quote:

Originally posted by johnboy:
[qb]

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] re: association between the theotic and what you're calling the pragmatic.[/qb]

One example would be Gelpi's: Orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy.

Another perspective might be to compare the theoretical and the practical realms. If theology is theoretical, spirituality is practical, or applied theology, very useful theology, pragmatically speaking. [/qb]

Gelpi and Helminiak seem to have different approaches here; maybe they're not even talking about the same things.
- e.g. orthopraxis -- that can apply to what he calls the philosophic, theist and theotic perspectives inasmuch as it means living one's principles. Helminiak's four perspectives provide a further elaboration of Lonergan that I think is quite helpful and makes a lot of sense. Some of what you're sharing from Gelpi's approach seems conflated in terms of Helminiak's. Maybe there's a way to put one on a Y axis and the other on X and show interrelationships, however.

I'll eventually be starting a Helminiak thread or maybe a premium group to study his works more deeply. My primary concern on this thread was using his work to respond to post-modernism, not necessarily understood as any particular formal philosophical system as much as a generalized "spirit" promoting relativism and cynicism regarding truth.

re: e.g. orthopraxis -- that can apply to what he calls the philosophic, theist and theotic perspectives inasmuch as it means living one's principles.

Yes, as I pointed out, I view these as fully integrated, fractal-like. Hence, they'd appear conflated. But those conflations are mine not Gelpi's, to be clear. Gelpi and Helminiak are precisely talking about the same thing, when it comes to Lonergan. They differ in that Helminiak side-steps the metaphysics, while Gelpi is immersed in a semiotic realism. And, importantly, Gelpi's peircean pragmatism is a distinct concept apart from how I was rather loosely throwing around the word pragmatic, which was more in the conventional sense and not the philosophical lexicon. You are right about x and y axes, though, because my schema lends itself even to a z axis As for those imperatives of Lonergan, they truly apply to any perspective, although the need for any given one of them may stand out in sharper relief as we move from one epistemic task to another. This is all seamless to me, as Maritain says, drawing distinctions only toward the end of uniting. My heuristic is a mnemonic device holding together a lot of otherwise unrelated stuff and is facile in some of its conflations, to be sure.

My chief contribution, tracking more on your initial primary concern, is to suggest that we not throw the postmodern critique baby out with any radically postmodernistic bathwater. Hermeneutics that don't respond to this critique are untenable and a big problem, too. They lead to jihads.

pax,
jb

Okay, I've got my sweats and my stinky tennis shoes on so let me start this light twenty-minute after-work workout by first saying, thank you, JB, for taking my question seriously and answering it thoughtfully. (Cardiovascular usage: 15% and rising).

Interestingly, it seems that human core competencies lie in our ecological rationality, which you can read more about at the Max Planck Institute.

Yes, that's interesting info on bounded rationality. I just KNEW my knee-jerk reactions had some merit. And seriously, now that I look back, I see that I've been upgrading my heuristic engine every time I follow one of your or someone else's line of inquiry. I don't tend to follow it particularly deeply, but I think just enough to get a good feel for a subject. For whatever reason and purpose, it now seems that I have been intentionally developing my heuristic skills. Maybe when this wheel of fortune stops spinning I will study in depth whatever subject I land on. I don't know. What amazes me about you is that you are both broad and deep.

At any rate, directly to your point, it seems that humans are not well equipped to engage in deductive and probabilistic rationality without considerable training, much less normative rationality and meta-rationality, and this includes our struggles to articulate what's going on, when we do employ them in an otherwise unconsciously competent manner.

That makes sense to me. If this were not so then the light bulb would have been invented many centuries before.

Here is some disquieting evidence on how humans reason.

I TOTALLY flunked that 4-card test. But if this weakness in human reasoning is indicative of anything it is that making some kind of decision, by and large, is better (at least more advantageous to the individual) than procrastinating or taking "Should I have cake or pie?" to a blue ribbon committee. I didn't read all that stuff but what I did read was very interesting.

The postmodernists --- confronted with these multiple rationalities, all of which approach the same reality from different angles and seemingly obey different laws (polynomial), independent of one another --- apparently take the apparent conflicts, inconsistencies and contradictions, and ascribe those to reality, itself, rather than to the fallible observer.

That's an interesting thought. I wonder if one is feeling weak, insignificant, impotent or fragile that one will tend to see one's self as the unmovable bedrock and everything else "out there" as contingent, inexact and flawed.

We also addressed on other threads, over the years, the difference between knowledge and wisdom (knowledge plus love, in my book).

Yes, I like that definition.

There is one root cause for fundamentalism and radical postmodernism --- both groups have given up, have literally abandoned the ongoing and never-ending journey to conversion, the former believing they have already arrived , the latter thinking there is no destination .

I somehow sense that both are attempts at metaphorically shoving an iron bar into a revolving door in order to achieve "Stop!" If one's world is full of rapid change, violence, and a cacophony of turmoil than sure, solid answers might look very attractive, particularly if all the change and variety around one has been equated with chaos. And the exact instinct can kick in if one's present world seems an imposing solidity of rules, regulations, forms and customs. Then one's instinct might be to tear it all apart. I suppose arrogance and the need to be right about something fuel this.

Fundamentalists and arationalists have one thing in common -- they are not moving.

I think that's a very good description. Thanks for the workout. I got my system up to near 85% of capacity for a full twenty minutes. But I would like to say in all sincerity that the people here at SP have certainly been quite helpful to me in keeping me in motion. Mine might be a slightly different kind of motion, but it's motion all the same. And JB, that's one thing I like about you. You keep things in motion.

