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Notes 1-11 | Note 12 | Notes 13-25

12. p. 233: "The lecture... is in my notebook."

     Here is Lesa Powell's lecture on "The Death of the Subject and the Birth of Narcissism":

      "Much of preconventional narcissism, we at IC have been suggesting, flourishes under the shelter of postconventional pluralism. And this takes us directly into the heart of the great postmodern movements--from Heidegger and Nietzsche to Foucault and Derrida and Lyotard.

      "Although there are many tenets that define the various flavors of postmodernism, virtually all of them are united under a theme called 'the death of the subject.'

      "Ferry and Renaut, authors of French Philosophy of the Sixties, state the widely accepted conclusion that there is a 'common element that groups together certain characteristics, philosophical currents that derive from orientations as different as Marxism, on the one hand, and the Nietzschean/Heideggerian/Freudian deconstruction of rationality on the other. The basic theme is clearly in the project of carrying out a radical critique of subjectivity. This project easily unites the forces concerned, since subjectivity is assimilated by them either to monadic bourgeois egoism or to a concept of man developed by modern metaphysics [as a metaphysics of subjectivity, which posits man as foundation and evaluative limit for all of reality]. They are unified in their proclamation of the death of man as subject, a theme Foucault made famous...' (p. 16)."

      Lesa Powell continued: "As with most of postmodernism, this notion contains a profound truth that was taken to unfortunate extremes, at which point it aggressively supported and encouraged the confusion of preconventional with postconventional. But the central idea is as simple as it is important.

      "Classical Enlightenment thought--foreshadowed as early as Descartes--had assumed that human beings were a simple subject (the mind or ego) confronting the world 'out there.' Indeed, this notion of a simple subject attempting to grasp the world as object is as old as metaphysics and philosophy itself (i.e., at least a few thousand years). But with modernity, the Enlightenment, and the rise of modern humanism, this individual mind or subject--the individual self as an autonomous agent, possessing free will and the capacity to generate its own knowledge--took on a central importance (see Sidebar E: 'Descartes'). This subject, it was thought, could master the world through technical know-how; it could master itself through will and discipline; it was the author of its own ideas and the creator of its ethical actions. This modern ego or modern subject was not beholden to the herd mentality of the church or state; it saw itself as possessing a genuine autonomy; and it sought to freely extend this autonomy and its human rights in a worldcentric and postconventional fashion (eventually to women, slaves, children, and even animals).

      "Jürgen Habermas notes that this was the historical emergence of a postconventional ego out of the previous conformist role self (put simply, the emergence of orange out of blue). And that was the 'good news' of the modern ego or modern subject: in contrast with the mythic-membership, blue, conformist, herd mentality, the modern subject sought to apply universal, worldcentric, postconventional standards of fairness, equality, and liberty. So far, so good.

      "But no sooner had this ego-subject emerged and announced its own autonomy (in various ways, from Descartes to Kant to Fichte) than numerous profound and far-reaching discoveries were in fact undermining the ego's claim to complete self-mastery. There were discoveries in biology, which demonstrated that the ego is in fact pushed by biological processes, drives, and instincts of which it knows little--and thus the ego is not all that autonomous! Freud outlined the many ways in which unconscious mental processes govern the ego's actions and desires. Linguists--starting especially with Ferdinand de Saussure--pointed out that one's use of language is governed by innumerable rules and structures of which one usually isn't even aware: where is the subject's autonomy now? Marxists and sociologists in general, starting especially with Comte and Durkheim, pointed out that individual subjects were actually embedded in extensive social systems (such as techno-economic forces of production) that profoundly mold the subject's consciousness. Hermeneutics pointed out that even the construction of everyday meaning rests on background cultural contexts that are rarely conscious. In short, the ego is immersed in an almost infinite number of various currents and contexts, few of which are even known, let alone mastered, controlled, or subjected to autonomy!

      "Biology, psychology, sociology, hermeneutics, linguistics--they all concluded, quite correctly, that the modern subject's claim to autonomy is, at best, an exaggeration. The Enlightenment ego, far from being the master of its own fate, was the puppet of a thousand forces, most of which it had no idea even existed.

