Getting beyond Otherness

 

Among the concepts least understood and appreciated in our culture, proprietary awareness is second only to individual freedom.  This is regrettable, because the two concepts are intrinsically bound together, ensuring the autonomy which defines man's role as the "free agent" of his world.  Once we realize this connection, we can understand that the source of our existence is not some extra-terrestrial Being that exists apart from reality but an all-encompassing Absolute whose value is the very essence of our being -aware.

Descartes was probably the first to express the reality of his own existence in terms of conscious thought.  It was the principle known as Cogito ergo sum: "I think, therefore I am".  The philosopher's insight was significant, but his proof was flawed, because without a physical being Descartes would have no central nervous system and would be incapable of thinking.  A human being has to exist as a biological entity before he can become consciously aware of himself.  Yet, while Descartes' conscious awareness was not empirically provable, it was nonetheless uniquely different from the awareness of any other individual, then as now.

What Descartes' meditation had stumbled upon was a cosmic principle far more profound than the conclusion he drew from it. Conscious awareness is proprietary to the individual and is not transferable to any other entity, either individually or collectively.  All knowledge is an interpretation of experienced sense data by the cerebro-nervous system.  The values perceived by sensation and intellection are integrated into consciousness as the reality of the individual.  Because no two people have identical values, the reality that we experience is unique to each of us.

Why has man's knowledge of the objective world increased exponentially in his short history on this planet, while the nature of proprietary awareness remains a mystery?   Why, despite the fact that we all know intuitively that our conscious experience is not transferable, do we cling to the view that "the real world" is a substantive otherness made up of polarized bundles of energy that behave according to physical laws and assume finite form as a variety of inorganic objects and biological organisms?

The answer is plain enough: physical reality is a universal  experience.  It is the same for everybody—everywhere—and, unlike conscious awareness, it can be quantified with consistency and predictive reliability.  We need to structure our world universally in order to survive and flourish as civilized people, just as we need language and logic to communicate ideas universally.  The survival of civilization depends upon a common ground of experiential data on which to expand knowledge, create new things, make decisions, and plan for the future of mankind.  This is all very logical and practical; so what is missing here?

What we have forgotten in our zeal for exploring new frontiers and our obsession with technology is the subjective core of material reality.  Because subjectivity is an elusive faculty that defies quantification, it is ignored by Science which does its best to eliminate it from objective data.  But "the real world" is not a monolith; it is, in fact, a dichotomy comprising two altogether different phenomena.  Subjective awareness vs. objective beingness is an ontological schism that cuts across every observation of physical phenomena, every set of moral principles, every assessment of man's place in the universe.  And trying to understand reality by searching only for information about the objective half of this dichotomy is like trying to hear the sound of one hand clapping.

We are conditioned from birth onward to understand reality as what we experience—an objective otherness extended beyond us in time and space.  Our experience of that otherness consists of discrete objects and events whose names we are carefully taught because they are the universal language by which civilization sustains itself.  But this life-long habituation to an objective reality causes us to lose sight of the fact that our knowledge of it is only the "content" of our awareness, not its essence.  This becomes clear when we absent awareness from the self/other equation: the object and its properties disappear.  For if everything that is "real" is an objective other, then the individual self is logically excluded from reality, which is a metaphysical impossibility.

Consider the fact that everything you know, every idea you have, every feeling you experience is proprietary to yourself.  If there were no one else "out there", you would still have this awareness.  It is the essential you.  If that you disappeared, there would be no reality.  Now, that may be regarded as pure solipsism, but it's the starting point for defining reality.  You can't go outside of yourself and say, "Oh, but there's evidence of a reality beyond me."  What is the evidence?  "Well, we know ..."   You see, it doesn't work; we're back to the starting point.  All knowledge is proprietary.  All of reality is contingent upon one's awareness of it.

In 1807 the German philosopher Hegel published The Phenomenology of Spirit, his first major work.  In it he traces the development of the mind in relation to experience, concentrating on the epistemology of cognitive activities like perceiving and knowing, and the nature of reality and reason.  The fundamental characteristic of human awareness, according to Hegel, is the relationship between self and otherness.  His ontology is based on mankind's desire for and estrangement from objects, what he considers to be the primordial experience of the world.  This otherness cannot be destroyed without the destruction of self, so we search for reconciliation with otherness and a universalization of consciousness through the other.

For Western philosophers prior to the twentieth century, ontology was viewed as the challenge of reducing reality to a monism; that is, by rejecting either the subjective idealism of Plato or the objective materialism of Science.  As if to rid the world of subjective reality, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels established the school of dialectical materialism in the mid-1800s.  Their atheistic platform was adopted as the ontological basis for the Existentialist movement in the following century and it continues to influence our view of physical reality.  While Existentialism has yielded to Objectivism or Scientific Naturalism over the last two centuries, most people in Western Society are really existentialists, whether they consider themselves theists, atheists or agnostics.

