Towards the Integral Humanities

Aleksandra Kunce

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Towards the Integral HumanitiesAleksandra Kunce, University of Silesia, Poland

Abstract: The author focuses on a role of the humanities in the contemporary model of knowledge. She tries to analyse thepostmodern ways of knowing and ask about the consequences of exhaustion of the strict boundaries of human knowledge.The paper indicates a need for the integral humanities.

Keywords: Integral Humanities, Boundaries of Human Knowledge, Postmodernism

DESPITEMANYATTEMPTS at reconsti-tuting the humanities in the 19th and 20th

centuries, the concern about its currentcondition is hardly passé. Discontent with

the very shape the humanities take is common to theadvocates of scientific research on nature – whoconfide in hard science as the march of facts – andto the followers of arts as a field of interpretationwhich yields truths about a human being in a distinctmetaphorical language. This article attempts to an-swer the question of how the humanistic reflectionmay be conceived as long as it is discussed in theframework of the philosophical presuppositions ofpostmodernism. Does it contribute to the integralvision of the humanities?

The postmodern thought is significantly embeddedin the history of ideas. One of such focal points isthe reflection of Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopherwho sought to unify art and theoretical insight, whourged that there be no divisions, who allowed linguist-ic creativity and meataphorical expression in thehumanities, and finally who shunned sedentary andcautious knowledge, one that was cultivated byscholars in the cool shade (Nietzsche, 1976, p. 237).This is a reference to the humanities which are closeto living, close to the flux of reality; but also to thehumanities which impose ethical obligations. Andthis trail is what we have to remember.

Another important moment in history is an antipos-itivistic turn in the late 19th and early 20th centurywhich brought with itself the notion of “spiritualsciences” (Geisteswissen-schaften) coined by Wil-helm Dilthey or Rickert’s “cultural sciences” (Kul-turwissenschaften). Demolishing positivistic conclu-sions, it moved closer to living – by treating the verysubject of inquiry, mainly a complex sociohistoricalreality, as distinct, and by selecting a distinct meth-odology based on understanding. In 1983 Diltheyresolved thatGeisteswissen-schaften should approachliving at the intersection of life, expression and un-derstanding (Dilthey, 1958-1982, vol. 1). This is

where postmodernism, as a conceptual edifice, hasits foundation.

One of the most significant aspects of postmodern-ism is an attempt at reinterpretation of the modernistworld-image. The modernist perspectivism is whatin the European culture determines the path of attach-ment to the whole, truth and reason. Only that whichguarantees totality, necessity and evidence is able tooffer an adequate way of cognition, explication andeven understanding (Descartes, 2004, pp. 3-61;Hegel, 1991). At the end of the day fragments alwaysconstitute the whole, analytical reasoning leads tosynthesis, the only right progress implies attainingever higher degrees of knowledge, and differencebecomes subordinated to identity. To know truly isto acquire synthetic knowledge of the One, Completeand Essential. This widespread language practice isobviously far removed from pragmatist contingency(Rorty, 1982; 1989, pp. 73-95). What is its aim? Toclose, bring to an end and complete the process ofthinking. The movement of totalizing thought – al-ways audacious in its undertakings – is synchronizedwith the European culture in full spate. Its globalenterprises – such as territorial expansion – aremerely a reflection of the formed mental space(Chaunu, 1997). “Behind the surface, into the depths,towards the essence” – the echoes of this call caneasily be heard in methodological, economic andpolitical pursuits. The first ones are of most interesthere. To explore the deep structure of thinking, toarrive at the basic oppositions governing cognitionis a task that faces the most European of Europeanmethodologies – structuralism (Levi-Strauss, 2000,pp. 277-381). To determine necessity, to completethinking and to merge in the name of totality andsystematicity is an aim of the Philosophy of Certitude(Hegel, 1991). To reintroduce unity into a numberof scattered traces, to rediscover the relationshipthrough understanding, to indirectly get to the bottomof things, to take root in language – is an aim of the

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less so certain methodology of hermeneutics (Ga-damer, 1977, pp. 3-17; Heidegger, 1995, pp. 9-24).

