Originally posted on sciy.org by Debashish Banerji on Sun 07 Jun 2009 04:46 PM PDT
EXCERPTS FROM ANANTA KUMAR GIRI’S BOOK CHAPTER: ‘Knowledge and Human Liberation: Jurgen Habermas, Sri Aurobindo and Beyond’ Annotated by Debashish Banerji This is an annotated introduction to the first chapter of a recent book Knowledge and Human Liberation by Ananta Kumar Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies. The introductory chapter of this text is highly relevant in our consideration of the broader context of social evolution within which the Integral Yoga is embedded in the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and its relation to contemporary concerns with the theory of social praxis. Our present epoch, whether we call it modernity or postmodernity, is premised in the movement of 18th c., European intellectual history known as the Enlightenment. Our contemporary disillusionment with the global effects of this ideology and its unflattering imbrications with power has led to widespread postmodern critiques, but this should not blind us to the fact that the core concern of the Enlightenment was universal human liberation through the solvent agency of knowledge. The assumption of rationality as the instrument of knowledge and of Science (broadly conceived) as the method of its collective empirical validation led to the categoric invention of Humanity and a perspectival world history and global staging yoking the peoples of the earth willy-nilly to its cause. In this journey of modernity, Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) can be considered a major spokesperson for the Enlightenment but also one of its foundational critics, in fact giving birth to the method of critique (critical theory) in the heart of Enlightenment’s inquiry with his three critical theses – those of Pure Reason, Practical Reason and of Judgment. Without going into its details, the first could be said to draw out the limits of rational inquiry, the second fielded the social and ethical problematic of relative knowledge developing in a plural field and the third explored possible universal and transcendental bases for judgments of aesthetic taste and the sense of the sublime. Postmodernism has largely been an acknowledgement of the failed project of the Enlightenment under the action of plural, hostile and hybrid culture contact in its world expansionist drive. The definition of the Human, closely tied to its categorization in relation to a universal rational knowledge project, has been challenged by the refusal of its boundaries in an anti-humanism (Heidegger/Derrida) and in the notion of the disappearance of Man/Humanity (Foucault/Lacan), dissolved either in transcendental laws or in virtuality (Baudrillard) or in the post-human, again whether cyborgian (Haraway) or overmental/supramental (Nietzsche/Sri Aurobindo). Within this scenario however, one major thinker who has stood his ground in support of the derailed project of the Enlightenment has been Jurgen Habermas (1929 - ). The potency of Habermas in a postmodern era has sustained itself due to the questions of human liberty, equality, ethics and understanding he has prioritized over those of knowledge, identity or experience. Habermas’ intervention in contemporary thought can be read as an extension of Kant’s second critique – that of Practical Reason. In foregrounding this, he has centered the emancipatory knowledge-project of the Enlightenment in the democratic space of plural experience. Habermas’ most powerful contribution to contemporary thought has been in the theorization of this space as the “public sphere,†a concept developed in his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). What can hold the enterprise of building the rational Tower of Babel at the point of its seeming disintegration into a multitude of tongues? What indeed leads to this disintegration? In seeking for resources to answer these questions, Habermas focuses on what he calls “communicative reason.†Communicative rationality, according to him, is "oriented to achieving, sustaining and reviewing consensus - and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims".(TCA1 p17). This discipline of intersubjective practice restores the lifeworld from its fragmentation under ideological or economic (commodified) alien consolidations. Aesthetic, therapeutic and explicative exchanges are seen by him as building such consensual understanding, under the disciplinary acceptance of “criticisable validity claims†in a public sphere of plural ontologies. Thus Habermas’ communicative speech acts operate under an implicit faith in Human universality and its inevitable collective experience as social and individual knowledge, a continuation of the Enlightenment ideal. In contrast to Habermas, Sri Aurobindo may be conceived more comfortably among the postmodern thinkers who have renounced the ideals of the Enlightenment. Firstly, as one of the founding figures of an Indian anti-colonial movement, his nationalist writings initiate a critique of the cultural hubris and world-dominating teleology of the Enlightenment. In terms of this critique, his work can be fruitfully constellated with postcolonialism. As for postmodernism, at the modern head of this movement one may think of Nietzsche and Sri Aurobindo could be seen as sharing with him the rupture of history, the apocalyptic leap to the