Review

Joined at the Mind: Philosophy, Mysticism and Madness

Review-essay of Wouter Kusters, Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022

Govert Schuller

In this article I will aim at giving an overview of Dutch philosopher Wouter Kusters’ phenomenal study, Philosophy of Madness, with some asides about what is phenomenologically important in it.

Kusters’ Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking is a must read for all interested in philosophy, mysticism and madness, and the disturbing closeness, even overlap, of all three, indicated by the following thought-provoking short statements: Philosophy, madness and mysticism all have in common that their point of departure is in the suspension of the ‘natural attitude’ (Husserl), inauthentic average everydayness (Heidegger), or our collective, narrative identity (Ricoeur). They all step out of consensual, common-sense reality. Philosophy and mysticism are modes of controlled madness. Madness is uncontrolled philosophy and mysticism. Madness develops its own philosophy, which is not necessarily mad. Some insights might only be accessible in the mode of madness. Monist philosophies push you to mysticism, which can take a turn into madness when you make too many imaginary connections too fast. Madness could be cured with a better, less verbal and imaginary mode of mysticism. In (very) short, the book is a true cornucopia of well-developed crossings.

Philosophy of Madness

A more structured introduction to this study might be developed by contemplating the subtle nuances implied by its title. This would be a somewhat Heideggerian manner of unpacking a subject matter, especially by looking at the preposition ‘of’ as a so-called ‘double genitive’ indicating that the study is not only a philosophy about madness (of which there are many variants), but also, and maybe more importantly, delves into the practice of philosophy inherent in madness. The leading idea is that people who are considered mad are not lost in confusion and incomprehensible thoughts, but are in their own way grappling deeply with the meaning of life, their situation and their own sense of identity. This is not to say that Kusters is romanticizing or justifying madness, which some have done in the anti-psychiatry movement. His aim is more towards developing an empathetic understanding of the very complex, meaningful, lived experience of madness, which might provide a better basis for the treatment of people suffering from psychotic episodes, while it is also a philosophical reflection on his own life as Kusters had his own experiences of involuntarily venturing twice into that realm.

The structure of a ‘double genitive’, just to bring into play some more hermeneutic phenomenology, was also applied by Heidegger in the title of his 1923 semester, the “hermeneutics of facticity”, having the double meaning of 1) the non-theoretical interpretation of life as lived and 2) the idea that life as lived has the feature of already having-been-interpreted. In other words, the hermeneutics of facticity involves the interpretive exploration of the historical and contextual dimensions of human existence, which requires more than just abstract analysis or theoretical speculation; it necessitates a hermeneutic engagement with the realities of lived experience. At the same time the hermeneutics of facticity involves uncovering the meaning and significance of our factual existence, including our bodily sensations, emotions, relationships, projects, and encounters with the world, which all of them have already been interpreted by our ancestors, parents, teachers, etc., with the caveat that we have the freedom to re-interpret life’s facticities. This notion of an existential-phenomenological hermeneutics of life is neatly captured by the short expression of the “pan-hermeneutic” nature of human life by Heidegger expert Theodore Kisiel (2014).

About Madness

As far as a philosophy about madness is concerned, Kusters is not interested in the proceedings and findings of modern psychiatry with its diagnostic manuals and what Kusters sees as its dominant discourse of looking at madness as something that happens to the brain in terms of neuronal misfirings, hormonal imbalances or chemical interferences, all of which are incapable of addressing how the madman experiences his reality. Fortunately, there exists a long tradition of “phenomenological psychiatry” inspired by the founding fathers of phenomenology like Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, which tries to look from the inside-out at the experienced reality and world of the mad itself.

“This method attempts to understand the seemingly strange world of the mad, including their thoughts and experiences, without judging them in terms of disorders, abnormalities, and deficiencies. Using this approach, it has been observed that it is not only the language of madmen, their way of perceiving the world, and their emotional responses to it that change; a change also occurs in the very depths of their experiential world—in how they experience time, in how their thoughts and perceptions mutually influence each other, and in how closeness and distance relate to each other.”(7)

Descriptive phenomenologies of madness and curative existential psychotherapies have been developed by Merlau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Thomas Szaz, Ronald Laing, Ludwig Binswanger, Meddard Boss, Viktor Frankl and quite some others, and Kusters can probably be placed in this category. Arguably he moved the investigation a couple of notches further by delving deeper into the experiences of madness themselves.

But, as much as Kusters appreciates phenomenology and uses many of its findings, this attitude is in his view not going far enough, because it stays on the edge and remains in an observational stance, gathering materials to make subtle differentiations and fitting them in the flexible framework of this school. Kusters proposes to go further and dive into madness “to taste its fluid substance, to feel its movements, whether swimming, diving, or drowning” and will do so with the help of what he calls “spiritual psychiatry” which is premised on the idea that madness and genius are closely related and that some or many mad people are actually highly sensitive and gifted crypto- or proto-philosophers who can help us broaden our experiential and philosophical horizons. But even this school (as well as psychoanalysis, which he puts into play) is “reluctant to break through the thin ice of madness”(8). Kusters wants to go deeper into a risky but also “wonderful” deconstruction in which the relationship between philosophy and madness is turned upside-down: “the madman comes to occupy the chair of the philosopher—and the philosopher ends up in the isolation cell”. In this movement in four phases, which are also the main parts of his book, Kusters is courageously on his own.

“In part I, the madman speaks mainly as a madman, as an object of observation, producing data analyzed by the philosopher. In part II he begins to stir; he dons the garments of the mystic, and his delusional writings are upgraded to the level of mysticism, if not philosophical aphorism. In part III, madness, mysticism, and philosophy join in a circle dance, precipitating a whirlwind in each of the four directions. In part IV, madness crystallizes; the madman rises to the surface from the mystical depths of part III; he solidifies into the more familiar forms of paranoia, paradox, and poetry and is now no longer discernible from the philosopher.”(9)

Therefore, besides the double genitive–setting up a dichotomy between a ‘sane’ philosophy about madness and a ‘deviant’ philosophy in madness–one can read the title also as covering the movement of philosophy into madness and its enriching return out of madness with the idea that we can “forge philosophy from madness”, which theme Kusters presents as underlying his book.

“What does the possibility and the existence of madness imply for commonly accepted ideas about humanity and the world? In what sense is philosophy changed or ‘stretched’ when we admit the ‘data’ of the madman’s experience? What is a philosophy of madness?”(11)

Here I like to interpolate–maybe retreating into my own safer philosophical attitude–that, from the stance of phenomenology, the movement and logic of the above questions and their answers as developed in the book, can be construed as an original instantiation of Husserl’s fundamental methodology, i.e. imaginative variation, by which one plays around with the particular structures and dynamics of a given experience by varying them to find its essential and contingent features and make ever more fine-grained differentiations.

What was maybe overlooked by Husserl, but put to good use by Heidegger and Marleau-Ponty, are the insights to be derived from variations of breakdown and dysfunction, like Heidegger’s broken hammer and the unfortunate cases Merleau-Ponty looked into to understand behavior at its most basic moments of constitution.