These are just a few routes of European cognition.But would it be so simple as to allow us to think thatthere is a parallel or criss-crossing undercurrent ofdiscrepant thinking: the cult of a fragment, differenceand indeterminacy – the MICRO-current? Is it simplyabout the Manichean hierarchy of importance: eitherParmenides or Heraclitus, either structuralism orpostmodernism, either Hegel or Nietzsche? Can onebelieve in the opposition of MICRO- and MACRO-style of thinking? Does the thought develop simplyby following the path of either MYTHOS or LO-GOS? The duality was repeatedly questioned byJacques Derrida, who traced the area of shadow,boundary, and the uncertain within the examplaryphilosophies of essentialism, like those of Plato orEdmund Husserl (Derrida, 1992, 1998). We havealso seen Jean-François Lyotard on the trail of thepostmodern in Kant or Aristotle (Lyotard, 1979, p.52;1984).

Postmodernism’s main finding is that the verythinking is a movement simultaneously prone tomacro- and microscopic influences. Let us trust theunity and inability to separate with reference to thehumanities. Postmodernism – this is what interestsus here – transgresses the divisions of the modernistproject of scholarship. It denotes openness to an in-tegral field of knowledge, one that additionally bindselitism to the popular, while stressing the necessityof a sense of moral duty as well as the everydayconcern for communal betterment and what stemstherefrom.

Suspicious ScholarshipModernist scholarship in its post-Enlightenment (andespecially neopositivistic) version was supposed toprovide definite answers (Lyotard, 1984). Postmod-ernism finds this imperative irrelevant and outdated.Besides, the scholarship, as scientistically conceived,was to be consistent through systematicity and unam-biguous through application of logical rules – whichwere treated as a revelation of the highest laws ofthinking (in the tradition of Aristotle or Descartes)and not merely as rules of a rhetorical game (in thetradition of Greek sophists). Finally, modernistscholarship was to be marked by completeness. ReneDescartes, laying the foundations of the modern ho-rizon of scholarly investigation (together with FrancisBacon and Isaac Newton), set in motion a methodo-logical machinery which was to control thinking andto guarantee its veracity manifested in simplicity andevidence (Descartes, 2004, pp. 3-61). Induction ordeduction – both paths of inquiry were to legitimizethe correctness and veracity of conclusions. Suchscholarship had to put faith in denotative sentences– which are questionable insofar as they are open to

verification as a gesture of confirmation ThomasKuhn wrote about (Kuhn, 1996, pp.10-34), or tofalsification, which in Karl Popper’s words is aguarantee of progress (Popper, 1972, pp. 4-51). Suchscholarship needed a “lodge of legislators” to becomean institutional game appealing to many due to itswell-developed and long-sanctioned rules, with legit-imacy and correctness of an utterance as a guaranteeof its quality.

Such scholarship has had to give rise to justifiablepostmodernist suspicions, a topic repeatedlybroached by Zygmunt Bauman (Bauman, 2000, pp.53-90) or Lyotard (Lyotard, 1984, pp. 11-17). Nev-ertheless, it is still a recognized academic practice,immensely popular and difficult to dispose of. AsKuhn notes, scholarship is based on puzzles whichare formulated by scholars of great eminence andthen solved by them according to system rules inorder to confirm and strengthen their professionalstatus. They work to provide us with a transparentworld-image, one already disclosed. Such scholar-ship, particularly disturbing to the humanities, be-comes closed and presents itself as a model of theworld which – in Michel Serrres’s view – has longimposed the imperative to combat disorder, to pursuecoherence at any cost, to stay separate from otherdomains of life, to refuse to face the fact that found-ations of all theories are cracked because reality itselfis unstable (Serres, 1983). Such scholarship is aliento the god Hermes, who borrows, mediates, initatiesand breaks the discourse open. And it is contrary tothe thought of postmodernist-minded Serres, whoinclines towards whatever is open, changeable anddiscontinuous in reflection. This is another importanttheme for the postmodern humanities.

