Responses 4
[These writings were originally posted on a well-known philosophy forum, responses to someone in academia. As the forum rejected the last post I sent, I am reposting the whole series here, including the rejected post.]
2012-10-09 (Original posting date)
Thank you for your response.
“The word is a doublet of treason”
Tradition and treason, the link is interesting.
Together with your neology, “treadition”, it suggests that the hostilities of mutual exclusion practiced by insular traditions always try to appropriate neutral parties into forms of partisanship determined by such insularity. If they fail to do this, they characterise the neutral autonomy of otherness as treason(ous). This is typical of those who wish to impose their ignorance on others.
“Yes, ‘consciousness’ is not natural. But the question is what is its non-naturalness made up of.”
To clarify:
“I suppose that would depend on the degree to which ‘consciousness’ and its products can be considered as falling within the scope of the ‘natural’.”
This supposition attempts to convey the indeterminate relationship between two concepts of variable determinacy: ‘nature’ and ‘consciousness’.
“Like ‘human’, the word ‘nature’ is a Latin term, a translation of the Greek concept, physis. And traditions of philosophy are emergences like any other.”
Acknowledging the indeterminacies of the preceding formulation, these two sentences subsume both terms, ‘nature’ and ‘consciousness’, under the concept of physis, which I render here as ’emergence’. I guess Heidegger is the reference here. But there could easily be others.
With these provisos in mind, your earlier unsureness concerning “the natural existence of “one’s own traditions” (OOT)” seems problematic. Why? Because your underlying points about ideology, hybridity, and so forth, rest on a particular mapping of nature and culture, a mapping that they question, but only up to a point.
Whether traditions are ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’ very much revolves around the conceptual distributions one allocates. It is possible to use either the ‘logic of nature’ or the ‘logic of culture’ to account for the totality. Both can subsume each other. The ‘physical objects of Nature’ are subject to the variabilities of interpretative artifice, to ‘representation’. And the deepest ‘mentalistic interiorities’ can be read in terms of their ‘functions’ or ‘effects’ within a consensual vocabulary of ‘objects’ accepted as forming a ‘logic of the Natural’.
If all traditions are artifice, ‘nature’ is an irrelevant consideration, there is only ‘ideology’. If all traditions are natural, there can be no ‘artificiality’, or ‘ideology’. Both perspectives are available. I realise your use of “the natural” is nuanced with respect to received notions of sociopolitical discourse that allow colonial appropriations to be subsumed under artifice, and thus under anthropic agency, such agency being responsible. Such a responsibility is always structured in accord with the systematic play of possibilities occurring within the opposition, Subject/Object. And one could say that there is a continuum of realisation with respect to this play of possibilities: from a mystical awareness of possibilities to their ”collapse’ into the said-imented understandings of realitas, the reifications of language, community, society. It is not an insignificant point that all such reifications are particular forms of ‘collapse’, each form being a network of consensuality; each ‘network’ being the accretion, over time, of agreements; and wherever there is agreement, there are scenarios of ‘choice’; ideology would consist in the excavation of forgotten or disputed choices, questioning a historical sequence of agreements, especially those considered hegemonic, and especially so if they are in discord with desirable ideals or practices.
Thus, ‘ideology’ would be those consensual networks which any ‘hermeneutics of of suspicion’ (Ricoeur) can reveal as chosen realities. Moreover, if such revelations also index the play of vested interests, discouragement of questioning, ‘resistance’ to what is revealed, etc., then people speak of ideological mystification. And it is here that a politics of disagreement develops, as neglected or exploited realms each coalesce as systematic articulation, position, and perspective. Such coalescences, if sustained, themselves become ‘consensual networks’, countering and contesting the hegemonic forces they were originally a response to. And perhaps they become new forms of hegemony?
All this, the preceding, is uncontroversial. We all know how it goes. And isn’t that the point? It’s all become ‘appropriated’, institutionalised critiques of uncertain value.
Anyway, my two earlier formulations perhaps attempt to keep a distance from the received uses of the ‘nature/culture’ divide common to traditional discourses of ideological analysis, without ignoring them completely: this sidesteps any characterisations of sociopolitical agency that might prove metaphysically restrictive: characterisations positioning themselves (somewhere along the continuum between ‘Nature’ and ‘Consciousness’-‘Culture’-‘Artifice’) in ways that might ossify into a deeper unquestioned, perhaps unperceived, form of ideological stasis.
