Post-Metaphysical Musings

I here want to start an initial inquiry into Ken Wilber’s Integral Post-Metaphysics, the latest innovation in his thought and the most recent attempt of a contemporary philosopher to move beyond the exhausted history of the Western philosophical tradition while still preserving the important truths of the worlds great religious traditions. Ever since Plato and Aristotle carved out the basic vocabulary of Western metaphysics (which asks the question “What is the meaning of Being?”) by making everything turn on clear-cut distinctions between ideal/material, appearance/reality, subject/object, Western civilization has been caught up in a series of intractable dualisms – the fractured footnotes to Plato described so eloquently by Wilber in “Sex, Ecology, Spirituality”, the result being that traditional metaphysical approaches to spirituality (and their artificial dualities) have been proclaimed dead by virtually every major philosopher of the last 100 years.

Nevertheless, in the wake of the post-modern turn and Derrida’s relentless deconstruction of the entire tradition of Western metaphysics as the search for a “non-existent fixed center of meaning” (e.g. Being, Spirit, God, Essence, Truth) there have been a number of attempts at post-metaphysics which claim to disclose the meaning of Being (ultimate Reality, Spirit, God) while jettisoning from their self-representations the now discredited adherence to metaphysics – or what Ken Wilber calls the “Myth of the Given”…

First of all, there was firstly Heidegger’s call for “the gods before who I can sing and dance”. Then there was the appeal of Emmanuel Levinas to God without reference to “the totality of Being” where the ethical response to the wholly other and hospitality to the one that is different comes before any rational accounting of the Divine. And then there is Jean-Luc Marion who re-affirms the vanity of metaphysics as a discipline that is always at a loss to find linguistic expression for God. For Marion, the mystery of God is given in a way that far exceeds our grasp, and so the short-coming has to do with the failure of our metaphysical concepts, not with overflowing excess of our experience of the Divine.

So how do these approaches to post-metaphysics compare with IPM and Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Address system? Briefly, an IPM maintains that any holon (or actual occasion) can be known in a post-metaphysical fashion simply by identifying its Kosmic address – as a bare minimum its Quadrant and Level – with the added condition that the Kosmic Address must be specified for both the object being perceived and the subject that is perceiving it. In this manner an IMP removes the need to postulate any ‘pre-given’ or ‘independently existing’ realities while applying a method of advanced perspective taking that can account for the entire spectrum of phenomena that are enacted by human beings.

In the context of previous attempts at post-metaphysics (which primarily seek to disclose spiritual realities), the basic problem with an IPM is that it constitutes the grounds by which God or Being may enter into the domain of knowledge. In other words, an IPM with its Kosmic Address system (and AQAL co-ordinates) pre-determines the conceptual horizon in which Spirit is allowed to show up and therefore forecloses on the true mark of the Mystery as an event that arrives as a Gift, as an event that disrupts any pre-supposed horizon of truth and meaning…. As Levinas, who also takes a post-metaphysical stance, would say – Spirit absolves itself from human knowledge as the intentionality of adequation and appropriation.

My own approach to post-metaphysics (see the Source Code blog on this site) maintains that when we give expression to our spiritual experience and communicate what it means to live an Integral Life, we find ourselves living with paradoxes and working to balance the creative tensions between opposing forces (inside/outside, individual/collective, presence/absence). And since paradoxes are un-objectifiable (i.e. structurally open to Not-Knowing) and since they have no “fixed center of meaning” they refuse to be pinned down by the rational accounting of an IMP Kosmic Address system which is still deeply conditioned by the traditional metaphysical assumptions that underpin the rational-scientific demand for evidence and the quest for cognitive certainty. In other words, the paradoxical nature of reality frustrates our desire to possess or “get a handle” on the Mystery, for truth be told the ultimate mystery of God simply does not depend on what we think about it…

Historically, the foremost example of paradox being utilized as a skillful means for facilitating self-awareness is found in the parabolic discourse of Jesus of Nazareth (and Zen masters) who consistently celebrated the ambiguity of those events that show up at the very limits of human experience… Rather than providing a pre-packaged program of rules and procedures for admission into the Kingdom of God, the paradoxical strategy of Jesus disrupts the quest for cognitive certainty and thereby sets up the necessary conditions for the decision of faith with an ‘aporetic anxiety’ that invites and challenges one to awaken to Jesus’ own experience of the Kingdom. By interrupting the metaphysical assumptions of the “Myth of the Given” with an outrageous abrogation of our fundamental laws of logic, the post-metaphysical heart of Jesus’ teachings consistently refuse to give us straightforward answers in response to our quest for what is Real, as his paradoxes call for a free movements of faith that is made in the face of an impossible situation, involving risk, uncertainty and an openness to the unexpected that is grounded in a confession of ultimate not-knowing… In contrast to the logical calculus and pin point clarity of an IPM, in view of the post-metaphysical paradoxes of Jesus on the ways of God an authentic faith commitment is structurally blind and takes root only when the road seems obscure and when the storm clouds of life buffet us, when we are overwhelmed, when we stumble, and fall, and yet still move forward in spite of doubt and objective uncertainty… For just as Kierkegaard wrote about paradox as the “infinite passion of inwardness” that has nothing to do with objective explanation at all, the real journey only begins when we don’t see directly where we are going… to be continued…

~ by doctorparadox on May 10, 2008.