As expostulated in Sartre's "Being and Nothingness ", Existentialism holds that the being of existence is primary to its essence, a throwback to mechanistic philosophies that regarded man as a byproduct of biological evolution, rejecting the concept of individual awareness apart from its collective societal context.  In effect, Existentialism reversed Descartes' Cogito to "I am, therefore I think," which for Sartre was the natural (arbitrary but actual) order of things.

The idea that "Existence precedes Essence" figures prominently in the objectivism of the post-modern world and leads to the moralistic conclusion that man is "condemned to freedom" in a deterministic universe without meaning.

In the wake of New Age mysticism, several contemporary philosophers wishing to introduce an alternative to materialism have sought to base their reality on aesthetic attributes like Quality, Consciousness, and a 'Life-Force'.  Some have even romanticized a universal Intellect which man, at the proper stage of his biological and sociological evolution, simply "taps into" in order to establish the physical laws and principles needed to advance to the next stage.  (It is assumed by these evolutionists that progress toward "morality" is inherent in the natural order of things.)

The idea of a Primary Source turns this evolutionary, pluralistic world of objects and events inside out.  In philosophy, whether it is identified as the Absolute, God, or The One, the primary source is traditionally alleged to be unified, undifferentiated, and unalterable.  If we assume this to be true, then it follows that the "first principle"—ultimate reality—is inversely related to actualized existence.  Ultimate reality can be defined as the primary state or mode in which there is no opposition—where "plus equals minus" and all otherness disappears.  I call this primary state Essence and treat it as the immutable Source from which experiential being is derived.

For the Essentialist, there must be a "clean break" between the unity of the uncreated source and the differentiated world of existence.  The specificity of conscious sensibilia, including the subjective values by which we judge them, are not identifiable with the primary source.  Essentialists also hold that any philosophy whose ontology is based on an existential attribute or property as opposed to a primary, undifferentiated essence cannot logically claim the metaphysical transcendence necessary for an immanent (not-other) Source.

Although the Hegelian idea that the fundamental division in human experience is between the conscious proprietary self and the objective world was refuted by the existentialists, it has always had its adherents.  One of them, the American pragmatist William James, observed in his Principles of Psychology: "One great splitting of the whole universe is made by each of us, and for each of us almost all of the interest attaches to one of the halves; but we all draw the line of division between them in a different place.  When I say that we call the two halves by the same names, and that these names are 'me' and 'not-me', respectively, it will at once be seen what I mean."  If we substitute value for James' "interest", we can see that the Self holds the greatest value for each of us.

Indeed, the proprietary self is the existential "value detector" and a collaborator in the creation process.  When we make experienced things part of our cognizance, we negate the self/other dichotomy that separates "us" from "them".  The essence of conscious awareness is not the finite things we experience but, rather, the value of that experience relative to the whole of reality.  We sense this value psycho-emotionally as an "affirmation" of its essential Source.  Epistemologically, we realize the relational values of "the other" in the process of discerning (intellectualizing) its existential properties.  In other words, we affirm the Value of Essence by converting being-other to being-aware.  And, while our well -being is enhanced by the relational value added in the experience of otherness, from a holistic perspective, nothing is "gained" or "lost" because what we are really sensing is our own value displaced in the dichotomy of actualized existence.

Just as the sentient creature is born into otherness by the negation of Essence, so is the Value of Essence born into sensibility by the creature's negation of beingness—the negation in both instances expressing the creative power of an otherness denied.  Man thus becomes the free agent in a differentiated, yet orderly and self-sustaining cosmos.  But all this would not be possible were it not for the separation of individual awareness from the beingness of its experienced objects.  And while the philosophers of modernism conspire to invalidate the self/other dichotomy, it resists all such reductionist efforts.

We live in a differentiated world of contrasts and polarities on many levels.  For many, existence is paradoxical and its origin inexplicable.  Only those who hold out for an uncreated, indivisible source will be rewarded for the wisdom of their insight.  Difference is the mode of cognizant awareness which makes value realizable.  When you understand that there can be no existence without a subject/object dichotomy—that attempts to "fuse" its parts into a unified whole won't work—you will begin to search for a primary cause that is not bound to the limits and transitions of finitude.  You may come to realize that such a transcendent Source is not an otherness like being, but the absolute Essence of actualized reality.

Once you have arrived at this level of understanding, you have intellectually moved beyond otherness and are on your way to becoming an Essentialist.

  --HP

 

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