Ken Wilber (1949 - )
Related: philosopy - USA - religion
A Brief History of Everything (1996) - Ken Wilber [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] [...]
This account of men and women's place in a universe of sex and gender, self and society, spirit and soul is written in question-and-answer format, making it both readable and accessible. Wilber offers a series of original views on many topics of current controversy, including the gender wars, multiculturalism, modern liberation movements, and the conflict between various approaches to spirituality. - amazon.com editorial
I started reading A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. One of the first notions he presents is the gradient from sex, biologically defined characterization of the male and female, to gender, the cultural analog defining masculinity and femininity. He presents the idea that the difference of value spheres between males and females is primarily attributed to hormonal differences: namely, testosterone, which has the drives of "fuck it" or "kill it," and "oxytocin," which promotes feelings of attachment and nurturing. Wilber brings in the biological evolutionary significance of these hormones: testosterone for reproduction and oxytocin for mothering. -- http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~mshlimov/MT/archives/cat_philosophy.html [2002]
Biography
Kenneth Earl Wilber Jr. (born January 31, 1949, Oklahoma City, USA) is an American philosopher. His work focuses mainly on uniting science and religion with the experiences of meditators and mystics. In Kosmic Consciousness, Wilber stated that he considers himself a storyteller and a mapmaker; his stories address universal questions and his maps integrate various perspectives of the cosmos.
Although he is considered a founder of the Transpersonal school of psychology, he has since disassociated himself from it. In 1998 Wilber founded the Integral Institute, a think-tank for studying issues of science and society in an integral way. He has been a pioneer in the development of Integral psychology and Integral politics.
In the 4 January 1997 issue of the German newspaper Die Welt, a reviewer called Wilber "the foremost thinker in the field of the evolution of consciousness." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber [Apr 2005]
Ken Wilber's quadrants
|
Upper-Left
Quadrant (UL)
Interior-Individual
Intentional
e.g., Freud
|
Upper-Right
Quadrant (UR)
Exterior-Individual
e.g., B.F. Skinner
|
|
Lower-Left
Quadrant (LL)
"We"
Interior-Collective
e.g., Gadamer
|
Lower-Right
Quadrant (LR)
"Its"
Exterior-Collective
e.g., Marxism
|
Each holon has an interior perspective (an inside) and an exterior perspective (an outside). It also has an individual perspective and a collective (or plural) perspective. If you map these into quadrants, you have four quadrants, or dimensions.
To give an example of how this works, consider four schools of social science. Freudian psychoanalysis, which interprets people's interior experiences, is an account of the interior individual (or upper-left) quadrant. B. F. Skinner's behaviorism, which limits itself to the observation of the behavior of organisms, is an exterior individual (upper-right) account. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics interprets the collective consciousness of a society, and is thus an interior plural (lower-left) perspective. Marxist economic theory examines the external behavior of a society (lower-right).
Thus all four pursuits-psychoanalysis, behaviorism, philosophical hermeneutics and Marxism-offer complementary, rather than contradictory, perspectives. It is possible for all to be correct and necessary for a complete account of human society. Wilber has integrated these four areas of knowledge through an acknowledgment of the four fundamental dimensions of existence. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber#Quadrants [May 2005]
see also: quadrant
Testosterone [...]
Q: Is there any sex in the book?KW: With diagrams, actually.
Q: You’re kidding.
KW: I’m kidding. But yes, sexuality is one of the main themes, and especially its relation to gender.
Q: Sex and gender are different?
KW: It’s common to use “sex” or sexuality to refer to the biological aspects of human reproduction, and “gender” to refer to the cultural differences between men and women that group up around the sexual or biological differences. . .
Q: And these differences have their roots in the biological differences between male and female?
KW: In part, in seems so. Hormonal differences, in particular. . . . I don’t mean to be crude, but it appears that testosterone basically has two, and only two major drives: fuck it or kill it.
And males are saddled with this biological nightmare almost from day one, a nightmare women can barely imagine (except when they are given testosterone injections for medical purposes, which drives them nuts. As one woman put it, “I can’t stop thinking about sex. Please, can’t you make it stop?”)
-- Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK OF KEN WILBER
by Michel Bauwens 1998
On the back cover of the first book I ever read by Ken Wilber one of the reviewers states: 'What Freud is to psychology and Einstein is to physics, Ken Wilber is to the study of consciousness.' On the back cover of the more recent Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Mitch Kapor, co-chairman and founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an eminent 'digerati', claims: 'This book changes everything.' Yet despite the fact that a number of mortals - I amongst them - consider Ken Wilber to be the most important thinker of this century (or even the most important thinker of the next century), he is largely unknown and unloved in philosophical circles and within the intellectual establishment, certainly in Europe.
Thus this article attempts to explain his work and its significance. I have chosen to present his works in the order in which I discovered them
Translation: Rachel Horner
Books
- A Brief History of Everything - Ken Wilber[1 book, Amazon US]
This account of men and women's place in a universe of sex and gender, self and society, spirit and soul is written in question-and-answer format, making it both readable and accessible. Wilber offers a series of original views on many topics of current controversy, including the gender wars, multiculturalism, modern liberation movements, and the conflict between various approaches to spirituality. - amazon.com editorial [...]