A Philosophy of the (Eco)Self
Rumi’s Mystical Experience: Faith and Knowledge, Theology, and Religion
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mohsen Ghasemi
The notions of faith and reason are two sources to approach religion. Faith is the mystical experience of God, and reason is its philosophical approach. The former is in sharp contrast with the latter. Any reasoning that tries to return us to mystical experience detaches us more from that moment. In fact, mystical experience is a secret moment when reasoning collapses and it remains enigmatic, yet reasoning itself is the moment of secret because its target is to control human thought, an experience of impossible for a deconstructionist because there is nothing as certainty in thought. My purpose is to study the description of mystical experience, by using Rumi’s, Iranian 13 Century Mystic poet, poetic experience of mysticism, and mention that such description is not theological (experience of God), but religious (reasonable description of mystical experience). The term “religious” is borrowed from Jacques Derrida because for him religion has two sources which are “the religion of cult… [and] moral religion which is interested in good conduct of life”. Such a concept leads us to a concept of “god” that has nothing to do with God. Reason remains a secret (not a transcendental meaning), but as an abysmal condition that leads to more reasoning. The contradiction, favourable to deconstruction, is the duality of the “faith” in God and the “knowledge” of God. Their existence is through their dependence on each other, yet none can help the other to arrive at a certain concept of understanding of God.
I Is that I Is: How Being Here is an Act of Bad Faith
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jason Mauro
If I am here in Vancouver to discuss Religion and Ecology, I have flown here from Florida. (I did not sail here, like Greta Thurnberg). I am here because I don’t yet really believe what I know to be true: not merely that I shouldn’t fly, but that there is really no place to go, and nothing to do. The very act of coming here is an act of bad faith, in the theological sense that I specifically derive from Kierkegaard, Whitman and Emerson. I think and act as though I am--despite what I know from their theological perspective. This I-am-ness is ecologically disastrous, the precondition that drew me here. This paper explores, through texts, images and audience exercises, how these proto-post humanist writers, Kierkegaard, Emerson and Whitman, conceive of the self in a way that counters the mythology that "I am." And by dismantling the grammar of "I am," they provide a framework toward a post-human ecology. As we currently identify the pronouns by which they prefer to be addressed, these writers encourage us to normalize an alternative form of the verb “to be,” to apply to ourselves. By the end of this paper, I wants “I is” to sound grammatical. I believe that these writers provide a framework which allows for that shift, without which our ecological efforts are bound to be self-defeating and contradictory. I hope that speaking here enables me to someday stay home, in my oikos.
The Concept of Self: Buddhist Perspective
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Indira Junghare
If one were to ask Buddha, “Who am I?” Buddha would have replied, “nothing” or “a bunch of changing molecules.” These simplistic responses seem to reflect the scientific string theory regarding the nature of existence, which states that life is energy strings in motion. However, being a pragmatist, Buddha was less interested in the scientific explanation of how human life formed, evolved, or arose, but he was more interested in life’s well-functioning. While scholars of the Upanishads focused on the permanency of the soul or inner mind (Atman), and its essential similarity with Absolute Reality (Brahman, Cosmic mind), Buddhists focused on the all-inclusive form of the self, i.e. person. Pali, the middle-Indic language of original Buddhism, helped transform Upanishadic (Sanskritic) idealism into realistic humanism, from seeing a person as a divine being to seeing a person as a human facing the challenging conditions of life, and seeking solely rational ways of solving human problems. The Buddhist analysis of the self as a person suffering in the context of changing times and dependency on others forced the Buddhist thinkers to provide a system of core ethics. In today’s world of diversity, every person is subjected to increased suffering as a result of violence, conflicts, oppression and exploitation stemming from biological and cultural differences. This paper examines the Buddhist view of a person as applied to solving modern conflicts related to gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity.
The Psychoanalysis of Earth
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Blanks
By “psychoanalysis” I intend here an inquiry into the collective unconscious that gave rise to our current thinking about the planet and its environment. In other words, by looking at the sources of the values and methods that underlie Enlightenment scientific thinking, a sort of religion in its own right, and one that clearly has its roots in Christianity, I hope to be able to bring to the surface and to examine the cultural metaphors that dominate our thinking today. The idea derives from the under-appreciated French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962). In 1938, at the age of 54, while a professor at Dijon, Bachelard published two books, La formation de l'esprit scientifique: contribution à une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective and La psychanalyse du feu. In these works he developed two concepts that are particularly useful to a psychoanalysis of earth: the epistemological obstacle and the epistemological break. (Thomas Kuhn would later pick up on the notion of epistemological break, which he called a “paradigm shift.”) The point is that an analysis of the scientific/religious discourse that has produced the schizophrenia towards the environment that our culture currently exhibits aims to help us find a more healthy, holistic, symbiotic, and integrated relationship with nature.
