Toward a Genealogy and Topology of Western Integrative Thinking
* Article: Toward a Genealogy and Topology of Western Integrative Thinking. By Gary P. Hampson. Integral Review, Vol. 9, No. 2
Abstract
"Contemporary integrative thinking such as meta-theorising, integral approaches and transdisciplinarity can be productively contextualised by identifying both a broad genealogy of Western integrative thinking, and also a topology regarding facets of such thought. This paper offers one such genealogical and topological reading. The genealogy involves the historical orientations or moments of Hermetism; Neoplatonism; Renaissancism; the nexus of German classicism, romanticism and idealism; and reconstructive postmodernism. Arising from this, an indication of a general topology of Western integrative thinking is offered (with case studies), one involving objects of integration (such as philosophy and spirituality), macro-integrative entities (such as syncretism), micro-integrative entities (such as creativity and love), integrative “shapes” (such as organicism), and processes of integration (such as intuition)."
Excerpts
Hermetism as the Relational Philosophy of a Living Universe
Gary Hampson:
"Key themes include particular relations between human and divine (partnership between humanity and God) that can be described as a form of nonduality (e.g. the world as spiritual), involving holography as meta-phor/ physics (“as above, so below”), a living universe, and depth (the world as infused with divine symbolism), such that it is possible for the human individual or collective to (directly) regenerate, redeem or transmute themselves toward the divine (alchemy as transformation toward potential); levels of reality are also posited through the notion of spiritual intermediaries (Goodrick-Clarke, 2008).
Jung (1943 / 1970) indicates that Hermetic understanding includes the assemblage of all conceivable opposites—one might say an archetype of dialectics or nonduality. This includes that between ego and id, eros (life, creativity, desire, sexuality) and thanatos (death), passion and reason (Faivre, 1995). In contrast to the dominant modern (post-eighteenth-century) episteme of “solipsism, atomization, [and] incommunicability,” (p. 70) the Hermetic offers “the path of otherness, of living diversity, of communication of souls” (p. 70)—a substantively relational template-sensibility that accords with contemporary (post-mid-twentieth century) academic interest in such items as “relativity, pluralism, polarities, [and] polysemiology” (p. 49): Hermetism as complexly integrative. Hermetism proved to be a robust stream of thought, forming part of the prevailing theological paradigm in the Middle Ages in the West (and also in classical Islamic civilisation) (Faivre, 1998), even though it was marginalised by Aristotelian scholasticism. As a mainstream interest, it can be evidenced at least as late as Isaac Newton’s prolific output of Hermetic and alchemical writings (Linden, 2003a). Somewhat paradoxically, Newton’s and Kepler’s Hermetic orientation could potentially facilitate a deconstruction of the technicist anti-Hermetic Newtonianism of modernism."