I haven’t seen Bernardo Kastrup mentioned here. He’s popular in some circles, and certainly advocating a big paradigm shift.
He’s one of only three people who have read the whole of my forthcoming book, because a prospective publisher sent him a copy to test read it. It produced a split reaction from him – on one hand he said the main thrust of the book was “important, and desperately needed”. But ultimately he rejected it, claiming I didn’t understand enough about metaphysics. What I think he actually meant is that I’m disagreeing with his notion that objective idealism is the only possible answer. We’re both anti-materialists, but instead of providing an ontological alternative I then start asking questions about epistemology and causality rather than trying to defend my own preferred ontology of neutral monism.
I guess see idealism as part of the old paradigm. For me, materialism and idealism are both just one half of Cartesian dualism with the other crudely chopped off. Neutral monism is different enough, and vague enough, to offer a genuinely new start. It might mean all sorts of things…which is a good thing.
Is Kastrup part of the 2R ecosystem, or is he a mistaken throwback to modernism?
I’ll just represent the founding thinkers of metamodernism, with which I am most familiar. Others can chime in on other 2R influences.
Moyo Okediji - African art historian, early use of the term “metamodernism”. Interested in aesthetics.
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin Van den Akker popularized aesthetic metamodernism in the 2010s.
Hanzi Freinacht (pseudonym) launched political metamoderism around 2017. Hanzi would not be interested in Kastrup. Hanzi is trying to break away from Wilberian integral, and thus leans into cognitive theory and away from anything that smacks of spiritual idealism.
Lene Rachel Andersen - published a title called Metamodernity. Since retitled Polymodernity. Practical interests. Would not be interested in Kastrup much one way or the other.
Brenden Graham Dempsey - probably the best overall authority on metamodernism. Not really that aligned with Kastrup. More aligned with UTOK, Azarian, and the evolutionary emergence of complexity story. His process theology involves God evolving.
Jason Storm. “What is metamodernism? … an alternative to the sterile opposition between realisms and anti-realisms”.
In summary, MM and Kastrup are an uncomfortable fit. There is a heavy Vedantic and/or neo-Platontic strand in integral, so you might find more Kastrup fans in those spaces.
ditto on question of @GeoffDann re “trying to break away”.
When i spoke to the Freinacht duo both acknowledged that Wilber had been their major influence and one of them specifically described themselves as “Marx to Wilber’s Hegel” i.e. a political theory derived/inspired from an underlying philosophy. Whether you buy that or not (it’s a pretty generous analogy ), it certainly suggests explicit lineage.
In addition, most of core theory of MM in Freinacht can be found or derived from Wilber IMO. That said the flavor is different and application to politics is much more detailed
BTW Wilber has lots of cognitive theory – all the cognitive complexity stuff is there in Wilber who is clearly familar with neo-piagetians, with hierachical complexity etc.
It’s interesting that you have Kastrup right near UTOK and Vervaeke. UTOK is not especially aligned with consciousness first. It’s more about consciousness emerging from matter/energy. I just listened to a recent Vervaeke conversation yesterday. He is now conversing with “Hermes” from somewhere in a generally Platonic realm. I’m not at all sure what Kastrup would think of that.
I was right in the middle of a massive FB conversation/flame war last year about the question of if Hanzi got everything from Wilber and refused to give credit. Also, the specific point at issue was Brendan Graham Dempsey writing a book titled Metamodermism and not including a big fat chapter (or at least lots and lots of footnotes) giving Wilber credit for being Hanzi’s mentor/inspiration. Certain members of the integral community showed up in force to “claim” metamodernism more or less the same way certain politicians currently want to claim Canada or Greenland. Much digital ink was spilled. Brendan ended up expanding the Wilber footnote for the next edition.
From the Listening Society, yes Hanzi specifically mentions Wilber and SD, but then makes some moves to differentiate. Most crucially, Hanzi cuts off the whole spiritual line of development/“waking up” emphasis and dismisses a lot of that as “woo” or magical thinking. Hanzi has no interest in gurus who walk through walls or anything of the like. So Wilberian Third Tier is just not a thing at all. With respect to Second Tier, Hanzi specifically calls out “Death to Turquoise!” That’s a provocation that totally worked, as a provocation. Hornets’ nest duly kicked over. In Wilberian terms, Hanzi places all the weight on cognitive development, i.e. “growing up”. Of course, Wilberians love that also, so it’s not really a differentiator. Calling out the spiritual as “woo”, that’s the dividing line.
Personally, I see Hanzi as a bridge between the original aesthetic phase of MM and more current political or systems work. The cartoon character persona of the authoring team and the emphasis on a sincere ironic tone throughout the book strike me as a creative sally that certainly worked in the moment, but not as valuable as a long-term analytical foundation. It did however make a splash and got things going, and that can never be taken away.
To get to the main topic of this thread, how does Kastrup’s work relate to any sort of Marx at all? It’s not like Marx himself would have bought Kastrup any more than he bought Feuerbach. So even if Hanzi succeeds in updating Marx (as you note - a bit of a stretch), connecting that work to Kastrup would not be a simple task.
), it certainly suggests explicit lineage.
