Awakening From the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke, Ep. 49 — Corbin and the Jung (Summary & Notes)

“Systems of constraints — virtual engines that regulate the self-organization of what is salient to us… Think of the archetype much more adverbally than adjectivally.”

(In case you missed it: Summary & Notes for Ep. 48: https://markmulvey.medium.com/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-by-john-vervaeke-ep-48-7c95541af4f9)

Ep. 49 — Awakening from the Meaning Crisis — Corbin and Jung [56:35] https://youtu.be/kkykBqApP4A?feature=shared

• Recall from last time: if we do not understand a kind of rationality that Callard calls proleptic rationality — the rationality of aspiration, that emerges in education and the cultivation of rationality — then a lot of human behavior won’t be called rational, which will render our notion of rationality self-contradictory and self-undermining.
• Callard makes use of the work of Dale Strawson who talks about a paradox of self creation. To be truly an instance of “self”+“creation”, emphasizing both the self and creation sides, two things are needed: 1. a continuity requirement (Self 1 = Self 2) which puts an emphasis on the self, and 2. a real novelty requirement (Self 1 ≠ Self 2) which puts an emphasis on the creation. Otherwise, if Self 1 develops a skill or ability they already have it’s just more of the same. A quantitative development rather than qualitative development. Strawson points out this contradiction, and argues there can be no such thing as “self creation.”
• Another way of thinking about this is that you can’t create a stronger logic by logically manipulating a weaker logic. You have to get to axioms that are outside the system of predicate logic.
• Callard says this is all a mistake, and Vervaeke agrees. Vervaeke suggests that the relationship between Self 1 and Self 2 is one of non-logical identity, something we practice by engaging in narrative all the time. A better way of describing the relationship is that Self 1 does not receive nor make Self 2, but participates in Self 2’s emergence. Aspiration is Callard’s name for that process by which Self 1 participates in the emergency of Self 2 out of Self 1 such that Self 1 has disappeared into Self 2.
• Callard then reformulates the problem that remains: Self 1 in some important sense causes Self 2, and so while it is temporally prior to Self 2 it normatively depends on Self 2. Self 1 is temporally prior but Self 2 is normatively primary. “All of Self 1’s actions only make sense — can be justified — once Self 2 comes into existence… It’s only after the aspirational transformation that Self 1’s behavior can be understood.” The state that justifies Self 1’s action is the state of Self 1 having disappeared into and through the emergency of Self 2, because only Self 2 understands and appreciates.
• Corbin’s explanation is that a symbol — in the imaginal sense — is what puts Self 1 and Self 2 together in the right way. A representation that is participatory, and is supposed to help to afford you going through the participatory process. A symbolic self that you can internalize into your current self anagogically. We talked about this before: “We transcend ourselves by internalizing how other people’s perspectives are being directed on us… The stoic aspirant internalizes Socrates so that he can self-transcend and become more Socratic. The symbolic self has to be internalized.”
• And think of what happens with internalization. Internalization is something other than you yet it becomes something that is completely identified as you. Not just as an idea, it becomes part of your metacognitive, reflective rationality. “It’s not just something that is passively happening to you, that coupled loop. It’s not just something you’re making happen. It’s something that transcends receiving and making. It is participating.” And it something that happens anagogically (i.e. it’s a process of self-transcending)
• The Divine Double is a mythos way to try to capture this dynamic process, and does so in a more simplified way through linear narrative — a simple kind of teleology. But Vervaeke argues there’s a sense in which teleology is overly simplistic because it doesn’t capture the participatory nature. Teleology tends to overemphasize the passive receptivity on the part of Self 1 in the face of Self 2.
• “The Divine Double shines the greater frame into the current frame, but it also draws you out by the way it withdraws into the more encompassing frame. It gives you a sense of the closing into your relevance but the opening into the greater self.”
