Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
Encyclopedia
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution is integral philosopher Ken Wilber
's 1995 magnum opus
. Wilber intends it to be the first volume of a series called The Kosmos Trilogy, but subsequent volumes were never produced. The scholarly work comprises 850 pages, including 270 pages of notes. The German
edition of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality was entitled Eros
, Kosmos
, Logos
: Eine Jahrtausend-Vision ("A Millennium-vision"). The book has been both highly acclaimed by some authors, harshly criticized by others, and largely ignored by academia.
, evolution
, and the meaning of life
. He also describes an approach, called vision-logic, which he finds qualified to succeed modernism
.
Wilber's project in this book requires nothing less than a complete re-visioning of the history of Eastern and Western thought. There are four philosophers that Wilber finds to be of the highest importance:
This is, of course, radically different from the usual history of philosophy
, in which Plato
, Aristotle
, Thomas Aquinas
, René Descartes
, Immanuel Kant
and sometimes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
and Friedrich Nietzsche
are typically seen as important Western philosophers.
Wilber argues that the account of existence presented by the Enlightenment
is incomplete—it ignores and represses the spiritual and noetic components of existence. He accordingly avoids the term cosmos, which is associated with merely physical existence. He prefers the term kosmos to refer to the sum of manifest existence, which harks back to the usage of the term by the Pythagoreans and other ancient mystics. Wilber conceives of the Kosmos as consisting of several concentric spheres: matter
(the physical
universe
) plus life
(the vital
realm) plus mind
(the mental
realm) plus soul
(the psychic
realm) plus Spirit
(the spiritual
realm).
perspective of contemporary philosophical naturalism as "the philosophy of 'oops'". He describes the spiritual inadequacies of philosophical naturalism as the source of the contemporary world's menacing ecological crisis
. He describes his methodology as outlining "orienting generalizations"—points on which agreement can be found that will reveal a shared world-space.
to show how the mechanistic
, materialistic
modern
worldview triumphed over the West
's traditional, holistic, hierarchical
view. The prevalence of pathological
, dominating hierarchies throughout history has given hierarchy a bad name. But hierarchy is ultimately inescapable. Thus, we should concentrate on discovering which hierarchies actually do exist and on healing them.
In the second chapter, "The Pattern That Connects", Wilber uses Arthur Koestler
's account of holism
and holarchy
and Ludwig von Bertalanffy
's General Systems Theory
to describe approximately twenty tenets of all holons. Wilber calls the holistic version of the Great Chain of Being the "Great Nest of Spirit", because this account emphasizes that higher levels include as well as transcend lower ones.
In the third chapter, "Individual And Social", Wilber describes Erich Jantsch
's account of co-evolution
and self-organizing systems.
In the fourth chapter, "A View From Within", Wilber describes what he calls two fundamental aspects of existence: the "Left-hand path" (interior
ity) and the "Right-hand path" (exteriority). Gross reductionism
—atomism
, for example—consists of reducing a whole to its parts. Subtle reductionism—systems theory
, for example—consists of reducing the interior to the exterior. Charles Taylor
's work is used to show that the Enlightenment
paradigm suffers from both gross and subtle reductionism. When Individual and Social spheres are added to the Interior and Exterior aspects of existence, four quadrants emerge.
In the fifth chapter, "The Emergence Of Human Nature", Wilber uses Jean Gebser
's account of the development of human consciousness
to show how the West progressed from the magic
to the mythic
to the rational
mentalities. This acknowledgment that all of existence is in development adds a third fundamental dimension—depth, or verticality—to Wilber's model of consciousness.
In the sixth chapter, "Magic, Mythic And Beyond", Wilber uses Jean Piaget
's theory of developmental psychology
to describe the individual development of the contemporary human being. The "Pre/Trans Fallacy" is described. This is Wilber's term for "romantic
" approaches, like deep ecology
and ecofeminism
, that often mistake earlier and more exclusivist modes of being for more mature, more inclusive modes.
In the seventh chapter, "The Farther Reaches Of Human Nature", Wilber uses Jürgen Habermas
' account of socio-cultural development to describe collective human development. Wilber describes vision-logic, a non-dominating, global awareness of holistic hierarchy, in which the pathological dissociations of Nature from Self, interiority from exteriority, and creativity from compassion are transformed into healthy differentiations. The validity claims of mystics
are compared to Thomas Kuhn
's account of scientific paradigm
s.