“This is why one tended to prefer a ‘treadition'(in relation to a rather cautious path) than the ‘traditon’ at hand, which not being an insider to it/any, I have always viewed sceptically. This is also why, I have never been able to see a ‘tradition’ which is not somewhat syncretic, whether it carries the official label for it or not. Besides, I seem to see a tautology in the use of the terms non-doctrinaire and syncretic. On the other hand, one would like to see tensions between the doctrines that emerge in exclusivising contexts, and the syncretisms that counter such hegemonic exclusivisms. This happens in any context, traditonal or not, unless of course someone deliberatley, chooses to project only the doctrinarity of one context and only the syncretism of another context or vice versa.”
I’m sure that exclusivities of all sorts have been rife in India for thousands of years. The Laws of Manu gave expression to perhaps the worst phase of such practices. I’m also sure that many of them were imported or emphasised by those who imposed themselves through coercive invasions, and settled, accruing enforced privileges for themselves.
“Besides, I seem to see a tautology in the use of the terms non-doctrinaire and syncretic.”
I did not speak of the non-doctrinaire, I spoke of a range of doctrinal variance, one so vast that it subsumes every possibility. This is what I meant by Pacific/Pond. It is this vast variance that constitutes the syncreticism. Such a variance is only possible where alternative doctrines are accepted for what they are, rather than as ‘heresies’. The notion of heresy, and the hostility towards it, is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic between Asian belief systems and those of a more contentious cast, further west.
Of course, it is undeniable that all systems of belief have produced great spiritual resources. That is not in question. That all of these traditions can be seen as flawed in different ways, cannot be denied, either. But one must ask, which traditions more readily resorted to coercion, violation, and invasion, to further their ‘influence? Neither China nor India were expansionist in the last thousand years.
“On the other hand, one would like to see tensions between the doctrines that emerge in exclusivising contexts, and the syncretisms that counter such hegemonic exclusivisms.”
Yes, tensions can be productive. Buddhism and Hinduism mutually enriched each other. Syncretism can encompass mutually exclusive doctrines. Theistic spirituality, monotheism, polytheism, materialism, atheism, etc., are all represented within Hinduism.
“someone deliberateley, chooses to project only the doctrinarity of one context and only the syncretism of another context or vice versa.”
Crucifixions, pogroms, jihads, Holy Wars and Crusades: these are expressions of Occidental ‘belief’. Do Asian ‘beliefs’ have a similar history of contentions?
Did Hindus war with Buddhists? Did Buddhism spread to China through invasion?
As for syncretism, I suppose Catholic theologians can be wildly catholic in their interests.
If you’re implying that I have been projecting in such a fashion of deliberation, you’re probably right.
But do I have good reasons for such a gesture? I think I do.
“The veil of Orientalism-Indology… the noble thoughts of Nagarjuna or Shankara”
How would Nagarjuna or Shankara characterise “the modern (Enlightenment-Romantic) world” ?
Perhaps such a question is the root, or guide, of any viable reconfiguration?
Reflections On [*******’s] Reflections On Treadition/Tradition
“First, we may ask where do we begin to draw the spatial, temporal, and historical limits of what we call ‘a traditon.'”
As Derrida says: “Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless.”
If we are contrasting comparatively recent Occidental traditions with older Asian traditions, this difference in age complicates things.
“And then, we might have to consider what, in a traditon, could be handed over and what was not or could not be.”
Yes. But the question of what could be received and understood is significant.
Exegesis alone could be infinite.
Who is to say what future interpretations may bring?
There is always the possibility of new texts being found.
What traditions, ‘lost’ to received discourses, await discovery?
The ancient world may be very different from ‘accepted’ Occidental historical accounts.
“there cannot be a tradition-to-come, because, what is already handed over cannot come (back); there can only be handing over, or gift, or giving, on the basis of the ‘bits and pieces’ or fragments or unwholes (not even syncretic) we are and allow ourselves to become.”
Whatever is given is not thereby exhausted in the instance of the gift.
To paraphrase your own words:”where do we begin to draw the spatial, temporal, and historical limits of what we call a” ‘gift’ ?
If you remove the ‘whole’, the ‘fragments’ disappear, too.
