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Ep. 49 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Corbin and Jung

Vervaeke examines Corbin's concept of the imaginal and the angel/divine double, linking it to Heidegger, Sufism, and aspirational rationality.

Key Takeaways

  • The imaginal, not the merely imaginary, mediates between subjective and objective reality through transformative participation.
  • Aspiration and rationality are intertwined; a rationality that excludes aspirational self-transformation is self-undermining.
  • The 'divine double' is a symbol of the self one is becoming, offering an alternative to Romantic authenticity.
  • Jung's archetypes can be understood as imaginal entities that reshape the ego through ongoing interaction.

What the video covers

  • Corbin distinguishes the 'imaginary' (subjective mental images) from the 'imaginal', which mediates between the intelligible and sensible worlds.
  • The imaginal is a transformative, participatory process, and the symbol captures this mediation between subject and object.
  • The episode traces the historical pursuit of the 'divine double' in ancient Mediterranean and Neoplatonic thought, challenging the Romantic model of authenticity.
  • The transgressive idea is that one's true self is a superlative self one aspires toward, not a fixed inner essence to express.
  • Drawing on La Paul's transformative experience and Agnes Callard's aspiration, Vervaeke argues aspiration and development are central to rationality.
  • Rationality must be understood broadly as aspirational and prolepsis-based, not merely logical, to avoid self-undermining.
  • Non-logical identity, as in the relation between a present self and a future self who appreciates classical music, is a key example of aspirational rationality.
  • The divine double is proposed as a symbol that captures the dynamic process of self-transcendence, while acknowledging its theistic connotations and problems.
  • The episode contrasts Freud's hydraulic model of the psyche with Jung's archetypes as active, imaginal entities the ego can interact with and internalize.
  • Overall, the lecture argues for recovering a participatory, transformative relationship to the sacred and to symbols to address the meaning crisis.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Heidegger, Eckhart, and Corbin's Core Argument
  2. 03:45The Imaginal vs. the Imaginary
  3. 03:48The Divine Double and Transgressive Authenticity
  4. 06:24Aspiration, Rationality, and La Paul and Callard
  5. 09:57Non-Logical Identity and Self-Creation
  6. 21:14The Angel Symbol and Theistic Concerns
  7. 40:05Freud, Jung, and the Hydraulic Psyche
  8. 49:44Archetypes and Internalized Interaction

Answers

Questions about this video

What distinguishes the imaginal from the imaginary according to Corbin?

The imaginary refers to subjective mental images without objective reality, while the imaginal mediates between the intelligible and sensible worlds. It is a transformative, participatory process that bridges subject and object.

What is the 'divine double' and why is it considered transgressive?

The divine double is a superlative self, bound to the present self yet ahead of it, that one aspires to become. It is transgressive because it challenges the Romantic notion that one's true self is an inner essence to be expressed authentically.

How does the lecture connect aspiration to rationality?

Vervaeke argues that rationality is itself an aspirational process, developed through education and wisdom. If the process of becoming rational is not itself rational, our concept of rationality becomes self-undermining.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
[Music] welcome back to awakening from the meeting crisis so last time we followed Heidegger into the depths where we encountered Eckhart and this non teleological relationship to the play of being and that led us very directly into Corbin and Corben's core argument that
00:39
Speaker A
gnosis as where we've been using it I mean relates centrally the ability to engage in this serious play relate centrally to the imagination but Corbin is making use of this term in a new way he makes a distinction between
00:54
Speaker A
the imaginary which is how we typically use the word the imagination and mental images in my head that are only subjective and have no objective reality and the imaginal the imaginal which mediates between the abstract intelligible world and the concrete
01:15
Speaker A
sensible world and trans Jet's between the subjective and the objective and that is not done statically all this mediation but a mutual affordance is done and an ongoing transformative trance framing and that the symbol captures all of this and then I wanted
01:35
Speaker A
to bring out Corbin's core symbol and it's a core symbol that relates directly to gnosis because in gnosis and that's transformative participatory knowing and this goes to the core of Heidegger's notion of design the being whose being is in question we write half to see self
01:54
Speaker A
knowledge and knowledge of the world as inextricably bound up together in order to do that we are pursuing Corbin's central symbol the angel which of course is immediately off-putting to many people including myself but I've been trying to get a way of articulating how
02:17
Speaker A
Corbin is incorporating both Heidegger and Persian Sufism Neoplatonic Sufism into this understanding of the symbol and I recommended that we take a look at the work of first of all of staying the historical work showing how throughout the ancient Mediterranean world and in
02:40
Speaker A
up and through the Hellenistic period and beyond up until the period of easily our pseudo-dionysius around you know the fifth century of the Common Era there's the pursuit of the divine double and then the idea is one that is deeply
02:59
Speaker A
