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TRANSCULTURAL DIALOGUES ISSUE 03 • DECEMBER 2019 WINTER SOLSTICE Adrián Navigante Amanda Viana Valentina Barnabei Gioia Lussana Alain Daniélou Table of Contents 3 Adrián Navigante PHYSIS AND ANTIPHYSIS: RECONSIDERING RELATIONS BETWEEN HUMANS AND NON- HUMANS 13 Amanda Viana A PERSPECTIVIST APPROACH TO THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE AMAZONIAN FOREST 24 Valentina Barnabei YĀTRĀ VRTTĀNT: DIFFERENT PERCEPTIONS OF THE HIMALAYAN REGIONS IN THE TRAVEL NARRATIVES OF GAGAN GILL AND ANIL YĀDAV 32 Gioia Lussana YOGA IS LIFE. THE FLOWING COURSE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN KĀŚMĪRĪ ŚAIVISM 42 Alain Daniélou MANTRA: THE PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE AND MUSIC ACCORDING TO HINDU COSMOLOGY SECOND PART Adrián Navigante Director FIND Research and Intellectual Dialogue PHYSIS AND ANTIPHYSIS: RECONSIDERING RELATIONS BETWEEN HUMANS AND NON- HUMANS This text was composed as an introductory talk to the FIND Forum Transcultural Encounters 2019, in which the conceptual opposition physis and antiphysis was discussed from a transcultural point of view. It is now published with minor changes in order to emphasize FIND’s commitment to urgent and fundamental questions concerning ecology, but going way beyond the usual instrumentalist approach and tackling important philosophical, religious and spiritual problems behind it that point to a change of paradigm in today’s humanity. All photos belonging to this article are taken by the author. TRANSCULTURAL DIALOGUES EPIGRAPH: A VOICE FROM ELSEWHERE (WITHIN) Mes dessins donc reproduisent […] ces mondes de prodiges […] / où la Voie / est faite et ce qu’on / appelait le Grand Œuvre […] / car nous ne / sommes plus dans la chimie /mais dans la / nature / et je crois bien / que la / nature / va parler (Thus my drawings reproduce these worlds of wonders / where the Path / is traced as well as / what is called the Great Work / since we are no / longer in the field of chemistry / but in / nature / and I really believe / that nature / will speak) Antonin Artaud, 31 January 1948 With these verses, I would like to open a tion fed upon a profoundly artistic bent). In any possible perspective that is incommensurable case, this question does not concern the destiny to its context (meaning that, at the same time, of a single individual, but rather that of life it exists potentially in the context that rejects on this planet as a Life source, a planet whose it). After an unparalleled catastrophe (World mythological name (Gaia) was paradoxically War II) and in a pathetic state (after three years rescued by an English chemist, James Lovelock, at the psychiatric clinic of Rodez), Antonin and associated with the proliferation of new Artaud proclaims – with his “magic draw- forms of religiosity. Religiosity and religion. ings” – a reversal of things: chemistry, having The usage I make of the term relates to a global condemned as superstition any spiritual tech- crisis, since with the new-age phenomenon, nique concerning matter, known as “alchemy”, religion has become deranged. I would there- can preserve its power position only if the fore venture a provisional definition partially world adapts itself to a “unique” perspective linked to a controversial etymology: I would in which the elements are detached from their like to consider religion a system of techniques source (Nature). But Artaud tells us that, in (both in the sense of “individual techniques” reality, the world cannot be reduced to such a and “collective techniques”) to reconnect with decoding method. There is a path already traced, a source of Life going beyond human individ- a path that re-traces the steps and reshapes uality – which presupposes that the individual time against chronology to re-enact the powers has severed himself from that source. and latent forces from the abyss to which they were confined. “I really believe that nature will Physis and Anti-Physis: the Dispositive speak.” Artaud anticipates a crisis, the crisis of the blindness of the West, which has become Allow me to trace a figure of thought that will flagrant today, though not in the sense that at the same time introduce the story of the retrograde traditionalists believe. We could ask impasse of the European-Christian West and ourselves what his destiny would have been its reverse side, since it is at this point of inex- if he hadn’t been treated by Gaston Ferdière pressible fluctuation between the two that the (with his psychiatric reduction of energy to the transcultural exercise of FIND seeks dialogical brain, epitomized by electroshock), but by Tobie accomplishment. I begin with Martin Heide- Nathan (with his ethno-psychiatric amplifica- gger, whose obsession was to recapture the 4 03 / WINTER SOLSTICE original Greek modality of thinking prior of the Platonic division between the sensible to Plato’s metaphysical closure. To simplify and the intelligible (or supersensible) play matters: the metaphysical