“In this Day the secrets of the earth are laid bare before the eyes of men. The pages of swiftly-appearing newspapers are indeed the mirror of the world. They reflect the deeds and the pursuits of divers peoples and kindreds. They both reflect them and make them known. They are a mirror endowed with hearing, sight and speech. This is an amazing and potent phenomenon. However, it behoveth the writers thereof to be purged from the promptings of evil passions and desires and to be attired with the raiment of justice and equity. They should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.” — Baha’u'llah, Tarzát #6

When I was in the Alps, I had a productive conversation with a young Italian student who is doing her doctoral work at the Sorbonne. She was curious about my opinion on the “faith and reason problem” as a “religious philosopher” (i.e., a philosopher who is religious and who thinks about religion). I was surprised by my answer.

I began talking about Husserl’s concept of the “epoché”, which may be understood as literally “to step back” and look not at the object but the way the object is given to us in experience. The concept was already on my mind as a way to describe God. What’s striking is that, even though Husserl was interested in the epoché as a philosophical tool or act, he described it as a “complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion” (The Crisis of European Sciences, 1970, Northwestern University Press, p. 137).

Since I’m not a Husserlian, I may be doing some damage to his thought here, but it’s my understanding that the entity doing the epoché — the who is taking the step back — he described as a “transcendental subject” (à la Kant). Maybe another way of describing it is that in order to take a step back, the philosopher must presume the position of a transcendental subject. Either way (and both could be true), this got me to thinking about Descartes’ radical skepticism. Briefly, Descartes had systematically doubted everything, even his own existence, in order to find at least one thing that actually does exist. In an epiphany, he realized that there must have been someone in the vast darkness beyond time and space who was actually doing the doubting — hence his legendary remark, “Cogito ergo sum“. No surprise that Husserl had entitled (one of his many) introductions to phenomenology, Cartesian Meditations.

However, in my eyes, Descartes made a critical mistake: he assumed that this discovered cogito was his own, when all he had actually managed to confirm was that there was a cogito somewhere out there (beyond “where” and “there”, of course). This intuition crept up on me as far back as my freshman year of philosophical studies, although at the time I had difficulty describing it. At first I thought that Descartes was shying away from what I used to call “the innate deification of his own logic”, but what I now realize is that what I wanted to say is: the cogito is God. Whether we want to compare my claim here to late Medieval Nominalism or Islamic Occasionalism, Descartes’ immense Doubter is the source of all “existents” in the sense that they are all Its hallucinations — including, by the way, that meager, finite hallucination which once called itself “Descartes”.

And therein lies the connection between, as it were, philosophical method and religious method, namely, that both are taking a step back via the presumption of a transcendental subject. Where Descartes tried to claim it and individuate it, Husserl apparently had an inkling of what it really was — hence his remark that the epoché is akin to a religious conversion. This would mean that at the very heart of philosophy is something profoundly religious, not that philosophy as a discipline and discourse can be reduced to, as it were, theology sans an explicit theo, but that it is fundamentally spiritual in a manner perhaps analogous to what may be the inevitable methdological-ontological intersection between scientific method and religious method.

Needless to say, I was impressed by this reasoning at the time (although I don’t know how original it may or may not be in the history of philosophy); my young colleague was not convinced, but she was also struck, so my Cartesian ego can give itself a little thumbs up. But now, here I am, a few weeks later, sitting in Leuven and pondering about it (when I really should be preparing for my “Media Ethics” exam tomorrow!) in light of a project my friend Ben Schewel is working on concerning insights gleanable from the praxis of the Baha’i community for the larger question of religion, science, and Modernity. Since Ben’s project is very much at the beginning stages, I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet, except to say that what they have in mind is damn good stuff.

Although I have the ambition to be a great philosopher, the truth may end up being that I just don’t have what it takes — certainly not when I look at Ben. So, I’ve been trying to figure out something that I could actually do, some contribution I could actually make, and for better or for worse, maybe it’s in journalism. Again, I’m not actually especially good as a journalist, since most of my career has been as an editor, and moreover, I’ve been working on the fringes or avant garde of contemporary journalism in the arenas of digital pluralism, “scientific leaking”, radical subjectivism, etc. But, you know, my Cartesian ego’s got to try something “to make a mark”.

