Jean Gebser

Jean Gebser (August 20, 1905 – May 14, 1973) was a prodigy, a student of the transformations of human consciousness, a linguist, and a poet.

Ideas

His major thesis was that the stress and chaos in Europe from 1914 to 1945 were but symptoms of a structure of consciousness that was at the end of its effectiveness. However his significant and novel contribution was the discovery of the birth of a new form of consciousness. The first evidence he witnessed was in the novel use of language and literature. He modified this position in 1943 so as to include the changes which were occurring in the arts and sciences at that time.

Related Topics:
Europe - 1914 - 1945 - Language - Literature - 1943

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His thesis of the failure of one structure of consciousness alongside the emergence of a new one led him to inquire as to whether such had not occurred before. His master work, "Ursprung und Gegenwart" (German, "Origin and Present"), is the result of that inquiry. It was published in various editions from 1949 to 1953, and in an English edition as The Ever-Present Origin. Working from the historical evidence of most every major field, (e.g., poetry, music, visual arts, architecture, philosophy, religion, physics and the other natural sciences, etc.) Gebser saw traces of the emergence (efficiency) and collapse (deficiency) of various structures of consciousness throughout history.

Related Topics:
The Ever-Present Origin - Poetry - Music - Visual art - Architecture - Philosophy - Religion - Physics - Natural science

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He notes that the various structures of consciousness are revealed by their relationship to space and time. For example, the mythical structure embodies time as cyclical/rythmic and space as enclosed. Whereas the mental structure lives time as linear, directed or "progressive" and space becomes the box-like homogeneous space of geometry — a vacuum. But just as each consciousness structure erupts they also eventually become deficient. The deficient form of the mental structure Gebser called the rational structure. Of particular significance is his realization that previous consciousness structures continue to operate. The rational structure of awareness seeks to deny the other structures with its claim that humans are exclusively rational.

Related Topics:
Space - Time - Myth - Cyclical - Linear - Progressive - Homogeneous - Geometry - Vacuum

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The rational structure is known for its extremes as evidenced in various "nothing but..." statements. Extreme materialism claims that "everything is nothing but matter — atoms". Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is replaced with instrumental reason, the ability "to make". Contemplation — looking inward — is devalued in relation to what one "can do". "Wise men" fall out of favor and are replaced by the "man of action." Successes in re-shaping matter — in technology — offer solutions to some problems but also give rise to problems of their own making. Mechanized slaughter of two world wars and the new atomic weapons exemplified and symbolized the expression of the ontology of the rational/mental structure. Living becomes hard to bear in such a consciousness structure.

Related Topics:
Materialism - Matter - Atoms - Contemplation - Technology - World war - Atomic weapons - Ontology

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Some saw the cause of this despair as a lack of values or ethics. Gebser saw that it is the very consciousness structure itself which has played out to its inherent end. He saw that its metaphysical presumptions necessarily led to this ethical dead end. A "value-free" ontology like materialism leads of necessity to living "without value". Any attempt to remedy the situation by a return to "values" would ultimately fail. But it was through this very quagmire of "the decline of the West" that Gebser saw the emergence of a new stucture of consciousness which he termed the integral.

Related Topics:
Value - Ethics - Metaphysical - Quagmire - West

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The integral consciousness structure was made evident by a new relationship to space and time. In the second part of his work, Gebser set out to document the evidence that he saw throughout various human endeavors. Of note here were the incorporation of time in physics, the attempts to "paint" time in the visual arts and the like. Gebser noticed that the integral structure of consciousness was largely witnessed as the eruption of time into the "fixed-reality" of the mental structure. For Gebser, dualistically opposed and "static" categories of Being gave way to transparency.

Related Topics:
Dualistically - Being

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Transparency points to how it is that the one is "given-through" and always "along-with" the other. For centuries, time was viewed as having distinct categories of past, present and future. These categories were said to be wholly distinct one from the other. Of course, this created all kinds of difficulties regarding how beings moved from one category to the other — from present to past, for example. What integral awareness notices is that though we may utilize categorical thinking for various purposes, we also have the realization that time is an indivisible whole. That various beings in the present are crystallized from the past, and which also extend into the future. In fact, without already having an integral awareness, one could have no notion of time as "past" or "present", etc. Without the awareness of the whole, one would be stuck in a kind of "not-knowing" of an always only "now" not connected to any sense of past or future. Even the mental awareness which divides this whole into distinct categories could not have become aware of those categories without an awareness which was already integral.

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Awareness is already integral, makes present via transparency, that is it presents. Gebser's notion of presentation is based upon the integral awareness of time. Another aspect of integral awareness is the presentiation of the various structures of awareness. Rather than allowing only one (rational) structure to be valid, all structures are recognized, presented, one through the other. This awareness of and acceptance of the various structures enables one to live through the various structures rather than to be subjected to them ("lived by" them in German).

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To realize the various structures within one's language and habits, and even within one's own life and self is a difficult task. But Gebser says that it is a task that we cannot choose to ignore without losing ourselves. This means that our so-called "objective thinking" is not without consequences, is not innocent. That to live "objectively" means to give life to the horrors of nihilism combined with the know how of highly "efficient" weapons. It means that "objectivity" gets applied to "engineering humanity" whether it is in the behavioral sciences or the physical sciences. He asks of us whether or not we have as of yet had our fill of those horrors. Are we willing to settle into the comfort of our daily life or to take on the process of change? He offers as a guiding note that just as there is also a time to act, there is also the much neglected time of contemplation. In a world where know-how is overvalued, simple knowing must also be nurtured in contemplation. Furthermore, he knew that thought was never simply a mental exercise restricted to one's writing. He calls upon us to realize that we are what we think.

Related Topics:
Nihilism - Behavioral science - Physical science

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Gebser traces the evidence for the transformations of the structure of consciousness as they are concretized in historical artifacts. He sought to avoid calling this process "evolutionary", since any such notion was illusory when applied to the "unfolding of consciousness." Biological evolution, as Gebser noted at length, was an enclosing process, that particularized a species to a limited environment. The unfolding of awareness is by contrast an opening-up. Any attempt to give a direction or goal to the unfolding of awareness is illusory in that it is based upon a limited notion of time, the mental, which is linear and hence implies "progress." To be sure, Gebser was fully aware that any notion of "human progress" was already played out. He notes that "to progress" is to move toward but is also a moving away from, and he knew that the question as to the fate of humanity is still open, that for it to become closed would be the ultimate tragedy, but that such a closure remains a possibility. Our fate is not assured by any notion of "an evolution toward" any kind of ideal way of being.

Related Topics:
Biological evolution - Environment - Progress

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Gebser's theory is that human consciousness is in transition, and that these transitions are structured jumps and not continuous. These jumps or transformations involve structural changes in both mind and body. There are a number of these levels:

Related Topics:
Mind - Body

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• The archaic structure (before approx. 200,000 years ago)
• The magic structure (approx. 200,000 to 50,000 years ago)
• The mythical structure (approx. 50,000 to 1,000 B.C.)
• The mental structure (stage 1) Philosophy and Theology.
• The mental structure (stage 2) Perspective and Science.
• The integral stage