Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The magnet of our difficult ascent

Sri Aurobindo's highly articulate vision of a spiritual society, initiated during his nationalist days, thus came to find concrete embodiment in this ...
Contemporary spiritual art in India is a diverse and exciting field, and Divine Carriers modestly attempts to introduce international viewers to it. All the work in this exhibition was created after 1965; all are informed with a concern for communicating visionary messages in the context of a national and global community of seekers for deeper living solutions in the contemporary world. Debashish Banerji, Curator, Divine Carriers.]

“Wilber differentiates basic and transitional structures, the former being included while the latter are transcended. So it is a question of what is defined as each kind of strucutre. Here’s an excerpt from ‘Ladder, climber, view’ by Ingersoll and Cook-Greuter:
‘As the self develops (climbs the ladder and increases its altitude), each rung reveals a broader, deeper view or perspective that replaces previous views or perspectives…. In one sense, these views are permanent for the period that the self is on a given rung. In another sense, the views are transitional in that once the self moves from a given rung to the next rung on the ladder, the previous view is replaced by a new, expanded view.’
“Wilber references his own article ‘ladder, climber, view’ on p. 66 of Integral Spirituality but says he won’t discuss it in the book…”]

I'm not too concerned that some academics are talking past each other, that's to be expected. But I wonder about the people who set up universities and fund them, expecting that the universities will teach the humanities or liberal arts. Are they aware that their philosophy departments are not teaching classic philosophers nor philosophy in general, but are instead teaching a very specialized subject that isn't recognizable as philosophy to most of those outside of that domain?]

Secondly, Graham is such a fun writer. I particularly think the section in which he demolishes the analytic philosophers and Meillassoux on the issue of ‘rhetoric’ is a tour de force. I’d like to pass it on along to some of my analytic friends, and see what they make of it. His use of ‘passages A, B, C, D, D1, D2′ is pretty great. But I’ve got to say, the excursions and diversions are a ton of fun, but trenchant as well. The flipping of correlationism with the twins, for example, but especially the excursion on rhetoric, and how it leads to general thoughts on philosophy as an enterprise.
I also REALLY like the way Graham redefines time, space, ontology, and metaphysics AROUND this overall project. I think the redefinition of things like ontology and metaphysics happens each time a truly new philosophy comes along, but this is often done implicitely. Kudos to doing it openly! And the redefinition of time and space around objects is I think also a great move. Creates a whole new set of lenses via which to view the world, and isn’t that what philosophy is for?]

The overall scene is chaotic, to say the least. But the quest is on, that’s the solace. [TNM]

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