Hi Erik, this was a timely read. Some of it is wildly off the mark, but I agree with a great deal of it in spirit. I won’t say more here, but I would be glad to talk about it at some point. Jonathan.
I have to admit that I was shocked, and a bit repulsed by the repeated conflation of Rebel Wisdom (which I have mixed feelings about) and Perspectiva (which I love), and The Daily Wire (which I cannot stand).
There has always been a close working relationship & dialogue between Rebel Wisdom & Perspectiva among other groups within the broader integral movement. That said, I tried my best to capture some of that history.
As a prospective student of CIIS, I took this critique of McGilchrist (who transformed and informs my worldview) and the larger “romantic-liberal formation” of philosophy to heart.
While you've persuaded me on several points, it’s harder for me to embrace your larger critique of McGilchrist and other neoromantic philosophers asserting a totalizing and closed narrative of universal value and meaning, subsuming world religion and spirituality for its purposes. I see them offering the early stages of a new paradigmatic worldview, capable of holding great pluralities that anchor perspective-taking from multiple vantages--though I do see how it currently falls short. Your critique regarding public adjudicating of claims still stands for me though, since paradigms inevitably reach questions that procedural debate cannot settle. I am still wrestling with how to operate at this level without falling into relativism, but also see worldviews as inevitable psychological architecture that should be engaged with in some fashion, for all the risks of totalization that they come with.
At the same time, I don’t see McGilchrist’s embrace by the Right as an inherent problem. Any truly holistic paradigm would be amenable to all sorts of political commitments, as it would describe them all. I do see how McGilchrist’s presentation of the hemispheric polarity is too general to prevent its ideological capture, but I also see its idealism and universalizing commitments as anathema to the broader left’s rejection of philosophy outside of contingent material analysis, an overcorrection to historical catastrophes that prevents any inroads into this sphere of political theory and action. This too is a hard problem to solve, and one I appreciate your essay making more conscious in my thinking.
Hey Michael! The essay was meant to be somewhat polemical & get people thinking about the political consequences of their so-called spiritual/ religious views & online consumption of media. I’m glad to hear you are wrestling with it. And thanks for reading! Its a long one.
As for Iain, he’s an absolutely brilliant and eminently affable man. I am grateful to count him as a friend. But as you probably know from my half a dozen replies to some of his more political posts here on Substack, we have rather fundamental disagreements about where the real problems lie.
Still, I think it’s pretty clear that Lukács analysis of “irrationalism,” while powerful as polemic, is pretty weak so far as serious intellectual histories go. I think you can do better than to lean on his work as if it were somehow an adequate account of so-called Romantic liberalism. (BTW I take it you still haven’t spent much time with my social threefolding article, wherein I lay out a position I’m not sure can meaningfully be called liberal anymore, even if it incorporates some important liberal values).
Lukács the Stalinist is in such a rush to reduce metaphysical positions to class positions that he runs roughshod over the deep incompatibilities in the supposed “lineage” he constructs. Further, his ideological fixation apparently blinded him to the mass death brought by his own favored brand of Marxist dialectical rationality, rightly or wrongly applied. Communism is not the only reasonable alternative to fascism.
“CIIS’s Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program, founded by Richard Tarnas in 1994, has been the academic home of process-relational metaphysics in North America for three decades”
A generous statement! But surely the more accurate statement would be to say that PCC was *one* such academic home. The Center for Process Studies, founded by John Cobb, Jr and David Ray Griffin, is far more worthy of being proclaimed *the* academic home of process thought, and for closer to the last 50 years.
I had a tough time gaging the granularity of the network structure when writing, & left a lot out. There is definitely a lot more work that can be done there.
This has been very helpful Erik, thanks for writing it.
It provides a very useful answer to a question that has been slowly forming my own journey through the very field or land that you describe:- 'Why am I struggling to locate my political stance in this supposedly rich information stream of philosophy, neuroscience, metaphysics, psychology, theology?
And consequently:-
What and where is the political strand of thinking in people that are sharing this information?
