognitive practices of social agents. He saw sociology as a means of combating symbolic violence and exposing those unseen areas where one could be free.
Rich
So if our mode of being influences our seeing which then influences our thinking, and it is the practice of inner technologies e.g. tantra,yoga,
which opens one to ones original mode of being then:
How does one seperate out pure being from those unconscious social formulations of being in the world which also underlie both our seeing and thinking, (eg phenomenology and epistemology)?
And here I will instance Bourdieu and his notion of habitus ( I will place a wikipedia
reference below) So if not only a pure ontology but a habitus as well, underlies our perceptions and actions in the world, does Darshan or direct seeing resist or dissolve habitus?
(e.g. even the habitus which is internalized from
the doxa of Indic discourse and its methodology of darshanic seeing?)
In other words are these inner technologies antecedent of Vedantic social constructions? or is there something parculiar to its methodology which can penetrate its own partcular cultural doxa, to presence an authenticity of being which could be universally interpreted?
Is Indic darshan discourse and its resultant technologies somehow resistant to what in Althusser's terminology is the interpellation of a subject? or the assertion that it has already socially constructed an imaginary ideological subject to which it addresses itself?
If I understand you correctly the Vedantic meditative practices which transmit the experience of ontological integrity would have to express a hermenuetic of knowledge which would resist any particular cultural doxa and could be universally represented.
from wiki:
Bourdieu's influential concept of habitus was developed to resolve the paradox of the human sciences: objectifying the subjective. It can be defined as a system of dispositions: lasting, acquired schemes of perception, thought and action. The individual agent develops these dispositions in response to the objective conditions they encounter, but they remain subjective things. In this way Bourdieu theorizes the inculcation of objective social structures into the subjective, mental experience of agents. Having thereby absorbed objective social structure into a personal set of cognitive and somatic dispositions, and the subjective structures of action of the agent then being commensurate with the objective structures of the social field, doxa emerge. Doxa are the fundamental, deep-founded, unthought beliefs, taken as self-evident, that inform an agent's actions and thoughts within a particular field. Doxa tends to favor the particular social arrangement of the field, thus privledging the dominant and taking their position of dominance as self-evident and universally favorable. Therefore, the categories of understanding and perception that constitute a habitus, being congruous with the objective organization of the field, tend to reproduce the very structures of the field. Bourdieu thus sees habitus as the key to social reproduction because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life.
approach to sociology:
Bourdieu insists on the importance of a reflexive sociology in which sociologists must at all times conduct their research with conscious attention to the effects of their own position, their own set of internalized structures, and how these are likely to distort or prejudice their objectivity. The sociologist, according to Bourdieu, must engage in a "sociology of sociology" so as not to unwittingly attribute the object of observation the characteristics of the subject.
For Bourdieu, sociology was a combatant effort at exposing the unthought structures that underly the somatic and cognitive practices of social agents. He saw sociology as a means of combating symbolic violence and exposing those unseen areas where one could be free.
Rich
Re: Re: (Revised): Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Ontology, Habitus, Interpellation, Darshan
Rich,
Somehow, your comment did not offer a reply option. Nor, I suspect, will this present one. To reply, if you wish, go back to the last comment before this which has a Reply button, and post your comment there. It will find its location below this one.
Heidegger's ontology of "thrownness", Boudrieu's habitus, Althusser's interpellation, all point to the same thing - that we are born into a world not of our own making, which is given to us and into which we are socialized without knowing the difference bwtween conditioning and choice. This habitus, ontology, interpellated reality is our culture - set into place through historical processes of discourse. But culture, though it may be given, is not fixed. It is in constant change, and we are the social agents of that change. Change in the fundamental assumptions and discursive "seeds" (doxa, memes) of a culture lead to a changed habitus. In Foucault's language, history is marked by sudden changes of this kind, which are not entirely causally describable. He calls them epistemes. The "modern episteme" is fundamentally different from the "episteme of the Renaissance." He begins his book "The Order of Things" by talking of the change from the one to the other. But this change may be more properly and priorly seen as a change in ontology, as a different "disclosure of Being" (in Heidegge's language). As recognized both by Heidegger and Foucault, such changes cannot entirely be explained, but social processes are certainly involved in their occurrence. These processes are partly immanent (transformations within the culture through critical and creative processes which "dissolve doxa", as you put it) and partly through alien culture contact and other incalculable factors (and thus, transcendent). The conditionings of doxa then become revealed as choices or else they may transform themselves (much as viruses can do) and continue in new more resistant forms until forced once more into consciousness.