Note: I don't think I made clear, above, that I was moreso addressing what I would call the different aspects of human knowledge, which are distinct from what Phil was presenting re: Helminiak, which I like to call different spheres of human concern. I was reflecting on the sorts of things that happen when these aspects and these spheres encounter one another (hence my purposeful conflations), some aspects standing out in sharper relief, for instance, in this sphere vs that, even though I affirm that all aspects are integrally engaged in all spheres. Maybe this thread can help clarify.

pax,
jb

Here�s a book whose existence I stumbled upon while reading an NRO article: Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, N. Levitt, From the Amazon.com reviews it looks quite interesting. And as one reviewer summed it up:

�what the postmodernist holders of these ideologies seek is not a reasoned position but brute social revolution thru obliteration of knowledge.

Here's another article I thought you might like catalogued in this thread:

Facts & Firemen
by Jonah Goldberg

quote:

As Stanley Fish put it not too long ago in the New York Times, "[P]ostmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one." Of course, postmodernism doesn't maintain only that, but you get the point.

The greatest expos� of postmodern asininity appeared, in 1996, in the pages of a respected postmodern magazine called Social Text. The editors of Social Text, as part of their long campaign against facts-without-quotation-marks, dedicated an entire issue to the problem of "science." For obvious reasons, PoMos hate science more than dogs hate vacuum cleaners, and they bark at it about as much. You see, scientists work on precisely the opposite assumptions as PoMos; they actually think that facts exist outside of clever word games. You can say all you like that physics is phallocentric, but it's not going to change the rules of thermodynamics. This really pisses off PoMos, because scientists keep making really cool gadgets that work while, to date, Duke's English department hasn't been able to make an airplane run on metaphors or to illuminate a football stadium with the adverbs from James Joyce's Dubliners.

Anyway, a physicist named Alan Sokal decided to have some fun and submit a paper to Social Text entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." After a zillion pages of jargon, it concluded that "physical 'reality,' no less than social 'reality,' is at bottom a social and linguistic construct." The editors loved the piece and published it. At which point, Sokal admitted it was a parody and he was just kidding. A few PoMos insisted it didn't matter if Sokal was joking, because he was right anyway. But most of them were angry enough to spit hermeneutic nails.

quote:

For example. If I stood up in a classroom at Brown or Harvard or Yale and declared, "Let the best man win," the students would turn into a human sprinkler-system of deconstructing inquiry. What do you mean by "man"? What are your criteria for "best"? Why does someone have to "win" at all? Couldn't we define the task more cooperatively? When you say "let," who is doing the "letting"? Isn't that just another way of saying we should "let" the patriarchal capitalist system continue to reward those already deemed "best" (and, therefore, most advantaged)? This word "the," it seems to connote that there is only a single criterion for determining a privileged status � couldn't there be a more pluralistic approach? Etc., yawn, etc.

I don't want to sound immodest, but once you understand the above point there's little reason for you to read Cornel West, or any other similar author who seeks to "unearth"-"expose"-"undress"-"deconstruct"-"reveal" the hidden class-racial-patriarchal-heterosexual-lookist biases hidden in our culture or language. It's all the same analysis, just with different examples and different grudges against whitey.

Good stuff, Brad! Jonah Goldberg is always worth reading, imo, and he's at his best on this one.

"[P]ostmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one."

The irony is that this position itself should be held to the same cynical standards, no?

The irony is that this position itself should be held to the same cynical standards, no?

You�re surely right, Phil. To judge the merit of the rationale (I will refrain from using the word "logic" in deference to postmodernism for the moment) behind postmodernism requires one to hold that system of "thought" up to some standard after all, even if its something as ethereal as our passing emotions rather than as solid as bedrock logic.

And if we find that the "foundational" rationale to postmodernism is no more than anti-establishmentism or over-emotionalism or the rejection of truth and logic itself then, to any reasonable person, it is obvious that the foundations to postmodernism automatically, from day one, undermine that "philosophy�s" own legitimacy � or rather, one could read this as saying that it automatically legitimizes any other ideology or philosophy as co-equal. And if this is so then we can counter-postmodernize and, say, invent an equally-legitimate philosophy based on whatever principles we feel are important. We might choose logic as one of the foundational principles, but we wouldn�t have to. But it�s quite likely that if I were to do so that I would, in my own mischievous way, choose just those foundational principles that could prove the illegitimacy of postmodernism.

I think one quickly sees from the above thought experiment that bedrock objective truth is not such a confining thing. In fact, it frees us from what are no doubt the totalitarian impulses behind postmodernism. After all, if the truth is the truth and can be shown to be so independently from opinion then nobody owns it. But if the truth is what a narrow group of people say it is by no other means than that they say it is so, then this quickly leads to the type of abuses inherent in such systems as socialism and Communism where the elite decide the "truth" and sidling up to the real truths can cost you your life. Luckily, in such places as government, business and academia, the nonsense (such as political correctness) that partially springs from postmodernism can cost you only your job and reputation. But it�s a matter only of opportunity, not of principle, that separates the lesser abuses from the larger ones.

Postmodernism consists of so many different elements. Many philosphers disagree(d) with each other: compare Derrida with Foucault, for example, or Kristeva and Irigaray. Yes, much of it shares common elements (things like fragmentation, subjectivity, denial of objective truth, pastiche, parody or irony, and suchlike) but I don't think you can lump it all together and discredit it all. Even if noted physicist Alan Sokal DID write a hoax nonsensical paper dismissing Science in favour of postmodernism and have it published and lauded by many postmodernists!