transgressive of our cultural cognitive grammar of decadent Romanticism where we have a we are born with our true self that nearly needs to express itself a Larusso and that author the core virtue is authentic authenticity which is being
03:18
Speaker A
right true to the true self that you have you know you possess rather than for example a Socratic model in which the true self is something towards which you are constantly aspiring and then I recommended trying to make this so and
03:33
Speaker A
what's the transgressive mythology sorry the transgressive mythology is that their self that I have now is not my true self my true self is my divine double this is right something that is superlative to me it is not it is it is
03:48
Speaker A
bound to me it is my double right it is bound to me and but it is superlative to me it is both me and not me it's me as I meant to be as I should be and that the
03:57
Speaker A
project right the existential project is not one of expressing a self that you have but of transcending to become a self that is ecstatically ahead of you in an important way and then I pointed out that for many of you this would
04:15
Speaker A
still be sort of like okay but I get the transgression but I still find this notion of a divine double unpalatable maybe for some of you you don't but nevertheless I think there is an important way by picking up on like by
04:29
Speaker A
asking the question why did so many people for so long believed in they're so deeply picking up on the question of what's going on there and focusing on the this aspirational process and this takes us back into work that
04:43
Speaker A
that was core to the discussion I made about gnosis and it has had a resounding impact at various places throughout this series which is La Paul's work on transformative experience and then somebody from who's from the same school
04:57
Speaker A
influenced by Paul having a different viewer as Paul is more her transformations are more like insight Agnes Coward's notion of aspiration is much more developmental but I argue that they can be I think readily reconciled together if you see development as a
05:14
Speaker A
link sequence of of insights to bring about qualitative change in your competence so we were zeroing in on this right I'm using la Paul and Agnes Keller to triangulate in to this relationship of aspiration and picking up first of
05:32
Speaker A
all on Keller's important point that is not addressed and this is an important point by la paul the the the deep connections between aspiration and rationality that rationality is itself a rash is an aspirational process and if we make the process by which we cut
05:50
Speaker A
become rational itself not a rational or irrational process we will get into serious a position that it's seriously self undermining similarly if the way in which you become wise does not involve sort of wise acts and behavior if the
06:06
Speaker A
process itself is not itself wise you're going to get into all kinds of difficulties if it's not in some sense a rational process again last time I reminded you how broadly but I think also deeply I'm using the term rational
06:20
Speaker A
or happy being educated I mean we we make ourselves better maybe even more rational or wiser by going through an education but education at least a liberal education is a deeply aspirational process if that itself is not part of what makes us rational is
06:37
Speaker A
that if it's not itself a rational process then of course our rationality is again being undermined and and right self contradictory fashion so the basics of this argument is if we take if we do not understand a kind of rationality
06:53
Speaker A
colored calls program thick rationality that's the rationality of aspiration the rationality that allows you right that is the rationality that emerges in education that emerges in the cultivation of rationality that emerges in the cultivation of wisdom then a lot of human behavior is Right
07:16
Speaker A
improv is not going to be called rational and it's going then that is going to render our notion of rationality as I've said self contradictory self undermining in some very fundamental ways and so again we see the rejoining of right love and reason that
07:36
Speaker A
was originally talked about so deeply in Plato so now we've come back to this problem I gave you the example of somebody in a liberal education and this is a colorants example right here's my self at this time and this self at this
07:54
Speaker A
time and something I brought out that color doesn't but important because it's a it's it it's a concise way of talking about the relationship between them and that there isn't a direct inferential relationship between these which is non
08:07
Speaker A
logical identity right this is part and parcel like think about what I would said earlier helped me broaden the notion of rationality outside of logic if calor does right and we have to include rationality proleptic rationality in our model of rationality
08:24
Speaker A
and involves its non logical identity then of course we're stepping beyond sort of a purely logical understanding of rationality yet again for yet another reason okay so what's the problem here though well the problem is the problem of non logical identity so we I don't
08:43
Speaker A
appreciate always remember both meanings of that term too deeply and and they're interwoven the two sides of aspiration I deeply understand it and I deep I'm deeply grateful for it I value it right I don't appreciate classical music I
09:02
Speaker A
don't have the taste for it I go get it and I want to be somebody who appreciates plastic classical music now if I want if I do that because I want to satisfy a current desire I have a current value I
09:15
Speaker A
have like I value impressing my friends or I evaluate R acting members of the opposite sex or something like that then of course I'm not actually aspiring because this person doesn't appreciate classical music because it impresses their friends or because it helps them
09:32
Speaker A
