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Evolutionity and the Calling of Evolutionary Suffering and Evolutionary Flourishing: Dialogues Among Epochs and Cultivating New Pathways of Planetary Realizations

Received: 28 April 2021     Accepted: 18 June 2021     Published: 24 August 2021
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Abstract

Evolution is a perennial challenge before Nature, self, society and the world. This article engages with the discourse of evolutionity offered by W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz to characterize our contemporary condition. Korab-Karpowicz argues that our contemporary condition is not so much characterized by tradition, modernity and postmodernity but evoultionity which refers to processes of evolution on the part of self and society. This article engages with this perspective and argues how evoultionity is characterized by evolutionary suffering which then leads to evolutionary flourishing. Evolutionary suffering refers to pain and suffering undertaken for realizing evolutionary transformations of self, society and the world. Evolutionary flourishing refers to realization of beauty, dignity and dialogues in self and society as evolutionary process. The article also argues how the present moment is not only characterized by clash among epochs but by dialogue among epochs. The theme of clash of epochs which draws on the discourse of clash of civilizations needs to engage with discourses and practices of dialogues among civilizaitons. Here the article offers the perspectives of multi-topial and multi-temporal hermeneutics to understand dialogues among epochs. In multi-topial hermeneutics one moves across multiple terrains of self, society, culture and the world and in multi-temporal hermeneutics one moves across multiple temporality. The article thus argues how dialogues among epochs need to be understood in the context of dialogues among cultures, civilizations and temporality. The article argues how in our contemporary moment we need to realize that we all are children of Mother Earth which is called planetary realizations in this essay.

Published in International Journal of Philosophy (Volume 9, Issue 3)

This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionity

DOI 10.11648/j.ijp.20210903.16
Page(s) 154-161
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Evolutionary Flourishing, Evolutionary Suffering, Dialogues Among Epochs, Multi-topial Hermeneutics, Multi-temporal Hermeneutics, Transmodernity, Lokasamgraha, Tian-Xia

