Stage-1: Realize New Fundamentals

Origin in an Individual

Once a person has had an illumination and taken it further by developing a doctrine to capture it, the question of whether to develop a school emerges.

Stage-1 commences when a future founder writes down a shareable account of their illumination with the fundamentals of the doctrine spelled out and the surprising implications articulated. There is now the potential for a school. If others read this, become illuminated, and start sharing similar accounts. Inspired by the founder, a nascent school is emerging.

Any doctrine which is an illuminating account must bring to life the fundamental truths that have emerged, what the relevant context is, and why the emergent knowledge is so important, not just to the discoverer but to the reader, to wider society and usually to humanity in general.

The ability to produce such an account, to do so in a readable format and to make it credible to someone else unknown cannot be taken for granted. The account needs to be alive, interesting, informative, explanatory, and revealing.

Although any generalization will necessarily be abstract, examples and illustrations will be required to bring it alive. To create this vitality, accounts will use metaphors and analogies that capture the spirit of the issue. Fragments of the doctrine to come may appear in preliminary publications, but these introductory accounts are inevitably book-length.

Example : ClosedAnthroposophy

All accounts of illumination feel earth-shaking to the author.

Example : ClosedPsychoanalysis

The originator of the doctrine naturally feels possessive of the illumination. But, in the nature of things, if the awareness is correct in that it does fit reality, then anyone could have a similar illumination. Just reading a well-written account can create the experience of a personal illumination with a similar level of excitement and gratification.

Once you are illuminated, that realization becomes yours. Disputes about ownership of ideas are futile. The winner in the illumination game is the person who can produce an account that is the most readable and credible and can then take it further round the spiral as described here. Sometimes there are several winners.

Example : ClosedFamily Therapy

Possible Outcomes

Death of the Insight

For academics in the same field, radical new ideas are particularly dangerous. Taking them too seriously can interfere with promotion, funding, and even employment. Self-interest speaks loudly and advises you to keep your distance from anything not generally accepted and acceptable to peers, and especially from ideas that depend on reflection rather than method.

Even an impartial open-minded intelligent member of the public does not necessarily have mental space for an illumination. Long-held opinions and principles compete and interfere with new thinking. Even if a new theory has been explained persuasively, it can be hard for a listener to recollect and explain it to others the next day beyond re-stating a few skeleton notions.

History reveals that conformity to cultural pressures commonly ensures that even brilliant new accounts can die a death—at least for the time being.

Example : ClosedGiambattista Vico (1668-1744)

Vico is often credited as the first thinker to have taken seriously the possibility that people had fundamentally different schemas of thought in different historical eras. This led him to a range of accounts and theories: of the imagination, of myth, of law, of human institutions. He noted that scientists took themselves as the measure of all men: a problem still bedevilling social sciences and even neuroscience. Vico desired glory and recognition, but this was never to be. As a counter-Enlightenment thinker during the ascent of the Enlightenment, his ideas stood little chance.

While many of Vico’s core ideas found root and re-birth in the 19th and 20th Century, his name is still only known to few. The Taxonomy for example supports his placing of imagination as above (but not supplanting) reason; and it confirms his notion that certain truth can flow from doing and making. His view that proofs should rely on imaginatively recognizing the way in which ideas have to fit together to reveal hidden or divine patterns is almost a blueprint of Taxonomic investigation—but Vico is new to me, his writing is near-inscrutable, and prior to this inquiry into doctrines I have never acknowledged Vico’s thought as a precursor to mine.

Survival of the Insight without a School

It is also possible for an illumination to survive and enter the cultural mainstream directly without proceeding around the Spiral. In such cases, the realizations occur to multiple individuals, none of whom wish to do more than write books and give lectures. These ideas, if they meet the needs of the time, can become popular without any formal association developing. That is to say, there is indeed a "school of thought" and it is promulgated through spreading the fundamentals and encouraging realization—but there is no "School" in the sense of an active association of convinced individuals.

Example : ClosedExistentialism

Existentialism is commonly associated with mid-20thC French writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. However, late 19thC pioneers included Soren Kierkegaard (sometimes viewed as the "father"of the movement) and Friedrich Nietzsche. And there was a 20thC German contingent including: Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merlau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, and Karl Jaspers. As well as philosophers, various writers have been given this label: Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Irish Samuel Beckett, and Czech Franz Kafka. Other notable contributors are Paul Tillich, a theologian, and Colin Wilson, a popular author.

Although there was some interaction among some of these thinkers, no unification or collegium was attempted and no group formed. Rather the ideas slowly permeated societies as a cultural movement without any specific drive or focused demands for change. This led to existential psychotherapy, existentialist films, existentialist theatre; and even probably to this Taxonomy.

Core existential ideas—authenticity, courage to be, absurdity of the world, emergence of meaning from personal freedom, deliberate choice, individual responsibility—all became largely accepted in many societies.

Transition to Stage-2

If the founder and a few like-minded colleagues want to take matters further, they realize that alone they are impotent, and that any book is unlikely to be a best-seller.

Example : ClosedPsychoanalysis

The originator of the doctrine hopes to be recognized as the "Founder of a new School". He willingly meets up with others and shares his ideas further. He offers his precious time to those who respond most positively and enthusiastically. As he considers with them how to disseminate the ideas in society, he becomes aware that these early supporters have not properly absorbed his insights. Even the most enthusiastic of them needs more help to understand, and more guidance if they are to apply the ideas and take them further.

The founder sees that there is a need to find and induct new adherents, and realizes that a personal touch is required at this early stage of development.

The situation in Stage-1 is that a blinding realization clarified with a doctrine and supported by a detailed written account creates the necessary potential for a school.

But nothing will happen without interest and effort from many others who become equally convinced—some would say "converted".

Originally posted: 7-Sep-2022. Last updated: 11-Apr-2024.