In the eighth chapter, "The Depths Of The Divine", Wilber uses the accounts of four mystics to describe the possibilities for further individual spiritual development: the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson
on nature mysticism, the Christian saint Teresa of Avila
on deity mysticism, Meister Eckhart
on formless mysticism, and the Hindu
guru
Ramana Maharshi
on nondual mysticism.
' nondual metaphysics
. "Ascending" philosophies are those that embrace the One, or the Absolute. "Descending" philosophies are those that embrace the Many, or Plenitude. Both ascent (driven by Eros
, or creativity
) and descent (driven by Agape
, or compassion
) are indispensable for a healthy, whole view. Plato
's metaphysics, which also included both ascending and descending drives, is described. Plotinus' attack on Gnosticism
is described in order to trace differences between healthy and pathological approaches to ascent.
In the tenth chapter, "This-Worldly, Otherworldly", Wilber describes various attempts to repair modernism's fractured and flattened worldview, especially Schelling
's existential
idealism
.
In the eleventh chapter, "Brave New World", Wilber describes the liberating advantages as well as the spiritually crippling disadvantages of the modern, scientific mentality.
In the twelfth chapter, "The Collapse Of The Kosmos", Wilber uses Charles Taylor's account of the effects of the Enlightenment paradigm to show how vertical depth was collapsed into horizontal span and how the ascending drive was dissociated into the "Ego camp" (Kant
's and Fichte's Transcendent Ego) and the "Eco camp" (Spinoza's deified Nature). Utilitarianism
is described as mistaking sensory
pleasure
for Spirit, which ultimately resulted in a fixation on hedonism
and sex
in modern society.
In the thirteenth chapter, "The Dominance Of The Descenders", Wilber describes how the West tried to embrace the Many through science, but failed to embrace the One through mysticism. The result was the rise of Thanatos
(Freud's death drive), and Phobos
(existential fear), which are the respective pathological versions of Agape and Eros.
In the fourteenth chapter, "The Unpacking Of God", Wilber describes aspects of particular historical nondual views that could possibly heal the noetic fissures in the West, especially spiritual practice as understood by Zen
& Dzogchen
Buddhism
.
The afterword
, "At The Edge Of History", includes a meditation on Emptiness
as the ground of Being
in which all entities are ontologically healed.
said that SES was one of the four most important books of the 20th century (the others being Aurobindo's The Life Divine, Heidegger's Being and Time
, and Whitehead
's Process and Reality
).
In his 1997 book Coming into Being, cultural historian William Irwin Thompson
harshly criticized the entire project of SES, contending that systematic "theories of everything
" were inherently misguided. He also dismissed Wilber's scholarly achievements as "undergraduate generalizations". Thompson's reverence for many of Wilber's favorite thinkers (like Sri Aurobindo
, Jean Gebser
and Adi Shankara
) makes Thompson's criticism all the more relevant.
Ken Wilber
Kenneth Earl Wilber II is an American author who has written about mysticism, philosophy, ecology, and developmental psychology. His work formulates what he calls Integral Theory. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute, for teaching and applications of Integral theory.-Biography:Ken Wilber was...
's 1995 magnum opus
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....
. Wilber intends it to be the first volume of a series called The Kosmos Trilogy, but subsequent volumes were never produced. The scholarly work comprises 850 pages, including 270 pages of notes. The German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
edition of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality was entitled Eros
Eros (love)
Eros is one of the four words in Ancient Greek which can be rendered into English as “love”. The other three are storge, philia and agape...
, Kosmos
Cosmos
In the general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from the Greek term κόσμος , meaning "order" or "ornament" and is antithetical to the concept of chaos. Today, the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The word cosmos originates from the same root...
, Logos
Logos
' is an important term in philosophy, psychology, rhetoric and religion. Originally a word meaning "a ground", "a plea", "an opinion", "an expectation", "word," "speech," "account," "reason," it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus ' is an important term in...
: Eine Jahrtausend-Vision ("A Millennium-vision"). The book has been both highly acclaimed by some authors, harshly criticized by others, and largely ignored by academia.
Content
Published in 1995, SES (as it is sometimes abbreviated) is the work in which Wilber grapples with modern philosophical naturalism, attempting to show its insufficiency as an explanation of beingBeing
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
, evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
, and the meaning of life
Meaning of life
The meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", and "What is the meaning of it all?" It has...
