Overview
If science is still looking for a grand unified theory that will explain all of physical reality, then philosophy is also looking for a grand unified theory of everything. Is there such a theory that can include all known truths? Perhaps not yet, but the closest I have seen is Integral Philosophy. Ken WIlber is one of the main founders of Integral Philosophy and I have been very fortunate to study with him and interview him several times.
Integral Philosophy is the world’s first “world philosophy.” In many ways, philosophy stagnated in the Western world after Kant showed the limitations of reason. Shortly thereafter, Hegel tried to put into place another great system, but it failed to take hold. Ever since, philosophy has been split up among different schools.
The great questions that animated the Greeks have gone all too often unasked, for it was felt there were no answers. We have also seen many different ethical theories, such as deontology and utilitarianism. Is there some philosophy that can hold it all together?
Until recently, modern philosophy said there were no answers. With no answers, it seemed like a better idea to do something more practical and analyze language or develop logic. But something amazing is now happening.
However, everything in the last 50 years has changed because scholars now have access to science, women's philosophy, and Eastern Philosophy. Imagine what it would have been like to sit in on a conversation between Jesus, the Buddha and Plato?
Inclusive and Universal
One of the things that I specifically like about Integral Philosophy is that it includes so much. That is, Integral Philosophy starts off with the premise: “Everyone is right.” Please don't take that too literally. By that, Ken Wilber means that he does not think anyone is so clever or so stupid to be wrong about everything, all of the time. All of the great thinkers of the past have made contributions to the way we think about and understand our world.
Problems come from putting ourselves in the position of having to agree completely or, if not, then one must disregard everything. Wilber teaches that what is most important is to see how each philosophy from the past offers us a piece of the puzzle of the map of reality. No one piece is good enough, but no one piece is something to be thrown out either.
We need science, and we need psychology. We need the Western wisdom traditions, but we need Buddhism and the East as well. We need women and the insights of feminism. We need all of this and so much more yet to be discovered, because the universe we live in is an amazing place. When it comes to ethics, we especially need virtue ethics. When we are good and we have good ethical rules, we are in a great position from which to live an ethical life.
Throughout my years of teaching, students have often asked me what I am most interested in, what religion I am, where I am “coming from.” If I am anything at all (because I really dislike labeling myself or others), I am an Integral Philosopher. I see this as not just an intellectually satisfying answer to many questions we have looked at in this class, but also as a way of life, practice, and ethics. I find myself attracted to it for a number of reasons, but most practically, I like how it helps me understand other things so much better.
Democrats and Republicans
For example, take politics. Politics is so often seen in the light of either/or choices. Either the Republicans are right or the Democrats are right. But they both can’t be right. However, integral politics tries to see the essence of each political philosophy, and then see how they can work together.
Very simply, Republicans tend to stress the need for individual responsibility. And that is a good thing. We want people to be responsible for themselves. Democrats tend to put emphasis on social responsibility. And that, too, can be a good thing. We want governments and organizations that are responsible, caring and compassionate.
Both sides are needed. People need to be responsible and social groups need to help one another. An integral perspective would begin by seeing that either political party alone is not enough. Once you can do that, you can see that the problem will be to decide how to balance them out, rather than demonize and try to destroy the other.
Ethics and Psychology
Integral ethics works the same way. We get a much richer picture of life when we combine theories than when we try to make one theory carry all of the weight of ethics. For example, some ethics are based on doing whatever is best for the community, while other ethics places the problem on doing what is best for the individual.
Another quick example: An integral psychology does not need to decide between schools of psychology. Instead, it will show you that, one time, you might need a psychoanalytical approach to a problem. Another time you might need a behavioral approach. One time you might need individual therapy and another time you might need group therapy.
More Choices
In other words, an integral approach provides more choices. Integral Philosophy tries to include all truth thus far discovered, while remaining open to the fact that how we understand the universe we occupy will continue to be updated as we learn. Integral Philosophy is as inclusive as it is universal. And that makes a lot of sense to me.