post-human. However, a close reading of Sri Aurobindo also shows him calling for a transcendence of the boundaries of Humanism, but through the extension of its rational possibilties. A suprarational ontology would achieve a universalization which is integral and expressible in rational terms, as demonstrated by him in his own philosophical and other writings. Such a rationality transcends the piecing together of large systemic fragments of causal relationship which is the method of the Enlightenment ideal. However, as he brings out in his Ideal of Human Unity, the progressive collective planetization of human understanding has been a move in the direction of a possible general ontological shift of the integral kind. This also presupposes the inner intuition of a universal Human, transcending social and cultural ontologies, but not denying them. A discplined intersubjective praxis of creative communication can very well be seen as a part of the social realization of such an integral ideal in a plural field. Usually this has not been clearly described or prioritized by scholars and practitioners of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Non-Dualism, the emphasis having been directed towards the articulation of a universal (integral) Psychology, in terms taken from Sri Aurobindo’s own writing. But such denotative asocial descriptions have tended to subjugate phenomenological variety and social/cultural/personal experience. As a consequence, the danger of a totalitarian epistemology in the name (nomos) of Integral Theory has asserted itself with its own institutional disciplinary agents, who have increasingly tended to police out (violently if necessary, as the contemporary controversy related to the recent biography, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, alarmingly and overwhelmingly demonstrates) all subjective interpretation of the way to this goal, and thus to the possibility of a plural realization of the Integral Yoga. Against this background, the comparative and cross-cultural dialog between Habermas and Sri Aurobindo initiated by Ananta Giri is a salutary intervention. Using each to critique the limits and possibilities of the other, Giri shows how the rational assumptions of knowledge in the Enlightenment ideal lead to aporia which have been amply documented by postmodern thinkers, but which receive a higher validation through the transcendental ontology and praxis of Sri Aurobindo; just as the susceptibility to ontotheological abstraction and totalism of Sri Aurobindo’s phenomenology and praxis reduced to an Integral Psychology, Integral Theory or Integral Religion can be safeguarded for a plural space through disciplines of intersubjective communication as developed by Habermas. Giri sees the effective domain of an Aurobindonian intervention in an emancipatory public sphere in terms of a Practical Vedanta (as coined by Vivekananda); and alternately, he sees the fruitful intervention of Habermasian communication acts in the social context of “Integral Yoga communities†in the sphere of education. Here we present some excerpts from Giri’s first chapter titled “Knowledge and Human Liberation: Jurgen Habermas, Sri Aurobindo and Beyond. There is a lot more in the article itself, which I have left out for lack of space, but these passages may provide a taste of the potency of Giri’s dialogic intervention:†1. INTRODUCTION ‘THE PROBLEM AND AN INVITATION:’ Giri introduces his essay by pointing to the individual and social dimensions in which the respective visions of Sri Aurobindo and Habermas are grounded. Of course, there is also a social dimension to the thinking of Sri Auorbindo, but the primary ground of knowledge is human experience and its possibilities through the exploration of an individually based psychology of normative and transformative experience. Habermas’ thinking, on the other hand, is carefully situated in the social domain of public communication acts and the evolution of understanding through such normative processes. Giri points to the openings to transcendence in Habermas’ formalization through the acknowledgment of “weak transcendental idealizations†and to “cognition, empathy and agape.†However, he correctly notes that such acknowledgments of a “beyond†remain within the unrealized domain for Habermas. I would add that Habermas’ allowable assumptions make such a “beyond†not only unrealized but unrealizable as a general project of human experience or understanding. But this is why Giri calls for a thought dialog with Sri Aurobindo, so as to deepen the assumptions of relativistic social discourse with the element of transcultural ontological transcendence. On the other hand, an exclusive concentration on individual experience can blind the consciousness to the exigencies of social justice, egalitarianism and freedom, which a scrupulous discipline of communicative democracy and progress of understanding can bring. In light of recent developments within the community of practitioners of Sri Aurobindo’s normative phenomenology (Integral Yoga) – ie. the coercive acts of violence stemming from faith-based truth claims relating to Peter Heeh’s recent biography of Sri Aurobindo, the inclusionof this Habermasian dimension of the discipline of normative communication becomes urgent. Human liberation has been a key concern with humanity from the dawn of history and in