Contemporary Indian Philosophers

Contemporary Indian Philosophy Name / Edited by Cost (Rs.)
Philosophical Reflections,G.C. Nayak 65.00
Doubt, Belief and Knowledge,S. Bhattacharyya 150.00
Towards a Critique of Cultural Reason,R. Sundara Rajan 95.00
Language, Knowledge and Ontology,Kalikrishna Banerjee 225.00
Karma, Causation and Retributive Morality: Conceptual Essays in Ethics and Metaethics,Rajendra Prasad 250.00
Philosophy and Religion: Essays in Interpretation,J.L. Mehta 175.00
The Art of the Conceptual: Explorations in a Conceptual Maze Over Three Decades,Daya Krishna 200.00
Natural Science of the Ancient Hindus,S. Dasgupta 50.00
Sattavisayak Anviksha ( in Hindi),Yashdev Shalya 75.00
The Primacy of the Political,R. Sundara Rajan 190.00
Studies in Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Deconstruction,R. Sundara Rajan 190.00
Facets of Recent Indian Philosophy,General Editor: R. BalasubramanianVoi.1: The Metaphysics of the SpiritVol.2: Indian Philosophy and HistoryVol.3: Problems of Indian PhilosophyVol.4: The Philosophy of Life,S.P. Dubey 150.00275.00275.00400.00
Confessions and Commitments,S.S. Barlingay 80.00
Social Actions and Non-Violence,R.K. Gupta 125.00
Reference and Truth,Pranab Kumar Sen 175.00
Name / Edited by Cost (Rs.)
Perspectives in Philosophy, Religion and Art: Essays in Honour of Prof. Margaret Chatterjee,R. Balasubramanian and V.C. Thomas 175.00
Freedom Transcendence and Identity: Essays in Memory of Kalidas Bhattacharyya,Pradeep Kumar Sengupta 135.00
Man, Meaning and Morality; Essays in Honour of Prof. Rajendra Prasad,R. Balasubramanian and Ramashankar Mishra. 225.00
Ever Unto God : Essays on Gandhi and Religion,Sushil Kumar Saxena 140.00
The Philosophy of Nikunja Vihari Banerjee,Margaret Chatterjee 150.00
The Philosophy of J.N. Mohanty,Daya Krishna and K.L. Sharma 170.00
The Philosophy of K. Satchidananda Murti,Sibajiban Bhattacharyya and Ashok Vohra 350.00
The Philosophy of Daya Krishna,Bhuvan Chandel and K.L. Sharma 360.00
The Philosophy of G.R. Malkani,Sharad Deshpande 375.00
Realism Responses and Reactions: Essays in Honour of Pranab Kumar Sen 850.00
Readings and Reference
Who's Who of Teachers and Scholars in Philosophy in India,Daya Krishna 20.00
A Union Catalogue of Philosophical Periodicals,Subhas C. Biswas and Bikash K. Bhattacharya 55.00
Select Bibliography of Journal Articles on Philosophy, Religion, Science and Related Aspects of Indian Culture,Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya 40.00
Author and Subject Index of the Philosophical Quarterly (Vols.I-XXXVIII),Daya Krishna and R.S. Bhatnagar 28.00
Author and Subject Index of the Philosophical annual (Vols. I-XI),Daya Krishna and R.S. Bhatnagar 14.00
Author and Subject Index of the Journal of the Indian Academy of Philosophy (Vols. I-XVII),Daya Krishna and R.S. Bhatnagar 20.00
Author and Subject Index of the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research(Vols.I - X),Daya Krishna and R.S. Bhatnagar 35.00
Ramana Maharishi: A Bibliography,K. Subramanyam 125.00
Author and Subject index of the journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research (Vols. XI-XV)Daya Krishna and R.S.Bhatnagar
Essays in Social and Political Philosophy,Krishna Roy and Chanda Gupta 250.00(HB)90.00(PB)
A Critical Survey of Phenomenology and Existentialism,Mrinal Kanti Bhadra 100.00
Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy,D.P. Chattopadhyaya 290.00
A Glossary of Technical Terms in the Commentaries of Sankara Ramanuja and Madhva on the Brahma-Sutras,K. Jayammal Pt I: 265.00Pt II: 400.00
Language. Testimony and Meaning,Sibajiban Bhattacharyya 250.00
Fundamentals of Logic,Arindama Singh and Chinmoy Goswami 450.00
Philosophy in India : Traditions, Teaching and Research,K. Satchidananda Murty 90.00
Tolerance in Indian Culture,R. Balasubramanian 60.00
History of Indian Philosophy : A Russian View Point,Marietta Stepanyants 150.00
Art and Philosophy : Seven Aestheticians, Sushil Kumar Saxena 240.00
Insights into Inward Consciousness,G. Srinivasan 125.00
The Philosophy of P.F. Strawson,Pranab Kumar Sen and R.R. Verma 425.00
Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical InvestigationsAshok Vohra ( in Hindi) 300.00
A Short Moral Lexicon,R.K. Gupta 100.00
Ludwig Wittgenstein's Culture and Value,Ashok Vohra ( in Hindi) 400.00
Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty,Ashok Vohra (in Hindi) 300.00
Circularity, Definition and Truth,Andre Chaupuis and Anil Gupta 560.00
icpr journal introduction

Husserl is also a target in Gadamer's impossibily of phenomenological neutrality

kela Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 1807 Posted: 01/28/07, 6:25 pm Post subject: no, i was not aware of that fact. where does he describe these events? paul hacker, the great shankara scholar, converted to catholicism as well. a few months back, i read an article by williams on language and construction in madhyamika. it was apparently adapted from thesis. while occasionally he make some interesting points, he tends to ramble on and repeat himself, and often he's not very clear about what he's trying to say. while his little book on mahayana buddhism is a nice over-view and useful for undergrads, i'm not all that impressed by his work. when don lopez was on sabbatical in the mid nineties, he went to england to work with williams. he was not all that impressed by him either (nor by england, for that matter.)