      "And thus if 'modern' meant the claim to be an autonomous subject, then 'postmodern' writers all rallied around a central theme: the death of the subject. This meant essentially what it sounds like: the autonomous self just isn't that autonomous--all around it are Others, are different perspectives, are countless unseen forces, are innumerable types of the unconscious, are modes of being and knowing that the 'autonomous' ego has not even begun to take into account--endless pluralistic contexts that the proudly autonomous Enlightenment subject was in fact ignoring, repressing, alienating. And thus all of the autonomous self's projects--from the control of nature (as if the ego were separate from nature: Bacon and Descartes especially offend) to traditional metaphysics (which assumed an autonomous subject that could totally master knowledge--even Hegel got caught in that dream) to the scientific-technical assault on the world (which assumed that the autonomous self could totally master the objective universe)--all of these modern Enlightenment pursuits were, with some justification, called into question by one postmodern writer after another (starting most famously with Nietzsche and Heidegger, and carried on by Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and crew).

      "This critique of modernity came in two phases, roughly analogous to the phases of structuralism and poststructuralism--that is, a mild critique of modernity and then a radical-totalizing critique of both modernity and the mild critique.

      "The first phase is often associated with theorists such as Marx, Freud, and Hegel, and it unseated the Enlightenment ego's claim to autonomy by showing that the ego is actually situated in extensive structures of which it usually knows very little. These are therefore often unconscious structures (hence the similarity with structuralism itself, which also belongs to this first phase). For Marx, these usually unconscious structures include the nature of class conflict and the structures of the techno-economic forces of production. For Freud, the forces of the psychological unconscious. For Hegel, the forms of Reason's cunning unfolding. The existence of all of these forces successfully challenge the notion of the ego's autonomy. However, according to these theorists, these unconscious forces can be made conscious, and thus the self's autonomy can be salvaged to a large (or even total) degree. This is why all of these first-phase critics were attacked by the second-phase critics, who maintained that autonomy in any form is an illusion and who were therefore radical and total in their assaults on modernity.

      "This second phase is often associated with the names of Nietzsche and Heidegger (although what was done in their names was often dubious). This radical critique of modernity and rationality did indeed tend to a be totalizing critique: all subjectivity, all autonomy, all modernity, all rationality--all of them are structures of power, oppression, illusion, or worse. Even the first-phase critics (especially Marx and Hegel, and all of structuralism) were aggressively attacked as merely modernists in drag: hence, this second phase identified itself as postmodern and poststructuralist. (And, similarly, the Left Hegelians and Marxists were often identified with liberalism, which the second phase also brutally attacked.)

      "For the Nietzschean line of totalizing critique--which found its greatest postmodern champion in Foucault--the Enlightenment ego was not much more than a series of power drives thinly rationalized. The Enlightenment claimed it was opposing truth to power, but its 'truth' was just more power, hypocritically concealed. Likewise, all claims of universality, truth, and objectivity are simply forms of power of a privileged discourse. This is still by far the dominant form of postmodernist critique (even though Foucault himself renounced it; see below).

      "For the Heideggerian line of totalizing critique--which found its most noticeable postmodern champion in Derrida--modernity was the culmination of the withdrawal of Being (mystery and difference). Modernity murdered Being and Mystery under 3 major repressions: one, the subject of consciousness knows only what is present as an idea or representation, which leads to the notion that this subject can have total or absolute knowledge of the world as fully intelligible, without residing mystery (the Hegelian system especially claims such, which is one of the great problems of having Reason attempt to carry Being)--and thus it actually represses the networks of difference, mystery, and otherness (this is Derrida's critique of presence, a critique which maintains that 'nothing is ever simply present,' since vast networks of nonpresent realities help to constitute the subject. Because of the sliding chains of linguistic signifiers and the deferral of meaning, nothing is ever simply present: therefore metaphysics, which claims to know as present various realities, is a concealing and hiding of Being and Mystery and Difference). Two, this subject is claimed to be autonomous will, and thus it actually ignores and represses all those aspects of Being that cannot be fitted into its practical mastery (Hegel again attempts to make the absolute Subject a union of will and rational intelligibility). But will is just 'the forgetting of Being,' the denial of différance (difference), the eclipse of the Other. Three, power itself becomes its own goal, and instrumental rationality seeks to control and dominate all that is Other.