. He also describes an approach, called vision-logic, which he finds qualified to succeed modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
.
Wilber's project in this book requires nothing less than a complete re-visioning of the history of Eastern and Western thought. There are four philosophers that Wilber finds to be of the highest importance:
- PlotinusPlotinusPlotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
, Neo-Platonic philosopher, who introduced the first nondual philosophy to the West - NagarjunaNagarjunaNāgārjuna was an important Buddhist teacher and philosopher. Along with his disciple Āryadeva, he is credited with founding the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism...
, BuddhistBuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
philosopher, who did the same in the East - Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, German IdealistGerman idealismGerman idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
who created the first evolutionary nondual philosophy in the West and - Sri AurobindoSri AurobindoSri Aurobindo , born Aurobindo Ghosh or Ghose , was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet. He joined the Indian movement for freedom from British rule and for a duration became one of its most important leaders, before developing his own vision of human progress...
, HinduHinduHindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
VedantinVedantaVedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...
philosopher who did the same in the East
This is, of course, radically different from the usual history of philosophy
History of philosophy
The history of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include : How can changes in philosophy be accounted for historically? What drives the development of thought in its historical context? To what...
, in which Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
, René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
and sometimes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
are typically seen as important Western philosophers.
Wilber argues that the account of existence presented by the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
is incomplete—it ignores and represses the spiritual and noetic components of existence. He accordingly avoids the term cosmos, which is associated with merely physical existence. He prefers the term kosmos to refer to the sum of manifest existence, which harks back to the usage of the term by the Pythagoreans and other ancient mystics. Wilber conceives of the Kosmos as consisting of several concentric spheres: matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
(the physical
Physical
Physical may refer to:*Body, the physical structure of an organism**Human body, the physical structure of a human*Physical abuse, abuse involving contact intended to cause feelings of intimidation, injury, or other physical suffering or bodily harm...
universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
) plus life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
(the vital
Vital
Vital or Vitals may refer to:* VITAL for Children, a charitable organisation* Vitalism, the doctrine that life cannot be explained solely by mechanism* Vitalism , the Jain teacher Mahāvīra's philosophy...
realm) plus mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
(the mental
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
realm) plus soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
(the psychic
Psychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
realm) plus Spirit
Spirit
The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...
(the spiritual
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
realm).
The structure and theses of SES
In the introduction, Wilber describes the deeply dysteleologicalDysteleology
Dysteleology is the philosophical view that existence has no telos or final cause from purposeful design. The term "dysteleology" is a modern word invented and popularized by Haeckel...
perspective of contemporary philosophical naturalism as "the philosophy of 'oops'". He describes the spiritual inadequacies of philosophical naturalism as the source of the contemporary world's menacing ecological crisis
Ecological crisis
An ecological crisis occurs when the environment of a species or a population changes in a way that destabilizes its continued survival. There are many possible causes of such crises:...
. He describes his methodology as outlining "orienting generalizations"—points on which agreement can be found that will reveal a shared world-space.
Book One
In the first chapter, "The Web of Life", Wilber uses Arthur Lovejoy's account of the Great Chain of BeingGreat chain of being
The great chain of being , is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God.-Divisions:...
to show how the mechanistic
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
, materialistic
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
modern
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
worldview triumphed over the West
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
's traditional, holistic, hierarchical
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
view. The prevalence of pathological
Pathology
Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
, dominating hierarchies throughout history has given hierarchy a bad name. But hierarchy is ultimately inescapable. Thus, we should concentrate on discovering which hierarchies actually do exist and on healing them.
In the second chapter, "The Pattern That Connects", Wilber uses Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
's account of holism
Holism
Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone...
and holarchy
Holarchy
A holarchy, in the terminology of Arthur Koestler, is a connection between holons – where a holon is both a part and a whole. The term was coined in Koestler's 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine...
and Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy was an Austrian-born biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory . GST is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, applicable to biology, cybernetics, and other fields...
's General Systems Theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
to describe approximately twenty tenets of all holons. Wilber calls the holistic version of the Great Chain of Being the "Great Nest of Spirit", because this account emphasizes that higher levels include as well as transcend lower ones.
In the third chapter, "Individual And Social", Wilber describes Erich Jantsch
Erich Jantsch
Erich Jantsch was an Austrian astrophysicist.In the mid-1960s his increasing concern regarding the future led him to study forecasting techniques...