When a piece of equipment breaks or is missing, this can become the entry point to a reflection on the inter-connected and co-dependent nature of instruments in a specific setting, like a carpenter’s workshop or surgery room. What comes to light especially is the difference between the primordial, tacit, skilful relationship with equipment as ‘ready-to-hand’ when used, and its derivative, theoretical thingness as ‘present-to-hand’ when observed and inspected. Furthermore, the larger context of using equipment can also become more explicit, like the structures of the ‘in-order-to’ and ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ of the work, all together constituting a ‘referential totality’ of a ‘work-world’ of a skilled worker, and beyond it, referring to the world of its intended users and equipment producers, including nature as the source of raw materials (Heidegger, 1961:102-7).

In Kusters’ case this method is pushed into the domain of madness, or the breakdown of consensual normality, not merely taking the madman’s data as a meaningful variant of normal reality construction, but also by experiencing madness itself as best as possible (empathetically, vicariously or even first-hand in hypo- or full mode) in order to deepen our understanding of both normality and its mad deviations, resulting in fascinating and unsettling insights about the contingent and fragile constitution of the world and ourselves.

Beyond Psychiatry: A Phenomenological Approach

In part I, “Cogitating Your Head Off”, Kusters provides a great tableau of such mad experiences and their variations in the realm of the cognition and perception of reality; the experiences of what is ‘outer’ and what is ‘inner’; and the experiences of time and space. He analyzes what can happen to these reality-anchoring categories when they enter the “ocean of madness” and become transformed and fragmented and thereby disrupt regular philosophical discourse and even lays claim to philosophy itself.

A special spot in Part I is reserved for Husserl’s phenomenology of inner time-consciousness, one of the deepest reflections on the possibility conditions of conscious experience, and in Kusters’ writing a tool to understand both normal and psychotic experiences. How do we keep the coherence of consensus reality running in a semi-chaotic flow of events? And what happens when that breaks down and a psychotic manner of meaning-construction takes over? How can we best understand the Husserlian analysis of the interplay between memory, the just-passed (retention), the present, the just-to-come (protention) and expectations in the construction and change of reality? Furthermore, Kusters also reflects on the subject matter of time and its complexities, which itself can become so perplexing that thinking loses its footing and can go into a mad overdrive. This is where the philosopher can slip from controlled, experimental thinking, into hyperreflexive perplexity, possibly resulting in uncontrolled psychotic thinking.

As an illustration of what might happen when a mad experience of time takes over, Kusters provides a few sections narrating his own experiences as he lived them himself (Fragments III & IV). In Part I he shares eight of such fragments of personal experiences, which reminded me of the absurdist science fiction writings of the American author Kurt Vonnegut in the sense that the experience of flow still has the structure of a meaningful, coherent narrative, but then solipsistically personal and for an outsider seen as detached from normal reality. It is in these fragments and the quoted passages from other madmen of mad experiences that the reader can “taste its fluid substance” and “feel its movements” most closely. Again, much can be learned from things going wrong.

Into Mysticism & Madness

In Part II, “Via Mystica Psychotica”, Kusters goes deeper and leaves behind explanatory frameworks and intends to

“analyze what happens to the madman when he no longer has the security of the prosaic, and when fixed identities, images, words, and thoughts all melt, dissolve, and disappear. In this part, the emphasis is more on the mad process than on the mad condition. The kind of madness to be discussed here is what outsiders are more likely to call manic . . “(163)

And a new important mode of experience is inserted into the analysis and that is mysticism in order to help to further the analysis of philosophy and madness by finding parallels and communalities between madness and mysticism. The focus is on four subsets of phenomena where things can go wrong and each deserved a chapter: the perception and experience of truth (Detachment); the use of images and the imagination (Demagination); the problems of expression and language (Delanguization); and the transformation of the process of thinking (Dethinking). Some of the leading questions are about the difference between mad hallucinations and mystic visions and why some uncommon experiences lead to serenity and others to madness. The core of his musing seems to be the following train of thought, though he thinks it not entirely adequate.

“Perhaps the mad experience is a logical continuation of the mystical experience. The madman carries on with the journey, while the mystic drops out prematurely. For the very reason that he is connected to a tradition that has prepared him for his experience, the mystic will hold fast to certain assurances, identities, or traditional distinctions–such as the difference between good and evil–and that makes him incapable of penetrating the most extreme domains. The madman goes further and deeper, but he also pays a higher price: many do not return from this transmarginal zone–or so this line of reasoning goes.”(171)

Even though considered inadequate and maybe too romantic, this question seems to be one of the book’s core dilemmas in evaluating the respective value of a) controlled mysticism embedded in a tradition and b) manic mysticism which has broken through all conventionality and continues to explore “the realm of paradoxes, paranoia and prophetic madness”(171).

Mystical Delusions in Four Variations

After this analysis of the commonalities and differences between madness and mysticism, philosophy is again put to use in the analyses in Part III, “Light Mists”. Here Kusters differentiates more ethereal and abstract categories in “mystical madness”, which are “the One, being, infinity and nothingness”(280). Each again deserved its own chapter, which titles indicate we are dealing here with a set of fascinating and overlapping delusions which delineate the essence of mystic and manic experiences.

The chapter on the “uni-delusion” is framed by Plotinus and his mystical concept of the One, which is the apex of a hierarchical structure comprising everything, i.e. “all dimensions of life and the cosmos”, which will appeal to all people with a monist inclination. The problem, as Kusters sees it, is that aiming at experiencing the One leads to a mode of spiritual interiorization which leaves the body behind.

“The One is everywhere and nowhere; it’s a lovely idea for the mind, but for the body of the uni-deluded individual, it means nothing but fragmentation and alienation. If my mind is swallowed up in the One, my body is swallowed up in general scattered physicality.”(297)

Being: Immersion in sensory ecstasy, detached from others

The “esse-delusion” addressed in chapter 10, seems to aim at the opposite of the “uni-delusion” in that it is more exterior. Here Kusters, among a few, uses the drug-induced experiences of the British author Aldous Huxley to make his points that the “esse-delusion” is more experiential, aesthetic and focused on visual-sensory perceptions, which induce a sense of intense being, even “too much being”(320). In this analysis Kusters also addresses the mystical aspects of music, both in its capacity to induce mystic experiences, but also to soothe the minds of the mad. The problem here is that a new mode of “subjectification” emerges, one which leaves behind our fellow subjects by becoming too wrapped up in one’s solipsistic ecstasy and avoiding others.

As an aside, I would point out that Huxley’s work on mystical ecstasies set within a this-worldly, sensory here-and-now might have been deeply influenced by his friendship with the global sage Jiddu Krishnamurti, who arguably was promoting a form of quiet, non-cognitive, post-egoic nature mysticism and also had a deep appreciation of music. In this regard see Huxley’s foreword to Krishnamurti’s first book published by a major publisher (Huxley, 1953).

The third delusion, the infinity-delusion, I will treat separately in the next section as it is the start of a phenomenological contemplation on the role of the imagination in both sane sense-making and its mad variant.

