Johannes Heinrichs on Lived Self-Reflection and Methodical Reflection

Discussion

Johannes Heinrichs:

The author of the book “Integral Philosophy” is much nearer to Sri Aurobindo`s understanding of “integral” than to that of Ken Wilber, which he characterizes as “fast food and overall philosophy”.

The most fundamental difference to Wilber is the author`s start from the human “Ego” as a self-referent or self-reflexive being. Where Wilber states that the “I” can as little recognize itself as a knife is able to cut itself, the author rejects this objectivism and sees the “secret” of self-consciousness and consciousness in just the capability of self-reflection.

This is also the position of Sri Aurobindo, which he shares with the greatest representatives of European and Indian thought. Sri Aurobindo doesn`t aim at an epistemologically systematic way of thinking, and therefore does not begin from a “critical” theory of knowledge, which is the standard of European philosophy after René Descartes and Immanuel Kant. The author accepts these critical standards as indispensable for an encounter of academic philosophy between Indian wisdom teaching and spiritual teaching. The point of departure from the human “Ego” (“I”) needs clarifications.

Firstly, we must distinguish the real philosophical or transcendental “I” which is nothing else than an activity being aware of itself before any objectification, just from the self-objectifications that form the empirical or psychological “Me.” If human cognition began only with objects, including an objectified “Me,” Wilber would be right on this point. In that case, a really “integral” philosophy would be impossible from the very beginning, because the seeing instance, the Seer, could not see himself. Philosophy would be damned to follow the object-sciences or religious traditions as Wilber does. Integral philosophy means, on the contrary, an independent philosophy with her own source of cognition, which is firstly the pre-objective, implicit self-cognition, secondly the explicit or theoretical reflection on the first one.

The author also speaks of a lived or ontological self-reflection in contrast to the subsequent and objectifying theoretical self-reflection (which is still something different from, but nearer to the psychological self-image).

Secondly, the departure from “I” as a self-reflexive entity does not mean at all that there is any “I” separated from the first world of objects nor from the second world of other subjects nor from the third world of cultural sense. On the contrary, being a self-relating entity, the “I” is essentially related to the “first world” of the objects, to the “second world” of subjectivity, including other subjects (beginning with the mother) and to the “third world” of sense, all at the same time.

The latter world includes not only the cultural level, represented by language, but also the trans-cultural Sense, which is infinite. The human being is capable of the thought “All,” capable of the Infinite! This is the decisive fundament of all spirituality and all “theological” thought, as we shall see.

If we speak (with the philosophers G. Frege and R. Popper) of worlds 1, 2 and 3, this is a certain concession to what is current, because this enumeration is lacking the essential difference of the “I” and “You”, putting both I and You under the common title “subjects”. But the I-experience is not the You-experience, which is a social one. It is true that the three worlds are only for the “I,” as objective phenomena (1), as the experienced social world (2), and as the world of common language and sense (3).

Nevertheless, the activity-experience of the “I” is absolutely fundamental. It is fundamental not only for our critical departure, but undoubtedly (in difference to the objects), it is constantly, always and ever, the fundament of all the three other “worlds” and experiences. The self-experience is the only subject-world, whereas the other worlds are object-worlds (if we take the word “object” in a wider sense, for otherness). The subject-world is the most indispensable and the most forgotten and misinterpreted, a “world” of its own. Therefore an integral philosophy must take it into account, all the more.

For logical reasons (namely the reflection levels which soon will become evident), the author prefers the following succession for the four “worlds” or the four sense-elements, as he calls them, because they are present in any human experience or action:

1. Objectivity or world of objects (world 1)

2. Subjectivity or subjective world of self-experience (world 2)

3. Inter-subjectivity or social world (world 3)

4. Medial world of Sense (world 4)

A brief summary of the structured ensemble of the sense-elements:

1. I AM, by reflecting myself implicitly and spontaneously. I am a being of selfreflection, first implicitly, than also explicitly. My implicit self-conscience is just the knife which cuts itself! This is the “wonder” of self-consciousness.

2. IT is, acknowledged by me as an object, objectified by me and more or less independent from me.

3. You are reflecting me, in being reflected by me. We are active mirrors of each other in a reciprocal reflection (mirroring), which is double reflection on both sides: my reflection of the other`s reflection on me, the other`s reflection of my reflection on him. Such is full social relation, exept:

4. WE are united in the infinite Medium of Sense (universal knowledge/information), which we presuppose in creating it together further.

5. Center: All these elements are unified in the dynamical act of Universal Being.

There is an ontological triad seen from above (body - soul - spirit), but this triad is a reduction of the existential fourness from the standpoint of subjective experience.

From that point of view my I-experience is not identical with the I-experience of the Other, and the social interrelation is not reducible to both or any of them. This dialogical difference is part of dialogical thinking, which is not given with those who speak of “three worlds” only"

(https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Diamonds_of_Integral_Philosophy)

Source

'* Book: Diamonds of Integral Philosophy. An outline of the book “Integral Philosophy”. by Johannes Heinrichs.