My roommate and close friend is at the beginning of the graduate program that I recently completed: a master's in existential-phenomenological psychology. The program is philosophically grounded in Emmanuel Levinas' book Totality and Infinity. But Levinas, of course, was working principally in the wake of Heidegger. The first quarter of the program is spent reading in the neighborhood of existentialism and phenomenology: Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Buber, De Beauvoir, Sartre, Gadamer, Ricoeur, so on. The second quarter is dedicated to reading most of Totality and Infinity. At the same time course work is also being done on diagnosis, cross-cultural psychology, listening skills, therapeutic communication, etc.
The program is a wonderful thing. I learned a tremendous amount there, and felt very well clinically prepared to step into the world of therapy, if not entirely prepared for the realities of community mental health: case management, poverty, systemic violence, and the like.
The chief thing that impressed me in the program was encountering my body, or the depth of somatic, experiential, and embodied forms of psychotherapy. During my internship I was exposed to polyvagal theory and the basics of contemporary trauma research. I am still reading and reflecting on Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and the other pillars of the program, but I am more interested in pursuing different questions through different writers. I spent this morning, Saturday December 7th, reading the first 50 pages of Aristotle's De Anima. Yesterday during my lunch break I watched an interview with Stephen Porges, the main proponent of polyvagal theory. As I've mentioned in other places, putting together my reading of Plato and Aristotle with my understanding of contemporary trauma and biology research is my main interest right now.
My roommate told me he was surprised to see me going in that direction. I have, for many years, been speaking of what is often called 'the autonomy of human affairs,' or more dramatically, 'the autonomy of history from the methods of the natural sciences.' These phrases refer primarily to the impossibility of reducing human affairs to any deterministic or predictive scheme culled from the physics, chemistry, biology, or the social sciences (which are generally attempting to imitate the natural sciences). Indeed, my friend said that my engagement with biology made him anxious and fearful about the possibility of neuro-biological determinism. I understand that fear. I feel it resonate in my viscera as I reflect on it. Yet I don't feel seriously threatened by it: I have been reflecting for long enough on my life that I do not feel my actions can be seriously affected by those considerations. There is a relative autonomy to human affairs; I feel it in my life; and I believe it to be an entirely cogent argument. It cannot, however, be secured on the foundation attempted by Heidegger, Collingwood, or anyone else working within that neighborhood of thought.
My engagement with the natural sciences (i.e. polyvagal theory, trauma research, nervous systems, etc) is actually an attempt to ground the idea of the autonomy of human affairs through a different avenue. I am still trying to understand what it means to be a responsible person, and how to speak about political and moral things in clear ways that facilitate this responsible activity. I think Collingwood, Heidegger, Levinas, and others, have been involved in a similar task. For, as Collingwood argued, we have somehow lost our honor and our nerve, by which he meant the ability to act in a reasonable manner, and our unreflective belief that we are capable of doing so. Collingwood argued that it was generally modern natural science and particularly modern psychology that had robbed us of our honor and nerve. On this point I think Collingwood is fundamentally correct.
Something has happened during the modern period that has shaken our confidence in the ability of human reason to grapple with reality, our own activity included. Just read H.P. Lovecraft or other horror writers to get a taste of this dilemma: the modern natural sciences promised unlimited power, and all they have done is reveal our finitude. We are dumb animals floating in the void; far from the masterful beings dreamt of by the early modern founders.
I am reminded of a line from Strauss' "An Epilogue" that I admire and continually return to: "The sphere governed by prudence is then in principle self-sufficient or closed. Yet prudence is always endangered by false doctrines about the whole of which man is a part, by false theoretical opinions; prudence is therefore always in need of defense against such opinions, and that defense is necessarily theoretical. The theory defending prudence is, however, misunderstood if it is taken to be the basis of prudence.” There is, in other words, a self-sufficiency to human affairs: prudence, politics, and morality has its own grammar. But there are theoretical views that can threaten our ability to engage intelligently with the sphere of prudence.