's account of co-evolution
Co-evolution
In biology, coevolution is "the change of a biological object triggered by the change of a related object." Coevolution can occur at many biological levels: it can be as microscopic as correlated mutations between amino acids in a protein, or as macroscopic as covarying traits between different...
and self-organizing systems.
In the fourth chapter, "A View From Within", Wilber describes what he calls two fundamental aspects of existence: the "Left-hand path" (interior
Interior
Coastal regions of a territory are often the most densely populated due to their greater economic productivity or colonial history. This leads to a contrast with the interior of the territory, which is sparsely populated...
ity) and the "Right-hand path" (exteriority). Gross reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
—atomism
Atomism
Atomism is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes...
, for example—consists of reducing a whole to its parts. Subtle reductionism—systems theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
, for example—consists of reducing the interior to the exterior. Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor (philosopher)
Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...
's work is used to show that the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
paradigm suffers from both gross and subtle reductionism. When Individual and Social spheres are added to the Interior and Exterior aspects of existence, four quadrants emerge.
In the fifth chapter, "The Emergence Of Human Nature", Wilber uses Jean Gebser
Jean Gebser
Jean Gebser was a philosopher who described the structures of human consciousness, a linguist, and a poet.-Biography:...
's account of the development of human consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
to show how the West progressed from the magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
to the mythic
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
to the rational
Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
mentalities. This acknowledgment that all of existence is in development adds a third fundamental dimension—depth, or verticality—to Wilber's model of consciousness.
In the sixth chapter, "Magic, Mythic And Beyond", Wilber uses Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
's theory of developmental psychology
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
to describe the individual development of the contemporary human being. The "Pre/Trans Fallacy" is described. This is Wilber's term for "romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
" approaches, like deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
and ecofeminism
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
, that often mistake earlier and more exclusivist modes of being for more mature, more inclusive modes.
In the seventh chapter, "The Farther Reaches Of Human Nature", Wilber uses Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
' account of socio-cultural development to describe collective human development. Wilber describes vision-logic, a non-dominating, global awareness of holistic hierarchy, in which the pathological dissociations of Nature from Self, interiority from exteriority, and creativity from compassion are transformed into healthy differentiations. The validity claims of mystics
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
are compared to Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
's account of scientific paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
s.
In the eighth chapter, "The Depths Of The Divine", Wilber uses the accounts of four mystics to describe the possibilities for further individual spiritual development: the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
on nature mysticism, the Christian saint Teresa of Avila
Teresa of Ávila
Saint Teresa of Ávila, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, was a prominent Spanish mystic, Roman Catholic saint, Carmelite nun, and writer of the Counter Reformation, and theologian of contemplative life through mental prayer...
on deity mysticism, Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart
Eckhart von Hochheim O.P. , commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire. Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title Magister in theologia he obtained in Paris...
on formless mysticism, and the Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
guru
Guru
A guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...
Ramana Maharshi
Ramana Maharshi
Sri Ramana Maharshi , born Venkataraman Iyer, was a Hindu spiritual master . He was born to a Tamil-speaking Brahmin family in Tiruchuzhi, Tamil Nadu. After experiencing at age 16 what he later described as liberation , he left home for Arunachala, a mountain considered sacred by Hindus...
on nondual mysticism.
Book Two
In the ninth chapter, "The Way Up Is The Way Down", Wilber describes Neo-Platonist PlotinusPlotinus
Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
' nondual metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
. "Ascending" philosophies are those that embrace the One, or the Absolute. "Descending" philosophies are those that embrace the Many, or Plenitude. Both ascent (driven by Eros
Eros (love)
Eros is one of the four words in Ancient Greek which can be rendered into English as “love”. The other three are storge, philia and agape...
, or creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
) and descent (driven by Agape
Agape
Agape is one of the Greek words translated into English as love, one which became particularly appropriated in Christian theology as the love of God or Christ for mankind. In the New Testament, it refers to the fatherly love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God; the term...
, or compassion
Compassion
Compassion is a virtue — one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy are regarded as a part of love itself, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism — foundational to the highest principles in philosophy, society, and personhood.There is an aspect of...
) are indispensable for a healthy, whole view. Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's metaphysics, which also included both ascending and descending drives, is described. Plotinus' attack on Gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
is described in order to trace differences between healthy and pathological approaches to ascent.
In the tenth chapter, "This-Worldly, Otherworldly", Wilber describes various attempts to repair modernism's fractured and flattened worldview, especially Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
's existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
.
