The Body in the Phenomenologies of Kojima and Aurobindo

[Unpublished Draft – Please Do Not Cite] The Body in the Phenomenologies of Kojima and Aurobindo Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino Florida Atlantic University Presented at: Caribbean Philosophical Association 2nd Annual Meeting San Juan (Puerto Rico) June 1-3, 2005 Introduction It is no secret that within the European philosophical tradition, from Plato to Descartes and beyond, the body has often either been ignored or deprecated as a source of epistemological deception and error. Intellectual rationalism has always denounced the body, via sensation, as the root of error and deceit. Sensation and perception often lead us astray, according to rationalism, and away from knowledge and certitude. True knowledge can only arise if the mind can distance itself from untrustworthy perceptual data and engage, instead, in lofty a priori speculations on eternal truths. Cartesianism, as a form of rationalism, clearly endorses these views and, although the phenomenological method does not employ lofty speculation, Husserl clearly remains a Cartesian to the extent that he continues to identify the subject with pure consciousness, at the expense of the body. Mistrust of the body is, however, not unique to the Western philosophical tradition. For example, the asceticism and Illusionism found in much of the Indian spiritual tradition is akin to the distrust of the body found in much of Western thought. In fact, it seems that asceticism and Illusionism are merely the spiritual counterparts to intellectual rationalism. On the other hand, rationalism can itself be thought of as a form of ‘intellectual asceticism’ or ‘intellectual Illusionism’. The two phenomenological philosophers discussed in this essay, Hiroshi Kojima and Sri Aurobindo, each respond in their own unique way to asceticism and Illusionism. Kojima provides an alternative to Western intellectual asceticism, whereas Aurobindo engages and responds to Indian spiritual asceticism. 2 These philosophers do this by offering alternative ways of conceiving of the role of the body and of its relation to consciousness. In doing this, they reaffirm the body as the intentional center of our being and as the instrument through which humankind reaches higher levels of understanding and becomes capable of living a truly ethical life. II. Kojima’s Phenomenological Ontology of the Human Being In his book Monad and Thou: Phenomenological Ontology of the Human Being, the Japanese philosopher Hiroshi Kojima develops a conception of the human subject that attempts to resolve the radical disagreement between the Husserlian conception of the human subject as pure consciousness and the Heideggerian conception of the subject as Dasein or pure individuality. Kojima finds the contact point between these two radically distinct conceptions of the subject in the structure of the human body as LeibKörper. In this way, Kojima seeks to reinsert the body, as the intentional center of the monad, into our philosophical understanding of the subject, into our understanding of what constitutes intersubjective encounters and, ultimately, into our understanding of the ethical and spiritual life. Kojima’s conception of the body as the intentional center of the monad arises out of his critique of Husserl’s early Cartesianism which, Kojima points out, is never truly overcome even by the later Husserl. According to Kojima, Husserl’s problem in understanding the self-evidence of the world is precisely due to his identification of the subject with pure consciousness, at the exclusion of the lived body. Kojima asserts that “[a]lthough Husserl discovered the dimension of the pregiven world, he could not clarify the ontological, or the so-called existential relationship of the three elements, namely monad, Leib, and the pregiven world, because he did not understand the inner relation between the body and the world”.1 Instead, Kojima suggests clarifying the relation between the pre-given world and the monad, or the “ego grasped in its full concreteness”2, by recognizing Leib (the bodily flesh or lived body) as “the unconstituted (prethetic) entity together with the Being of the surrounding world prior to any thesis given through the transcendental ego”3. For Kojima, the monad arises when “the transcendental ego unifies itself with the ‘psycho-physical ego”4. Kojima furthers strengthens this by arguing that the body is the intentional and functional center of the monad, that the monad is transcendental subjectivity incarnated. 