The ontic technologies of Vedanta are certainly prior to any cultural doxa formation, but the Vedantic cultural complex was created to facilitate the operation of such technologies from within its habitus. This is the subtext of Sri Aurobindo's "Foundations of Indian Culture." However, it is not dependent upon this habitus (whose outer forms keep changing unpredictably and not always for the best) and can and needs to be socialized through other cultural representations in times of worldwide epistemic/ontological revision. This also I believe is Sri Aurobindo's subtext and his social text. It indicates, as Rod has hinted, at a foundationalism based in experience - which, perhaps, phenomenology, as a cultural revisionism of western metaphysics can facilitate as aprt of a cross-cultural hermenutics leading towards social and individual (ontic and ontological) freedom.
Debashish
Somehow, your comment did not offer a reply option. Nor, I suspect, will this present one. To reply, if you wish, go back to the last comment before this which has a Reply button, and post your comment there. It will find its location below this one.
Heidegger's ontology of "thrownness", Boudrieu's habitus, Althusser's interpellation, all point to the same thing - that we are born into a world not of our own making, which is given to us and into which we are socialized without knowing the difference bwtween conditioning and choice. This habitus, ontology, interpellated reality is our culture - set into place through historical processes of discourse. But culture, though it may be given, is not fixed. It is in constant change, and we are the social agents of that change. Change in the fundamental assumptions and discursive "seeds" (doxa, memes) of a culture lead to a changed habitus. In Foucault's language, history is marked by sudden changes of this kind, which are not entirely causally describable. He calls them epistemes. The "modern episteme" is fundamentally different from the "episteme of the Renaissance." He begins his book "The Order of Things" by talking of the change from the one to the other. But this change may be more properly and priorly seen as a change in ontology, as a different "disclosure of Being" (in Heidegge's language). As recognized both by Heidegger and Foucault, such changes cannot entirely be explained, but social processes are certainly involved in their occurrence. These processes are partly immanent (transformations within the culture through critical and creative processes which "dissolve doxa", as you put it) and partly through alien culture contact and other incalculable factors (and thus, transcendent). The conditionings of doxa then become revealed as choices or else they may transform themselves (much as viruses can do) and continue in new more resistant forms until forced once more into consciousness.
The ontic technologies of Vedanta are certainly prior to any cultural doxa formation, but the Vedantic cultural complex was created to facilitate the operation of such technologies from within its habitus. This is the subtext of Sri Aurobindo's "Foundations of Indian Culture." However, it is not dependent upon this habitus (whose outer forms keep changing unpredictably and not always for the best) and can and needs to be socialized through other cultural representations in times of worldwide epistemic/ontological revision. This also I believe is Sri Aurobindo's subtext and his social text. It indicates, as Rod has hinted, at a foundationalism based in experience - which, perhaps, phenomenology, as a cultural revisionism of western metaphysics can facilitate as aprt of a cross-cultural hermenutics leading towards social and individual (ontic and ontological) freedom.
Debashish
Re: Re: (Revised): Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
Deb wrote:
The ontic technologies of Vedanta are certainly prior to any cultural doxa formation, but the Vedantic cultural complex was created to facilitate the operation of such technologies from within its habitus.<
IMO yes the ontic technologies of Vedanta, Buddhism, and some other spiritual traditions are specifically designed to penetrate doxa, and
to dissolve ones own habitus, but here is the rub,
in that one does emerge from these meditative (doxa free) states they are so to speak extra-normal
The problem as I see it is how to stabilize these states in consciousness, before one falls back into
the doxa of the tradition from which one began
the praxis. Unless this is addressed and states of consciousness assimilated by a sufficient
critical mass of the population, I am fairly skeptical about the psychological conditions being met which would be necessary to bring about the Ideal of Human Unity, which began this train of comments.
rc
The ontic technologies of Vedanta are certainly prior to any cultural doxa formation, but the Vedantic cultural complex was created to facilitate the operation of such technologies from within its habitus.<
IMO yes the ontic technologies of Vedanta, Buddhism, and some other spiritual traditions are specifically designed to penetrate doxa, and
to dissolve ones own habitus, but here is the rub,
in that one does emerge from these meditative (doxa free) states they are so to speak extra-normal
The problem as I see it is how to stabilize these states in consciousness, before one falls back into
the doxa of the tradition from which one began
the praxis. Unless this is addressed and states of consciousness assimilated by a sufficient
critical mass of the population, I am fairly skeptical about the psychological conditions being met which would be necessary to bring about the Ideal of Human Unity, which began this train of comments.