Finally, it is not a dogmatic philosophy, but simply a framework into asking questions and exploring different ideas. By that I mean you don't have to buy into it as you might if you became an Existentialist. There are no specific beliefs. Instead it is a framework to view the world. It says it is better to know more than less. And it says you need to change and update your personal philosophy as new knowledge comes in.
Ken Wilber: Life
One of the things I like about Ken Wilber is that he is alive! Many of the people we have studied in this class have passed on. It is nice to have a philosopher who is alive. Wilber was born in 1949, and he lives in Colorado. I like that he writes in English, so there is not the same difficulty as working with a translation. I like the fact that he is relatively understandable.
I say “relatively” because he can be difficult. He is not a popularizer, but a philosopher’s philosopher. I am sure there will be others who will come along and start to interpret him for people who not familiar with philosophy. In fact, books are starting to come out doing just that. I don’t think Wilber is impossible to read or understand. He uses many good examples and a lot of humor, which I really like. He is a very funny guy.
Wilber is also a genius. He wrote his first groundbreaking book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, when he was only 23 years old. He has an enormous intelligence. He is a speed-reader and is able to recall almost everything he reads, which gives him access to an always-increasing amount of information. I have never met or heard of anyone so well read in so many different subjects.
In addition to his intellect he has a huge heart. It is that combo that makes him such an articulate proponent of the integral approach. There is a lack of balance in a major percentage of intellectuals. This lack of balance makes them unattractive and helps others to dismiss them. I think this is dangerous because ideas are powerful and we need to try to engage with the best ideas out there, not just for personal satisfaction, but to help us deal with the enormous amount of problems facing the human race today.
To understand his heart, I would suggest that the first book you read of his be Grace and Grit. It is about the loss of his wife to cancer, and is a very moving and personal story, an incredible love story, and a philosophical and spiritual journey all in one. It is simply one of the best books I have ever read.
Integral Philosophy
Integral Philosophy includes and honors all branches of knowledge and integrates various worldviews. Rather than simply give us another worldview, Integral Philosophy shows us how all worldviews known from the past fit together in a unified system. Integral Philosophy shows how a deeply spiritual perspective is compatible with a rigorous scientific approach.
No other great philosopher has had this kind of access to the great cultures and thoughts of the entire world. All of this, in the information age, when computers can store, compare, and select information at an astonishing rate.
Never have so many of the great teachers and philosophers been able to meet, discuss and share their work with each other. All of this is new, and all of it must be included if you are to have a world philosophy for the first time in history.
One of the things Wilber gives us in his understanding of Integral Philosophy is what he calls “orienting generalizations.”
It is very exciting that we are virtually the first generation living that can bring together such diverse fields. Can you imagine what Plato or Kant or Emerson would have given to have been able to access all of this knowledge? What would our great ethical theorists have thought and written about ethics if they had been able to combine such vast fields of knowledge?
There are many differences in these fields of thought, but they do agree on some basic principles. For example, not all schools of psychology agree on everything. There are some basic ideas related to topics, such as child development, in which they do agree. Integral Philosophy uses these agreements as its foundation.
Integral Philosophy gives scholars from different fields a language in which to talk to one another. “Wilber’s orienting generalizations provide a way to integrate the different fields. These generalizations provide a context for understanding everything. Wilber has emphasized the importance of context in determining meaning. When information is viewed in a larger context than previously used, the meaning is changed - enhanced” (Howard 2005, 6). Integral philosophy provides an enhanced view of reality because it includes so much.
States and Stages
There is too much to write about in one essay, so I will give you just a sample of basic integral ideas, to give you a feel for how these ideas work together. I will use primarily psychological examples, as psychology is a familiar subject for many students. I will start with “states and stages.” We all recognize different states of consciousness. For example, we can be awake or asleep: two different states of consciousness.
