The Archaic Consciousness “Structure”

Those of you who are acquainted with the work of Jean Gebser (especially his book The Ever-Present Origin) are, by now, familiar with his four civilisational types as “consciousness structures”. Those he identifies as the archaic, the magical, the mythical, and the mental-rational structures, and his prospective fifth — the integral structure characterised chiefly by “diaphaneity” (or “the transparency of the world”), by “time-freedom”, and by verition, or “being-in-truth”. The latter might be considered as somewhat equivalent to “being-in-love”.

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