Posted: 01/28/07, 7:28 pm Post subject: yes of course. i was simply attempting to get a handle on the phrase, "metaphysics is the myth of the given." the phrase comes from sellars, and by the same token, i imagine that much the same could be said about wilber's relation of sellars as what you say about his relation to quine; in other words, he is not necessarily referring to sellars' quasi-kantian attack on empiricism when he makes use of the phrase. the phrase has, perhaps, come into contemporary jargon of late through the work of rorty.

in "philosophy and the mirror of nature," sellars appears alongside heidegger and the later wittgenstein as one of the great "deconstructors" of the classical modern tradition. it is sometimes pointed out that husserl, in his attack on empiricism, made use of arguments similar to the argument implied by the "myth of the given." but i think that for later 20th century thought, husserl's phenomenology, too, has become a target, a version of the "myth of the given." certainly in rorty's book, as in gudmensen's "wittgenstein and buddhism," the "phenomenogical" and "eidetic" reductions function as analogs to russell's "sense data" analysis (to which gudmensen compares the abhidharma analysis of "dharmas").

husserl is also a target in gadamer's account concerning the impossibily of phenomenological "neutrality," and the necessity of "Vorurteilen" in "historically effected consciousness." at the same time, i cannot resist the temptation to think that perhaps in the back of his mind, wilber is still entertaining the idea that the "given" means some sort of metaphysically a priori assumption. this, of course, would imply a kind of eqivocation on the term "given" and a distortion of what sellars has in mind. but given what i have read in the interview with cohen, this does not appear to be the case.

by the phrase "metaphysics is the myth of the given" he appears to be referring to the idea of "metaphysics" as is implied by the term "post-metaphysics," for which the "foundational epistemology" of husserl and russell is central. even still, what the "post-metaphysical" thinkers mean by "metaphysics" is not at all clear, and not very satisfactory. pehaps it is time for a short piece on the idea of "metaphysics."Back to top

Posted: 01/28/07, 7:51 pm Post subject: interesting. all of this has a quasi-kantian ring to it. compare collingwood's "absolute presuppositions" or gadamer's "Vorurteil" both of which remain opaque since they function as transcendental "grounds," as it were, for all acts of understanding within a particular world-view (we cannot "see" that which "forms" our "seeing" or understanding since any act of "seeing" already presuposes that which "forms").

collingwood does say, however, that the presuppositions of older zeit-geists can however be seen for what they are. in the classical tradition in india the impasse is solved by the presence of "scripture," which not only provides the transcendent norms for the life of the worldly brahmin, but also reveals the trancendental structure that cannot otherwise be seen but that must be transcended for those on the course of release, the samnyasins. presumably, in the modern world, which looks upon "scripture" with suspicion as mere "dogma," "punditry," and so on, it is the siddha himself (da or ramana) who functions as the "transcendent guide" and provides the way out -- an adaptation from anti-brahmanic tantrism. Back to top

Posted: 01/28/07, 8:00 pm Post subject: schumacher...an anarchist of sorts. yes, one would imagine that the idea "small is beautiful" might not quite jibe with the idea of a theory of everything.

How can we claim to discover anything about the fundamental structure of the universe?

The Splintered Mind reflections in philosophy of psychology, broadly construed Monday, December 04, 2006 Chalmers on "Modal Rationalism" Eric Schwitzgebel Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside

In my undergraduate/graduate seminar this quarter, we read David Chalmers's influential book, The Conscious Mind, and now we’re reading some of the subsequent criticism and discussion of it, and Chalmers’s replies. A common theme in many replies -- and my sense, too, is that there’s something fishy about reflecting from the armchair about what we can conceive and reaching conclusions on that basis about the fundamental structure of the universe.

Chalmers’s response to this (in Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 1999, p. 490; see also "Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?") is interesting. He insists -- correctly, I think -- that either you’re doing empirical exploration or you’re engaged in a “rationalist” enterprise centering on ideas such as “consistency, entailment, and ideal conceivability” -- that either you're doing scientific research or you’re exploring our concepts. In particular, he attacks the idea that something might be conceptually possible but still metaphysically impossible: Metaphysics just is about our conceptual space. This is hard for what Chalmers calls “Type B materialists” to swallow: They want to embrace materialism as a “metaphysical” thesis and at the same time allow that it’s conceivable that materialism is false, that it's conceivable (for example) that “zombies” -- beings physically identical to us but with no conscious experience -- exist.

As I said, I’m inclined to agree with Chalmers about this and disagree with the majority of his critics. But I think this only raises even more sharply the fundamental concern that seems to me to be driving them. If Chalmers’s (and all of our) “metaphysics” is just exploration of our concepts, how can we claim to discover anything about the fundamental structure of the universe thereby -- anything about anything other than our concepts? Metaphysics seems then to become a branch of psychology.

Now, actually, I’m quite happy with that, but I’m not sure Chalmers should be, and it isn’t the tenor of The Conscious Mind as I read it. And if materialism is true, then I’d say it’s not -- or shouldn’t be -- construed as a metaphysical thesis at all, but rather as a scientific thesis, a claim only about the “laws of nature”, and not a claim about Kripkean “a posteriori metaphysical necessity” or the like. Labels: metaphilosophy, metaphysics posted by Eric Schwitzgebel @ 8:37 AM

Prophetic insight of post-modernism

Post Human Variations by Richard Carlson
by Rich on January 25, 2007 08:46PM (PST)

To speak of the post-human is now becoming fairly widespread in our global culture. This is not only due to science fiction but due to critical scholarship as well which has realized the enhancements to the human that technology makes possible. If Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “death of god” helped annunciate the spirit of modernity, Michael Foucault statement about “the death of man” appears to be the prophetic insight of post-modernism. more » Leave Comment Permanent Link

Scotus' view on our freedom, and of the unity of the intellect and will

From: "bill cranston" To: tusarnmohapatra@mail.com CC: Subject: Heidegger and Scotus Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:13:54 +0000

Dear Tusar, Having only just discovered that Heidegger wrote his 1915 thesis on Duns Scotus, I have done the obvious thing and googled on 'Heidegger Scotus.' Hence arriving at your piece at

http://savitrieralearningforum.blogspot.com/2005/10/scotus-heidegger-and-derrida.html

You mention how 'difficult' Scotus is. In my (so far limited) mentions of him to others, he is mostly dismissed as 'too subtle.' Thanks for your book recommendations. In return, I would mention the work of Professor Alexander Broadie. He has a major interest in Scottish Philosophy, as you will see from his home page

http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Personnel/alex/

He has studied Scotus in depth. I have a copy of his little book 'Why Scottish Philosophy Matters,' where he assigns a major role to Scotus - and explains that role. For example there are descriptions of Scotus' view on our freedom, and of the unity of the intellect and will, - descriptions which I have been able to follow (although it is hard work!). The book is out of print - but there are a few second-hand copies available via Abe-books, starting at around US $12.00.

Looking below, you will see that I am a member of the British Teilhard Association (www.teilhard.org.uk). There are links between Teilhard and Scotus - these need to be brought out, I think - but that's another topic! -- bill cranston (Membership Sec, British Teilhard Association) 3 Anthony Road, LARGS, Ayrshire, KA30 8EQ, Scotland, UK Tel: 44 (0) 1475 686374