One of the ways that makes me “fringe”, at least in the West, is that I’m religious, as in my experience, the overwhelming majority of Western journalists are at best agnostic. The difference is all the more striking working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, since many of the Muslim journalists on the staff are very devout while their American and Russian colleagues are frequently died-in-the-wool atheists. Now, as a student of Charles Taylor and Marcel Gauchet, I’m actually not surprised by this difference, as I believe that deep down inside, whether they know it or not, the structure of my Western colleagues’ ideals is actually very Christian, if secularized so much that they can’t see it anymore. Yet, the historical-sociological aspect is only part of the story; I want to do what Ben’s doing for religion and science, namely, applying the insights of the Baha’i Faith. So, here goes:

The Baha’i approach to historical and social phenomena tends to be very Modern(ist) in the sense of getting to the universal essence of things. This is most evidenced in our doctrine about the prophets of old, namely, that They have all actually been Manifestations of the same Divine Reality, culturally contextualized but the innermost truths of Whom have been gradually unfolding over the course of time until Baha’u'llah (and shall continue to unfold after Him into the future). When this kind of reasoning is applied to journalism as an historical or social phenomena — and mind you, a lived phenomena, right now — what I think it shows is that there is a deep skepticism that comes naturally to the profession, one that cannot be said to just be specifically emergent from this or that religion or historical period (even if, as Habermas has pointed out, it is distinctly Modern).

Moreover, that so many of my Muslim colleagues are critical of Islam, i.e., in terms of its political and social practices as a community, and they do so while still being completely devout, citing the authority of no less a personage than the Prophet Muhammad Himself to legitimate their stance, indicates something very, very important about the true nature of this skeptical instinct — perhaps, for me, it’s the key hint. What it tells me is that journalists are in fact a breed of philosopher as understood by Husserl, wielding the epoché like an axe in the wilderness of the world. The differences between them are merely apparent and the result of the differences between the media and academic industries. In fact, the philosopher’s focus upon the structure and meaning of the mind and the journalist’s focus upon the structure and meaning of information is tantamount to the same thing. Moreover, their concerns for accuracy and insight as a means of enlightenment, transformation, and justice are in fact resonant, if not the same.

Thus, if journalists are actually a breed of philosopher, then that would mean that at the very core of journalistic method is a profound religious sensibility. The journalist’s commitment to The Truth, The Fact, The Voice of the People, and so forth, is actually a commitment to God. Perhaps, if there is a substantive difference between the philosopher and the journalist, it is that while the former is seeking the manifestation and realization of the Divine Presence within the individual mind, the latter is seeking it in collective consciousness, i.e., society, government, public opinion, etc. — but then a figure like Socrates would call even that distinction into doubt.

Hmmmm I suppose what I want to argue for, then, is what might be called transcendental journalism. It’s certainly a snazzy way to put it, but it also describes my point very well. There’s just one problem: authority. There’s a potential paradox in this religious approach to journalism, especially as a Baha’i. On the one hand, the transcendental journalist roots himself in Divine Reality as the position from which he can examine events, assertions, etc. — in other words, he or she is a kind of anarchist, obeying no authority save the Lord’s — but on the other hand, that Divine Reality, via Its Manifestations, has identified or appointed channels for Its authority in this life: for Catholic Christians, the Church; for Protestants, the assemblage of believers; for Muslims, the ulema; for Baha’is, the Universal House of Justice; and so on. What, then, should the journalist’s stance be toward these institutions?

Judging from experience, many of my colleagues almost certainly would opt for a Tolstoy approach, i.e., The Kingdom of God is Within You — indeed, that’s pretty much their approach already. The really radical ones among them might even go down the path of Bakunin, arguing that God demands His own renunciation (resulting in a kind of intoxicating infinite loop of submission and rebellion). And I must confess, there is a strong allure to both approaches, if for nothing else than their sheer spiritual energy and logical coherence. Yet, they also seem somehow to be the epoché instinct gone a bit too astray, seduced indeed by its own logic — in a sense, the cry of the Divine within the journalist actually can lead him or her away from the Divine, a scary idea for sure. My intuition suggests that the problem may lie in the emphasis on doubt and criticism and a de-emphasis on belief and construction, but at present I don’t yet know how to philosophically articulate that in the same way that I did for the former. Maybe that should be my project?

[The photos above are, in order: the room in which the Bab declared His Mission, the pen used by Baha'u'llah, and the cover image from Nabil's chronicle, The Dawn-Breakers. If you're curious to read an earlier reflection of mine concerning the spirituality of journalism, check out: The Journalistic Doors of Perception.]

This blog has been quiet for almost a month, first because I was happily secluded in the Alps for the better part of two weeks, and then because it’s examination season here in Leuven. Not only exams, but also PhD applications, grant applications (for neweurasia), and budget paperwork are all due this month. I’m somewhat frayed at the edges at the moment, as there’s not enough me (and what there is, isn’t especially great at time management).