      "Those critiques of subjective autonomy, will, and power are, in my opinion, generally correct. But that Heideggerian line of critique, as all of the totalizing critiques do, simply went too far, and left no room for any sort of relative autonomy, truth, rationality, will, or subjectivity at all. What was so shocking about these critiques--especially those of early Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida--was exactly their radical and totalizing nature: an explosion of all things modern, a wild deconstruction of everything in its path. And that, of course, is what made it an ideal magnet for boomeritis, without which these totalizing critiques would never have caught on as fanatically as they did in the last thirty years. Extreme postmodernism spread like wildfire only because boomeritis had prepared the way: and it was boomeritis above all else that carried it strategically.

      "Which is why it is all the more interesting to note that each of those totalizing theorists--Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida--eventually retracted their totalizing critiques: which certainly took the fun out of it. The details are well known, and needn't be repeated here. Heidegger went through the 'turn' ( Kehre), shifting emphasis from Dasein and its historicity to Being and its openness. Heidegger's early work was in fact so steeped in pluralistic relativism and historicism that he had no way to ground truth at all: if all truth is historically constituted, then how can we even know that, since our own perceptions are not trans-historically true? Both Husserl and Cassirer leveled this charge at Heidegger, and his 'turn' included an attempt to respond: 'But this response was so "Kantian" that if it had been formulated directly it might have jeopardized the originality of Being and Time itself' (Ferry and Renaut, p. 216). Likewise, as we will see in a later lecture [lecture/chapter 7], Foucault went to considerable trouble to distance himself from his early, totalizing critiques; he even ridiculed them--and their followers. And Derrida eventually conceded, in Positions, that the transcendental signified does in fact exist, a fatal blow to the extreme deconstructive project.

      "Likewise Thomas Kuhn, whose work was also used as a totalizing critique of science (i.e., paradigms do not discover facts but invent them): although Kuhn never agreed with that extremism, he nonetheless softened his own claims so much that he is now thought to be championing a completely trivial thesis (namely, paradigms do not create facts, but they do color our interpretations of facts, which nobody had ever doubted in the first place).

      "In other words, all of these radical and totalizing critiques of modernity, rationality, subjectivity, and autonomy eventually failed dramatically--and were abandoned even by their original authors. What did not abandon these totalizing critiques was boomeritis--for in this total deconstruction of anything that stood in the way of its egoic desires, boomeritis had found its happy home. Today, extreme postmodernism is championed almost exclusively by boomeritis and the mean green meme.

      "Of these two phases--mild and total--note that all of the original theorists were German: Marx and Freud in the first phase, Nietzsche and Heidegger in the second. Ferry and Renaut make the fascinating observation that extreme postmodernism was basically the product of French theorists who took these German thinkers, some of whose ideas were extreme enough, and stretched them to even further extremes, arriving at wildly radicalized (and ridiculous) results. Bourdieu took Marx to extremes; Lacan took Freud to extremes; Foucault took Nietzsche to extremes; Derrida took Heidegger to extremes. Ferry and Renaut demonstrate how little originality there was in these French radicals, except the extremism. 'Far from being a purely indigenous product [of France], 1968 philosophy is in fact the use of themes and theses borrowed, in more or less complex combinations, from German philosophers, for example, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, to mention the fundamental ones.... Our intention is to pose the problem of originality. French philosophy seems to take up the themes it borrows from German philosophy in order to radicalize them, and it is this radicalization that is the source of antihumanism, the thing peculiar to it...: not so much an original and creative moment in intellectual history as simply a secondary growth...through this desire to radicalize a gesture...' (pp. 20, 25).

      "Why this secondary growth? And what was the incredibly fertile field in which it grew? A large part of that answer is surely boomeritis (i.e., pluralistic relativism--the green meme--infected with emotional narcissism of red/purple). Boomeritis is by no means confined to America or even to Boomers, but rears its head wherever the green meme flourishes, for the subjectivistic warrant of the green meme invites, even encourages, pre/post confusions and narcissistic reactivations, as these French critics themselves spotted in no uncertain terms."

