The following is from the Metaphysics and the Matter with Things: Thinking with Iain McGilchrist conference in March 2024. The theme of the conference was notably thinking with Iain McGilchrist.
McGilchrist rightfully received much praise for his work during the conference, but it becomes a bit one-sided if critical voices don’t make themselves heard. The only one who challenged McGilchrist was Thandeka:
Thandeka: I think it’s important for us, and I know it is for you, to read texts carefully. So Aristotle, of course, was the tutor of Alexander the Great. And he said, Alex, when you go into these other places, kill them…, make them slaves, knowing that a slave is part of your own body. … And of course, take the women, make them slaves, because women after all are only mutilated males. … So the question becomes, for us, why Western civilization is doing this? Not talking about other civilizations, but ours.
McGilchrist: I always resist being pushed one way or the other. And so I’m always a skeptic amongst believers and the believer amongst skeptics. … And when people start sledgehammering at Western civilization, I find myself defending it. So I think there’s much to be said on both sides of everything… So it depends what you want to look at but I really resist people who want to denigrate the great things that have been done by Western civilization while recognizing the many problems that we now face that we’ve inherited from that civilization.
Thandeka: My only fear is that what we would tend to think of denigration might more accurately be called post-traumatic stress disorders. And that’s one of the things we’re overlooking. So I’m not denigrating. I’m not…
How are you going to be able to see both sides if you see criticism as denigration? The person wielding the sledgehammer in this case was, in fact, McGilchrist himself. I noticed that Thandeka challenged Andrew M. Davis in a later session, but it played out differently.
I also noticed that Ruth Kastner stepped forward once, very carefully avoiding to be confrontational. She was totally ignored! I understood that McGilchrist didn’t agree with some of Kastner’s ideas and talked with her separately. I would have liked to hear that conversation!
Updated 2024-09-16:
Typo corrected.
Related posts added.
Related posts:
John Vervaeke on Ecologies of Practice
Zak Stein on Values
Retrospective 2024-37
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