Tags
Aristotle, ascent/descent, intimacy/integrity, Ken Wilber, Mozi, perennialism, Plato, Śaṅkara, skholiast (blogger), Thomas P. Kasulis
On my recent post about the ascent-descent and intimacy-integrity classifications in philosophy, skholiast asks an important question: “what is the itch in us to make such schematisms?” What is the point of trying to classify philosophies this way? Clearly many philosophers do attempt to so classify them – but is that anything more than the kind of obsessive interest that characterizes Asperger’s syndrome?
I thought of one important answer to this question because of some friends who are interested in Frithjof Schuon and his fellows in the Perennialist or Traditionalist School of thought. The members of this school believed, and continue to believe, in a philosophia perennis, a kind of philosophical wisdom that persists across cultures throughout the ages. Central to this perennial philosophy is the idea of an ultimate Reality distinguishable from the everyday world we perceive with our senses – an ultimate One which Plato, Śaṅkara, and Zhu Xi might all arguably be said to have found, more or less entirely independently of one another. The perennialists tend to believe that the reason so many came to this conclusion in so many places is because it was the truth – it was really there, to be observed or deduced by any human being anywhere if they cared to take a serious look.
As for me, one reason I find classification of philosophies so important is that I’m only willing to meet the perennialists halfway. I am struck by the recurrence of different ideas across philosophical traditions, and I suspect at least some of that is indeed because it is true. What I don’t buy is that the thinkers cited by the perennialists were the ones who found the correct answer. For those thinkers who seek an ultimate Oneness beyond the world of the senses, like Śaṅkara and Plotinus, are basically Ascent thinkers, almost by definition. And yet Descent thinkers, who embrace the material world and its flaws, are just about as common in the history of philosophy – probably more so, since they’re so much closer to that elusive beast called “common sense.” Indeed, as I noted in my post on Asperger’s, many of the greatest ascent philosophers (Plato, Augustine, Śaṅkara) were followed soon enough by a more descent-oriented thinker (Aristotle, Aquinas, Rāmānuja) who tried to harmonize those ascending views with a more everyday understanding of the world – to “save the appearances,” as Aristotle put it. That’s not to mention the thinkers who didn’t bother harmonizing with the ascent tradition and preached a pure descent of sorts – while ubiquitous today, they also have significant historical precedent in thinkers like Mozi.
What I’m getting at is this: the question of ascent and descent – of whether we should ascetically seek a perfect world beyond, or embrace the world of the senses with all its flaws – strikes me as a perennial one, widespread throughout the history of philosophy. But it is the question that is perennial, rather than the answer – or at least, the perennial answers are multiple. Human beings, when they have started to think about questions beyond their immediate survival, have tended to think about the kind of questions that I refer to as ascent and descent – and they have answered these questions both ways. I strongly suspect that whatever truth is out there to be found is going to be somewhere in the middle; and it is by identifying these ideal-typical answers that we can more successfully locate where that middle will be. As many difficulties as I have with Ken Wilber’s thought, this is a reason I keep coming back to him: I think he gets this point, and really tries to harmonize ascent and descent. (The big danger in doing so, one I’m not sure Wilber avoids, is reaching merely a compromise and not a synthesis.)
I’m not quite sure whether the same discussion (mutatis mutandis) would apply to Kasulis’s distinction of intimacy and integrity, but it might. East Asian thought often seems to have embraced the intimacy orientation wholeheartedly; one finds some elements of the integrity orientation in Mozi, but even he doesn’t seem to go all the way. I suspect glimmers of it do keep showing up there, as Daoists and Buddhist monks retreat out of the wider society. But suppose that isn’t so – suppose East Asian thought is basically all intimacy. Then intimacy-integrity is not quite a perennial question in the way that ascent-descent is – it is not a question that is asked everywhere. Even so, it seems like the distinction remains essential for those seeking philosophical truth, because so many great thinkers come out on either side. If one is to do justice to the concerns of humanity’s great thinkers, if one is to really find truth, it seems to me that one must find some sort of synthesis (and not merely compromise) between intimacy and integrity, as between ascent and descent.
In the schema of schematisms what should be eschewed is the binary/polar/symmetrical/dyadic. The triadic, ternary, the third way, reflects the complexity of life, the ‘don’t know’, the fuzzy.
You’re right to be concerned about binary schemes, but I’m not sure how much better the triadic schemes are. I experimented with a triadic scheme in asceticism/libertinism/traditionalism, but found the set of double binaries (ascent/descent and intimacy/integrity) fit the data (i.e. the history of philosophy) better.
I like this for the respect it gives to our forerunners without selling short our much more descent-oriented (post)modernity. Like you, I am interested in Schuon, Guenon, et al., but I’ve read too much Camus and Nietzsche, too much Eco and Kundera, to be ready to meet them more than halfway. (This is, as you rightly note, a reason to commend Wilber, who does subject the perennialists to a critique, but a respectful critique). Of course an incorrigible ‘descender’ might argue that it’s not the question that is perennial so much as a foolish mistake, a craving to escape, which must thus be (perennially) corrected by those with their feet on the ground. But I’m with you on this one– a question that has stuck around for the duration of human history (at least) has something to recommend it, and if we were to suddenly lose (or be uprooted from) our curiosity about it, we’d lose something inherent about ourselves.