rc
Re: (Revised): Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Ontology, Habitus and Extra-Normality
Rich,
Unless a social habitus supports an ontic possibility, it is bound to be extra-normal. But closer consideration of this proposition may reveal that a kind of extra-normality may be the desirable condition for a habitus which socializes a transitional humanity. The Vedantic cultural complex (I include early Buddhist societies in this since imo Buddha operates within a Vedantic discursive formation) socializes an extra-normal outsiderism in its samsara-sannyasa dialectic. But this outsiderism is also central to its habitus, a transcendence that is powerfully active as an immanence in the historical revisions of the habitus for both its polarities, sannyasa and samsara (eg. the discussion of sannyasa and tyaga in the Gita, which Sri Aurobindo explicates so brilliantly in The Essays on the Gita or in the forms of Indian creativity or even polity as he brings out in The Foundations of Indian Culture). But today, this discusrive dialectic itself seems bankrupt due to the alien cultural hegemony of the west (earlier called colonialism and presently known as globalization). (I have a prpaer on the processes of this epistemic transformation in India, which perhaps I will post in SCIY). Moreover, while it operated vitally (and even now operates subliminally in spite of contrary appearances) in the Indian cultural habitus, its leanings predominated towards a negation of samsara, or saw it at best as a window to transcendence through sannyasa. However, a habitus-transcendence dialectic may be socialzed in other ways or forms to be more creatively transformative of the habitus, an immanence of technologies of transcendence which could be the basis for constant revision for the habitus. This would require alternate social formulations, or discursive interchanges and relations which allow such a socialization and set up such a habitus (as a new phenomenological foundationalism). The global habitus which defines our ontic boudaries today does so economically through the corporation and the market, culturally through the media and intellectually through the academy. Together they determine our social (in)habitation. To arrive at a new habitus which socializes technologies of trancendence as part of its own self-definition as perpetual mutation, we need alternate forms of enterprise, alternate relations of social and material exchange, alternate forms of dissemintaion, presentation and reception of culture and alternate academic boundaries, vocabularies and environments. These cannot be throught of in isolation but as overlapping categories dialectically related to the present discursive forms and transforming them through these relations. Tagore's Shantiniketan, Sri Aurobindo's Pondicherry and the Mother's Auroville are all such alternative experiments in potential. You or I are free to start our own. An experiment in alternate habitus is valid only to the degree of its creative power to stretch the boundaries of hegemonic discourse - and thus, on the real-time individual and social praxis of its inhabitants, not merely as isolated individuals or social islands but as dialogic agents in the world creatively institutiing new interpellation systems. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
DB
Unless a social habitus supports an ontic possibility, it is bound to be extra-normal. But closer consideration of this proposition may reveal that a kind of extra-normality may be the desirable condition for a habitus which socializes a transitional humanity. The Vedantic cultural complex (I include early Buddhist societies in this since imo Buddha operates within a Vedantic discursive formation) socializes an extra-normal outsiderism in its samsara-sannyasa dialectic. But this outsiderism is also central to its habitus, a transcendence that is powerfully active as an immanence in the historical revisions of the habitus for both its polarities, sannyasa and samsara (eg. the discussion of sannyasa and tyaga in the Gita, which Sri Aurobindo explicates so brilliantly in The Essays on the Gita or in the forms of Indian creativity or even polity as he brings out in The Foundations of Indian Culture). But today, this discusrive dialectic itself seems bankrupt due to the alien cultural hegemony of the west (earlier called colonialism and presently known as globalization). (I have a prpaer on the processes of this epistemic transformation in India, which perhaps I will post in SCIY). Moreover, while it operated vitally (and even now operates subliminally in spite of contrary appearances) in the Indian cultural habitus, its leanings predominated towards a negation of samsara, or saw it at best as a window to transcendence through sannyasa. However, a habitus-transcendence dialectic may be socialzed in other ways or forms to be more creatively transformative of the habitus, an immanence of technologies of transcendence which could be the basis for constant revision for the habitus. This would require alternate social formulations, or discursive interchanges and relations which allow such a socialization and set up such a habitus (as a new phenomenological foundationalism). The global habitus which defines our ontic boudaries today does so economically through the corporation and the market, culturally through the media and intellectually through the academy. Together they determine our social (in)habitation. To arrive at a new habitus which socializes technologies of trancendence as part of its own self-definition as perpetual mutation, we need alternate forms of enterprise, alternate relations of social and material exchange, alternate forms of dissemintaion, presentation and reception of culture and alternate academic boundaries, vocabularies and environments. These cannot be throught of in isolation but as overlapping categories dialectically related to the present discursive forms and transforming them through these relations. Tagore's Shantiniketan, Sri Aurobindo's Pondicherry and the Mother's Auroville are all such alternative experiments in potential. You or I are free to start our own. An experiment in alternate habitus is valid only to the degree of its creative power to stretch the boundaries of hegemonic discourse - and thus, on the real-time individual and social praxis of its inhabitants, not merely as isolated individuals or social islands but as dialogic agents in the world creatively institutiing new interpellation systems. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