      Lesa Powell paused, then paced the stage. "American boomeritis took this already extreme, radical, and ridiculous ideology... and astonishingly made it even more extreme and radical and ridiculous. And there extreme postmodernism rests, suckling on the breast of boomeritis, its true mother. The sad conclusion: American postmodernism was an extreme exaggeration of French postmodernism, which was an extreme exaggeration of the original German ideas. In each step away from the original ideas, the ego became bigger and bigger, and the originality less and less.

      "Well, this general aspect of postmodernism--this totalizing, extreme, absurd critique--became known as antihumanism, because it attacked the central beliefs of traditional humanism, namely, that I possess an autonomous self or subject, which as consciousness is the author of my ideas and as will is the author of my actions. Through cultivating my own consciousness, and through assuming responsibility for my own actions, I can come to find both freedom in the world and a degree of responsibility to others in that world. But the extreme postmodern antihumanists rejected every one of those tenets--rejected the ideas of consciousness, will, representation, subjectivity, freedom, and responsibility--because all of them rested on this notion of an autonomous subject, whose death they had come to announce, if for no other reason than that its 'autonomy' was illusory at best, oppressive and alienating at worst.

      "The 'death of the subject' contains, as I said, some very important truths: the ego is not altogether autonomous, for it is embedded in endless contexts and relationships, conscious and unconscious--natural, biological, ecological, cultural, linguistic, social, and spiritual-- all of which need to be taken into account in any truly integral philosophy. And it is quite true that the Enlightenment ego was largely ignorant of all of these extensive contexts and relationships, and that such ignorance was not without its costs.

      "All of the theories that assume as foundational the typical Enlightenment ego--the monological, egoic-rational, orange, conscientious, instrumental self--are often referred to as the 'philosophy of the subject' or the 'philosophy of consciousness.' The latter is an unfortunate phrase, because it implies that all attempts to redress problems of the philosophy of the subject are actually trying to obliterate consciousness. But when various theorists deny the philosophy of consciousness, all this means is that they are denying the radical and total autonomy of the egoic self (this generally means the same thing as proclaiming the death of the subject--in other words, they are pointing out that the subject or self is not the source of total and complete self-mastery nor the foundation of unshakable truth, but is actually situated in extensive fields and shifting networks of relationships and processes--of course, we at IC make this point by saying that the individual subject of the Upper-Left quadrant is actually situated in an 'all-quadrants, all-waves, all-streams, all-states' matrix).

      "All postmodern writers in effect deny the philosophy of consciousness and announce the death of the subject--even constructive postmodern writers, such as Habermas (Habermas is a constructive postmodernist in that he is attempting to take the positive gains of the Enlightenment and supplement them with a post-Enlightenment approach that escapes the problems of the philosophy of the subject by grounding truth in intersubjective communicative exchange. Habermas is not, however, a deconstructive postmodernist, such as Foucault or Derrida, and has in fact sharply criticized them, a criticism I generally share).

      "We have seen that, generally speaking, formal is to modern as postformal is to postmodern. As a rough generalization, deconstructive postmodernism tends to be associated with green, and constructive postmodernism with integral: green differentiates and deconstructs, second tier integrates and constructs.

      "Any truly second-tier or integral philosophy--any truly constructive postmodernism--must do at least three things vis-à-vis the death of the subject. One, it must indeed acknowledge that the individual self is set in vast networks of contexts, backgrounds, meanings, forces, and intersubjective relationships--some of which are conscious, many of which are unconscious--and all of these limit the so-called autonomy of the self. Two, it must specify as best it can the nature of these vast networks, indicating where possible how each is to be fruitfully explored and verified. And three, it must explain the relative autonomy that will replace absolute autonomy, because the situated self is still an agency-in-communion and not merely a network of communions. (That is, to say that the self is always embedded in relationships, to say that agency is always 'agency-in-communion,' to say that being is always 'being-in-the-world'--in short, to say that the self is situated in endless contexts--is not to say there is no agency at all, no individuality at all, no responsible self at all. A situated autonomy is still responsible, within its confinement, for those choices over which it has some control--the self is still a relatively autonomous and responsible agency set in its communions.)