Modern natural science has had such vitiating effects on our ability to engage in prudential activity. The thought that the universe is mechanistic, determined, dead, has prevented us from believing in the experience of 'freedom' that we seem to possess.
Many thinkers have perceived and written about these detrimental implications of the modern mechanistic natural sciences. The Romantic movement, initiated by Rousseau (from what I'm told), was one of the original progenitors of this rebellion. Somehow the rebellion against the implications of the modern natural sciences took the form of a dualism between nature and history. History, it was posited by Hegel and others, becomes a distinct domain of freedom apart from the necessary world of nature. Nature is determined; but history is where spirit, freedom lives. John Searle asks the question quite clearly in Making the Social World. To paraphrase, 'How do we get from electrons to elections and protons to presidents?' How, in other words can physical things give rise to political things?
In my final integration paper for grad school I argued that this distinction between nature and history persists to the present day, and appears in implicit and explicit forms in most existing forms of psychology. Nature and nurture. Nature and culture. Nature and X. These dualisms are everywhere.
This is indeed a tempting avenue for solving the dilemma of how the experience of human freedom can persist in a world that appears to be made strictly of physical things obeying the 'laws of nature'. The modern thinkers in hermeneutics, phenomenology history, so on, offer powerful critiques of the natural sciences, and do much work to help us come back to the reality of human experience.
My issue with them, however, is that they rarely explicitly challenge the modern understanding of nature as mechanistic. They generally acquiesce to an atomic metaphysics, ceding that they cannot speak to the reality of the universe, but only decide what it means to live meaningfully in a universe bereft of natural meaning. The desire to live meaningfully in a universe without natural meaning, however, leaves us in an awkward position: we are left to posit, assert, or will meaning into existence. Thus existentialism and existential psychology, in which I was trained, repeatedly uses a phrase that I find horrifying and untrue: meaning making. I do not feel as if though I 'make' or 'create' meaning. I am in the grips of meaning. It overtakes me. I am in the midst of the logos, not its source.
This generally willful character of the historical school is perfectly aligned with a deeper layer of the modern mechanistic sciences. For, as I understand them, the modern mechanistic sciences were never meant to be an accurate ontology or to provide insight into human nature. They were intended to enable a project of mastering nature that was meant to serve political ends. Robert Roecklein is the philosopher who has helped me see this most clearly. But Strauss is all over these questions, as is Richard Kennington, Paul Rahe, Caroline Merchant, and many others.
If the modern sciences were meant as tools of mastery rather than accurate accounts of what we are, then on what basis do we posit a domain of history as distinct from nature in which freedom lives? Shouldn't we, instead, go back to the early modern redefinition of nature, and try to understand where things went wrong there?
If the fundamental issue is that the modern conception of nature doesn't enable serious reflection on human affairs, then why are we busy positing history as an autonomous domain of human freedom? Shouldn't we just go back to this redefinition, see what was lost, and ask ourselves if there are other ways of thinking of nature that would enable us to reflect seriously on ourselves?
My wager is that something like the autonomy of human affairs can be approached more seriously simply by thinking through the problem of nature, rather than by doubling-down on the distinction between nature and history.
This is why I am reading polyvagal theory, looking into trauma, and engaging with my body as a somatically oriented therapist and person. These are contemporary excursions into the nervous system, trauma, and the body, in other words, can guide us towards an understanding of nature that is different from the mechanistic view that has proved so detrimental to reflection on human affairs. The body, understood properly, leads to a teleological understanding of nature and thereby to a version of the autonomy of human affairs.
Indeed, prior to the early modern redefinition of nature, teleology was the prevailing view of nature. Glancing at Spinoza some time ago I was amazed to see how explicitly he was attacking the notion of teleology; and Descartes was admittedly in the business of refuting Aristotle's teleological understanding of nature. There are contemporaries advocating for teleology: Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos has been hugely influential on me, and guides the way through the contemporary nonsense.
