The Spectre of Philosophy: Self-Knowledge

[kelamuni]

This is the third subject that I had planned to deal with in series of essays outlining a conception of the "path of knowledge" or the "way of the sage."

The first, which I have written already, concerned itself with the relation between the sage and the philosopher, and with the relation between the seeker of wisdom and "the limit." The completed essay does not appear in my blog here, but was included in my blog at Gaia.

The topic of second essay, which will deal with conceptions that attempt to push "beyond" the limit (as Hegel and the later Wittgenstein say: "to set a limit is to have already gone past it"), will form the basis of the post to come at the Big Stories thread. The full essay, which will develop out of that initial post, will deal with the drive to the universal and to the "objective," and its parallel diminishing the particular subject, as found in the paths of Jesus, the Buddha, and Shankara, as well as how this relates to not only other traditions like Kynicism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism, Pashupata Shaivism, the Malamati of Persia, etc. but also to Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, and even modern science. What I will be syaing there, is that there is an element of "wisdom" that involves seeing things in terms of the "big picture," the "universal," the "objective,"the "view from above," the "God's eye view," the "subspecie aeternatis," "paramartha satya," "dharmata," tathata," yathabhutatvam," the "Kingdom of God" (as understood in sapiential eschatology), or even what Plato, Kant, and Schopenhauer refer to as the "intelligible realm." There the point will also be made that this move to the universal constitutes a kind of "maturation," where the individual is no longer so wrapped up in his own petty concerns, and that it is in this sense that we can really speak of the "transpersonal" development of the individual. This second essay will provide a kind of dialectical counterpoint to the conception found in the first essay, in which a "limit" was described in terms of human finitude (Greek sophrosyne or "know that you are not a god", as well as christian and buddhist humility).

The third essay, the topic of which I will introduce here, will return to what is missing, and provide a dialectical counterpoint to the second essay. In doing so it will "return" to what forms the actual basis of the path of knowledge, or the way of the sage, and that is the topic of self-knowledge.

 

---

 

In the opening sections of the Nyaya Sutras, a text dealing with the subject of Indian logic and method, two broad areas of concern are outlined. The first is anivikshiki, which the author of the sutras identifies with nyaya, the logical method of classical India, which derives out of the systematization of ancient debate in India. Though it is most closely related to logical method, it would appear that "anvikshiki" is a term used very broadly to refer to any "scientific," logical, and systematic approach to a subject. It is often related to "naturalistic" concerns, such as those of the Vaisheska and Lokayata-materialists in the domain of philosophy. But it is also related to any "science" such as astronomy, or ritual, or grammar, etc.

Over against anvikishiki the Nyaya Sutras poses atma-vidya, self knowledge. This subject, the sutras continues, is properly the domain of the Upanishads, and, it continues, the Nyaya Sutras will not deal with this subject.

Here, it would appear that the author of the Nyaya Sutras is not simnply relating his own opinion on this division, but that he is relating a generally held distinction in the Indian tradition.

In chapter seven of the Chandogya Upanishad, Narada approaches Sanatkumara for knowledge. At 7.1.2-3 he says, "I have read and studied the rg veda, yajur veda, sama veda, atharva veda, history-myth (itihasa), grammar, the ritual science, meterology, mineralogy, logic, dharma shastra, the ancillary vedic sciences, archery, astronomy, lepatology, musical theory. I know all of these. But still I do not know the self. I am not a self knower. And as such I am not happy."

So self-knowledge was set apart from these other sciences in ancient India. This was for good reason, apparently, as its subject was a rather odd one. For the self, it was noted in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, was not itself an object of knowledge like other objects. Repeatedly, the Brhad Up states, "The self cannot be seen; just as the eye that sees cannot see itself, so too the self that is the seer cannot be seen." So the self is not itself an object of knowledge.

The great wisdom traditions of India -- Samkhya, Vedanta, and Buddhism -- can all be understood as manifestations of this quest for self-knowlegde. In all of these traditions, release or enlightenment is predicated upon some form of self-knowledge. As applied to the Buddhist tradition, this may strike us as odd, until we realize that the liberating insight that Buddhism refers to is the insight that there is no self.

Shift to the Western tradition. The theme of self-knowledge in the Western philosophical tradition is prominent and important, but not always overt. It is more like a kind of shadow or better a Spectre that haunts the tradition but is not always explicit. Like the self itself, its presence can be seen through a kind of oblique analysis of tradition.

The theme of self-knowledge is most overt in the counter-tradition that runs alongside the main stream of western philosophy and science, in the so called humanistic tradition. We find the theme in the writings of Isocrates, then later in Cicero, then Petrarch, and later Montaigne. It is the theme of gnosthi eauton, "Know thy self."

So, the subject of the self, it would appear, cannot be treated in the manner that we deal with objects in the world, that is with the systematic, scienctific, and logical approach. It can only be approached obliquely, as it were. As Foucault notes, its "method" is more closely related to rhetoric, another of the "humanist" concerns. And indeed, this is what Plato himself suggests via Socrates, that the care of the self is best approached through protrepsis and anatrepsis.

