Primordial forms, ordinary life and conflicts of knowledge in society

Human culture is home to a multiplicity of proposals for constructing forms of life. These proposals base themselves on claims of fundamental insight into the nature of reality and the fate of humanity. These claims often conflict with each other. Is humanity condemned to live with these conflicts of certitudes or universalisms? Or should we just give up on certitudes? Can we build life and institutions based on a cloud of incertitudes? If not, then how do we deal with the problem of multiplicity of certitudes? Modernity offered some sort of solution by declaring these claims and forms of life based on them as archaic and relegating them to private life. In other words, our problem is how can certitudes mingle? It is a fact that certitudes do mingle in human societies and cultures. We propose in this speculative exercise a kind of map for understanding conflicts of knowledge in society. I have drawn upon some insights of two contemporary philosophers in our backyard, Navjyoti Singh and Sunil Sahasrabudhey, though not necessarily in ways that they will approve of. Arche or Primordial Forms Arche is a Greek term signifying origin. The term has both temporal and ontological dimensions. It refers both to the one as the foundation and to the first as the beginning. The term was first used by Anaximander to characterize apeiron. Apeiron is the boundless, unlimited, in-definite power or principle which is prior to and responsible for the world. It also came to be associated with chaos. In Anaximander, apeiron brings into being the entire existence and rules over it. Parmenides banished this idea from his thought and later on, Apeiron, or the whole idea of infinite, always posed a problem in western thought. It is considered to be one of the greatest achievements of modern 19th and 20th century mathematics that it has cracked the problem of the infinite. If apeiron is the primordial stuff, arche is the primordial form. Form/Content or Form/stuff relation is the stuff of our ordinary language. It is a way of conceiving reality by separating the things that exist from the way or manner in which they exist. Things that have existence are content or stuff and the way or manner of existence is form. Therefore, form is said to be vacuous, not having an existence of its own. It is a way of conceiving of something unwavering amidst multiplicity and change that characterizes reality. It is way of conceiving order or arrangement in such a way that the multiplicity and change can be generated from its operations. Knowledge involves grasping the form. Form that is grasped has different content in reality and in mind. The content is different in imagination and in reality, but the arrangement of content is

the same. This sameness of arrangement accounts for knowledge. Therefore, form is a way of conceiving of knowledge in terms of order in reality and grasping of this order. Forms have the power of summary. Things may exist here and there, now and then, but they exist is certain well-defined ways. In other words, they always exist in certain arrangements. This power of summary is what makes form an ideal instrument of knowledge, since knowledge requires summarizing power. In search for knowledge with higher and higher powers of summary, one may therefore look for some fundamental insight into the nature of reality which will light up the whole of existence. Such a formal insight can be conceived in terms of a primordial form or arche. If forms are ways of existing of stuff, arche or primordial form can be thought of in two ways: One way of conceiving a primordial form could be to postulate a way of ways of existing or form of forms. This kind of move implies that forms have some kind of existence, which subtracts from the initial separation of existence from the way of existence that led to identify forms in the first place. Moreover, such a move lends itself to infinite regress. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to postulate a fundamental form that denotes a way of existing of anything whatsoever. To exist is to exist in this way. One can say that Arche is the way of existence rather than being the way of existence of this or that thing. Arche is the first fold in reality which defines it for all subsequent existence and also for all subsequent apprehending. But the first has a two-fold meaning: it is first in terms of depth as well as first in terms of origin. Arche is the one as well as the first. Arche is the fundamental principle. In practical usage arche came to acquire the meaning of first power, sovereignty and even political authority. In philosophical discourse it meant variously the primordial stuff (apeiron, in Anaximanders case), the first principle, the principle of knowledge, basis of being. The Problems of Many Ones and Many in the One Arche is beset with the problem of the many ones. Arche is the one fundamental form which encompasses everything but there are always many formations in human culture that are archaic. In other words, there are many proposals of arche that appear in human cultures. Each of these proposals entails a form of life, a vision of human origins and destiny. Since each of these proposals seeks to organize human culture around itself, is human species condemned to perennial conflict or is there a way of co-existence which does justice both to the one and the many? The problem is to conceive a form of human co-existence.

