Jacques Derrida On Religion

These two videos are really just audio, but the lectures are interesting for anyone who enjoys postmodern philosophy. Jacques Derrida was nearly a rock star as far as philosophers are concerned, which is rare in our day. Zizek has achieved nearly as much fame in recent years, but his is more to do with his outrageous behavior and commentaries (which is part of his philosophy) than Derrida's, which was due more to his ideas, especially as concerns justice.

In order to make sense of Derrida's position on religion - or anything else - it helps to understand his use of the word deconstruction and what the method means as he uses it. This is from a Wikipedia entry on Deconstruction, and there is more from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Religion below the videos.

From Différance to Deconstruction

Derrida approaches all texts as constructed around elemental oppositions which all speech has to articulate if it intends to make any sense whatsoever. This is so because identity is viewed in non-essentialist terms as a construct, and because constructs only produce meaning through the interplay of differences inside a "system of distinct signs". This approach to text, in a broad sense,^[1][2] emerges from semiology advanced by Ferdinand de Saussure.

Saussure is considered one of the fathers of structuralism when he explained that terms get their meaning in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language

In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. [...] A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass thought engenders a system of values.^[3]

Saussure explicitly suggested that linguistics was only a branch of a more general semiology, of a science of signs in general, being human codes only one among others. Nevertheless, in the end, as Derrida pointed out, he made of linguistics "the regulatory model", and "for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, and everything that links the sign to phone".^[4] Derrida will prefer to follow the more "fruitful paths (formalization)" of a general semiotics without falling in what he considered "a hierarchizing teleology" privileging linguistics, and speak of 'mark' rather than of language, not as something restricted to mankind, but as prelinguistic, as the pure possibility of language, working every where there is a relation to something else.

Derrida then sees these differences, as elemental oppositions (0-1), working in all "languages", all "systems of distinct signs", all "codes", where terms don't have an"absolute" meaning, but can only get it from reciprocal determination with the other terms (1-0). This structural difference is the first component that Derrida will take into account when articulating the meaning of différance, a mark he felt the need to create and will become a fundamental tool in his life long work: deconstruction.^[5]:

1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of these opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.

But structural difference will not be considered without him already destabilizing from the start its static, synchronic, taxonomic, ahistoric motifs, remembering that all structure already refers to the generative movement in the play of differences^[6]

The other main component of différance is deferring, that takes into account the fact that meaning is not only a question of synchrony with all the other terms inside a structure, but also of diachrony, with everything that was said and will be said, in History, difference as structure and deffering as genesis.^[7]:

2) "the a of différance also recalls that spacing is temporization, the detour and postponement by means of which intuition, perception, consummation - in a word, the relationship to the present, the reference to a present reality, to a being - are always deferred. Deferred by virtue of the very principle of difference which holds that an element functions and signifies, takes on or conveys meaning, only by referring to another past or future element in an economy of traces. This economic aspect of différance, which brings into play a certain not conscious calculation in a field of forces, is inseparable from the more narrowly semiotic aspect of différance.

This confirms the subject as not present to itself and constituted on becoming space, in temporizing and also, as Saussure said, that "language [which consists only of differences] is not a function of the speaking subject."^[8] Questioned this myth of the presence of meaning in itself ("objective") and/or for itself ("subjective") Derrida will start a long deconstruction of all texts where conceptual oppositions are put to work in the actual construction of meaning and values based on the subordination of the movement of "differance"^[7]:

At the point at which the concept of differance, and the chain attached to it, intervenes, all the conceptual oppositions of metaphysics (signifier/signified; sensible/intelligible; writing/speech; passivity/activity; etc.)- to the extent that they ultimately refer to the presence of something present (for example, in the form of the identity of the subject who is present for all his operations, present beneath every accident or event, self-present in its "living speech," in its enunciations, in the present objects and acts of its language, etc.)- become non pertinent. They all amount, at one moment or another, to a subordination of the movement of differance in favor of the presence of a value or a meaning supposedly antecedent to differance, more original than it, exceeding and governing it in the last analysis. This is still the presence of what we called above the "transcendental signified."