A descender could certainly say that; and a perennialist ( = ascender) could say just the opposite, as the early Buddhists or Advaitins would, that it is a foolish mistake which keeps us in the world and prevents our desire to escape.
Skholiast,
You’ve remarked elsewhere that the noted perennialists are Sufis which is interesting when one considers that Islam is insistent on the seal of the prophets. The book is closed. Even though they, Guenon and the rest, have a strong sense of the natural supernatural, culture and tradition is the way most people set their feet on the path. Some form of irruption by the divine is required to draw one in otherwise. If the perennialists were a form of religion rather than a metareligion then they too would require a grand unifying theory to account for them.
The term Natural Supernaturalism is a chapter heading from Sartor Resartus
by Thomas Carlyle, an unclassifiable book of prophetic persiflage.
Such would be the attitude of the advaitins and the Zen folk also. Your everyday mind is the Buddha-mind. For Shankara perception demonstrates the unity of being. There is the saying of a Tantric sage (Indian tradition not the Hollywood)
No need to be stuck in the lift of ascent and descent.
MR: “For Shankara perception demonstrates the unity of being.”
Perception does not “demonstrate” anything, not to mention “unity of being”. “Demonstration” is a function of reason. And reason demonstrates that if you see two tigers approaching you, and your eyesight is in good condition and you have not consumed “Soma”, there are in reality two tigers and not one!
MR: “There is the saying of a Tantric sage (Indian tradition not the Hollywood) What is here is there, what is not here, is not anywhere.”
This seems absurdly “terracentric” or “here-centric”. If “here” represents this world or universe, and if there are other worlds or universes, it is highly improbable that “what is not here, is not anywhere”. Further, what makes the things “here” so indispensable that they must also be “there”? Just because we have roaches in this universe doesn’t mean that they must also exist “there”. In any case, it is an empirical question whether “what is here is there” and whether “what is not here, is not anywhere”.
Michael, I am tardy responding to this, but I agree. If there is a dialectic that Amod has identified (and I think he’s right on this, schematically), that dialectic has an aufhebung. The lift only gets stuck if one is static. Neither Plato nor Aristotle were, I feel sure, this simple. When you read the parts in Aristotle’s Metaphysics where you get to nous thinking itself, the whole train of thought unfolds in a new dimension perpendicular to the one you thought you were on — that’s a moment of ascent if ever there was one, in this ancestor of all descenders. And Plato’s ascent is always rooted in the dust of the agora or the sweat of the gym or the smile on the face of the beloved. All this is true, and is the spirit informing their works. If you try to extract doctrines from P or A, I think you get more or less what Amod identifies. If you read for the journey, not the destination, then you sense that the way up is the way down.
I’d bet that the same thing pertains, mutatis mutandis, to intimacy/integrity, (I’m thinking of bhakti/jnana), but I’d want to think carefully before I committed myself as I don’t yet know Kasulis’ work well (and I am not sure that, e.g., bhakti and jnana perfectly map here).
Intriguing thoughts. Here and in the Asperger’s post, I have tried to make sure not to categorize Aristotle as just a descent thinker (as I think Nussbaum often tries to do). I don’t think you can read Ethics X.6-8, where he says the best life is that of pure contemplation like the gods, as any sort of descent; Nussbaum basically can’t make sense of that passage on her understanding, she thinks Aristotle is just contradicting the rest of his philosophy here. (But I think she also pays relatively little attention to the Metaphysics.)
Pretty clear then that he’s somewhere in between Ascent and Descent. But I should remind myself more fully that this needs to be synthesis and not just compromise, in order to truly be a virtuous mean. For the middle ground to be a virtuous middle, it needs to preserve the best rather than the worst of both. But shouldn’t that synthesis be dialectical? It seems logical now that you mention it, but I’ve probably been missing that dimension in these classifications.
So far the main dialectic I’ve identified in the history of philosophy is between internal and external reasons in ethics (the Doull post). But what if we also see dialectics unfolding in thought between ascent and descent, intimacy and integrity? That might perhaps make it easier to look to that elusive project I hint at in the most recent post: to take up Hegel’s project with a full awareness of the historical development ongoing in South and East Asian philosophical traditions, not merely in the West.
Amod:
Looking at the development of the Advaitic teaching before Shankara one can see a similar dialectic to the one that you have proposed with Plato and Aristotle. Gaudapada’s karikas on Mandukya Upanishad have the ajativada (not born) theory. It is a type of absolute idealism clearly influenced by the Buddhist sunyavada. Shankara with his redaction brings out the core idea but with a realist ontology by opposing to it the aporia of perception i.e. that it is possible but ought not to be. This then is the new synthesis. It is interesting that the sublation/contradiction idea crossed over from Hegel so smoothly.
The odd thing about modern day advaitins is that they do not accept development. Shankara must be saying the same thing as Gaudapada his grandfather guru because they are of the same tradition.
Thill:
Demonstrations are chiefly two, deictic and apodeictic. You perhaps only accept the latter. In the matter of realisation/moksha Shankara would hold that only the deictic is possible as he claims that no reasoning process will get you there.
Likewise in the case of the tantric sage. Being is continuous and undivided. There can be no difference in his whether the jnani is in the body or out of it or in the state of samadhi or indigestion.
I introduced my remarks on the here and there with the Zen motto, your everyday mind is the Buddha-mind, which restricts the menagerie to the metaphysical.
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