jeremy johnson (1)

Jean Gebser on Primal Trust-Primal Fear

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I think this is a powerful extract from the teaching of the cultural historical theorist, Jean Gebser, from a 1972 talk on "Primal Fear and Primal Trust" re: his asking humans to continue to pursue the answers to the origin questions like: 'Where do I come from?', 'Who am I?' and "Whither do I go?' (the full quotation from this talk is offered in Georg Feurstein's (1987) Structures of Consciousness p. 30, and in Johnson's book in a chapter on "The Integral A-Perspectival World" (Johnson, 2019, p. 168). 

For those of you who know I am a critical integral theorist/philosopher, often following much of the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber, it is important to note that integralist philosophy is articulated by many other great minds of which Jean Gebser is one of them. Johnson names Gebser (1905-1973) "a German-Swiss cultural philosopher, intelectuall mystic, poet, and scholar of the evolution of consciousness." (p. 1). 

See also https://prism.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/handle/1880/112698/Tech%20Paper%20114_rev.pdf?sequence=5 [my more in depth article on "Cultural Theorist Jean Gebser Meets a Fearologist"). 

 

References

Feurstein, G. (1987). Structures of consciousness. Lower Lake: Integral Publishing [translation].

Gebser, J. (1997 ed.). The ever-present origin [Trans. Noel Barstad with Algist Mickunas]. University of Ohio Press.

Johnson, J. (2019). Seeing through the world: Jean Gebser and integral consciousness. Revelore. 

 

[art poster image by R. Michael Fisher]

 

 

 

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