From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Symbolics Schwartz, Michael

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century Volume 6 | Issue 6 Article 2 2018 Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Symbolics Schwartz, Michael Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal Part of the Clinical Psychology Commons, Cognition and Perception Commons, Cognitive Psychology Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, Other Life Sciences Commons, Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Philosophy Commons, Psychiatry and Psychology Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, Sociology of Religion Commons, and the Transpersonal Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Schwartz, Michael (2018) "Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Symbolics," CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century: Vol. 6 : Iss. 6 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals and Newsletters at Digital Commons @ CIIS. It has been accepted for inclusion in CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ CIIS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. : Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Sy Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Symbolics Michael Schwartz Augusta University Abstract: Critical theorists and social commentators agree that modernity and postmodernity suffer from historical pathologies of world disenchantment. What might be done? Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings on elemental practices, this paper investigates the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in generating a symbolics of the self, world, and other that is always already enchanted; an aesthetics of existence where the world itself shows forth like a work of art replete with exorbitant logics. Keywords: Sallis, phenomenology, disenchantment, enchantment, imagination, imaginal, art, po- etics, aesthetics of existence, Buddhism, Tibetan, elementals, element Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552 Published by Digital Commons @ CIIS, 2018 1 CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 6 [2018], Iss. 6, Art. 2 Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics (Dis)Enchantment Again In Bhaskar’s later non-dual philosophy of me- ta-reality, there are analyses of the collapse of Max Weber, early in the twentieth century, the semiotic triangle (signifier-signified- diagnosed what he termed world- referent) through the dissolving of the subject- disenchantment as due to modern rationalizing object divide, such that the world’s inherent processes: a thesis about the loss or displace- enchantment comes forth (Bhaskar, 2012). ment of meaning and value, which subsequent The present essay has elective affinities with philosophers and social theorists have re- this thesis, while making different philosophi- framed in various ways - as with Jürgen Ha- cal and spiritual emphases that allow for more bermas’s analysis of modern social systems of fine-tuned descriptions and analyses of en- money and administration that override and chanted living. “colonize” cultural lifeworlds of shared mean- Elemental Phenomenology ing and compelling life-narratives (Habermas, 1984 and 1987); where to be sure a wide range In two books – Force of the Imagination: The of critical thinkers touch on this diagnosis of Sense of the Elemental (2000) and Logic of modernity/postmodernity from complemen- the Imagination: the Expanse of the Elemental tary angles (Schwartz, 2010 and 2016). Yet a (2012) – John Sallis enacts a twisting free of Habermasian approach, for all its importance the metaphysical paradigmatics of the intelli- in our moment of fake news and post-validity gible and the sensible, into an immanent field in discourse, is in part caught within the ma- of the senses of sense, exploring in the first laise, through its leanings towards a one-sided study the conditions of the determination of discursive-centering of sense and significance, the self-showing thing (Schwartz, forthcom- flirting with an alienated form of conscious- ing). The upsurge of presence of the mere im- ness in which meaning is coming from the age, suspended between own and other, hence human side alone and no longer has a sense of “in-different,” is gathered into the more de- being “of” nature or the world. Roy Bhaskar’s terminate sense of a thing with the coming criticism of Habermas indeed centers on the forth of speech as logos. This dynamic deter- “irrealist” and anthropocentric character of minancy, against a background of the indeter- what is construed as the latter’s overly lan- minate, is intensified through three horizons – guage-oriented philosophy (Norrie, 2010). lateral, peripheral, and operational (and I would add, in part echoing remarks that Sallis What then might be a way out of this epochal himself has made, the systemic). The lateral leveling of values and pervasive disenchant- horizon is the unlimited store of profiles of the ment? In extending several previous papers on thing. The peripheral horizons are the visible phenomenologies of art and experience as surround and background to the focal thing. conditioned by social deformations (Schwartz, The operational horizon, in its instrumental 2010, 2015a, and 2016b), this essay explores a moment, is the network of equipment in line robust way of contemporary enchantment. with the analysis in Martin Heidegger’s 1927 Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of volume Being and Time. (The systemic hori- the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings zon is the patterned iterations of and amongst on elemental practices, we shall investigate the operational horizons, constituting system, the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in where the nexi of operational practices and generating a symbolics of the self, world, and systems are unable to be reduced to one another that is always already enchanted; invig- other without significant remainder.) All these orating an aesthetics of existence where the horizons, along with speech and the in- world itself shows forth like a work of art re- different image, are constitutive moments of plete with exorbitant logics. the thing’s self-showing. Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552 Page 2 https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/2 2 : Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Sy Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics The imagination, marginalized in the tradition, philosophy addresses); (2) those that are more comes forward as tractive, prior to subject and local or restrictive; and (3) those proper to object, like a gift of being itself, drawing the fantasy and the sensible. Schemata, unlike in horizons around the focal thing, the retention the Kantian view, become unhinged from and pretension of all the prior conditions or submersion in any kind of transcendental sub- moments, in a hovering of determinate self- jectivity, imagination characterized even more showing; thing-hood stretched within and strongly than in the first volume as non- against the indeterminate. And beyond the pe- subjective; a condition of any modality of ripheral and systemic horizons lie another what might be termed “subject.” constitutive factor of the thing’s self-showing: the elementals. As the elementals are the from Sallis expands the senses of the elementals in which of manifestation, encompassing hori- their encompassing. Not only are there natural zons and things as an unfathomable medium elementals such as earth, sky, tempests, and that in exceeding the things of nature, also be- fire, but there are extra natural elementals as longs to nature as hyper-natural. The elemen- well, where these distinctions hinge on the tals, unlike things, have no profiles; they do articulation of human finitude centered in the not reveal themselves the way things do, proper: the proper as one’s ownmostness. Sal- drawn as they are around the various horizons lis explores four proper elementals: the (1) by the tractive imagination. All elementals natural elements, (2) seclusion as sheltering lead back to two that are primary: earth and retreat, (3) birth, and (4) death. The natural sky. Earth shelters, supports, and withdraws, a elementals indefinitely exceed the human self-closing that resists disclosure. Sky opens while, but through absorption in our senses, as an absolute recession that grants expanse, a recoil back as constitutive of our being in the pure shining that enables light as condition of world. Seclusion is a depth that exceeds pres- the visible. Elementals and things intersect, ence without being a subjective interiority overlap,

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