Philosophy comprehends life as a question

Confucianism Is Philosophy Not Religion By Taru Taylor

Contributing Writer The Seoul Times Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Confucianism is much misunderstood. The United Nations, for example, classifies it as a religion. Big mistake. Confucianism is a philosophy, not a religion. What's the difference? Religion believes in god as the final answer. Philosophy comprehends life as a question. Confucianism is a disciplined ethical inquiry — a moral philosophy.
To really understand a moral philosophy one must understand its heroes. Its idealists, not men of action. Here in South Korea that means Confucius and Mencius.
They are tour guides of the magical mystery tour that is Asian civilization. Consider "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" as an analogy. Wonderland is Asian civilization. Alice is every human being who would enter the rabbit-hole into Asian civilization. The White Rabbits are Confucius and Mencius. Notice I said that Confucius and Mencius "are" the White Rabbits, not "were."
Moral philosophy is timeless. Right and wrong never really change. Thus, it is folly to dismiss Confucius and Mencius as mere ancient philosophers of antiquarian interest. It is presumptuous to consider their words only with reference to times past, as if they have nothing pertinent to say to us now.
Many of their political and economic speculations are dated. Obsolete. But that's beside the point. For the theme that persists throughout "The Analects of Confucius" and "The Works of Mencius" is that ethics trumps politics; ethics trumps economics. They insist that the Confucian, as such, must do right even when it is more prudent and more profitable for him to do wrong.
Civilization is like Alice's Wonderland because it is not straight and narrow. It is circuitous and meandering. Mysterious. There is no map; only a compass. Every civilized person is his own pathfinder. There are no leaders or followers. But there are tour guides.
"The Great Learning" and "The Doctrine of the Mean" are the first two of the four Confucian classics. Taken together they provide the moral compass for every person who would find his way through the magical mystery tour of Asian civilization. Again, the other two Confucian classics, "The Analects of Confucius" and "The Works of Mencius." provide tour guides for every Alice who would adventure in the Wonderland of Asian civilization.
Civilization considers every person to be his own authority. Authoritarianism, which is about select leaders finding the right way for everybody else, is diametrically opposed to Confucian civilization. Thus Confucius and Mencius are tour guides, not leaders. Their charges are active disciples, not passive followers.
Confucius speaks to his role as guide, not leader, in Book 18 Chapter 8 of "The Analects." Po-i, Shu-chi, Yu-chung, I-yi, Chu-chang, Hui of Liu-hsia, and Shao-lien, great leaders of his own past, he characterizes with sincere respect. He then characterizes himself: "I am different from all these. I have no course for which I am predetermined, and no course against which I am predetermined."
In Book 7 Part 1 Chapter 26 of "The Works," Mencius distinguishes his role, as a philosophical guide, from the ideological leader. He reports that Yang led men according to the selfish principle: "Each man for himself." That Mo led men according to the altruistic principle: "Love all equally." And that Tsze-mo led men as a mediator between the two. Mencius describes Yang's and Mo's as "one-point principles." conceding that Tsze-mo's was better as a "two-point principle." But just as two wrongs don't make a right, two points don't make a philosophy.
Whereas Yang, Mo and Tsze-mo led according to one-point and two-point ideologies, Mencius guided according to the philosophy of "right principle." As he put it, "The reason why I hate that holding to one point is the injury it does to the way of right principle. It takes up one point and disregards a hundred others."
When Confucius speaks of being neither for nor against any predetermined course, and when Mencius speaks of right principle, what they both speak of, in a word, is circumspection.
Circumspection involves looking at a circumstance as a sphere of infinite sides, not as a coin of two. It characterizes the baduk player who places the stone according to the logic of the board, not a formula. It is the operative word of Confucianism because every Confucian must solve the problems of right and wrong on his own.
Confucianism is a philosophy of personal moral responsibility. It is an existential code of ethics. It is therefore, in essence, neither political, nor economic, nor social. It is no less individualistic than Western Utilitarianism.
Unlike Utilitarianism, which sees the individual as a pleasure-seeker, Confucianism sees him as a moral agent. The Confucian does not pursue happiness. He does the right thing.
The Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham conceived a "hedonistic calculus" for every Utilitarian to calculate maximal pleasure and minimal pain. This is the Western counterpart of the Confucian's moral compass. Enlightened self-interest on the one hand; circumspection on the other.
To every South Korean I ask — Which are you? Pleasure-seeker? Or problem-solver? The Utilitarian maximizing his pleasure just as the businessman maximizes his profit? Or the Confucian solving the problems of civilization just as the baduk player solves the problems of the 361-point board? Imitation Westerner? Or Easterner in command of modern science and technology?

If you have any views visit the discussion board. Related Articles The Children Are Our Present Racism at the University Black History Month: Who Needs It? Mr. Taru Taylor, who teaches English at Sangmyung University in Seoul writes opinion pieces for The Seoul Times. Mr. Taylor majored in philosophy at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College. His minor was English Literature there. He has been writing columns and other opinion pieces for many newspapers and publications including college ones.

Well-being and the concept of choiceworthiness

T. Scanlon (What we owe to each other, ch. 3) Scanlon assumes that the concept of well-being and the concept of choiceworthiness are not the same concept. Scanlon has many reasons to distinguish the two concepts. Some of these reasons are peculiar to his views about the relation about value and reasons. For example, choiceworthiness can be understood as the life "one has most reasons -all things considered - to choose". Scanlon argues in a different place (ch. 2) that some of our reasons are not teleological (i.e. not reasons to produce some thing or some more thing of value). Posted by Michele at 8:02 PM

A strategy for denying the existence of the concept of well-being

How can we argue that the concept of well-being most philosophers talk about does not exist?First of all: does such a project make sense? Consider Quine's argument in "two dogmas". He tried to show that the alleged distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments is untenable. How does he do it? he shows that every attempt to explicate what the supposed distinction means turns out to be meaningless or viciously circular.

Maybe something similar can be said about the concept of well-being, if it is understood in such a way that its meaning is based upon a previous conceptual distinction, and that this distinction turns out to be empty in the same sense as the analytic-synthetic distinction is, according to Quine. For example many philosophers identify the notion of well-being with the notion of "what is good for a particular subject". They think that when we say that something is “good for p” we appeal to a different concept from the concept(s) we appeal to when we say, for example "you made a good choice by choosing to live like that", “this would be a good and fulfilling life – a life that human being is supposed to lead”, “that is the life that is most desirable or worth aiming at”.

If it can be shown, for example, that we cannot make sense of this distinction, or that, if we make sense of it, neither terms turns out to coincide with the mongrel of intuitions that philosophers are trying to characterize by using the word “well-being”, we have something like a possible line of attack.

I made explicit reference to “the mongrel of intuitions that philosophers are trying to characterize by using the word “well-being”. But how can there be such intuitions, if the concept of well-being does not belong to our conceptual repertory? What we have is really a mongrel of ideas that do not cohere into a concept. But we can still characterize “what philosophers are trying to characterize by using the word ‘well-being’” by describing the peculiar goals such philosophers have in mind, the goals that motivate them to introduce the term. And one of these goals is the goal of making certain distinction, the goal of making sense of some thoughts which seems to be indubitable. We can define this goal, this distinction, and these thoughts without a commitment to their truth and meaningfulness.

Therefore, first of all one needs to identify some salient feature about the concept that philosophers are trying to characterize. I am clearly considering well-being as a technical word, a word that does not have necessarily anything to do with what the man or the woman in the street (or in the wellness centre) calls well-being. This assumption of mine is justified by scepticism about the idea that we could ground a theory of well-being upon the linguistic intuitions that surround the usage of that very term. (A suspicion shared by Griffin. See this post, quote 4.)