Modernist scholarship is far removed from art andthe experience of mystery. The undecidable is nosubject of inquiry, it is deferred or postponed in ac-cordance with the belief in the development of re-search tools and methods. Scholarship, if confrontedby a mystery, has no difficulty in dealing with it –simply declares its surrender. In this way institutionalscholarship frequently incapacitates itself, as it isconfined to social praxis which makes a distinctionbetween the rational and the wise. Entrusted withsolving puzzles instead of approaching mystery, thescholarship turns into an efficient and functionallifestyle, accompanied by an analogous way ofthinking. Not necessarily a demanding way of beingin the world, it is what scholars actually desired,having distanced themselves from metaphysiciansin order to make their pursuit more efficient. If thereis any mystery in modernist thinking, it can be foundin a discourse radically different from the scholarlylanguage, the discourse of great thinkers and criticsof Western scholarship, such as for instance MartinHeidegger. He wreaked havoc with the Western

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calculating thinking, and in doing so, he wished toplant anew and cultivate the concern for Holzwege,a contemplative insight and closeness to mystery(Heidegger, 2003). The route of mystery is a well-known path of reflecting; it is however a much unap-preciated path of scholarly practice.

A scholarship which would reestablish its connec-tion to the first questions without seeking to eliminatemystery and ambiguity might be the most favourableenvironment for contemporary humanistic thinking.The contemporary world is consumed with the con-flict between incommensurable orders of knowledge;to remedy the situation one need not, however, tryto constrain the plurality (in itself a desirable condi-tion) in the name of unity. On the contrary, oneshould emphasize it even more, or foreground theexisting tension, the entanglement, the unique rhythmof living. It is behind the conceptual wars fought inthe name of rationality and irrationality that the sameostentatiously manifested unpredictability, inabilityof self-expression, ambiguity, absence and intangib-ility resides. This is what in fact is lacking in scient-istic thinking (which remains ever on guard againstthe vague, inexplicable and non-falsifiable), but thisis also what paralyses postmodernist thought (by itsreference to the abyss and metaphysical depths, whilethe most promising developments are associated withevents, writing and surface).

Contrary to appearances, the underlying mysteryis visible in the shreds of discordant knowledge: inthe methodological credulity of natural sciences, inthe discourse of analytical philosophy, in the theolo-gical approach to particular issues, in the rationalfondness for solving puzzles in social sciences, inthe positivistic developing of any histories of factsand ideas, in the empirical-based argumentation insocial anthropology, and, last but not least, in theinclination towards metascientific investigations intothe old scholarly discourse, as well as the fondnessfor the postmodern mode of reflection, one confidingin paralogy, creationism and artistry of language.

Mystery is a false bottom of postmodernism andmodernism, both of which attempt to steer clear ofobscurity on various levels. This is why we need toaddress the problem of integrity. Obscurity identifi-able as mystery proves crucial to postmodernisminasmuch as it is the reverse of the apologia of thesurface. Because while the post-trend flees from thesource, essence, depth, metaphysical mystery, it alsorecognizes their significance, even if it seeks to in-validate them by preaching a cheerful play with sur-face (in)scription (Derrida, 1998). Postmodernismis after all well-aware of the fear of the mighty oldnarrative of mystery which translated into diversesocial orders, ones seeking to legitimize even ex-treme violence by means of the mythology of thedepth they created and fostered. Therefore, postmod-

