Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity
A core aspect of an integral perspective is honoring and synthesizes the insights of premodern, modern, and postmodern strands of thought. Premodernity was characterized by a focus on subjectivity and a generalization of that subjectivity to the world. Hence, religious and spiritual experience was granted the status of objective, metaphysical truth. Modernity shifted the focus to objectivity. What was not deemed objectively verifiable was not real. Modernity thoroughly critiqued the premodern worldview. Lastly, postmodernity again shifted toward a focus on intersubjectivity. Both the subjective experiences of premodern spiritual traditions, and the objective experiences of modern science, were considered to be hopelessly embedded in sociocultural contexts that, for the subject in each of these modes, unconsciously determined what they were doing. Both science and spirituality were then social constructions that served only the functions of social power and interest.
A challenge for integral theory has been to take seriously the critiques of each phase of thought, while including the valid elements of the previous stage. As with any holons, these stages in the development of intellectual history are approached from the vantage point of transcend-and-include. Each successive or “higher” aspect of development both transcends and includes the previous one. Again, an imbalance in this bi-directionality between holons can lead to various dysfunctions and exaggerations. The modern scientific worldview that arose with the Enlightenment contained strands that still exist that basically say all of religion, and even philosophy, is bullshit. Likewise, postmodernity had its own way of saying that even science was bullshit. Part of these hardline critiques were true, however, since they were based upon perceived blindspots in the other forms or thought. Unfortunately, though, a lot of babies were thrown out with the bathwater, dirty as the latter may have been.
One promising way through the thicket here is Ken Wilber’s integral post-metaphysical philosophy. Based upon the AQAL model, which, among other things, posits a four-quadrant model including an individual-collective axis, and a subjective-objective axis, the post-metaphysics stance salvages interior, subjective experiences, while wedding them to exterior, material objects. Therefore, unlike the traditional premodern spiritual-philosophic hierarchies, which saw material as the bottom rung of the ladder of a cosmos filled with supernatural stuff (a view that modern, objective science has been trying to “naturalize” ever since), interior and exterior, and individual and collective, dimensions are seen as flip sides of the same coin.
The quadrants are irreducible to each other. But every holon (thing or process, has correlates in every quadrant. For example, take a spiritual experience that someone may have. It will have an individual-subjective aspect, described in phenomenological terms. It will have an individual-objective aspect, described in terms of the dynamical processes of neurophysiology. It will have a collective-subjective aspect, described in terms of the cultural context and worldview in which it is embedded. And it will have a collective-objective aspect, described in terms of the function within the social system.
Different intellectual communities and traditions have focused solely on certain aspects, and tried to reduce the others to their own. But from an integral perspective, all of these descriptions are necessary for a complete account of any holon.