Nevertheless, I would like to share something I have worked hard on these last few weeks for my “Media Ethics” course. Admittedly, it’s an academic Frankenstein’s monster: a paper entitled, “Totemism and Panopticon” (click on the link to read a pdf version), that fuses Foucault, Durkheim, and an immanent critique of Assange’s now well-known essay, “Conspiracy as Governance”, to explore the conflict between WikiLeaks and the United States under the Obama Administration. My use of Durkheim is key, as fundamentally I am proposing a spiritual and identity dimension to the debacle. Here’s my conclusion:

WikiLeaks as a reverse, grassroots panopticon with a peculiar ratio of liberal and democratic beliefs, a murky conception of the publics at stake in its Bolshevik-like endeavor to mobilize and transform the world, and an ambivalance between a Kantian and utilitarian understanding of the proverbial leak has collided headlong with the full totemistic power of the American national self as embodied in national security and the soldier, prompting in turn an equally Kantian response in terms of secrecy. This response is perhaps evidenced by the dogged manner in which the Obama Administration is pursuing legal action against Manning and Assange, the latter under the Espionage Act of 1917, a federal law which, as I understand it, has in mind the concept of leaking toward a specific enemy in officially declared wartime, not a general mass during what is still formally peace time (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never receiving formal Congressional declarations), even if that leaking occurred for journalistic-activistic-historical (much less contre panoptic) purposes. Even more remarkable — and all the more telling of the totemistic crisis at stake — was when United States Senator Joseph Lieberman expressed his confusion/disappointment on Fox News that Assange [had not yet been] tried for treason a sentiment echoed by several other pundits on the station, even though he is not a United States citizen.

My interests in monopsychism and panpsychism also extend to the notions of “mass consciousness” and “public opinion”, hence why I thought using Durkheim would be at least interesting, hopefully a bit funky and creative. The goal in the paper is to get a fix on the public ethos that Assange et al have engendered, specifically in my homeland. By the Greek term “ethos” I mean something akin to the English notions of character, disposition, and fundamental values. With respect to WikiLeaks — specifically WikiLeaks as its own variety of mass media (by dint of it being a digital entity) and as a response to and element of the broader mediascape of today — I also mean ethos along the lines of how the Greeks used the term to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer’s emotions, behaviors, and even morals.

Besides trying to find an interesting new angle to the issue, I also felt duty-bound as a Baha’i journalist to get a fix on what WikiLeaks means for me. Assange et al are a moral confrontation right at the intersection between my religiosity and my professional work. The philosopher, in an essay such as this, tries to sort out the resultant mess – although the philosopher is also torn, between Hegelian and Gandhian instincts.

Much to my pleasant surprise, I’m in Milan again for Christmas, visiting my good friend Luca. It was a much longer journey here than last year, though, what with the massive general strike in Belgium coupled with an ungodly early flight, but it has been worth it, because immediately upon arriving Luca and I launched into a conversation concerning his views of what first philosophy should be, i.e., in Kantian terms, focus upon the conditions of the possibility for knowledge, and moreover, as a holistic action that does not have praxis, much less activism as its primary goal. The key concept here is Husserl’s epoché, which struck me as a theoretical tool that has vast applicability for religion.

So, here I am, in a library in Milan thinking over this while waiting for Luca to wrap up an essay for his PhD. Once more there is a feeling of fate, purposiveness, necessity. By accident, I happen to be facing the science fiction section (I just learned an Italian neologism: fantascienza), and what do they have prominently displayed there? Copies of Asimov’s Robot Series, Herbert’s Dune Series, and Lem’s Solaris, novels that speak to some of my core interests. Herbert and Lem especially leap out at me because of the difficulties I’ve been having with my would-be Lovelock paper: my professors, although they don’t want to discourage me, have doubts and misgivings about the project, and I’ve been wondering whether I shouldn’t just give it up for something more “easy” and “concrete”, say, the recent incidents in Zhanaozen and the complexities of trying to ascribe “exploitation” in a neo-patrimonial system like Kazakhstan’s. Perhaps the universe is saying with respect to Lovelock: go for it anyway; try, if not Gaia, then something about Nature. But seeing these books also makes me feel that I am somehow supposed to be here in Milan.

I want to try right now to link together several things that have been on my mind these past few months, but there are too many copper ball strands; it’s extremely difficult to see how they wind together as a single ball, and perhaps this is decidely praxis-oriented (or maybe I’m just being surprisingly Husserlian?) So, for what it’s worth, here is my thought process, in raw, literal, unprocessed form (and for those familiar with HTML, they’ll hopefully get the double entrendre implicit here in the way I’m using the blockquote function as a way to “bracket” my internal dialogue, thereby holding it up for analysis, inspection and reflection as though it were a diamond under a lamp):