I support many elements of relativism and postmodernism, but I can't take it to its logical extreme. I truly believe that we construct reality in our own shapes with our own words, but I can't deny an essential core to us. I believe in my having an immortal soul. I don't believe that if you stripped back my various social constructed elements you'd find nothing there!

In terms of Science, I must object though. Yes I understand that some postmodernists deny an objective Truth and thus dismiss science and scientific discoveries. However I do believe that many people have looked at this all wrong. At least in my understanding, those postmodernists who can see that Science has helped put men on our moon, launched Voyager 1 almost out of our solar system, etc. do not dispute hard-won scientific facts or proofs. We simply deny that these form part of a preordained plan that will reveal all scientific truths to us to uncover a Whole Objective Truth. Science has made findings, it will make others. None of these represent episodes of Revelation of a Metanarrative. But, like I said, it doesn't necessarily try to scupper all Science as non-existent language constructs!

In regards to postmodern totalitarianism or relativism: you can still believe in something as 'right' given a context and social/cultural/political constructs, but still not think of it as an objective Universal Truth.

Still, I enjoyed that description of postmodernists taking apart a simple phrase like 'Let the best man win'! Mainly because I could imagine doing that myself... I would, come to think of it, love to see how a bunch of people like that would react if you suddenly shouted: 'Oh my god, get OUT OF HERE! There's a fire!'

quote:

However I do believe that many people have looked at this all wrong. At least in my understanding, those postmodernists who can see that Science has helped put men on our moon, launched Voyager 1 almost out of our solar system, etc. do not dispute hard-won scientific facts or proofs. We simply deny that these form part of a preordained plan that will reveal all scientific truths to us to uncover a Whole Objective Truth. Science has made findings, it will make others.

I define science as discovering repeatability. No more. No less�even if that repeatability is consistently random. We then go on to make use of that consistency and repeatability to send rockets to the moon. We couldn�t do that if just sometimes when hydrogen and oxygen mixed together it burned or if the radioactive fuels powering a satellite just sometimes decayed at a consistent and predictable rate (although it�s impossible to predict the exact moment any individual plutonium atom will decay). That repeatability, however, is a deep, deep objective truth. And in my mind this logically leaves room for one-time events such as miracles. Religion is outside of science primarily because of repeatability and predictability, although I would say religion as noticeably traces of both.

I might agree with more of postmodernism if I didn�t see the proponents of same as cynical deconstructionists.

Welcome, Cartographer of the Empire! I'm surprised you found that display name to be available.

In the opening post on this thread, I noted what I was objecting to:
What I am mostly concerned about, here, is the popular manifestions. E.g., that truth is unknowable, relative, subjective, utilitarian. I am also concerned about the political implications -- e.g., the correlation between postmodern thinking and secularism. The reaction to this is also significant.

Nevertheless, as you noted, post-modernism has done a service in calling attention to the role of subjectivity and perception in understanding truth.

In the end, it's a rather complicated topic, as I believe there are issues that are completely subjective, including a wide range of opinions, likes and dislikes. Many matters turn out to be simply a matter of preference, for example. That said, it doesn't follow that that all truth is merely subjective, and one is left to inquire why the mind should be interested in the truth of an issue in the first place if truth doesn't exist to be known? This is not a dynamic we're conditioned to accept; it seems to be intrinsic to the mind's very operation, and we all pretty much know the kinds of issues that turn out to be a matter of subjective opinion and those that fall into the realm of objectivity.

You might check out this thread sometime to see how the various levels of consideration break down. In Exhibit A, note the distinction between the Positivist and Philosophic perspectives. There's not doubting that the former can come very close to establishing explanation congruent with fact -- which is a good definition of objective truth. When it comes to the philosophic and theistic, however, it's a little more difficult, as we're dealing with explanation congruent with experience and other factors. Nevertheless, as long as one can say that some explanations seem "truer" than others, what is implied is an objective truth which calls us ever onward to deeper inquire and reflection.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb]it doesn't follow that that all truth is merely subjective, and one is left to inquire why the mind should be interested in the truth of an issue in the first place if truth doesn't exist to be known?[/qb]

Wonderful. I don't dispute that. In fact, though its subjective sensibilities appeal to me, I would never call myself a postmodernist. Pomo and relativism, taken to their logical extremes, lead to conclusions that strike ME as bizarre and unacceptable: stripped down to its core you find... nothing! I believe I have an immortal soul but pomo taken to its extremes would destroy such a concept I think ! I believe in an essential core. I believe I even touched/felt/experienced my soul once.

I agree, Cartographer. That essential core is really hard to get at, but its existence can be implied from the fact that our body, psyche and spirit are somehow integrated in such fashion that they generally function as a harmonious unit. We can deconstruct these levels of our being, show how body has its ways, for example, or psyche, but in the end, this deconstruction must be willfully maintained, and that's not natural. What's natural is for our being to function as an integrated whole, and I think the concept of soul provides an explanation of this integration.