But, as Derrida also points out, these relations with other terms don’t express only meaning but also values. The way elemental oppositions are put to work in all texts it's not only a theoretical operation but also a practical option. The first task of deconstruction, starting with philosophy and afterwards revealing it operating in literary texts, juridical texts, etc, would be to overturn these oppositions^[9]:

On the one hand, we must traverse a phase of overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize that in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand.

To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment. To overlook this phase of overturning is to forget the conflictual and subordinating structure of opposition.

It’s not that the final task of deconstruction is to surpass all oppositions, because they are structurally necessary to produce sense. They simply cannot be suspended once and for all. But this doesn’t mean that they don’t need to be analyzed and criticized in all its manifestations, showing the way these oppositions, both logical and axiological, are at work in all discourse for it to be able to produce meaning and values.^[10]

And it’s not enough to deconstruction to expose the way oppositions work and how meaning and values are produced in speech of all kinds and stop there in a nihilistic or cynic position regarding all meaning, "thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively".^[11]
To be effective, deconstruction needs to create new concepts, not to synthesize the terms in opposition, but to mark their difference and eternal interplay^[12]:

That being said - and on the other hand - to remain in this phase is still to operate on the terrain of and from within the deconstructed system. By means of this double, and precisely stratified, dislodged and dislodging, writing, we must also mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new concept that no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous regime. If this interval, this biface or biphase, can be inscribed only in a bifurcated writing then it can only be marked in what I would call a grouped textual field: in the last analysis it is impossible to point it out, for a unilinear text, or a punctual position, an operation signed by a single author, are all by definition incapable of practicing this interval.

This explains why Derrida always proposes new terms in his deconstruction, not as a free play but as a pure necessity of analysis, to better mark the intervals:

Henceforth, in order better to mark this interval it has been necessary to analyze, to set to work, within the text of the history of philosophy, as well as within the so-called literary text (for example, Mallarme), certain marks, shall we say (I mentioned certain ones just now, there are many others), that by analogy (I underline) I have called undecidables, that is, unities of simulacrum, "false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition: but which., however, inhabit philosophical oppositions, resisting and organizing it, without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics

Some examples of these new terms created by Derrida clearly exemplify the deconstruction procedure^[12]:

• (the pharmkon is neither remedy nor poison, neither good nor evil, neither the inside nor the outside, neither speech nor writing; 
• the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the complement of an inside, neither accident nor essence, etc.; 
• the hymen is neither confusion nor distinction, neither identity nor difference, neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiled, neither inside nor the outside, etc.; 
• the gram is neither a signifier nor a signified, neither a sign nor a thing, neither presence nor an absence, neither a position nor a negation, etc.;
  spacing is neither space nor time; 
• the incision is neither the incised integrity of a beginning, or of a simple cutting into, nor simple secondary.

Nevertheless, perhaps Derrida's most famous mark was, from the start, differance, created to deconstruct the opposition between speech and writing and open the way to the rest of his approach:

and this holds first of all for a new concept of writing, that simultaneously provokes the overturning of the hierarchy speech/writing, and the entire system attached to it, and releases the dissonance of a writing within speech, thereby disorganizing the entire inherited order and invading the entire field

OK, then, so here is the introduction to the videos.


Jacques Derrida on Religion

Jacques Derrida was one of the most well known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one of the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism), he developed a strategy called "deconstruction" in the mid 1960s. Although not purely negative, deconstruction is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a critique of the Western philosophical tradition. Deconstruction is generally presented via an analysis of specific texts. It seeks to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking—presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Part One:




Part Two:




From the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Derrida:

Deconstruction

As we said at the beginning, “deconstruction” is the most famous of Derrida's terms. He seems to have appropriated the term from Heidegger's use of “destruction” in Being and Time. But we can get a general sense of what Derrida means with deconstruction by recalling Descartes's First Meditation. There Descartes says that for a long time he has been making mistakes. The criticism of his former beliefs both mistaken and valid aims towards uncovering a “firm and permanent foundation.” The image of a foundation implies that the collection of his former beliefs resembles a building. In the First Meditation then, Descartes is in effect taking down this old building, “de-constructing” it. We have also seen how much Derrida is indebted to traditional transcendental philosophy which really starts here with Descartes' search for a “firm and permanent foundation.” But with Derrida, we know now, the foundation is not a unified self but a divisible limit between myself and myself as an other (auto-affection as hetero-affection: “origin-heterogeneous”).