ernism yearns to be freed from the obsession andobligation to serve the compulsory mysterious inter-pretation of the world, whether in the name ofmetaphysical reality or the ascent of the spirit, theidea of purpusefulness of history, universal humanprogress or civilizational primacy (Deleuze, 1994).The obscurity of mystery is then transferred onto thelevel of superficial opacity. The discourse becomesflat, devoid of fundamental issues. But we can ask:Does it not provide a heightened sense of the obscur-ity of the world? It is not only the nature of thingsthat becomes impenetrable; it is also the sphere oflinguistic convention or behavioural code that tendsto be blurred. Contrary to common opinion, postmod-ernism sides with the simultaneous yet incoherentrecognition of the power of mystery and apologia ofimpenetrable surface. It is not just an innocent playin the name of dis-sense. Obscurity, emphasis onparalogy, deferment, absence and openness – theseare signposts that paradoxally lead to rootedness inthe consideration of mystery. The humanities arehumanistic insofar as they make a sustained effortto face up to mystery and obscurity of things withoutyielding to the temptation of easy solutions to thehuman existential puzzle. And this is the commonbasis of different humanistic disciplines which cannotremain separate as long as they guard mystery. Inthis sense postmodernism is what bridges gaps andmediates between various fields of knowledge.

Towards the Integral HumanitiesThe integral humanities, which are not totalized, maybe aided by the ambivalent cognitive situation of theresearcher. This seems to apply to the sociologist,philosopher and anthropologist alike, who are encour-aged to cherish their cognitive impotence. Obviouslyit will only take place after they have recognizedtheir own inability and debunked the illusions har-boured by their predecessors as to the conclusivenessof intellectual speculations. Hence their sense ofsatisfaction will stem from some kind of confidencein their cognitive powers; otherwise they would notbe able to regard anything as unknowable. Paradox-ically, cognitive impotence is thus tantamount topotency. It is connected with one’s powers beingbased on the acknowledgment of the obscurity of theworld and on development of linguistic formulaethat would make it possible to describe the obscurity.It is however quite pointless to talk indiscriminatelyabout all the seekers after obscurity and transparency.It seems that those who announce their epistemolo-gical impotence – after the postmodernist reworkingof key categories – are marked by humility manifes-ted in refusing the title of a priest, master, teacher orjudge. One is merely a participant in language gamesthat society plays (Wittgenstein, 1999; Lyotard,

ALEKSANDRA KUNCE

1984); but a participant with moral duties. There isalso an element of excessive pride but it is rather tiedto one’s linguistic self-awareness, whereby the indi-vidual does not attempt to conceal her creativity andcontingency of her vocabulary, as Richard Rorty putsit (Rorty, 1989, pp. 73-95). Eventually what domin-ates is a sense of one’s cognitive impotence and aconcern related to the inability of stating the truth inthe clear bivalent logical description.

The strength of the humanities lies in that theyrefuse to assimilate to hard science and are not proneto fragmentation while eschewing from simple dia-gnoses and easy conclusions. And it is postmodern-ism that casts a new light on the humanities. It testi-fies to the inability of arriving at the truth of theworld and, by projecting an image of things that fo-cuses on the unpredictable, chaotic, inaccessible andunnameable, it celebrates the aforementioned routeof mystery. With all its emphasis on anonymity andintertextuality, it is a truly original current, one ori-ginally preaching “the death of the Author” and cre-atively juggling patterns. The creationism of theknowing subject actually means establishing theprinciple beyond all principles. It concerns a prin-ciple inherent in us, in our response to the old order,a principle that denies transparency. This principle,contingently erected and trusted, is simply obscurity.The key, present in the tradition and used to disen-tangle meaning, fails us, as does our learned epistem-ological attitude – powered by the will to know andbelief in the systematicity as well as in the effectmeasurable both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Another crucial aspect of obscurity, one oftenbroached by the humanities, is writing. This is oneof postmodernism’s greatest achievements. It consistsin signalling – by means of the adopted style ofthinking and description – a departure from the no-tion of language as a mirror of nature (Rorty, 1989,pp. 3-22). But also in showing the inapplicability oflogical rules or the absence of a system. This in turnis connected with the practice of following textualdisplacements by pointing to the dissemination of(dis)senses, unmasking gaps and ruptures in the es-sentialist discourse, creating ever new metaphoresin the hope of developing interesting languagegames, and breaking open holistic accounts in favourof fragmentation. The postmodernist discourse osten-tatiously celebrates its stylistic obscurity, which is afurther testimony to the existence of cognitive impot-ence. Above all, however, it points to the literaryquality of scholarly accounts by stating that writingis an instrument for producing metaphors. Eachscholarly text is literature. And this is an importantremark for the humanities, which self-consciouslyembark upon scholarly considerations, having firstacknowledged their provisional character and rhetor-ical appeal.