Hi Phil & all:

Engaging discussion. I worked with a "postmodern" critic this year, Frank Davey. It was interesting to work with him. He seemed to like writing that had non-linear, that was phrenomenological, that defied usual narrative strategies, and yet that had a pattern, that wasn't simply chaos. Since my mind normally functions in this way <g>, stumbling into stories/interesting thoughts, through process, through exploration, through the nature of one point to reproduce from a common source, much like Deleze's rhizome, where multiple narrative can "sprout" from a source, I find this way of thinking, or way of being conductive to my own unfolding. It doesn't go to the extreme of some schismatic writers who delude themselves into thinking that the past can be done away with (ie the traditions of the past...), but I firmly believe that without the rational mind, the light of reason, of intuition, of grace, one can fall into various traps. At the same time, new modes of thinking can be found at the mid-point...new ways our constructing our life histories, cartogrophies (ha) of the soul which arise out of the unconscious, rather than being shaped by a framework, a framework forming quite naturally, with the help of grace with gives a new pattern that is unique to a soul. I don't think that pm necessarily has be seen as a movement, schismatic, or non-rational...although it tends to attract these sorts of reactionary thinkers who are inherently mean and trivial and reductive in their own right...

Kermode's "The Sense of an Ending" gives a balanced (although humanist and Freudian) viewpoint of the pitfalls of pm...in it he extends the discusses this midpoint region using Aquanis's term "aevum", what he calls a third duration in narrative. He connects this idea of time with postmodern spatial form...this in itself would be an interesting thesis to explore...perhaps connecting the humanist urge with the postmodern...

But ultimately it is only the heart that will re-create postmodernism, and that break through will come and it will use postmodern forms of telling..and invite new ways in which the act of reading is relational, rather then using the language of science. Writing as phenomenology, guided by the higher mind, and not stifled by reason.

Kermode's issues with PM are as follows and I pretty much agree with these:

1) connects pm narrative to naive apocalyptic thinking.

2) a break with the past

3) mimicry of technology

4) gap between the elect and the rest

5) propoent of illiteracy?

6) more noise than information

7) novelty becomes the inflation of triviality

8) schismatic movements can hardly be expected to care for continuity and the past; the more schismatic, the less they know about novelty

--note, not all postmodern writers break with a past or the traditions of the past.

9) my favorite point: "there us a humanly needed order which we call form"

--but kermode is a freudian and thinks that parts of narrative "must be repressed." My feeling is quite different...the unconscious that can order itself through tapas and realign itself to the heart should be explored in narrative. this can lead to new ways of exploring the unconscious, not as a playground of irrationality, but as a locus for wisdom. but metaphorical patterns, foreshadowing, other narrative strategies for projecting a future into the present, can be done away with. the present is always process, is always unfolding with moments of insight, where kairos and chronos interpenetrate. new ways of creating metaphors, of writing should be explored. that's what i have learned from pm. that it is explores the process of movement...the process itself has no endings or beginnings, or fancy terminology; subjectivity is emphasized. but this sort of knowledge, or this way of relating to the world can keep one open, in ways that one cosmology/ one truth, would not. Clearly, there are multiple ways of experiencing truth, none of which is ultimate. There is no absolute, but countless absolutes all of which are put into question by time. But process is like being in love with the subjectivities touching subjectivities, giving birth to new forms. This is how I see PM. Not just novel forms, but a way of being that is inherently poetic.


Asher

but secretly at night I turn signs around, I point
all travelers in the wrong direction;
....
and after another failure I stood, delicately, on my own
head, defying her to tell up from down;
(The Sad Phoenician, 71, 73)

Kermode's "message" in regards to "postmodern" narratology:

1) "we must avoid the regress into myth which has deceived poet, historian, and critic...the survival of paradigms is as much our business as their erosion. For that reason it is time to look more closely at them."

2)"We achieve our secular concords of past and present and future, modifying the past and allowing for the future without falsifying our own moment of crises."

3)"Now I also believe that there is a powerful eschatological element in modern thought and that it is reflected in the arts....It is commonplace to talk about our historical situation as uniquely terrible and in a way privileged, a cardinal point in time....there is nothing at all distinguishing about eschatological anxiety; it was, one gathers, a feature of Mesopotamian culture, and it is now characteristic, often somewhat reach-me-down in appearance, of what Mr. Lionel Trilling calls the 'adversary culture' or subculture of our society."

-"we project our existential anxieties on history."

4) "each reacts to a 'painful transitional situation,' but one in terms of continuity and the other in terms of schism. The common topics are transition and eschatological anxiety; but one reconstructs, the other abolishes, one decreases and the other destroys the indispensible and relevant past."

5)-a permanent literature of crisis

6) "the new novel repeats itself, bisects itself, modifies itself, contradicts itself, without even accumulating enough bulk to constitute a past--and thus a "story," in the traditional sense of the word."
_______________________________________________

To contrast:

Deleze and Guattari on the "rhizome-book:"

"A rhizome-book, not dichotomous, pivital, or fascicular book. Never send down roots, or plant them, however difficult it may be to avoid reverting back to the old procedures. 'Those things which occur to me, occur to me not from the root up but rather only somehwere in their middle. Let someone attempt to seize them, let someoen attempt to seize a blade of grass and hold fast to it when it begins to grow only from the middle. Why is this so difficult? The question is one of perpetual semiotics. It's not easy to see things from the middle, rather than looking down on them from above or up at them from below, or from left to right or right to left: try it, you'll see that everything changes...

What is lacking is a Nomadology, the opposite of history...etc.

much more here:

http://mythosandlogos.com/Deleuze.html

This sort of thinking about writing, thinking, living excites me personally and feels fresh, new. Unfortunately, in "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" they seem to think that a schizoid way of being can be productive...when I think it's unhealthy without the mediation of a vertical dimension, namely grace, which would never isolate a person, but contribute to integration. Of course, Wilber deals with this well, but he annoys me.

Best,

Asher

from

http://130.179.92.25/Arnason_DE/Deleuze.html

(I hope that it's ok to post this).