in their dating life or for whatever other reason they appreciate it for a perspectival and participatory knowing that s one doesn't have that's the point the appreciation that s two has is bound to perspectival and participatory no a
09:57
Speaker A
of which s one is ignorant and that of course is one of the central points who you member of La Paz argument about transformative experience so that looks like there's something right there's a fundamental discontinuity here okay now
10:16
Speaker A
to bring out the problem that we need to sort of resolve and bring back and tie this back to the notion of the divine double I want to talk about April a in which Callard shows us how this is problematic as we
10:31
Speaker A
try to talk about it and she makes use of the work of Strawson Galen Strawson and he talks about a paradox of of self creation right now Strawson points out that for self creation and doesn't this look like self creation here's a self
10:57
Speaker A
creating itself right right for self creation be too true to be truly an instance of self and creation sort of emphasizing both sides of that double form two things are needed one requirement right is a continuity requirement there has to be something
11:20
Speaker A
deep continuous between s1 and s2 because right if they are not the same self then it's not an act of self creation right they're not the same self it's not an act of self creation so that's the continuity requirement and so I'm going
11:44
Speaker A
to represent it like this right s1 equals s2 so what this means is if like if s1 is hit by a motorcycle and their brain is damaged and right and they act and behave in a different way that's not an act of self creation that
12:00
Speaker A
is not an act of self creation s1 has to be totally responsible for s2 or else it's not an act of self creation putting an emphasis on the self okay but now let's shift to the creation side right
12:17
Speaker A
which is that there has to be real novelty between them or else there's no creation involved if s1 just develops a skill or ability they already have that is not real novelty that is just more of the same that's quantitative development
12:37
Speaker A
not qualitative development so right if all that happens is s1 you know improve their skill you know deepens their capacity to acquire something that they already value etc that right is not real novelty so real novelty means there has
12:57
Speaker A
to be a fundamental difference between s1 and s2 now what Strawson does with this right is he points out notice how right in s1 and s2 for the continuity requirement have to be equal but the real novelty means there has to be a real deep
13:15
Speaker A
difference between s1 and s2 right or it's not creation and the permanent so what he argues is the argues that self creation is paradoxical in fact the point he's trying to make is its self contradictory there can be no such thing
13:27
Speaker A
as self creation right so another way of thinking about this is if you remember when we talked about this in connection with transformative experience we can invokes voters notion of the idea that you can't you can't sort of create a stronger logic by
13:51
Speaker A
logically manipulating a weaker logic no matter how much I manipulate the machinery of predicate logic I won't get modal logic because what I have to do right is I have to introduce axioms that are outside forged Elian reasons
14:08
Speaker A
ultimately are outside the system of predicate logic so putting it this way right in order to get the real novelty between s1 and s2 I have to introduce something that's outside the logic of s1 the logic of its values and beliefs
14:28
Speaker A
right that will then make it into s2 but if it comes from outside of s1 it is foreign and strange and right and therefore it right is not an act of self creation what that shows voters idea about you can't infer a stronger logic
14:48
Speaker A
from a weaker logic and it goes back to a point we've made before there is no inferential way there's no way you can sort of infer yourself from s1 to s2 and this of course is part of kirkegaard
15:00
Speaker A
whole point about the leap and the leap of faith the leap of faith is to leap into a process of development that is going to put you through this kind of qualitative change in your identity but Strawson makes this very problematic by
15:14
Speaker A
saying right this makes absolutely no sense all right and so we're caught between two things either we're caught we can break this by saying right there is ultimately no self we could go rapidly empiricist I'm just a blank slate and all that happens is
15:32
Speaker A
stuff from the outside changes me and then III go for the novelty but there's no underlying self or I can just do the continuity requirement I can become sort of a Russo Lee and romantic and myself is myself is identical
15:47
Speaker A
throughout right and all I'm doing is expressing what was already within myself that's all that's happening you see empiricism and romanticism choose one of the two over the other and when strossen says is you you have to make
16:03
Speaker A
such a choice because self creation is itself self contradictory Khaled says this is all a mistake and I agree with her she argues that this is both the empiricism and the romanticism at least the Brazilian decadent romanticism right
16:23
Speaker A
is not right it is not adequate or accurate of our experiment of developmental change what breaks this I argue helping her I believe is that the relationship between s1 and s2 is one of non logical identity something of course
16:45
Speaker A
we practice the narrative practice hypothesis by engaging in narrative all the time and making ourselves into temporarily extended selves that have a non logical identity through time and through development so I think both the in their romantic Expressionism and the
17:09
Speaker A
imperious in Pyrrhic the empiricists you know writing upon the blank slate do not capture what's happening between s1 and - it's not that s1 is just changed randomly into s2 from the outside neither is it the case that s1 simply