We can put the problem in another way also. Arche is the locus of certitude around which forms of life can be woven. In view of multiplicity of archeai, how does a certitude relate to other certitudes? How do certitudes mingle? Modernity attempts to solve this problem by the division between the private and the public. Archeai, or proposals of arche and practices following from it, are restricted to the private domain of individuals. Public domain is apparently an-archaic, and is governed by contract and competition, and probably, reasoning. Arche is reduced to a leisure activity and a mode of individual expression rather than a form of life. When we enter the public domain, we shed all archaisms. There is a problem in such an arrangement. The public domain becomes haunted by an ambiguity. Is it truly an-archaic, or is it governed surreptitiously by an archaic formation which remains publicly invisible? Is France Catholic or republican? Or is there a difference? Is England liberal or protestant, or both? Is modernity (or science) universal or western? Is political theory governed by theology, or metaphysics? A lot of critical effort goes into unmasking the archaisms hidden behind the apparently an-archaic modern public sphere. Equal lot of effort is spent on establishing the indifference and impartiality of modern arrangements towards Archeai. But the ambiguity persists. This ambiguity is best illustrated (and least discussed) in science, which is the knowledgeformation par excellence, integrally linked to modernity. On the one hand, science is the domain of free inquiry, and on the other, it seeks explanations which align with specific metaphysical propositions. This is resolved (or effected) by the post-enlightenment disciplinary structure of science, where in each discipline one is free to pursue inquiry, but the acceptability of explanation is governed by the overall disciplinary and metaphysical hierarchy with physics as the most fundamental science. Moreover, as laymen we get an ambiguous message from science, which puts us in a double-bind. We are told that search for knowledge involves a disregard for authority and authoritative views. At the same time we are told that we are not authorized to question science, since science is the perfect knowledge being pursued with disregard to all authority. Science constitutes its own authority on the ground that it offers the best institutional and methodological instrument to pursue knowledge without any regard to authoritative views. This leads to an irreducible ambiguity in the meaning of science and obscuring of the interrnal structure of authority within science. This double message emanating from science leads to a double bind for society, similar to the case of a dominating father ordering the son to be independent. There is another problem with the proposals of Arche, which is internal to each one. A specific proposal of arche can at best point to a set of possibilities as far as weaving a form of life around it is concerned. Arche requires renewal and translation. There is always the possibility of

a contest when it comes to establishing the appropriate embodiment of arche in terms of concepts, norms, and institutions. Many in the One arises, as the principle of the one itself multiplies into many. One duplicates itself and becomes many. There is the one and there are many representations of the one. While the problem of the many ones gives rise to conflict about what is the truth, the problem of many in the one gives rise to conflict about what is the true representation of truth. Communities and Knowledge Traditions Arche is the principle of origin. The principle of origin itself has an origin. It is at a certain place and time that a discovery or invention is made, or a fundamental, sweeping insight is earned, or an original vision is articulated. Along with this insight itself, accounts of the origin of insight also grow. If arche illuminates the origin of the world, then such accounts illuminate the origin of the arche itself. If arche tells the story of the world, then such accounts tell the story of the arche. If we shift our focus from the principle of beginning (arche) to the beginning of the principle, we can view arche, along with the forms of life woven around it, as a knowledge tradition. If we turn around our description, and start with knowledge traditions that exist in society, we can say that each tradition is rooted in a formal insight. Arche is a first, an origin, in another sense; it is the origin of a knowledge tradition. When we look at knowledge in the form of traditions with beginnings we discover that society is densely packed with knowledge traditions. Underlying the life of a community is a multiplicity of knowledge traditions each with an origin which may be formal in nature. In other words, a community harbors a multiplicity of origins. These origins are organized in a hierarchy. Science can also be seen as a multiplicity of knowledge traditions bundled in a hierarchy under the rule of an Arche. The problem is not so much the conflict between archeai, but between hierarchies. These hierarchies are permeable in the sense that the specific archeai do not limit themselves to a particular hierarchy. They can spread into other hierarchies. In other words, traditions of knowledge do not respect communal boundaries and established hierarchies of knowledge. Viewed in this way, human culture is constituted by a myriad of knowledge traditions each with a beginning. Human communities get constituted by hierarchies. Ordinary Life

Multiple origins could not be sustained in any form of life, if a form of life is constituted entirely by an origin. There has to be something in the dynamic of human life which transcends these origins, something which is not, and cannot be, governed or ruled by these origins. Or else, the human life would be perpetually lived in the condition of waiting for godot. One can postulate ordinary life as that part of life which makes it free from the rule of an arche. Ordinary life is beginning-less. Ordinary life is not bound to any proposal of arche. In fact, arche or primordial form, becomes the content of ordinary life. Arche is tested in terms of whether a proposal can be sustained in day-to-day living. Human well-being can be assessed only in terms of ordinary life. Ordinary life is not always just or true or beautiful, but it has criteria of justice, truth and beauty. Ordinary life is distinct from the extra-ordinary forms of life like life of the mind, life in art, life in search of truth, life in the service of nation, though it is informed and enriched by these. There is a substratum of ordinary life underlying all these extra-ordinary forms of life which keeps making new demands and throwing up new questions to them. Extra-ordinary forms of life keep inventing new rules of life, but ordinary life rules over all rules. Truth, justice and beauty are not subject to arche. This implies autonomy for ordinary life and for the protagonists of ordinary life. We can think of Gandhis last man as the protagonist of ordinary life. There is three-fold autonomy of the last man, and therefore for every human being. To say that ordinary life is not subject to arche but contains arche as content, is to say that human being, the last man, is characterized by jural autonomy, epistemic autonomy and aesthetic autonomy. These are ordinary powers of ordinary humans in beginning-less ordinary living. These do not require any religion, any technology, any ideology, any infrastructure, for their sustenance. These latter, in fact, emerge from the necessities of ordinary life and have ordinary life as their end.

Avinash Jha

[Paper to be presented at CSDS Retreat, Ramnagar, December 2012]