Perennial Philosophy and Evolution

October 4th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Evolution, Perennialism |

It could be claimed that the concept of a ‘Perennial Philosophy’, as espoused by Huxley, Aurobindo, Wilbur etc, is bankrupt, that such a claim for a totalising theory is symptomatic of early 20th Century colonial approaches to knowledge and of positivistic, linear, Western approaches to truth. It could be claimed that this does not reflect the plurality of a global, multicultural, situated understanding of knowledge. However, this criticism is only valid if the claims of Perennial Philosophy are taken to represent an absolute truth about the physical world, it is not valid if Perennial Philosophy is taken to articulate and structure a set of human responses and human relationships to the world. Human responses are grounded in shared embodiment and shared evolutionary history, with common desires and universal propensities. Given this type of animal with this kind of mind and this kind of body in this kind of environment, this is the likely shape of the belief system they will produce.

It is important to note that the development of the complex structures of thought represented by Perennial Philosophy did not emerge fully-formed in the full light of consciousness by the rational deductive processes of sentient beings, detached from history and evolution. Rather these ’stories’ will have grown from simpler stories, actions, events, and beliefs, ultimately grounded in non-conscious, instrumental, emotionally tagged behaviour and perception; standing in a field and looking at the bowl of the sky overhead. Sleeping and waking, and the journeys of sleep, birth, and death.