Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The archetypal semantics of an experiential universe by Bernardo Kastrup

 

February 2021 publication

Reading this book was both a continuation and a commencement. By way of continuation, it forwards my project to become better acquainted with the thought of Carl Jung, the great Swiss thinker and practitioner of depth psychology. My first formal step was completing Gary Lachman's Jung the Mystic. Lachman's book is a solid biography of Jung that gets its zest from its willingness to consider that aspect of Jung's life and work that Jung didn't want to publicize: that Jung was influenced by--and to some extent subject to--esoteric and paranormal influences. Jung, mindful of the spirit of his time, wanted to be seen as quite "scientific," although in the last couple of decades of his life (after the Second World War), he became more open about his inner life and experiences and this opening revealed more (but not all) of the hidden Jung. I mention all of this because, in a sense, Kastrup continues the story started by Lachman. 

By way of commencement, this title represents the first book-length dive I've taken into Kastrup's work. I've heard him interviewed on Jeffrey Mishlove's podcast two or three times, and I've seen and read some shorter pieces by him. I've read Jeffrey Kripal's praises of his work, and now this work has taken me deeper into Kastrup's thought while also taking me deeper into Jung's thought. (A bit of a spoiler here: but I don't intend that this will be the last Kastrup work I intend to read; in fact, I've already starter reading his Decoding Schopenhauer.) By way of an introduction to Kastrup, he trained originally in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence), earning a Ph.D. He worked in this field, among other places, at CERN. He became interested in philosophy and earned a second Ph.D. in that field with an emphasis in ontology and philosophy of mind. He has become a leading figure in a "renaissance of metaphysical idealism." And the gist of this book is that Kastrup's "metaphysical idealism" has discovered a kindred spirit in Carl Jung. 

Kastrup reports that he first encountered Jung's work as a teenager, but only recently did he re-visit it with the eyes of his fully developed metaphysical idealism and philosophical training. With this new vision, Kastrup very carefully reviews Jung's works--especially his later works--and carefully delineates the terms of Jung's thought. He then proceeds to re-create, as it were, Jung's (mostly unstated) metaphysical grounding. The early portion of the book reviews Jung's overt conceptions and terms (which of course changed over time). Jung formulated his most important terms, like "collective unconscious" (or his later preferred term, "objective consciousness"), "self," "archetypes," "individuation," and "instincts," to name some of his more familiar terms. Kastrup carefully examines each term and its use to gain a firm understanding of the parameters of Jung's mainstream (or "scientific") thought. This portion of the book is quite valuable in its own right simply for the carefully guided tour of Jung's terminology. But for Kastrup, these terms only take him the threshold, so to speak. 

Jung most reveals his underlying metaphysics in his later work, and, it seems, most significantly, as a result of his dialogue (in person and via correspondence with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Their letters (since published and cited by Kastrup), along with Jung's  Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1952) provide a great deal of insight into Jung's thinking about the relation of mind, body, and psyche. Also, Kastrup examines Jung's Answer to Job (1952) as providing the deepest revelations available about Jung's spiritual life and insights. Also of note is Jung's (sort of) autobiography, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections (1961, the year in which Jung died at age 84). Based on these sources and many of Jung's earlier writings, Kastrup provides a persuasive re-construction of Jung's metaphysical presuppositions. 

I should note that Kastrup's philosophical perspective ("metaphysical idealism") doesn't impinge on his exposition of Jung's thought, and he only explores intersections with his own perspective after he's laid a solid foundation in Jung's writings. 

I have only two minor complaints about this book: first, there were several run-on words, especially when phrases were italicized. A finger-wag at the publisher! Second, Kastrup's abbreviations for Jung's titles are hard to follow. And other than these two picayune points: an excellent work that provides a solid exposition of Jung's work and  provides an excellent analysis of how it fits into a wider circle of philosophical thought. 

sng

03.10.21

Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 9 March 2021

 

2011 publicantion

The Gardens of Democracy

Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer

If we are serious about creating wealth, our focus should not be on taking care of the rich so that their money trickles down; it should be on making sure everyone has a fair chance—in education, health, social capital, access to financial capital—to create new information and ideas.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

In describing these movements, the term “hard right” is to be preferred to “new right” because the slogans, themes, and appeals are old. They go back through the twentieth and nineteenth centuries to historic splits on the conservative right, back, in fact, to conservatism’s never-resolved ambivalence about capitalist modernity and hence to its original quarrel with political liberalism.

Theory is a moon buggy for exploring terrain that’s difficult or impossible to explore any other way. We need our wits about us to build and to guide the buggy. The real distinction isn’t between formal and informal methods – they both need each other. It’s between the use of those methods that is skilful and fruitful, rather than just clever, and use that is less so – between good analysis (formal and discursive) and not-so-good analysis.

Nicholas Gruen, "What’s the beef with Krugman? Gruen on the disciplinary incentives of economics"

Political Order and Political Decay

Francis Fukuyama

The study of “development”—that is, change in human societies over time—is therefore not just an endless catalog of personalities, events, conflicts, and policies. It necessarily centers around the process by which political institutions emerge, evolve, and eventually decay.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

What Socrates discovered was that we can have intercourse with ourselves, as well as with others, and that the two kinds of intercourse are somehow interrelated. Aristotle, speaking about friendship, remarked: “The friend is another self”139—meaning: you can carry on the dialogue of thought with him just as well as with yourself. This is still in the Socratic tradition, except that Socrates would have said: The self, too, is a kind of friend.

Speculum Mentis

R. G. Collingwood

All science, said Descartes, rests upon the one indubitable certainty that I think and that therefore I exist. Now the thought and existence of which Descartes spoke were not abstractions—anything thinking anything, or anything somehow getting itself thought about—as those wiseacres believe who offer to emend his formula to cogitatur ergo est, or cogitare ergo esse or the like. Descartes meant what he said, and what he said was that the concrete historical fact, the fact of my actual present awareness, was the root of science.