DB
Re: Re: (Revised): Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY - Metaphysics and Darshan
Deb wrote:
The global habitus which defines our ontic boudaries today does so economically through the corporation and the market, culturally through the media and intellectually through the academy. Together they determine our social (in)habitation. To arrive at a new habitus which socializes technologies of trancendence as part of its own self-definition as perpetual mutation, we need alternate forms of enterprise, alternate relations of social and material exchange, alternate forms of dissemintaion, presentation and reception of culture and alternate academic boundaries, vocabularies and environments.<
Well said, and if I can reformulate this without mischaracterizing it :
1) The inner technologies of transformation in the traditional samsara-sanyasa dichotomy enable one to
transcend one's own embeddedness in cultural habitus
because its goal leads to one renouncing ones life within a specific culture and thus skillfully avoids the doxological formulations of the culture, because one no longer engages in the world by virtue of it.
But if we are talking about changing the world and aiming toward an ideal of human unity then one who takes the path of transcendence must necessarily remain socially embedded. And therefore the need is there to create social institutions which can support individual transformation while resisting the ideological inheritence of historical and cultural dogmatisms.
I certainly agree here, and thats why to my mind the belief that homo sapiens will undergo some major spiritual transformation solely dependent on the individual transformation of a few to me smacks of magical thinking!
(And its why I resist the doxa of Auroville or those in the Ashram in what appears to me, their wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely "progressive evolution" which will in spite of world events and global and local institutions produce certain individuals who will spiritualize the species)
Now if those few individuals who are transformed are in real positions of power,say over major institutions such as a president or prime minister and can initiate change therein, well then it seems more plausible to me. IMO there is a necessary interdependece between individuals and society and I think this is true in Sri Aurobindo's formulation.
For example, if we can believe Norman Dowsett when he related what SA told him in 1950 (that if a nuclear war would break out it could set his work back thousands of years) from such statements and the actions SA took in the world (working for indian independence, working against the fascist) it is clear that he does not see sadhaks as acting in isolation from the world, and that yes changes in society are also important in facilitating the goals, which he urged those following him to aspire
rc
The global habitus which defines our ontic boudaries today does so economically through the corporation and the market, culturally through the media and intellectually through the academy. Together they determine our social (in)habitation. To arrive at a new habitus which socializes technologies of trancendence as part of its own self-definition as perpetual mutation, we need alternate forms of enterprise, alternate relations of social and material exchange, alternate forms of dissemintaion, presentation and reception of culture and alternate academic boundaries, vocabularies and environments.<
Well said, and if I can reformulate this without mischaracterizing it :
1) The inner technologies of transformation in the traditional samsara-sanyasa dichotomy enable one to
transcend one's own embeddedness in cultural habitus
because its goal leads to one renouncing ones life within a specific culture and thus skillfully avoids the doxological formulations of the culture, because one no longer engages in the world by virtue of it.
But if we are talking about changing the world and aiming toward an ideal of human unity then one who takes the path of transcendence must necessarily remain socially embedded. And therefore the need is there to create social institutions which can support individual transformation while resisting the ideological inheritence of historical and cultural dogmatisms.
I certainly agree here, and thats why to my mind the belief that homo sapiens will undergo some major spiritual transformation solely dependent on the individual transformation of a few to me smacks of magical thinking!
(And its why I resist the doxa of Auroville or those in the Ashram in what appears to me, their wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely "progressive evolution" which will in spite of world events and global and local institutions produce certain individuals who will spiritualize the species)
Now if those few individuals who are transformed are in real positions of power,say over major institutions such as a president or prime minister and can initiate change therein, well then it seems more plausible to me. IMO there is a necessary interdependece between individuals and society and I think this is true in Sri Aurobindo's formulation.
