I just found this texts on dialogue that seem very worthwhile material to explore further in the Art of Dialogue.
The whole texts are at
http://www.doorstodialogue.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/doors-to-dialogue2.pdf but I’ll only select what I find of value to look at or further discuss.
For Emmanuel Levinas (1999), for instance, ethics is the
primary philosophy, and ethics involves the recognition of the impossibility to know “the
Other”, my fellow human being. The Other is beyond knowledge, beyond our conceptions.
Rudolf Steiner on the other hand said that we have to learn to understand the human being
behind the ghost-like conceptions of man that, for instance, natural science gives us. In order
to do this, we have to develop new organs of perception; organs whose potentiality for
development lies dormant in all of us. The development of these organs can be speeded up by
certain exercises and ways of life, but it also to some extent takes place naturally and
spontaneously in the process of human history. It is therefore possible to see the stirrings of
such developments within various emerging cultural expressions, of which post-structural
philosophy may be one example.
Postmodern or poststructural philosophy has been described as a “logic of difference”,
in contrast to the “logic of sameness” characterizing modern philosophical thinking. The
problematique of sameness, or identity, and difference is as old as philosophy itself. Schickler
(ibid.) takes up Hegel’s dialectics of identity and difference and argues that identity refers the
subjective aspect of the subject-object unity as Hegel conceived it; whereas difference refers
to the objective aspect of that unity.1 If the structuralism and logocentrism of modern thinking
bases itself one-sidedly on identity and sameness, post-structuralism seems to rely only on
difference. A one-sided focus on identity entails hegemonic political power structures and
social exclusion, which is the poststructuralist critique of modern thought. On the other hand,
from a one-sided focus on difference follows a break-down of all order, everything is equally
possible or desirable. For instance, it is hard to see how from a poststructuralist critique of all
notions of “essence” (an instance of identity or sameness) it could be possible to argue against
genetic manipulations. If there is no essence to any living species, which would be violated by
such manipulations, the field seems open to almost any form of biotechnological
developments, including the genetic engineering of human embryos.
For Schickler, the resurrection of Christ implies the identity of identity and difference: I am the Same and I am
an Other. Even His closest disciples did not at first recognize Christ in his body of resurrection.
The de-differentiation tendency goes however hand in hand with its opposite, which is
sometimes extreme differentiation; for instance in emphasizing the radical differences
between various cultural traditions, religions or “language-games”. Another example of post-
structuralist diffentiation is the denial of the existence of personal identity, or of a self-
identical “I” of the human being. There is according to this view no central coherent self, but
a plurality of selves temporarily constructed or “positioned” in different contexts. There is an
interesting parallel in the spiritual teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, one of whose central tenets
was that the ordinary human being has “many I’s” but no core identity or Self (Ouspensky,
1950).3 The “real I” of the human being is a spiritual potentiality, not an actual fact. In
10
2
On the other hand, Steiner claims this difference must be overcome in our life.
3
See Ornstein (1991) for an interesting psychological application of this idea.
Anthroposophy there is usually a strong emphasis on the “I” as the spiritual core of the human
being, but Steiner actually in many places describes this “I” as more of a potentiality than an
actuality. He says for instance that the “I” is like a newborn baby, the least developed “part”
of the human being, whose full realization belongs to the future. He also said that our
ordinary, everyday “I”-experience is basically an illusion.
Living thinking
Another door to dialogue could be the idea of a living, creative thinking. Everyone familiar
with Steiner’s writings knows of the significance that living, creative or “pure” (sense-free)
thinking has for his philosophy. According to Derrida, the deepest desire of Western
philosophy has always been to deny the “play of différance” by finding a stable ground, a
fixed permanent centre of all being. The contingent character of all such strivings must be
revealed by the deconstruction of all metaphysics.4 There is a certain similarity here with how
Steiner argued that such a ground can only be found in “pure” thinking.
One could perhaps say that postmodern philosophers also try, consciously or not, to
bring life into thinking by turning to aesthetics, poetics and literary forms of writing, and
assimilating them into the academic genre. They try in their own way to go beyond sense- or
brain-bound thinking; they seem to seek for freedom in thinking. As a consequence, their
writings often demands of the reader to follow the text with the active, creative thinking of
her own.
Deconstrucitve versus reconstructive postmodernism
Deconstruction is the famous term coined by Derrida, denoting his philosophical “program”
of dismantling all metaphysics by pointing out the contingency of all “grounds” and the
fissures and rifts of meaning inherent in all seemingly unambiguous rational concepts. One
aspect of this is the de-differentiation of the sharp distinctions established by modernity; for
instance the difference between science and art. Such a dissolution of all differences and
distinctions hint at the possibility of total freedom in our construction of reality. For the
unprepared mind, such freedom may be hard to bear; ultimately it entails either enlightenment
or psychosis (Grauer, 2007). In the ancient monistic spiritual traditions, such as Advaita
, non-duality can be interpreted as pre-distinction, that is, Chaos or Void. Giordano
Bruno is reported as saying: “In God there are no distinctions”.
4
Cf. Gare (2002), who finds an interesting parallel between Derrida’s ”play of différance” and Schelling’s idea
of the Absolute.
No comments:
Post a Comment