The Primitive Ideal Type of Reality

Abstract

Primitive reality is fettered in the world, in the embodied aspect of our humanity. In this type of reality, time is experienced as cyclical and renovated in synchronic ritual and festivity, and the expression of its cosmology or view of reality takes place in metaphorical language structures. The primitive ideal type of reality contemplates human beings as animals of a species that need to live in conversations and tales, within a network of references and affections. The basic experience for the embodied human animal is her worldly and concrete reality where human ontogeny takes place. I am speaking of interaction within domestic spaces, where the human sense of self is originally formed for every embodied member of the species as children growing up. The process of becoming an ethically competent member of a human group rests on primitive practices of care, on nourishing, in personal attachment, and an awareness of human frailty and neediness. I argue that a substantive position that lacks an appraisal of primitivity’s relevance to the complex experience of modern life is incomplete. This is the reason why this chapter also engages in a discussion of primitivity seen as the animal characteristics and needs of humanity as a species. Modern life encompasses experiences of valuable primitivity right now, even if they are not legitimate realms of experience to the modern sense of self.