Nothingness: Hyper-reflexivity leading to existential emptiness

The fourth delusion, the nothing-delusion in chapter 12, is the logical outcome of the process of the “de-xx-ing” on the via mystica psychotica, which destroys all mental content in the course of becoming “thoroughly detached, demagined, delanguized, and dethought”(389). Everything is questioned in a heightened state of reflexivity to the point where the normal relationship between being and nothingness is flipped. Where being used to be the norm and nothingness an aberration, in the experience of the psychotic the tables are turned and a hyperreflexive doubt undermines any and all tacit, common sense understanding of being and the resulting abysmal emptiness becomes the norm.

“Ordinary human reflexivity is stripped from the ground of existence and becomes a raging, nihilistic, inhuman hyperreflexivity in the vacuousness of Ø.”(396; with Ø standing for nothingness)

And a little further:

“… the mystical madman “slips away” from being by doubting everything, by calling everything into question, and by subjecting the most ordinary things to the scrutiny of a questioning and burning hyperreflexivity. This leads to perplexity that can be understood as the question mark with a capital letter, as the state of questioning in which there is no longer a questioned or a questioner, and as total nothingness: Ø. When being is swallowed up in questioning, the mystical madman disappears into nothingness. Hyperreflexivity is like the whirlpool that leads to an infinitesimal point of concentration in the endlessly vast, bottomless ocean of being.”(399)

For phenomenologists, Kusters’ analysis of the thoughts on nothingness by Sartre and Heidegger will be of interest. In the case of Sartre, the idea of the linkage of madness and the Husserlian concept of time is brought back. For Sartre human time is only possible if and when a break is inserted between the past and the future, a break by ‘nothingness’ in order to free man from its past and be open to its future, and this will be accompanied by anguish if we are conscious of it. And the presence of other people has a role in this constitution of freedom in anguish. Therefore, the structure of consciousness includes nothingness, being and others in an interdependent manner. In madness this structure also falls apart. In the Ø-delusion, nothingness swallows up being, others are left aside, and with them morality too, and the mood can waver between demonic and cheerful.

“Ø functions as the drain through which all possible life is carried away, sooner or later, in the sewer of nothingness.”(411)

Kusters calls Heidegger one of the “optimistic nothingness experts”(424), who recommends anxious encounters with nothingness, especially for philosophers, in pursuing the question of why there are beings rather than nothing. And it is fine if the grounds of one’s being disappear and you become speechless. This pursuit is harmless as long as you are not drawn into the realm of the imaginary with its illusions and hallucinations. It is all controlled and benign. But in mystical madness a more terrifying question is posed: “Is there anything at all? Isn’t there actually absolutely nothing?”(426) Here again might be the fine line between controlled philosophy and being in the runaway grip of madness.

The chapter ends with a discussion of the soteriological concepts of nothingness in the “nihil-centric”, spiritual philosophies in the east and their overlap with some aspects of the Ø-delusion. Kusters consulted the work of religion scholar Mircea Eliade on the “via mystica orientalis” of the yogi. Both yogi and madman turn their back to reality, including other humans and even their own body, and find it all illusory, and both become entangled in another, opposite world of detachment and emptiness, the yogi in samadhi or sacred nothingness, and the madman in the Ø-delusion. And again, their difference might lie in their measure of control, though the factor of cultural acceptability has to be taken into account. By western standards a yogi might get locked up and by eastern standards a madman might be venerated.

Rock Bottom

Part IV, “Crystral Fever”, dives into the end point of philosophy, mysticism and madness, that is complete disintegration in perplexity, solipsism, chronic psychosis, mania and paranoia. But here I will leave the summary and plunge into a contemplation on the role of the imagination in madness.

The Hidden Productivity of the Transcendental Imagination

Both mysticism and madness transgress all limits and touch thereby an ineffable infinite. Mathematical philosophy joins the two when it tries to think through what it means “to keep on counting” and asks where it ever might stop. In the chapter on the infinity-delusion Kusters starts with a discussion of the many infinities the German mathematical genius Georg Cantor could generate, including the ultimate infinity of infinities, the one he identified with God. Besides the obvious idea that infinities are mental concepts, Cantor thought infinities were somehow also to be found in reality. Many of his peers thought he had gone maybe too far into some form of pantheism. Kusters thinks that Cantor, who struggled with mental health issues, might have been the first to get trapped in an infinity-delusion.

Infinity in Reality

Kusters’ grappled with a similar ontological claim by Rudy Rucker, that “mathematical infinity can be found in reality”(335). How that could be interpreted, is the starting point for me to bring in a cluster of ideas with which I struggled when I wrote my MA dissertation on narrative identity and the role of the faculty of productive imagination.

I will first summarize Kuster’s processing of Rucker’s claims, then present my phenomenological ideas derived from Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of Kant regarding knowledge and action, after which I will present my own re-arrangement of these ideas and apply them to madness.

Rucker’s example of a ‘real’ infinity is the infinite length of the English coast encompassing a finite amount of land. The more you zoom into a stretch of coast, the more its irregularities add to the length of the coastline “until the measuring instrument breaks down and you slip into the realm of the molecular and the atomic”(339). The other, similar example is the phenomenon of fractals in which irregular lines or surfaces multiply seemingly without end into ever more detailed and longer lines when you zoom in.

But, Kusters questions this alleged experience of infinity and asks himself if this infinity is only taking place in your mind and whether you see only pixels “onto which you are projecting infinity?” Kuster then states that “Infinity is located somewhere between mind and matter, between thought and perception”, or maybe even beyond these faculties. Mathematicians therefore only “imagine” or “conceptualize” infinity “on the inside of his eyelids.”(340)

The Fregean and Kantian Distinctions

When contemplating these conundrums, I was thrown back to the dizzying complex of ideas in Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of Kant’s epistemology, but also the intuitively simpler Fregean differentiation between the sense (Sinn) and the reference (Bedeutung) of a word or expression. Both provide some possible clarification to Kusters’ questions, and by extension, to the issues he addresses in the overlap between madness and philosophy.(Frege, 1960)

In the framework of Frege the word ‘infinity’ can have a sense or meaning, but not necessarily a reference or experience. You can think the concept infinity and combine it with a lot of meaningful predicates, but its reference is always beyond one’s thought and perception. And maybe in Kantian terms, and like his concept of noumenon, one can think the concept infinity, but never experience it. Whatever you might experience is only phenomenal. And if you think you have the real thing, it is only an image seen with the mind’s eye.

The segue into Heidegger’s Kant is this little concept ‘image’ and the pivotal role it played in the A edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which addresses the question how the understanding (concepts) and intuition (experiences) are linked in order to produce empirical knowledge. Kant’s question was how concepts, which by themselves are empty, could be applied to experiences, which by themselves are under-organized (except for spatial and temporal aspects), and, other way around, how experiences could be subsumed under concepts.

