An Integral Tropology of Saturation: The Interplay of Shownness and Givenness

Final%20Paper.docHere was my foray into including something Integral in an academic paper.  (Please forgive the typos I noticed when I re-read it just now.)

Since then I've added Marion's re-interpretation of Aquinas's analogy of being, which re-interpretation builds on Heidegger's critique of Aquinas as enmeshing God in metaphysics by building an onto-theo-logy.  Applying Gebser to this critique is what makes my work an Integral Postmetaphysical Phenomenology, and I think  mine is the only one to exist so far.  I'd better hurry up and get published!  :)

Any and all critique is appreciated.

Load Previous Comments
  • Layman Pascal

    One thing I've paused at a few times in the paper is the description of the Mirror Stage in Lacan.  Your phrasing suggests somewhat casually that the reflected image is interpolated as the result of adults pointing out and naming it.  However since it also appears that a few of the "higher animals" reach the Mirror Stage in the sense of being able to correctly identify their reflection in relation to an individually embodied identity we might presume that this process (unlike the passage through the Oedipal Gate into linguistic self-consciousness) may progress with little or no naming and educating.  Our neural architecture is very quick to build its Frankensteinian composite self-image out of whatever perceptions even come close to the model that we are primed to download.  Obviously the capacity for a "That one!" gesture is needed but I remain suspicious about making this seem to much like a verbal-social event of identification.

  • Layman Pascal

    In this same section I pause over the phrase "undifferentiated whole".  I worry that this is phenomenologically misleading at that the sense of the undifferentiated wholeness is a kind of popular illusion arising after the differentiation begins but which does not do such a good job of characterizing the prior phase.  I am inclined to view this as a pre-differentiated condition of hyper-partiality compared to which the consciousness of differentiation represents an enormous leap forward in both structural integration and experiential wholeness.

    Do you have an interest in referring to pre-differentiation as a type of wholeness or is that just a kind of colloquialism?

  • David Miller

    Thank you.  I am very stimulated by the responses.  I may be able to start responding tomorrow evening, or it may be Saturday.  But I will respond, and appreciate the conversation.