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Abstract
This article emerges out of the dialogue and exchange between critical realism and integral theory. It is a contribution to and within critical realist discourse, philosophically underlabouring for the senses of the good and goodness with a metaReality schema, arguing for, in performing the necessity of, the intimate intertwining of transcendental and phenomenological methods. One implication of the study is the recontextualizing of the singular philosophical status of the axiology of freedom.
Notes
2 Levinas Citation1969. For a later refinement of this scheme, see Levinas Citation1981.
3 Derrida Citation1992.
4 Critchley Citation2007.
5 This view of goodness, which diverges from the classic articulations of the philosophy of metaReality, is inspired by the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhist (as in its phrase ‘the Great Perfection of all that is’), consonant with Wilber's notion of (absolute) ground value and perhaps less so with Collier's view of the inherent worth of being. See Wilber [1995] 2000, 545–6 and cf. Collier Citation1999.
6 Milbank 2010.
7 Sallis Citation2008, 50–52.
8 An elemental is at once (1) conditioning of and (2a) in part immanent to, (2b) while withdrawing from, what is conditioned — Sallis articulating this view with philosophical nuance and precision. In Sallis (Citation2000), the natural elements, especially those of earth and sky, are the primary focus. In Sallis (Citation2012), this exposition is extended, such that, in his terminology, the sundry natural elements, along with seclusion as sheltering retreat as well as birth and death, are proper elementals of one's ownmostness; with the cosmological elemental exceeding even more so than do the natural elements the constitution of being human. Sallis's work is a case in point that phenomenology can be more than descriptive, offering novel modes of transcendental insight, fleshing out dimensions of the actual that enrich understanding of the constellated three-fold depth strata of the real.
9 Fuhs Citation2010.
10 For example, the first-person actualities of the cognition of the embodied personality are a necessary condition of possibility for scientifically exploring the generative mechanisms of that cognition, as proper to developmental psychology and the neurosciences. For elaboration, see CitationSchwartz forthcoming a, 2015.
11 On freedom, cf. Bhaskar Citation1993, 282–3.
12 These two perspectives — expanded as meta-perspectives, about which more below — bear upon and offer a different interpretation of the notions of ground-state and the cosmic envelope as presented in the classic articulations of the philosophy of metaReality. The cosmic envelope, gathering and sustaining all ground-states, is enfolded in each and every ground-state. In god-realization all is within what I AM, while at the same time what I AM is enfolded in the ground-states of others from their side, constituting a complex folding, enfolding and unfolding of the god-realized Self that is also the Self non-dual with Others-as-Thous — each ground-state as uniquely singular and universal. This Otherness as other ground-states in their own perspectival I-ness is what then ‘escapes’ and ‘transcends’ the absolute enfolding of the cosmic envelope in any god-realized Self: as the encompassing of the entire cosmic envelope in the non-dual Self is relative to that Self's locus on the cosmic envelope.
13 A formulation echoing Levinas's notion of the ‘third person’ (Levinas Citation1987, 106).
14 CitationWilber [1995] 2000, 545.
15 CitationWilber [1995] 2000, 543–7.
16 Bhaskar Citation1993, 181.
17 A question arises about the first term in the perspective chain being not singular but itself doubled (or tripled), such that there is no strong priority for the opening and founding term in a combinatory chain. The answer is that this is possible but entails an initial forestalling at the start of any clear moral orientation, in effect a short-circuiting of the call of the good having any clear direction. This would be a case of pathology in the perspectival dynamics of the moral field — a kind of undirected calling that does not effectively call.
18 On the political, cf. Bhaskar Citation1994, 156–7.
19 Bhaskar himself speaks of ‘modalities’ of metaReality if in a different register of analysis.
20 Bhaskar says as much — that transcendental arguments are not a final form of certainty (especially when moving beyond the domains of physical and biological nature) and that intuitive knowing is a requisite moment in creative thought — the issue being to take these insights seriously into our theoretical practice.
21 Bhaskar [2002] 2012, xlii.
22 Hewiston Citation2014.
23 Hence the need for a community of practitioners, as a moment in integral theory's three stands of knowing (Wilber Citation2006, 267) — ‘knowing’ delimited in a mega-phenomenological sense.
24 CitationLonergan [1957] 1992 and 1971.
25 Cf. Bhaskar Citation2000, 3, 39–50.
26 On 1-2-3 of spirit, see Wilber Citation2006, 158–61.
27 Levin Citation1989.
28 Cf. Critchley Citation2007, ch. 1, on the two-fold distinction between the demand (the call) and approval.
29 See Smith 2014 on the terms of moral source and moral motivation as proper to both of Taylor's major books: Sources of Self (1989) and A Secular Age (2007).
30 Along with moral source and moral motivation, there is also moral will as the ground intentionalities that only come forth in flow upon non-dual actualization and the healing of splits of the embodied personality. Such ground intentionalities are the ways one inclines uniquely and creatively to respond in act to the moral call. Moral will is the singular directionality of one's creative responsiveness in act.
31 On wisdom in the world lineages, see Walsh Citation2014.
32 Laske Citation2008.
33 Acknowledging that spontaneous right action comes forth as we become more and more transparent to ground-state capacities, a question remains as to the effective limitations of such action per the capacities proper to a given embodied personality. Ken Wilber was once asked about the difference between his awakening and that of the historical Buddha. His reply was that he could drive a Jeep, the Buddha could not. Wilber's playful comment contains a core dictum of his integral theory: that upon god-realization, all potentially beneficial capacities of the embodied personality do not immediately come forth. And here is perhaps a fault-line between certain sectors of IT and of CR: many integralists seeing god-realization as complemented by continuing capacity training to enrich the skilful means of the embodied personality's acts of wise love; whereas some critical realists would seem to see such training in integral circles as more or less unnecessary in the end, even egoically driven in lieu of relaxation into ground-state know-how, prone to go astray into beautiful soul syndrome.
34 If we attune, approve and attend to the call of the good, there can be impact on our sense of who or what we are. Simon Critchley (2007, 19–23) has made the case that (1) ‘the self shapes itself through its relation to whatever it determines as good’; while going further to claim that (2) ‘this demand of the good founds the self; or, better, that the demand of the good is the fundamental principle of the subject's articulation’. For us, where ontology and the moral call are on more intimate terms than in Critchley's often Levinasian-inspired formulations, the self-sense — or Self-sense (as regards agency and co-agency) can be said to be co-constituted through the play of perspectives and the ways one engages the good.
35 Bhaskar Citation1993, 377–82; Bhaskar Citation1994, 144–58.
36 For an explication of the moral dimensions of dialectical critical realism, see Norrie Citation2010, 121–57.
37 Bhaskar Citation1993, 381, original emphasis.
38 Bhaskar Citation1993, 380, original emphasis.
39 Bhaskar Citation1993, 381.
40 Wilber 2006, 267–9.
41 Sloterdijk 2012, 6, emphasis added. On the anthropotechnic parameters of this cited passage, see Sloterdijk 2013.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Schwartz
Michael Schwartz is Professor in the Department of Art at Georgia Regents University, USA. He is the co-founding executive director of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, serving as Associate Editor of both its journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy on Maney Press and its books series on Northwestern University Press.