It has become more clear over the last couple of years what Jordan Peterson aligns to and that Iain McGhilchrist is swimming in the same waters, albeit in quieter more traditionally conservative waves and that the IDW is spread out across this libertarian/contrarian/conservative ocean with the outlier Sam Harris who's swimming in waters I don't understand. I'd make a guess that David Fuller and Alex Beiner along with Jonathon Rowson are in the left centric portion of my map and I'm pretty sure Matt Segall has stated his political preferences and articulated such in response to your essays before.
All this to say that you're correct, they have all used Iain McGhilchrists hemispheric hypothesis as a way to understand, and describe the issues of the day and also to prescribe the antidote of more right hemispheric ways of being.
My own experience of coming into contact with Rebel Wisdom and Perspectiva was 2018 and having navigated my way there through 20 years of mysticism, psychedelia, Steiner, Tomberg and Jung I felt like I was finally landing on some solid ground and very glad of that fact too. I didn't however have any clear sense of what my political and ethical stances and actions were based on and that became searingly obvious as the spectre of Covid-19 rolled over the horizon and all hell broke loose. My 'Sense Making' went full libertarian then full irrational then full liberrational.......What a clusterfuck!
I am slowly unfucking myself with various degrees of success ( I am heavily drawn to the irrational - intuitive, instinctual aesthetic modes of being) but thanks to your essays I am managing to at least grasp a sense of what the Habermassian Adornoian Wilberian ground can give me.
I think the Covid-19 period and its post years would be a fascinating topic for you to point your sites at next. I think it is seismic in terms of what it lead to politically and where we find ourselves. Maybe that's my wee job??
Keep writing your epics Erik, they are inspiring and educating me
Really interesting work. A lot I agree with and disagree with.
Definitely a lot to think about, and although I love McGilchrist's work I have been concerned about his late dipping of toes into the culture wars. And I do think a lot of that is because he is self-admittedly not politically minded, meaning he doesn't have the epistemic structure to correctly project his views into the political arena, and is starting to confuse his small c conservative disposition with reactionary authoritarian culture war views.
Interestingly, though, McGilchrist was the single biggest influence in my turning away from right-wing culture-war thinking. His emphasis on holism, openness, and not trying to intellectualise everything about myself had precisely the opposite effect to the one you describe. But this isn't necessarily a point against your view. Presenting a worldview metaphysically is fine, but how people interpret and project it into their social and political lives is so complex that, without strong frameworks for deployment, it can be misused. If the framework itself seems politically underdetermined; the receiving apparatus does the determining.
The charge against Taylor, on the other hand, doesn't land for me. He is far too careful metaphysically, and he simply doesn't read in a way that a reactionary Petersonian type could use effectively. But the most important difference is this: Taylor does not present a "fallen world" the way McGilchrist arguably does, and it's the fall-and-restoration narrative shape, more than any metaphysical content, that fuels reactionary politics. Taylor spends most of his energy on what we have to be thankful for in modernity, treating its pathologies as deviations and misinterpretations rather than as the essence of the thing. He also describes how people have already created new frameworks to transcend disenchantment (spiritual pluralism). I remember him criticising Allan Bloom as making a 'darn these kids' slight about how self-absorbed young people (in their 40s and 50s now) and Taylor defending them saying this isn't kids being bratty but is a built in feature of the modern world and its overdetermination of authenticity, but still vehemently defending authenticity in its right deployment. A thinker who refuses the declension story is a poor engine for restorationist politics in my opinion.
All that to say, when you put Taylor in the irrationalist camp, it started feeling like you know longer are criticising intuitionist thought structurally as not being epistemically disciplined enought and it started reading as criticising it internally as being inherently fascist breeding. That was always the standard criticism of The Destruction of Reason itself — that the structural method kept collapsing into guilt by essence — and I don't think it's true in the slightest. But thanks again for the thought provoking work.
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Hi Erik, this was a timely read. Some of it is wildly off the mark, but I agree with a great deal of it in spirit. I won’t say more here, but I would be glad to talk about it at some point. Jonathan.
