(17) Meta-Narratives

Meta-Narratives

Furthermore, transcendental method can address the stance of many thinkers who maintain an “incredulity toward metanarratives,” or grand narratives and foundational theory (Lyotard, 1995, in Ornstein & Hunkins, 2004). That is, the cognitional theory and theory of knowledge that are included in transcendental method are general theories with claims to universal structure and process. However, that universality is drawn from an historical, rather than a classical viewpoint, such that claims to theoretical universality are grounded in verity--the continual manifestation of the evidence for those claims--rather than in some sort of an "Absolution," or set of "first principles," or a notion of "self-evidence."

Furthermore, both theories (cognitional and knowledge)call for personal (and-or public) experimentation and continual grounding in the empirical evidence drawn from that experimentation. In fact, and by way of experimentation, both theories come together in the self-reflective evidence that is the concrete person of commonsense and-or science, the teacher, the reader, and in you.

In this way, and since we are exploring the human mind, transcendental method is more than a mere speculative theory applied to "unconscious and unavailable evidence" because it takes up the further requirement of calling for concrete and personal verification in experimentation. So there is TM-as-theory, and there is TM-as-you. TM-as-theory is expressed in specifically defined technical concepts and is developed herein; whereas TM-as-you is your actual thinking mind. The present work helps you make this verifiable connection. And it is just this continual reference to concrete empirical verification that is missing from virtually all “grand narratives.”


The alternative to the abstract deduction that turns out to be empty is, of course a concrete deduction. The existent does not lie outside the deductive system but, from the start, is included within it. Instead of operating vainly within analytic propositions, one proposes to operate fruitfully with analytic principles whose terms, in their defined sense, refer to what exists. . . .

. . . . Accordingly, if abstract deduction is empty, concrete deduction sets a prior question. Moreover, since the metaphysical question is the general nature or structure of the universe, the prior question, it seems, must regard the mind that is to know the universe. (1958, pp. 404-05; 2000, pp. 429-30)


We need not abandon grand narratives or the order of logic to explore the evidence deeply, or to expose the concrete data of the mind to them as the evidence for verification of a cognitional theory and-or a theory of knowledge. However, we do need to hold to empirical method and concrete historical expression, and expose-relate their claims to the concrete evidence. Such an exposure, and the self-verification that can proceed from it, will provide the ground for critique of those narratives, as well as the core meaning for any purely logical developments that flow from such a critique.

The broad outlines of the data of the human mind, the theory explaining it, a theory of knowledge, and our self-verification process also reveal the common and norm-making movement of our intentions-questions and the complex of thought and being that flows from them. From having come to know ourselves in such an incisive way, we can then attune ourselves to that questing movement more fully by knowing exactly where we stand within it and where human beings have always stood; and through a conscious embrace of that stance we can continue to probe the yet unknown, and the differently felt, imagined, thought, and expressed, unfolding ourselves in and through our history, as human beings always have. Only now, our theories are verified and attuned empirically with that process. Now the process both employs and edifies the theory in the fruition of the normative movements of our self-corrective process, with our own mind as its intent and content.

Further, self-appropriation is more than a personal verification of a universal theory of mind coupled with an adequate theory of knowledge. However, with self-appropriation, instead of merely having a meta-narrative to refer to as an empty abstraction that we arbitrarily accept or refuse, we are fully aware of what the theory says about us and everyone else. More importantly, we know it to be true via the constantly available and recurrently manifest evidence. There is a required personal praxis involved, then; and it is this praxis that makes the theory unique, creative, and healing of the broken philosophical tradition in the West.

Furthermore, the theory is not exhaustive. However, the mind has a developmental, recognizable structure and set of operations that are quite amenable to theoretical clarity. With regard to verification procedures, the implication of the thoroughly empirical venture of self-appropriation is to understand meta-narratives in any field of knowledge as moments of general and comprehensive stasis (or plateau-horizon) in an emergent and ongoing empirical process. Their verity, of course, is still an open question.

In this way, meta-narratives are stationary moments of explanation arrived at in a universe of human knowing on-the-move. The point about TM and its invitation to self-appropriation is the constant availability of the data and the recurrent and continuous manifestation of evidence for the theory’s verification. So TM-the-theory could be classified as meta-narrative; however, TM's universal claims are also readily verifiable.

As grounded empirically, however, meta-narratives and their inferences must meet our critical questions: “What are the constitutive conditions of such a narrative?” “What is the state of the philosophical infrastructure of such a narrative?” “Do such narratives meet with the concrete evidence they profess to regard and explain?” “Is concrete evidence developed generally enough to include the dynamism and open-endedness that is apparent in the historical situation we find ourselves in?” “What are the philosophical, social, ethical-political, and spiritual foundations of such a narrative?” “What are the prescriptive aspects of the narrative?” “If any, what prior prescriptive reality is the narrative analysis drawn from?” And "what are the narrative’s further prescriptive implications?”

If such narratives fail to meet our reasonable questions and new insights, like any scientist’s theory, these meta-narratives and their purveyors should be flexible enough to change; to admit their speculative “floating” status; to develop their work as overt visionary vehicles open to comprehensive ethical-political critique; or to dump it in the trash with all of the other short-lived and unsuccessful scientific or philosophical probes; and chalk it up to learning. This is so regardless of whether these probes and narrative declarations are motivated by a common desire to know, by political fiat, by pure egotistical hubris, or by any mixture of the above. Like any theory in any empirically established field, as long as our gaining on relevant evidence goes wanting, our theories will continue to “float.”

With a clear understanding of transcendental method, then, we can move beyond the classicist-Absolutist underpinnings of most meta-narratives and understand TM and human-science theory itself as having an empirical, methodological, and historically critical ground that is continually available for personal and public verification.