3 [I]t is clear that the monad itself as the peculiar ownmost sphere is also based upon a "pre-given" world […] this becomes true by virtue of the fact that the nonobjectifiable side of the body (the bodily flesh, or Leib), which is to be penetrated afterward by the transcendental subjectivity, is already the center of the pregiven world, unlike the always intentionally constituted, objectifiable "physical body" (Körper) […] the reflective transcendental consciousness indeed has the ability to constitute the Körper, but never the Leib itself. Rather, the Leib is given from the anonymous bottom, as the core of the pregiven primordial world or the monad […] we must think that insofar as neither the transcendental consciousness that constitutes the Körper nor the imaginative life that constitutes the Leib could constitute the other […] a third agent, the “somatic ego” will be necessary to unite them kinesthetically as the Leib-Körper from the outside, so to speak.5 From this discussion of the pre-thetic self or monad, Kojima then explains how the transition from the pregiven world to the lifeworld occurs. [The] transition from the pre-thetic, pregiven world to the general thesis of the life-world […] must correspond exactly to that of the transition from the pre-thetic self to the transcendental corporeal (somatic) ego […] The pre-thetic self as the primordial form of Existence is necessarily thrown into the common general-thetic world by the radical reflection of transcendental subjectivity, and it is given the kinesthetic vestment of voluminosity (body-schema) and becomes a corporeal ego. This voluminosity or spatial corporeity of the ego accompanied by the nonreflective transcendental consciousness is able to constitute a similar voluminosity analogically around any image given from the world at a stroke through the transcendental principle of coupling […] Therefore, the pre-thetic world and the pre-thetic self do not suddenly disappear even in the establishment of the general thesis of the life-world by transcendental subjectivity. Rather, the pre-thetic world remains as the dimension of the optimum image of the object and its meaning, and the pre-thetic self remains as the dimension of imagination and projection.6 4 Furthermore, according to Kojima, we cannot confine transcendental consciousness to a windowless monad à la Leibniz because the body appears as the incarnation of transcendental consciousness and, through the lived body, transcendental consciousness is essentially intersubjective “and open to the other”. In other words, “my ‘universe of the transcendental subject’ is penetrated everywhere by the intentionalities of other transcendental subjects, which are a priori equally original with me”23. Thus, Kojima argues that what Husserl believed to be a paradox, that I am at the same time a subject in the world and a subject towards the world, is no longer a paradox when one understands that the pre-thetic self, through its corporeality and intersubjective existence with other intentional subjects, is Being-in-the-world.7 Yet, although Kojima identifies the somatic ego as Being-in-the-world, he does not completely agree with Heidegger’s notion of subjectivity. Though the existential phenomenology of Heidegger anticipates the irreducible double-subjective structure of the body as imaginative subjectivity and body-surface subjectivity, Kojima points out that, “[u]nfortunately, […] it divides this duality into two independent moments and allots each of them two different ways of human life.”8 Kojima argues that, even in our account of objects as tools, we must always also take into consideration their characteristics as things, and that this objective data is offered by a perceptive body-surface subject. […] objective characteristics of beings in the world are not the simple privation of their toolcharacteristics, but their conditio sine qua non […] We must not overlook the indispensable role that perceptive body-surface subjectivity plays in the world projection of imaginative subjectivity, as Heidegger regrettably did.9 Although he agrees with Heidegger that the subject is Being-in-the-world, Kojima wishes to unite the spheres of imaginative subjectivity and body-surface subjectivity as authentic modes of being, rather than consider them distinct modes, as Heidegger did, and relegate the latter to the sphere of inauthentic life. Imaginative subjectivity and body-surface subjectivity represent the incarnation of transcendental subjectivity, the concrete pre-thetic self that is the monad. 