rui manuel grácio
das neves
nagpur
(india)
03.03.08-29.07.08.
“If
you can imagine it,
you
can achieve it.
If
you can dream it,
you
can become it”.
Today we hear everywhere, people talking about ‘Holism’. This also became
a new fashion!
So,
it is said that we must get a more holistic perspective at the Market, at the
Administration, at Politics, at Business, at Football or at Art. The word has
became very common, but is used in a less precise and analytical meaning. If the
use of the word is so imprecise, the challenge is that: “All is OK!”, and that
word is useful for almost all the things. All people accept it, but without much
comprehension of it. This can be the risk of these intellectual
fashions.
Nevertheless, this word can denote also something as a “wave of
thinking”, that is, as “signs of the times”, in relationship with
thinking-feeling-acting of the people in the world. It is becoming more and more
useful, because we have a parochialless, closeless, schematicless, less “narrow-minded”
“feeling”, in front of a Reality that we feel very complex, difficult and with a
lot of implications and scopes.
So,
it is becoming more widespread the “impression” that we must get at total
comprehension, less fragmentary, in the analysis of human and social problems,
studying them as an interrelated whole.
We
feel this second aspect more interesting and worthy of philosophical
consideration.
That
means that we must be very vigilant according to these “signs of the times”,
more of cognitive type, pretending to grasp these interests and their
background.
Actually, this is always the task of a good Philosophy: go to the ground
of the things, trying to understand “the ultimate” (although in this case and in
others, it results in a “philosophy of the penultimate”) that it is possible to
say about some specific questions. We are not interested in discussing about one
word, but about one style of thinking.
In
other words, we need to investigate the concrete epistemology beneath/behind
this “epistemological need” of searching for wholeness/ totality by human
thought. It is not the first time that it does so, and perhaps it is not the
last time, too. Human thought likes to reach to the depth and to say: “until
here we arrived” and “we cannot overcome the beyond”. And, once we arrived
there, to “the last”, and we cannot go further, we become happy analyzing,
deepening…, knowing, in one word.
I
can tell that all great philosophers, in the History of Philosophy, always found
“the last”, which he couldn’t (or did not like) to overcome. This “last” becomes
the principle of his thought, organizing them in an orderly
way.
For
instance, the concept of ‘life’ in Nietzsche, of ‘Idea’ in Plato, of Reality
conceived as ‘matter-form’ in Aristotle (or his famous ‘primary principles’), of
‘élan vital’ in Henri Bergson, or of ‘change’ in Heraclitus. All these deep
insights and thoughts when centered together, became the ‘foundation stone’ of
the architecture of their philosophical systems.
The
question for ‘totality’, either in thought, or in Reality (if Thought and
Reality are different “things”…) is a permanent question. Perhaps, it is the
question. Philosophers (and other thinkers) in answering it, articulate in
different ways in their systems.
If this
comes from a psychological need of human beings or not, is something that the
psychology of knowledge could analyse. Anyway, our attitude to this “last” could
be different: we can accept it, to reject it, or trying to go beyond. We can
remember here the famous words of Ernst Bloch: “Denken heißt
Überschreiten”
(“To Think is to overcome, to transcend”). This is the most original tendency in
dialectics. However, the question is if we can also go beyond the same
dialectics.
We
are in front of the goal for ‘wholeness’, something present in the contemporary
culture. This objective is, however, as old as the Humanity, that could be
formulated in different ways. The Holism is as old as the Humanity. But in the
actual times, this tendency is emerging strongly, because of different causes.
We need, therefore, a philosophical service today to mankind, studying and
investigating what we are saying under the term ‘Holism’.
First of all, what does it mean by the term ‘Holism’?
We
can think that Ecology, Music and Chess are ‘holistics’. But, what do we mean
with this word?
Provisionally, we understand by ‘Holism’: “A specific way of thinking
that stresses the priority of the whole over its ‘parts’”. We can also talk of
this like: “Some model (or paradigm) of investigation searching over all, for
the totalities and their relationships, more than what is specific to each
part”.
In
this last case, we don’t exclude any specific anylisis of the different “parts”,
but we need to integrate these parts in a more extensive analysis, more
integrative, of wholeness, where the different parts have a general meaning
understood like the Whole.
In
short, it is the Whole or the Totality that gives meaning to each of its parts.
That is, the parts are parts-of-a-whole, but they are not autonomous
parts. The parts configure the Whole. Obviously, we are engaged here in
interesting problems of language, that we shall try to analyse during this
investigation.
