The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abrams May 30, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , trackback
A friend recommended this, partly because of the explanation of the ideas of Merleau-Ponty, and because we were having a debate about the primacy of the ‘rationalistic’ point of view.
Abrams ideas begin, at least to anyone who’s been looking at green philosophy in the last few decades, sounding fairly reasonable. We have lost our connection to the ecology and landscape within which we live and, unlike pre-literate societies, we no longer see ourselves as part of a greater conversation with the world around us. We separate the perceiver and the perceived, and do not recognise the influence they have on each other. More controversially, this is due to the rise of ‘alphabetic civilisation’ where, with the advent of literacy, our perception has been increasingly abstracted from the things we perceive, and we have become introverted and focused on artifacts rather than the natural world.<–more–>
As I read the book, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated. The glorification of ‘indigenous society’ as somehow highly in tune with the natural world in a way that ‘Western’ society is not started to pall. How in tune with the natural world is urban Indian civilisation? Why has the rise of the Greek alphabet and Christian civilisation let to such great disarray and yet there is no mention of Sanskrit and its derivatives throughout South and East Asia? What of the vast mass of Europeans who, until the last couple of hundred years, were illiterate anyway? And the Moa, hunted to extinction by Maori before Europeans arrived, would be very interested to hear that oral societies are always careful to maintain ecologies.
Just when I was near the end, and grateful to get there, Abrams pulls a stunt worthy of a shoddy novelist, and tells us that in fact he’s not presenting a thesis to be taken as fact, and is well aware that there are other influences on our estrangement from nature, including industrialisation and urbanisation. He even acknowledges that oral cultures take a while to achieve a balance with their environments (or perhaps die out trying). In fact, he’s just presenting a story, a different way of thinking about the world. We can all wake up from the dream.
His final few pages are surprisingly inspiring, as he pleads that we return to awareness of our environment and not allow ourselves to be estranged from the world around. Even if living in a city, we are still part of an ecology and a landscape. London floods because it is on the flood plain of the Thames, and clay does not absorb water well. There is soil beneath the concrete and tar, and sometimes living things peer through.
The book is worthwhile for the introduction to Merleau-Ponty alone, and that’s something I intend to pursue a little further. The idea is that there is no disembodied self, that all experience is physical and that everything we know about the world is based on observation made physically, and that observation is of another physical entity which participates in the act of observation. I need to think a little more on that one, and to try to understand why my friend thought that was somehow opposed to rational views of the world.
So, I find myself with a couple more books to read, and perhaps review later.
Why Truth Matters
Merleau-Ponty (A Guide for the Perplexed)
I also spent a little time in Waterstones looking at Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Cheng Wei-shih Lun (RoutledgeCurzon Critical Studies in Buddhism)but not this time.
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“The idea is that there is no disembodied self, that all experience is physical and that everything we know about the world is based on observation made physically, and that observation is of another physical entity which participates in the act of observation. ”
In the book of Job, it says “We experience everything through our bodies, even the experience of God itself”. Just cannot remember which chapter and verse.