the contemporary moment, it manifests before us as an epochal challenge as the prevalent guarantors of liberation in modernity--liberalism and socialism--have left us alone in the street. The dead end in which our familiar projects of social emancipation and human freedom are at present urges us to rethink liberation as part of a new seeking, striving, and experimental subjectivity at the level of both self and society. Human liberation means liberation from the oppressive structures of society, from one's ego and urge to control (which is one of the most important sources of social evils, as Teressa Brennan (1995) would tell us), and to be related positively and affirmatively to new schemes of being and becoming and to creation of alternative spaces of self-realization, intersubjectivity and solidarity. In this practice and quest of human liberation, knowledge plays an important role and Jurgen Habermas and Sri Aurobindo, two soul-touching thinkers of our time, help us to understand the multidimensional pathways of linkages between knowledge, human interest and human liberation. Their pathways of seeking and striving touch us not only as cognitive schemes but as intimations of a Beyond. Though Habermas is conventionally looked at approaching knowledge only through rational argumentation, there is the suggestion of a beyond in him. It is no wonder then that in many of his works, as for example in Between Facts and Norms: Towards a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Habermas (1996) talks of the need to proceed with "weak transcendental idealizations" in our practices of communication and acquisition of knowledge (also see Habermas 2002a). Habermas (1990) himself urges us to realize that "cognition, empathy, and agape" must be integrated in our quest of knowledge and "concern for the fate of one's neighbor is a necessary emotional prerequisite for the cognitive operations expected of participants of discourse" (Habermas 1990: 182). Such a suggestion for a beyond whose full potential however is not fully explored in Habermas (2002a) as he is anxious to reduce all transcendence to a “transcendence from within†in the practices of knowledge can be deepened and broadened by a dialogue with Sri Aurobindo. 2. THE BORDER CROSSING BETWEEN EPISTEMPOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY: Giri spells out the integral field of knowledge which can be the fruit of such a dialog between Habermas and Sri Aurobindo, by referring to it as a “thinking about knowledge of self, society, nature and god / transcendence as part of an interconnected field of autonomy and interpenetration.†Again, one may say that such an integrated field is indeed what Sri Aurobindo opens up in his oeuvre. But it is also clear that Sri Aurobindo scholarship has not followed in these footsteps and has tended to valorize a universalistic (integral) psychology over history, culture or the field of plurality. The fossilization of Integral Theory, Integral Religion or Integral Psychology are the severe dangers of an approach which eschews plurality of interpretation, practice or social manifestation. What Giri points to more pressingly, however, is Habermas’ valorization of epistemology over ontology as part of his ongoing self-distancing from Heidegger. Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge and presupposes a dualistic separation of knower and object/field of knowledge. Ontology as the philosophy of Being was Heidegger’s attempt to collapse the Kantian gap between subject and object in making Knowledge a project of reflection on Existence as the pre-given ground of experience. Habermas’ distrust of Heidegger stems from the latter’s error of support to Hitler’s National Socialism during its ascendance and his later attribution of this error to history rather than his own misjudgment. Nevertheless, a non-dual assimilation of ontology and epistemology is the border-crossing which Giri invites Habermas to conduct through a dialog with Sri Aurobindo and he adduces a few intermediate steps in this direction – ie. the recent fields of “virtue epistemology†or “weak ontology.†He also draws attention to Mohanty and Uberoi as contemporary Indian philosophers who have introduced more holistic schemes for this bridging: A dialogue with Sri Aurobindo helps us to bring the very conception of knowledge into a foundational broadening and cross-civilizational dialogue, for example, thinking about knowledge of self, society, nature and god / transcendence as part of an interconnected field of autonomy and interpenetration. The relationship among them is not one of dualism alone and though this relationship has been predominantly thought of and lived in a regime of pervasive dualism within modernity of which Habermas still continues to be a passionate advocate there is a non-dual dimension in their logic of constitution and embodiment characterized by what J.N. Mohanty calls “multi-valued logic†or what JPS Uberoi calls “four-fold logic of truth and methodâ€(cf. Mohanty 2000; Uberoi 2002). A dialogue between Habermas and Aurobindo can not only broaden the ontology of knowledge but also help us realize that the distinction between ontology and epistemology as has been valorized in modernity needs to be transcended by embodying what can be called an ontological epistemology of participation, taking cues from recent transformations in both epistemological and ontological imaginations such as “virtue epistemology†and “weak ontology.