References
[1] W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, (2017). Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus: New Directions for the Future Development of Humankind. London: Routledge.
[2] Gianluca Bocchi & Mauro Ceruti. (2002). The Narrative Universe. Translated by Luca Pellegrini & Alfonso Montour. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 159-160.
[3] Arnold J. Toynbee. (1956.) An Historian’s Approach to Religion. Oxford: Oxford U. Press, p. 74.
[4] W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz. (2019). The Clash of Epochs: Traditional, Modern, Postmodern, and Evolutionity. Perspectives on Political Science 48 (3): 170-182.
[5] Prasenjit Duara (2015) The Crises of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and Sustainable Futures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[6] J. C. Heesterman (1985), The Inner Conflicts of Tradition: Essays on Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[7] Dallmayr, Fred. (2002). Dialogue Among Civilizations: Some Exemplary Voices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[8] Richard Hartz. (2015). The Clasp of Civilizations: Religion and Globalization in a Multicultural World. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld.
[9] Harvey, David. (1989.) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into Origins of Cultural Change. Boston: Basil Blackwell.
[10] Rudolph, Lloyd and Susanne H. Rudolph. (1967.) The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[11] Ananta Kumar Giri. (2013). Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London, Anthem Press.
[12] Dussel, Enrique. (2017). “Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation.” In Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony. Delhi: Primus Books.
[13] In making such a formulation of the dialectic between values and power in understanding epochs and civilizations, I draw upon sociologist Andre Beteille’s work on ideology which looks at it as the dialectic between power and symbols. See Andre Beteille, Ideologies and Intellectuals. Delhi: Oxford U. Press, 1980.
[14] Boaventuar de Sousa Santos. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Struggles Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
[15] Ananta Kumar Giri. (2021). “With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South: Multi-topial Hermeneutics, Ontological Epistemology of Participation and Planetary Realizations.” Sociological Bulletin, 70 (3), pp. 366-383.
[16] Baventuar de Sousa Santos writes about this: The aim of diatopical hermeneutics is to maximize the awareness of the reciprocal incompleteness of cultures by engaging in a dialogue, as it were, with one foot in one culture and the other in another—hence its diatopical character. Diatopical hermeneutics is an exercise in reciprocity among cultures that consists in transforming the premises of argumentation in a given culture into intelligible and credible arguments in another. See Boaventuar de Sousa Santos. Epistemologies of the South, op. cit., p. 92.
[17] Ananta Kumar Giri (2021), “Cultural Understanding: Multi-topial Hermenuetics, Planetary Conversations and Dialogue with Confucianism and Vedanta.” International Journal of Communication of Chinese Culture, 2020.
[18] What philosopher J. N. Mohanty writes deserves our careful consideration: The ethic of non-injury applied to philosophical thinking requires that one does not reject outright the other point of view without first recognizing the element of truth in it; it is based on the belief that every point of view is partly true, partly false, and partly undecidable. A simple two-valued logic requiring that a proposition must either be true or false is thereby rejected, and what the Jaina philosopher proposes is a multi-valued logic. To this multi-valued logic, I add the Husserlian idea of overlapping contents. The different perspectives on a thing are not mutually exclusive, but share some contents with each other. The different ‘worlds’ have shared contents, contrary to the total relativism. If you represent them by circles, they are intersecting circles, not incommensurable, [and it is this model of] intersecting circles which can get us out of relativism on the one hand and absolutism on the other. In this spirit, we can realize that different epochs have “shared contents” among each other which facilitate dialogues among epochs. See, J. N. Mohanty (2000), Self and Other: Philosophical Essays. Delhi: Oxford U. Press, p: 24; emphases added.
[19] Jurgen Habermas. (1990). Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
[20] Ananta Kumar Giri (2012), “Beyond Adaptation and Meditative Verbs of Co-Realizations,” [in:] Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
[21] Ankersmit, F. R. (1996). Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value. Stanford: Stanford U. Press.
[22] Clammer, John; Ananta Kumar Giri. Eds. (2017). The Aesthetics of Development: Art, Culture and Social Transformation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[23] Korab-Karpowicz, Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus, p. 4.
[24] Here what Chitta Ranjan Das writes about Benedict Spinoza: Power, knowledge and the challenge of cultivation of higher consciousness deserves our careful consideration: Benedict Spinoza has spoken about potestas and potential—words that in Latin mean power. They are different in their import because they point to different connotations. The former is functionally the urge to possess by bossing it over others, and the latter reminds us about the potentials inherent in every human being, the many possibilities of flowering up and upholding, if freedom is the climate in which it develops. According to Spinoza, love is the mediating link between knowledge and power. Love of humanity, love of the world, a deep faith in the unending possibilities of individuals as well as the collectives. This calls for a higher consciousness that all knowledge should congenially aim at. To Sri Aurobindo, a higher consciousness, as a rule, has to prove itself in the world. It never runs away and can afford to prove itself to be an asset of the world. But the changeover is not that easy as the wonderful words and references may suggest. There will be many-a-restraint, obstacles and oppositions, both from without and within. Hence, those who have chosen love have been men of protest. See Chitta Ranjan Das (2009), “Afterword,” The Modern Prince and the Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom, ed. Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Sage.
