Rise of Neo-Integrative Worldviews

* The rise of neo-integrative worldviews. Towards a rational spirituality for the coming planetary civilization? Roland Benedikter and Markus Molz.

URL = https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Rise-of-Neo-Integrative-Worldviews-1.pdf

Description

"This chapter provides an introductory overview of contemporary developments in the field of worldviews related to neo-integrative efforts. The current constellation in the European-Western hemisphere is witnessing a significant increase in ‘spiritually’ informed paradigms that claim to be at the same time ‘rational’. Though these paradigms sometimes deploy ambiguous concepts of ‘spirituality’ and ‘rationality’, have very diverse features, are not infrequently opposed to each other and are of varying quality, their common core aspiration can be said to be, in the majority of cases, integrative, inclusive and integral. These terms imply an attempt to reconcile spirituality and rationality, transcendence and secularism, as well as ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’, with the goal of building a more balanced worldview at the heart of Western civilization than the ones we have had so far, which have by and large been biased either towards secular nominalism, on the one hand, or religious transcendentalism on the other.

To put the current attempts at and developments toward integrative worldviews into perspective, this text first lists some of the most important features of the current worldview constellation in the Western hemisphere; second, problematizes some of the paradigmatic attempts towards integrative, inclusive or integral thought of the present, including some transitional movements between the late 1960s and today; and third, outlines a view of some of the currently most influential tendencies and trajectories towards integral worldviews, i.e. towards the conciliation of rationality and spirituality.

The result of our critical investigation of this topic is that, if deployed appropriately, i.e. in full accordance with the rules set by contemporary academic scrutiny, integrative worldviews may provide at least potentially useful ‘layers of stratification’ ."

Excerpt

Roland Benedikter and Marcus Molz recognize different 'generations' in integrative thinking:

"We have to consider integrative emancipatory frameworks originating from different cultures, contexts and disciplines. We divide these into three categories:

- first, those stemming from the first half of the twentieth century;

- second, those of the phase of transition between the 1960s and the twenty-first century; and

- third, twenty-first century approaches.

(1) The first half of the twentieth century gave birth to the pioneers of modern integrative worldviews, who laid the foundations for the basic idea of integrative worldviews within (and not against) evolving modernity.

(2) The second half of the twentieth century– and especially the period from the 1960s to the 1990s– can be considered a phase of transition, which brought about symptoms of the renewal of a renovated integrative intuition, manifested inter alia in the trend towards post-materialism in the 1980s and 1990s and in the ambiguous rise of a postmodern spirituality in the 1990s.

(3) Finally, the twenty-first century (presumably starting with the great political and cultural change of 1989/91) seems to be generating a new generation of integrative thought, which is still struggling to rise fully to the challenges of our time at the level of given problems and their comparatively increased complexity. Most representatives of this new generation of integrative thought and action seem to conceive themselves as part of a paradigm shift beyond classical modernity (including its latest stage of ‘postmodernity’), and as closely related with the emerging paradigm stage of a mature modernity."

(https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Rise-of-Neo-Integrative-Worldviews-1.pdf)