The first step in this project consist in the identification of the salient features that a philosophical theory must have in order to present itself, relatively uncontroversially, as a theory of well-being, and not as a theory of something else. Posted by Michele at 6:30 PM Thursday, January 11, 2007

Ethics is Greek or Jewish?

Philosophy. A Note on Lévinas, Putnam, Nozick and Derrida

I was recently reading quickly through Robert Nozick's Philosophical Explanations, a copy I borrowed from an office I use somewhere I gave one course in the last semester, while giving an exam on Derrida. Much to my surprise noticed a reference to a contrast between Greek and Judaic ethics. That created an unexpected link between Nozick and Derrida, since the idea of Greek versus Jewish philosophy, or culture, or ethics, is something that Derrida considers carefully in a long essay on Lévinas, 'Violence and Metaphysics', collected in Writing and Difference .

The context in which Nozick introduces the distinction between Greek and Jew, is the difference between ethical 'push' and ethical 'pull'. The push is Greek, and refers to the concern in Ancient Greek thought with cultivation and flourishing of the self, in an ethics which is based on the balance and health of the self. The pull is Jewish, according to Nozick, and comes from the Old Testament, or what Nozick calls the Hebrew Bible. It is the pull of ethical law, the obligation to follow commands of the kind handed down to Moses as the Ten Commandments.

Where did an Analytic philosopher like Nozick come up with this? How does a philosopher who usually avoids cultural context, and comes from a way of thinking which regards cultural and historical context as highly secondary to philosophical argument, come up with this historical-cultural generalisation? Nozick gives thanks to his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam in the acknowledgements section. We don't expect cultural-historical generalisations from Putnam either, but Putnam did make one major departure from concentrating on Analytic philosophy.

Two of Putnam's texts refer to Emmanuel Lévinas, whose work took European philosophy since Kant as its departure. Lévinas' work is full of allusions to Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger and belongs to the French Phenomenological work of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Where did Putnam refer to Lévinas and what was that about?Putnam refers to Lévinas in 'Lévinas and Judaism' which can be found in The Cambridge Companion to Lévinas edited by two notable commentators on European Philosophy: Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley.

Putnam's essay is rooted in Putnam's strong Judaism, I am not sure if he is a believer, but then I could say the same about Lévinas who was a Talmud teacher for children as well as an academic philosopher. The point is that Putnam takes Lévinas seriously as an expositor of what Judaic religion is. Lévinas ' s philosophy, most famously in Totality and Infinity, rests on a distinction between Greek Ontology and Judaic Ethics, the latter rooted in the Torah, the "Hebrew Bible" and the tradition of study of it. Greek Ontology takes the 'Same', that is the Ego or the Self, as primary; Jewish Ethics takes the Other as primary. Putnam briefly but significantly refers to Lévinas' views on Ontology and Ethics in Ethics without Ontology.

It looks very much like Nozick got the ex-cathedra judgement that the ethics of Obligation from Lévinas via Putnam. He very probably did not consider Derrida's critical remarks. Like Nozick, Putnam and Lévinas, Derrida was Jewish himself. I won't recapitulate Derrida's argument here, I will just note some problems in equating Greek Ethics (often known as Virtue Ethics) with Self-Cultivation and Jewish Ethics with obligation. One obvious point is that the Biblical Jews were following the commands of the God of their nation rather than abstract obligation as such. Their ethical commands are clearly located in the rules and taboos of antique eastern Mediterranean society.

In any case, how can we locate obligation in a purely Jewish origin? Nietzsche who contrasted Roman master morality, meaning Greek Virtue Ethics, with Judaic Slave Morality, meaning the ethics of obedience to God, also located the origin of ideas of other worldliness and abstract morality in Plato, even as Plato developed a version of Virtue Ethics. Nietzsche clearly though that Old Testament morality was tied to Jewish national identity, and regarded the morality of obligation as Christian rather than Jewish. Christianity meant the teachings of the historical Christ as interpreted by St Paul, the converted Jew, from the point of view of Neo-Platonist philosophy.Heidegger certainly thought of the early Greek ethics, as an Ethos which preceded ethical rules, abstraction and obligation in the way of life as it was lived. Ethical obligation arises in Heidegger from a turning away from Being, something that is phenomenal for Heidegger, towards law outside Being trying to dominate it, that law came from Plato.

Some philosophers have regarded Old Testament Jewish ethics as an extreme example of an ethics of obligation. Hegel presents Judaism as excessive in its sense of obligation, in comparison to Christianity, a view he supports with reference to the story of Abraham and Isaac. Kierkegaard looks at the story in a more favourable way, though his interpretation is a critique of obligation which argues that the story shows the necessity to will the unethical in obligation to God, and that ethics can only be properly rooted in a self-relation which becomes a relation with the absolute externality of God.

Kierkegaard argues for an alternative to the ethics of obligation by looking to the self which has to live with the paradox of ethics founded on following an absolute, subjectivity and God at the same time.ş Kierkegaard classifies Kant's ethics of pure obligation with the Greek following of Ethos of the community, as both examples of following external rules and universality, instead of the paradoxical unity of particularity and universality in absolute subjectivity.

Of course in recent decades a wide variety of thinkers have sought an alternative to obligation ethics in Greek Virtue and flourishing: G.E.M. Anscombe, Michel Foucault, Martha Nussbaum amongst many. Nussbaum though distinguishes between an emphasis in Aristotle on luck and fragility as opposed to the abstraction of a rule obeying moral self in Plato.Nozick's attempt to distinguish between Greek and Jewish cannot be upheld, though he uses it with great force for establishing a central ethical tension. Posted by Barry Stocker at 16:27 13 January 2007 Labels: Ethics, Flourishing, Law, Obligation, Virtue

McLuhan, Whitehead & Freud

McLuhan was a great pioneer of what in academia these days is called, simply, theory. He seemed to care little for the departmental distinctions between literary criticism, sociology, history, philosophy, the humanities, and the sciences. He just rode roughshot along and across the borders of the traditional disciplines. He was overtly dismissive of them, so much so that in “The Mechanical Bride” he mocked Mortimer Adler’s “Great Ideas” endeavor, comparing the cards in the card catalog to tombstones. Today McLuhan’s interdisciplinary approach is a normal mode of academic writing, though there’s little evidence that today’s academic writers possess the wit and facility for metaphor that distinguish McLuhan. posted by Heresiarch @ 9:33 AM 0 comments links to this post Sunday, November 19, 2006

McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" always struck me as intuitively obvious, and I've always been puzzled by its controversy. The character of an information channel must condition the experience of receiving its content. How could it be otherwise? Only after reading Whitehead'sSymbolism did I see the connection between McLuhan and Freud/Jung. Later other correspondences became apparent:

• Freud/Jung: UNCONSCIOUS - CONSCIOUS
• McLuhan: Medium - Message
• Whitehead: Causal Efficacy - Presentational Immediacy
• Psychology: Sensation - Perception
• Bohm: Implicate/Implicit - Explicate/Explicit
• Marx: Change in Means of Production - Change in Relationships Among Social Classes