We can see these two strands of western thought in the person of Socrates himself. At some point in his career, so he relates, Socrates stops looking up to the stars and begins to think about the "care of the self." This is a kind of counter theme that runs throughout the Socratic dialogues of Plato. Whereas scholars have traditionally read the Platonic dialogues as sources on Plato's views on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, the "unsaid" component of the Socratic dialogues is the theme of Socrates attempting to serve as the "midwife" to the soul of various people he meets. This side of the dialgoues cannot be approached through a logical analysis of the dialogues; it can only be seen by way of a literary approach to the texts.

If the way of "systematic, logical method" is fraught with aporias, it would appear that the analogous" issue" for the way of the self would be irony. As I say the theme of the self and self-knowledge is a kind of spectre that haunts the tradition, a kind of daemon that informs it and guides it in some way, but is not always present in a fully reflective manner.

For example, Habermas, in his wonderful volume on the discourse of modernity, notes the stupendous irony we find in the work of Foucualt. Foucault rails against the "philosophy of the subject" and the "philosophy of consciousness." And yet his entire ouevre can be read as a kind of interrogation of the self. We can particularly see this concern for the self and for self-knowledge in Foucault's latest work on sexuality and on what he calls the "hermeneutics of the self."

In any case, this is the subject of a prospective third essay on the "way of the sage."

 

[xibalba]

ciao Kela

 

Interesting stuff

 

Thanks for mentioning these two works of Habermas and the late Foucault "le Souci de Soi" (the care of the Self).

I see them as being the most comprehensive critique of/and  solution to the cul-de-sac created by the logocentrism of the philosophy of the subject and some of its pomo detractors I have read these past three decades.

 

 

 

[kelamuni]

Thanks buddy.

[xibalba]

Ciao Kela

 

In his book "The Rhetoric of Immediacy: Cultural Critique ofChan/Zen Buddhism" , Bernard Faure, is overtly a great fan of Pierre  Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and Ricoeur and partly a critique of orientalism following some old ideas of Said.

 Epistemologically speaking , space, time, field, habitus, micropolitics, writing have a profound significance during the moment of "interpretation". What is your opinion of that and what is your "main" methological doing in this context?

[kelamuni]

hmmm. in the present context?

ummm. bricolage? pastische?

hahaha.

xibalba said:

Ciao Kela

 

In his book "The Rhetoric of Immediacy: Cultural Critique ofChan/Zen Buddhism" , Bernard Faure, is overtly a great fan of Pierre  Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and Ricoeur and partly a critique of orientalism following some old ideas of Said.

 

 Epistemologically speaking , space, time, field, habitus, micropolitics, writing have a profound significance during the moment of "interpretation". What is your opinion of that and what is your "main" methological doing in this context?

[xibalba]

 

 bricolage...?

hummm...

that´s old Levi-Strauss´structuralism, isn´t it?

"vieux jeu" you are kela.

hahahahah

 

tha
kelamuni said:

hmmm. in the present context?

ummm. bricolage? pastische?

hahaha.

xibalba said:

Ciao Kela

 

In his book "The Rhetoric of Immediacy: Cultural Critique ofChan/Zen Buddhism" , Bernard Faure, is overtly a great fan of Pierre  Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and Ricoeur and partly a critique of orientalism following some old ideas of Said.

 

 Epistemologically speaking , space, time, field, habitus, micropolitics, writing have a profound significance during the moment of "interpretation". What is your opinion of that and what is your "main" methological doing in this context?

[Edward theurj Berge]

Along the lines of pomo bricolage you might appreciate my reference (in the Varela thread) to your Canuck comrade Joe L. Kincheloe's article "Beyond Reductionism: Difference, Criticality, and Multilogicality in the Bricolage and Postformalism."

This essay concentrates on the power of difference and multilogicality in such a critical multiculturalism in the process exploring how such a focus enhances the research process and the quality of the knowledge we produce about culture and selfhood.

[Edward theurj Berge]

You also might find the following relevant (or not) on the self(ves) from p. 1 of the Varela thread:

From Varela's article "The emergent self":

"In my epistemology, the virtual self is evident because it provides a surface for interaction, but it's not evident if you try to locate it. It's completely delocalized.

"Organisms have to be understood as a mesh of virtual selves. I don't have one identity, I have a bricolage of various identities. I have a cellular identity, I have an immune identity, I have a cognitive identity, I have various identities that manifest in different modes of interaction. These are my various selves. I'm interested in gaining further insight into how to clarify this notion of transition from the local to the global, and how these various selves come together and apart in the evolutionary dance.

"I see the mind as an emergent property, and the very important and interesting consequence of this emergent property is our own sense of self. My sense of self exists because it gives me an interface with the world. I'm "me" for interactions, but my "I" doesn't substantially exist, in the sense that it can't be localized anywhere. This view, of course, resonates with the notions of the other biological selves I mentioned, but there are subtle and important differences. An emergent property, which is produced by in underlying network, is a coherent condition that allows the system in which it exists to interface at that level — that is, with other selves or identities of the same kind. You can never say, "This property is here; it's in this component." In the case of autopoiesis, you can't say that life — the condition of being selfproduced— is in this molecule, or in the DNA, or in the cellular membrane, or in the protein. Life is in the configuration and in the dynamical pattern, which is what embodies it as an emergent property.

"Let me add that this emergence and nonlocality has nothing to do with the current hype about quantum mechanics and the brain. That stuff is perhaps an interesting hypothesis to entertain, but it has no scientific evidence behind it."