{"title":"Francisco Varela: A Philosophy of Surprise","authors":"Natalie Depraz","doi":"10.53765/20512201.30.11.238","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"I would like to show here that Varela, besides being a scientist and a Buddhist practitioner, also has the stature of a philosopher. In order to do so, I chose to illuminate his thought in the light of a concept that he did not use much, at least at the beginning, but which constitutes\n the cornerstone of his philosophy. It is the concept of surprise. I will show first how surprise is at the core of what I call his 'Valence' article; time, affect, and intersubjectivity being the main coordinates of surprise. Then I will prove how the structural concepts of autopoiesis, enaction,\n and co-generativity are all supported by surprise as a dynamic model. In parallel, I will indicate how some seemingly side concepts (I call 'operative'), such as creation, novelty, unpredictibility, openness, and otherness, are actually key candidates for demonstrating the relevance of Varela\n as a philosopher of surprise. ...the nature of the self is precisely its non-findability. There is nothing to grasp that would make persons and phenomena what they are (Sanscrit: anatman; Tibetan: bdag med gnyis)... The usual translation of anatman is 'non-self', or 'emptiness of self'. However,\n this is again too close to the original Buddhist language... For the practitioner, anatman is manifest, experienced as superabundant: it is a nonknowledge that holds a host of surprises. (Varela, 2000/2017, p. 134)","PeriodicalId":47796,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consciousness Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Consciousness Studies","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.53765/20512201.30.11.238","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
I would like to show here that Varela, besides being a scientist and a Buddhist practitioner, also has the stature of a philosopher. In order to do so, I chose to illuminate his thought in the light of a concept that he did not use much, at least at the beginning, but which constitutes
the cornerstone of his philosophy. It is the concept of surprise. I will show first how surprise is at the core of what I call his 'Valence' article; time, affect, and intersubjectivity being the main coordinates of surprise. Then I will prove how the structural concepts of autopoiesis, enaction,
and co-generativity are all supported by surprise as a dynamic model. In parallel, I will indicate how some seemingly side concepts (I call 'operative'), such as creation, novelty, unpredictibility, openness, and otherness, are actually key candidates for demonstrating the relevance of Varela
as a philosopher of surprise. ...the nature of the self is precisely its non-findability. There is nothing to grasp that would make persons and phenomena what they are (Sanscrit: anatman; Tibetan: bdag med gnyis)... The usual translation of anatman is 'non-self', or 'emptiness of self'. However,
this is again too close to the original Buddhist language... For the practitioner, anatman is manifest, experienced as superabundant: it is a nonknowledge that holds a host of surprises. (Varela, 2000/2017, p. 134)
我想在这里说明,瓦雷拉除了是一位科学家和佛教徒之外,还有一位哲学家的地位。为了做到这一点,我选择用一个概念来阐明他的思想,这个概念至少在一开始并没有使用太多,但它构成了他的哲学的基石。这是惊喜的概念。我将首先展示惊奇是如何在我称之为“瓦朗斯”的文章的核心;时间,情感和主体间性是惊喜的主要坐标。然后,我将证明自创生(autopoiesis)、制定(enaction)和共生(co-generativity)的结构概念是如何被惊喜作为一个动态模型所支持的。同时,我将指出一些看似次要的概念(我称之为“操作性”),如创造,新颖性,不可预测性,开放性和差异性,实际上是证明Varela作为惊喜哲学家的相关性. ...的关键候选人自我的本质恰恰是它的不可发现性。没有什么东西可以使人和现象成为他们的样子(梵语:anatman;藏语:bdag med gnyis…anatman通常的翻译是“无我”或“自我的空虚”。然而,这又太接近原始的佛教语言了……对于实践者来说,无我是明显的,是丰富的:它是一种拥有大量惊喜的非知识。(Varela, 2000/2017,第134页)