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Creative Fidelity: the Study of Compassionate Consciousness in a Technological World

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Creative Fidelity: the Study of Compassionate Consciousness in a Technological World INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9406689 Creative fidelity: The study of compassionate consciousness in a technological world Ford, Chris, Ph.D. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1993 Copyright ©199S by Ford, Chris. All rights reserved. 300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 CREATIVE FIDELITY: THE STUDY OF COMPASSIONATE CONSCIOUSNESS IN A TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD by Chris Ford A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1993 Approved by \ / Dissertation Advisor ^ © 1993 by Chris Ford APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following conunittee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation Advisor //•X w- l f U Committee Members & Date/of2/fof Acc(Acceptance by Committee 5I- Datei-Nr of Finaltii Oral Examination 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE ii CHAPTER I. AN INQUIRY INTO THE CONCRETENESS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE 1 A Personal Introduction to Creative Fidelity 2 Philosophical Foundations Underlying Creative Fidelity . 13 Traditional Foundations of Consciousness 18 Foundations of Existential Consciousness 21 Foundations of Creative Fidelity 23 The Influence of Josiah Royce on Marcel 29 The Influence of William Hocking 36 Foundations of Embodied Consciousness 53 H. THE MEANING OF CREATIVE FIDELITY 62 The Purpose of Creative Fidelity 66 The Role of Receptivity in Just Relationship 76 Courage, Freedom, and Truth in Creative Fidelity 82 Marcel's Theater of Interiority 94 A Passion for the Existential Struggle 101 HI. CULTURAL HISTORICAL ROOTS OF EXISTENTIAL INFIDELITY 109 The Language of Prediction and Abstraction Ill The Metaphor of Disembodiment 114 The Particularity of Individual Experiencing 117 The Social Phenomenon of Consciousness 120 The Forgotten World of Feelings 126 The Texture of Invulnerability 131 The Recovery of a More Embodied Consciousness 138 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Page CHAPTER IV. THE HOPE OF LOVE IN THE BARREN LANDSCAPE OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE 151 Is There a Way Beyond Domination and Control? 154 Future Shock is Here 157 Anti-existential Forces 167 A Language of Hope 171 The Education of Being 178 The Creative Fidelity of Love 186 BIBLIOGRAPHY 190 iv FORD, CHRIS, Ph.D. Creative Fidelity: The Study of Compassionate Consciousness in a Technological World. (1993) Directed by Dr. Fritz Mengert. 195 pp. In the tradition of western philosophy often focused on in the perennial search for wisdom is the foundations of philosophy that have based ontology and epistemology on abstract systems of thought. In these systems, thought is considered in and of itself, not in terms of its interrelationship to feelings and actions. These traditions of philosophy, founded on abstraction rather than on the concreteness of human experiencing, rarely touch the meaning of the questions, dilemmas, joys of being human. A void ensues in our understanding which both shapes and continuously reinforces existence thought of as thinking separated from feeling, mind separated from body and soul, and knowledge separated from being. Throughout western philosophy, there have been thinkers who have resisted this thought that systematically divides and abstracts that about human experiencing which is interrelated and concrete. These phenomenological existential thinkers have sought and seek language that describes consciousness as the embodiment of mind, body, and soul and thus as the interplay between each of these dimensions. In this concept of embodied consciousness, thoughts are inextricably related to feelings, and thoughts and feelings to actions. In this sense, intellectual and ethical concerns are grounded in questions of meanings that are aesthetic and spiritual. This dissertation is an exploration of Gabriel Marcel's work, particularly his work about living in creative fidelity in terms of what it contributes to the phenomenological existential perspective of human meaning. The first chapter discusses the philosophical background of Marcel's work and how he extends the meanings of his philosophical education to seek to bridge the existential and spiritual dimensions of human experience. The second chapter explores the concrete texture of what it means to live in just relationships of creative fidelity. The third chapter examines different anthropological and cultural perspectives on why the human propensity to avoid meeting one another in relationships of meaning and existential truth. The fourth chapter explores the hope of finding compassion in a world of abstract technology, describing a language and concept of love that indicates creative fidelity. 1 CHAPTER I AN INQUIRY INTO THE CONCRETENESS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE 2 CHAPTER I AN INQUIRY INTO THE CONCRETENESS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE A Personal Introduction to Creative Fidelity Reflecting on why I have chosen in particular to write about the works of Gabriel Marcel, primarily on his concept of creative fidelity, I piece together moments, thoughts, and feelings that have brought me to graduate study in general. I was searching for people willing and able to help me address an "unthought known" that I held. This unthought known was a feeling that something was very wrong in my world and that these wrongs were not being addressed by me or anyone else. I met this feeling of "wrong-ness" in workplaces I was exposed to, through religion that seemed institutionalized beyond meaning, in troubled relationships between lovers, friends, family members, and in the tremendous social problems involving sickness, poverty, abandoned children, and domestic violence. I think even more poignant for me than the magnitude of these problems was the almost desperate need I felt for other human beings whom I could trust to affirm in my presence that "yes, something is very wrong" and who subsequently had the experience, knowledge, and wisdom to help me language the predominant problems and questions. Courage was a quality absented more than not in so many of the 3 lives I knew. I wanted to meet human beings in whom there was courage to admit, address, and live out questions relevant to human experiencing. To meet human beings who had not given up on participating in life in the justice-seeking or aesthetic or spiritual sense of participating was important to me. So many seemingly had given up their individual encounter with life to money, alcohol, drugs, or to escapist transcendental mantras such as "life is beautiful, really." Though I had not languaged it as such, I understood that meaning is constructed not solitarily but in communion with one another. I needed intellectual, spiritual companionship that was real, real meaning that the intent of these relationships would be to inquire into what was actually happening in the realms of our social, cultural, personal experience and out of shared insights to weave meaningful experiencing into our concrete lives. What was becoming apparent to me is that the actual dilemmas, challenges, and conflicts of human life are often unaddressed because we have allied our consciousness with the appearance side of the appearance/ reality dichotomy. We pretend that what appears to be is what is happening in human lives when in actuality something very different is going on. For example, we teach our children that America is a rich and generous nation, and yet we hide the actuality that many children are allowed to starve. Or children are told that a parent is asleep (actually is passed out) on the chair at 8:00 pm because she is tired when in fact she is drunk. 4 To consider the source of our affiliation with the appearance side of the dichotomy as epistemological, that we are limited to knowing only what appears to be because there is a limit to that which we can actually know, is to elevate this dichotomy to the realm of philosophy and to elevate it beyond the meanings that I am wishing to illuminate. Though there are important philosophical questions to raise about appearance and reality, as Kant did in his Critique of Pure Reason, the dichotomy I am struggling with here is not a result of philosophical tenets but rather seems to have evolved out of a need and desire to avoid embodied feeling life. This dichotomy stems less from the purity of philosophical concerns and more from a psycho-social affliction having to do with our tremendous fear of meeting our own feelings and those of one another. We must overcome this affliction, the fear of meeting human existence, before we can look to philosophical idealist explanations for the why of our limited knowledge of being.
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