In the A edition Kant elaborated on the “transcendental faculty of the productive imagination” as the necessary mediator between concepts and perceptions. What this faculty does–going from concepts to perceptions—is to generate from the concept a series of rules inherent in the concept, from which a series of images can be generated, which might then connect with a series of perceptions. Or, again other way around, this faculty can derive from our semi-chaotic experience a set of images, which can be formalized into patterns, which can be connected to the rules inhering in a specific concept.

Fig. 1. Kantian mandala of the three major faculties

Kant provides the examples of a dog and a triangle to indicate the steps of how concepts can be made more sensible and intuitions more intelligible.

Heidegger’s Phenomenological Expansion

Kant dropped these insights in the B Edition and Heidegger later thought that was a mistake, because Kant’s work on the imagination in its role of producing knowledge had a profound congruence with the basic structure of phenomenological intentionality. What Heidegger brought into position was the tri-partite dynamics of the intentional structure of meaningful experiences, one of the breakthrough insights developed by Husserl (Heidegger, 1962b & 1997).

In a static, structural sense, phenomenological intentionality is always already of the form that consciousness is consciousness-of-X, and the dynamic aspect is that most experiences, if not all, start with a) emptily intending ‘X’, which pre-experiential, meaningful structure might then b) get fulfilled in an experience, after which c) the identity between the projection and its fulfilment is intended. So, we can emptily mean ‘dog’, then see a dog and then experience that the meaning and the seeing are congruent and the concept dog is applicable.

What Heidegger did, was to overlay the dynamic structure of intentionality onto the dynamics engaged in by Kant’s imagination, such that the imagination is the faculty which can emptily project structures (rules and images), which then can connect with intuitions, which, after their identity is established, is stable enough to affirm or connect with a concept. In this way there is a congruence between:

Kant : Imagination Intuition Understanding

Husserl : Empty intending Fulfilment Identity / conceptualization

This insight by Heidegger of lining up Kant’s faculties with Husserl’s intentionality was a tremendous help in deepening my understanding of all three big philosophers involved, including also Ricoeur, whose work on narrative identity and the complex synthesis of emplotment explicitly referred back to Kant’s faculty of the productive imagination as the enabling factor of our more or less fictitious sense of life-span identity.(Ricoeur, 1983: 68 & 1985: 3)

Surprisingly also Heidegger seemed to have dropped these ideas as he moved from phenomenology to a more poetic thinking, though one insightful Heidegger scholar made the case that Kant’s concept of the imagination and Husserl’s concept of empty intentionality did survive in Heidegger’s existential concept of Dasein’s projective possibilities as an integral part of our manner of being-in-the-world.(Richardson, 2004: 153f)

Imagination, Madness, and Creativity

This processing of Heidegger’s phenomenologized Kant also led to an epiphany, which also gave me great help in understanding the role of the projective imagination in the act of philosophizing itself and its intensification and possible derailment in madness.

My rearrangement of Heidegger’s Kant is premised on the idea that the imagination can not only provide a measure of freedom from reality-perception in purely mental endeavors like fiction, fantasies, hypothesis-formation, and running provisional scenarios in one’s ‘inner mind space’, but also provide a creative freedom in engaging in the perception-action cycle relatively free from ideations, like in dance, children’s play, mindless routines, sports and sexuality.

In the following figure the term ‘schema’ replaced ‘imagination’ and a third field of possible experiences and actions is indicated with Truth / Action, in which all three faculties work together

The re-arranged figure looks like this:

Fig. 2. Simple Three-ring Mandala

In the Truth and Action category one can place all experiences to which all three faculties contribute. Staying with Kant and the early Heidegger, the idea is that truth is a product of the harmonious cooperation of all three faculties. Truth is traditionally conceived as located in a proposition as its truth value, but in phenomenology the concept of truth increasingly shifted towards perception and, in the hands of Heidegger, became identified with the ‘opening’ enabled by the projective faculty of imagination. Following the German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the arguably highest level of action (communal and political) would necessarily bring in the understanding because such action is mostly executed by speech and legislative acts in which conceptual entities like ideals, plans and promises are brought to verbal expression.(Arendt, 1958)

In all three fields of a) inner-mind fantasy, b) enacted play or c) complex truth / action scenarios, we can proceed conventionally and obey the explicit and tacit rules of one’s society; or proceed creatively in a post-conventional manner without getting in trouble; or engage in the mad variations of all three in either a) one’s mind with seemingly delusional ideations; or b) in public with seemingly incomprehensible play-acting; or c) with interventions in other people’s lives or the political arena based on seemingly inappropriate truth claims and proposals.

A Reframed Model of the Imagination

The main point here in connecting this phenomenological framework with madness is that maybe this framework might contribute to a better, or at least different, philosophical understanding of madness in its rootedness in the faculty of the imagination, but then with a deeper understanding of the imagination in its role as the transcendental, a priori enabler of any meaningful endeavor whatsoever, be it fantasy, play, intellectual action, or any of its runaway derangements.

A last thought on the conceptualization of mysticism. All three fields have their own mysticism and some might line up with Kusters’ fourfold differentiation of mystical delusions. In the fantasy field it is the emptying of the mind in Zazen, i.e. a sitting meditation disconnected from perceptual reality in which one tries to empty one’s inner mind space without necessarily deconstructing this space itself. It is a going inside, without necessarily challenging the constituted nature of this inside (aiming at nothingness). In the play field one could put the meditation of mindfulness while slowly moving one’s body and being aware of one’s surroundings (aiming at being). In the action / truth field one could find Heidegger’s mysticism of simple daily life experienced within a poetic opening of being-there. And maybe also Krishnamurti’s call for a post-egoic and non-conceptual way of life might fit in this category (aiming at oneness).

Conclusion

Kusters’ Philosophy of Madness challenges us to rethink madness as more than a pathology to be contained and treated. Instead, it presents madness as a complex and meaningful mode of existence with profound philosophical implications. By drawing parallels with philosophy and mysticism Kusters not only illuminates the fragility of normalcy but also the potential richness of what lies hidden in the psychotic thoughts of the madman.

The exploration of the transcendental faculty of imagination and its capacity to construct meaning, can add to the discussion, presenting a framework where the modes of experience in fantasy, play, and truth/action—and the manner in which all three have quotidian, mystical and mad variations—provide another categorization of human experiences in their complexity.

Ultimately, Philosophy of Madness is a call to embrace the unsettling questions posed by madness as illuminating contributions to understanding ourselves and the world. Kusters invites us to see madness not as a deviation but as a thought-provoking byway of the philosophical journey—a journey that, while risky and not to be recommended, holds the promise of profound insight and possible healing.

Wouter Kusters (PhD) studied linguistics and philosophy, and is an independent scholar and teacher in the Netherlands. He wrote two prize winning books on philosophy and madness in Dutch, and the last one – A Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking – has been translated into English (2021) and Arabic (2023), while a Chinese translation is due to appear this year. His most recent book’s title is in English: Shock Effects: Philosophizing in the Age of Climate Change (2023). For more information, readers can visit his website at: https://kusterstekst.nl/.

Source

This review-essay of Philosophy of Madness was published in the Indian journal, Cetana: A Journal of Philosophy, 5/1 (Jan 2025): 38-58.