I like Adorno’s “The whole is the false.” But that was probably a reaction to Hegel.
I haven’t read Derrida’s 90s works, but I am aware that he talks about a democracy-to-come. With that in mind, the phrase ‘overcoming-to-come’ suggested itself to me.
Although my skit on Derrida was a playful offering, it does have a logic to it that can be validated.
If you respond to this post, that is the tradition-to-come, as is this very post you read.
“I’d like to express my gratitude for your deeply thoughtful response that has greatly enabled me to think on our common problem.”
Thank you for your kind words. It is a great honour that you find my writings worth consideration.
The Final Refractions of Common Sense (sensus communis), the Clarifications of Commerce
This is a response to Terence Blake’s comment on Fighting Things You Cannot See: A Quick Response to Larval Subjects, October 26, 2012, Fighting Words 2
It was an involved and complex comment, suggestive of a general logic that perhaps governs the global opera we seem to inhabit, the coercive global operations that configure contemporary being.
1. furtive shifting between an extended concept of naturalism as the suspending of transcendence
The “extended concept of naturalism” as: “the suspending of transcendence”; “naturalism as immanence”; “there is nothing outside the world”: all these are a particular rhetoric of containment, preliminary categorisations that set up an epistemological schema or framework, a world: a world to be ruled. When transcendence was necessary, to compensate for lack of sufficient material control, a central principle was arrived at and implemented with brutal force (in the Occident, at any rate). The principle was tightly governed, authoritarian, and inflexible. As networks of cyber-kontrol and exploitation developed, the central principle was contested and recontextualised as an element of these networks. The essential movement of assimilation continued, the element of earlier brutalisations transposed into the ‘scientific’ implementations of an ‘industrialisation’ that colonised almost without limit.
As the innate pragmatics of this deprived and depraved barbarity prevailed: as the entire globe was cast into the abyss of the lowest common denominator: an ‘l.c.d. consciousness’ took hold, crystallising a mundum depletus whose ever-renewing facets glittered out to the void: powered by a circuitry of oneiric commerce, endlessly replaying nostalgic imagery of the earlier stages of liquid vitality, even of the ‘l.c.d. consciousness’ itself, all of which had been displaced: the crystal world shone its twinkling visions of frozen desire, but its invitations to the dream life were in vain, the mechanism of seductions now only a museum for passing inspection by alien ‘brains’, an exhibition of the “Era of homo insane“.
2. naturalism as immanence (the thesis that “there is nothing outside the world”)
This is the imperative: “You are in the ‘world’. You must do what we say, because we know best. We have fixed the very meanings of the words everyone uses, in a way that predisposes their ‘common sense’ connections in our favour. Nevertheless, you can only accept this, “there is nothing outside this world.””
3. more restricted notion of naturalism as the extrapolated unifying framework of the sciences
The “extrapolated unifying framework of the sciences”, in effect, is the ideological extension of a process of legitimation.The legitimation produces whatever counts as ‘valid knowledge’, as ‘truth’. The milieu of this process gains an almost ecclesiastical authority, dispensing reality to the herd.
4. On the extended sense of naturalism, nothing can be ruled out a priori except transcendence and transcendent causation.
“nothing can be ruled out a priori except transcendence and transcendent causation.”
‘Transcendence’ is always a threat to every closed system.
5. In this sense a naturalist could accept teleological causes, that would be a matter of research
6. Husserl is a philosopher of immanence and the bracketing of the natural attitude brackets out concepts and assumptions that are transcendent to this field
Yes, but isn’t it an immanence with respect to the phenomenological field of investigation, the ‘things themselves’, rather than a metaphysics of ‘nature’ or ‘materiality’? And Husserl’s eidetic procedures introduce ideality at the very foundations of his project.
7. Bryant falls foul of the Laruellian critique that he posits naturalism twice
The problem with any dogmatism is not the multiple positings of its basic position, rather it is the pretence of plural incommensurability when its characterisations of these posits are questioned. This is the monolithic utterance characteristic of an insidious imperialism, the surreptitious and easy delineation of a coercive weltanschauung as ‘nature’ (“This is the way it is!”).