      "All three of those points have been covered in some detail by one of our IC colleagues in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, especially chapter 4 and its endnotes (particularly 27), and chapters 12, 13, and 14 (and all their endnotes). In essence, the integral view we at IC propose is summarized as 'all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types.' which is an attempt to explicitly take these various post-Enlightenment necessities into account to arrive at a constructive and integral postmodernism (which acknowledges and embraces the entire spiral of development and the full spectrum of consciousness). A simplified introduction to this approach can be found in A Theory of Everything and A Brief History of Everything.

      "Those important postmodern truths--the ego is not altogether autonomous, for it is embedded in endless contexts and relationships, conscious and unconscious--unfortunately have mostly been championed in their extremist versions. Instead of examining the manner in which the individual self is embedded in relationships and then suggesting ways that this relational self can nonetheless grow in its own rights and responsibilities, the extreme postmodernists began a virulent attack that took no prisoners at all: there is no subject, period; there is no autonomy, period; there is no consciousness and no will and no responsibility, period!

      "'The death of the author' (Barthes), 'the death of man' (Foucault), 'the death of the subject' (Derrida), 'the death of....' In all of this bashing and killing of the Enlightenment self, the extremist versions were the only versions that had sufficient shock value. But the sad fact is that, in denying all forms of subjectivity--and its correlate responsibility--postmodernism invited, indeed exuberantly encouraged, a chaotic psychological regression, sliding toward that destination of all regression: narcissism. Instead of working on what a relative autonomy, responsibility, subjectivity, consciousness, and will might look like, it simply trashed them all, deconstructed them all, and thus ended up with its twin agendas, however thickly disguised: narcissism and nihilism.

      "But there is, common sense tells us, a middle course between total autonomy on the one hand (which the Enlightenment often championed, and which indeed is an illusion), and no autonomy at all (which the antihumanists championed, and which is just as misguided).

      "The workable idea of autonomy--a 'good enough' autonomy--is not that it is a total and complete mastery of the self--for the finite self is never completely autonomous. Rather, the workable idea is that, in the course of development, each stage of the self has a little more autonomy than its predecessor. The preconventional self (the egocentric self) often seems 'free' and 'unfettered'--and thus many Romantics take it to be a type of free and autonomous self--but in fact it is simply ruled and driven by its immediate sensations, appetites, and urges: it is a slave to its impulses, a slave to the beige meme. When the self develops to the conventional level, it learns to 'delay gratification' and thus it becomes, to some degree, free of the immediate dictates of its desires: it has gained a little bit of autonomy. But it is now a slave to the herd mentality: no longer totally dominated by its instincts, it is totally dominated by the crowd ('my country right or wrong'). If the self continues its development into the postconventional realms, it can--at least to some degree--reflect on the norms of its culture and subject them to criticism. It might decide that those norms are worth following, but it might decide that they are not and that accordingly it must march to the beat of a different drummer. It either case it has moved from ethnocentric to worldcentric, and therefore it has gained even more autonomy. Not total autonomy, just a bit more than it had at previous stages of development.

      "I believe that the above approach has much merit and does indeed give us a good enough notion of autonomy. But it should also be noted that, alas, 'autonomy' is an unfortunate word in almost every way. One, there is no fully autonomous finite self, only a relatively autonomous self (although the relative autonomy increases at every wave). Two, the relatively autonomous self of every stage is set in vast networks of relationships and processes (natural, objective, cultural, social, spiritual)--in short, agency is always agency-in-communion--which makes mockery of 'autonomy' or isolated agency in general. Three, the relatively autonomous self of every stage also exists in a system of exchanges with other relatively autonomous selves at a similar level of development.

      "The latter point is particularly important. The purple self exists in a system of mutual exchanges with other purple selves, the blue self exists in a system of mutual exchanges with other blue selves, the orange self with other orange selves, the green self with other green selves, and so on. (Of course, blue also interacts with purple, red, orange, green, yellow, etc. It is just that each level of self particularly recognizes itself in exchanges with other selves of similar depth.) In short, the self at every level is always a self-in-relationship-with-other-selves (and especially a self-in-relationship-with-other-selves-at-that-level).