5 To better understand Kojima’s conception of the monad, it is important to introduce two ways through which Being appears to the subject. To do this, we must first examine what, according to Kojima, are the fundamental opposing concepts of Western philosophy, the concept of ‘consciousness’ and the concept of ‘Being’. Kojima argues that these two seemingly opposing concepts actually capture two ways through which Being appears: Being as seen from the inside and Being as seen from the outside. According to Kojima, the possibility for the reconciliation of these two opposing concepts lies in the rehabilitation of the body as the intentional and functional center of the subject, the somatic ego or monad. “Being appears in two completely different ways to the consciousness of the somatic ego, which confronts Being in the broadest sense. The first of these ways is ‘Being seen from the outside’ (so-called extended Being), while the second is ‘Being seen from the inside’ (so-called living Being) […] my body is seen from the outside as Körper in space, but simultaneously as Leib from the inside in a completely different dimension called the ‘monad’. [Emphasis in original]”10 Kojima tells us that [i]t is worth noting that the dimension of “I” comprises the consciousness that sees Being from both sides, inside and outside, at the same time. This is the self-consciousness that mediates both sides of Being and that can be regarded as the complex of the transcendental consciousness and the imagination. It is also the consciousness of “I” (somatic ego), and not any impersonal consciousness. By contrast, in the dimension of “I” there is no consciousness except the impersonal consciousness of primordial transcendentality. The human consciousness of the “I” gradually absorbs this transcendental consciousness during its development. The self-awareness of the “I” itself seems to grow with this absorption. Therefore, in the region of Being seen from the inside, consciousness and Being are mediated by “I” (somatic ego) and make up a kind of unity, but in the region of Being seen from the outside, consciousness and Being are related only externally and make up no unity (e.g., as in the case of intentionality).11 There are situations, however, in which a being that is outside the parameters of the I can be experienced as another ‘monad’, as a being having an inner life, a self and, therefore, as experiencing being seen from the inside. These situations are ones in which two monads encounter one another as Thou. It is in his account 6 of these situations that Kojima is able to reconcile the notions of 'individuality' and 'community' and, thereby, answer the question of how a communication or communion between monads can be secured without the mediation of God.12 Though Kojima is clearly influenced by Buber in his analysis of I-Thou relations, Kojima supplements Buber’s thought with an phenomenological analysis of the body. This analysis of the body makes it clear that, rather than encountering an ‘anonymous Thou’ as claimed in Buber, I am always aware of the other with her particular characteristics that make her this person and not another. We do not have empathic IThou relations with indeterminate Thou’s but with determinate He/She/It, when my Thou and her Thou encounter each other and bring into being the mediating Thou that Kojima calls the occuring Thou. The challenge that Kojima faces is that of expressing the I-Thou relationship with the concepts of ‘consciousness’ and ‘Being’. Kojima claims that “[n]ot only the idealism and materialism of the modern age, but also phenomenology and phenomenological ontology, which arise later, seem not to be able to get rid of this schema”13. Since for Kojima the body is the intentional focus of the monad and since it is only when I intend the body of the other that kinesthetic coupling of Thou’s can occur, the Thou is always to be “predicated with sensory qualities […] Though Thyself never appears absolutely and independently. Thou always appears through I and He, She, It as monads and as phenomena […] Thou never ‘becomes’ He, She, It and He, She, It – or I – never ‘become’ Thou. Thou only appears from time to time through I and He, She, It, and then disappears from Them. They are only expressions and passages of Thou”14. Life and the lifeworld, for Kojima, have their center and meaning in the second person, Thou. For, he argues, life could not have its center either in ‘Being seen from the inside’ (I) or in ‘Being seen from the outside (other), since these are the two manners in which Being appears. It follows that life and the lifeworld are neither egocentric nor alter centric. Instead, in Kojima’s words, life and the lifeworld are tucentric.15 It is the I-Thou encounter or the tu-logical relation, as mediated by the kinesthetic coupling of bodies, that grounds the lifeworld. The Thou who occurs into the region of the In-Between is no other than the true mediator whom we have been seeking […] It is evident that Thou is the origin of every meaning, because meaning is the pre-thetic Being of the monad modified by Thou. Meaning is truly subjective-objective and acts as the 7 mediator of the self and the