The uncertainty underlying the humanities, whichis both their distinctive feature and a guarantee oftheir integrity, contributes to the description of ahuman being. The tension between an apologia forand rebellion against the order of culture, betweenthe simultaneous taking root in and uprooting oneselffrom the soil of collective ideas merely paves theway for the description of a human. But it is thesimultaneity that provides a clue to humanisticthinking – an insight which, by formulating systemsof knowledge, reinforces the belief in the power ofrootlessness. It achieves this aim by constructingtools which serve to dismantle blocks of knowledge.It stresses the instrumental and contingent functionof language, which we can use, in Rorty’s words,like a toolbox, searching for ever more appealingmetaphors (Rorty, 1989, pp. 3-22). It requires a cre-ative activity that would withstand disharmonywithin the human being and world – a Nietzscheandemand for writing that would tantalize with lan-guage conceived as an existential call.

This is how the humanities, by blurring the gapbetween the domains of knowledge and art (as wellas ethics), dismiss the possiblity of human fragment-ation. The humanities come close to the simultaneityin human experience and by doing so they protectthemselves against one-track knowledge, one devel-oping a single line of thinking and generating varioustheories of human and world development with onecentral idea and a closed list of categories in mind.We could say that the humanities need a suddenvision of the human being – which is in a sense atotal, instant and frayed image. They cannot act asa shell that rigoristically forces manifestations ofhuman activity into established orders, that givesencyclopaedic overviews and classifications. Signi-ficantly, the humanities should never overshadow ahuman being, separating him / her by means ofvarious fields of knowledge. Their task is to guardthe good cover, one that does not allow ostentationand medical precision in thinking, that does not per-mit annihilation of the contingent and that protectsthe human. It is the cover that prevents from beingstripped by a method and protects against the abusesof the bombastic faculty of cognition. Paradoxically,shielding a human being from the possessive know-ledge that takes place in the humanities bears muchresemblance to protecting the individual from beingexposed in cultural practices. It secures the acts oftaking root and uprooting, a good secret of a human.

The gesture of demolition obliges since it givesrise to a sense of responsibility for the whole con-struction. Nietzsche, in stressing the role of destruct-ive energy, set unprecedented requirements withreference to the genius and greatness of created effect(Nietzsche, 1976). Heidegger, in his Letter on Hu-manism (Heidegger, 1995, pp. 129-168), contesting

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES, VOLUME 4

forgetfulness in the Western thinking on Being,erected a new edifice, a new world-image which al-ternatively, through destruction, restored a humanbeing. No thinker more than Derrida eschewed anunequivocal interpretation of destruction and repudi-ation (Derrida, 1992, pp. 129-160), yet the idea ofdeconstruction was well anchored in the past andattached to textual experimenting. Above all, it wasa gesture of responsible friendship which inquiredabout ways of sublating humanism and metaphysics.Destruction, deconstruction and recon-struction area merit because they guard the cover with its good‘darkening’ quality, or what provides the shelter inthe humanities. Such humanities are a challenge, butmost of all they presuppose duty and aim to protecta human being. In doing so, they become a field opento exploration in the realm of language as a descript-ive tool, but first and foremost in the sphere of cre-ation and reinterpretation of concepts, as well ascreation of mental space which is marked by thetension between the cultural and the particular.

