|
Christian de Quincey |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
COMMUNICATIONS |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Scrapbook |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Sitemap |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
Will The Real Perennial Philosophy Please Stand Up? by Christian de Quincey "Am I the only person to find the term “the perennial philosophy” irritating? It seems to imply a deposit of timeless truth that puts it above the culture-bound pronouncements of all other philosophies. And I just don’t buy that." —Anthony Freeman, editor, Journal of Consciousness Studies The term “perennial philosophy” has been part of our intellectual history ever since Leibniz introduced the phrase. However, it has undergone some evolution since Leibniz’ time. When he used it he was referring to a worldview (essentially idealist) that has been around since the dawn of philosophy, and keeps reappearing in one form or another from age to age, and across cultures. For Leibniz, then, “perennial” refers to historical longevity and cross-cultural persistence. However, since Aldous Huxley published his book by that name (in the 1940s), the term seems to have taken on an a-historical meaning. Now it seems to refer to the content of the philosophy—a content that, as you say, is supposed to transcend the vagaries of culture and history. To speak of the “perennial philosophy” today is to refer to a belief-system that purports to derive its content from a form of experience (mystical) that transcends time, space, and all duality. And—if we are to believe that the sages and mystics have accurately reported their experiences—such content represents absolute truth (or, at least, a form of truth that is impervious to any rational, cultural or historical critique). When I use the term, I’m not assuming that the content of the perennial philosophy is necessarily true (it may be, I just don’t know). I’m referring to its longevity as a transcultural phenomenon, and essentially using it as a synonym for idealism. But Freeman’s comment raises two questions: 1). Could materialists and/or dualists (not to mention panpsychists) likewise make a claim that their particular brand of ontology is also perennial? After all, in the West at least, we can trace a form of ontological dualism back to Pythagoras and later Plato, and a form of materialism back to Democritus. The Eastern traditions are not without their ancient materialists and dualists, either. (And in my book “Radical Nature: Consciousness All the Way Down” [now under consideration at Random House] I make a strong case for the long lineage of panpsychism stretching back beyond the Presocratics through the Orphics to shamanic roots). So, will the real “perennial philosophy” please stand up! 2) Does using the term “perennial philosophy” give (inadvertently or otherwise) a kind of sanction and endorsement to idealism, privileging it over other ontologies? Does it imply not only a unique longevity to a particular worldview (which is questionable), but also that its longevity is due to its unique expression of ultimate truth? If Freeman has been picking up on (2), then I’m not surprised at his “irritation.” This implication does seem to assume an awful lot. |
|
||