Other, too. Meaning contributed by Thou comprises not only linguistic meaning but also practical meaning (value) and aesthetic meaning […] Reason, too, is not originally in our possession or under our control, but rather it comes to us freely and occurs among us […] as we have seen, noematic sense originates in the pre-thetic world (monad) whose Being is the goal of the occasional projection of the apperceptive body. Since the mediation of the occurring Thou is the precondition of every synthetic cooperation of transcendental subjectivity and the apperceptive body as the pre-thetic self, which is necessary to the personification of meaning, reason, whose apperceptive body is now restricted to cognitive acts, must also be mediated by and involved in Thou […] we may call Thou the substratum of reason […] I might forget something when I am fulfilled by Thou, but I shall never forget that I am I. Rather, precisely in, and only in Thou can I live totally and concretely as a monad together with other I’s as monads.16 This, then, is the contact point between Kojima’s conceptions of intersubjectivity and the world as the pre-thetic grounding of transcendental subjectivity and his new conception of the I-Thou relation. Here, Kojima rejects all solipsistic conceptions of meaning, reason, and transcendental subjectivity and, instead, offers the occurring Thou of the intersubjective relation between monads as the pre-condition for the lifeworld and for personhood. III. Aurobindo’s Supramental Phenomenology Sri Aurobindo’s supramental phenomenology develops as a clear critique of and response to much of the Indian spiritual tradition. What Aurobindo finds most objectionable in this tradition is its tendency towards asceticism and Illusionism. Illusionism is the view that the material world is just that, merely an illusion that stands in the way of spiritual enlightenment. The body is, therefore, denounced as the seat of deception and illusion. Because of this, the spiritual seeker must practice a strict asceticism and renunciation of the body in order to allow the spirit to attain ever higher levels of consciousness. As Aurobindo states, 8 […] the eager seeker of spiritual fulfillment has hurled his ban against the body and his world-disgust selects the world-principle above all other things as an especial object of loathing. The body is the obscure burden that he cannot bear; its obstinate material grossness is the obsession that drives him for deliverance to the life of the ascetic. To get rid of it he has even gone so far as to deny its existence and the reality of the material universe. Most of the religions have put their curse upon Matter and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary endurance of the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality.”17 Aurobindo, however, does not regard the material universe as mere illusion. Rather, the material world is “the last stage […] in the progress of pure substance towards a basis of cosmic relation in which the first word shall not be spirit but form, and form in its utmost possible development of concentration, resistance, durably gross image, mutual impenetrability, - the culminating point of distinction, separation and division. This is the intention and character of the material universe; it is the formula of accomplished divisibility” 18. According to Aurobindo, substance exists in ascending grades from Matter to Spirit and from absolute divisibility, separation, and form to absolute indivisibility, unity, and formlessness. Thus, Matter is mere the lowest stage in an ascending scale culminating in pure spirituality. There are clear parallels between Aurobindo’s conception of Matter as the last stage in the progress of substance and Plotinus’ notion that matter is but the last and lowest emanation from the One. For both Plotinus and Aurobindo, then, Matter is neither illusionary nor deceitful because it is a manifestation of one reality that is the pure source of all that is. According to Aurobindo, as one ascends away from Matter and toward Spirit, substance is marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence […] Even within the formula of the physical cosmos there is an ascending series in the scale of Matter which leads us from the more to the less dense, from the less to the more subtle […] [the] gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to 9 correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda”19. Many scholars have drawn parallels, with regard to Aurobindo’s notion of substance, with Hegel’s teleological conception of Spirit. In fact, according to Aurobindo, all of reality and substance is involved in a teleological process of evolution. “Evolution comes by the unceasing pressure of the supra-material planes on