Nicely put. (Though the image only occurred to me recently, it makes intuitive sense to me; I’m sure others … and obviously some who have engaged Gebser … would disagree.)
Back in the mid-90s, I led a Gebser reading-group in SF. Not unsurprisingly (well, for me at least, given the time and place and the motley assemblage who was willing to even give Gebser a go), there were two types of participants: those who rejected him (more or less straight out, because he didn’t make sense or his argument didn’t “add up”, whatever that meant) and who dropped out; and those who accepted him, even if they didn’t “get” all that I think he has to give, and who stuck around to the end. That has continued to be my “experience” with Gebser readers ever since.
In some cases, like your own experience, it is simply the spiritual side of his presentation. But that has interesting variations. Many of the group were local Rosicrucians and Martinists, what many mainstreamers would consider relatively whacked-out esotericists and “new-agers” (oh, and there were those too, there’s no denying that). You’d think for as open- (though their detractors thought “empty-”) minded as they were, some of them just couldn’t get their hearts and mind wrapped around Gebser’s Origin (Ursprung). They had no problem with the Cosmos or Cosmic Consciousness or the Grand Architect of the Universe, but Origin? Uh … no. Maybe it was just too vague for them. The more rationally minded, of course, simply accused Gebser of being new-agey (which I always liked since he predated the “movement” by almost half-a-century) or Procrustean in his argumentation. Details were not always forthcoming.
In America, of course, he didn’t show up on the scene until the late 80s as it is. And I don’t know how realistic it is that he might find acceptance, especially considering the timing (for here I wouldn’t underestimate the new-age phenomenon), but for the mainstream, well, it’s all uphill, isn’t it? Wasn’t it in the Jordan Hall clip that @johnnydavis54 posted that the American “thought scene” is dominated by Harvard, the Ivy League, and a few outliers, like U of Chicago, Berkeley and Stanford, so if you aren’t accepted there, your chances of gaining traction are slim at best. If anything’s going to happen, it’ll have to happen off the grid, so to speak, like here. The Jean Gebser Society keeps holding conferences, which is commendable. And Aaron Cheek has his Diaphany: a Journal and Nocturn, but he has only produced one volume thus far (2015).
Having said all this, one shouldn’t think that things here, in Gebser’s home country, are all that much different. He was certainly known – maybe not as much as Sloterdijk, but Gebser died long before philosophers got on TV. Besides the DTV edition of EPO and his Complete Works, all his other writings are out-of-print. The International Jean Gebser Society produced 21 volumes of Contributions to an Integral Worldview (Beiträge zur integralen Weltsicht) between 1984 and 2009. His admirers were dedicated and active, but the IJGS has also more or less shut down operations. Memory fades, membership fades, and it couldn’t find enough to sustain itself. And so it goes.
But, on the lighter side, and only because I wanted to fact-check a couple of my above statements, I literally stumbled across this blog post by Stuart Davis, of all people, which I wanted to share. It’s kinda long … he rambles, or is addicted to detail … but it’s an interesting take on ol’ Jean. It’s entitled Diaphany.