Derrida has provided many definitions of deconstruction. But three definitions are classical. The first is early, being found in the 1971 interview “Positions” and in the 1972 Preface to Dissemination: deconstruction consists in “two phases” (Positions, pp. 41-42, Dissemination, pp.4-6). At this stage of his career Derrida famously (or infamously) speaks of “metaphysics” as if the Western philosophical tradition was monolithic and homogeneous. At times he also speaks of “Platonism,” as Nietzsche did. Simply, deconstruction is a criticism of Platonism, which is defined by the belief that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separate substances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, with one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other. The first phase of deconstruction attacks this belief by reversing the Platonistic hierarchies: the hierarchies between the invisible or intelligible and the visible or sensible; between essence and appearance; between the soul and body; between living memory and rote memory; between mnēmē and hypomnēsis; between voice and writing; between finally good and evil. In order to clarify deconstruction's “two phases,” let us restrict ourselves to one specific opposition, the opposition between appearance and essence. Nietzsche had also criticized this opposition but it is clearly central to phenomenological thinking as well. So, in Platonism, essence is more valuable than appearance. In deconstruction however, we reverse this, making appearance more valuable than essence. How? Here we could resort to empiricist arguments (in Hume for example) that show that all knowledge of what we call essence depends on the experience of what appears. But then, this argumentation would imply that essence and appearance are not related to one another as separate oppositional poles. The argumentation in other words would show us that essence can be reduced down to a variation of appearances (involving the roles of memory and anticipation). The reduction is a reduction to what we can call “immanence,” which carries the sense of “within” or “in.” So, we would say that what we used to call essence is found in appearance, essence is mixed into appearance. Now, we can back track a bit in the history of Western metaphysics. On the basis of the reversal of the essence-appearance hierarchy and on the basis of the reduction to immanence, we can see that something like a decision (a perhaps impossible decision) must have been made at the beginning of the metaphysical tradition, a decision that instituted the hierarchy of essence-appearance and separated essence from appearance. This decision is what really defines Platonism or “metaphysics.” After this retrospection, we can turn now to a second step in the reversal-reduction of Platonism, which is the second “phase” of deconstruction. The previously inferior term must be re-inscribed as the “origin” or “resource” of the opposition and hierarchy itself. How would this re-inscription or redefinition of appearance work? Here we would have to return to the idea that every appearance or every experience is temporal. In the experience of the present, there is always a small difference between the moment of now-ness and the past and the future. (It is perhaps possible that Hume had already discovered this small difference when, in the Treatise, he speaks of the idea of relation.) In any case, this infinitesimal difference is not only a difference that is non-dualistic, but also it is a difference that is, as Derrida would say, “undecidable.” Although the minuscule difference is virtually unnoticeable in everyday common experience, when we in fact notice it, we cannot decide if we are experiencing the past or the present, if we are experiencing the present or the future. Insofar as the difference is undecidable, it destabilizes the original decision that instituted the hierarchy. After the redefinition of the previously inferior term, Derrida usually changes the term's orthography, for example, writing “différence” with an “a” as “différance” in order to indicate the change in its status. Différance (which is found in appearances when we recognize their temporal nature) then refers to the undecidable resource into which “metaphysics” “cut” in order to makes its decision. In “Positions,” Derrida calls names like “différance” “old names” or “paleonyms,” and there he also provides a list of these “old terms”: “pharmakon”; “supplement”; “hymen”; “gram”; “spacing”; and “incision” (Positions, p. 43). These names are old because, like the word “appearance” or the word “difference,” they have been used for centuries in the history of Western philosophy to refer to the inferior position in hierarchies. But now, they are being used to refer to the resource that has never had a name in “metaphysics”; they are being used to refer to the resource that is indeed “older” than the metaphysical decision.

This first definition of deconstruction as two phases gives way to the refinement we find in the “Force of Law” (which dates from 1989-1990). This second definition is less metaphysical and more political. In “Force of Law,” Derrida says that deconstruction is practiced in two styles (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 21). These “two styles” do not correspond to the “two phases” in the earlier definition of deconstruction. On the one hand, there is the genealogical style of deconstruction, which recalls the history of a concept or theme. Earlier in his career, in Of Grammatology, Derrida had laid out, for example, the history of the concept of writing. But now what is at issue is the history of justice. On the other hand, there is the more formalistic or structural style of deconstruction, which examines a-historical paradoxes or aporias. In “Force of Law,” Derrida lays out three aporias, although they all seem to be variants of one, an aporia concerning the unstable relation between law (the French term is “droit,” which also means “right”) and justice.

