Episode 56: On Jean Gebser, with Jeremy D. Johnson

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09/25/19 • 78 min

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The German poet and philosopher Jean Gebser's major work, The Ever-Present Origin, is a monumental study of the evolution of consciousness from prehistory to posthistory. For Gebser, consciousness adopts different "structures" at different times and in different contexts, and each structure reveals certain facets of reality while potentially occluding others. An integral human being is one who can utilize all of the structures according to the moment or situation. As Gebserian scholar Jeremy Johnson explains in this episode, modern humans are currently experiencing the transition from the "perspectival" structure which formed in the late Middle Ages to the "aperspectival," a new way of seeing and being that first revealed itself in the art of the Modernists. Grokking what the aperspectival means, and what it might look like, is just one of the tasks Jeremy, Phil and JF set themselves in this engaging trialogue.

Jeremy D. Johnson is the author of the recently released Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness.

REFERENCES

Jeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and the Integral Consciousness
Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin
William Irwin Thompson, Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness
Ken Wilber, integral theorist
Lionel Snell, “Spare Parts”
Nagarjuna, “Verses of the Middle Way” (Mulamadhyamakakarika)
Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Object-oriented ontology (OOO)
Dogen, Uji (“The Time-Being”), from the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye)

Special Guest: Jeremy D. Johnson.

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Jeremy D. Johnson is the author of the recently released Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness.

REFERENCES

Special Guest: Jeremy D. Johnson.

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Previous Episode

Episode 55: The Great Weird North: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Wendigo'

No survey of weird literature would be complete without mentioning Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). As with all masters of the genre, Blackwood's take on the weird is singular: here, it isn't the cold reaches of outer space that elicit in us a nihilistic frisson, but the vast expanses of our own planet's wild places -- especially the northern woods. In his story "The Wendigo," Blackwood combines the beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands with the folktales of his native Britain to weave an ensorcelling story that perfectly captures the mood of the Canadian wilderness. In this conversation, JF and Phil discuss their own experience of that wilderness growing up in Ontario. The deeper they go, the spookier things get. An episode best enjoyed in solitude, by a campfire.

Header Image: "Highway 60 Passing Through the Boreal Forest in Algonquin Park" by Dimana Koralova, Wikimedia Commons

SHOW NOTES

Glenn Gould, The Idea of North
Algernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo"
Game of Thrones (HBO series)
Weird Studies, Episode 29: On Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition"
Fritz Leiber, The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Richard Wagner, Parsifal
David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return
Peter Heller, The River: A Novel
The Killing of Tim McLean (July 30, 2008)
Weird Studies, Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People"
Mysterious Universe: Strange and Terrifying Encounters with Skinwalkers
Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds
Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
Arthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy

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Next Episode

Episode 57: Box of God(s): On 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'

Raiders of the Lost Ark is more than a Hollywood movie made in the summer blockbuster mold. As Phil says in his intro to this popping Weird Studies episode, the film is "a Trojan horse of the Weird, easy to let in but once inside, apt to take over." This conversation sees him and JF discuss a movie we dismiss at our own risk, a cinematic masterpiece replete with enigmas that reach back to the foundations of Western civilization. What does the Ark of the Covenant signify? What does it contain? What happens if you open that box of god(s)? And whose god is this, anyway? These are questions that have puzzled theologians and mystics for centuries, and Steven Spielberg's great work asks them anew for an age gone nuclear.

Image by arsheffield

REFERENCES

Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark
Steven Soderbergh’s version of Raiders with sound and color removed
Weird Studies Patreon extra, “Weird Genius”
Weird Studies episode 28, “Weird Music Part 2”
Camille Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre
M. Night Shyamalan, Signs
Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon
Neil Jordan (dir.), The End of the Affair
Weird Studies episode 29, “On Lovecraft”
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism
Howard Carter, British archaeologist
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel”
Claude Levi Strauss, French anthropologist
Clement Greenberg's concept of medium specificity
D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation
David Mamet, On Directing Film
Dumbo (1941 film)
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Strange High House in the Mist”
Jan Fries, Helrunar: A Manual of Rune Magick
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
GIF of the soldier moving funny at the end of Raiders
Weird Studies episode 2, “Garmonbozia”
Aaron Leitch, occultist
Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure
Gene Wolfe, [Soldier of the Mist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoldieroftheMist)_