Taylor: “Sorry Chris, Averroes’ conjunctions are knowledge”; the monopsyche is not “literally” a separate dimension. He’s both right and wrong. It is not some secularism veiled in Aristotelian terminology à la Renan, and yet we also needn’t reach for anything; we need merely to step back, even away from metaphysics, and enter into theoria (we mustn’t reduce theoria to metaphysics, Prof. Taylor), the true shariah of the philosopher, truer than metaphysics. We are already conjoined. (Was *this* what Averroes and my grandparents had been really saying: deconstruction…?) + Desmond: metaxu as passio essendi as prime being as Schellingian ground or Dostoevskian subterrain = not a separate dimension; so close, we could almost lick it. + Khidr: discovery is learning how to read what’s always been in front of us + Luca: to always question is the truest first philosophy; to even question questioning: what are our theoretical intentions? –> Socratic/Foucaltian deconstruction is productive, is active (cf. Gandhi’s non-action principle as a potent political act, or consider how Desmond does it: to deconstruct is to not philosophize, it is to step back, and in doing so, is to somehow also proscribe); Socrates’ daemon led him to deconstruct, but in turn, that led him to being a citizen = theoria somehow leads to a praxis, even though praxis is not the goal (Plato’s man in the cave seeks the sun, but after finding it, must return whence he came); theoria as contemplation, i.e., Husserl: epoché as “suspension”/”bracket”, literally “to step back” and look not at the object but the way the object is given to us, which apparently he said was like a (religious) conversion, or when I deconstructed the Qur’an for my first Master’s thesis, leading me to the Bab’s own deconstructions — placing all of Islam into a bracket, so to speak — leading me to Baha’u'llah’s reconstructions = stepping back, to be out of the world while still in it: theoria is its own praxis, the doing of deconstruction is a doing, even if doing is not its principal aim.

What is the connection between this renunciation and Astrid’s ocean? Is it not only some kind of prime being equivalent to the Divine Manifestation and the created cosmos, as perhaps described in Baha’u'llah’s Tablet of the Uncompounded Reality (Lawh Basít al-Haqíqa)? “Prime being” is also a description; the ocean is also a visualization. — I just “saw” a darkness, intense, sent a chill up my neck into the back of my skull. Khidr is smiling. Monopsyche equivalent to the uppermost celestial sphere, the most intimate of the Prime Mover, but the Prime Mover is not God, only Her revealed face. “Prime Mover”, much less “God”, is also a description, i.e., of the way in which God is given to us. Is theoria the attempt to connect with that which cannot be connected? No, theoria is realizing that we are already there; there is no need to “attempt”, there is no need for will, only the slightest bit, to see what we already see, to see what we already cannot and can never see, to decide to understand givenness and not the given = the sun shining above the ocean? –> This isn’t what I signed up for; I wanted to be a man of action, not passivity. Come on Chris, you’re more courageous than that; keep going. –> Detachment from all things save God; detachment from God –> God as negation, God as beyond negation, God as not God, God as nothing, God as bracketed, God as bracket, yes, God as epoché: “I form light and create darkness” (Isaiah 45:7). Hence the impossibility of being a being within the precincts of the Divine Court, hence God as object of all knowledge and yet unknowable, hence God as the dim, cavernous, void-like center and underground of all existence, hence God as only the metaxu in Her Averroistic/Spinozan face but ultimately not the metaxu, either, hence God, hence God…

Word in the Belgian press is that the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven shall be Katholieke no more — well, somewhat.

Although it’s still to be decided this week, officially, our Dutch name shall be “KU Leuven”, with the “K” no longer signifying anything (humorously, university officials like to emphasize that we shall also no longer be “K.U. Leuven”, either). Apparently, our English name shall be “The University of Leuven — KU Leuven” or “The University of Leuven (KU Leuven)”. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of letterhead, website design, curriculum vitaes, etc.

This decision is part of the ongoing mixture of market- and identity-politics here in Belgium. It has been presaged by earlier identity problems (or continuities, depending on your view): previously, we were the Studium Generale Lovaniense (from our founding in 1425 to 1797), the Université d’État de Louvain (until the 1830s, with a brief closure during the Napoleonic regime), then the Université Catholique de Louvain/Universitas Catholica Lovaniensis until the political crisis of 1968 resulted in two universities with the same charter: the Flemish-Dutch Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in historical Leuven, and the Université Catholique de Louvain in the purpose-built town of Louvain-la-Neuve in southern Francophonic Belgium.

The latest change has been justified along two lines: first, that the Catholic Church is interfering with stem cell research (apparently, the change shall also entail removing the archbishop as chairman, leaving him as chancellor); and second, that the “Katholieke” adjective hurts our reputation in the United States, as it supposedly gives the wrong impression of us, i.e., that in order to have a degree from here means one must subscribe to the Catholic faith. Proponents for the change also argue that the university is becoming more and more pluralistic (that remains to be seen in some faculties, but as an official intention this is true).

You can immediately see some of the ideological fault-lines opening up: Secularists among the professoriate and students don’t see the change as either sincere or thorough enough, as we shall remain Catholic “in values” and constitutionally, but now with a thin veneer of secularism to hide that fact from prying eyes. They contend this is another example of a “Belgian solution”, i.e., no solution at all, just postponing the inevitable. Believers, however, wonder why is the university not only hiding its identity, but drifting away from its values? How much longer before it drops the “K” altogether, and what should they do if Rome revokes the papal imprimatur, thereby rendering the charter null and void? In the meantime, do we risk giving the impression to the outside world that we are somehow ashamed of being Catholic?