Cetana is published by the Centre for Phenomenological Studies.

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Heidegger, Martin. 1962a. Being and Time. Macquerrie, John & Robinson, Edward (Transl). New York: Harper Collins.

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Kant, Immanuel. 1978. Critique of Pure Reason. Kemp Smith, Norman (Transl). London: Macmillan.

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Kisiel, Theodore. 2014. “The Paradigm Shifts of Hermeneutic Phenomenology: From Breakthrough to the Meaning-Giving Source”. Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, 4: 1-13.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1954. The First and Last Freedom. New York: Harper & Brothers.

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Review – Nitya: A Tale of Two Brothers

Nitya: A Tale of Two Brothers
Mahesh Kishore, SHF Publications, 2019 (order here)

Just finished reading this remarkable study of the relationship of Krishnamurti and his younger brother Nityananda. The author provides a very intimate and sympathetic narrative of their deep friendship in the context of the World Teacher Project inaugurated by the then leaders of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater. This Project was the physical and mental preparation of the human ‘vehicle’ Krishnamurti for the consciousness of Maitreya, Buddha’s main disciple, to manifest through.

The narrative is firmly premised on 1) the idea that the Project was genuine, i.e. transcendental forces and personalities (Masters) were responsible for its start and guidance, and 2) that after Nitya’s death in November of 1925 his personality merged with Krishnamurti’s thereby transferring psychological attitudes Nitya had developed and Krishnamurti somewhat lacked, resulting in a quite different Krishnamurti at the end of December of 1925 when many people believed the first manifestations of Maitreya occurred.

In this manner Nitya indeed had become essential to Krishnamurti’s destiny, something many followers of the Project, including both brothers, believed, even to the extent that some of Nitya’s admirers could easily re-direct their more personable affection for Nitya to Krishnamurti.

The plot-line of the first volume of Mary Lutyen’s 1975 biography of Krishnamurti reads like a chronicle of Krishnamurti’s more or less solitary coming of age and enlightenment (“The Years of Awakening”), and seems to be, as far as its metaphysical premises are concerned, close to K’s deep skepticism of his Theosophical status and destiny as that attitude developed starting around 1927.

Kishore’s plot-line of his study reads more like a love story of two very close friends deeply dedicated (though with some ups and downs) to the Project and all its ramifications (except for the ‘Huizen manifestations’, which is a story by itself). And the author, as indicated above, is very much in sympathy with the Theosophical worldview guiding the brothers till 1925. Because he is in sympathy with that view he can easily recount the brothers’ experiences from their own situated perspective. This enables a very close emphatic interpretation of their lives and contributes to our understanding of the peculiar life-world of these two young men during their formative years. As the back cover justifiably states, the importance of this book is not only the presentation of some new facts, but the author’s “compellingly stringing his research together to create a new picture of of these two astonishing people”.

Very helpful to the narrative are indeed the author’s use of quotes from Nitya’s diary (ca. 10) and the many letters from Nitya to Krishnamurti (ca. 13), to Leadbeater (ca. 15), to Besant (ca. 10), and to the Manziarly family (ca. 8).

The quantity of letters, which have apparently survived, makes me think that it might be time, now about a hundred years after their composition, to have them all published in an academic format.

I like to end this review with a critical note about the author’s main claim regarding the merging of the consciousness of the two brother’s after Nitya’s death. This has to be done, because the author not only makes a strong case for this idea by quoting Krishnamurti himself, but he also recounts stories which makes this claim questionable, though there might be subtle ways out of certain contradictions based on the intricacies of Theosophical psychology, though such ad hoc reinterpretations will have their own interesting implications.

So, even though Krishnamurti made clear statements in his letters and poetry, and in verbal statements to others, that his consciousness had merged with Nitya’s, Kishore also recounts instances in which this idea becomes problematic. For example, and this might be one of the strongest counterfactuals, Kishore refers to Rosalind Rajagopal’s story that, when K saw her daughter Radha for the first time, he supposedly asked “Do you think it’s Nitya?” If the brothers’ consciousnesses had melded that question would never have been asked.

Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age (Review)

Last summer I read with pleasure Dr. Stravianos’ historical narrative of the genesis of the Third World during the 400 year expansion of capitalism throughout the world.

The dean of ‘world systems analysis’ Immanuel Wallerstein [3] stated about the book:

“There is no comparable work that covers the whole Third World over a four-century period. It is readable and comprehensive . . . In short, it is excellent”.

Though it is almost 40 years old, I think the book is a classic in its field and very affordable.

Find below a very incisive review of the book and its main theses found on Good Reads [1]. The original article [2], from which the review is lifted, provides a critical overview of the field of International Political Economics (IPE) and defends a more heterodox and holistic view against the orthodox view allied with mainstream neoclassical economics.

The relevance of heterodox IPE in the vein of ‘world system analysis’ for our endeavor of monetary reform is that it is important to understand the history and genesis of the current global system in order to get a better grip on how it could and should be reformed if we want to take a truly global perspective.

[1]. www.goodreads.com/book/show/271171.Global_Rift
[2].www.academia.edu/34494374/Units_Markets_Relations_and_Flow
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-systems_theory

Stavrianos’ Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age (1980)

Global Rift presents a systematic and relational history of the First and Third Worlds, in which both are constituted by the “structure and dynamics of the whole” (23). Stavrianos stresses the unique dynamism of European capitalism as it incorporates all other regions of the world as part of its own logic, so that the wealth of Europe and poverty in most of the regions of the rest of the world are interconnected. While Stavrianos invariably explores internal political, economic, and cultural aspects of particular societies, his aim, like Wolf’s, is to highlight the neglected “indivisible whole” – the external, interactive, and systemic ways that both wealth and poverty are produced in a global political economy. Other theorists and other books, including Wolf’s, present similar accounts of the “great stream” of “social process,” but none have quite the range and depth of detail of Global Rift.

Stavrianos demarcates capitalism both temporally and spatially, according to criteria similar to Chaudhuri’s. Temporally, he locates four periods of European capitalist expansion: (1) 1400-1770, in which the European “center” or “core” is engaged in commercial capitalism and colonialism is largely confined to the Americas; (2) 1770-1870, in which the center, primarily Britain, is engaged in industrial capitalism and there is a “waning colonialism” in the periphery; (3) 1870-1914, which he describes as the era of “monopoly capitalism” and world-wide colonialism; and (4) 1914-1980 (when the book was published), in the core must actively defend monopoly capitalism in the face of “revolution and decolonization,” which when subdued produces “neocolonialism” (41). These periods correspond to spatial delineations produced by and within spreading capitalist relations: the space which initiates and sustains capitalism (the core); that which the core has incorporated into its own dynamics (the Third World); that which begins to encounter European Capitalism but is not yet integrated (the periphery); and spaces that remain external to global capitalism. In short, as capitalism develops and intensifies, more and more of the peripheral and external spaces become internalized as the Third World. It is this dynamic social process and the spatial striations and inequalities it produces that Stavrianos wishes to reveal. By identifying these broad systemic patterns, he allows readers to see how particular spaces or societies in a particular time fit into the contours of capitalism as a global phenomenon.