"In practice, Deleuze and Guattari have created a new vocabulary to permit them to speak about psychoanalysis and society without falling into either Marxist or Freudian ideas:

Machines: A term coined by Guattari to escape the Lacanian notion of the "subject" which is often mistaken for consciousness itself. A machine is any point at which a flow of some sort (physical, intellectual, emotional etc either leaves or enters a structure. A baby's mouth at its mother's breast is a mouth machine meeting a breast machine. There is flow between these two machines.

Desiring machine: a machine connected to a "body without organs."

Body without organs: A phrase from Artaud. Any organized structure, such as a government, a university, a body, or the universe. Desiring machines and the body without organs are two different states of the same thing, part of an organized system of production which controls flows.

Paranoic machine: A state in which the body without organs rejects the desiring machines.

Miraculating machine: a state in which the body without organs attracts the desiring machines.

The Socius: a body without organs that constitutes a society, as in the body of the earth of primitive societies, the body of the despot in barbaric societies and the body of capital in capitalist societies.

The nomadic subject: the free autonomous subject which exists momentarily in an ever shifting array of possibilities as desiring machines distribute flows across the body without organs."

You see this idea of a "nomadic subject" as being "free" is interesting and probably frees people from getting caught in the presumptions of the Oedipus complex, & perhaps it releases desire, but without the means to know what to do with desire, one is still prone to fanatical thinking, fascism etc. Yeats, Pound, and many of the modernists were prone to regressive/mythical thought. The other end is paranoia, which is where many of the humanists stand, clinging as some of them do, to Oedipus and Freud (like kermode). One can be filled with raw desire and tyrranical, of course, so I don't quite understand how this way of being that Deleuze and G propose will be inherently better than paranoid thinking. Why history must alawys vacillate between extremes, amazes me. Since the humanists don't have the answers, nor the postmodernists, nor Yung (who mistakes pre states for trans states) only a few know that the heart and the discriminating mind are safeguards into the unconscious. Not morality, or religion, but an open, loving, receptive, life-engaged, relational heart.

This element has to become part of literature and narrative...imo. But people still never understood the soul of Romantacism. It was rejected to easily. Ordinary people cannot be mystics, but we can be heart-open, aware of egotity, aware of what we are creating moment to moment...

Neither postmodernism nor humanism have the answer to the dilemma of the modern novel.

Aurobindo writes prophetically here, I think, in "The Future Poetry:"

( I emphasize poetry and literature b/c it is the way that we tell our stories, the various presumptions that metaphoriacl patterns have on an imagined future, or a romantic past, which define thought processes. The ability of new ways of telling stories, of writing essays, of journalism has a direct relationship with how we conceive the world around us and the meaning/presumptions which we impregnante into our world view...Postmodernism has, to be fair, given much to the realm of journalism, but it is missing a quality which I call the soul. This is a result, I believe, of an animosity towards the Romantics...of subjective realms of experience, of visionary realms, of the intuition to touch our present lives, not to create a future, but to be present...but we use intuition to project future, rather than to experience the utter beauty of this moment...at least this is the pattern of narrative, and is one reason why pm's reject people like Shelley as "an ineffectual angel," to use Arnold's words.)

"The essential and decisive step of the future art of poetry will perhaps be to discover that it is not form which either fixes or reveals the spirit but the spirit which makes out of itself the form and the word and this with so sure a discovery, once we can live in it and create out of it without too much interference from the difficult and devising intellect, that their movement becomes as spontaneously inevitable as the movements and their mould as structually perfect as the magical formations of inconscient Nature...Nature creates perfectly b/c she creates directly out of life and is not intelletually self-conscious, the spirit will create perfectly b/c it creates directly out of self and is spontaneously supra-intellectually all conscious...."


later, on narrative:

"An intensive narrative, intense in simplicity or in richness of significant shades, tones and colours, will be the more profound and subtle art of this kind in the future and its appropriate structures determined by the needs of this inner art motive. A first form of the intensive and spiritually significant poetic narrative has already been created and attempts to replace the more superficially intellectual motives, where the idea rather supervened upon the story or read into it the sense of its turns or its total movement, but here the story tends more to be the living expression of the idea..."

From "The Future Poetry"

In a sense, this is what breaking from humanism should have done, but there were the intervening levels of the subtle/occult mind and vitality which must bore through to the spirit of an idea, which creates its own form...Kermode will not allow this and postmodernism is still the model for art, because this element will not be exceopted. Partly because it assumes a stable metaphysical position, which presumes hieracrhy. However, the Spirit is as dependent on its vehicle as the vehicle is dependent on the Spirit. The Romantics knew this, as did the Greeks, but they made the Spirit a priveledged entity, the poet, a God, when we are all simply meeting the Spirit halfway, and form is also rising up to meet Spirit. These two movements need not represent hierarchy, but mutal codependence.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] What I'm saying, here, is that truth exists and our minds are fundamentally oriented toward alignment with it. We can approach it more and more closely and live more and more in harmony with it through the practice of honesty, critical reflection and responsible action. This leads us to a deeper and deeper experience of truth, perhaps ultimately moving one into the realms of religion and spirituality.

If truth does not really exist, then neither does lying, and information becomes merely something to use to obtain certain ends. These can be justified however one wishes, for in some postmodern schools, goodness is a purely relative matter as well. But what I wrote about truth applies to goodness aas well -- we really do know when we see it and approach it, and we know when we drift away from it. Fidelity to one's values is the way forward, here, but such values must be in alignment with truth.