There are practical problems, too. For instance, the huge Theology faculty (formally, “Theology and Religious Studies”) is really in trouble, because either they get with the new program and take seriously the sociological aspect of their official name, or they risk losing their raison d’être (I imagine that their chair of Canon Law is almost certainly extinct once the current occupant retires).

People like me are left wondering how so many “Leuvens” and “Louvains” floating around out there in the outside world will effect us when it comes time to find jobs (“Which university are you from? They’re actually the same university but different town?s What?”). Certainly, losing the “Katholieke” adjective makes my own life easier when looking for jobs in the Islamic world, but it doesn’t seem to matter in Europe. I also wonder whether it’s a straw man: I’ve personally experienced confusion among older North Americans as to which town I’m physically in, since they’ve never heard of “Leuven” — indeed, even some of my older Flemish professors refer to us as “Louvain” when speaking English! The “Catholic” issue hasn’t ever come up.

Moreover, previously us philosophers — for whom professionally the issue of ideology and values can be the make or break when applying for a job — could at least expect relatively decent employment in the Catholic university system; now, if we’re shifting to something seemingly secular, we’ll have to compete with the secular American schools on their own terms, and it’s questionable whether we really have the capability to do so (better to be a big fish in a small pond, and then again, the Catholic pond ain’t so small, either…) Also keep in mind that Leuven as a place is known because of this university (and yes, Stella Artois); we’re not Milan, Brussels, Ghent, Berlin, etc. We’re seen as an “old” school with “traditions”.

Nevertheless, I can appreciate the dilemma faced by the university administration: to completely secularize would risk losing our charter and hence our status as one of the world’s oldest continually operating institutions of higher education (the Napoleonic interlude notwithstanding, even if structurally the university that emerged was very different from the one before). If this did happen, then paradoxically, Louvain-la-Neuve would retain that title — even thought it’s an entirely different physical location. At the same time, however, the university (or at least many among its professors, students, and administrators) aspire to be “Modern” in the sense of liberal-pluralistic, globalized, and to some extent letting science lead in terms of values. That’s also why we’re slowly Anglicizing (another controversial point, since we’re supposed to be a Flemish institution). Evidently, they seem to feel that Vatican II does not seem to sufficiently provide an ideological framework by which they can be both Catholic and Modern…

What do you think? Leave a comment below and/or vote.

I first learned about the shooting in Liège from my friends at Demotix, who sms’d me looking for a photographer on the scene (Leuven should be no more than a half hour drive to Liège, although I’m constrained to sing trains, which during the mid-day means having to take a detour via Brussels). What quickly unfolded was a terrible story, the full nature of which remains to be deciphered but the general similarities of which — conceptually, technologically, and ethically — to the tragedy in Norway are disturbing.

Consequently, just as I did then, I want to offer a prayer, but not just one of mourning — although it is that — nor of solidarity — for it is certainly that, as well — but also of philosophical opposition:

“O My Servant! Thou art even as a finely tempered sword concealed in the darkness of its sheath and its value hidden from the artificer’s knowledge. Wherefore come forth from the sheath of self and desire that thy worth may be made resplendent and manifest unto all the world.” — Baha’u'llah, Hidden Words, Persian #72

This has been a very odd semester, to say the least. Having turned 30, I’ve somehow become antsy; I find myself, for instance, more and more subject to the urge to write fiction, i.e., to “finally get going again” with my childhood passion (and my organization, NewEurasia, may also be taking an arts-cultural turn in its coverage during 2012-13). In terms of the intellectual themes predominating my academic life, I’m starting to move away from strictly Islamological issues and into other terrains that have long interested me, particularly the democratic/liberal theory and environmentalism.

Studying liberalism, of course, intersects with my journalistic work, so it shall come as no surprise to my readers that I’m looking into the phenomenon of “managed democracy” in contemporary Russia and Kazakhstan, and that I shall probably be approaching the topic from the perspective of Claude Lefort. It also feeds into my interests as a member of the Baha’i Faith, namely, whether global democracy is possible, indeed, whether there can be a global understanding of what it means to be “human”.

As for environmentalism, believe it or not, this actually emerges from my background in Averroism, and no, I don’t mean by way of Spinoza; again, it is by way of my childhood resources.

Child psychologists have observed an intriguing phenomenon among children, namely, that they have the impression that things or objects have personalities and subjectivities, but that eventually we grow out of this and come to see the world around us as (largely) inert and plastic. Of course, interpreting psychological development this way is probably very culturally encoded, even if it is generally true that the capacity to instrumentalize one’s environment does seem to be a marker of maturation (so, it might be more accurate to say that psychological development in Modernity entails objectifying the world, whereas in previous eras it simply entailed making use of it…)

Yet, I somehow never lost this impression. When I look at a spoon, a violin, a tree, a rock, even the stars, I have the distinct impression that they are looking back. Although I’ve had this feeling all of my life, I only became really conscious of it since coming to Belgium, as I think something about the process of cultural dislocation somehow heightened my sensitivity to my own internal sensations (a phenomenon among expatriates that’s been noticed by psychologists), and so I’ve been sort of letting it guide my thinking a bit these last few years (if you go back and read some of my poems and posts, you can sniff it).

