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Synchronicity and Correlationism: Carl Jung as Speculative Realist

  • Michael Haworth (author)
Chapter of: Speculations 3(pp. 189–209)

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Metadata
TitleSynchronicity and Correlationism
SubtitleCarl Jung as Speculative Realist
ContributorMichael Haworth (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0010.1.09
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/speculations-iii/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
CopyrightHaworth, Michael
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2012-09-03
Long abstractThe name of Carl Gustav Jung tends not to be associated with a concern for philosophical realism, seen, as he is, as one of the worst apologists for obscurantism, mysticism and spiritualism of the modern age. Yet the thesis I try to defend here is that Jung’s work can be read as an elaborate attempt to escape the “correlationist circle” and the impasse of finitude every bit as rigorous and compelling as that undertaken by Quentin Meillassoux in After Finitude. I propose to advance this argument via a read-ing of that work of his which is considered perhaps the leastdefensible in terms of philosophical or scientific realism, namely the short treatise entitled Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle. It is here that the monist or “psychoid” ontology underpinning all of Jung’s psychological work on the archetypes of the collective unconscious is given its most extensive treatment. This, I will argue, rather than being a pre-critical metaphysical curio is a remarkably sophisticated philosophical concept, consistent with Kant’s transcendental conditions while transgressing them from within in order to undermine the gap of finitude between thought and being. In the letter to Marcus Herz of February 1772, in which he famously announces his readiness to embark on the critical project, Kant interrogates the correspondence between the object of our representation and the representation itself. What, he asks, guarantees the reference of the internal sense-image to the external object? If the former is merely the result of the subject’s being affected by the latter then it can be explained as of cause to effect, otherwise:if that in us which is called representation was active with regard to the object, i.e., if the object were produced by the representation itself [my italics] (as one thinks of divine cognitions as the archetypes of things) then the conformity of the representations with the objects would also be understood. And so one can at least understand the possibility of both an archetypal intellect, upon whose intuition the things themselves are grounded, as well as an ectypal intellect, which attains the data of its logical activity from the sensuous intuition of things.
Page rangepp. 189–209
Print length21 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Michael Haworth

(author)