Experience and its modes

We must not only be guided by our limited traditional experience but also encompass best of experience, idea elsewhere

Complex modern problems, generated by spectacular advancements and proliferation of technology, have raised difficult questions of ethics and values. In our country, too, we are confronted with such basic issues. How we understand them and how they get resolved would have a bearing on our future.

The rapid ferment of change affecting us today calls for a reflection on fundamentals. Every kind of experience has a role in life. Morality, art, music, science and religion have their respective domains. The extent of stress laid on one or the other varies with time, place, individual and circumstances.

Experience, as a whole, consists of individual experiences of various kinds and forms. These may be perceptual experiences, moral, scientific, emotional and so on. It has been said that experience is a world of ideas. The more consistent it is, the more rational it becomes.

While the various kinds of experiences may have certain features in common, they also differ from one another. Each type of experience has its own relevance and value. There are varying degrees of conceptual coherence of experience. The different stages of experience are linked together by the principle of  “self-conscious Reason”. According to Hegel, these different stages reflect not just differences in time, but also in the development of their coherence. His Lectures on the History of Philosophy are monumental in their learning and greatness. Hegel’s comprehension and penetrating insight into the elaboration of human ideas and thought from antiquity to his own era is quite amazing.

The acme of human experience lies in reason. Reason is both a reflective activity and an intuitive activity in a single function of mind. The primacy of reason was the main element of the ancient Greek thought, as well as of the leading German thinkers. Our own centres of learning need to study deeply these intellectual endeavours, as well as the classics of China and Japan. A critical study of these would save us considerable intellectual effort in building new structures of thought relevant to our circumstances. In Pakistani universities, these issues are not given importance.

At a time when our lives are being greatly shaped by technology, we still need to ponder over such intangibles as the spirit of a nation, the character of a person, concepts of good and bad, and the spirit of an age.

Science is universally valid, but it is relative to assumptions and methods. It is essential for us as a nation to imbibe and inculcate science. But, over and above science, we need to combine and integrate different modes of human experience.

In shaping our courses of action, we must not merely be guided by our limited traditional experience but should also encompass the best of experience and ideas elsewhere. According to Hans Reichenbach, “We wander through the world, from perspective to perspective, carrying our own subjective horizon with us; it is by a kind of intellectual integration of subjective views that we succeed in constructing a total view of the world, the consistent expansion of which entitles us to ever increasing claims of objectivity.”

Since we are being overwhelmed at present by the hectic and swirling day-to-day happenings, we need to devote attention to where we are going. This would be facilitated by focusing on our aims as a rational and progressive society and the directions we need to take to attain them. For this, we need to understand basic issues and consider them through sound, rational and wise criteria.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2013.

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