the material compelling it to deliver out of itself their principles and power which might conceivably have slept imprisoned in the rigidity of the material formula […] this necessity from below is very much aided by a kindred superior pressure.”20 This process of evolution eventually results in the emergence of humanity. However, humanity is not the final stage in this evolutionary process. Humanity, Aurobindo tells us, is transitional. "Evolution continues and man will be surpassed”. The question is “how does the process of evolution from humanity to the next stage occur?” According to Aurobindo, the first stages of evolution, in which Life evolves out of Matter and Mind evolves out of Life, are not conscious, in that they are not the result of a decision to evolve. However, in order for humanity to be surpassed, human kind must consciously participate in its own evolution. It must decide to evolve. Whatever evolves out of humanity must evolve through the efforts of humanity itself. “Man occupies the crest of the evolutionary wave. With him occurs the passage from an unconscious to a conscious evolution.”21 In a very Nietzschean vein, Aurobindo tells us that humankind must be overcome. This evolution must occur for two reasons. First, it is a teleological necessity that an imperfect stage must be surpassed. Second, humanity must evolve from its present state because this is the only way that it will save itself. If we do not evolve to a higher state of consciousness and change our ways, the world will not longer be able to sustain our presence in it. The force within evolution is leading humanity - impersonally, disinterestedly and universally - to a critical point of choice where it must decide, consciously, to surpass itself and radically change or else become extinct. Evolution will occur no matter what. It can either take us along or throw us off. The choice is ours. This evolution will come about when humankind elevates itself beyond its ego-centeredness and toward higher consciousness. Once this has occurred, the post-human will live the unity of all Being. The body, according to Aurobindo, is not only an important ally in this process but is actually required to assist 10 humankind in its evolutionary ascension. Because Matter is understood as being a stage in the ascending ladder of Being that culminates in Spirit, it is not regarded as inherently deceitful or illusionary. Therefore, the physical body of the human being is not seen as necessarily deterring the Mind away from pursuing unity with higher consciousness. In fact, it is through certain bodily practices that consciousness is elevated and that, therefore, the evolution toward higher consciousness occurs. The physical body can certainly impair the evolution of consciousness, if we make the mistake of associating this principle of division and distinction with our true selves and, thereby, remain ego-centered. The body, however, can also be harmonized with the soul and, through certain physical and mental disciplines, it can be brought into the service of the soul’s ascension toward what Aurobindo calls Supermind. According to Aurobindo, through the specific practice of integral yoga, the body becomes an important ally and necessary ally in the elevation of human consciousness toward Supramental consciousness. Although “[i]n the past, [enlightenment] has been attempted by a drawing away from the world and a disappearance into the height of the Self or Spirit. Sri Aurobindo teaches that a descent of the higher principle is possible which will not merely release the spiritual Self out of the world, but release it in the world, replace the mind’s ignorance or its very limited knowledge by a supramental Truth-Consciousness […] The psychological discipline of Yoga can be used to that end by opening all the parts of the being to a […] transformation”.22 The unique “feature of [Aurobindo’] yoga [and] a principle which is at the heart of his whole philosophy [is that] [h]e lays great stress on the importance of matter and on the cooperation of the human body in the achievement of the divine life. In doing this he separates himself form those yogis who preach Sannayasa or renunciation of the body and worldly activity.”23” For Aurobindo, in fact, the body perfected through the practice of Hathayoga, in which it is fully harmonized with the mind, “is full of consciousness; it is a manifestation of God.”24 In the development of this philosophy, Aurobindo employs a phenomenological approach. His method proceeds from the data revealed to consciousness, rather than in an a priori speculative fashion. The data Aurobindo is referring to is not the data revealed to everyday ego consciousness but, rather, the data revealed to consciousness when it transcends