50
Subtle Agroecologies
an unfolding event, and through this, we situate ourselves and derive our own sense of being and
meaning (Ricoeur, 1991: 99). At its simplest, narrative has two aspects, an empirical and a mythical.
History seeks the ‘true’ relation of events, while story embodies ‘imaginative’ events. Yet ‘story’
can equally tell what is true, as Aristotle says of tragedy: ‘Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular’
(Aristotle, 1932).
ORDERS OF TRUTH
‘True’ has many dimensions of meaning, though there has been a tendency since the Enlightenment
to grant ‘truth’ only to a single so-called ‘objective’ dimension. But this objective dimension is itself
founded on a presupposed narrative comportment towards reality. Nevertheless, any approach to the
world seeks to ‘tell it as it is’ and to be truth-bearing. And such ‘telling’, of putting into speech or
representation, is rooted in narrative consciousness, and this cannot be circumvented. Every such
speaking or representing is in some sense an act of bearing witness to the world. Human consciousness spontaneously seeks to give account of the world and reality, to bring what is seen before itself
and to refect on what is so and what is not so. This is the case whether it is the exchange of mere
gossip or the elaboration of a scientifc theory. In recounting these things, we express a fundamental
characteristic of human nature – as the being who tells of things and who becomes a community
through such telling of things. Human accounting and bearing witness situate us in society, and
society in the cosmos. Thus, Aristotle distinguishes the human being from all other species as having language (logos), and it is this that makes the political being (Aristotle, 2012: 1253A: 10).
It is from this ‘mythic consciousness’, the fundamental intuition of the order of things, that Greek
philosophy emerged. Plato’s famous quarrel with the poets was not because he held the accounts of
Homer and Hesiod to be untrue, but because they spoke true things without a real understanding
of them. They spoke ‘out of their minds’, possessed by a divine madness. This divine madness is
perfectly legitimate, and the poet cannot make true poetry without it:
If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert
knowledge of the subject without the Muses’ madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will
be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.
Plato (1997)
Granting that, it is part of the work of the philosopher to bring into refection and articulation an
order of truth that lies in the deepest memory of the soul, or which belongs to the nature of consciousness itself.
NARRATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS AND TELEOLOGY
The narrative consciousness is also grounded in a sense of the ‘whole’, or what we may call the
‘cosmic sense’. What unfolds in narrative, or in becoming, unfolds within a totality, embracing reality as a whole, so it is natural to seek the lawful order of things. Here, we may say that the scientist,
the philosopher and the poet all work on the same ground, acknowledging universal laws and a
coherence to the order of things – even if that coherence always remains beyond full grasp. What is
important is that, for the ancient philosophers, the sense of a ‘whole’ and an order to things belongs
to the nature of consciousness itself and this is presupposed by all enquiry into the nature of the
order of things. 1
Two further factors arise from the sense of the whole which are held by the ancient philosophers:
the intuition of a teleological order of nature and an ethical sense of our relation with the world
1 For a detailed philosophical discussion of the human sense of cosmos, see Rémi Brague, The Wisdom of the World: The
Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought (2003).
Subtle Agroecologies
an unfolding event, and through this, we situate ourselves and derive our own sense of being and
meaning (Ricoeur, 1991: 99). At its simplest, narrative has two aspects, an empirical and a mythical.
History seeks the ‘true’ relation of events, while story embodies ‘imaginative’ events. Yet ‘story’
can equally tell what is true, as Aristotle says of tragedy: ‘Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular’
(Aristotle, 1932).
ORDERS OF TRUTH
‘True’ has many dimensions of meaning, though there has been a tendency since the Enlightenment
to grant ‘truth’ only to a single so-called ‘objective’ dimension. But this objective dimension is itself
founded on a presupposed narrative comportment towards reality. Nevertheless, any approach to the
world seeks to ‘tell it as it is’ and to be truth-bearing. And such ‘telling’, of putting into speech or
representation, is rooted in narrative consciousness, and this cannot be circumvented. Every such
speaking or representing is in some sense an act of bearing witness to the world. Human consciousness spontaneously seeks to give account of the world and reality, to bring what is seen before itself
and to refect on what is so and what is not so. This is the case whether it is the exchange of mere
gossip or the elaboration of a scientifc theory. In recounting these things, we express a fundamental
characteristic of human nature – as the being who tells of things and who becomes a community
through such telling of things. Human accounting and bearing witness situate us in society, and
society in the cosmos. Thus, Aristotle distinguishes the human being from all other species as having language (logos), and it is this that makes the political being (Aristotle, 2012: 1253A: 10).
It is from this ‘mythic consciousness’, the fundamental intuition of the order of things, that Greek
philosophy emerged. Plato’s famous quarrel with the poets was not because he held the accounts of
Homer and Hesiod to be untrue, but because they spoke true things without a real understanding
of them. They spoke ‘out of their minds’, possessed by a divine madness. This divine madness is
perfectly legitimate, and the poet cannot make true poetry without it:
If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert
knowledge of the subject without the Muses’ madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will
be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.
Plato (1997)
Granting that, it is part of the work of the philosopher to bring into refection and articulation an
order of truth that lies in the deepest memory of the soul, or which belongs to the nature of consciousness itself.
NARRATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS AND TELEOLOGY
The narrative consciousness is also grounded in a sense of the ‘whole’, or what we may call the
‘cosmic sense’. What unfolds in narrative, or in becoming, unfolds within a totality, embracing reality as a whole, so it is natural to seek the lawful order of things. Here, we may say that the scientist,
the philosopher and the poet all work on the same ground, acknowledging universal laws and a
coherence to the order of things – even if that coherence always remains beyond full grasp. What is
important is that, for the ancient philosophers, the sense of a ‘whole’ and an order to things belongs
to the nature of consciousness itself and this is presupposed by all enquiry into the nature of the
order of things. 1
Two further factors arise from the sense of the whole which are held by the ancient philosophers:
the intuition of a teleological order of nature and an ethical sense of our relation with the world
1 For a detailed philosophical discussion of the human sense of cosmos, see Rémi Brague, The Wisdom of the World: The
Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought (2003).