Daniel Gustav Anderson: The Integral Review
In On Belief, Slavoj Zizek (2001) argues that the onslaught of the New Age ‘Asiatic’ thought, which, in its different guises, from the ‘Western Buddhism’ (today’s counterpoint to Western Marxism, as opposed to the ‘Asiatic’ Marxism-Leninism) to different ‘Taos,’ is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism (p. 12)...This inquiry suggests that Integral theorists should take Zizek’s critique to heart. First, I examine the genealogy of the imperative to integrate, demonstrating the implicit ideological investments of Integral theory’s foundational theorist, Aurobindo Ghose.3
2 The concept of a "perennial philosophy" is a foundational assumption of much Integral thought; it informs Wilber’s discussion of spirituality, for example, from No Boundary (1979) beyond The Eye of the Spirit (2001a). This concept gained some intellectual currency at the pitch of the Enlightenment with the work of Leibnitz, named by Ziporyn as a thinker still capable of maintaining his credibility as such while making ostentatious universalistic truth-claims about his work, and his claims about the man producing such work (that is, himself as one who is up to the task). The "perennial philosophy" as a concept, then, coincides historically with a moment of uncritical self-fashioning.
The relatively early vintage also suggests that the logic of integration as "East-West synthesis" may have circulated among intellectuals long before Aurobindo—and not in the sense of forcing all antiquities into a scheme of Biblical teleology (an ideological "return to roots") as parodied in the paranoid figure of Casaubon. Thus, while it performs a significant function in Theosophy and synthetic Integral theory—functions of popular culture, not philosophy of theory strictly defined—it may also have had some kind of credibility in intellectual culture. Had they the resources, would early holist Edmund Spenser have produced an early Integralism?
3 The influence of Aurobindo’s idea of integration-as-synthesis cannot be overestimated in Integral studies or for cultural production generally, which is one reason why it seems Zizek is not overstating his case, and why his critique deserves a fair hearing. Beyond the direct reception of Aurobindo’s writings by an undifferentiated readership and the specialized reading communities in the academy and the professional world, Aurobindo’s synthetic gesture has lies behind the foundation of educational institutions such as CIIS, by Aurobindo’s disciple Haridas Chaudhuri; and Esalen Institute, co-founded by Michael Murphy, who himself spent a significant period of time at Aurobindo’s ashram and popularized Aurobindo’s ideas, leading to what became known as the human potential movement and helping invigorate the profitable "Self Help" and "New Age" marketing niches in publishing. Integral theory, arguably a reification or clarification of Integral pedagogy, remains Aurobindian from tip to toe inclusive of thinkers as diverse as Wilber and Thompson.
Outside the gestalt of Integral studies, D.P. Chattopodhyaya, arguably the most prominent professional philosopher living in India, has spent much of his career explicating Aurobindo’s social thought. Unfortuantely, much of his work is not easily accessible to non-specialists outside South Asia.
To adapt a meme attributed to Whitehead: if European philosophy amounts to a footnoting of Plato, Integral theory may very well amount to a conversation about Aurobindo. This bit of context foregrounds Aurobindo’s achievement: while philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche responded to Asian ideas in European terms, the notion of an "East-West synthesis" traces its genealogy to Aurobindo Ghose.
Blavatsky, who crystallized this meme and circulated it heartily among the bourgeois of fin de siecle Europe in the form of Theosophy, can be credited with (or held responsible for) inventing the cultural phenomenon of "East-West synthesis." This is why a response to Zizek’s critique of Integral theory (as distinguished from Integral culture per se) must begin with Aurobindo, and a cultural analysis should begin with Blavatsky.
Approaching Aurobindo’s position in the Integral canon from another way, in his Forward to A Greater Psychology, Wilber (2001b) credits Aurobindo with synthesizing the Hegelian view of evolution as Spirit-in-action with "ancient wisdom" (p. vi)—a fair judgment—and for this reason, suggests that "[a]ll subsequent attempts at such integrative efforts must […] at least acknowledge Aurobindo’s enduring genius and in many ways still unsurpassed efforts" (p. vii).
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