In his book, "Archetypal Process: Divine and Self in Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman", David Ray Griffin pulled together a good collection of essays on the compatibility of Whiteheadian process philosophy/theology and Jungian archetypal psychology. posted by Heresiarch @ 12:59 PM Sunday, March 19, 2006

Heresiarch said... In your consideration of models of evolution that include a spiritual/transcedental dimension, you might take a look at the stellar metamorphosis model presented at www.starlarvae.org. I continue to find it extremely stimulating. 9:53 PM

Only Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo postulated a divinisation stage beyond the spiritual mind

Integral Practice, Integral Esotericism - Part Six Alan Kazlev

6-ix . The Cosmic Sphere - Physical Evolution and Evolutionary Cosmology

As mentioned in sect 2-vii, an evolutionary perspective is central to both New Age and Integral understanding. This evolutionary perspective provides a complete Holistic and Integrative system of Science and Arts has to integrate all fields of knowledge, and do so in a way that makes sense, rather than an artificial juxtaposition. Within Integrative studies and the general worldviews of the integral movement, the concept of An evolutionary, teleological cosmology according to which being evolves through successive progressive states of matter, life, and mind, and will still evolve beyond mind to future and higher states seem to be common denominator.

It is found in the writings of Teilhard, Sri Aurobindo, Gebser, Erich Jantsch, Wilber, and many other integral and evolutionary thinkers. This is a theme that goes all the way back to 18th century ideas on the temporialisation of the Great Chain of Being, 18th and 19th century German Idealism represented by Schilling and Hegel; 19th century German Nature Philosophy and English evolutionary thinking, late 19th through to contemporary science fiction, current astrophysics, scientific cosmology, biology, and so on; in 19th and early 20th century Theosophy and Occultism (Blavatsky, Leadbeater, Alice Bailey, etc) and from thence it makes its way to the New Age; and of course in evolutionary philosophers and visionaries such as Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred North Whitehead (Process Theology), Jean Gebser, Oliver Reiser (Cosmic Humanism), Edward Haskell (Unified Science)[46], Arthur M Young, Erich Jantsch, Clare Graves and the Spiral Dynamics movement, Andrew Cohen, Wilber, and many many others. In many ways this represents the zeitgeist of our age, occurring in both materialistic science, holistic thought, modern esotericism, and the New Age movement. Perhaps for this reason it can also be considered one of the few fundamental and unified doctrines of the integral movement as a whole.[47].

A few examples are shown here, for the sake of comparison. One could create any number of lists of correspondences, the reason being that these are empirically agreed upon levels. Note that only Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo postulated a divinisation stage beyond the spiritual mind or spiritual adept...

This opens the way for a unifying evolutionary paradigm, as suggested by Haskell in his thesis regarding Unified Science, according to which different branches of knowledge can be understood as pertaining to the different stages or levels of cosmic and planetary evolution. Thus mathematics (in part), physics and astrophysics pertain to the very earliest levels, which constitute the foundation of space-time, the basic nature of the physical universe, elementary particles and the basic laws of physics, then chemistry, geology, astronomy, meteorology, etc to the second level in the table, then biology and paleontology to the third (organic life), then the various social sciences and applied sciences to the socio-cultural level, the various spiritual teachings and traditions to the spiritual level, and finally only a few teachings actually speak about the divinisation of matter, and these pertain to the column on the right.

Following the convention of Vernadsky and Teilhard , one might metaphorically posit terms like spatiosphere or physiosphere and chemosphere or (more accurately) thermodynamo-sphere to precede geosphere, biosphere, and sociosphere or noosphere here, even if "sphere" becomes meaningless (and rather inaccurate) when referring to the known universe as a whole.. The final stage of divinisation, Omega Point or supramentalisation, I refer to as the theosphere (God sphere). Following Werner Schwemmler, the appearance or singularity or symmetry break (Jantsch), which constitutes a new quantum leap of evolution in which each new stage appears can be designated by the suffix -genesis after the appropriate term, as in chemogenesis, biogenesis, sociogenesis, etc...

It follows then that a truly integral and integrative transformation should involve all these multitudinal aspects and branches, rather than bias or revolve around one alone. The attitude of compassion, empathy (including telepathic empathy with animals and the rest of nature, including "devic" forces), and stewardship represented by Deep Ecology, Animal Liberation, and Esoteric Integral Ethics has to be applied universally. It is not just the human species, but all life and all creation that contributes to, represents the Divine unfolding of, and proceeds equally towards the eschatological singularity of supramentalistaion. Thus, a totally new approach to teleology is required, as well as an ontology that recognises the subtle physical reality and its interaction with the gross or dense physical.

Light, perception, mind and consciousness

"Trialogues at the Edge of the West," Chap. 5, part a: Light and Vision

by rjon on December 13, 2006 05:49PM (PST)

I'm posting this portion of Chap. 5 of "Trialogues at the Edge of the West" because I think it may relate to the discussion presently under way re the article titled: "Instruments of Knowledge and Post-Human Destinies." My hope is that some of the new theories now surfacing in contemporary science may support our work in deconstructing the insights presented both in traditional Hindu and Buddhist texts and in Sri Aurobindo's more recent writings. For example, the initial section of "Trialogues" that I quote below raises some interesting ideas about the possible relationship between light, perception, mind and consciousness. (ron) more » Leave Comment Permanent Link

Interim World Philosophy Congress

Dear Colleagues, We are sending herewith the Programme of the Interim World Philosophy Congress for your information and perusal. We look forward to your joining the Congress and to your participation. With best wishes and regards,

Yours sincerely, Bhuvan Chandel
Interim World Philosophy Congress
Programme 15th December, 2006
Day One Venue: New Convention Centre, Vice Regal Lodge,
Delhi University, Delhi, India. 09.00 a.m. to 10.00 a.m. Registration of Delegates
(Conference Centre Complex) 10.00 a.m. to 11.15 a.m. INAUGURAL SESSION
(New Convention Centre) Chairman: D.P. Chattopadhyaya

Nietzsche was a philologist, after all

You'd think that Heraclitus, who tried to articulate an ethics, ethos, aesthetic, physical science, and metaphysics all at once, would be regarded as the king of the integral cats. At least the one at the top of the family tree (arborescence implied, for those who've read D&G). Dig:

"The way up and down is one and the same."

Nietzsche was a philologist, after all. He didn't just self-medicate and rant, he knew what he was doing. And one thing he did was quote Heraclitus, a big kahuna indeed for philologists. This statement looks an awful lot like a dismissal of verticality, no? Heraclitus probably would have laughed if this faire soule offered him a personality test. No ladders for me, thanks."The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings." Take that, Spinoza. posted by DGA at 1:26 PM

The Archaic, the Magical, and the Mythic

The Integral movement in social and historical context: Integral Esotericism - Part Two Alan Kazlev 2-ii. The "Premodern" worldview

Human knowledge as a series of isolated and specialised disciplines is a result both of the sheer complexity and detail of the modern world and the mundane physical reality as revealed through empirical knowledge and understanding, and the current absence of an esoteric "wisdom tradition" in academia (there are indeed profound esoteric teachings in the West - Hermeticism, Anthroposophy, etc, but these are not accepted and often not even known by the mainstream).