17:31
Speaker A
makes ask to the first self does not make it right it's not it's neither pure passivity nor pure activity this of course is why I've continually emphasized the notion of participation we'll see how Barfield is trying also to
17:47
Speaker A
step above both you know making and acted completely active making and completely positive reception in notion of participation a better way of describing the relationship is s1 does not receive nor make s2 but participates in s is to emergence x2 emerges out of
18:11
Speaker A
s1 to the point that s1 disappears into as - it's an emergency we participate in an emergence so aspiration is coloureds name for that process by which s1 participates in the emergence of s2 out of s1 such that s one has disappeared
18:43
Speaker A
into s2 self one has disappeared into has become s2 so colored now reformulates the problem that remains once we acknowledge this there is a problem that remains because it again warts our usual cognitive cultural grammar what's the problem that remains
19:09
Speaker A
well here's the problem s1 in some important sense causes s2 my actions now are necessary and perhaps in some importance and sufficient for setting forth a course of development that is going to result in s2 right but although s1 is therefore temporally
19:40
Speaker A
prior it's before s2 right you know in the arrow of causation the opposite is the case normatively s1 normatively depends on s2 all of s one's actions only make sense can only be justified once s2 comes into existence because
20:10
Speaker A
only s2 appreciates the music only s 2 is rational only s 2 under can understands and justifies the value of rationality the value of the classical music so although s1 causes us to instant temporarily prior s1 is normatively dependent on s2 in terms of
20:42
Speaker A
normativity s1 is right it's not primary its secondary to s2 the first self right all everything that the first self is doing ultimately only makes sense when the second self has come into existence it's only after the operational
21:05
Speaker A
transformation that s one's behavior is may can be made sense of can be justified can be understood it's interesting because the state that justifies s one's action is the state of s1 having disappeared into and through the emergence of s2 because only s2
21:29
Speaker A
understands and appreciates rationality understands and appreciates classical music understands and appreciates what it is to be a parent understands and appreciates what it is to be a spouse so this this goes against our normal way of doing things right because we've got
21:50
Speaker A
this is temporarily prior but this is normatively primary okay so this is the s-1 is temporarily prior but s2 is normatively primary in that it's where we find the justification explanation right legitimation of the aspirational process that the person that has become in s2
22:20
Speaker A
and that's weird for us because normally the thing that is temporally prior and causes is also the thing that is the source of justification and explanation now the temptation here of course is to be teleological to think that in some
22:36
Speaker A
sense as to pre-exists us and causes s1 and i think that's partially what's coming out in the mythos of the divine double trying to deal with this a really difficult way of thinking an easy way of thinking about it is well the divine
22:52
Speaker A
double pre-exists it's already there fully formed and they're drawing me out helia logical until I eventually become s1 alright but we've already I've already argued last time and the time before and earlier on in the series is that the the pineal are the teleological
23:12
Speaker A
explanations are often thwarting us in important ways and they were certainly thwarting what Heidegger was talking about so let's try and do this a little bit more slowly I want I want to say s1 has the causal power but s2 has the
23:30
Speaker A
normative authority so s1 has the causal power but s2 has a normal authority so how do we relate to the self to which we with a Spartan so when I am s1 and I'm aspiring to being more like Socrates
23:48
Speaker A
more rational how do I now relate to this s2 that doesn't yet exist but has authority over me how do i how do I do that well I sort of slipped it in there right I sort of slipped it in there when
24:09
Speaker A
I talked about right aspiring to be like Socrates so let's take this take by step I need I'm relating to this the aspired for self their self that I aspire to there's a non logical identity between myself now and that self then that self that
24:29
Speaker A
I'm aspiring to is not logically accessible to me and those two reasons are deeply those two points are deeply connected I can't infer my way to it right and my representation of that future self my current representation to
24:42
Speaker A
me now has to afford me somehow tapping into this non illogical identity this non logical process and that representation has to actually afford the transformation of me into the aspired to self it has to actually help me become a more rational person now
25:04
Speaker A
notice of course what this means what kind of thing does this for me and this is Corbin's point it's a symbol not in the imaginary sense but in the imaginal sense it's only a symbol that right puts these two together in the right way it's
25:23
Speaker A
a kind of relationship that right between things that are non logically identical it is not something that is processed in a purely logical fashion it is a representation that is participatory and it's supposed to help to actually afford you going through the
25:38
Speaker A
transformative process now let's add a little bit more my representation of the aspire to self is it's a symbolic self it's a symbolic self that I can internalize into my current self anagogical ii right this is remember we
26:00
