Charles Taylor and the Invention of Modern Inwardness: A Sufi, Constructive Response
One of the constant themes in my writing on Corbin and related issues (which includes pretty much everything) is the mutability of the the “self.” That is to say, our experience of the ourselves and the world varies over time, among cultures and even within a single lifetime. But we are not generally aware of these fluxes. This essay is a nice account, I thought, of the overly simple distinction between inwardness and exteriority. The variables relevant to any account of “selfhood” are multiple, fluid and very hard to grasp - maybe ultimately impossible to see clearly. But that doesn’t mean we can’t usefully try to trace the vagaries of our experience. I think one helpful way to contrast modern subjectivity as described by Taylor with a richer “sufic” experience of inwardness might be in terms of “the cognitive function of sympathy” - connectedness or relationally; what Irigaray calls “the between-us.” And we should keep in mind the lability of such sympathy. Maybe not think in terms of structures of consciousness, but something moor like feelings and moods, that shift and metamorphose continually.
Good things to think…