For example, in the initial period of the emergence of West European capitalism, he shows how the Third World originated in the incorporation of the somewhat distinctive Eastern European region into the trade, investment, and production circuits of Western Europe (Chapter 3), extended quickly into Latin America (chapter 4). Some spaces remain “peripheral” at this stage: Africa, despite the centrality of the slave trade, and the Middle East, meaning the Ottoman empire, remain not yet penetrated by European capitalism (chapters 5 and 6). Asia, primarily India and China here, largely spared capitalist penetration and remained an “external area” (chapter 7). Stavrianos performs three more tours of the world – each exploring the relation of core and periphery in successive periods of capitalist development.

The key and consistent point for Stavrianos, then, is that the First and Third Worlds are not simply products of separable and uneven internal developments. Rather, they are relationally co-constituted within an “indivisible whole,” with wealth on one side and poverty on the other. Indeed, “the phrase ‘Third World’ connotes those countries or regions that participated on unequal terms in what eventually became the global market economy” (31-2, emphasis added). For Stravrianos, the co-constituted structural inequalities central to capitalism profoundly distort human development as a whole, though the effects fall most fatally on the Third World, challenging claims of market-induced harmony. Though Stavrianos’ recognizes capitalism’s transformative role, including the expanding human productivity released by the restless pursuit of profit, he places greater ethical weight on the devastation wreaked on the economics, politics, and culture of the conquered societies (35-7). Capitalism utterly reshapes them: “This was a total and all-encompassing process, for the culture as well as the economies of those societies were profoundly distorted and remodeled in order to satisfy the demands of the global market” (37, emphasis added).

The burden of the text, and picking up the story of European expansion where Chaudhuri ends, is to show how the encounter between European capitalist expansion and the Third World imposes new relationships that incorporate the latter. Here Stavrianos relies, interestingly, on Joseph Schumpeter’s distinction between economic development and economic growth (1961, 63): Economic development “calls forth…qualitatively new phenomena” that “are not forced upon it from without but arise by its own initiative, from within,” whereas “mere economic growth” involves “processes of adaption… [of] the same kind as changes in the natural data.” Though Schumpeter’s major concern is not global dynamics but to challenge the static character of equilibrium analysis (McNulty 1968; Legrand and Hagemann 2017), Stavrianos pounces on this distinction between internally created qualitative economic changes (development) versus economic changes that follow from externally initiated and generated processes (economic growth) to organize his narrative.
The distinguishing feature of Third World status besides low incomes, Stavrianos insists, is “growth determined by foreign capital and foreign markets rather than by local needs” (4).

Externally determined growth fosters “vertical economic linkages” that tie raw material extraction and agricultural production in the Third World to demands in the “metropolitan centers.” By contrast, “horizontal economic linkages” more fully integrate local production and local needs and support local employment and incomes (39-40; emphasis added). Though the development of the “indivisible whole” of global capitalism may foster some “trickle down” for the First World working classes (267, 270, 439, 794), the dependence of Third World economies on growth via vertical economic ties means that incomes and wealth tend to “trickle up” (794):
The people of the Third World experienced no corresponding improvement in living standards. For them the impact of the West was a wrenching experience, in which everything was turned upside down and inside out. This was inevitable, for all Third World societies, by definition, were integrated into the world market economy, with unavoidable disruptions and distortion of their traditional institutions. (267)

Thus, Stavrianos arrives at an elegant relational definition of the Third World: “the Third World is not a set of countries or a set of statistical criteria but rather a set of relationships—unequal relationships between controlling metropolitan centers and dependent peripheral regions, whether colonies as in the past or neocolonial “independent” states as today” (40).
In all of this, Stavrianos asserts, the “interests of the colonies were automatically subordinated to those of the mother country” (55). After all, “the purpose of the colonies was to provide markets for manufactures, to supply raw materials that could not be produced at home, to support a merchant marine that would be valuable in wartime and to engender a large colonial population with manpower” (55-6). Colonial underdevelopment appears a natural and automatic corollary of the expansion of capitalism.

But can we be so certain that this subordination is natural and automatic? Why do the capitalism’s systemic inequalities map largely, if not always neatly, onto a European and North American Core and a Latin American, African and Asian Third World. Creating and sustaining vertical ties with the colony follows an economic logic, certainly, but that seems insufficient. Stavrianos’ explanation seems to rely on the additional factors of political competition/chauvinism and practices informed by doctrines of white supremacy. Western Europeans did not imagine their colonies as part of the home nation, territory, or culture. Nor did they consider the peoples of these areas as necessarily equally human. In either case, the peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are thought of as something apart and, thereby unworthy of full ethical or legal consideration. Stavrianos’s narrative makes explicit the role of multiple logics – the logic of capitalism but also that of the Westphalian state-system and perhaps that of white supremacy – near the end of the book where he highlights the limits of worker internationalism. It is not true that “working men have no country;” “Far from a world dividing along class lines, it is state frontiers that are decisive and meaningful” (631). Indeed, the “evolving world system is dominated not by class interests but by nationalist considerations” (631). Thus, changing our world is not merely a matter of restructuring the global economy. It requires “a comparable restructuring of national units” (812).

This last comment hints at an important narrative shift: Stavrianos, more so than Wolf, begins to show that European capitalism’s expansive dynamism is met head-on by Third World resistance and rebellion. Though initial rebellions and wars of resistance against European invasions and colonization across the Third World were largely unsuccessful, appearing only as a “gestation phase” of “uncoordinated resistance” (432), these events were not isolated. They all reacted to the same cause – capitalism’s logic of incorporating each space into its own logic and dynamics (424). And yet, these events were separated from each other and the failure, apart from Japan (chapter 17), to resist “imperialist onslaught” resulted directly from lack of “any international mutual support,” while “the imperialist powers aided each other all over the globe.” The Twentieth Century brought a change, where, slowly but surely, these movements overcame their isolation as mutually supportive struggles for national independence and liberation. These struggles’ efforts to “break with” a “trauma” created by 500 years of history became the “center of global revolutionary initiative” (431-2).

Of course, capitalist counter-revolutionary forces were not idle. They responded with mobilizations of their own political, economic, cultural counterrevolutionary strategies, as Stavrianos labels them (pp. 433-483). He announces that the future of our world depends on the “nature, strength, and interaction of global revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces” (432) and his less hopeful prognosis has been vindicated by events already unfolding as he writes the final sections of Global Rift. Skyrocketing oil prices, Third world debt, stagflation in the core, and draconian monetary policy combined with assassinations, support of dictators tied to the interests of capital, and intensified counter-insurgency to weaken and fracture the Third World movement and its demands for an international order serving and reflecting national needs, ideals, and goals. As reactionary forces gained the geopolitical-economic upper hand, theories diagnosing and protesting global inequality were gradually marginalized in respectable academic discussion in the US (Blaney and Inayatullah 2008), just as neoclassical economics reasserted its predominance, erasing nearly any other voice. It is at this moment that liberal institutionalist IPE assumed a dominant position in the academy of the US imperial core, obscuring attention to the “indivisible whole” with its privileging of unit-level explanations. Yet, the struggle continues because, according to Stavrianos and as theorized by others (Escobar 1995; Santos 2007), the “problem of how to attain autonomous economic development remains unresolved, both in theory and practice” (796).