This little opener has many implications, which I am hoping we can explore. What I am saying is that objective truth and goodness really do exist, although in a transcendent realm, for we can never fully grasp them, only approach them more and more closely. [/qb]

Phil,
I don't think that most postmodernism accepts any sort of transcendental "truth," unfortunately. It looks more into the socio-political & linguistic presumptions of truth in fields such as post colonial theory, where such binaries truth/untruth were used to construct paradigms like the the 4 stage theory of the savage, which placed the urban environment as the highest form of civilization. It also devised linguistic means to create (a partially imaginary) opposition towards "lower" forms of civilization (see Edward Said's "Orientialism"), as inherently primitive, other, exotic etc. It never suggested that even within "primitive" civilizations that genuis could manifest in a Ramana Maharshi, for instance, or a Ramakrishna could exist. Much of postmodernism is simply political. I don't think that this precludes honesty, although this honesty takes a surface form and amounts to constructs such as political correctness, which, taken to its extreme, results in delusional thinking, as noted in the Wilber thread on the green meme and whatnot. But pushed further, I think it resulted in some of the most ingenious and creative forms of thinking that allowed for new histories to be constructed, which put into question the socio-political use of the word "truth." The way to bring the element which you speak of into postmodernism is a question that engages and facinates me. Because postmodernism resists definitions, it is open to admitting the element which you speak of. But to be incorporated you would have to take out the sense of a stable metaphysical spiritual identity that can speak a truth that is absolute. The truth would have to be seen as an ordeal, or a process, a movement, rather than an end...or if there was an end, it would have to not be either conclusive, or an answer, but simply an opening into a deeper process...

Best,

Asher

This sort of goes back into Kermode's problem/question about endings and chronology: why are we afraid of endings? In the point above, apirituality would have to be seen as a process, codependent on physicality and not superior to physicality. I suppose that such a world view would result in being preoccupied with the process of change. Change amounts to 99.9 percent of all the aspects of ones spiritual life, not counting those who claim to be in a stable fixed, enlightened position. The notion of a Christ or a Buddha as a fixed world-view, is imaginary, a linguistic construct, which the mind holds onto, until it is thrust into a dark night, where notions of fixity of concepts are purged and one stands on unstable ontological ground. This movement is where postmodernism (in its ontological position stands) and some writers even go as far as making such a state, an ideal sort of state (see Robert Krotesch) These writer's proclaim, like Stephen Daedelus in Joyce's "Ulysses" that "history is a nightmare I am trying to recover from," something to that effect. This unstable, shifting ontological ground is the basis for much of Delezean thought, which rejects more nihilistic and paranoid modernist thinking. What I'm facinated by is the creative process which opens up as a result of this state of ontological uncertainty. The sense of infinite possibility, of breadth, rather than depth, of expansion. Most postmodernists are not postmodern, because they truly don't stand on this ground; they only preach this ground as though it is an answer. Truly, it may be the desert of the contemplative. Within this place is vast, untapped creative potential & the possibility, if insight is available, to achieve, a secular understanding of the divine, mediated through the intuition.

Asher, thanks for those thoughtful reflections. You've really done a lot of good thinking on this topic, and I pretty much go along with your analyses and the directions you point up.

Because postmodernism resists definitions, it is open to admitting the element which you speak of. But to be incorporated you would have to take out the sense of a stable metaphysical spiritual identity that can speak a truth that is absolute. The truth would have to be seen as an ordeal, or a process, a movement, rather than an end...or if there was an end, it would have to not be either conclusive, or an answer, but simply an opening into a deeper process...

Is there not in what I think you accurately point out, some preconceived sense of "the way things are?" It almost seems that postmodernism of this sort is incompatible with any theism which posits God as "ultimate explanation," or "ultimate truth, meaning, etc." That conclusion is implicit in the premises, which must, in the end, be viewed with the same level of skepticism postmodernists recommend to other analyses, no?

The notion of a Christ or a Buddha as a fixed world-view, is imaginary, a linguistic construct, which the mind holds onto, until it is thrust into a dark night, where notions of fixity of concepts are purged and one stands on unstable ontological ground. This movement is where postmodernism (in its ontological position stands) and some writers even go as far as making such a state, an ideal sort of state (see Robert Krotesch)

I follow, but the mistake here, imo, is to view Christ or Buddha as "merely" a concept and not living realities which DO provide foundational ontological stability. Of course, to affirm such a thing would be to acknowledge that objective reality exists independently of our language or opinions, and this sort of thing doesn't always appeal to postmodernists.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb]
The notion of a Christ or a Buddha as a fixed world-view, is imaginary, a linguistic construct, which the mind holds onto, until it is thrust into a dark night, where notions of fixity of concepts are purged and one stands on unstable ontological ground. This movement is where postmodernism (in its ontological position stands) and some writers even go as far as making such a state, an ideal sort of state (see Robert Krotesch)

I follow, but the mistake here, imo, is to view Christ or Buddha as "merely" a concept and not living realities which DO provide foundational ontological stability. Of course, to affirm such a thing would be to acknowledge that objective reality exists independently of our language or opinions, and this sort of thing doesn't always appeal to postmodernists. [/qb]

Phil, let me address your last point first. Yes, I have yet to find some critic(s) who will acknowledge an objective reality (especially a divine one) that exists apart from linguistic constructs. A truth which would at least provide the individual with a greater (and "deeper" pm dislike that word awakening. But there are the possibilities, as explored above, of moving into higher levels of green thinking, if we use Wilber's terminology.) I think that this does amount to greater levels of ontological stability, but I, personally, would be reluctent to call this anything but growth. I do understand that these awakenings are assisted by a higher source, although I'll be reluctent to name it, but would rather quietly express my gratitude for this source, which seems to exist apart from the individual. Some strains of postmodernism, would close off to this realm completely, as move back into existential angst.