Derrida calls the first aporia, “the epoche of the rule” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 22-23). Our most common axiom in ethical or political thought is that to be just or unjust and to exercise justice, one must be free and responsible for one's actions and decisions. Here Derrida in effect is asking: what is freedom. On the one hand, freedom consists in following a rule; but in the case of justice, we would say that a judgment that simply followed the law was only right, not just. For a decision to be just, not only must a judge follow a rule but also he or she must “re-institute” it, in a new judgment. Thus a decision aiming at justice (a free decision) is both regulated and unregulated. The law must be conserved and also destroyed or suspended, suspension being the meaning of the word “epoche.” Each case is other, each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation which no existing coded rule can or ought to guarantee. If a judge programmatically follows a code, he or she is a “calculating machine.” Strict calculation or arbitrariness, one or the other is unjust, but they are both involved; thus, in the present, we cannot say that a judgment, a decision is just, purely just. For Derrida, the “re-institution” of the law in a unique decision is a kind of violence since it does not conform perfectly to the instituted codes; the law is always, according to Derrida, founded in violence. The violent re-institution of the law means that justice is impossible. Derrida calls the second aporia “the ghost of the undecidable (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24-26). A decision begins with the initiative to read, to interpret, and even to calculate. But to make such a decision, one must first of all experience what Derrida calls “undecidability.” One must experience that the case, being unique and singular, does not fit the established codes and therefore a decision about it seems to be impossible. The undecidable, for Derrida, is not mere oscillation between two significations. It is the experience of what, though foreign to the calculable and the rule, is still obligated. We are obligated – this is a kind of duty—to give oneself up to the impossible decision, while taking account of rules and law. As Derrida says, “A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 24). And once the ordeal is past (“if this ever happens,” as Derrida says), then the decision has again followed or given itself a rule and is no longer presently just. Justice therefore is always to come in the future, it is never present. There is apparently no moment during which a decision could be called presently and fully just. Either it has not a followed a rule, hence it is unjust; or it has followed a rule, which has no foundation, which makes it again unjust; or if it did follow a rule, it was calculated and again unjust since it did not respect the singularity of the case. This relentless injustice is why the ordeal of the undecidable is never past. It keeps coming back like a “phantom,” which “deconstructs from the inside every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24-25). Even though justice is impossible and therefore always to come in or from the future, justice is not, for Derrida, a Kantian ideal, which brings us to the third aporia. The third is called “the urgency that obstructs the horizon of knowledge” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 26-28). Derrida stresses the Greek etymology of the word “horizon”: “As its Greek name suggests, a horizon is both the opening and limit that defines an infinite progress or a period of waiting.” Justice, however, even though it is un-presentable, does not wait. A just decision is always required immediately. It cannot furnish itself with unlimited knowledge. The moment of decision itself remains a finite moment of urgency and precipitation. The instant of decision is then the moment of madness, acting in the night of non-knowledge and non-rule. Once again we have a moment of irruptive violence. This urgency is why justice has no horizon of expectation (either regulative or messianic). Justice remains an event yet to come. Perhaps one must always say “can-be” (the French word for “perhaps” is “peut-être,” which literally means “can be”) for justice. This ability for justice aims however towards what is impossible.

Even later in Derrida's career he will formalize, beyond these aporias, the nature of deconstruction. The third definition of deconstruction can be found in an essay from 2000 called “Et Cetera.” Here Derrida in fact presents the principle that defines deconstruction:

Each time that I say ‘deconstruction and X (regardless of the concept or the theme),’ this is the prelude to a very singular division that turns this X into, or rather makes appear in this X, an impossibility that becomes its proper and sole possibility, with the result that between the X as possible and the ‘same’ X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation of homonymy, a relation for which we have to provide an account…. For example, here referring myself to demonstrations I have already attempted …, gift, hospitality, death itself (and therefore so many other things) can be possible only as impossible, as the im-possible, that is, unconditionally (Deconstructions: a User's Guide, p. 300, my emphasis).