      "This gives us purchase on the raging debate between liberals and communitarians: both of them have an important but partial piece of the puzzle. The communitarians are right that the self is always a situated or saturated self--it is always a self-in-context (or agency-in-communion, or autonomy-in-relationship). But the liberals are right in that the orange self has relatively more autonomy than the blue self, and that relative autonomy must be protected from the herd mentality of blue (hence liberal rights). But the relatively autonomous liberal (orange) self is still a self-in-relationship at that level, and it recognizes itself only in exchanges with other relatively autonomous selves. Thus, the autonomy of one level is relatively greater than that of a previous level, but autonomy is always still autonomy-in-relationship (agency is always agency-in-communion--all the way up, all the way down). Even the highly integral or 'autonomous self' (in fig. 4-1) seeks out relationships with other autonomous selves. That is, agency seeks agency of similar depth and depends upon that relationship for mutual recognition, which is a genuine need of the self at every level. In the early stages of development, those relationships are mandatory for self formation; in the adult, those relationships are necessary for the self's happiness and wellbeing, and for its actual existence in mutual recognition. (Of course the adult self can live without those relationships--if it is stranded on a desert island, for example--but the self simply withers in such aridity--and it would never have developed in the first place in such circumstances, as cases of 'wolf boy' consistently demonstrate.)

      "The typical liberal notion of autonomy correctly understood the relative increase in autonomy of the orange self over the blue self--and correctly demanded a system of rights to protect orange individuality from blue oppression--but then incorrectly assumed that such autonomy was an atomistic freedom. Liberal theory misunderstood autonomy as atomism (or isolated agency) and thus it fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the self--which is always agency-in-communion--and thus it likewise misunderstood the nature of society, which is not a contract between atomistic selves but an inescapable manifestation of the relational exchange of agency-in-communion (although a liberal, postconventional society was indeed a manifestation of orange selves, which itself was a new and revolutionary type/level of social organization, which appeared to be a 'contract' only to an atomistic misconception. Technically, all holons intrinsically have four quadrants; the sociocultural quadrants are not 'contracts' that one may or may not form, but are inherent dimensions of all holons; the 'social-contract' society is simply how the atomistically misunderstood orange self pictures the form of the sociocultural quadrants that emerges at orange: it must see oranges selves as brought together under legal agreement, instead of seeing orange selves intrinsically and mutually related from the start, but a relationship that takes the form of formal rational agreements at orange, 'contractual' agreements that do not bring the selves together but simply give voice to the form of the already-together selves at that level).

      "As described in both Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and Brief History, agency implies rights, and communion implies responsibilities, and thus agency-in-communion means that each self (at whatever level) is always a series of rights-in-responsibilities or freedoms-with-duties. But the Enlightenment liberal self (orange) identified itself only with rights and freedoms, and identified blue only with duties and responsibilities, and thus in its noble attempt to protect the orange self from the blue herd--which really meant, protect orange agency-in-communion from blue agency-in-communion (or protect orange rights-in-responsibilites from blue rights-in-responsibilites)--the orange self severed rights from responsibilities, identified itself with rights and blue with duties, and thus in protecting orange from blue inadvertently imagined it could have rights without responsibilities, agency without communion, freedom without obligations, whoopee without duties. And in that regard, liberal notions of autonomy indeed contributed to regressive, narcissistic, egocentric disintegration of social communion, caring, obligation, and compassion. The communitarian criticism of liberalism hit that part of the argument right on the head.

      "Thus, one of the first items on the agenda of a truly integral politics is to reconnect rights and responsibilities at a postconventional level (orange and higher), without regressing to mere blue rights-and-responsibilities. For the liberal autonomous self exists only in a network of mutual exchanges with other autonomous selves, and that network of agency-in-communion imposes new duties and responsibilities even as it opens new freedoms and opportunities: both must be fully honored.