In the eleventh chapter, "Brave New World", Wilber describes the liberating advantages as well as the spiritually crippling disadvantages of the modern, scientific mentality.
In the twelfth chapter, "The Collapse Of The Kosmos", Wilber uses Charles Taylor's account of the effects of the Enlightenment paradigm to show how vertical depth was collapsed into horizontal span and how the ascending drive was dissociated into the "Ego camp" (Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
's and Fichte's Transcendent Ego) and the "Eco camp" (Spinoza's deified Nature). Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
is described as mistaking sensory
Sensory
Sensory may refer to:relating to senses or smellIn biology:* Sensory preference* Sensory system, part of the nervous system of organisms* Sensory neuron, nerve cell responsible for transmitting information about external stimuli...
pleasure
Pleasure
Pleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria...
for Spirit, which ultimately resulted in a fixation on hedonism
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....
and sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
in modern society.
In the thirteenth chapter, "The Dominance Of The Descenders", Wilber describes how the West tried to embrace the Many through science, but failed to embrace the One through mysticism. The result was the rise of Thanatos
Thanatos
In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the daemon personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person...
(Freud's death drive), and Phobos
Phobos
Phobos may refer to:* an Ancient Greek word for fear* Phobos , the Greek god of fear* Phobos , a moon of Mars* Phobos , a 1997 album by Canadian heavy metal band Voivod...
(existential fear), which are the respective pathological versions of Agape and Eros.
In the fourteenth chapter, "The Unpacking Of God", Wilber describes aspects of particular historical nondual views that could possibly heal the noetic fissures in the West, especially spiritual practice as understood by Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
& Dzogchen
Dzogchen
According to Tibetan Buddhism and Bön, Dzogchen is the natural, primordial state or natural condition of the mind, and a body of teachings and meditation practices aimed at realizing that condition. Dzogchen, or "Great Perfection", is a central teaching of the Nyingma school also practiced by...
Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
.
The afterword
Afterword
An afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed....
, "At The Edge Of History", includes a meditation on Emptiness
Nirvana
Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...
as the ground of Being
Being
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
in which all entities are ontologically healed.
Reception
In a review of the book, author Michael MurphyMichael Murphy (author)
Michael Murphy is the co-founder of the Esalen Institute, a key figure in the Human Potential Movement and author of both fiction and non-fiction books on topics related to extraordinary human potential.- Biography :...
said that SES was one of the four most important books of the 20th century (the others being Aurobindo's The Life Divine, Heidegger's Being and Time
Being and Time
Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...
, and Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
's Process and Reality
Process and Reality
In philosophy, especially metaphysics, the book Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead sets out its author's philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy...
).
In his 1997 book Coming into Being, cultural historian William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompson is known primarily as a social philosopher and cultural critic, but he has also been writing and publishing poetry throughout his career and received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He describes his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz on ancient...
harshly criticized the entire project of SES, contending that systematic "theories of everything
Theory of everything
A theory of everything is a putative theory of theoretical physics that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena, and predicts the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out in principle....
" were inherently misguided. He also dismissed Wilber's scholarly achievements as "undergraduate generalizations". Thompson's reverence for many of Wilber's favorite thinkers (like Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo , born Aurobindo Ghosh or Ghose , was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet. He joined the Indian movement for freedom from British rule and for a duration became one of its most important leaders, before developing his own vision of human progress...
, Jean Gebser
Jean Gebser
Jean Gebser was a philosopher who described the structures of human consciousness, a linguist, and a poet.-Biography:...
and Adi Shankara
Adi Shankara
Adi Shankara Adi Shankara Adi Shankara (IAST: pronounced , (Sanskrit: , ) (788 CE - 820 CE), also known as ' and ' was an Indian philosopher from Kalady of present day Kerala who consolidated the doctrine of advaita vedānta...
) makes Thompson's criticism all the more relevant.
Quotation
"Put differently, I sought a world philosophy. I sought an integral philosophy, one that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details—that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world is one, undivided whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos: a world philosophy, an integral philosophy." — Ken Wilber, "Introduction to Volume Six of the Collected Works".External links
- Wilber's Shambhala site, which includes lengthy excerpts from the forthcoming Volume II of the Kosmos Trilogy, tentatively titled Kosmic Karma and Creativity.
- Review of SES by Roger Walsh, author of Essential Spirituality
- Review of SES by Kaisa Puhakka, Transpersonal Psychologist