â€[i] But here a Habermasian mode needs to be ready for a foundational border crossing as despite Habermasian critique of positivism Habermas is within a modernist epistemological privileging in his conception and method of knowledge and his denial of ontology.[ii] Even though this denial has to some extent to do with Habermas’s understandable fight with the ghost of Heidegger, Habermas seems now to turn this into a new orthodoxy thereby showing how critical theory is incapable of critiquing its very foundational presuppositions such as valorization of rational argumentations, performative competence, validity claims and linguistic intersubjectivity instead of emotional intersubjectivity (Craib 1998). But the problem of dualism and instrumentalism does not vanish by being part of communicative action and knowledge as human liberation, not only as human interest, calls for developing non-dual and non-instrumental modes of relationships which are not automatically guaranteed even when we shift from positivism to a Habermasian communicative rationality (see Bhaskar 2002). 3. THE BORDER CROSSING OF THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE: Giri calls here for the development of a new Critical Theory which turns its questioning on â€the valorization of knowledge and communication to the exclusion of other practices of self-cultivation such as listening, silence and self-emptying vis-à -vis one’s will to power and will to arguments, and connectedness with the world.†He points to the currency of contemporary Critical Theory which rose to prominence in the Frankfurt School with its critique of the Marxian valorization of capital; and invites its extension in a critique of “valorization of knowledge and communication, enabling us to understand the very limits of knowledge itself.†This border crossing would also be necessary as a prelude to the dialog of Habermas with Sri Aurobindo. In his thinking of this crossing, Giri also adduces an original and interesting interpretation of the famous lines from the Isha Upanishad on Knowledge and Ignorance: A dialogue between Habermas and Aurobindo has another potential for a foundational border crossing for critical theory and this has to do with realizing the very limits of knowledge itself. The Habermasian articulation of knowledge and human interest valorizes knowledge and communication and here Habermas’s critique of “illusion of pure theory†does not really acknowledge the limits of knowledge itself in a foundational sense. Consider here the following lines of Ishopanishada—one of the foundational texts of spiritual universality coming from India: Andham Tamah Prabishyanti Jo AVidyam Upasate, Tato Vuya Ibate Tamah Jo Vidyaam Ratah. It means: those who worship ignorance are steeped in darkness but those who are steeped in knowledge are also steeped in darkness. Therefore to be steeped in the valorization of knowledge and communication to the exclusion of other practices of self-cultivation such as listening, silence and self-emptying vis-à -vis one’s will to power and will to arguments, and connectedness with the world—not only the human social world but also with the world of nature and transcendence—is to be steeped in blindness and we now need a new critical theory which helps us to understand the limits of knowledge and human interests. Critical theory in its modernist incarnation started with a Marxian critique of valorization of capital to which the proponents of the early Frankfurt school added a much helpful critique of valorization of state and the media. But now, especially in these days of communicative revolutions, we need a new mode of critique and reconstruction which combines a critique of valorization of capital and power with a critique of valorization of knowledge and communication, enabling us to understand the very limits of knowledge itself. 4. ON REASON AND SOCIAL IDEALS: Giri provides us with brief introductions to both Habermas and Sri Aurobindo and then establishes the grounds of concordance. What is very hopeful in the dialog is the fact of Sri Aurobindo’s acknowledgment of “the crucial significance of reason in understanding the validity of traditions†and its place in collective understanding and critiques of the inequalities of power and oppression. In making this clear, Giri, quotes very important lines from Sri Aurobindo showing the importance he gives to reason, particularly in social evolution and also showing its limits and grounds of transcendence. This paragraph is particularly important in the recognition of the need to overcome orthodoxy by communication acts which submit to a basic discipline of reason, even when an individual and collective transcendence is sought as an eventual goal: Sri Aurobindo is one of the very few modern Indian thinkers who does not reject reason outright rather accord it a primal place in human development and evolution both. Sri Aurobindo also does not reject modernity outright rather his ‘Human Cycle’ puts reason and modernity in perspective. When we read this we find a lot of similarity between Sri Aurobindo and a modernist European thinker such as Habermas. Sri Aurobindo here points to the crucial significance of reason in understanding the validity of traditions. Like Habermas, Sri Aurobindo