      (See Up from Eden for a discussion of relational exchange at each level of selfhood; see Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and A Brief History of Everything for a discussion of agency-in-communion as rights-in-responsibilities; and see A Theory of Everything for a discussion of integral politics.)

      "Now, the postconventional orange self--with its very real, if relative, increase in autonomy--is what the Enlightenment, at its best, brought into the world on a large scale--which eventually resulted in everything from the abolition of slavery to female rights to civil rights--which is to the Enlightenment's everlasting credit. Thus, to say that the mature ego is relatively more autonomous than its predecessors is not to deny that the ego is also set in a massive number of contexts and relationships that prevent it from being totally autonomous. The Enlightenment got the former absolutely right, but flubbed the latter badly--which is no reason to toss the idea of autonomy altogether, which is what the deconstructive antihumanists proceeded gleefully to do.

      "To give a few more of the important details of autonomy in the postconventional stages themselves: The orange self has a good deal more autonomy than the blue self, simply because, as we just said, it can at least begin to reflect on some of society's norms and subject them to critical judgment (e.g., 'Is my country always right?'; this we called the conscientious self in fig. 4-1). In turn, the green self has the possibility of even more autonomy than the orange self, because it can take into account more of the innumerable background contexts that impinge on the self, and thus it can become even more individualistic (fig. 4-1). This increased pluralistic freedom was, in fact, what the postmodern green-meme writers were trying to offer to the world: escape the straightjacket of formal rationality and the illusion of perfect self-mastery, and open oneself to the multiple Others and contexts in which the self is actually embedded.

      "Finally, the second-tier integral self has the possibility of yet more autonomy, since it can reflect on even wider contexts and their integral patterns, and thus to some degree be free of their unconscious determinations. This is why the integral self is usually called the autonomous self, as in fig. 4-1 (although, as we have seen, 'autonomy' is a relative, sliding scale, and not a total mastery). Thus autonomy in the manifest realm is judged not as a type of absolute freedom, but simply in relation to previous selves, each of which has less.

      "But instead of working with what it means to move beyond the orange subject (or orange autonomy) and finding instead a green subject (with its own higher forms of autonomy, pluralistic freedom and responsibility)--so that the 'death of the (orange) subject' would have meant the birth of the green subject--the deconstructive postmodernists simply began to attack subjectivity in general. And thus they and their legions of followers began to attack any form of autonomy, self-responsibility, accountability, rationality, and ethics.

      "In other words, constructive postmodernism explicitly works toward a refurbished and reconstructed understanding of subjectivity, self, consciousness, will, responsibility, and relative autonomy (all embedded in an AQAL context)--and does not simply deconstruct them all, leaving only the Cheshire cat's grin hanging in mid-air. I have on several occasions quoted Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, simply because they are perceptive French philosophers working in France, the epicenter of (extreme) postmodernism, and thus their critiques carry a certain on-the-scene authority. But even Ferry and Renaut share with postmodernism the realization that the Enlightenment ego--and Enlightenment humanism--is woefully incomplete (and I agree): 'It is impossible to return,' they say, 'after Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, to the idea that man is the master and possessor of the totality of his actions and ideas. Today we know the illusions and the danger inherent in such a denial of the unconscious in its various forms [psychological, linguistic, social, and so on]'--in other words, the illusions of the 'fully autonomous ego' of the Enlightenment. This is why they say--and again I quite agree--that 'this influence of the sixties must not be lost' (pp. xvi, xxviii).

      "At the same time, they wisely wish to rehabilitate autonomy in a relative form, and not simply trash it totally. 'We dispute this logic [of denying the subject and autonomy in any form] by demonstrating its erroneous character. It does not follow that, having established that man is not really autonomous (that he is open to his other), one has to go to the extreme of withdrawing all meaning and function from the idea... of autonomy' (p. 211). They lambaste the 'massive, brutal, and unsubtle' attempt to deconstruct all forms of subjectivity, autonomy, and humanism (p. 30). And they call for a type of relative autonomy that finds in men and women an openness--instead of a closure--that allows humans to escape mere thingness. See especially the fine chapter 'The Return of the Subject' and their 'Conclusion' in French Philosophy of the Sixties.