Speaker A
talked about this we become we transcend ourselves by internalizing how other people's perspectives are being directed on us right so remember Spencer internalizes my perspective so that he becomes metacognitive the stoic aspirant internalizes Socrates so that he can
26:19
Speaker A
self transcend and become more Socratic right so the symbolic self has to be internalized and notice what's happening in internalization internalization is something other than you yet it becomes something that is completely identified as you not just as
26:38
Speaker A
an idea right it becomes part of your metacognitive reflective rationality in the case of internalizing Socrates it becomes part of the very guts of the machinery of yourself why anagogical II because what I'm doing right is I am
26:56
Speaker A
internalizing this symbol this symbolic self and what it's doing is its reordering my psyche so that I see different ways of being in the world and as I inhabit those new ways of being in the world they allow me to then re
27:13
Speaker A
internalize remember this I internalized Socrates and right right and then I end well the world in a more Socratic fashion which allows me to better internalized Socrates so that I end well the world in a more Socratic fashion or
27:26
Speaker A
perhaps for the Christian right right the Christ comes to live within them until they live more christ-like so that Christ comes to live within them more they right so there's more internalization more indwelling in that an agogic and that Ana gothic process
27:43
Speaker A
takes off of its own accord but it's not something that is you're just past that's just passively happening to you that coupled loop it's not something you're just making happen it's something that transcends receiving and making it is participating so
28:07
Speaker A
what we're doing is you have this symbolic self that internalizes other people's perspectives others who live a way they make viable to you this the self you aspire to but as you internalize them and that self is transformed that the world is anagogical
28:27
Speaker A
transformed also the world is playing an important role in this so what I'm suggesting to you is the divine double is amethyst way of trying to capture this dynamic process which we've discussed at length in this series and
28:53
Speaker A
what it does is it represents this process and kind of a linear narrative and therefore it simplifies it into a simple kind of teleology but there's a sense in which I think that peoole ology is overly simplistic it's not capturing
29:10
Speaker A
the participatory nature the danger with the teleology of course is it tends to overemphasize the passive receptivity on the part of s1 in the face of s2 so the divine double I think what people were trying to say with the mythos of the
29:30
Speaker A
divine double the devout it's an imaginal symbol that affords the dynamic coupling of an agave that allows you to participate in the act of self creation the act or a better way of putting it the act of aspiration
29:48
Speaker A
the divine double is you but it's not you it's it's the advanced others that you've internalized into you but and eventually become you and so you live differently in that we're in a new world a way of being becomes viable to you
30:10
Speaker A
[Music] right it is the self you will be not the self you are now but if there is no inkling in your current self of if there's no inkling of an identity possible and already beginning to be actualized between your current self and
30:30
Speaker A
the future self right then of course it's not going to be part of that aspirational process here's you right you're in this frame right you're trying to move to this one I'm going to separate them just so I
30:49
Speaker A
have room to write normally this one is round and encompassing so please allow me this is just so I've room to write write the divine double right allows you to internalize from this more encompassing frame into your current
31:06
Speaker A
frame but that is simultaneously and here's the shining in here's the shining in through the divine double angels are glorious they shine here's the shining through right into your frame but that's shining that internalization affords you moving towards indwelling that more
31:29
Speaker A
expanded world it engenders a trance framing so that you can come to end well this more expanded into frame the agent and the arena are simultaneously transform here's right so the divine double shines the greater frame into the
31:49
Speaker A
current frame but it also what draws you out by the way it would withdraws into the more encompassing frame it gives you a sense right of right the closing in to your relevance but the opening into the greater self see the gnosis the divine
32:14
Speaker A
double allows you to conform conform in process to the very play of being itself the way being is shining but also withdrawing and how that afford your radical self-transcendence which is always a process also of becoming a greater or better self so what I'm
32:41
Speaker A
suggesting to you right is that the divine double is a central example of the imaginal and that that is often represented in the mythos of angels so we see how the divine double is trans jets trans framing how it's integrating
33:08
Speaker A
the abstract form or a concept of the better self I have some a cracked sense of the better self but it's it's integrating that with my concrete the concrete actions of causal actions of my current self they're being the abstract
33:23
Speaker A
and the concrete are being drawn together it's the divine double subjective no that's not right is it part of just about the objective part of my world no that's not right either it's it's deeply symbolic in nature and in
33:36
Speaker A
action and although it is a symbol it is not just imaginary it is imaginal in nature it it makes it affords right the true development it affords the core of the being mode the being mode is not about having things it is about becoming
