Shared Genealogy of Postmodern and Integral Thinking

Discussion

Gary Hampson:

"A starting place to view a less adversarial relationship between integral and postmodern than that connoted by Wilber and some members of the integral community, is to consider their shared genealogy. Philosopher Arran Gare (2002) has done just that. He presents the following picture: As scientific materialism began to increase in societal power in late 18th Century Europe, a “postmodern” countertradition arose in the footsteps of Giambattista Vico and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Johann Herder led the way, identifying: suffering caused by abstractions; the need for self-realisation; an appreciation of cultural plurality; the importance of the particular, the sensory, the active; and a purposeful nature. This thread led—via Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Like Rudolf Steiner, Wilber (1995), and Jennifer Gidley (in press), Gare identifies Schelling as an inspiration, and a pivot in history. He highlights Schelling's dialectical method and also his understanding of that, that we are: an “unprethinkable Being” which precedes all thought and is presupposed by it. Gare then identifies a historical bifurcation stemming from Schelling. One branch leads to the poststructuralists (“poststructuralist postmodernism”), the other to a high-order quest for coherence (“cosmological postmodernism”). In addition to the dialectical nature of the philosophy that lies at the root of the two branches, the branches themselves can be seen as a dialectic between Schelling's alignment with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on the one hand, and his critique of Hegel, on the other. The branch that proceeds from Schelling's critique of Hegel includes Friedrich Wilhelm Neitzsche, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault (largely influenced by Nietzsche), Jacques Derrida (largely influenced by Heidegger) and Gilles Deleuze (who retains more influence from Schelling than the others). Somewhat resonant with Roland Benedikter's (2005) seminal work on postmodern spirituality, Gare proffers that, “poststructuralists require Schelling's earlier philosophy or developments of it to sustain their arguments” (Gare, 2002). The branch which is more aligned to Hegel leads to Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead via Charles Peirce and also via Karl Ernst Von Baer's evolutionary theory of nature. Gare identifies this thread as a high-order quest for coherence. Such a quest for coherence is surely central for any integral theory. But surely a greater integral quest would be to attempt to respectfully honour both branches?"

(https://www.integralworld.net/hampson.html)

More information

Reference: Gare, A. (2002). The roots of postmodernism: Schelling, process philosophy and poststructuralism. In C. Keller (Ed.), Process and difference: Between cosmological and poststructualist postmodernisms (pp. 31-53). Albany: State of New York University Press.