I have to admit that I was shocked, and a bit repulsed by the repeated conflation of Rebel Wisdom (which I have mixed feelings about) and Perspectiva (which I love), and The Daily Wire (which I cannot stand).
There has always been a close working relationship & dialogue between Rebel Wisdom & Perspectiva among other groups within the broader integral movement. That said, I tried my best to capture some of that history.
By all means! Feel free to DM me & arrange something. Glad to hear some of it resonated.
As a prospective student of CIIS, I took this critique of McGilchrist (who transformed and informs my worldview) and the larger “romantic-liberal formation” of philosophy to heart.
While you've persuaded me on several points, it’s harder for me to embrace your larger critique of McGilchrist and other neoromantic philosophers asserting a totalizing and closed narrative of universal value and meaning, subsuming world religion and spirituality for its purposes. I see them offering the early stages of a new paradigmatic worldview, capable of holding great pluralities that anchor perspective-taking from multiple vantages--though I do see how it currently falls short. Your critique regarding public adjudicating of claims still stands for me though, since paradigms inevitably reach questions that procedural debate cannot settle. I am still wrestling with how to operate at this level without falling into relativism, but also see worldviews as inevitable psychological architecture that should be engaged with in some fashion, for all the risks of totalization that they come with.
At the same time, I don’t see McGilchrist’s embrace by the Right as an inherent problem. Any truly holistic paradigm would be amenable to all sorts of political commitments, as it would describe them all. I do see how McGilchrist’s presentation of the hemispheric polarity is too general to prevent its ideological capture, but I also see its idealism and universalizing commitments as anathema to the broader left’s rejection of philosophy outside of contingent material analysis, an overcorrection to historical catastrophes that prevents any inroads into this sphere of political theory and action. This too is a hard problem to solve, and one I appreciate your essay making more conscious in my thinking.
Hey Michael! The essay was meant to be somewhat polemical & get people thinking about the political consequences of their so-called spiritual/ religious views & online consumption of media. I’m glad to hear you are wrestling with it. And thanks for reading! Its a long one.
As for Iain, he’s an absolutely brilliant and eminently affable man. I am grateful to count him as a friend. But as you probably know from my half a dozen replies to some of his more political posts here on Substack, we have rather fundamental disagreements about where the real problems lie.
Still, I think it’s pretty clear that Lukács analysis of “irrationalism,” while powerful as polemic, is pretty weak so far as serious intellectual histories go. I think you can do better than to lean on his work as if it were somehow an adequate account of so-called Romantic liberalism. (BTW I take it you still haven’t spent much time with my social threefolding article, wherein I lay out a position I’m not sure can meaningfully be called liberal anymore, even if it incorporates some important liberal values).
Lukács the Stalinist is in such a rush to reduce metaphysical positions to class positions that he runs roughshod over the deep incompatibilities in the supposed “lineage” he constructs. Further, his ideological fixation apparently blinded him to the mass death brought by his own favored brand of Marxist dialectical rationality, rightly or wrongly applied. Communism is not the only reasonable alternative to fascism.
I totally agree with you! But if we are going to make headway against the critical theory folks, we have to deal with Lukacs & Habermas.
“CIIS’s Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program, founded by Richard Tarnas in 1994, has been the academic home of process-relational metaphysics in North America for three decades”
A generous statement! But surely the more accurate statement would be to say that PCC was *one* such academic home. The Center for Process Studies, founded by John Cobb, Jr and David Ray Griffin, is far more worthy of being proclaimed *the* academic home of process thought, and for closer to the last 50 years.
I had a tough time gaging the granularity of the network structure when writing, & left a lot out. There is definitely a lot more work that can be done there.
This has been very helpful Erik, thanks for writing it.
It provides a very useful answer to a question that has been slowly forming my own journey through the very field or land that you describe:- 'Why am I struggling to locate my political stance in this supposedly rich information stream of philosophy, neuroscience, metaphysics, psychology, theology?