We
are in the presence of a thought belonging to centuries –even millenia- of
existence of Humanity. This thought without any doubt, expresses itself in the
way the human spirit thinks, feels, acts and lives since ages. It is a different
way to look at the Reality, different from what is esteemed as “normal” in
western cultures. Therefore comes our interest to penetrate into it and to grasp
its principal thesis, it’s strengths, and also it’s
weaknesses.
We
are engaged here in an investigation, and such investigation implies the need to
practice an “epistemological check up” of its solidity, foundation, safety, etc.
Perhaps, this could help humankind in these times of obscurity and incertitude.
In any case, that must be critically analysed, if we try to do correct
philosophy.
We
don’t try to set up another philosophical system on the banks of the
philosophically accused, but we try to search for its logic, rationality,
foundation, that is, its epistemological consistency. Perhaps we can thus give
something to today’s human beings. But this is other task, more sociological,
that we are not attempting here in detail.
Definitively, the “author” of this investigation is the Life itself,
because it teaches us a lot of things (with others, that we could not yet
learn…), an enormous set of interconnections, that begins from who created us,
genetically, our parents, until the cook, who prepares every day the meals, and
a lot of friends who had helped us during all this time, with their care,
interesting observations and also with radical criticisms.
Of
course, Life itself is not to be blamed for our ignorance, mistakes of
perception and of evaluation, of our ego-centric mind, using now terminology of
the Holism. But, with humility, we have tried to do our best.
Nagpur
(India)
09.07.08.
2. HOLISM IN WORLD
PHILOSOPHY
We
can mention here, in a certain chronological order, besides other things, the
following philosophers: the pre-Socratics (above all Pythagoras and his school),
“Plato”, the Cynic school, Stoicism, Philo of Alexandria, Epitectus, the Gnostic
schools, Origen (the theologian), Plotinus and his neo-platonic school, Hermes
Trimegistus, Gregory of Nysa, Proclus, Boethius, pseudo-Dionisyus the Areopagite
(Acts 17,34), John the Scot Erigena (or Eriugena), Alfarabi, Ibn Gebirol,
Algazel, the Victorines (Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor), Ibn Tufayl,
Gioacchino da Fiore, Bonaventure, Raymond Llull, Master Eckhart, Jan van
Ruysbroek, the anonymous author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, Nicholas of Cusa,
Leo Hebrew (Abrabanel Jehuda), Gian
Francesco Pico della Mirandola, Teophrastus Paracelsus, John of the Cross,
Giordano Bruno, Jakob Böhme, Angelus Silesius (Johann Scheffler), Baruch
Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, Karl Christian
Friedrich Krause, Arthur Schopenhauer, the American transcendentalists (over all
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau), Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead,
Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Heidegger, etc.
We
can also mention poets and writers like Yalal al-Din Rumi, Dante Alighieri,
William Blake, Walt Whitman, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fernando Pessoa, Nikos
Kazantzakis, Hermann Hesse, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Jorge Luis
Borges…
Or
psycologists like Carl G. Jung, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber,
Rubén Feldman González... and interestings schools like Gestalt or
Transpersonal Psychology. At the same time, neurologists like K. Pribram.
Physicists like David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, Michael Talbot, besides big
contributions to the question by the quantum physicists: N. Bohr, M. Planck, W.
Heisenberg, even the same A. Einstein…, etc.
Curiously, there is in the field of Administration a so-called “Holistic
Administration” and there is also a Holistic Medicine, working for millenia,
with incredible results.
It
is very probable that we forgot some important holistic persons. There are also
other authors, not so famous as the former ones. Not all in the list, of course,
are “clearly” holistic thinkers and some are only close by (almost
holistic). Nevertheless, all of them have meaningful aspects to contribute
to a holistic philosophy “in construction”. We study them with “positive
thinking”, in an open-minded spirit.
If
we add to all of these, some of the thinkers in the East, whose tendency was
more predominantly ‘Holistic’ than in the West, we would be surprised with the
big list of people that we can associate with Holism.
3.
BASIC THESIS OF HOLISM
3.1. They are the
following:
(1)
Reality
is a flowing Whole, dynamic and in permanent “activity” (“heraclitean
principle”). However, it also exists in ‘calmness’ and ‘quietude’ in other
“realms” of Reality (“parmenidean principle”).
(2)
Reality
is a unitarian totality. The Whole is One. “Parts” are always parts of a Whole. The Whole is more than the
addition of the parts. “The Whole is in the parts”.
(3)
All
is in relationship with all, in inter-connectivity or absolute
inter-relationship (‘ecological paradigm’: Gaia hypothesis-Lovelock). Nothing is
out of this total inter-relationship.