34:00
Speaker A
someone there's a deep interconnection between the imaginal the divine double gnosis and the being mode so the angel in Corbin is a representation of the divine double for and now the thing to note is that for Corbin every everything
34:20
Speaker A
has an angel right because it's not only the agent that is being transformed it is also the arena your world is also being opened up and aspects of being are disclosing themselves that otherwise would not disclose themselves every
34:39
Speaker A
object is shining and is also withdrawing into its mystery everything is a thing beyond itself and so you are a thing beyond yourself as an agent coupled two sets of things beyond themselves as an arena and you are both
34:57
Speaker A
going through this coupled process that's what Corbin means by the angelic aspect or the angelic order of being now given the way I've tried to interpret and I think explain but not I hope dismissively explained away Corbin I
35:20
Speaker A
wouldn't want to make I want to note as I said there's deep connections between gnosis and this divine double between the being mode between self transcendence between all of this I'm a little bit unhappy with staying's term though the divine double because it
35:35
Speaker A
seems to bind us a little too much to the mythos and the the teleological simple narrative struck merit of structure that I think doesn't adequately capture everything that we can see in this in the work of La Paul
35:55
Speaker A
and colored and the response to strawsons problem right and also the the notion of divine seems to bind this to theism which is problematic given its deep connections to gnosis and the Gnostics and also it precludes non-theistic cultures or sets
36:18
Speaker A
of religions from having something like this whereas I think you can readily see the divine double in Buddhism where it's talked about the Buddha nature and the Buddha nature is very much the Aspire itself but things have a Buddha nature
36:32
Speaker A
the Buddha nature is both their ultimate real nature but not their conventional nature or you can see the same thing in Vedanta when there is a deep identity perhaps in the atman and brahman what I'm pointing out is that this way of talking
36:50
Speaker A
about aspiration can be seen clearly in non theistic religions it's clearly in Gnosticism which i think is very much should not be interpreted atheistical ii i've tried to show you that it's clearly the case in Neoplatonism staying makes
37:04
Speaker A
this case for it both in Platonists and aspects that at least the Neoplatonic aspects of Dionysius and so and that's clearly not theistic so i'm not going to use the devant of the term divine double anymore because i want to try and separate this
37:21
Speaker A
idea from its commitment to theism and so I'm gonna call this symbolic self I'm gonna call it the sacred second self the sacred second itself it gives me even more alliteration than divine double so I win right so so the idea of the sacred
37:44
Speaker A
second self perhaps perhaps this is a way wow I don't know I don't know what what I'm gonna do right now but I'm gonna do it because I have an inkling of its value perhaps the notion of the
38:04
Speaker A
sacred second self is a way of bringing back the idea of having a soul in fact that's even the wrong way of putting it perhaps that's part of what I'm trying to transgress against your sacred second self is us the soul that you are
38:22
Speaker A
becoming the soul that you are aspiring through and - and perhaps that is a way of bringing it back the reason I raise this is because that will allow us to make a bridge to another one of the
38:36
Speaker A
prophets Carl Gustav Jung because this notion of a relationship to a sacred second self that is perhaps what we were always talking about when we invoke the word soul is central to Jung's work one of Jung's crucial texts for representing
38:55
Speaker A
the meaning crisis and linking it to his particular psychology is the book modern man in search of a soul so the response to the meeting crisis is that modern man has lost his soul now that doesn't mean that
39:11
Speaker A
a ghost has slipped free of a person's corpus and is somehow floating around untethered Jung is trying to talk about though I'm going to argue the loss of a real relationship to the sacred second self that is needed for responding to
39:30
Speaker A
the meeting crisis and there are deep connection therefore between Jung and Corbin and this is not just similarity of argumentation Jung and Corbin had deep had a deep interaction a deep influence on each other they met regularly together at the Uranus
39:48
Speaker A
conferences and discussed as I mentioned I find that Corbin is more responsible through that relationship than young Corbin talks more often about it explicitly whereas I do not see Jung given enough credit to the influence of Corbin on his
40:02
Speaker A
thinking nevertheless we can move between Corbin and Jung by picking up on this idea of your relationship to your sacred second self and I think this is the best way to understanding the process that is central to Jung's whole
40:19
Speaker A
notion of it's both a notion of development and a notion of self transformation and a notion of how to fundamentally respond to the meaning crisis this is Jung's notion of course of individuation right so how do we get to this notion well
40:48
Speaker A
we're going to get to this note notice that each thinker gets into it in a different way and what Jung is doing and he's right he's picking up on something that is not it's not really present in Heidegger its present in Corbin but its
41:03
Speaker A
present more implicitly than explicitly and this is psychology right the the the processes within that psyche that are conducive to responding to the meeting crisis and by individuation Jung and he clearly uses this adjective to describe it describes this as a psychological
41:25