the ego through the practice of integral yoga. The function of yoga practice, in Aurobindo’s thought, fulfills a similar methodological function as the epoché in Husserlian phenomenology. There are, of course, important distinctions to be drawn between the 11 Husserlian and the Aurobindian reductions. But an examination of these would go beyond the scope of the present essay. The yoga practice recommended by Aurobindo can be thought of as a phenomenological reduction because it results in the bracketing of ego-consciousness to reveal other levels of psychic being. More precisely, Aurobindo claims that the first level of psychic being revealed by yoga practice is what he calls “the soul” or “the psychic being”.25 “The soul is marked by a qualitatively different mode of subjectivity than that of the ego. It is a ‘larger and purer’ entity than the ego and, for Aurobindo, it constitutes the real self because, unlike the ego, it is not cut off by thick protective walls from the higher planes of the larger totality that is consciousness. In other words, it is a mode of subjectivity in which our ‘individuality is in constant relation to our universality’ […] As such it opens the way to the higher planes or the ‘dark matter’ of consciousness that the walls of our egos make inaccessible.”26 Thus, although the ultimate goal is to escape, at least temporarily, the limiting ego-consciousness and enter into higher consciousness, such an escape, for Aurobindo, does not occur through asceticism and the denial of the body. Rather, it occurs through bodily practice. The “opening of self to the power above […] is attained by yoga. Yoga becomes significant precisely at the point at which we pass from natural evolution to conscious evolution.”27 Bodily practice, then, become essential in realizing an enlightened consciousness. “What philosophy establishes theoretically as a fundamental necessity, we can only realize practically through yoga.”28 Thus, the mind/body practice of yoga is both an epistemological method for intellectually knowing the various levels of psychic being and a spiritual method for elevating the spirit toward higher consciousness, thereby advancing the process of humankind’s evolution toward Supermind. Hiroshi Kojima’s and Sri Aurobindo’s thought provide interesting alternative ways of conceiving the role of the body in the acquisition of knowledge and its relation to consciousness and spirit. Both of these phenomenologists are responding to traditions of thought that clearly devalue the material world and the body and suggest asceticism, either epistemological or spiritual, as the true path towards knowledge and enlightenment. Both Kojima’s and Aurobindo’s thought have clear ethical implications which will be further explored in a forthcoming and longer essay. What I have sought to accomplish here is a brief outline of how these two non-Western thinkers have employed the phenomenological method as an instrument for grounding knowledge and spirituality, once again, to their material and corporeal roots. 12 Notes 1 Kojima, Hiroshi, Monad and Thou: Phenomenological Ontology of the Human Being (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000), p. 107. 2 Ibid, p. 104 3 Ibid, p. 107. 4 Ibid, p. 104. 5 Ibid, pp. 106-116. 6 Ibid, pp. 49-50. 7 Ibid, p. 48. 8 Ibid, p. 137. 9 Ibid, p. 139. 10 Ibid, p. 177. 11 Ibid, p. 181. 12 Ibid, p. 105. 13 Ibid, p. 176. 14 Ibid, pp. 194-195. 15 Ibid, p. 166. 16 Ibid, p. 199-201. 17 Ghose, Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo), The Life Divine, The Sri Aurobindo Center of Education Collection, Volume III ( 18 Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (New York: The Greystone Press, 1949), p. 233. 19 Ibid, pp. 233-235. 20 Ibid, p. 238. 21 Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man: The Divine Life Upon Earth, compiled with a summary and notes by P.B. Saint-Hilaire (London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1974), p. 28 22 “Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Sadhana”, in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 95-97, at www.miraura.org/teaching.html 23 Bruteau, Beatrice, Worthy is the World: The Hindu Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971), p. 39. 24 Sri Aurobindo in a letter to Barin, as quoted in Diwakar, R.R., Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1962), p. 195. 25 Henry, Paget, “Between Naipaul and Aurobindo: Where is Indo-Caribbean Philosophy?”, in The CLR James Journal: A Review of Caribbean Ideas, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter 2002/2003), p. 22. 26 Ibid. 27 Bruteau, p. 138. 28 Maitra, S.K., An Introduction to the Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo (Calcutta: Culture, 1941), p. 10. View publication stats