Ralph Waldo Emerson: Integral Pioneer

[Christophe]

Thanks to Nickeson (Stephen), I lately took interest in 19th century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) who had a big and lasting influence on the intellectual and spiritual life of North America. He is generally be seen as a singular and unique figure, hard to classify, and admired by many colleagues like Nietzsche, Thoreau, William James, and last but not least, Integral Dude Ken Wilber, who quotes Emerson in his major work SES.

RWE was an American philosopher, lecturer, essayist, and poet. He wrote about personal freedom and emphasized the possibilities of the individual, who had yet to tap into its true potential. He promoted a kind of nature mystcism (best known is the 'transparent eyeball' as also quoted by Wilber). Here is Ralph Waldo in original:

Not thanks, not prayer seem quite the highest or truest name for our communication with the infinite, -but glad and conspiring reception, - reception that becomes giving in its turn, as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part and infancy. I cannot, -nor can any man,- speak precisely of things so sublime, but it seems to me the wit of man, his strength, his grace, his art, is the grace and presence of God. It is beyond explanation. When all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the only logician. Not exhortation, not argument becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and praise. (RWE, Journals)

He also had a rather positive view on the possibilities of modernity: individualism, debate and competition, progress. At the same time he warned against the dangers of commerce and consumerism. But despite this mild criticism, Emerson's view fits perfectly with the american (capitalist) culture, so much so that Harold Bloom called Emerson the "prophet of american religion".

The downside of RWE's comforting mysticism is that it discourages any engaged political activism. Emerson himself was deeply disappointed by real-life politics and, although he publicly supported the anti-slavery movement, avoided any direct involvement in political organisations.

Cornel West, in his essay 'A genealogy of pragmatism' sums it up like this:

Therefore the primary social base of Emerson's project consisted of the mildly oppositional intelligentsia alienated from conservative moneyed interests, and "enlightened" businessmen who longed for "culture" as well as profits. [...]
The social location of RWE's constituency imposes severe restrictions on the political possibilities of his project. The group of people with which he is aligned is dependent of the very moneyed class he is criticizing. Therefore they can only bark so loud. [...]
RWE's ability to exercise moral and intellectual leadership over a small yet crucial fraction of the educated middle classes and enlightened business elites of his day principally rests upon his articulation of a refined perspective that highlights individual conscience along with political  impotence, moral transgressions devoid of fundamental social transformation, power without empowering the lower classes, provocation and stimulation bereft of regulated markets, and human personality disjoined from communal action. RWE is neither a liberal nor a conservative and certainly not a socialist or even a civic republican. Rather he is a petit bourgeois libertarian, with at times anarchist tendencies and limited yet genuine democratic sentiments.

I consider this to be important information. Comments welcome.

[Christophe]

So all in all RWE was an important pioneer of American Intellectual History who influenced the Pragmatic School of Philosophy like Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey and today Richard Rorty.

I was struck with the similiarities between the situation of Emerson and his colleagues back in the days and the state of the Integral Movement nowadays. Of course there are crucial differences also, for example ____________ (fill in the blank.) Also they are quite alike in that they use certain rethorical strategies to gain influence on the important middle class and business elites, which is no shame to do, we all need the money and so on and so on.

Actually I was quite angry and disappointed with Ken Wilber when I wrote the above post, because it reminded me how, in my Wilberry days, I myself argued against political action and wanted everybody to meditate and read Wilber books instead. Of course it takes a hungry mouse for a cheese trap to work, which means that I deeply yearned for a Weltanschauung that made sense and could 'explain it all'. But still there is taste of deceit in my mouth today. My life would have taken a different course had I not encountered this monstrous brick of a book in the bookshelf of the public library. In several of his books he uses rethorical fishing hooks in the last chapters, where IMHO he promises more than he could possibly keep. This makes me angry. I can't decide whether to hate this spiritual whistle blower or to imitate him.

And then I realize that I have to be careful with all this. Concerning my own casual communist persuasions, I myself can only bark so loud. I am very grateful for having a pay-job that actually makes sense. I cannot afford to lose my societal credibility, as little as it may be. In german there's a saying "Wes Brot ich ess des Lied ich sing" which translates to "don't bite the hand that feeds you". Well well. Even Karl Marx could physiologically survive only because of his good friend Fritz Engels. I remember from my unemployment year how dang cold it feels to live outside of the so called productive society. Instead I earn money nowadays and can even afford to put on the radiator. Ahhhh...

[Edward theurj Berge]

You mention that Emerson was part of a heritage that influenced the American Pragmatists. The latter in turn influenced the modern cognitive science movement, at least the embodied variety. I explored this in the Mead thread from our past Gaia pod. Here's one of the references I cited showing this connection. Also note how the abstract references the "nondual," a nondualism of the postmetaphysical kind that we're seeing Morrison develop in the Spinbitz thread (and of course I've been preaching on this pod for years). Also in the old thread I researched Habermas' chapter on Mead in Postmetaphysical Thinking, and how Mead was pivotal in Habbie's own theory of communicative action.

Johnson, M. and Rohrer, T. “We Are Live Creatures: Embodiment, American Pragmatism, and the Cognitive Organism.” In Body, Language and Mind, vol. 1, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 17-54 (limited preview from Google Books).

Abstract

The philosophical tradition mistakenly asks how the inside (i.e., thoughts, ideas, concepts) can represent the outside (i.e., the world). This trap is a consequence of the view that mind and body must be two ontologically different entities. On this view the problem of meaning is to explain how disembodied “internal” ideas can represent “external” physical objects and events. Several centuries have shown that given a radical mind-body dichotomy, there is no way to bridge the gap between the inner and the outer. When “mind” and “body” are regarded as two fundamentally different kinds, no third mediating thing can exist that possesses both the metaphysical character of inner, mental things and simultaneously possesses the character of the outer, physical things.

Embodied Realism, in contrast to Representationalist theories, rejects the notion that mind and body are two ontologically distinct kinds, and it therefore rejects the attendant view that cognition and language are based on symbolic representations inside the mind of an organism that refer to some physical thing in an outside world. Instead, the terms “body” and “mind” are simply convenient shorthand ways of identifying aspects of ongoing organism-environment interactions - and so cognition and language must be understood as arising from organic processes. We trace the rejection of this mind-body dualism from the philosopher psychologists known as the early American Pragmatists (James and Dewey) forward through recent cognitive science (such as Varela, Maturana, Edelman, Hutchins, Lakoff, Johnson, Brooks). We argue that embodied realism requires a radical reevaluation of the classical dualistic metaphysics and epistemology - especially the classical Representationalist theory of mind - and we conclude by investigating the implications for future investigations for a new, pragmatically centered cognitive science.

In the following sections we show how the Pragmatist view of cognition as action provides an appropriate philosophical framework for the cognitive science of the embodied mind. We begin by describing the non-dualistic, non-Representationalist view of mind developed by James and Dewey. Their understanding of situated cognition is reinforced by recent empirical research and developments within the cognitive sciences. We cite evidence from comparative neurobiology of organism-environment coupling ranging from the amoeba all the way up to humans, and we argue that in humans this coupling process becomes the basis of meaning and thought.