But traditional and pre-modern cultures and worldviews understood reality in a holistic way. Astronomy and astrology, alchemy and chemistry, myth and history, magic and science, were not differentiated, but part of a single all-encompassing vision of the cosmos. This type of worldview and intuitive as opposed to empirical methodology is still retained today in its exoteric (outer, and often literalist) form by traditional religions, in a more syncretic manner, by the Perennialist or Traditionalist movement, and by the modern New Age movement.

According to Wilber, this "premodern" worldview represents an earlier stage in the history of human evolution, and hence in his holarchical view a more partial and incomplete understanding. I assert the exact opposite, that modern secular thinking is more incomplete, because it only understands a single reality (the external material), whereas premodern, traditional, and perennialist worldviews embrace many realities. This is not to deny the numerous facts and insights gained by western empirical method.

So certainly the modern understanding of the external mundane reality in all its precision and detail is far far in advance of anything the ancients could ever dream of, and increasingly, seemingly exponentially, all the time. And certainly no integral paradigm or meta-paradigm can afford not to take this material into account. But this is quite distinct from the varuious supra-physical and inner physical realities. Our external mundane reality - including the vast observable cosmos with all its stars and galaxies, is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg (to borrow Freud's evocative metaphor). This is why it behooves us to respect what other cultures, traditions, and also for that matter western esoteric traditions and teachings, say.

Evolutionary philosophers such as Steiner, Julian Jaynes[2], and Wilber, make the error of assuming that because people in the olden days lived in a society which taught a mythological worldview, their consciousness was of a dream-like nature, they lived in the unconscious and and they couldn't think as we do. This fallacy can be easily disproved by talking to anyone from a premodern culture; it can be seen that they are just as rational as a modern person. Conversely there are many modern westerners who are just as irrational as a premodern (consider Fundamentalist Evangelism).

Gebser presents evidence to show that what is here called the premodern actually includes three distinct stages or historical structures or mutations of consciousness: the Archaic, the Magical, and the Mythic. (In contrast to later developments such as Wilber's early evolutionary psychology (beginning with Up From Eden) and Wilber and Beck's interpretation of Clare Grave's Spiral Dynamics (A Theory of Everything), Gebser did not see these as evolutionary developmental stages.)

But one could equally, or even more appropriately I believe, interpret these structures as being parallel perspectives of consciousness equivalent to the different chakras, say, in that anyone can access all these stages. Of course, a great deal of this is enforced and reinforced by the collective culture and mindset, and this is what Gebser seems to be describing.

Unconditional and undeconstructable

Edward Berge Says: November 16th, 2006 at 9:10 am You’d probably find much agreement with Derrida Ned (Alan, Tusar), if you look deeply. He also shows how our culture emphasized the self over the other, autonomy over communion, male over female, intellect over feeling. And he shows a way to go behind such hegemony of one over another by pointing to that which is unconditional and undeconstructable. If you choose to box him in as “intellectual” of course you’ll miss this.

Vitality and change, openness for question and experiment

Indian Philosophic Prose in English Dr. Sumita Roy

The source of inspiration in the case of Devendranath Tagore was his own heart, in contradistinction to the privilege given to revelatory scriptures by other Brahmos. Here the fourth of Veeser’s assumptions comes into play because both imaginative and archival discourse shows the alterable nature of truth. Keshab Chandra Sen borrowed from Christianity, while Vivekananda categorized the West as materialistic/ pragmatic and the East as spiritual/ impractical.

Aurobindo attempted to establish the identity of Hinduism not by return to the past nor by asserting its timeless validity; for him it was the source of vitality and change, openness for question and experiment. Coomaraswamy spoke in defence of tradition in Hinduism through his criticism of Radhakrishnan, who, he felt, had failed in the task of actualizing and modernizing the tradition, as had several others. Krishnamurti did not show allegiance to any particular philosophic system or tradition and spoke of spiritual truths as lying deep within oneself, to be realized by one’s own effort.

It was the unique privilege of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharshi to bring an experiential dimension to the expression of philosophic truths. The tolerance and universal dimension of Ramakrishna’s spiritual message and the silence of Ramana, which is as eloquent as his words of wisdom, bring new levels of truth to philosophic discourse. But, of course, this was not the last word. It has been said that Vivekananda’s use of the teachings of his guru Ramakrishna was styled in his own peculiar way to suit his purpose, for his ideas of mass-education and philanthropy were not directly mirrored in the teachings of Ramakrishna...

Radhakrishnan, notwithstanding his alleged lack of originality, was one of the most successful spokespersons for neo-Hinduism in the West - as memorable as he was persuasive. His relentless crusade began with his objection to the European verdict of ethical deficiency in Hinduism in addition to its unsuitability to scientific progress. B N Seal went a step further and upheld the potential of Hinduism to bring about a European renaissance.

Bhagavan Das articulated the opinion that philosophy should not be an end in itself as it was in Europe - a more or less intellectual engagement. He advocated the need for a practical philosophy helpful to man and society. P R Damle viewed the future of Indian philosophy as one of revival and constructive exposition of non-monistic and non-idealistic systems of thought. In all of these, the attempt is to make philosophy acquire a saleable value and the oft-repeated attempt to justify it in scientific terms of reference is just one more attempt in this direction.

Computers are no longer just tools but complex systems

Disappearances chapter 1 (code and the pentecostal condition) by Richard Carlson by Rich on Fri 17 Nov 2006 10:53 AM PST Permanent Link

The similarities and differences of speech to writing to code are complex and are still being discovered and defined by theorist. Below are some instances of the differences between the speech, writing and code which N.Katherine Hayles highlights in her book “My Mother was a Computer” (2006)