And consequently:-
What and where is the political strand of thinking in people that are sharing this information?
It has become more clear over the last couple of years what Jordan Peterson aligns to and that Iain McGhilchrist is swimming in the same waters, albeit in quieter more traditionally conservative waves and that the IDW is spread out across this libertarian/contrarian/conservative ocean with the outlier Sam Harris who's swimming in waters I don't understand. I'd make a guess that David Fuller and Alex Beiner along with Jonathon Rowson are in the left centric portion of my map and I'm pretty sure Matt Segall has stated his political preferences and articulated such in response to your essays before.
All this to say that you're correct, they have all used Iain McGhilchrists hemispheric hypothesis as a way to understand, and describe the issues of the day and also to prescribe the antidote of more right hemispheric ways of being.
My own experience of coming into contact with Rebel Wisdom and Perspectiva was 2018 and having navigated my way there through 20 years of mysticism, psychedelia, Steiner, Tomberg and Jung I felt like I was finally landing on some solid ground and very glad of that fact too. I didn't however have any clear sense of what my political and ethical stances and actions were based on and that became searingly obvious as the spectre of Covid-19 rolled over the horizon and all hell broke loose. My 'Sense Making' went full libertarian then full irrational then full liberrational.......What a clusterfuck!
I am slowly unfucking myself with various degrees of success ( I am heavily drawn to the irrational - intuitive, instinctual aesthetic modes of being) but thanks to your essays I am managing to at least grasp a sense of what the Habermassian Adornoian Wilberian ground can give me.
I think the Covid-19 period and its post years would be a fascinating topic for you to point your sites at next. I think it is seismic in terms of what it lead to politically and where we find ourselves. Maybe that's my wee job??
Keep writing your epics Erik, they are inspiring and educating me
Really interesting work. A lot I agree with and disagree with.
Definitely a lot to think about, and although I love McGilchrist's work I have been concerned about his late dipping of toes into the culture wars. And I do think a lot of that is because he is self-admittedly not politically minded, meaning he doesn't have the epistemic structure to correctly project his views into the political arena, and is starting to confuse his small c conservative disposition with reactionary authoritarian culture war views.
Interestingly, though, McGilchrist was the single biggest influence in my turning away from right-wing culture-war thinking. His emphasis on holism, openness, and not trying to intellectualise everything about myself had precisely the opposite effect to the one you describe. But this isn't necessarily a point against your view. Presenting a worldview metaphysically is fine, but how people interpret and project it into their social and political lives is so complex that, without strong frameworks for deployment, it can be misused. If the framework itself seems politically underdetermined; the receiving apparatus does the determining.
The charge against Taylor, on the other hand, doesn't land for me. He is far too careful metaphysically, and he simply doesn't read in a way that a reactionary Petersonian type could use effectively. But the most important difference is this: Taylor does not present a "fallen world" the way McGilchrist arguably does, and it's the fall-and-restoration narrative shape, more than any metaphysical content, that fuels reactionary politics. Taylor spends most of his energy on what we have to be thankful for in modernity, treating its pathologies as deviations and misinterpretations rather than as the essence of the thing. He also describes how people have already created new frameworks to transcend disenchantment (spiritual pluralism). I remember him criticising Allan Bloom as making a 'darn these kids' slight about how self-absorbed young people (in their 40s and 50s now) and Taylor defending them saying this isn't kids being bratty but is a built in feature of the modern world and its overdetermination of authenticity, but still vehemently defending authenticity in its right deployment. A thinker who refuses the declension story is a poor engine for restorationist politics in my opinion.
All that to say, when you put Taylor in the irrationalist camp, it started feeling like you know longer are criticising intuitionist thought structurally as not being epistemically disciplined enought and it started reading as criticising it internally as being inherently fascist breeding. That was always the standard criticism of The Destruction of Reason itself — that the structural method kept collapsing into guilt by essence — and I don't think it's true in the slightest. But thanks again for the thought provoking work.