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Abstract

"Mag.art." thesis: "Arational Epistemology. A Gebserian Critique of Rationalism and Causalism in the Western Culture."
Odense University (now called: University of Southern Denmark), 1997.

(Please note, that this thesis is not available in English).

1

Generally speaking, this thesis is a GEBSERian culture critique of western rationality and the western world view. It is a critique of the epistemological culture of the western world, primarily of its confidence in rationality and causality. At the same time the thesis tries to present an alternative. I argue, that philosophy should be aware of and take into consideration the empirically and philosophically established emergence of a more extensive human structure of consciousness, which will lead to major epistemological consequences, the death of philosophy among other things.

2

I use JEAN GEBSER's (1905-1973) combined theory and history of consciousness as a foundation for my critique. GEBSER's theories identify 5 structures in human consciousness and 5 ages (and worlds) in which the structures dominate in turn. The most important characteristics of the respective structures are their different idea of time and space. The archaic structure is the deepest and most original, and its level of awareness comes close to dreamless sleep. When the archaic structure was dominating, man lived in an unproblematic unified whole with the universe. The unified whole was characterized by being prior to time and space and by being zero-dimensional. With the magical structure a rudimentary sense of time and space emerges, but the time- and space-lessness were still prevalent. The magic man starts to want something and begins to see himself as opposed to the world instead of being in the world. He wants to rule and possess the world so he practices magic that transcends distances in time and space by connecting events point-by-point. In the magical world any event is connected to and can be transformed into any other event - without causality. The magical 1-dimensional point related unity is replaced by the 2-dimensional polarity of the mythic age. The mythical man has a cyclic sense of time, but has still only a rudimentary sense of space. That is why the remembered events of the myths are often symbolic expressions of inner, psychical changes rather than events taking place in a spacious world. Where the mythic man discovered time in its cyclic form, the modern, mental man discovers 3-dimensional space and the perspective. Time is now seen as an abstract, linear and irreversible form, that can be measured by clocks. The mental man splits up everything and analyses it to get an understanding of it, thereby tearing the mythic polarities apart and creating dualism. The integral structure, that is in the making, discovers the existence of the 4 previous structures in the consciousness and is able to make them co-operate in an understanding that is total and uses multi-perspective. This understanding is incomprehensible for the mental man. Apart from discovering the archaic, magical and mythic layers in the human consciousness, the integral man also discovers something that precedes all the structures, which GEBSER named "the origin" or "das Sich". This foundation of consciousness and of the world can approximately be compared to the Tao of the East or to ECKEHART's Gottheit. In the beginning of the integral age the 4-dimensional space-time is discovered as a forerunner of the fully developed integral human being's conception of time as an intensity i.e. as something qualitative. GEBSER documents the emerging of the integral age in countless areas of the western culture. I only give an account of a few examples.

In the beginning all structures are qualitative and effective, but they degenerate later on, causing quantification and incompleteness which again constitutes the foundation of the emergence of a new, supplementary structure. The degenerated mental man is the rational man, and it is a critique of two ideas of this man, namely his rationalism and causalism that this thesis mainly focuses on:

3

GEBSER's model of structures entail that reality cannot be understood in depths by using rational concepts, ideas and methods, because these only apply to the mental age. Rationality cannot understand what is irrational (the archaic, magical and mythical) nor what is "arational", i.e. that which in the integral age will transcend rationality.

Based on GEBSER, I discuss and criticise two kinds of rationalism:

  1. Rationalism as belief in reason, and
  2. rationalism as opposition to religious belief.
GEBSER regards rationalism as exaggerated when it degenerates into reductionism, which makes rationalism the judge of everything e.g. of the magical and mythical world. I argue, that people should no longer favour the mental-rational, but we should instead see the different structures of consciousness as equal. The mental-rational should lose its self-appointed authority. There is no longer a need to further strengthen the tendency embedded in the mental structure to divide, fragment and analyse. Instead there is a need for an understanding of the wholeness, an understanding that cannot be reached through rationality, but only through arationality. In the following attempt to reach an understanding of the arational as an alternative to the rational, I conclude that it can be said to consist in an identification and classification of the structure affiliations of the phenomena, then in an overcoming of the special ideas and methods of the present prevailing structure, and at last in mastering a new form of perception, that enables the perceiver to seize the truth by observing "the origin", "das Sich" and the structures that have mutated from it in a unified perspective. Whole hinking means giving up the thought that measurement, analysis and systematism are crucial and unavoidable for the cognitive human being. The qualitative, arational and aperspective are part of a whole, that cannot be split up, analysed or communicated without being lost.

According to GEBSER, philosophy will one day be replaced by eteology. To understand the difference between philosophy and eteology I present two basic concepts of eteology: systase and synairese. To clarify the arational even more, I compare it to mystic and meditative experiences and to dialectics. Arationality and aperspectivity are visible in today's philosophy in three areas:

  1. in the discovery of time as a phenomenon,
  2. in the admittance of the insufficiency of rationality and
  3. in the interest for wholeness and transparency.
Apart from the examples of incipient arational philosophers mentioned by GEBSER, I give two examples: DANIEL KEALEY's ethics of environment and PAUL FEYERARBEND's theory of science.

4

The mental-rational structure entails causalism, defined as the view that all physical events are submissive to causality and are understandable as causal events. This view is criticised in an argumentation for a contrary view that the world is not understandable from a materialistic causalism, but there exist other types of causes than the ones we normally look for in the western culture. Causalism has in this century been opposed by quantum mechanics, chaos-theories and level-theories, but it is still so dominant that magical explanations are not accepted. I outline two models that could be used when dealing with causal explanations: My own model of causality and the well-known "covering law" model in its two variants. After that, I examine two examples of acausal philosophy, C.G. JUNG's theory of synchronicity and JAN FAYE's thoughts of the logical possibility of backwards causality. These examples are by themselves part of my argumentation that there are acausal connections (i.e. synchronistic) and that these are not logically self-contradictive. I use the two models and the two examples as a basis for an account of GEBSER's view of non-causality and acausality. The fact that non-causal phenomenas exist fit into GEBSER's history of consciousness, so with the assumption of his theory there are no longer culturally conditioned conceptual hindrances for non-causality as it e.g. is demonstrated in para-psychological research and in C.G. JUNG's psychology. Synchronicity and other para-psychological non-causal phenomena are explainable by use of the point-to-point connections of the magic structure, that are not submissive to distance in time and space. The integral man has the capacity to transcend the distinction between past, present and future made by the mental idea of time, and thus many of the illusions of rational man, that make acausality and non-causality problematic and incomprehensible, disappear.

As a consequence of GEBSER's theory I round off with a critique of SIR KARL POPPER's kantian idea that time and space and causality are necessary categories for experience of any kind.

 

 
Last updated: 4-03-2022 0:26