8. the extended but weak sense of immanence
The use of the term “weak” for the philosophical concept of ‘immanence’ favours the identification of ‘strong’ with ‘physical realisation’, with ‘material presence’, ‘weak’ with the idealised abstractions of philosophic conceptuality. But I guess you’re right, for the actual difference is between a concept that occurs only in specialised discourse, and a concept that is amplified by more general and ‘powerful’ representations in the ‘world’ .
9. and then some hoddgepodge that he can never decide, on containing whatever specific hypothese he needs at the moment of proclamation to specify his naturalism.
The ‘hodgepodge’ is the ‘sorting house’ where elements are selected to constitute the scenography of ‘reality’: obviously, explicit modalities of truth play a large part in this process, but there is considerable room for disingenuity, too.
10. The strong, but always changinng and ever oscillating between mechanism, materialism and physicalism,
Oscillating between the philosophemes of mechanism, materialism and physicalism, reinforced by a philosophical naturalism that is itself reinforced, in its turn, by scientific demonstrativity.
11. is somehow meant to be reinforced by the weaker more philosophical naturalism,
‘Philosophy’, yes, the cultural veneer that obscures a history of networked exploitations.
12. which is itself reinforced by the “scientific” content.
Such “scientific content” is always administered, ultimately, by political interests who kontrol the vast sums of kapital which finance scientific research.
13. Having two forms of immanence he can exclude a maximum of potential rivals.
Professor Bryant is free to circle on the merry-go-round of as many immanences as he can think up. I don’t have to join him.
14. With weak philosophical immanence he thinks he can exclude teleology in the sciences (but he can’t!)
15. and with strong scientific immanence he thinks he can exclude Husserl and Foucault and whoever.
16. But research (and here I include both philosophy and science) is not so much about demarcation and exclusion as critical investigation and experimentation.
Yes, this is the ideal, the dream, the spin, of that benevolent ‘science’ everyone has such faith in.
It is a great pity that they are not clever enough to realise it.
Fighting Things You Cannot See: A Quick Response to Larval Subjects, October 26, 2012, Fighting Words 3
Naturalism or materialism are hardly perspectives struggling to disseminate novel insights to a population ignorant of their ‘virtues’. Their outlooks are well-known.
In actual ‘Contental philosophy’, on the Continent, Bachelard, Serres, Thom, and Monod, have been hugely influential. In the Anglophone reception of this tradition, these thinkers have been well-represented over the years. They are not ‘outlier’ figures. If you’re claiming they are ‘outliers’ for you, and your milieu, you are the best judge of that, but it certainly doesn’t apply to the rest of the philosophical world.
When you speak of ‘dominant tendencies’, in the Anglophone world there is one, and one only, the Anglo-American analytical tradition and all its sub-schools. ‘Speculative Realism’ is merely an intermediary form that has developed in response to the perceived ‘excesses’ of some Continental thought, it is an attempt to domesticate such thought to the basic outlook exemplified by a large, hegemonic strain in the Anglo-American tradition.
There is nothing in my response that can be construed as implying the rejection of Althusser or Foucault, not that I would hesitate to do this if it was necessary. But I would actually read them first.
Your silence regarding the rest of the points in my response is notable.
You are very prolific, philosophy takes time.
Fighting Things You Cannot See: A Quick Response to Larval Subjects, October 26, 2012, Fighting Words 2
“Institutional levels” are not necessarily indicative of significance at the level of ideas and discursive production.
Monod’s “Chance and Necessity” was a bestseller, and its themes would have certainly been in the air after he won the Nobel prize in 1965.
Perhaps Derrida’s: “The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of philosophy and beyond it, the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end.” alludes to it? Who knows?
If you consider Bachelard et al. marginal now, this only refers to the fact that their works are ignored by present trends of Anglophone appropriation. They do not fit into the particular schematism of contrived contentions demanded by an Anglophone readership eager to comfort itself through replays of the historical victories enabled by empirical method, a method that has merely arranged the ‘world’ in its own image, commandeering it through an emphasis on military technique, generating only the global scenario of a rudderless ‘modernity’ drifting in the the infinite seas of ‘alienation’, ‘freedom’ and ‘possibility’. Post-Modernity brought in a fresh consideration of these issues, applying eminently modernist formalisms, reflexively, to the processes of modernity itself. This has obviously proved too much for those who merely chant ‘progress’ as a mantra, believing in the argot of ‘modernity’, even as it displaced the autonomies of everything contrary to its projects, to the extension of its ‘networks’, and supplied them with the booty, the sp(oil)s?, of this regimentation. But this ‘supply’ has been getting a little uncertain, recently. Time to boost the old ‘self-esteem’, the flagging spirits, let’s run the good ol’ narratives of ‘can-do’, no-nonsense reductionism again, the ones that gave us what we have, the simple ones that we can understand, the ones with heroes like Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud.