In contrast to Derrida's critique of writing, machine code can not endlessly defer and differ for it has precise meanings in terms of binary systems of 1s and 0s. Code however, must be unambiguous and therefore can not tolerate floating signifiers.
Code also assumes the semiotic relationship of signifiers to signifieds . In machine code voltages can be seen as signifiers which are interpreted by a higher level language (compiler) as a signified.
Codes can not be transposed into other systems of codes. e.g. Unlike written language in which an older version can be translated into contemporary language (ex. Old English- e.g. Chaucer - can easily translated into modern English) one can not run out dated versions of software on new hardware, or have it interpreted by the newest operating systems. For example, one can't run a program for DOS on Windows software.
Unlike other forms of language codes exists in clearly differentiated versions which are executable. They are subject to processes contingent of the interpretations by higher level languages of binary code, and their execution on hardware platforms.
The community of speakers in a code largely determined by the operating system they use, e.g Microsoft or common networking languages they use such as HTML or Java
Although code may inherent little of baggage from metaphysics (it does not contain signifiers which only refer to themselves e.g. transcendental signified )it is permeated throughout with the politics and economics of capitalism along with embedded assumptions, resistant practices, and hegemonic re-inscriptions. Although the historical context of code does not present a troublesome metaphysical problem, it present a troublesome problem in the way assembly codes rely on historical practices to be created. For example, ASCII is encode in bit patterns which are physically presented in the shape of a teletype bell. The form of the teletype bell was created years ago when teletypes were state of the art technology however, the physical form of the code has not evolved because it is less troublesome to adapt subsequent versions of the code to the actual form as to change the historic form of the code itself.
An aspect of code not mentioned by Saussure and Derrida is digitization or the transmission of information in discrete packets. All code must be discrete by the process of rectification the voltage errors are rendered in terms of discrete ones and zeros.
As Derrida argues writing exceeds speech, Hayles argues that code exceeds writing in that in its compiling ability it enables communication between the natural languages of human and the electronic language of intelligent machines.
Like speech and writing computer behaviors can be interpreted by human users at multiple levels and in diverse ways, but this activity comes after the computer activity of compiling code and executing programs
Not all codes are alike and some mirror more closely natural languages than others. Unlike procedural languages such as FORTRAN and BASIC which relies on modularize procedures as can be represented in a flow chart (ex. Put the grommet in the bin,,, “set the bot in the chip that means the relay will close) C++ however, instantiates a shift in that as an object oriented program it uses code in terms of more natural language. C++ uses the same language of translating machine behaviors and human commands. C++ uses late binding in which the compiler ensure the function exists and checks its form for accuracy but the actual address of the code is not used before the program is run.
Code is not a system of differences but the calculation of differences. (eg. The differences between 1's and 0s)
Computers are no longer just tools but complex systems that increasingly produce the conditions , ideologies, assumptions and practices that help to constitute what we call reality. As true for other forms of ideologies the interpolation of the user into the machinic system does not require his/her conscious recognition of how he or she is being disciplined by the machine to become a certain kind of subject.
References: Abram, David (1997) The Spell of the Sensuous, Random House Books, Vintage Books New York

Thompson-Schopenhauer-Goethe-Leibniz-Plato

An excerpt from Twilight of the Clockwork God: Conversations on Science & Spirituality (1999) which some might find interesting: The interviewer, John David Ebert, comments in the end-notes: Posted: 10/19/06, 1:02 pm Post subject: William Irwin Thompson on Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser

Quote: It occurs to me that Ken Wilber and William Irwin Thompson are modern incarnations of an archetypal dichotomy of intellectual temperament. Aristotle and Plato are perhaps the earliest manifestation in Western culture, but it has continued right down the line in such pairs as Newton and Leibniz, Kant and Goethe, Hegel and Schopenhauer. The Wilber type is the Systematist for whom the world is capable of reduction to a single clear architecture. There is one set of truths, eternal and unchanging, which the Systematist, whether he is Kant or Hegel, Newton or Aristotle, believes he has been uniquely privileged to discover.

Everything is assigned to its niche, like the saints and apostles in a Gothic cathedral, and one system contains all the necessary answers for any question that should arise. For Wilber, consequently, there is only one theory that is articulated over and over again in each of his books, all of which repeat the same schemas and diagrams endlessly. His work can be neatly divided in two halves, for Sex, Ecology, Spirituality marks the birth of his new Final Theory, in the light of which his earlier works are to be taken as precursors. Everything since that book contains a carbon copy of the same four-fold diagram of quadrants, as though consciousness can be mapped as neatly as the trajectory of a parabola on a Cartesian grid.

For the Thompson-Schopenhauer-Goethe-Leibniz-Plato type, the world is in flux and its truths are changing along with it. The ideas of these thinkers are never finished, always subject to revision, and constantly undergoing transformation as new truths are tested, or new theories acquired. The world is a state of perpetual Becoming and no system or body of knowledge can ever hope to be complete, capturing all that there is to know at last. No scholar has ever succeeded, for example, in capturing the fine nuances of Plato's ideas as they evolve through the course of his dialogues. Nothing but actually reading them through chronologically can replicate the experience of watching his thought ripen to its full maturity.

Plato, like Nietzsche, was not afraid of contradicting himself, for the two were alike in their manner of constantly trying out new ideas on themselves to see what the resulting points of view would look like. Something of this dichotomy is embodied, also, by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. For the former, working in the medium of stone meant the production of complete masterpieces. Michelangelo almost always finished what he started--until later years, that is--and consequently we possess only a handful of unfinished works. The Sistine Chapel constitutes a veritable System of the Christian cosmos, complete in every respect from Genesis to Apocalypse.

For Leonardo, on the other hand, the world was ever changing and so were his views. Rarely did he finish what he began. Each painting is a sort of test of an entirely provisional theory. His notebooks are unsystematic and no one has ever really managed to capture their full complexity in a synopsis. Thompson, likewise, must be read in his entirety, every book, in order to grasp the substance of his vision, which is always changing. He is unsystematic, but always innovative, incorporating fresh insights with each new volume. Every book is a unique experience. For him, consequently, Wilber personifies that which Thompson most dreads: the Final Theory Engraved in Stone.

Pluralistic relativism

Jeff Meyerhoff

Pluralistic relativism could mean many things. The many meanings of relativism are described by Michael Krausz and Rom Harre in their book Varieties of Relativism and by Maria Baghramian in her book Relativism. I will name some major theorists who could be, and sometimes are, called pluralistic relativists. Nelson Goodman, one of the great philosophers of the second half of the twentieth-century, defended what he called a “radical relativism.” Paul Feyerabend, one of the five most important philosophers of science could be described as a pluralistic relativist. The philosopher and translator of Nagajuna, Jay Garfield, gives a strong relativist reading of Nagajuna's Buddhism in his book Empty Words.

The philosopher Richard Rorty, while denying the label relativist, is very often accused of being, what could be called, a pluralistic relativist. The Princeton political philosopher Philip Pettit, while perhaps not wanting the label relativist (no one does because it is more an epithet than a description), has defended what could be called a pluralistic relativism in his essay “A Sensible Perspectivism.”

We learn from the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy that “moral relativism is a standard topic in metaethics, and there are contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it: The most prominent are Gilbert Harman and David B. Wong.”[3] David Bloor, Barry Barnes and their strong programme in the sociology of science are accused of relativism. And these examples are all from the Anglo-American tradition. The Continental postmodernists are even more notorious for their alleged relativism.

The widely and rapidly spreading devastation of language

Rod Hemsell sulekha.com

Jaques Derrida, in his insightful interpretations of Heidegger, has provided an important key to understanding this essential, problematical feature of Heidegger's conception of Being, which seems to have led Heidegger quite naturally to identify with, and possibly to take his cue from, Nietzsche's tragic sense of the eternal return of the same and will-to-power, as adequate definitions of the essence of Being. And the same problematical feature seems to have led Satprem, in his interpretation of the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, to characterize man's fate as one of 'only destruction and death.' But these 'conceptions' of Being -- at the highest range of mental understanding -- are still only human conceptions.