For example, if we can believe Norman Dowsett when he related what SA told him in 1950 (that if a nuclear war would break out it could set his work back thousands of years) from such statements and the actions SA took in the world (working for indian independence, working against the fascist) it is clear that he does not see sadhaks as acting in isolation from the world, and that yes changes in society are also important in facilitating the goals, which he urged those following him to aspire
rc
Re: Metaphysics & Darshan: Auroville & Prime Ministers
Rich,
You say:
"But if we are talking about changing the world and aiming toward an ideal of human unity then one who takes the path of transcendence must necessarily remain socially embedded. And therefore the need is there to create social institutions which can support individual transformation while resisting the ideological inheritence of historical and cultural dogmatisms.
"I certainly agree here, and thats why to my mind the belief that homo sapiens will undergo some major spiritual transformation solely dependent on the individual transformation of a few to me smacks of magical thinking!
(And its why I resist the doxa of Auroville or those in the Ashram in what appears to me, their wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely "progressive evolution" which will in spite of world events and global and local institutions produce certain individuals who will spiritualize the species)
"Now if those few individuals who are transformed are in real positions of power,say over major institutions such as a president or prime minister and can initiate change therein, well then it seems more plausible to me. IMO there is a necessary interdependece between individuals and society and I think this is true in Sri Aurobindo's formulation. ..."
Do you really believe that you can so tritely encapsulate the "doxa of Auroville?" Do you imagine you've spent sufficient time residing at Auroville to arrive at such a sanctimonious judgement? My own experience of having stayed there for 3 months/year for the past 3 years is honestly that I've met only a couple of AV residents whom I'd describe as having a "wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely 'progressive evolution'." And the other residents smile tolerantly when confronted with those few who profess such an innocent belief. Most of the Aurovilians I've met are far too busy dealing with day-to-day survival and the intricate sociological complexities.
Auroville and its residents become less & less amenable to glib generalizations the better I get to know them. Imo, there's an incredibly complex process underway there with constant interaction with outside society, both via a host of formal arrangements and informal influences via AV residents traveling to and from their home cultures, via the thousands of visitors from many different countries, and of course via the deep interactions & involvement with the surrounding villages.
I think Auroville is one of those rare places where there is in fact a kind of magical 'darshana' available to those who are open to it. I think what's happening at AV could well have real influence on the "presidents & prime ministers" whom you sa
You say:
"But if we are talking about changing the world and aiming toward an ideal of human unity then one who takes the path of transcendence must necessarily remain socially embedded. And therefore the need is there to create social institutions which can support individual transformation while resisting the ideological inheritence of historical and cultural dogmatisms.
"I certainly agree here, and thats why to my mind the belief that homo sapiens will undergo some major spiritual transformation solely dependent on the individual transformation of a few to me smacks of magical thinking!
(And its why I resist the doxa of Auroville or those in the Ashram in what appears to me, their wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely "progressive evolution" which will in spite of world events and global and local institutions produce certain individuals who will spiritualize the species)
"Now if those few individuals who are transformed are in real positions of power,say over major institutions such as a president or prime minister and can initiate change therein, well then it seems more plausible to me. IMO there is a necessary interdependece between individuals and society and I think this is true in Sri Aurobindo's formulation. ..."
Do you really believe that you can so tritely encapsulate the "doxa of Auroville?" Do you imagine you've spent sufficient time residing at Auroville to arrive at such a sanctimonious judgement? My own experience of having stayed there for 3 months/year for the past 3 years is honestly that I've met only a couple of AV residents whom I'd describe as having a "wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely 'progressive evolution'." And the other residents smile tolerantly when confronted with those few who profess such an innocent belief. Most of the Aurovilians I've met are far too busy dealing with day-to-day survival and the intricate sociological complexities.
Auroville and its residents become less & less amenable to glib generalizations the better I get to know them. Imo, there's an incredibly complex process underway there with constant interaction with outside society, both via a host of formal arrangements and informal influences via AV residents traveling to and from their home cultures, via the thousands of visitors from many different countries, and of course via the deep interactions & involvement with the surrounding villages.
I think Auroville is one of those rare places where there is in fact a kind of magical 'darshana' available to those who are open to it. I think what's happening at AV could well have real influence on the "presidents & prime ministers" whom you sa
Attachment:
Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY
By Debashish Banerji
I've taken the liberty of re-posting here all of the comments ("Replies") to Debashish's earlier posting: "Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji." -- My reasons:
1) The set of responses in this thread was getting so large that we were starting to experience some oddities in BlogHarbor's reply functions.
