KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 41 (to C34 Johnson)

AT - ORIGIN OF MAN ?
by Glenn C Wood
17 March 2004, posted 10 April 2004

<1>
The following can be taken as more of my view on "evolution" in answer to HM's request for my position. We are wasting too much time and energy on this abstractism.

It's hard to respond to JJ's abstraction theory without using first and second person forms of speech. Third person seems more objective, but it moves too far from the affirmed subjectiveness and fragility of the theory.

The use of "JJ" is meant to overcome the restraints and dishonesty associated with getting personal, and that is my intention here. JJ's epiphenomenal subjective experience appears to be the basis of the abstraction complex, and it seems to have had a life changing or influential effect on JJ comparable to the biblical Paul and historical others, like one's religious conversion experience that led to the formation of AA. Personal experience, known little here, is the fine filament through which believed revelation comes -- reference here is being made to the vision JJ had which is found in his first contribution to the forum. JJ seems unduly committed to evolution and GW (my objective self) has an apparent aversion to the same. GW hopefully can show objectively that the aversion is based on something other than subjective processes.

<2>
KJ says "research itself lives in the tension between the current whole and the smallest detail" (last page of Chapter Four in Origin and Goal of History). Smallest details are manifested like this: GW places "evolution" in quotes, refuses to capitalize and abbreviate theories -- except where objectivity is unquestioned like with "GW and JJ." GW finds what would appear to the evolutionist the smallest detail, but which to the more objective thinker illuminates the apparent aversion. It's a detail found in history -- like that Oxford debate which was reflective of the evangelical movement which -- though maybe unconsciously -- opposed Catholic catholicity by taking a route that does not lead to Rome, and includes a reaction which now reflects a whole theory of naturalism threatening moral decisions in general.

<3>
GW reads JJ as a cipher of objective existence trying to understand why a bit of non-objectivity rears itself to make the theory acceptable, like the association with a less than correct interpretation of HM's subjectivity, and seeking confirmation from Anaximander's small and philosophically uttered only extant few words. It shows an unusual commitment to vision and some unusual individual private history can be assumed as one layer of ground for the imagined form. What seems to come closer to the ground of the commitment is the warning about the Yellowstone threat to humankind, and occasional reference to creation and the creator shows the openendedness of the potential for intense images.

<4>
My purpose, again, is to guard against the misrepresentation of Karl Jaspers' views. For instance, rather than seeing the value in a quote by him JJ (<28-29>) chose to interpret it negatively by suggesting KJ has intolerance toward some cultures; whereas KJ represents the epitome of hope and effort at communication. That misinterpretation of KJ's quote about the value of the influence of those we love may have come from what's interpreted as my intolerance of a whole world view grounded in evolutionism. Contrary to JJ's judgement that faiths war against one another is the more in-depth awareness that struggles for power conflict.

The easy misinterpretation implies more perhaps an intolerance for the daring refusal to submit respectfully to "AT." But it points out the need for GW to make sure distinctions are made and that KJ is not misrepresented by his defender.

<5>
So GW must be fair, honest, about misrepresenting KJ, and my seeming aversion to "evolution" though reflecting my experience-based feelings and unusual approach to research, is not perhaps so much that experience of KJ. GW has stated KJ speaks little of "evolution" which is objective considering KJ's main trusts which is psychopathology and philosophy. Also, being in the academic arena KJ had more to lose by not using the word evolution to show its limitations when honestly evaluated. JJ's abstraction from evolutionism (ism pointing toward a whole world view of an absolute nature) shows the need at this point to, in greater detail, reveal KJ's position on "evolution" and through this showing it is hoped the problem with JJ's theory can be seen clearly.

<6>
KJ's views can be found in The Origin and Goal of History and in Chapter Three entitled "Prehistory." "Man cannot be conceived of as a zoological species capable of evolution, [I prefer to stop here and move on to applying KJ's psychopathological contributions to Forum views, but objectivity prevents -- GW] to which spirit was one day added as a new acquisition [My form of thinking includes the idea something extraterrestrial occurred represented by the divine breathed-in-living soul of the biblical text, but KJ seems even more biblical, for:] Within the biological sphere man must have been, from the very start, something different, even in a biological sense, from all other forms of life [in terms of beginnings and ends--reflective of the restraints of piece-meal phenomenological thinking GW -- I'm reminded of the debate with a fellow Greek-Hebrew student who before space-ventures declared it to be impossible, not on biblical grounds but on the mistaken idea that nothing could stand the heat of reentry. That possibility was foreign to my thinking. Later at another school I met John Hurd who's father, he said, invented the material that withstands the heat of reentry. My point is that humanity's potential exceeds the restraints of beginnings-and-ends thinking and the from a biblical perspective the origin of humanity can be from beyond potentially speaking].

<7>
KJ continues, hopefully JJ will follow this closely: "Attempts have been made to interpret man's biological peculiarity as the product of domestication, on the analogy of animals, which change their essential nature as the result of domestication inflicted on them by man. It is not man who has created culture, but culture that has created man [according to that erroneous attempt -- GW]. Quite apart from the question of where culture comes from in this case, from a purely biological standpoint the universal consequences of domestication are not found."

<8>
KJ asks what happened in prehistory, "that vast stretch of time during which humans already existed ... [that time of] historical silence in which, nonetheless, something of vital importance must have taken place. The movement of becoming completely human is the deepest enigma of all, up till now utterly impenetrable and beyond all comprehension. Such figures of speech as 'a gradual process of transition' merely serve to obscure it. We can evolve phantasies [mythical abstractions] of the genesis of man. But even these phantasies break down; whenever we try to picture man coming into being, our imagination see him already there."

<9>
He goes on to say that on top of this we don't know what man is now, (and though contributors to the Forum are just now seeing various concepts of selfs as less than absolute, the idea has been around for a long time and clearly found in KJ works, and in the sixties led a professor of pastoral counseling of mine to write on a final exam (which I still have and treasure) of the matter of self images: "I have learned from you."). KJ then resorts to playfully visualizing prehistory in two elements: "the biological evolution of man, and the historical evolution, which took place in prehistory, ... [remembering these are visualizations including the unknown] "Biological evolution brings inheritable characteristics, historical evolution only a cultural heritage ... Biological reality can be apprehended in the structure, function and psychol-physical characteristics of the body; the reality of the cultural heritage can be apprehended in language, behavior-patterns and works."

<10>
"In the process of becoming human, going on through long millennia, the fundamental features of humanity must have been fixed as inheritable biological qualities that are still present. In historical times, on the other hand, man has not undergone any demonstrable biological metamorphosis... we have not the slightest indication etc" and "Even the biology of man, if we once succeed in grasping it, may perhaps prove different in some way from all other biology..."

<11>
This seems to be adequate to show the difference between KJ comments on evolution and my cautious use of the term -- though JJ should read it for himself for KJ's quality thinking on the matter. It also, if one has a will to objectivity, shows the need for JJ to qualify the eloquence and certitude of his theory by subjecting that proudly admitted subjectivity to the humbling objectivities of prehistory and history. An unusual self-centeredness -- selfishness is not meant here -- probably is the ground for vivid imagination, vivid abstraction that even assume human characteristics, i.e., anything from an intense personalization of a meaningful tree top experience to attaching human characteristics such as that of angels.

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Glenn C Wood