Consequently, my interest in Averroistic monopsychism inevitably extended beyond human beings in application to the physical world around me: is the environment somehow thinking? Does it have agency? Does it have subjectivity? As Cartesians, we are constantly tempted to think of subjectivity in terms of thought — after all, cogito ergo sum — but can we really say with certainty that even something as seemingly inert as a rock isn’t thinking, perhaps just one thought, articulated in the very alien language of the intercourse between its mineral composition, shape, density, mass and the forces of erosion placed upon it, a thought occurring over the course of an aeon?

My turn toward environmentalism has other sources, of course, from my interest in evolution and the purpose of the physical to my background as a Boy Scout to even the work I’m doing in Central Asia. I must also confess, there’s not a little bit of a compensatory need to regain the balance viz. all the time I spend in the digital world, i.e., in front of a machine, concerned with the petty Nietszcheanisms of my career and the human universe. Finally, I’ve always been moved and intrigued by come passages in the Qu’ran that imply a degree of subjectivity, free wil and social organization beyond the human but viz. our species:

“There is not an animal on earth, nor a bird that flies on its wings, but they are communities like you” (Qur’an 6:38).

“Do you not realise that everything in the heavens and earth prostrates/submits to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals?” (Qur’an 22:18).

“We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but Man undertook it — he was indeed unjust and foolish” (Qur’an 33:72).

So, you can begin to see how these interests are intersecting: if things can have subjectivity and perhaps agency, then can they also be exploited? Does the world around us have rights?

I want to explore this in one of my MPhil courses this year, entitled “Ethics and Public Policy” and conducted by three academics here in Belgium: Philippe Van Parijs, Antoon Vandevelde, and Nicholas Vrousalis. My paper question is this:

“Does the planet earth as defined in James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis possess any intrinsic rights, and if so, does human activity therefore constitute an exploitative violation of these rights?”

I’m choosing to focus on the controversial Lovelock because he seems to offer the most ready, as it were, point of attack/investigation. Just as Lovelock tests the limits of the Darwinian concept of evolution by applying it to such a massive scale, I wish to do the same to the Lockean concept of natural rights.

However, this is obviously a huge question I’m pursuing — and I have only 7000 words in which to do it. So, I’d like to know the thoughts of my readers. Click here to read what is essentially my abstract cum introduction to the paper and please tell me what you think.

—

Update, 11/12/2011: I’m trying the following out as my paper abstract:

Does the planet earth as defined in James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis possess any intrinsic rights, and if so, does human activity therefore constitute an exploitative violation of these rights? My central interest here concerns whether Nicholas Vrousalis’ definition of exploitation as a form of domination for self-enrichment (“A obtains a benfit from B by taking advantage of B in virtue of B’s relational vulnerability vis-à-vis A”) makes any sense when extended beyond the human species, and if so, whether it can be utilized for the purpose of something as counter-intuitive as ecological justice. In other words, allowing that it is prima facie obvious that the planet earth can be exploited in a non-moral sense, I am curious as to whether it can be exploited in a moral sense, as well.

The reason why this is potentially interesting is that arguments in defense of maintaining/preserving the environment have mostly relied upon human-centric reasoning around notions of present- and future-term quality of life, flourishing, security, etc.. Can there be an argument that transcends the human, and if so, would a combination of Vrousalisian exploitation and the Gaia hypothesis provide one? The answer is: (tentatively) yes, although it would require establishing whether personhood is a necessary precondition of Vrousalis’ approach to exploition and whether “Gaia” can constitute a large-scale non-human “person” (in other words, whether Vrousalis’ logic, when applied in this manner, results in human rights being extended to our planet). These two issues shall thus serve as my main lines of investigation.

What do you think?

I should note that it is my understanding that my question is “unique” only in a very specific way: since Peter Singer, there has been much philosophical work concerning whether human rights should be extended to animals, but there has not been anything substantial on whether they should be extended to the entirety of our physical environment, i.e., the combined terrestrial geo-biosphere (to say nothing of the universe beyond).

That does not mean, however, that I am the first to ever argue for this; to the contrary, it is a position quite familiar to shamanistic religions, Jains, Franciscans, Sufis, and so forth. Consequently, I am attempting a “rational” (philosophical) way of not only re-describing their intuitions, but of rejuvenating them and making them relevant to contemporary debate.