2) I was concerned that we could delete the entire thread due to some technical or human error, thus losing this fascinating & important discussion.
3) By posting all of the comments as this article, we can go back in and re-format them if we wish; e.g., correcting typos & adding italics for quoted passages.
PLEASE CONTINUE OUR REPLIES ON THIS TOPIC HERE, IN THIS ARTICLE, NOT IN THE PREVIOUSLY POSTED ONE.
Thanks,
~ ron
Re: Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji
let me argue some points which maybe put forth from a post-structuralist perspective. From this perspective one might say that the doxa of the times (e.g. progress, enlightenment and evolution) may undergird Sri Aurobindo's
social theories Of course such an argument would preclude SA's concurrent notion of devolution or his acceptance of falling away from on original source as equally in play.
In this he defies the modernist paradigm of progress by his eschewing a linear ideal toward infinite progress, much as Gebser does.
Gebser is refreshing as he does not fall prey to the modernist fallacy of the idea of continuous progress, but sees evolution as proceeding through a series of bifurcations or discontinuous mutations. Here is Gebser:
With the unfolding of each new consciousness mutation consciousness increases in intensity; but the concept of evolution with its continuous development excludes the discontinuous character of the mutation, The unfolding then is an enrichment tied, to a gain in dimensionality; yet it is also an impoverishment because of its increasing remoteness from origin. (46)
But in response to the following:
Though such a possibility looks distant, Sri Aurobindo says, "But if it is at all a truth of our being, then it must be the truth to which all is moving and in it must be found the means of a fundamental, an inner, a complete, a real human unity which would be the one secure base of a unification of human life. A spiritual oneness which would create a psychological oneness not dependant upon any intellectual or outward uniformity and compel a oneness of life not bound up with its mechanical means of unification, but ready always to enrich its secure unity by a free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression, this would be the basis for a higher type of human existence".
Well how does one unify the psychology of the individual
after Foucault who basically says that an indivdual psychology does not exist, rather the individual is the sum of a number of multiple, often competing discourses, which have been formulated by experts and internalized within the psychology of the individual. How does one get to free inner variation, if the substratum of human experience is already defined by social discourse?
But even if the individual is fragmented, my thought is Can't the process of fragmentation form greater wholes?
If the individual psychology is pervaded already by the discourses of history and culture, so that each human being may be seen in a certain way to be representative of the whole of human experience at the time of their Episteme. Aren't we all rather not fundamentally already unified in certain biological and social discourses which we have all internalized, even as each of us is a singular individual expression of our phenotypal evolution?
And who/what is the Spirit that unifies psychology, is it a totalizing structual imposition of the whole on the expression of the individual, as in the formulation of a totem where the whole tyrannizes its parts,
(and I think if I understand SA correctly, if humanity does not become plastic enough for the transformation, plasticity may be forced upon it by the evoltuion, perhaps embedded in silicon wafers and composite nano-materials, but nature will keep moving forwarded whether a self-reflective humanity is ready or not)
Or will the play of spirit find humanity a vehicle to internalize the divine anarchy in an affective intersubjective play of multiplcity in unity. e.g. a unity in which the parts presence the whole, as Goethe's archetypal plant.
Secondly regards the continuing evolution of consciousness mediation by language or not, according to Derrida, for humanity everything is mediated by language. So how would we use language which mediates our experience of the world, to go beyond itself?
(I take it by the practice of silence, but something undoubtable emerges from the silence (e.g. the future poetry, will that not also be of grammartology?)
Somehow, I can not buy into Rod's argument that although things are imperfect today in 50 years (or maybe longer) there will be those in Auroville who actual faithfully practice the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and will be the prototypes of an Gnostic Being. In fact at present to my mind this is pretty close to magical thinking. But it also seems to smack of the enlightenment idea of linear progress.
Although I agree that Auroville may actually be privileged in this respect, but my own thoughts on giving such special status to Auroville is actually quite decisive that this is not unlike certain Zionist who see the multi-dimensional New Jeruselum collapsed into the one dimensional space of the state of Isreal as ending history. (Moreover, even if this is a departure from AV doxa, I beleive what Mother would envision for the township today is anyones guess?)
As I said I do have faith in Sri Aurobindo's vision and certainly see him and the Mother as annunciating a new future, its just that I think this future will baffle any formulation we can currently conceive.
rich