You cite Husserl’s epoche, Heidegger’s questioning of technology, the ‘linguistic turn’, and social constructivism, as if they are wayward aberrations from the orthodoxy of ‘naturalism’. You then magnanimously state that you are not suggesting the rejection of phenomenology. You call for a ‘naturalistic’ revision of these errant discourses. You don’t seem to be thinking too clearly, or at least deeply enough, in offering these claims. To be fair, the initial post was a manifesto of intent, and your response is carried by the momentum of its zeal. You also qualify this:
“The truth of the matter, however– and I won’t even bother to make arguments here –is that naturalism and materialism are the only credible philosophical positions today.”
And, of course, your qualification is couched in an unequivocal declaration of your ‘orientation’. lol
1) The outlook of naturalisms (there isn’t just one) are very adequately represented: the sensus communis is replete with their presuppositions. ‘Scientific naturalisms’ are informed by a general ‘common sense’, and this forms a large measure of their persuasive appeal. But it’s often a simplistic appeal, and we live in a complex world: the inveterate reduction of these complexities to populist criteria is not always a good thing.
2) If I have a problem with my tap (US: faucet), it makes sense to call a plumber and listen to his advice. If I want to learn about the composition of a globular cluster, I should ask an astrophysicist. If I wish to ascertain the modalities of ‘mental process’, it would help to have the input of a phenomenologist, a neurophysicist, a psychologist, a philosopher, a yogi: which one, would depend on the specific goal or purpose guiding the inquiry. Definitely, all of them would have something interesting and unique to offer, to ignore any of them would be an impoverishment.
3) If someone wants to engage in naturalistic revision of fields that are allegedly non-naturalistic, go ahead, interesting things can result from that. But don’t try to suppress a ‘natural’ tendency for people to think otherwise. They might come up with something of interest, too.
4) Regarding the epoche (Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonian scepticism, Husserl), in Husserl’s case his explicit method was to suspend the natural attitude, in order to see what would result from what he felt would be an unprejudiced focus on ‘actual phenomenal experience’. For you to suggest a ‘naturalistic’ revision of this is revealing.
i) It is simply contradictory. It’s like telling a vegetarian restaurant that, yes, they can be vegetarian, but they must revise their menu to include meat dishes.
ii) The fact that you indulge in such contradiction indicates a lack of awareness, as well as your stated unwillingness to acknowledge, that ‘naturalism’ is a position, if it is conceptually articulated. Your assumption of ‘naturalism’s’ exclusive credibility leads you to position yourself in Husserl’s workshop, with its sign on the door saying ‘No Natural Attitude Beyond This Point’, with a sandwich board on your shoulders that declares: “Naturalism is nigh!” lol
There are multiple ways to question Husserl’s project, do you feel you’ve chosen the most effective one? There is a point where such assumption amounts to ev(angel)istic (demon)stration, rather than reasoned consideration.
5) ‘Naturalism’ could be said to be a kind of ‘sedimented pragmatism’, the historical accumulation of coping strategies that have worked, to one degree or another. That’s important, but it isn’t a justification for closing off or limiting other considerations, even seemingly opposing ones. There’s always more routes to follow.
Fighting Things You Cannot See: A Quick Response to Larval Subjects, October 26, 2012, Fighting Words 1
“The central failure of Continental philosophy has been the rejection of naturalism.”
Is this really an accurate characterisation of Continental philosophy?
Aside from ignoring notable instances such as Gaston Bachelard, Rene Thom, Jacques Monod, perhaps even Michel Serres, all of whom have been hugely influential in ‘Continental philosophy’, it is insensitive to philosophy’s obligation to consider all claims, all positions, all traditions, and not to presuppose the privilege of any one of them, just because of a measure of any popular success.
Have not conceptions of Nature varied through the ages?
This variation indexes contingency in what counts as scientific knowledge, at any particular time, sometimes in a quite profound way.