[25] Sociologist Andre Beteille looks at ideology as a dialectic of value and power. But Beteille does not explore much transcendence and transformation of our existing conceptions, organization and configurations of values and power. See Andre Beteille (1980), Ideologies and Intellectuals, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
[26] Roy Bhaskar (1996) Dialectics: Pulse of Freedom. London: Verso, 1996.
[27] Ananta Kumar Giri. (2001) ed. Rethinking Social Transformations: Criticism and Creativity at the Turn of the Millennium. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
[28] Ananta Kumar Giri. 2018. (ed.) Beyond Sociology: Trans-civlizational Dialogues and Planetary Conversations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[29] Axel Honneth, (2007) Disrespect: Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[30] The Indian transformative thinker Chitta Ranjan Das speaks about cultivating ideal lives in our daily lives which is different from clinging to particular ideologies and phenomenologist Edmund Husserl talks about idealization which involves a different mode of perception where we perceive the far to be near. See Ananta Kumar Giri and Ivan Marquez (2002), eds, The Essays of Chitta Ranjan Das on Literature, Culture and Society: On the Side of Life in Spite of. New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
[31] J. N. Mohanty (2002), Self and Other: Philosophical Essays. Delhi: Oxford U. Press.
[32] See Jurgen Habermas. (1979). Communication and the Evolution of Society. Boston: Beacon Press.
[33] Piet Strydom. (1989). New Horizons of Critical Theory: Collective Learning and Triple Contingency. Delhi: Shipra.
[34] Ivan Ilich. (1972). Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row.
[35] Korab-Karpowicz, Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus, p. 19.
[36] Ananta Kumar Giri (2017), ed. Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues. Delhi: Primus Books.
[37] Michel Foucault (1984). “What is Enlightenment?” In Foucault Reader, Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon.
[38] Giani Vattimo (2011) A Farewell to Truth. New York: Columbia University Press.
[39] Arturo Escobar. (2021). Pluriversal Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
[40] Korab-Karpowicz. The Clash of Epochs, p. 8.
[41] Sri Aurobindo (1970). Life Divine. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, p. 3.
[42] This passage us quoted in S. Maitra, (2000), The Meeting of the East and West in Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
[43] It is especially visible in the part of the Tractatus entitled Sophocracy, which is a name for an ennobled democracy. See Korab-Karpowicz, Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus, pp. 89-102.
[44] S. Maitra, (2000), The Meeting of the East and West, p. 71.
[45] Korab-Karpowicz, Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus, p. 21.
[46] Henri Bergson, Henri, Creative Evolution. Tr. Arthur Mitchell. London: Macmillan, 1912.
[47] J. N. Mohanty. 2002. Explorations in Philosophy: Western Philosophy. Delhi: Oxford U. Press.
[48] What Swaminathan writes here deserves our careful consideration: How can we define biohappiness? I woud say it is the sustainable and equitable use of biodiversity leading to the creation of more jobs and income. When the use of biodiversity leads to sustainable livelihood security, the local population develops an economic stake in conservation. It means that growth and progress must be reliable and dependable and maintained at an even and steady pace. In farming it is the production of high yields in perpetuity, without associated social and ecological harm. Sustainable development must be firmly rooted in the principles of ecology, social and gender equity, employment generation, and economic advance. See M. S. Swaminathan, In Search of Biohappiness: Biodiveresity and Food, Health and Livelihood. Singapore: World Scientitic, 2011, p. ix.
[49] Peter Kropotkin. (1976). Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution. Boston: Porter Sergent Edition.
[50] Bikram Narayan Nanda. (1994). Contours of Continuity and Change: The Story of the Bonda Highlanders. Delhi: Sage.
[51] See Amartya. Sen (1987), Gender and Cooperative Conflicts. Helsinki: World Institute of Development Economics (WIDER) Working Paper.
[52] Ananta Kumar Giri, ed. (2019). Transformative Harmony. New Delhi: Studera.
[53] Ananta Kumar Giri. (2020). “Upholding Our World and Regenerating Our Earth: Planetary Lokasamgraha.” In Cosmopolitan Civility: Global-Local Relations with Fred Dallmary, ed. Ruth Abbey. Stonybrook: State University of New York Press.
[54] Ananta Kumar Giri. Ed. 2018. Cosmopolitanism and Beyond: Towards Planetary Transformations. New York: Pagrave Macmillan, 2018.
[55] Here what Fred Dallmayr writes deserves our careful consideration: As an antidote to the spread of “worldlessness” in our time, Hannah Arendt recommended the restoration of a “public realm” in which people would actively participate and be mutually connected. Digging beneath this public forum, Heidegger unearthed the deeper source of connectedness in the experience of “care” (Sorge, c ura) in its different dimensions. From the angle of human “being-in-the world,” care penetrates into all dimensions of this correlation—in the sense that existence is called upon to care about “world” and its constituent features (fellow-beings, nature, cosmos). Differently put: There cannot be, for Heidegger, an isolated “self-care” (c ura sui) without care for the world—that includes care for world maintenance (without which Dasein cannot exist). In this latter concern, is work does not stand alone. In the Indian tradition, especially the Bhagavad Gita, we find an emphasis on a basic ethical and ontological obligation: the caring attention to “world maintenance” or loka-samgraha. According to the Gita, such attention needs to be cultivated, nurtured and practiced in order for human life to be sustainable and meaningful. See, Fred Dallmayr. (2015), Against the Apocalypse: Recovering Humanity’s Wholeness. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 51-52.
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    Ananta Kumar Giri. (2021). Evolutionity and the Calling of Evolutionary Suffering and Evolutionary Flourishing: Dialogues Among Epochs and Cultivating New Pathways of Planetary Realizations. International Journal of Philosophy, 9(3), 154-161. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20210903.16