Speaker A
process now the way to get a little bit clearer about how young is using the notion of psychological is right to contrast him to the most important influence on him his progenitor Freud and I'm not going to get into a deep
41:43
Speaker A
analysis of Freud I'm right that's that would be too far afield Freud is a Titan even if 95% of what Freud is said is wrong it doesn't matter he gets to be in the Hall of the Immortals because he
41:56
Speaker A
came up with the idea of the unconscious he comes up with the idea of it it's neither nature nor nurture but the interaction between them in stages of development is these are all just they become so deeply interwoven with our
42:09
Speaker A
fundamental way of trying to understand and theorize about ourselves like I said so Freud is a Titanic figure however let's pick up on the difference in what fundamental way did Jung's model of the psyche different from different from
42:22
Speaker A
Freud's so here I'm picking up on work done by paul ricoeur in his book on freud and some work done by store anthony store in his work on young in an important contrast so freud ultimately has what has been called a hydraulic
42:38
Speaker A
model of the psyche it's so the psyche is basically a Newtonian machine like a steam engine things are under pressure and the pressure has to be relieved and it drives and sort of pushes various processes into operation so Freud and
42:55
Speaker A
and of course this makes perfect sense Freud has a new toe machine hydraulic model of the psyche Yong ultimately rejects that and this is more in store than in record because of course we're not primarily concentrating on Freud but what store argues is that
43:16
Speaker A
and this becomes clear in the language and the metaphors that Jung use Jung replaces that hydraulic metaphor with an organic metaphor he sees the psyche as a self-organizing dynamical system ultimately as an auto poetic being so he sees the psyche as going through sort of
43:40
Speaker A
a complex process of self-organization and that you have to understand individuation as this kind of organic self-organizing organic self-organizing process that you neither make nor receive but you participate in okay so this takes us to one of the
44:01
Speaker A
quintessential notions from Jung Jung gives a psychological an allure Plato's idea of the form a structural functional organization this is the archetypes the arc a tip house these right people people should go back arkaid foundational like in archeology getting
44:20
Speaker A
to the origins and the foundation tip-offs the patterns so the archetypes are the are are are the formative founding patterns of the psyche these are the ways in which these are the structural functional organizations by which the Selphy by which the psyche
44:37
Speaker A
self organizes the archetypes are therefore very much psychological versions of the Platonic forms and Jung is much better at acknowledging plato's influence than Freud is for example so the archetypes are not images right the archetypes are not images right you have
45:03
Speaker A
to take the images and treat them in an imaginal fashion not as imaginary things you Zess in your mind but as imaginal things that are leading you into into the aspirational process of individuation think of the archetypes more the way we
45:26
Speaker A
talked about earlier they're there they are systems of constraints they are virtual engines that regulate the self-organization of what is salient to us so if the hero archetype is active in me it's not it doesn't mean that I have
45:49
Speaker A
I'm carrying around in my head images of the hero it means that right this is an imaginal relationship in which I'm Ana got my salience Landscaping is being transformed so I'm Ana gothic lis interacting with the world and
46:05
Speaker A
undergoing aspirational self transformation so that I am becoming more and more heroic think of the archetypes much more ad verbally than you then adjective Olli an archetype is a way in which you are Ana Garga Klee coming to be not something in you right
46:27
Speaker A
that you possess and reflect upon so Jung argues that all of these like the psyche as a whole these archetypes insofar as their virtual engines of self-organizing processes are autopoietic they have a life to them a life to them these archetypes are the
46:50
Speaker A
way hear this word deeply way as method and path of development the archetypes are the way that psyche makes itself as a living organism that's why I mean think of archetypes in a deeply adverbial fashion rather than archetypal
47:11
Speaker A
I'd saw adjectives oh so that was a mistake so where where's the sacred second self well let's talk about the ego and what Jung called the self and he's influenced right by Vedanta this is the ego itself and this is Othman right and the and the
47:34
Speaker A
notion of the self with the yeah see that was such a bad choice in some ways because unless you've done all the stuff we've just done and talked about the relation between right that's self one and self two and all right you don't and
47:47
Speaker A
unless you've got the aspirational sense of what itself is if you if you come to Jung with just decadent Romanticism you're gonna hear ah but this this is my this is my inner true self that I have to be true to your gonna relate to this
48:04
Speaker A
the self adjective early from the having mode very great temptation to get into right narcissism right I understand why young did this because he he capitalizes the s because he's trying to point towards I would argue the sacred second
48:22
Speaker A
self right so the ego is the archetype of the conscious mind the ego is the virtual engine that regulates the self organization of the conscious mind what's the self well it's kind of the archetype of the archetypes it's like
48:38
Speaker A
Plato's notion of the good which is the form for how to be a form the I das of the I das it is the virtual engine regulating the self organization of the psyche as a whole it is the principle the self is