Let us repeat, the humanities are still a challengeand duty. We could figuratively say that the human-istic insight is simultaneously a matter of lightnessand burden. Hence the requirement to conceive hu-manistic generalizations – as long as they wish toaddress the com-plexity of phenomena – as a sort oflight covering of well-disposed (friendly) theory forthe items being researched or constructed. And thetheory, as long as it desires to approach things,should be close to life and cracked. We exist in themental space of displacement, transplantation andtransformation. That is why all the attempts at under-mining and silencing cultural narratives which growhumble faced with the indeterminate course of events

are a challenge. That is why the discourse whichdismantles the systematicity of seeing – through re-flection revolving around the exhausted, the unname-able, the ineffable, the unknowable, the silenced andthe dispersed – multiplies gaps that allow us to sensethe rhythm of experiencing. The humanities watchover epistemological borders within which we ap-proach things. In this sense, the integral humanitiesprotect and preserve cracks and scratches, impossiblesteps in research, incoherence of the system, anyblurs or specks that testify to the missing route totransparency.

We can conclude that the contemporary humanities– as long as they do not settle for the simple fragment-ation of knowledge – have to take account of thepostmodernist narratives highlighting the obscurityof the world. If the humanities are to provide anysort of lively description and not just a sample ofacademic systemizing, they have to be contaminatedwith obscurity, not merely on the linguistic level butalso on the level of ideas. The long-term aim of hu-manistic thinking is a creation of an interdisciplinaryplatform combining philosophy, cultural anthropo-logy and art theory, but also borrowing metaphorsand findings from natural sciences. Most importantly,the humanities need to be well anchored in ethics,since, as we said before, they are supposed to protecta human being and blur the gaps between scientificand ethical domains. Admittedly, though, the con-struction of the humanities as a field open to explor-ation in the realm of language, in the sphere of cre-ation and reinterpretation of concepts, as well ascreation of open mental space – is a difficult task.But one that poses a cognitive and ethical challenge.

References

Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press 2000.Chaunu, Pierre, La civilisation de l’Europe des Lumières, Flammarion 1997.Deleuze, Gilles, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton, Columbia University Press 1994.Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, The Johns Hopkins University Press 1998.Derrida, Jacques, Kres człowieka, trans. P. Pieniążek in Pismo filozofii, Kraków 1992, pp. 129-160.Descartes,René,Discourse on theMethod of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences inADiscourse

on the Method. Meditations and Principle, trans. J. Veitch, Orion Publishing Group 2004, pp. 3-61.Dilthey, Wilhelm, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften in Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart-Göttlingen 1958-1982, t. 1.Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. D. E. Linge, Univeristy of California Press 1977.Heidegger, Martin, Holzwege, Klostermann 2003.Heidegger, Martin, List o „humanizmie”, trans. J. Tischner in Znaki drogi, Warszawa 1995, pp. 129-168.Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree, Prentice Hall 1956.Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press 1996.Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology, trans. C. Jacobson and B. Schoepf, Basic Books 2000.Lyotard, Jean-François, Thebaus, Jean-Loup, Au Juste, Les Editions de Minut 1979.Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press 1984.Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. W. Kaufmann, Penguin Books 1976.Popper, Karl Reimund, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Oxford University Press 1972.Rorty, Richard, Consequences of Pragmatism, Univeristy of Minnesota Press 1982.Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge University Press 1989.Serres, Michel, Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, The Johns Hopkins University Press 1983.Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, Prentice Hall 1999.

ALEKSANDRA KUNCE

About the AuthorDr Aleksandra KunceAleksandra Kunce, Ph.D. An adjunct-lecturer at the University of Silesia. The author of the book titled 'Identityand Postmodernism' (The Publishing House 'Elipsa', Warsaw 2003). A member of The International CulturalResearch Network. The editor of the journal 'Anthropos?'(http://www.anthropos.us.edu.pl). Interest: anthropologyand philosophy of culture.

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