Environmental Virtue Ethics–Review

Environmental Virtue Ethics
Philip Cafaro and Ronald D. Sandler (editors)
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Print.

A Review-essay by Josef Mathews

“No Man is an Island,” writes poet John Donne. The idea contained in those words is a profound and timeless truth. It refers to the sea of connections that bind human beings. Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro, echoes this sentiment and extends the concept into the nonhuman world. There is a spider web of links between humans and betwixt humans and nature. The book is a collection of 13 essays penned by academics. They share their views on the topic of human relations with the natural world as well as with each other. While this paper captures the essence of the entire book, special attention is given to ideas in a chapter by Peter Wenz. Nonetheless, the collective message is that if humans live in harmony with each other and with nature, both the natural world and the human species will flourish; otherwise, social problems and environmental degradation multiply.

A tenable claim advanced in the book is that people are interconnected to and interdependent on each other as well as the natural world. Most people will not need complex scientific experiments to be convinced of this idea. Simple observations of causes and effects as they occur in the laboratory of daily life will do. While personal experience is valuable, keen insights on the global biotic community from dedicated and perceptive observers and thinkers of reality expands the band of individual observations. Geoffrey Frasz, in his essay Benevolence as an Environmental Virtue, captures the sentiment of the inextricable link between humans and nature:

We do not exist in the world as isolated, atomic individuals who simply act on objects outside of ourselves. Rather we are relational beings, moral agents who act in specific social, historical, and ecological contexts. …To be human is to dwell in relations with the nonhuman world (133).

While this observation is plain, its acknowledgment has profound implications. Some reflection on this idea will likely persuade the thinker to believe that what he does to the environment he is doing to himself and others. Therefore, out of enlightened self-interest and a genuine concern for everything other than the self, the individual is more inclined to make better behavior choices.

Indeed, actions have consequences. When humans act on the environment the impact can be classified essentially as positive or negative for human and environmental health. Peter Wenz uses a David Korten quote to summarize relations between humans and between humans and nature and the eventual fallout. Japan, a first world nation, in order to dodge pollution on their land, set up a copper smelting operation in the Philippines, a third world nation. The project began with the ejection of local residents from their land. Subsequently, plant contamination diminished local water supplies, fish, and rice. It increased upper-respiratory diseases among local residents who depended on the most dangerous and filthiest jobs at the plant. As a result, the locals suffered while the company owners prospered (201). This example highlights a willful disregard of marginalized people. Clearly, their worth as human beings, in the eyes of the company owners, is not much more than a means to an end. If the owners and other decision makers cared, there would have been significantly more consideration for the well-being of the people that already lived on the land as well as the workers. In fact, it is quite possible that a modicum of concern for people and the environment might have rendered the plan unconscionable.

Think about the hopes and dreams of these workers. A dirty plant which compromises their well-being is not fertile ground to realize their potential. Furthermore, the above example demonstrates that maltreatment of the environment reflects back on human well-being as well. In this case, the residents who dwell near the smelting operation endured the health repercussions associated with the degradation of the environment. To put it simply, at the benefit of a few people, many people suffered and the environment degraded. However, this need not be. If decision makers regard workers as intrinsically valuable and view them as human beings, they will not only ensure the health and safety of workers but also support their personal and professional development. Everyone has the basic rights to clean air, water, and it is a basic truth that all people have gifts and talents. Consultation of human development literature will bolster the idea that although people may have different capacities and abilities, all hold the potential to develop them. It is simply a matter of having the opportunity to flourish.

As often the case is, poor people bear the brunt of consumerism. Peter Wenz defines consumerism as the “ideology that society should maximize consumption, pursue consumption without limit” (198). It is true that humans need to consume. As a matter of fact, everyone depends on the natural world for sustenance; that includes the rich and the poor. However, some are deprived of basic necessities for survival while others overconsume. Wenz writes that “dependence on free sources of food and materials is common in the Third World” (200). However, the pursuit of increased output at times interferes with this access to even the basic supplies. Take, for example, the reduced access to basic nutrients like Vitamin A. The killing of a wild and free source of Vitamin A, bathau, with pesticides in India serves as an example. Ironically, the proliferation of bathau was fanned by the use of artificial fertilizers. One problem with such fertilizers is that poor people cannot afford them (200). The fertilizer was meant to grow high-yield crops. Two problems with this particular crop are their high water requirement and need for artificial fertilizers. Unable to dig deeper wells as well as secure artificial fertilizers, the poorest farmers were rendered incapable of keeping their farms and grow traditional varieties which required less water and no artificial fertilizers. While increased production and profits are not necessarily bad in themselves, it is the existent poor that often suffer. They get pushed deeper into destitution while a minority prospers on profits from fertilizers and pesticides. The lucky farmers who could afford the farming inputs profit from the crops themselves.

In the specific scenario described above, the locals were essentially denied Vitamin A. An unacceptable consequence is the occurrence of blindness among tens of thousands of Indian children every year due to a lack of vitamin A (200). As Wenz demonstrates, the benefits of particular practices are not always enjoyed by everyone. In fact, it negatively impacts vulnerable people. A concern for human welfare needs to be inclusive, and the negative consequences of boosting production need to be balanced against the benefits of freeing resources for optional consumer items. Respect for others should be a pivot point for projects intended to maximize production.

While problems dot the human landscape, so do solutions. The book proposes a strong idea which is a salve for social and environmental problems. It is land-ownership for the masses. Wenz uses another quote by Korten which explains this idea:

Rapid economic growth in low-income countries brings modern airports, television, express highways, and air-conditioned shopping malls … for the fortunate few. It rarely improves living conditions for the many. This kind of growth requires gearing the economy toward exports to earn the foreign exchange to buy the things that wealthy people desire. Thus, the lands of the poor are appropriated for export crops. The former tillers of these lands find themselves subsisting in urban slums on starvation wages paid by sweatshops producing for export. Families are broken up, the social fabric is strained to the breaking point, and violence becomes endemic (202).

An idea that emerges from the above quote is that the lack of land ownership is a contributor to social problems. In fact, other sources confirm this idea. A number of articles filed under World Food & Hunger on The Global Policy Forum website explore the nexus between land ownership and hunger. The page heading captures a basic truth that land is distributed unfairly and this inequity is a key factor to poverty and hunger. Across the globe, land is mostly in the hands of the rich elites, stripping the paupers arguably of the basic right to grow their own food. The principal message in the quote outlines the relationship between groups of humans, expressly the relationship between a small group of landowners and the landless many.