      "Incidentally, several Buddhist writers have attempted to see in the 'death of the subject' philosophies something akin to the Buddhist doctrine of anatta or 'no self.' But the similarities are almost entirely superficial. Anatta is not a philosophical idea but a direct realization in consciousness, a realization that is the result of intensive transverbal and transrational spiritual practice, and a consciousness that persists unbroken through the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states. There is nothing even vaguely similar to that in the antihumanists and deconstructionists--they are coming mostly from the green meme; Buddhism at is best is integral and transpersonal.

      "Now, the unfortunate result of extreme postmodernism was a widespread invitation not just to go post-orange into green and even second tier, but pre-orange into egocentrism, narcissism, and nihilism. This was an engraved invitation for boomeritis to be king of the postmodern ball; the invitation was eagerly accepted.

      "The truly sad fact is that in denying all forms of subjectivity--and its correlate responsibility--postmodernism invited, and often championed, a psychological regression to narcissism. As the French critic Regis Debray summarized the aftermath of the '68 student protests in both America and Paris: 'The communion of egos on the barricades [became] generalized egocentrism, the gift of self became the cult of me....' (Quoted in French Philosophy of the Sixties, p. 45.)

      "Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut point out that this regressive trend touched virtually every aspect of postmodernism (in France and in America). It wasn't just the going-beyond of the conventional ego, but its actual disintegration, that let preconventional selves run rampant (especially purple and red narcissism). 'It must seem paradoxical and problematical that what passes for postmodernism... acquires the strange appearance of a regression....

The hyperbolic affirmation of individuality set in motion a process that led quite predictably in the direction of the disintegration of the Ego as autonomous will [and, quoting Lipovetsky,] "would work toward the crumbling of the Ego and the annihilation of organized and synthetic psychic systems...." The philosophical sixties both initiated and accompanied this process of the disintegration of the Ego.... Pulverized into tendencies no longer seeking integration..., can this Ego, significantly called "exploded," really make a person?... By denouncing the illusions inherent in the ideal of a "willed consciousness" [an autonomous subject in any form], which carried with it the classical notion of subjectivity, the philosophies of 1968 participated in a no doubt unprecedented promotion of the values of individualism [in the negative sense of egocentrism and narcissism. I have juxtaposed several quotes from pages 227, 66, and 67 of French Philosophy of the Sixties; the meanings are unaltered; italics added].

      "The result, they conclude, is 'the Ego of contemporary narcissism...' (p. 65). Just that is the ultimate horror of the death of the subject in any form: for in denying my own subject, I deny yours as well: I stop treating you as a subject with dignity, with will and ideas and choices of your own (and for which, of course, you are to some degree responsible, as I am for mine). Without extending this dignity--and subjectivity--to other beings, then we are indeed rancorously locked into our own pluralistic worlds, never to be heard from again. Consensus is then impossible; shared human perceptions are out of the question; deeper or higher realities binding us together are viewed merely as an oppression of wonderful pluralism and heterogeneity. And that is exactly what Lyotard would claim: 'Consensus obtained through discussion? It violates the heterogeneity of language games.'

      "Ferry and Renaut are unsparing: that type of postmodernism dissolved subjectivity into egocentrism, a regressive and narcissistic slide verging on barbarism. 'The antihumanism of '68 philosophy opens onto "barbarism"... insofar as all possibility of a real dialogue between consciousnesses, which had been open to thinking of their differences on the basis of identity, is destroyed by accusations brought against subjectivity [in all forms]: When only exaggerated individual differences survive, then everyone's other becomes "wholly other," the "barbarian"' (p. 120).

      "Such noble intentions; such sad, ironic results. As Ferry and Renaut themselves point out, these postmodernists ' produced exactly the opposite of what they intended' (p. 48; italics added). They wanted to free individuals from the prison of subjectivity, whereas they ended up encouraging its most blatant and barbaric forms. This paradox has long been thought puzzling, but it is, of course, simply the paradox of boomeritis: aims high, ends low, with poststructural freedom inflaming prestructural barbarism."

Notes 1-11 | Note 12 | Notes 13-25