Notice, however, that states are not permanent. “There is an interesting thing about states of consciousness: they come and go. Even great peak experiences or altered states, no matter how profound, will come, stay a bit, then pass. No matter how wonderful their capacities, they are temporary. Where states of consciousness are temporary, stages of consciousness are permanent (Wilber 2007, 30).
"Stages represent the actual milestones of growth and development. Once you are at a stage, it is an enduring acquisition. For example, once a child develops through the linguistic stages of development, the child has permanent access to language. Language isn’t present one minute and gone the next. The same thing happens with other types of growth. Once you stably reach a stage of growth and development, you can access the qualities of that stage – such as greater consciousness, more embracing love, higher ethical callings, greater intelligence and awareness –virtually anytime you want. Passing states have been converted into permanent traits” (Wilber 2007, 31-32).
This is one reason why we can experience a state of compassion, but then later not act in a compassionate manner, when we are no longer feeling compassionate. Compassion is not yet a permanent trait, but the state of compassion is important because it gives us a taste of what to look for.
Wilber has left it to others to work out the details, but in the meantime, he uses the general agreement on states and stages to draw his map of reality. “There are all sorts of ways to slice and dice development, and therefore all sorts of stage conceptions. All of them can be useful. [For example,] Jean Gebser, the famous anthropologist, uses five: archaic, magic, mythic, rational, and integral” (Wilber 2007, 32).
In this diagram, Wilber tries to demonstrate that we all start at the bottom but with effort we can develop all the way to enlightenment, or as he likes to say like "from babyhood to Buddhahood."
Abraham Maslow, the famous psychologist, wrote about a hierarchy of needs we all share, starting with having our basic needs met and concluding with self-actualization. This is simply another model.
One of the things we notice in development is that things grow more complex. We think the universe, for example, began with very few chemical elements that eventually developed into all of the known elements (and we are still discovering more as time passes). In fact, before he died, Maslow added another top above self-actualization he titled Self-transcendence
“‘Stages of development’ are also referred to as ‘levels of development,’ the idea being that each stage represents a level of organization or a level of complexity. For example, in the sequence from atoms to molecules to cells to organisms, each of those stages of evolution involves a greater level of complexity” (Wilber 2007, 32-33). This is what makes each jump in complexity so beautiful, but also explains why things can be more difficult. The more complex things are, the more things can go wrong.
Ethical Stages of Growth
We have discussed in this class how people change ethically as they mature. A great deal of research has been done in this area. You can break moral development down into three simple stages. “We find that an infant at birth has not yet been socialized into the culture’s ethics and conventions; this is called the pre-conventional stage. It is also called egocentric, in that the infant’s awareness is largely self-absorbed" (Wilber 2007, 33).
"But as the young child begins to learn its culture’s rules and norms, it grows into the conventional stage of morals. This stage is also called ethnocentric, in that it centers on the child’s particular group, tribe, clan, or nation, and it therefore tends to exclude care for those not of one’s group. But at the next major stage of development, the post-conventional stage, the individual’s identity expands once again, this time to include a care and concern for all people’s, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed, which is why this stage is also called world-centric” (Wilber, p. 34).
Our actual growth through moral development can be broken down into many more levels depending on the need, but this works to show that often the problems between people, or even nations, are that people see the world in different ways from each other because they are at different stages of moral development.
These stages of moral development can be studied across the world. It seems that all people pass through similar stages, although there is no guarantee that everyone will get to the average stage of consciousness, and no stopping others from advancing further.
Cultural Growth
Using this stage model becomes an interesting way to look at not only individuals, but cultures as well. It also becomes a way of bringing more insight into discussions that normally get written off in a more simplistic fashion. For example, it seems that Freud took any language that used religion and called it pre-rational because he saw religion as an earlier stage. Partly to correct him, and partly due to his own perspective, Jung tended to take any language that used religion and see it as post-rational, referring to a stage that was past ordinary reason.