However, there is no need for people to starve, especially if they are willing to work the land to grow their own food. A book originally published in 1995, When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten, asserts that equitable sharing of the earth’s sustainable resources would meet the needs of the population at that time (199). The 2015 third edition of the same book contains the same wording which signifies even today, with the earth bustling with more than seven billion people, there is enough for everyone to survive. Another fertile argument for land ownership on a global scale is that small landowners who depend on their land will be good custodians of the earth because the land sustains them and they have a personal relationship with it. In that scenario both humans and the environment flourish, a universal wish of the essayists in the book.

Peter Wenz underscores other problems that are associated with the integration of traditional societies into the global consumer market. The resulting destitution creates social problems, like child prostitution, which disintegrates the social fabric of societies. Other negative effects are a growing disparity in income between nations and a decrease in global food security. In the year 2000, half the global population’s vitamin and nutritional needs were unmet (202). As mentioned earlier, it is not just humans that suffer; the environment aches as well. Environmental concerns aside, the earth simply does not contain the resources for all its inhabitants to embark on a lifestyle which is on par with the high-income countries (199, 203). An undeniable conclusion is that an insatiable appetite for endless goods and services precipitates social and environmental problems. Therefore, it is in the best interest of the human species and the rest of the earth community for humans to be more considerate consumers.

One approach to solving social and environmental problems is through educating the global population of the consequences of overconsumption along with character development, in particular the cultivation of empathy. People are less likely to jeopardize the well-being of other humans and other living things, no matter which part of the world they live in, if they develop a concern for the other like John Donne observed. Furthermore, one need not stop at living things; respect and reverence can be distributed more broadly to nonliving things like rocks, mountains, streams, and rivers. After all, all of these entities individually make up the whole of our natural world and life-sustaining systems. The education and character development applies both to the young people of today, who are still in their formative years, and the adults who make decisions which have consequences in the real world. The book clearly articulates the development of virtues that result in desirable outcomes for all.

Furthermore, the drivers of consumption need to consider that environmental degradation eventually spills over into their own neighborhoods. After all, water flows and air circulates, taking pollution along with them. To be sure, there may be less contamination when the water and air reach their homes, but that should not deter polluters from being better global citizens. Plus, the wealthy are not immune to social problems. The waves of those problems reach their shores as well.

Rich or poor, the factors that make human beings tick vary. This is so even when their actions are identical. Simply stated, people’s motives may differ. Wenz notices this peculiarity in the human species but places the importance on the end results rather than the motivations. What matters is the flowering of humans and the environment. He writes:

[N]onanthropocentric environmentalists have reasons to favor traditional virtues because their exercise tends to protect the nonhuman environment. Anthropocentrists have reason to support the same virtues because their exercise promotes human flourishing. Nonanthropocentric and anthropocentric considerations regarding human virtue and vice are thus mutually reinforcing. Each is stronger in combination with the other than alone, a relationship I define as synergistic (197).

As the above quote suggests, a balance of human and nonhuman interests motivating an individual is probably the ideal. Nonetheless, the following example demonstrates the concept of dual stimuli at work. Consider a group of people acting out of concern for other humans and another group acting out of concern for the natural world. On the one hand, humans concerned about other humans may oppose the use of sport utility vehicles because it contributes to climate change which adversely affects poor people across the globe. On the other hand, humans concerned about the natural world might be troubled by climate change because it endangers the survival of many species. The motivations are different, but they result in less consumption of natural resources and more preservation of the environment, and more flourishing of humans (209-210). In the absence of a broader environmental ethic, human-centered ethics still manages to promote the well-being of the natural world because, on many occasions, what is good for humans and what is good for the environment coincide. Still, the environment may not get the full protection that it would under a more rigorous environmental ethic (Gruen, 58, 60). Of course, some people may be equally compelled by the welfare of human beings and a reverence for the natural world. Perhaps this dual concern is a more well-rounded approach, but people possess different value systems which originate from many places. Some people may wish to protect the environment because it has instrumental value. Others are motivated to preserve the environment because they regard nature with a sense of reverence and sees intrinsic worth; its value is independent of whether or not it serves human ends (220).

The book, Environmental Virtue Ethics, in its entirety, including Wenz’s chapter, wishes for a peaceful existence not only between human beings but also between the human species and the natural world. The desire is that people respect each other and nature. However, despite people having strong convictions, changing their ways of being in a society that operates counter to their principles is akin to swimming upstream. Wenz takes into account the nuances and complexities of culture and status quo which make it difficult to adhere to virtues to their full extent. He does not ask individuals to ditch their car, in a car-centric society, if it halts their flourishing. Yet that is not a valid excuse to drive a thirsty vehicle. Wenz posits alternatives that deviate from mainstream practice, like driving vehicles that are fuel efficient, driving less, or/and increasing use of public transportation. The message is to adopt practices that improve on existing ones while not causing disharmony in social relationships which are critical for human flourishing. He asks the individual to be the vanguard of trendsetters that help both humans and the natural world to blossom (210-211). As the example illustrates, modifying current lifestyles for the welfare of the global biotic community is not an all-or-nothing effort. This piece of news should be encouraging for someone who does not think their small efforts will make a difference in the grand scheme of things. There is plenty of middle ground. A small change is better than no change and a significant change is an improvement over a small correction. Permission is granted to act even in the smallest ways for a better outcome for the greater good.

The consequences of over-consumption of goods and services by people in wealthy nations and by elite groups in poor nations disproportionately afflict the already marginalized poor. This is both unjust and morally reprehensible. While social and environmental problems are real and grave concerns in the world of today, the solutions are simple and actionable. Consuming less and living with a concern for the human and nonhuman world are obvious choices. The cultivation of virtues encourages individuals to be more concerned for others and the natural world. A more ethical global community allows for greater cohesion among its members and better relations with the natural world. Therefore, when possible, whether by doing a little or doing a lot, human beings “should cultivate … virtues to benefit themselves, other human beings, and the nonhuman environment (212). Environmental Virtue Ethics inspires the fostering of virtues that benefit both humankind and the natural world that the species is a part of.

Works Cited

Cafaro, Philip, and Ronald D. Sandler. Environmental Virtue Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Print.

“Global Policy Forum.” Land Ownership and Hunger. Global Policy Forum. Web. 14 Feb. 2016. .

Gruen, Lori, Dale Jamieson, and Christopher Schlottmann. Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Philosophy. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.

Entertaining, Type-II Error-prone, Axiomatic Skepticism: An Incomplete Form of Systemic Doubt

Review of “The Perks of Paranoia” (Video; 2013; 3.30 mins) by Christopher Griffin.

Though the creator of the entertaining video, Christopher Griffin, used the fruitful idea of “hyper-active threat detection” derived from evolutionary psychology to explain the tendency of some hyper-active brains to see conspiracies where there are none, he is only giving a part of the evolutionary picture. He overlooks the idea that–as people have evolved faculties to detect the good or bad intentions of other people, and as we try to detect the intentions for beneficial cooperation or nefarious conspiracies in other groups–we do so because deception and deception-detection are structural ingredients of evolution. It is not merely the simple case of evading predators. There is more going on, and more than we might be comfortable with. Continue reading “Entertaining, Type-II Error-prone, Axiomatic Skepticism: An Incomplete Form of Systemic Doubt”