Even though the word “deconstruction” has been bandied about, we can see now the kind of thinking in which deconstruction engages. It is a kind of thinking that never finds itself at the end. Justice – this is undeniable – is impossible (perhaps justice is the “impossible”) and therefore it is necessary to make justice possible in countless ways.

Documentary - Derrida: The Abstract Philosopher and the Everyday Man

This is a cool 2002 documentary on Jacques Derrida, one the most infamous 20th century philosophers. As usual, this goodness comes from Open Culture.

Derrida - A 2002 Documentary on the Abstract Philosopher and the Everyday Man

June 7th, 2012

“I once saw Jacques Derrida,” Sam Anderson remembers in New York magazine, “the reigning high priest of French theory, a man so intimidatingly abstract I imagined he pooped exegeses, shuffle out of a lecture hall and load his papers not (as I’d expected) into a rickshaw pulled by grad students or onto the shoulders of cynical chain-smoking French angels but into the trunk of a bright-red Daewoo sedan — a car as terminally lame as any my family had ever owned, and which he then proceeded to drive slowly across a parking lot indistinguishable from the anti-intellectual parking lots of my youth.” Whether Derrida visibly jiggles open the door of this very same Daewoo in the documentary that bears his name I have yet to determine, but the film goes on to offer a wealth of such stolidly quotidian moments. Derrida butters toast. He describes his mother’s kidney stones. He admits to staying in his pajamas all day if he doesn’t have to leave the house.

Faced with the split between Derrida the eminence of high-flown ideas and Derrida the man of bathrobes and economy cars, directors Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman choose to oscillate. We see the hyperverbal, faintly ethereal philosopher take calls in his tastefully light-flooded concrete-and-bamboo study, grant respectful television interviews, meet breathless young exegetes-to-be (“Listening to you speak elucidated your texts just so much for me!”), and travel to South Africa to lecture on the theme of forgiveness. We hear selections from Derrida’s writings intoned over shots of city streets and the man himself strolling them, pipe in mouth. We watch, through a regression of monitors, Derrida watching Derrida watching a tape of Derrida and his wife refusing to divulge the emotional details of their first meeting. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ambient compositions score these conventionally cinematic moments as well as those… less so: Derrida getting a haircut, for instance, or speaking of his great wish to know more of Hegel and Heidegger’s sex lives. Any number of books and interviews can presumably teach you about Derrida’s oft-referenced techniques of deconstruction, but none of them so entertainingly examine the territory where the philosopher’s ideas end and his real world begins.

Bookforum's Omnivore - The Epistemology of Postmodern Spirituality

A recent collection of links from Bookforum's Omnivore looks at the epistemology of spirituality in a modern and postmodern reality. Of special interest to readers of this blog is the title article from the collection, "On the epistemology of postmodern spirituality" by Dudley A. Schreiber, the abstract for which, and a couple of excerpts referencing integral theorists, is posted below.

The epistemology of postmodern spirituality

May 31 2012 

3:00PM

• Dudley A. Schreiber (South Africa): On the Epistemology of Postmodern Spirituality. 
• From Anthropology of this Century, Chris Hann (Max Planck): Personhood, Christianity, Modernity; and facing religion, from anthropology: Michael Lambek on the making of distinctions between the religious and the secular. 
• From Christianity Today, Jenell Williams Paris responds to Mark Noll: Why it's good that evangelicals have not, and likely will not, develop an "evangelical mind"; Carolyn Arends on defending Scripture — literally: Not everything the Bible has to say should be literally interpreted, but that doesn't make it less powerful; an interview with Eric J. Bargerhuff, author of The Most Misused Verses in the Bible: Surprising Ways God's Word Is Misunderstood; and an interview with Alvin Plantinga, author of Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. 
• From New Scientist, a special issue on God and the new science of religion. 
• A review of Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief by Justin Barrett. 
• Analytical thinking erodes belief in God: Our intuitive thought processes, which underpin supernatural beliefs, can be overcome by thinking analytically.