Graciously look upon Thy servant, humble and lowly at Thy door, with the glances of the eye of Thy mercy, and immerse him in the Ocean of Thine eternal grace. — Abdul-Baha

Today is the second anniversary of your suicide, and somehow, it has come easier — not because there is less to say, less to feel; no, quite the contrary, because there is too much, and all of it so beautiful.

We were connected. I was the first in Dondeynehuis to whom you revealed the horror that eventually drove you to that terrible act, and I was the first to whom you conveyed your dreams of moving to America, probably the only hint you ever gave us about your intentions to leave this world.

Neighbors, many of my memories entail seeing you in your bath towel, or you sitting on the big inflatable ball in your room, bobbing slightly back and forth while we talked. Most of all, I remember your smile and the grace with which you walked.

I felt that somehow I was supposed to guide you — the experienced, older, wiser man. But I didn’t know how, I was too confused. And then I was at the station. Why did our connection bring me there, at that precise moment, standing on the platform? Was I your unwitting Charon, guiding you by whatever unseen metaphysical tethers across the railroad Styx?

This past October, I thought a lot about you in the lead-up to that season I enjoy so much, Halloween, Allerheiligendag and Allerzielendag. I saw you within my innerscape, dancing upon the stage, gliding through the hallways, and then you would grab me and gently say: Let me go.

It is hard to describe what happened next. I eventually found myself confronting a door that stood quietly upon a grassy plain. It would open, and I would see you, standing upon the shoor of a vast, surging ocean. You smile and beckon me to join you, as you dive into the water and swim away. I cannot go, and I cannot bear to see you disappear into the gently rippling waves. I run back through the door.

I would return to that door many times throughout the month, but at the end, I return there with my parents. We have travelled long and hard together, and now they ask me to forgive them for the past. I’m about to do so when suddenly something else happens: to my surprise, I instead tell them: There is nothing to forgive.

To forgive is to place myself above them; to forgive would mean that they had done something wrong, that I had been harmed. But when all is said and done, they had done nothing wrong; they had simply done their best, indeed, they had simply done. And I? I was not harmed. I was never harmed.

I was shocked by this feeling, that there is an act we can do that is greater than forgiveness: radical acceptance. This, this is the road to agape, to truly putting others before oneself, to love, to let go. And I felt as though I was being poured out.

My mother kissed me goodbye on the forehead; my father hugged me. Then they watched me, proudly, as I turned back toward the door. At this point, there was little division between imagination and reality. I opened it, to the shore, to the ocean, and passed through.

Firm, friendly hands held me and waded into the water with me as I cried, then set me loose, to swim, to drift. The sky was blue; the water was cool and refreshing. And I swam, and I swam, and I swam, until finally I could join Astrid.

I’ve thought a lot about this experience since then, in particular those words: There is nothing to forgive. They had welled up from somewhere deep inside me, pushing aside all ther considerations except one: to give, to be, to go.

And I can still remember that vast ocean in crisp detail, and as I look upon it from the shore of my mind, as I swim in it with the flesh of my psyche, I realize: it was you, Astrid, who were guiding me all along.

You are my friend. There is nothing to forgive. There is everything to thank.

Today I turn 30. As my readers, friends and colleagues know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Inevitably, it brings up complex feelings — mingled uncertainty and absolute confidence in one’s life choices; a sense of the elusiveness of numbers, not quite mere human inventions, not quite correspondent to the fullness of reality; noticing grey hairs appearing amidst the dark brown, reminding you of inevitability. But overall, I’m feeling good today. The kingdom of the impossible is a bit closer than it was ten years ago, but for now, the horizon’s edge quivers with invitation.

And as I pass this milestone, really, without much effort on my own, I find that I do not want to reflect about myself in an atomistic sense, but about myself in its widest, universal sense: my loved ones who constitute my being — parents and clan, siblings both of blood and spirit, dearest friends, close colleagues, mentors and guides, readers and so many of the young people of Central Asia, even enemies, and all those who have crossed my path and helped me evolve. There are too many names, too many faces, too many moments both inner and outer, so forgive me for not explicitly mentioning specific people (and, indeed, due to the nature of my work in Central Asia, perhaps it’s also a bit wise if I don’t roll out a list of identities). Know that you all are part of me, and that through you, I find You, the Divine Countenance, the supremely agapeic Source.

None of us are monads, self-enclosed wholes; we are small universes, self-enclosed non-wholes seeking completion, an ancient Turkmen carpet of inter-subjectivity and inter-essence, woven with countless threads spun from eternity. And none of us shall perish; we have been bequeathed the gift of existence by the Divine, and I dare say it is not revocable, our ontological dependence notwithstanding. Standing upon the shore, looking out across the surging vastness of being, our individual currents are flowing, yes, for only brief moments as waves cresting upon the surface before before slipping into the depths, but we shall persist, as ripples, as ebbs and flows, as the contour of the coastline, and perhaps even as the bathymetry.