Derrida points out that "Heidegger's thought (in Being and Time) is guided by the motif of the proximity of Being to the essence of man," and he makes this important and relevant observation: "It remains that the thinking of Being, the thinking of the truth of Being, in the name of which Heidegger de-limits humanism and metaphysics, remains as thinking of man. Man and the name of man are not displaced in the question of Being such as it is put to metaphysics. Even less do they disappear. On the contrary, at issue is a kind of reevaluation or revalorization of the essence and dignity of man. What is threatened in the extension of metaphysics and technology -- and we know the essential necessity that leads Heidegger to associate them one to another -- is the essence of man, which here would have to be thought before and beyond its metaphysical determinations.

The widely and rapidly spreading devastation of language not only undermines aesthetic and moral responsibility in every use of language; it arises from a threat to the essence of humanity. Where else does 'care' tend but in the direction of bringing man back to his essence? What else does that in turn betoken but that man becomes human? Thus, humanitas really does remain the concern of such thinking. For this is humanism: meditating and caring that man be human and not inhumane, 'inhuman,' that is, outside his essence. But in what does the humanity of man consist? It lies in his essence (from Heidegger's, 'Letter on Humanism,' in Basic Writings, p.198-202)." (Margins of Philosophy, p. 128-129)

The tales are individual descriptions of an internal journey

ray harris Says: November 10th, 2006 at 5:29 pm Hi Alan, I have great sympathy for the revelation of the Heart and we could wax lyrical about the Heart as THE organ of realization, in Sufism, Kashmir Shaivism, etc. The difficulty I have is that in the end nothing can be said about the opening of the Heart, other than tell one’s own tale. And that is the ‘heart’ of the problem, the tales are individual descriptions of an internal journey.

I’ve mentioned it before but it’s worth mentioning again, and that’s the concept of ta’wil, found in Shia philosophy and elaborated by Ibn Arabi and that is that the Divine reveals itself to individual in a unique hermeneutic. The problem with any system is that it can dull the individual’s own unique understanding. A key event in Ibn Arabi’s life was the meeting of a young girl called Nizam, which he understood to be a visitation of Sophia. Ta’wil, being individual, means that this experience was unique and it certainly fits with my own experience. In my case it was a beautiful Italian/Brazilian girl I’ll call Gulabi. The goddess appeared through her and I had an overwhelming experience of the goddess through her that no one else, not even Gulabi, could understand. (Gulabi had a different experience).

It may be possible to create a more definitive map but it will be difficult. I believe much more needs to be done in the field of comparative mysticism amongst genuine mystics freed from any need to defend a particular map. I’m writing this at the same time as I’m revisting the various Platonic variations in the Abrahamic traditions, Sohrawardi, Ibn Arabi, Gnosticism (several variations thereof) etc. Ray’s Integral Blog Integral Metatheory

People don’t even have the language to address it in its own terms

Matthew Newsham Says: November 11th, 2006 at 6:57 pm I would say that Ken is toeing the line myself- and doing it well enough that we’re writing and thinking about it. Invoking tradition works both ways. Yes, your language and thought is built out of component social parts, but those parts can push and pull you across boundries you might otherwise miss. “Orienting generalizations” aren’t there to make Ken look big (we all bow to yet another not-so-subtle zing at Ken with the moth to streetlamp comparison)- but to actually create a free flow of information across disciplines.

That’s the main issue that most people have with deconstructivepostmodernism- it doesn’t connect or resonate with their inherited traditions. Most people don’t even have the language to address it in its own terms, all they see are things like “political correctness,” which they rightly view as an outgrowth of the pomo movement (Derrida creating his own tradition?), but they don’t see it as a radical expirement of freedom (which it is) but rather as cultural rules that have to be obeyed. The I has to be meaningfully tied into the equation- which will always bring traditions with it. This is where new emergence comes from- the inside as well as the outside of a single holon made up of other holons- which continue to build upward.

Nietzsche, Bergson, Samuel Alexander, Teilhard de Chardin, and Sri Aurobindo

Evolution - A Metaphysical Discussion by R.Y. Deshpande by Debashish on November 10, 2006 09:39AM (PST) This is a chapter on Evolution from R.Y. Deshpande's just published book based on Book III of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, The Book of Fate - which deals with Narad's Arrival at Ashwapathy's kingdom of Madra. Deshpande reviews here the philosophical approaches which try to explain Becoming in the Cosmos, the meaning of Time and human destiny. His wide-ranging contemplation includes the nature of Time as seen through determinism and probability in the debates of Science, early Greek phulosophy in Heraclitus and Paramenides, Kant's reflections on the limits of rational knowledge and empirical experience and more recent evolutionary thinkers, such as Nietzsche, Bergson, Samuel Alexander and Teilhard de Chardin, before settling on Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of Integral Non-Dualism. more » Leave Comment Permanent Link

Althusser links his ideas about ideology to Lacan

Louis Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor of English, University of Colorado, Boulder, November 6, 2001

Althusser makes some final points about ideology working this way to "hail" us as subjects, so that we think these ideas are individually addressed to us, and hence are true. He says that ideology, as structure, requires not only subject but Subject. In using the capital S, he invokes an idea similar to that of Lacan (whom Althusser studied and wrote about), that there is a small-s subject, the individual person, and a capital S Subject, which is the structural possibility of subjecthood (which individuals fill). The idea of subject and Subject also suggests the duality of being a subject, where one is both the subject OF language/ideology (as in being the subject of a sentence) and subject TO ideology, having to obey its rules/laws, and behave as that ideology dictates.

The interpellated subject in the ideology of the home gym commercial would thus order the gym, behave as if bodybuilding or rigorous exercise was a necessity, something of central importance. The Subject here would be some notion of physical perfection, or body cult, the rules that the subject is subjected to. Althusser uses the example of Christian religious ideology, with God as the ultimate Subject--the center of the system/structure.

On p. 248 Althusser links his ideas about ideology to Lacan directly, noting that the structure of ideology is specular (like Lacan's Imaginary, like the mirror stage). There are a couple of things worth noting about Althusser as a "bricoleur" of other theorists. Althusser was enchanted by Freud, and even more enchanted by Lacan; the ideas of the imaginary, the mirror, the specular, and the subject/Subject are all gotten from or parallel to Lacanian notions. Also, as a Marxist, Althusser privileges SCIENCE as a form of knowing that is outside of any ideological structure, a type of knowledge that really IS simply true, because objective and material--hence his comment on 246 that the only way to know when ideology is ideological is through scientific knowledge.

Is this theory useful to literature? Yes, because it enables us to talk about how a literary text, as a subset or transformation or production of ideology (or of specific ideological formations) also constitutes us as subjects, and speaks to us directly. The most obvious form of how a literary text might interpellate us as subjects is one that uses direct address, when the text says "dear reader" (as Uncle Tom's Cabin does with annoying frequency). All texts interpellate readers by some mechanism, in some ways; all texts create subject positions for readers, whether that construction of subject positions is obvious or not. We will look at this idea of subject positions within literary texts further with Foucault.