This is an interesting article:

On the epistemology of postmodern spirituality

Dudley A. Schreiber

Abstract

At first glance, the postmodern spiritual ‘scene’ appears ‘sociologically messy, experiential, multifaceted, ecological, provisional and collective’ (Petrolle 2007) and of uncertain epistemic provenance. Here, I ask: can Roland Benedikter’s (2005) conception of postmodern dialectic and spiritual turn, help us understand postmodern spirituality and can it assist in a construction of a postmodern epistemology of spirituality? The current argument constitutes a meta-theoretical exploration of:

• Deconstruction and neo-essentialism as representing the significant dialectic in philosophical postmodernism. Deconstruction is presented as an apophatic moment in Western thought about ‘knowing’ and ‘being’ whilst postmodern neo-essentialism, though contextualised by antirealism and ambiguity, palpably suggests itself.
• Postmodern trends which derive from the dialectic.
• How these epistemic trends influence methodology in the study of spirituality.
• How a trans-traditional (anthropological) spirituality might incorporate insights about transformation from a complex of epistemologies in which, theories of ‘self’ abound.

In the conclusion an attempt is made to describe how postmodern spirituality expresses itself in society.

Citation:
Schreiber, D.A. (2012). On the epistemology of postmodern spirituality. Verbum et Ecclesia, 33(1), Art. #398, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v33i1.398

Full Text: PDF (423 KB) HTML EPUB XML

Here is a excerpt from the article - the author makes reference to Ken Wilber's integralism, as well as Jean Gebser. As a fan of integral theory, in general, it's nice to see it mentioned in an academic article on postmodern spirituality. 

Introduction

Postmodern spiritual turn as the epistemic context for postmodern spirituality
If spirituality is at all times embedded in its time and place in the world and takes its language of meaning ascription from context (Lesniak 2005:7; Corkery 2005:26), how might postmodern insight enrich a contemporary understanding of spirituality across the ‘three worlds’ of knowledge (Mouton 2011:137), namely meta, epistemic and lay? Might postmodern philosophy be said to exhibit rational parallels to dynamics within trans-traditional spirituality? What experience of truth are we to speak of and how are we to speak of it? How might postmodern discourse on knowledge inform us about the experiential inward path of knowing characteristic of mysticism (McGinn 2005:19)? Thinking about spirituality, as do Schneiders (2005:1) and Sheldrake (2005:38), implicates us in contemporary myth, epistemology and general science. Elements of postmodern epistemic landscape suggest a sense of reality that confronts us ‘with the enigma of existence itself’(Benedikter 2007:5) and the many challenges to knowing anything. Yet how might academic spirituality, relatively newly ensconced in the Human Sciences, build theory that is truly contemporary?


Postmodern epistemic trendsAlthough no universal agreement and no monolithic Postmodern Epistemology exist, Benedikter (2005) suggests the primary dialectic lies between deconstructionism (late 1970s to about the late 1990s) and a later constructivist neo-essentialism from 2001 onwards. Deconstruction as a trend, targets both premodern notions of metaphysics and ontology, and modernist realism, in a wide range of narratives. Narratives receiving greatest attention include rationalism, logical positivism, determinism and a gamut of progressively aggressive, externalist and positivist-styled creeds and paradigms (hegemonies) of materialism and domination, which had found their expression through the three worlds of knowledge and across the Western epistemic landscape. The meteoric rise of post-structural critique in the works of the French School of Continental Philosophy up to Foucault constituted a profound attack on former confidence in how history and society work. Furthermore, with the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (cf. also Bird 2004), Modernism’s pride in Physical Science as its chosen and privileged epistemology came under devastating scrutiny. Lest we over simplify the epistemic picture, Griffiths (2007:1) suggests that not all sciences suffered to the same extent, noting a rise in interest in the philosophy of biology, which seems to have undergone some linguistic turn. The work of Bradie and Harms (2008) suggests that a contemporary epistemology of evolution posits a mitigated realism, freer from deterministic mindset. Perhaps, presumption of this less deterministic stance accounts for the way some lay conversations about spirituality indulge in naive biologism, and strange notions of evolutionary transformation? The quest for biochemical substrates remains fascinating at a popular level readily informed by science media. Perhaps too, a heightened sense of democracy in the world of lay knowledge provides an appeal to ontologise from below rather than from meta-engagement?  