closure is a radical a decisive role in the history of the Christian division between the sensible (i.e. the domain religion and have essentially contributed to of world immanence) and the supersensible the configuration of Western thought. Physis, (i.e. the domain of transcendence with regard reduced to the domain of limited, imperfect to the limitations of the material world). This and perishable things, was placed on the side division can already be seen in the term “meta- of Evil by the religious thought of the Middle physics”, since the Greek phrase tà metà tà Ages. In modern thought, the situation has not physiká presupposes that “physical things”, that improved much. In his Critique of Pure Reason is, things related to nature, are limited and do (1781), Kant reduces nature to a set of objects not enable us to realise the truth of our being. the intelligibility of which depends on sensible According to Heidegger, one must restitute the intuition, framed in its turn by the coordinates 2 original meaning of the word physis, which of space and time . Even when Kant shows concerns being in its totality, that is, encom- a certain sensitivity towards the beauty of passing all events that make up what is called nature, for example in his Critique of Judgement “cosmic dynamics”1. Heidegger does not ignore (1790), he says that the products of nature are the etymology of the term, related to the notion not opus but only effectus, that is, not creative 3 of “growth” and “expansion”. Physis is there- work but only mechanical effect . The real fore an expansive and perpetual modification catastrophe comes with Hegel. In his Lectures of an originary power (arché) that knows no on the Philosophy of History (1837), he places exteriority. In the expression “metaphysics”, “nature” and “Spirit” in opposition. In the light there is a displacement and a transformation of this opposition, the whole transformational dynamics of nature appears as nothing but a of the idea of physis: it is fixed and reduced to blind mechanics of repetition – his sentence “physical things” (tà physiká), the limit of which ends with the Biblical phrase “nothing new also implies an exteriority – where the power under the sun” 4–, whereas he declares that the of origin is transferred. For this reason, Heide- essence of the Spirit is freedom. Hegel re-enacts gger’s critique of metaphysical thought is at herewith the Kantian opposition between the the same time a critique of epistemic thinking sphere of instincts (Natur) and the domain of (unable to think of being without objectifying reason (Vernunft) and at the same time couples it) and a clear shift of focus away from a reli- human reason with divine providence. Religion gion based on the idea of a transcendent God has nothing to do with nature, but with culture, who cannot be confused with His creation. that is, with the development of the Spirit. With But Heidegger does not only try to think such reflections, Hegel resumes the monothe- differently about (pure) being; he criticizes istic motif summarised in the Latin phrase a whole civilisation project, since the effects homo imago Dei and turns a philosophical truth Physis, reduced to the domain of limited, imperfect and perishable things, was placed on the side of evil in the Christian Middle Age. 5 TRANSCULTURAL DIALOGUES The Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, a place of symbolic condensation of the divine from fertility powers (vallis pinguendinum) to the radical transcendent god of ancient Israel and its subsequent incarnation in human agency. on universal history into the anthropocentric separation between the sensible and the super- dimension of biblical heritage: humans are the sensible5. centre of creation with nature at their disposal. The development of this figure of thought leads Physis, Antiphysis, Religion: some me to consider the term anti-physis. Although paradoxes this term has already been used by François There can be no meta-physics without a reduc- Rabelais with the meaning of something antag- tion of the domain of nature (physis as an onistic to nature, I prefer to emphasize the expansive, ordered and totalising dynamics) modern meaning of the term, which blossomed to something limited that needs an external in the avant-gardist arts of the XX century source to be completed and well-grounded. and in modern theories to indicate culture in In the context of monotheism, this source is radical opposition to nature. In this sense, anti- God, the one and only Creator of the universe physis points to the domain of subjectivity, that is, to the constructions and creations of the (which makes nature a mere ens creatum, that Spirit whose aim is its indefinite expansion (as is, it deprives it of all its intrinsic forces). In in Marxism, where physis means the domain secular modern thought, human beings are the of necessity as opposed to anti-physis as the depositary of the order of the Spirit (or culture), reign of freedom).

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