The problem is that we can study people and see that they go through a pre-rational stage to a rational stage to a post-rational stage. The major difference is that those in a post-rational stage have full access to rationality, while those in the pre-rational stage do not have access to rationality. This is a major difference that can be missed if all we see is that both groups are speaking in a non-rational manner. They have that in common, but do they have anything else in common? Probably not. They are very different, just as the world-centric and egocentric perspectives are very different even though both are not ethnocentric.
This knowledge of stages is only seen in its universal and integral perspective, now that we have access to all cultures and their systems of thought. We see that they may use different scales with different names, like measuring in feet or meters, but the stages are the same. It also helps us understand that a culture supports the growth of individuals to its collective level.
It helps people, through education and families, to reach the accepted level of development. It also tends to look with disapproval at those who want to go past the average level. We can see over and over again that ethnocentric cultures have a hard time with both egocentric individuals and world-centric individuals. For example, many people from Socrates to Martin Luther King have gone past the conventional understanding and then are often persecuted or even killed.
Example
[Your Name]
HUM 31
Dr. Glorian
[The Date]
1 Philosophy is not to attain information, but to use it in a transformative way
2 If we do not question everything, then what is the point of any of it?
3 Philosophy is less about searching for answers and more about being aware that answers may lie out there
4 Know yourself before you try to know anything else. Common phrase I have heard: “you must love yourself before you may start to feel love for others”
5 Humans are quick to jump to conclusions about why something has happened, placing blame when there is no fault at all
6 Philosophy can be important in forming one’s own beliefs, rather than adhering to the stories told by those before them
7 We also try to assess meaning where there may be none. A common mistake by all humans, especially in dreams.
8 If religion/science/ANYTHING has something to say then I am interested!
9 When it comes to the impossible question, we either assign no value to its answer or we accept an answer already provided.
10 Philosophers are similar to scientists in that they are also trying to figure out the vast complexities of the world and universe as we know it.
Addressing Bullet Point 7:
This specific bullet point stuck out to me because I often find myself falling victim to it without knowing that I’m doing so. Many times I will wake up from a dream, riding horseback underwater with a long-lost friend from middle school and think “Does this mean we will reunite soon?” Even though, clearly there is no rhyme or reason behind the dream. This is a fault that many humans fall victim to. The main outlet is for humans to look for answers in foundational stories already conceived, such as with religion. If something has happened out of the blue, one might think “Well that was God’s doing!” When in reality, it could have been that the tree fell over because its roots had been rotting for years prior. Now, I’m not saying that these events could not be influenced by said deities; however, there is more often than not a chance that something happened without a reason behind it, and we are the ones who are assigning reason to it. I am eager to keep reading on this topic and to explore just why humans have such a tendency to act this way, and to see whether or not having the “awareness” mentioned earlier in the module would help with such notions.
Addressing Bullet Point 8:
I really enjoy the concept of this bullet point and topic within the module, which essentially says that you can find knowledge and experience in essentially anything. This is called Integral Philosophy. Even if you are not necessarily a religious person, there is wisdom in studying and applying practices of that religion. If you deny scientific claims of global warming or vaccines (which come on, it's 2024), then you would still be able to find knowledge about the topic and various ways of applying it. Whenever I hear about philosophical claims, I always hear it followed up by counterarguments or reasons why it doesn’t apply to certain scenarios. However, integral philosophy is one that I think everyone should learn and accept. Which, in it of itself, is the core foundation of philosophy as it stands. There is so much wisdom at our fingertips, and we as a human race are quick to shut down information that we think doesn’t apply to ourselves or our interests. Although these pieces of wisdom, which do not concur with our prior beliefs, are arguably the most important in transforming our minds to a greater purpose. To seek truth wherever it may be, is a path in which we all should lead ourselves because at the end of the day, none of us truly know where that may lead us.