Epistemic parallels? Deconstruction and apophasis Deconstruction as an epistemic trend seems to be a conscious and rational pursuit reminiscent of many traditional spiritual practices that aim to ‘dissolve’ ego-constructs in the history of Christian and Oriental spiritual practice. This in itself suggests at least a superficial parallel in the dynamics of postmodernism and spirituality. It could be argued that despite the numerous obstacles to a glib comparison, both philosophical deconstruction and spiritual dissolution of ego ultimately shadow each other by rendering purely rational knowing somewhat mute, truncated, if not counter-intuitive. Is it an over-generalisation to suggest that the postmodern revolution has brought epistemology close to apophatic crisis? What of the broader context of trans-traditional spirituality in which muteness is enhanced by the influence of Oriental meontic and antirealist thought in the Buddhist strands of Pacific philosophy?  

Constructive ontologising In contra-distinction to deconstruction, Benedikter (2005) claims that post-structural neo-essentialism is evident in a ‘broad church’ of thinkers and writers. These, he claims, suggest an ontological realism arising from a boundary of cognitive resistance to deconstructive finality. In paradoxical continuation of deconstructionism, constructive trend exhibits an epistemological project towards a proto-ontology, proto-realism and a proto-spirituality inspired by both oriental and postmodern antirealism. In contrast to essentialist fixity in premodern metaphysics, post-structural neo-essentialism perceives humanity’s vital consciousness as dynamic, evolving and transforming. Cognitive turn seems to provide a shared locus of interest for traditionally divergent, unengaged epistemologies. Interdisciplinary inspiration in Wilber’s (1995) Integral Theory, for instance, shows a multistrand, multihemisphere epistemology at play in trans-traditional spirituality. 

There are a couple other references to Wilber, which are more current (from a 2006 article at Integral Life). And then this passage where he makes reference to Jean Gebser:

Toward neo-essentialism? So, where does consciousness travel, once it has deconstructed ego-attachment in the things of illusion? Benedikter’s argument for a neo-essentialist movement in mature postmodernism rests on a number of literary and philosophical references. These differ in their levels and anthropological concerns. A detailed discussion of these differences is omitted in Benedikter and here, for reasons of brevity. The strand that seems common in his reading focuses on the dynamic nature of attention. Benedikter paraphrases Gebser’s (1986) answer to the aforementioned question, thus: ‘Quite plainly, we are still aware that the stream of consciousness continues, as act and activity, pure and active attention’ (Gebser 1986; cf. also Benedikter 2005:iii, 2). What is this dynamic nothingness and borderline something-ness, which is prior to normal ego and suggests the primordial basis of consciousness? Here Benedikter cites numerous authors: Bhaskar (2002) refers to it as ‘pure substance of mankind’ [sic]; Derrida (1995) speaks of ‘the absolute secret’; Foucault (1977) called it the ‘productive void’; Heidegger (1927), ‘ontological occurrence’; and Rand(1947), ‘the fountainhead’. It is quite clear that in the writing of thinkers of the mature 20th century, a new essentialism suggests itself. Postmodernism perhaps, reaches its neo-religious peak in Gebser’s (1986) ‘permanent origin in itself’ and Bhaskar’s (2002) ‘meta-conscious basis of postmodern emancipation and everyday life’.

After deconstructing realism and inner ego-objects, we recognise something behind the eyes (Hay 2006), which although it deconstructs, is itself resilient to deconstruction.


The affirmative phenomenology of meta-consciousness, false-self and true-self Consciousness behind the ego suggests an inner realm of two ‘I’s. We are profoundly paradoxical, fragmented and schizoid, according to Benedikter (2005:iii, 4): ‘If you take deconstruction seriously, you will, sooner or later, encounter the other’. Traditional mystical epistemology speaks often of a conscious, transformative embrace of the Other. Embrace of otherness that is conceivably also nothingness, seems a perennially recurrent mystical experience. In postmodern spiritual epistemology primacy is given to a rationally derived cognitive participation in deconstruction. Psychologically, unconscious expression of ‘non-being’symptomatically gives rise to schizophrenia¹ and narcissism in pseudo-spiritualities. Is not the unconscious pseudo-spirituality of modernism materialism? The implicit spiritual injunction to authenticity and wholeness, in various traditions would have us hold and dissolve attachment to selfish realisms, staying in the moment of terror after deconstructive process, to encounter being in a metaphorical post-annihilation. These are of course, terms used in many mystical traditions and referred to often in the writings of Merton (Cunningham 1999), Johnston (2000), Krishnamurti (1954) and Nishida Kitarô (cf. Maraldo 2005). 