In any statistical distribution, any calculation of an ‘average’ serves commonality and not the ‘outlier’. ‘Nature’ is the residual conceptualisation that emerges from such a sifting of ‘experiences’, the filtering for ‘consistency’: sometimes, the ‘outlier’ phenomenon is host to scientific possibilities radically different to what the ‘received consensus’ claims. And, perhaps, it is this that is of most interest. The insight that jumps to a new understanding, instead of mere combinatorics.
“If you find yourself explaining being in terms of the signifier, text, rhetoric, culture, power, history, or lived experience, then your thought deserves to be committed to flame.”
This is disturbing, it is redolent of other book burning practioners rather than David Hume. Hume’s scepticism emerged out of a genuine philosophic path, rather than the unthinking ‘cult-speaks’ that characterise the epoch of an exploitative ‘modernity’, of which ‘speculative realism’ seems to be the most recent, sub-cultural ‘gang’ argot. A collation of anachronies and out-of-context citations, ‘speculative realism’ attempts to contrive imaginary philosophical contentions by replaying ‘positions’ noone has seriously held for centuries.
I remember telling a physics and philosophy student about a joke I’d written, involving an army of Hume clones rushing around and burning books. He laughed a little too much. It wasn’t really that funny.
“The point is not that these other orientations have failed to make contributions to our understanding of the natural world, but that they have mistakenly treated these things as grounds of the natural world, rather than the reverse.”
If the ‘naturalist’ believes all those ‘orientations’ are rooted in the ‘natural’: if the ‘natural’ is a self-enclosed system of mutual ‘self-referentialitease’: who is to say what is a ‘ground’ or not? What confers the attribute of ‘ground-ness’?
“Your thought is a reaction formation to the narcissistic wound of the fact that your existence is contingent and that you are only the third of the three great apes.”
“great apes”? – “‘You are reckless in your modesty!'” (Sheckley:1966) lol
A thought is a thought, wherever it seems to be hosted, its spatiotemporal qualities (‘materiality’, etc.,) are features to be taken into consideration, not excuses to limit the scope of that thought only according to a particular ‘lowest common denominator’ understanding.
“There’s even a bit of truth in Christ, Paul, and Buddha.”
Can you speak so assuredly on concepts of truth that you are able to dispense portions of it to those traditions which played a large part in their very formation?
“All you need to do is abandon the notion that humans aren’t an animal, that somehow being is dependent on humans and culture, and that somehow we have ends like knowledge and transcendence. All you have to do is re-interpret the entirety of your claims about lived experience, the signifier, culture, power, etc., in naturalistic terms.”
anima, animation? soul?
knowledge, transcendence
These are all open concepts, perspectives whose resolutions according to this or that logic, whether ‘scientific’ or otherwise, are themselves contingent and arbitrary.
‘Naturalistic reinterpretations’ are the easiest thing in the world, all it means is that one reinterprets according to the vocabulary of relatively uncontentious ‘physical presences’: the systems where they seem to have most theoretical consistency, and the ‘lowest common denominator’. The problem is that there is always more than one way to do this, and that everything one rejects as extraneous comes rushing back at ‘deeper levels’ of investigation.
Any search for the ‘ground’ of the manifest, always leads to a non-manifest principle, a theory, a novel principle of form, a substantial configuration derived from the very manifestations it is supposed to account for. So it is a self-referring system. But it is never fully closed. As Derrida says: “Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless.” This applies to everything, not just ‘language’. Would not Godel have said something similar?
If the Occidental tradition can come up with no more than the disingenuously regurgitated contentions of ‘Speculative Realism’, then it hasn’t moved beyond Derrida and the 60’s. And ‘speculative realism’ is merely a reactionary nostalgia for the comforting ‘finitudes’ of ‘anthropic’ forms of ‘presence’ (‘self’, ‘world’, ‘substantia’, etc.,) in a ‘universe’ that always exceeds the limited comprehension of an exploitative mentality.
After Thought ? After Mind ?
A space of novel emergence…
Might it be possible to actually communicate a transcendence of the conceptual?
How would this be achieved?
Can one speak of methodology with regard to such a quest?
Or could such methods be obstructive, rather than instructive?
Is the mere inculcation of ‘structure’ sufficient, without a deeper, living understanding of its play?