• The notion of the divine seems to bind this idea to theism and so is somewhat problematic, given its deep connections to gnosis and the gnostics. It also precludes non-theistic cultures or sets of religions, even though it’s clearly present in something like Buddhism and the “Buddha nature” for example. So rather than using the term “divine double” Vervaeke proceeds to call this symbolic self “The Sacred Second Self.” It could be that this idea of a sacred second self can bring back the idea of having a “soul.” The soul that you are becoming. This allows us to build a bridge to another one of our prophets: Carl Gustav Jung.
• One of Jung’s crucial texts for representing the meaning crisis and linking it to his particular psychology is Modern Man In Search of a Soul. What Jung talks about is the loss of a real relationship to the sacred second self that is needed for responding to the meaning crisis. (Jung and Corbin in fact had a deep influence on each other, meeting regularly.) Jung’s notion of individuation describes things more as a psychological process, something that may be only implicitly present in Corbin and is different from the psychological model of Jung’s progenitor Freud.
• Freud has what has been called a “hydraulic” notion of the psyche, something akin to a Newtonian machine like a steam engine. Things are under pressure and the pressure has to be relieved, and it drives and pushes various processes into operation. Jung rejects that. He replaces the hydraulic metaphor with an organic metaphor, seeing the psyche as a self-organizing dynamical system. Ultimately as an autopoetic being. You neither make nor receive, but participate in.
• This takes us to a quintessential notion of Jung, where he gives a psychological analog of Plato’s idea of the form: the archetype. arche=foundational, as in archeology. typos=patterns. Archetypes are the forming, founding patterns of the psyche. (Jung is much better at acknowledging Plato’s influence here than Freud is)
• Archetypes are not images. They are not imaginary things you possess in your mind but as imaginal things that are leading you into the aspirational process of individuation. “Systems of constraints — virtual engines that regulate the self-organization of what is salient to us… Think of the archetype much more adverbally than adjectivally.”
• Again, Jung says they are autopoetic, meaning they have a life to them. Archetypes are the way the psyche makes itself as a living organism. He talks of the relationship between the ego and the Self, and he capitalizes “Self” because he’s referring more to that idea of the second sacred self and not the more traditional “self” that people might associate with their own personal being-ness. (That is the more narcissistic sense of the word) The ego is the archetype of the conscious mind, while the Self is more akin to Plato’s archetype of the Good, and the principle of autopoesis itself. The dialogue between the ego and the Self is what Jung called the axis mundi — the axis of the world. The ego individuates through its dialogue with the sacred second self.
• Jung has a deep criticism of literalism and fundamentalism because it is to reduce the imaginal nature of the archetypes into simply being imaginary. You lose the being mode into the simply having of subjective representations rather than engaging in the process of individuation. It’s a condition where the ego thinks it’s sufficient unto itself — i.e. to “have” an identity.
• Vervaeke’s main criticism of Jung is related to his counter-criticism of Corbin, and converges with the criticism that Buber the existentialist (who also picked up on the being/having modes as well) had of Jung. Jung thinks of the entire ego-Self system as happening within the psyche, as purely psychological, and his Kantianism was having him see this all as happening subjectively within the mind rather than transjectively. Jung misses all of the existential modes (e.g. having and being modes) because he doesn’t have a way of representing the transjective relationship. For Corbin, Jung seems to be reducing the imaginal to the imaginary. (“If you don’t understand Kant you don’t get Jung.”)
• Jung could turn around and say: Well, what’s missing from Corbin and Heidegger is a psychology. You haven’t told me what the internalization looks like. How does the imaginal get internalized into the depths of my psyche?
• Vervaeke suggests you can integrate the three (Jung, Corbin, and Buber) and get something much better than Jung, or Corbin, or Buber. Next time we’ll discuss someone who shares a lot with all three, and like them is deeply influenced by Heidegger: Paul Tillich.

Next up: Awakening From the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke, Ep. 50 — Tillich and Barfield (Summary & Notes) https://markmulvey.medium.com/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-by-john-vervaeke-ep-50-e86c89b48f95

List of Books in the Video:

• C. G. Jung — Modern Man In Search of a Soul
• Paul Ricoeur — Freud & Philosophy
• Anthony Storr — Jung
• Alfred Ribi — The Search for Roots: C.G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis (For a god discussion of the Buber/Jung debate)