also stresses the need “to universalize first of all the habit of reason†but “the reason which is to be universally applied, cannot be the reason of a ruling class: for in the present imperfection of the human race that always means the fettering and misapplication of reason degraded into servant of power to maintain the privileges of the ruling class. It must be the reason of each and all seeking for a basis of agreement†(ibid: 184, emphases added). Like Habermas's plea for undistorted communication, Aurobindo also sensitizes us to the distortion that power can introduce in the working of a rational discourse and the realization of even its inherent emancipatory potential. But for Aurobindo even though reason is so important for moral development and evolution (both phylogenetic and ontogenetic) it cannot be a sole foundation of morality. Aurobindo accords this role to spirit. An ideal society, for Aurobindo, is not a mere "rational society" but a "spiritual society" which does not abandon rational foundation but deepens and transforms it. A society founded on spirituality is not governed by religion as a mere social custom. A spiritual society regards man not only as a "mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfillment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond, which after all it need not have left if it had no divine business here in the world of physical, vital and mental nature" (Sri Aurobindo 1962: 213). 5. ON SOCIAL FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY: Giri follows his paragraph on communicative concordance between Sri Aurobindo and Habermas with his key insight into the deep roots of human responsibility which drive both Habermas and Sri Aurobindo – their passion for social freedom. It is all too easy to forget this in the case of Sri Aurobindo in seeing him solely as a spiritual teacher, but Giri draws attention to the fact that his anti-colonial intensity and his unsparing stand against German Nazism are not personal choices divorced from his general teaching but constitute the social conditions of the Integral Yoga and part of its integrality. It is also important to establish that in spite of his distance from Germany, his earlier struggle against Britain and the widespread support for Hitler among Indians, including members of his ashram, Sri Aurobindo had no hesitation in opposing Nazism, as against Heidegger’s susceptibility: 6. ON LANGUAGE USE: Giri, in drawing on the lines of difference between the two, strikes on their attitudes towards language. Habermas expresses his distrust for Poetry as rhetorical obfuscation of critical reason. In this, he can be said to repeat an ancient philosophical bias, that of Plato in The Republic, who would banish the poet and reciter from his ideal republic for the same reasons. Habermas is also allergic to Poetry because of his distrust of Nazi rhetoric and Heidegger’s espousal of Poetry as the utterance of Being. Sri Aurobindo also gives a high premium to Poetry, seeing its future as the revealer of secret insights and experiences in the form of the utterance of ranges of cosmic consciousness, the mantra. Here one may make finer distinctions between the poetry of a blinding rhetoric and the poetry of relevation, whose passion lies in revealing Being and providing access to depths, heights and widenesses of universal understanding, empathy and clarity of sight: 7. ON EMANCIPATION: Giri dwells on the limits of emancipation in Habermas’ project. Here he points out how the project of social emancipation cannot complete itself without emancipation from ego. This indeed is one of Sri Aurobindo’s principal critiques of all attempts at ideological reform or social/political engineering. Giri points to Habermas’ limitations in this regard, and the violence of projection and appropriation which is effectively the result of his denial of ontological value to the truth claims of spiritual traditions: Once we understand the limits of an emancipatory interest especially as it is faced with the calling of self-cultivation then we realize other limits of the very language of emancipation. The discourse of emancipation has focused primarily on social emancipation and now this can be deepened by emancipation from ego, in fact liberation of self from ego. Liberation then consists of overcoming both self-alienation and social alienation. Overcoming self-alienation is enriched by what Roy Bhaskar writes below which is in tune with the perspective of Sri Aurobindo: “The dialectics of de-alienation(of retotalisation) are all essentially the dialectic of love: of Self (>Self), of each and all (>Totality) and in both inner and outer movements, both as essentially love of God. The essence of liberated man therefore is love of God, and God, we could say, is not only love but essentially to be loved†(Bhaskar 2000: 44). A major problem here is Habermas’s over-confidence in his rationalistic project and lack of participation in multiple traditions of humanity.