Daniel Gustav Anderson - Moving Beyond Wilberian Integral Theory

I've been sitting on this post by Daniel for a few days, unsure if I just want to post it and say:

"See, this is where many of us are now regrading integral theory. Integral has great potential, but it needs to get out of Wilber's shadow and prove its assertions."

Or if I want to add even more to the list of reasons so many of us are both disillusioned and ready to see the model grow beyond The Ken. In reality, I use his work in psychology a lot, and I am building upon it with the things that he left out either by choice, by bias, or by not knowing about those theories.

But, it seems to me that Daniel Gustav Anderson has made the definite statement for many us who formerly saw ourselves as students of Wilber's model. So here is a big chunk of his interesting post (if you are not familiar with Anderson's work on Wilber, I highly recommend you spend some time at his blog - this post is an emotional statement, but he has earned his perspective with detailed criticisms of Wilber's project):

I think I have said enough. It is time to move on, and not only for me personally, but for everyone who identifies with what might be called "integral theory." It is time to think instead about what integral theory after Wilber looks like: in response to Wilber, in the shadow of Wilber, working from Wilber's premises, or moving directly away from Wilber's doctrine. All these tendencies are present. There are surely others.

For this reason, it is worthwhile to consider what has motivated my engagement with this man's work in recent years. I have picked at it like a scab; I have identified the conceptual legs on which it stands and, one by one, kicked them out, suggesting more profitable or at least less preposterous directions in which to grow instead. I have not always been judicious or kind about it, which is regrettable. What has motivated this?

A complex of things.

First, a repulsion from Wilber's use of traditional sources, in European and Asian philosophy. Wilber's practice has him mining ancient and canonical texts for concepts he then appropriates and often distorts, then represents as his own, for his own gain. This is his version of "primary accumulation." He samples the riches of the world's spiritual and intellectual traditions as he sees fit, mashes them up into his own matrix of badly-assembled convictions, and marks it. I identify as a Buddhist. Wilber's abuse of the Buddhist tradition in this sense (unpack what he has done with the simple concept of emptiness, equating it with some kind of really existent Godhead) is unconscionable to me.

Second, a fascination with the wildly devoted subculture of followers that surrounds Wilber. My position is that Wilber's doctrine is untenable as academic work. It is simply not reasonable; it cannot tolerate the scrutiny of reason. If integralism is predicated on what he calls "orienting generalizations," as they are described in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, then it must be said that integralism is not predicated on science or reason as such, but on blind faith in these abstractions. One may say that the orienting generalities are themselves a useful fiction; I respond by saying that Wilber does not mark them as such fictions, he accepts them as proven fact and moves on without examining them, and for that reason his work is sunk from the start if it is to be taken seriously as knowledge, as reason. But but but! It does not matter, because it is a doctrine that appears reasonable at first glance and claims to point toward means of verification beyond reason. It goes for transrationality without actually getting to the rationality part: it is a prerational cult of the transrational, unmediated by the rigor of reason, fact, or accountability to method. To use a Wilberism: Wilber is guilty of the Pre/Trans Fallacy, or rather, his writing insists on readers who are willing to absorb that fallacy. This explains the shrill freakings-out that go on and on and on when Wilber's basic premises are examined with care. It is assumed to be personal, because it is Wilber's person (the figure of the one who has achieved something beyond reason) that guarantees the validity of this "knowledge." It is a kind of self-fashioning, a rhetorical game.

Third: politics and the public good. One would think that a writer committed to a transformational project would consistently seek out a transformational political program, and would seek to understand the political implications of his own work and that of his claimed antecedents with some rigor, to account for it and move on. Wilber's politics are of significant concern to me insofar as they are instead quite the opposite, a boring and uncritical repetition of the same old neoliberal tripe, but with some kind of supernatural, superspiritual cast to them that lays a veneer of inevitability to his person, his project, his followers. This gives Wilberism an exceptionally high creepitude factor, to put it informally. His doctrines have a dismal pedigree as political theory, clearly visible if one takes a historical view as I have attempted to do in past and in forthcoming work. "The white holon's burden." All this is thoroughly discredited, but where does Wilber renounce this doctrine? When will he catch on that this material, the legacy of such constipated apologists for capital as IA Richards and Michael Oakeshott, is not consonant with a transformational politics without some serious intellectual gymnastics?

I'm sure the majority of current Wilber students/followers will take exception with these statements, and that is good. PLEASE, defend Wilber's "Theory of Everything" with some proofs, some research, some . . . well, anything.

Tags: Daniel Gustav Anderson, For the Turnstiles, Moving Beyond Wilberian Integral Theory, Ken Wilber, integral theory, Philosophy, Psychology, culture, Integral, Wilberism