Abstract

This work concludes by pointing the way to a future Ecological Humanism which is to be actualized from within the Revolution of Quality. ;The envisioned personal transformations and cultural change need to be guided, so it is argued, by the standard of quality. After it introduces a distinction between the process and the content of human reality experience, this work lays out the difference between impure and pure quality experiences and comes to regard the latter as the sole cognitive and the best practical principle to guide human self-actualization efforts towards transcendentally rational ecocommunities. It then provides a metaphysical framework which allows an understanding of why pure Quality experiences are the crucial standard in the making of ecocultures. ;This work then proceeds to clarify the myth of the detachment of the symbolic from the symbolized. It dissolves this illusion of detachment under the light of the philosophy of quantum physics, exposes the limits and defects of allegedly "pure" epistemological rationality, rejects the notion of the value-neutrality of science and unravels the esthetic/ethical assumptions inherent in the psychic style of doing methodological science. It argues that in order to realize the "integrated wholeness of human experience," the human experiential split between psychological and epistemological rationality needs to be transcended towards a psycho-epistemological experiential One. It is found that the development of a human psycho-epistemological reality experience requires not only an awareness of the conditions of adequacy for the integration of a revised psychological as well as a revised epistemological rationality, but also a close-up view of the relationship between language, thought, culture and reality experience. This leads to an elaboration of the relationship not only among such abstract-theoretical concepts as core and marginal culture, cultural paradigm, language and reality as well as among such concrete-practical concepts as cultural activity, communication, expression and problem-solving, but also between the former and the latter. The making of psycho-epistemological languages, cultural activities and reality experiences is sketched and the importance of de-specialization for the coming about of a transcendental rationality is stressed. It is maintained that the envisioned psycho-epistemological synthesis must ultimately take place within human individuals' experiential reality whence it must be brought to bear upon their culture. ;Based upon the assumption that humanity has entered an economic, socio-developmental, ecological and psycho-behavioral impasse, this work starts off with an attempt to elucidate the actual state of human affairs and to contrast it with an ideal one. It then sketches a history of Western thought, the understanding of which is deemed to be essential to come to grips with the contemporary problematic world situation. After mapping out the salient characteristics of a particular thought pattern termed "epistemological rationality" which is regarded as having led humanity into its present impasse, this work delineates a historical framework of "psychological rationality" relevant to its vision of an ideal human condition. Both kinds of rationality are found to be incomplete, at odds with and independent of each other. It is argued that a different sort of economic system, social evolution, ecological and psychological behavior could have and still could come about, if both types of rationality came to be grasped as evolutionarily and inseparably linked versions of one and the same human experiential continuum. It is concluded that cultural change is indispensable and that the conceptual basis and means for such a change need to be elaborated