In his mature work (2003:5–69) published posthumously, Merton refers to the false, collective, alienated exterior and authentic, hidden, real, dark, inner, interior, inmost, awakening selves. Epistemologically speaking it is only in mature postmodernism that we have taken the rational experience of many-selves seriously: grounding real-self by un-grounding false-self. Western true-self and Oriental non-self seem parallel meta-conscious realms arrived at, in deconstructing false-selves.

It's an interesting read (HTML version).

Levi R. Bryant - Distinction: On Deconstruction

For those who enjoy philosophy, Larval Subjects is a very cool blog. Here is a slightly adapted version of his own statement from his blog.

Larval Subjects is the blog of Levi R. Bryant, author of Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence, co-editor of the forthcoming The Speculative Turn with Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, and author of a number of articles on Deleuze, Badiou, Zizek, Lacan, and political theory. He is currently developing his own ontology to be released in a book tentatively entitled Being and Difference: An Essay on Realist Ontology. In a former incarnation he was a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and he is now a professor of philosophy at Collin College.

All that is simply to introduce this cool post he recently put up on the concept of distinctions proposed by G. Spencer-Brown. This is a topic I have not seen before, but it makes incredible intuitive sense. As Bryant summarizes Brown's ideas:

every distinction cleaves a space (whether conceptual or otherwise), the unmarked space of the distinction is what becomes invisible when the distinction is drawn ...

With a distinction, a boundary is drawn, but that which lies on the other side of the boundary disappears. However, on the other hand, the distinction itself disappears when drawing a distinction.

This feels like something we need to consider in integral theory, which is founded on distinctions as much as is on inclusion. We are always drawing distinctions from the moment we sense the self/other divide - even nondual is a distinction from dual (although I think this may be a both/and thing, perhaps the only space that is not either/or). Or not . . . just thinking out loud.

Here is the beginning of the post:

Distinction: On Deconstruction

For some time now I’ve been tormented by G. Spencer-Brown’s theory of distinctions. Anyone who has attempted to read his Laws of Form will know what I’m talking about. Spencer-Brown’s thesis is that in order to indicate anything we must first draw a distinction (depicted to the right above). The bar that cleaves the space is the distinction. The unity of marked and unmarked space with respect to a distinction is what Spencer-Brown calls a distinction. What falls under the bar is what can be indicated once the distinction is drawn. Insofar as every distinction cleaves a space (whether conceptual or otherwise), the unmarked space of the distinction is what becomes invisible when the distinction is drawn. Every distinction thus has two blind spots. On the one hand, every distinction contains the unmarked space that disappears when the distinction is drawn. With a distinction, a boundary is drawn, but that which lies on the other side of the boundary disappears. However, on the other hand, the distinction itself disappears when drawing a distinction. When a distinction is drawn what comes to the fore is the marked space or what is indicated, not the distinction itself. The distinction, as it were, withdraws into the background.

In light of the foregoing, we can thus call distinction the transcendental and what is indicated under a distinction the empirical. If distinction is the transcendental, then this is because no indication can be made without a prior distinction. Distinction is the condition under which indication is possible. Indication, of course, can be anything. It can be what we refer to in the world, how we sort things, what we choose to investigate, etc. In order to indicate or refer to any of these things, I must first draw a distinction. As a consequence, the distinction is prior to whatever happens to be indicated. For example, if I wish to investigate the pathological, I must cleave a space (conceptual or otherwise) that brings the pathological into the marked space of the distinction. It is only on the basis of this distinction that I will be able to indicate the pathological. Part of what is interesting in all of this is that the marked space of the distinction– and recall it’s always withdrawn from any and every indication such that it’s invisible –is like a Mobius strip, attached to its unmarked space in much the same way that the front of a page implies its back. The pathological never innocently indicates the pathological, but rather presupposes an unmarked space of the “normal” that structures and organizes the pathological. In other words, the conditions under which any observations are possible are those of a prior distinction.

Read the whole article.

Tags: Philosophy, distinctions, perspectives, deconstruction, Levi R. Bryant, Larval Subjects, Distinction, On Deconstruction, G. Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form, either or, both and, integral theory, boundaries