All the rights and wrongs and all the joys and sorrows and all the many, many lessons glistening under the blazing golden sun and the glimmering silver moon of the Divine Essence, so far away but its heat and its light so, so close, I feel the spray of salt upon my skin, and I rejoice: I am the kashkúl, You are the tide.

In general, the period of October through December is my favorite time of year, fertile yet transitory, transitory yet perennial. Eons from now, when our world has become ancient and our sun approaches its demise, I wonder what autumn might be like, because for me, it is a uniquely terran moment, tied to the destiny of our planet. I would like to imagine a world with a year twice or thrice as long as ours and the autumns and first chills of winter stretching out for months upon months — but perhaps that would ruin the uniqueness of the season, which seems so necessarily fragile, momentary, for only then can it reach for something eternal.

I recently had to purchase a new mobile phone as my old one, after travelling across three continents in my pockets, finally gave up the ghost this past September. This device comes equipped with a very primitive camera — despite proudly being a creature of the digital era, I am no technophile, and persistent poverty reinforces the need for simplicity even in this era of the smartphone. The quality of the photographs are intriguing: a camera for the journalist this is not, but it is one for the mystic. What’s striking is the odd painting-like quality, the blurred edges from the curvature of the lens’ plastic casing, and most of all, the sharp, brilliant light. Rarely have I found photos that capture so well the sublime character of a season that finds its strength in inevitability, finality.

Now for a post of a more positive tact than my last one, which I wrote in a moment of acute frustration. I spent the past weekend in lovely, misty Namur, trying to study Gauchet for a presentation I must make in two weeks. Indeed, as I think over it, I never realized just how Francophonic Leuven’s philosophical inclinations really are — even the only American on staff, Prof. Friedman, routinely cites Gilson — and considering that I’ll probably be using a lot of Lefort for my MPhil thesis, I may very well end up becoming versed in the French tradition, as well (my ancestors would be very happy with this, as apparently we’ve always had a Francophilic streak).

But more pertinently, I’ve been thinking about the question of my path, which has been the (rather self-centerred) focus of this blog for the last two months, and especially my metaxological dilemma, my limbo-like feelings this past October in particular. My old friend Ron and other lovely readers have suggested that perhaps I’m already on the path, and you know what? Maybe, just maybe.

Certainly, I’m in the better wing of Leuven’s philosophy faculty, i.e., social-political philosophy. These professors strike me as very different from the other ones: they’re more engaged in the world, dealing in real questions ranging from the metaphysical structure of liberalism and whether there should be a religious basis to universal human rights to the very nature of politics and society, and they do so often with a phenomenological or analytical spirit. These aren’t the tired, recycled Scholastics of the rest of the faculty, who have frustrated me so much (yes, I’m not afraid to say it out loud), and that is really refreshing.

I’ve also been thinking about infinity, especially during this season, this time of masks and of truths — the infinity within us, as much as around us and beyond. On one level, Modernity’s great mistake was not to presume we are immortal, but that we are mortal. In fact, humanity is much like a street urchin, forlorn of parents and raising itself, but within a framework that we used to be very aware of prior to the Enlightenment. Yes, I mean a guide: the revelation provided by the prophets over the centuries. What Modernity, or for that matter, post-Modernity may really be is shame over the blind mistakes over our past: unable to forgive crimes committed out of innocence and ignorance, committed in our struggle to survive in the slums of existence. We are still not at peace with ourselves or what we have done.

On another level, humanity is a finite infinity. Averroes was right: we are mere instantiations of something larger, something more massive, a humanity, as opposed to collection of human animal individuals. Yet, he was also wrong: these same instantiations somehow persist after death; humanity is one ocean, many streams and rivers and rains and underneath that ocean, deeper oceans, currents, depths, layers — this is what Baha’u'llah came to teach: the tiny epics within ordinary life.

To wrap up, at the start of last month I wrote the following poem, phrased more in the language of Tibetan Buddhism than my usual Abrahamic-Baha’i vocabulary: Bardo is the Tibetan limbo, the metaxu between reincarnations. Incidentally, someone recently advised that I should “go to the Tibetans”…

Bardo

i have been privileged to see and feel so many things
but the most dangerous act would be to interpret them
suspend the mind, levitate my judgment
let experience waft over me like curtains of Tibetan prayer flags
i am gently ushered into the inner sanctum
and buried upon the peaks of the Tien Shan

there is an important distinction between happiness and felicity
– place|state outward|inward existence|essence –
yet i do not understand their dance, their dialectic
even mountains have roots

but Plato cannot be correct, nor can Hegel
there is intimacy, yet not quite sublation
then a finger presses against my lips:
hush, listen to the geological whisper
the song sung in hints

ancient lamas beat their drums and chant
tantric in the rhythm of erosion
and amidst them i find an I
a shard of mind puzzling over patterns in a chunk of quartz