[iii] Despite his own admission that philosophy “even in its postmetaphysical form, will be able neither to replace nor to repress religion as long as religious language is the bearer of a semantic content that is inspiring and even indispensable,†(Habermas 1992: 51) he can relate to other traditions only in a manner of “appropriationâ€(Habermas 2002a: 79). Given Habermas’ concern for rooting emacipation in human interest, Giri later explicates Sri Aurobindo’s views on emancipation and human interest and shows how this includes both domains of subjective and social emancipation, neither of which can be complete without the other and both of which belong to human interest: Sri Aurobindo writes: “The central aim of knowledge is the recovery of the Self, of our true self-existence, and this aim presupposes the admission that our present mode of being is not our true existence†Sri Aurobindo also makes it clear that when he talks of knowledge and human liberation it is not individual salvation alone: “[..] an individual salvation in heavens beyond, careless of the earth, is not our highest objective; the liberation and self-interest of others is as much our own concern,-- we might almost say, our divine self-interest,--as our own liberation. Otherwise our unity with others would have no effective meaning.†8. ON TRANSCENDENCE: Giri dwells further on Habermas’ anxiety regarding ontological transcendence and his attempt to reduce all transcendence to subjective terms (transcendence-from-within). He draws on the contemporary French philosopher of aesthetics, Luc Ferry to make his critique of Habermas here and thereby to point to a post-secular definition of God and to open the ground for the dialog with Sri Aurobindo: [H]e [Habermas] is anxious to de-transcendentalize religion and though it has a continued empancipatory potential in freeing us from what Spinoza had long ago articulated as the problem of “theological illusion,†the anxious reduction of all transcendence to only a “transcendence from within†calls for rethinking. There are many different conceptions of transcendence possible and Habermasian agenda of “transcendence from within†suffers from the modernist anxiety to imprison transcendence within a familiar language and the public sphere. Consider here the following lines of Luc Ferry: “[..] When I hear a musical passage, it does not reduce to a series of related notes with no connection between them (actual immanence). On the contrary, it contributes—in an immanent way, apart from any rational operation—a certain structure that transcends this actual immanence, without being imposed on me from the outside like an argument from authority. This ‘immanent transcendence’ contains within itself, par excellence, the ultimate significance of lived experiences†(Ferry 2002: 26). In post-metaphysical and secular moments, God is referred to not to “ground truth, but comes after it, to give it a meaning†(ibid: 31). 9. ON POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE IN HUMAN AND SOCIAL EMANCIPATION: Giri compares the relation of Power and Knowledge in (post)modern traditions of critical theory with the relation of Knowledge and Love as agents for emancipation in Sri Aurobindo. He also lays out Sri Aurobindo’s critique of the limits of mental idealism in processes of social transformation: In contemporary critical theory whether it starts from Habermas or from Foucault knowledge is almost always a subservient to either power or mastery but Sri Aurobindo urges us to understand the integral connection between knowledge and love: “Perfect knowledge indeed leads to perfect love, integral knowledge to a rounded and multitudinous richness of love†(ibid: 522). But at the same time Sri Aurobindo tells us that knowledge has equal power as love but their method of arriving at is different†(ibid: 524). This suggests that Sri Aurobindo is open to acknowledging the differential autonomy of knowledge and love as the two domains are also interconnected. In his Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo laments that the modern European idea of society is founded upon the primacy of vital dynamism and has “neglected the spiritual element in man which is his true being†(1962: 277). Sri Aurobindo is for a spiritual vitalism and spiritual realism: “[spirituality will not try to slay the vitality in man by denying life but will rather reveal to life the divine in itself as the principle of its own transformation†(ibid: 286); furthermore, “Our idealism is the most rightly human thing in us, but as mental idealism it is a thing uneffective. To be effective it has to convert itself into a spiritual realism†(ibid: 301). Like Habermas Sri Aurobindo stresses on learning from our failures: “Failures must be originally numerous and difficult but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used [..]†(ibid: 330). 10. SPIRITUAL REALISM AND PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY: Giri extends Sri Aurobindo’s idea of spiritual realism to talk of its dynamic use in social transformative processes. In dealing with this, he also raises the comparative issue of Vivekananda’s ‘practical spirituality.’ Vivekananda’s ‘practical spirituality’ is more about ‘social uplift’ than social transformation, but one could conceive of it as an alternate approach to the mobilization of a spiritual realism. However, when Sri Aurobindo uses this phrase in a social context, it is the formation of a spiritual society that he is referring to. Giri acknowledges this and points to the conditions of its establishment. Ultimately, a gnostic community must rest on the realization of a gnostic consciousness by its members. But, by dint of the integrality of the realization, we may view the relationship equally in its obverse form and say that the social conditions fostering the realization of a gnostic consciousness must be a spiritual realism mobilized in the progressive aspiration towards a gnostic society. Habermas’ insights into the development of disciplines of communicative interaction can play an important part in the development of social conditions ensuring plurality of interpretation and practice towards the realization of such a gnostic community: Habermas speaks of practical discourse. Communicative interaction is the most important part of this practical discourse. This practical discourse can be part of a practical spirituality and Sri Aurobindo’s perspective of spiritual realism is a significant part of it (Metz 1970; Vivekananda 1991). Practical spirituality, as Swami Vivekananda[iv] (1991: 354) argues, urges us to realize that "the highest idea of morality and unselfishness goes hand in hand with the highest idea of metaphysical conception." This highest conception pertains to the realization that man himself is God: "You are that Impersonal Being: that God for whom you have been searching all over the time is yourself--yourself not in the personal sense but in the impersonal" (Vivekananda 1991: 332). The task of practical spirituality begins with this realization but does not end there: its objective is to transform the world. The same Swami Vivekananda thus challenges: "The watchword of all well-being of all moral good is not "1" but "thou". Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is an unchangeable or not? Here is the world and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did, and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt" (Vivekananda 1991: 353). What practical spirituality stresses is that the knowledge that one is Divine, one is part of a Universal Being, facilitates this mode of relating oneself to the world. This knowledge is however not for the acquisition of power over the other; rather it is to worship her as God. In the words of Vivekananda: "Human knowledge is not antagonistic to human well-being. On the contrary, it is knowledge alone that will save us in every department of life, in knowledge as worship" (Vivekananda 1991: 353). The realization of practical spirituality in the dynamics of self, culture, and society is as much a normative ideal as the building of a rational society or realization of a state of undistorted communication (Giri 2002c; Wuthnow 1998, 2001). The coming of a spiritual society requires both the "reflexive mobilization of self" (Giddens 1991) as well as building up of alternative communities which are founded on the principles of practical spirituality. According to Sri Aurobindo, the coming of a spiritual society begins with the spiritual fulfillment of the urge to individual perfection but ends with the building of a "new world, a change in the life of humanity or, at the least a new perfected collective life in the earth - nature" (Sri Aurobindo 1970: 1031). "This calls for the appearance not only of isolated evolved individuals acting in the uninvolved mass, but of many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings and a new common life superior to the present individual and common existence. A collective life of this kind must obviously constitute itself on the same principle as life of the gnostic individual" (ibid). 11. ON INTEGRAL EDUCATION: As a social practice preparing conditions of individual and social emancipation and transformation, Giri draws on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s theories of Integral Education and sees its potential but also its shortcomings as practiced. He points to the burgeoning of Integral Educational schools across India and specially mentions Orissa as a state in which such schools have found fertile ground. Giri hints at the shades of authoritarianism at work in these schools mixed up in their idealism. Unfortunately, a deeper study reveals not merely authoritarianism but ideological orthodoxy and even the simmering of an Aurobindonian fundamentalism under its placid façade. As Giri points out, Habermasian respect for plurality and disciplines of communication can go a long way in releasing the potential of such schools. Sri Aurobindo scholarship fossilized under authorized orthodoxies are the surest way to kill the emancipator and transformative potential that Giri extols so highly as the promise of Sri Aurobindo to the postmodern world: We find the glimpses of emergence of such spiritual communities in the integral education movement in India which is a grass-roots social movement at work in building spiritually inspired integral education schools. In the state of Orissa there are now nearly 300 such schools inspired by the ideas of Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual companion The Mother and these schools have been a product of an earlier study circle movement. In these spaces we find the glimpses of emergence of a new connection between knowledge and human liberation through the mediations of love, labor and mutually shared time (see Giri 2003b). But its fuller potential remains unrealized because of traces of authoritarianism in the management of these schools which is sometimes brushed under or justified in the name of spirituality. Here opening up these spaces to further democratic deliberation of the kind suggested by Habermas is helpful."