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    Ananta Kumar Giri. Evolutionity and the Calling of Evolutionary Suffering and Evolutionary Flourishing: Dialogues Among Epochs and Cultivating New Pathways of Planetary Realizations. Int. J. Philos. 2021, 9(3), 154-161. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20210903.16

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    Ananta Kumar Giri. Evolutionity and the Calling of Evolutionary Suffering and Evolutionary Flourishing: Dialogues Among Epochs and Cultivating New Pathways of Planetary Realizations. Int J Philos. 2021;9(3):154-161. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20210903.16

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijp.20210903.16,
      author = {Ananta Kumar Giri},
      title = {Evolutionity and the Calling of Evolutionary Suffering and Evolutionary Flourishing: Dialogues Among Epochs and Cultivating New Pathways of Planetary Realizations},
      journal = {International Journal of Philosophy},
      volume = {9},
      number = {3},
      pages = {154-161},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijp.20210903.16},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20210903.16},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijp.20210903.16},
      abstract = {Evolution is a perennial challenge before Nature, self, society and the world. This article engages with the discourse of evolutionity offered by W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz to characterize our contemporary condition. Korab-Karpowicz argues that our contemporary condition is not so much characterized by tradition, modernity and postmodernity but evoultionity which refers to processes of evolution on the part of self and society. This article engages with this perspective and argues how evoultionity is characterized by evolutionary suffering which then leads to evolutionary flourishing. Evolutionary suffering refers to pain and suffering undertaken for realizing evolutionary transformations of self, society and the world. Evolutionary flourishing refers to realization of beauty, dignity and dialogues in self and society as evolutionary process. The article also argues how the present moment is not only characterized by clash among epochs but by dialogue among epochs. The theme of clash of epochs which draws on the discourse of clash of civilizations needs to engage with discourses and practices of dialogues among civilizaitons. Here the article offers the perspectives of multi-topial and multi-temporal hermeneutics to understand dialogues among epochs. In multi-topial hermeneutics one moves across multiple terrains of self, society, culture and the world and in multi-temporal hermeneutics one moves across multiple temporality. The article thus argues how dialogues among epochs need to be understood in the context of dialogues among cultures, civilizations and temporality. The article argues how in our contemporary moment we need to realize that we all are children of Mother Earth which is called planetary realizations in this essay.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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    AB  - Evolution is a perennial challenge before Nature, self, society and the world. This article engages with the discourse of evolutionity offered by W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz to characterize our contemporary condition. Korab-Karpowicz argues that our contemporary condition is not so much characterized by tradition, modernity and postmodernity but evoultionity which refers to processes of evolution on the part of self and society. This article engages with this perspective and argues how evoultionity is characterized by evolutionary suffering which then leads to evolutionary flourishing. Evolutionary suffering refers to pain and suffering undertaken for realizing evolutionary transformations of self, society and the world. Evolutionary flourishing refers to realization of beauty, dignity and dialogues in self and society as evolutionary process. The article also argues how the present moment is not only characterized by clash among epochs but by dialogue among epochs. The theme of clash of epochs which draws on the discourse of clash of civilizations needs to engage with discourses and practices of dialogues among civilizaitons. Here the article offers the perspectives of multi-topial and multi-temporal hermeneutics to understand dialogues among epochs. In multi-topial hermeneutics one moves across multiple terrains of self, society, culture and the world and in multi-temporal hermeneutics one moves across multiple temporality. The article thus argues how dialogues among epochs need to be understood in the context of dialogues among cultures, civilizations and temporality. The article argues how in our contemporary moment we need to realize that we all are children of Mother Earth which is called planetary realizations in this essay.
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  • Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India

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