I can only say that I'm searching for critics like Deleuze who seem to have an opening of sorts. Intuitively, there is a sense of an expansive and green quality to postmodernism, which wasn't implicit in modernism.

Even if a postmodernist were to posit an objective reality, there is still the filtering of this objective reality through the human, where truths can be seen from slightly varying angles. Perhaps the useful elements of religious life will provide a firmer basis for postmodernism, some sort of structure. Currently, most theorists and artists feel at a bit of a dead end, to be honest. There's only so much severance with the past that one can do without sounding banal:-)

At least in art, narrative and reconstructing history I think we can agree that any formation of a story based on a seemingly objective reality would still be simply a point of view, no? Not absolute or definite. Is there one absolute source of authority in language?

Postmodernism will tend (in its healthy manifestations) to take many viewpoints and make a sort of collage of them. When thinking about interrelationship between religion and history, intersubjectivities, I cannot see how an objective, authoritative point of view could be upheld in language.

Postmodernism will bring out relational aspects, through juxtaposing different genres.

There are problems with purely poetic and religious writing as Bakhtin notes in his discourse on the novel. Bakhtin (whom many postmodernists draw from) talks about the dialogic nature of language. Between the word and the object, he writes (paraphrasing here) there is a dialogic atmosphere of other "alien" words, different semantical layers which deflect off the word and produce socio-linguistic nuances. Poetic/religious writing, in contrast, is monologic, Bakhtin asserts. It aims at writing in isolation of a social context; it is a centriptal movement, rather than a centrifugal movement.

A postmodernist, I think would say emphasize the sociological or aspect of a word where it is always in flux. So the individual stands always in relation to a social context, rather then in hellenistic culture, where the poet often stood apart, and was somehow privedged.

However, I've even read writers who say that Baktin's theory is derived from Kantian architectonics and assumes some sort metaphysical presence in language. They would do away with this as well. I don't quite see where this would lead, besides being in some sort of astral space where one is floating. And how can an individual be mobilized, how can desire be mobilized to resist hypocricy in this floating state. It seems inane to me, personally. Hence, I agree that foundational ontology, can be provided. What I suggest is that the awakened heart, in love, in desire to serve, in desire to scout out egotity, in a natural impulse to move out, to expand, to heal, and integrate, can provide this apart from any religious framework. I see this in peoples writing now, this willingness to be broken, to not repress, or to hide behind intellectual postures, to be broken in this way, seems to be the beginning of a movement into the heart. Does the heart have the power to effect total change? Only if one is willing to be broken over and over, to have ones stance broken. Then something will come through, something will become fixed, even if it is only the impulse to allow oneself to peridically fall apart. There is something to this, I think.

Best,

Asher

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb]
[i]
Is there not in what I think you accurately point out, some preconceived sense of "the way things are?" It almost seems that postmodernism of this sort is incompatible with any theism which posits God as "ultimate explanation," or "ultimate truth, meaning, etc." That conclusion is implicit in the premises, which must, in the end, be viewed with the same level of skepticism postmodernists recommend to other analyses, no?
[/qb]

Phil,

I'll try to address this point by drawing from resources which suggest what Aquinas called a third duration. Kermode will connect this to temporal integration and postmodern spatial form. This mid region is "capeable of change by acts of will and intellect." This point, Kermode calls, the aevum, a figure for the temporal integration of the past, present and the future. He connects it also to the imagination, or more organic faculties. We could simply call it intuition:

"The concept of aevum provides a way of talking about this unusal variety of duration--neither temporal nor eternal, but, as Aquinas said, participating in both the temporal and the eternal. It does not abolish time or spatialize it; it co-exists with time, and is a mode which things can be perpetual without being eternal...this is, I think, the real sense of modern spatial form, which is a figure for the aevum."

What is emphasized is this mid region (Kermode gives an optimistic and I think rather biased view of postmodern spatial form, which is usually not a 1:1 ratio between Chronos and Kairos, but tends to give Kairos precedence as a locus of knowing.)

I'm interested in this point, not as a way to manufacture a future, but as a way to impregnate an idea, or a narrative with the sense of the idea, rather than to project a future onto an idea, and hence, a teleological structure. I think at its best pm, can look at objects expanding from a individual point of perception, to a social context, and, perhaps, to a cosmic context. This sense of the present as holding within it, not the future, but many layers of understanding. But metaphor suggests something esoteric, whereas postmodernism would tend, I think, to ask everything to be expressed. It emphasizes surfaces, in other words. Sometimes in a boring a superfical manner. And hence metonomy is emphasized over depth structures in language, like metaphor.

I don't think PM outright rejects God, it just rejects that the ability to express a single truth in language that will not be modified by incoming perceptions. Although, I'm giving pm the benefit of the doubt. To be fair, there are no spokepeople for the movement, so no fixed definition can be attached to it. It seems stangely open itself to interpretation.

Here's an example of nostalgia for God expressed in a postmodern poet (Dennis Lee):

"for to secular man there is not given the glory of tongues, yet it is
better to speak in silence than squeak in the gab of the age
and if I cannot tell your terrifying
praise, now Hallmark gabble and chintz nor least of all
what time and dimensions your naked incursions
announced, you scurrilous powers yet
still I stand against this bitch of a shrunken time
in semi-faithfulness
and whether you are godhead or zilch or daily ones like before
you strike our measure still and still you
endure as my murderous fate,
though I
do not know you. (32)."