References Cited: Aboulafia, Myra Bookman & Catherine Kemp (eds.). 2002. Habermas and Pragmatism. London: Routledge. Bhaskar, Roy. 2000. From East to West: The Odyssey of a Soul. London: Routledge. 2002. Reflections on MetaReality: Transcendence, Emancipation and Everyday Life. New Delhi: Sage. Brennan, Teressa. 1995. History After Lacan. London: Routledge.
Both Sri Aurobindo and Habermas are passionate critics of systems which deny human flourishing. Much of Habermas’s passion can be attributed to his struggle for radical democracy and his fight against Nazism in his native Germany. Sri Aurobindo was also a critic of Nazism and contributed in his own ways as a yogi to the fight against the Nazis. While Habermas speaks of the colonization of the life world Sri Aurobindo uses a much more passionate language of criticism such as barbarism going beyond the familiar distinction between civilization and barbarism. Habermas (2002a) is now a critic of marketization of the globe and his critique can be deepened by the critical perspective of economic barbarism that Sri Aurobindo outlines in his Human Cycle: “Just as the physical barbarian makes the excellence of the body and development of physical force [..] so the vitalistic or economic barbarian makes the satisfaction of wants and desires and the accumulation of possessions his standard and aim†(Sri Aurobindo 1962: 94).
While there are similarities between Habermas and Aurobindo there are some major differences. One of this has to do with Habermas’s theses of linguistification of the sacred—the sacred has now lost its aura and is part of ordinary language. As is well-known Habermas makes a shift from philosophy of consciousness to philosophy of language and looks at the sacred linguistically. This is related to the issue of poetry and prose in thinking about language, and also critique and reconstruction. Habermas is critical of any poetic use of language as he is afraid that any such can dislocate humans from their reason and make them servile followers of tyrannical crowds such as the Nazis. But in his own work we find a poetic dimension. Consider here the following lines of Habermas: “This ontology fetishizes words, bows down before their roots, believing words to be pure only in their venerated origins [..]†(Habermas 2002a: 65). Habermas directs his energies here against Heidegger but poetry in Heidegger was not only a poetry of glory, it also embodied a deep “pathos of shakenness†(Shanks 2001). Sri Aurobindo, much like Heidegger, has a broader conception of language and dialogue which can be understood by reading what Derrida writes about his conversations with Levinas: “[..] we often addressed to one another what I would call neither questions nor answers but, perhaps a question-prayer, a question prayer that would be anterior to all dialogue†(Derrida 1999: 13). For Sri Aurobindo, poetry is a /mantra/, an invocation of self, social and world-transformation. Writes Sri Aurobindo (1948) in his legendary epic /Savitri/:
A lonely freedom cannot satisfy
A heart that has grown one with every heart
I am a deputy of the aspiring world
My spirit’s liberty I ask for all. ^^i <#sdendnote1sym>
i <#sdendnote1anc>3. In Savitri there are many conversations between Savitri who is trying to overcome death and Yamaraj, the King of Death. Rev. Chris Platt Episcopal Church, Lexington, Kentucky, suggests that these conversations also embody a Habermasian discursive argumentation (personal communication). I am grateful to Rev. Platt for this extremely innovative reading and exploring further about it.
Quoting Roy Bhaskar, Giri sees the social habitus of spiritual seeking as still stuck in "a prehistory of spirituality" and ends of a note showing the mutually transformative possibilties in bringing the Habermasian tools of a culture of communication of radical democracy into dialog with the ontology and epistemology of emancipation in integral yoga communities:
"Liberatory movements of even spiritual kind continue to be entrapped in a logic of authoritarianism and here Habermasian practice of argumentation and mutual validation can go a long way in creating an appropriate democratic public space for spiritual evolution of self and society. As we have seen, this critical perspective for realizing its own inherent potential can learn from the pathways of a Sri Aurobindo as Sri Aurobindo’s project of knowledge and human liberation can be facilitated by movements of radical democracy and formation of appropriate public spheres. Going beyond the facile polarity between rationality and spirituality, West and East, we can build here on this intertwined pathway of knowledge and human liberation for creating a more beautiful and dignified world for us all."