(4)
The
Macro is present in the micro
(‘hologramatic paradigm’). The unique difference between both is its
dimensionality. Macro-micro: one unique thing. “As in up, so in down” (“hermetic
principle”).
(5)
The
Whole is structured: because of its unity, it integrates the differences, which
are not suppressed. It is a “differentiated” Whole (Multiplicity and Diversity
are integrated in the Whole). Reality is a multidiversefying
totality.
(6)
Particular
identities or individualities are not substantials, but provisionals, flexibles,
interchangeables (‘physical paradigm of the “Shiva’s Dance”: F. Capra). They are
changeable and mutable identities. In phenomenal World, “nothing that ‘is’, all
changes” (“heraclitean principle”).
(7)
There
is no duality between subject and object: the observer is, at the same time, the
observed, and vice versa (‘quantum paradigm’). It puts an end to the
dualism between the epistemic and ontological. “Reality observes
itself”.
(8)
From
an episteme-ontological point of view, the Whole can be considered into a
phenomenal-noumenal way. ‘Phenomenally’ it is difference, multiplicity,
spaciality, temporality; ‘noumenally’ it is ‘one’. Holistic vision consists of
seeing both aspects interconnected (‘aristotelian principle’, but interpreted
holistically). Noumenon in phenomenon, simultaneously. And vice
versa.
(9)
Using
a Kantian schema, but in other episteme-ontological context, we can say that the
human mind (‘understanding’ in Kant), only can grasp (discursively) the
phenomena. To grasp the Whole in itself with its differences, the ‘noumenon’
with its ‘phenomena’, comprehensively, we need an intuitive and transcendental
act (a sort of ‘intuitive Reason’, paradoxically using Kant’s terminology, but
with other meaning).
(10)
This
intuitive act or original intuition of Reality is beyond (or behind) discursive
thought. It is a pure experience, original. It is paradoxical, unthinkable (in
logical categories, that work constantly in oppositions), incommunicable,
unspeakable in itself. Only it could be grasped in a simultaneous, spontaneous
and ruptural way, once for all (there is diversity in schools: the first ones,
more ‘rupturalists’ and the second ones, more ‘gradualists’). Anyway,
holistic experience is a synoptic vision of Reality. It is apophatic, but
experienceable (an ‘absolute experience’, viventia), in principle and for
all human beings.
3.2.
In a shorter and more schematic form, we can summarize these theses in the
following type, too (writing also their specifics paradigms, and, above all,
organizing the thesis):
(1)
Reality
is a ‘fluent’ Whole and ‘in repose’ (heraclitean-parmenidean
paradigm).
(2)
Reality
is a unitarian totality (paradigm of unity).
(3)
Reality
is a multidiverse totality (paradigm of diversity).
(4)
The
Whole is interrelated (ecological paradigm).
(5)
Identities
are flexible and provisional (paradigm of ‘Shiva’s
Dance’).
(6)
There
is not duality between subject and object in an absolute way (non-dualistic
paradigm).
(7)
The
Macro is present in the micro (holographic or hologramatic paradigm, and
hermetic paradigm).
(8)
The
Whole is phenomenally multiple and noumenally unitarian. ‘Holistic Experience’
consists of “seeing” noumenon in the phenomenon (Aristotelian
paradigm).
(9)
Holistic
Experience is transcendentally intuitive (intuitionistic
paradigm).
(10)
Holistic
Experience is synoptical (simultaneous) and apophatic (negative-paradoxical
paradigm).
3.3.
All these affirmations can be summarized in four (4):
(1)
Reality
is phenomenally dynamic, but with a noumenal ‘realm’ of ‘quietitude and repose’.
Both are mutually integrated and they are really “two faces of the same coin”.
(2)
Reality
is unitarian in the noumenal realm and multidiverse in the phenomenal
realm.
(3)
Reality
is “substantial”-relational (inter-related).
(4)
Reality
only can be essentially grasped in a transcendental, simultaneous and total
intuition.
3.4.
Finally, in a few theses (3), they could be, onto-epistemologically,
summarized:
(1)
Reality is multidiverseally a unitarian totality (unitarian noumenally,
multiple phenomenally), dynamic-static, inter-related.
(2) The
Whole is given in the parts, the Macro in the micro. In the last
expression, there is no duality subject-object and different identities are
relatives, flexibles and provisionals.
(3) The
HE (Holistic Experience) is intuitive (transcendentally speaking), synoptic
(simultaneous) and apophatic. The HE consists of living the noumena in the
phenomena.
“LET
US WALK
SOFTLY
ON THIS EARTH
WITH
ALL LIVING BEINGS”
[INDIAN-AMERICAN
BLESSING].