Thought you'd all enjoy

From an essay:

"Like Heidegger, Lee and Kroetsch encounter 'the poet's silence' because that is the way they know how to encounter Being. The capacity to listen to our own words arises from the ability to hear them within the background of this silence, and that means being aware of this silence. The Voices are there: it is up to us to listen to them (all). Even if we can't. Or precisely because we can't."

There is movement towards being? even in outright atheists, like Krotesh. Who can resist being? Now it's manifesting form in Canadian poets seems to be "this silence." Now what to do with silence, is the question.

Asher, I'm not very familiar with some of the writers you quote, but I'm following your reflections and appreciating the questions and struggles you point out. You also seem to be putting your finger on one of the real contributions of postmodernism, and that is its critique of categorical thinking and the tendency to equate reality with language. A certain humility does emerge from this critique that enables one to more openly and honestly follow one's questions.

I don't think PM outright rejects God, it just rejects that the ability to express a single truth in language that will not be modified by incoming perceptions. Although, I'm giving pm the benefit of the doubt. To be fair, there are no spokepeople for the movement, so no fixed definition can be attached to it. It seems stangely open itself to interpretation.

This is an excellent point, and one that resonates with the apophatic traditions in the world religions. It would also seem that pm would find a ready home in Buddhism, or in some form of process theology. When it comes to the more kataphatic aspects of religions, including dogmatic formulations and so forth, I see most pm balking. But, then, its gift is not in affirming and describing reality, as much as it is critiquing the means by which we do so. Does that ring true to you?

. . . Now what to do with silence, is the question.

Ahh, yes. To which I would reply that one should continue to listen, as there are different kinds of silence. At least an authentic sense of one's being should emerge from this, inclucing an awareness of our openness to transcendence. This is not yet religious faith, but it is the fertile ground in which faith can take root.

Thanks for this, Phil. I do think pm will veer away from religion, even though much of Derrida's influence can find correspondences in Eckhart:

http://www.eckhartsociety.org/Essay.html

Hopefully, more of these correspondences/influences will surface more over time. I think that Buddhism is an interesting parallel and one that most of us would connect pm to, especially tantric forms of Buddhism which emphasize physicality and relationship. Much can be gathered from someone like Nietzche in this regard, especially his Apollinian and Dionesyian catergories. Combined with Deleuze, these would translate into bodily flows, which of course is very much apart of tantric practices. I would like see if someone like Blake had an understanding of this need to balance these flows, even in practice of writing.

What can a religious person who has no theology learn from postmodernism? I think that it gives a critical framework to both a non-religious person, like myself, and even to people on a religious path. For instance, the silence of a naval gazer is seen within this framework as a hoax, as it doesn't move beyond itself, to effect any change. True, such a silence can form the backdrop of some poetry, but such poetry will be readily dismissed by many pm's who insist on the dialogic nature of language. (ie naval gazing,
or a deathly stillness has to communicate beyond itself. strangely enough, as soon as it does, it is no longer naval gazing!) And even the heights of spirituality will be dismissed, if they cannot be applied in the body of language, in physicality and in social discourse. These lines of thinking require cross pollination of someone like Derrida with someone like Bakhtin, who focuses on the socio-political aspects of language. But maybe Wilber has all the answers!
At least, I'm beginning to see many aspects of self which must be integrated: interpersonal, intrapersonal, transcendent, child-self etc.
What becomes interesting to me in regards to pm, is the sense that one day, one may be in a state of bliss, and the social self will be shut down. There's a blockage in that sphere of self. But in this framework, one will not undermine that sphere.

These aspects of self are in dialogue and as soon as they are in dialogue, there is the scattering of what I once called truth.

Futhermore, one is part and parcel of social discourse which has its own energetic field into which we all belong are are communicating through. Wilber has yet to acknowledge this. He fails to give credit in many ways to the theorists that preceeded him (or at least, he should try to not talk above his contemporary critics, which he often does. I'm especially amazed that much of his theories on the stages are taken directly from the controvesial teacher named Adi Da, who I much respect.) At least that's my present feeling.

I think pm has been pivotal for some of this growth.

But again, there is no one who will talk about grace, perhaps they'll use the word "temporal integration," but grace, never!

ps. someone will probably scold me for mentioning Adi Da, Franklin Jones. But his teachings are simply superb & there is definitely a grace-force behind them.

Talk about detours!

Thinking now of application of this framework. I have a friend, the security guard of my brother's apartment, who is a non-secetarian monk. He's around 70 years old and I bumped into him at a time in my life when I needed some guidance. He gave me the impetus to leave the community I was involved in at the time, where I had recieved all the benefits that I could. At any rate, this gentleman, tells me he is in a state of bliss and such a state is like turning of a water faucet.

I saw him recently and seemed to recognize that nothing had much changed. This state was simple for him to be in and he emanated something of it to people who communicated with him, but I recognized that he hadn't changed much. His arrogance was still well in place, although he was/is aware of it and never fails to mention it.

I asked him why he didn't quit his job (which is a job mostly in isolation with others) and work with people. I even offered to set up some talks for him, which would allow him to test his state. He would have nothing of it, clinging to ideas that seemed escapist to me ("that's all drama" sort of outlook). Here is this man, with a profound gift, choosing to live in isolation in his blissful state and never having a chance to test it. He calls such testing, "drama." But perhaps pm simply stirs something within people, a social sense, a sense of duty, no matter how meagre our offerings will be, or whatever we end up doing.