Teleology is a fancy word, but all it means is that goodness has a real existence in nature, and that every animal, every living thing, is in the business of pursuing what is good for it by nature. My dad once playfully asked me in an e-mail: 'Hey, are worms mechanistic or teleological animals? Neither brah, It's a fucking worm. I did get banana bread at work today though. ' He read my integration paper, which is occupied mainly with this distinction between mechanism and teleology. I replied: 'They are teleological for sure! Ie "what's good for a worm?" is a totally intelligible question, and the best way to find out is by watching worms worm!' He found this helpful: 'Your answer to the worm question is a perfect way for me to understand what teleology means. Onwards and upwards. Love you, Dad.'
A teleological conception of nature requires a certain account of the species. On a mechanistic or atomistic account the species is an illusion, the deeper reality being the undulating and transforming genetic material, the bits. The species, as a natural form, is called into doubt. As John Gray says in Straw Dogs, Darwin's teaching implies that the species is less real, or not real at all, and that it will be carried away in the flow of time.
If the species can be shown to have a deeper reality, and if each species is defined in large part by the ends or goods that that species pursues, then we have a potential basis for reflection on human things. Indeed, the analysis of teleology I am working on is not so much about ontology or metaphysics (though it is about that), but it is about securing a basis for reflection on human things. For if we can take seriously the idea that the species is real, and that species need to be reflected on as possessing unique goods, then several features of the human species become salient. Namely, we are animals that are rational and political by nature. We possess, in a sense, a split nature. Our rationality and our politicality come into conflict with one another. The misological character of society, the split between politics and philosophy, becomes a feature of our nature, not a bug. The Enlightenment in this sense is hostile to human nature as the ancients understood it.
This view of human nature, as divided between rationality and politicality, is what I've learned to call the tragic view of nature. Our nature doesn't fit together. We are monsters, composites. Polyvagal theory puts meat on this claim: we hold our entire phylogenetic history in our bodies. The vagas nerve shows our reptilian and mammalian ancestry. We are not human, pure and simple. We are achieving humanity all the time.
Polyvagal theory, trauma research, body work, all offer avenues to a teleological understanding of nature. I think Gendlin was onto this, although I've never seen him use the world teleology. I suspect it wasn't a creative enough term for him.
This is the significance of what I'm after with this work in the contemporary natural sciences. I see in them a possible alternative way of thinking of the 'autonomy of human affairs'. But it is not an autonomy grounded on the untenable distinction between nature and history. It is a grounding instead in a conception of nature that is pluralistic enough to admit the legitimacy of the species. It is worth noting that the Greek word 'eidos' could mean 'form', 'essence', 'type', or 'species'. It could also mean 'appearance' or 'looks' or surface appearance of a thing. The question of form goes so deep. What the hell are natural forms? Why do trees grow the way they do, and why do certain things help them grow when others don't?
Atomism denies the reality of form. It argues that form is only the form of the smallest things. Of course there is a human form, a human species, a human nature. Such a conception of nature that makes this possible also makes possible reflection on what is good for us.
I am so worked up by this writing. I am so tired. It is 7:35 pm on 12/12. I fly home to see my family in 8 days and I am looking forward to it. But good god the dark is getting to me.
I feel so much stirring in these thoughts. These are the implications of my final paper in graduate school. This is the essence of my alternative to what that program offered me. It offered me so much. And I offer these thoughts as a compliment to that project.
Keir and I agreed our project is still to move beyond Heidegger. He is the giant of the twentieth century, 'a real fucking philosopher,' as Keir recently said to me. I will soon be reading his "Question Concerning Technology," where he apparently takes on the question of teleology.
I also want this to connect back to a question of the deeper meaning of esotericism as a hermeneutic. Reality has layers. We can feel them in our body. That is perhaps the next thing I hope to write on here.
All of this needs to take form.
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