48:55
Speaker A
the principle of auto police's itself it's the ultimate virtual engine that constellated engines so that the psyche can continue its process of autopoietic self-organization remember when a system is self-organizing its function and its development are completely merged it
49:22
Speaker A
develops by functions and it functions by developing so this functional model is simultaneously a developmental model that it's what makes it aspirational it is simultaneously functional and developmental right so one of the things you can do is you can set up an
49:44
Speaker A
interaction with these imaginal symbolic entities the archetypes and that interaction can be internalized into the perspective so I can interact with the hero archetype or the shadow archetype and that will actually be internalized into the way the ego self organizes
50:11
Speaker A
ultimately that can be can become part of this the dialogue between the ego and the self what jung calls the axis mundi the axis of the world very maybe overwrought way of putting it but in some ways I understand what he's trying
50:26
Speaker A
to get at this is the process right as I in dialog through the archetypes with the self the egos perspectival knowing and it's participatory being is being fundamentally altered this is the individuation of the ego the ego individuals through its dialogue notice
50:50
Speaker A
that an agogic resonant way of talking it's dialogue with the sacred second self I noticed ultimately how that falls back to Plato and Socrates this notion of dialogue this of course is the basis of Jung and notice the similarity here
51:08
Speaker A
again of Jung's deep right deep criticism of literalism and fundamentalism because of course the imaginal right the archetype as imaginal sits right here it mediates between these right why is young so critical of literalism and fundamentalism because it is to
51:34
Speaker A
reduce the imaginal nature of the archetypes into simply being imaginary it is to lose the being mode and since the simply having of subjective representations rather than engaging in the process of individuation right it's a form of inflation in which the ego
51:55
Speaker A
pretends that it is sufficient unto itself and tries to take on the right the role of the complete role of the self tries to just have an identity rather than continually becoming in the process of individuation it is deeply
52:12
Speaker A
disturbing to see someone who is would claim to be committed to a Jungian approach being deeply enmeshed or involved with proponents of literalism or fundamentalism this would be I believe a deep form of self contradiction what's my main criticism
52:34
Speaker A
of Jung which will then allow me a counter criticism to korban both and this is a these this is a criticism that Corbin makes of young but it's also independently a criticism that Buber the existentialist the person who talked
52:50
Speaker A
about I it and I thou and picked up on the difference between the being mode and the having mode as well right there's also convergence with the criticism that Bluebird made of young young young understands all of this and
53:03
Speaker A
that's how I've explained it to you as intrapsychic Lee happening within the psyche now my friend and colleague Anderson Todd tells me that towards the end Jung seems to be breaking out of this purely psychological way of talking
53:19
Speaker A
right but for most of his writing Jung understands all of this and this is of course this is problematic right and this is what Corbin was trying to get him to see he was understanding all of this as subjectively his Con Thien ISM
53:38
Speaker A
was making him see this is all happening in a very deep sense within the mind the archetypes are understood ultimately for very long time in young as subjectively rather than transductive ly and because of this and then this is where boobers criticism
53:55
Speaker A
bites into young young missus all of the existential modes that Buber wants to talk about young can't talk about you know the having and the being modes because he's he doesn't have a way of representing the translation ship for
54:16
Speaker A
corbin young seems to be reducing the imaginal to the imaginary and for corbin this is a mistake because the mystical for corbin doesn't just disclose the depths of the psyche the mystical also discloses the depths of the world in an
54:32
Speaker A
integrated coordinated fashion that's because corbin is ultimately Neoplatonic and not content does why i said if you don't understand Conte you don't get young now in fairness to young young can say but what's missing from Corbin is a psychology what's
55:00
Speaker A
missing from Heidegger is a psychology how does all of this existential ontological Neoplatonic stuff play out within the psyche if you're gonna talk to me about internalizing I get it I'm answering on behalf of young you don't get say I get it I leave off the
55:20
Speaker A
indwelling in the world that Corbin right is pointing to and Heidegger has been pointing to but what young can say is yeah but you haven't told me what the internalization looks like how does the imaginal get internalized into the
55:36
Speaker A
depths of my psyche so what I'm suggesting to you this is neither Corbin nor Boober nor is it right young but Verve a key is arguing to you that you can integrate the three of them together and then you
55:49
Speaker A
get something much better than either young or Corbin or Boober I want to take a look next time at somebody who shares a lot with all three of these Corbin young and Boober and like them is deeply influenced by
56:08
Speaker A
Heidegger and that's Paul Tillich thank you very much for your time and attention [Music] you [Music] you you
Topics:CorbinimaginalJungHeideggergnosisaspirationdivine doubletransformative experiencerationalitymeaning crisis

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