Structurization Theory™ is an original critical realist perspective in The MarkFoster.NETwork™, a sociology project. Although the resemblances between Ram Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism (including meta-Reality), on the one hand, and my Structurization Theory and The Unities Model of Existence™, on the other, are obvious and deliberate, our approaches are not identical.
Enfoldments or complexities of unities, unifying essences, universals, or essential unities are the eternal, unknowable webs of interconnectedness between beings and things. They are the ontological (real) fabric of existence. The Essence or Unity of God, the innermost Essence of essences, is also a rational Being (the “Supreme Being”). Whether any other essences are beings appears to be unrevealed. These essences preexist, or precede, their ontological attributes or individualized attributes (beings and things).
All beings and things form and develop as individualized attributes, involutions (involvements), emergences, or manifestations of essences. In keeping with the Will of God, various entities, during gestation (fetal development) or evolution, obtain or acquire the attributes of their own and lower kingdoms of existence: cohesion from the mineral, growth from the vegetable, and sensation from the animal. The manifested attributes of essences are relative to the capacities or limitations of particular beings and things.
Names are the designations for essences, attributes, and individualized attributes (beings and things). Physical attributes are named or described through empirical observation. Spiritual attributes are named or described through empirical analogy. People name essences, and their attributes, but cannot create them. We use either the Names found in Sacred Texts or we coin our own.
Bhaskar’s philosophy of meta-Reality presents an approach to emancipation through the cosmic envelope—the non-dual (unifying) ground-state for reality. This stratified reality includes the Real (underlying structures), the Actual (events), and the Empirical (observable) domains. One of the wonderful implications of the cosmic envelope is the “Principle of Co-presence.” We are all connected with one another. There is a unity in diversity:
To Bhaskar, the objective of any emancipatory project is the cosmic envelope. Likewise, according to Structurization Theory, the struggle for emancipation is accomplished through structurization (emancipatory agency) or forming relationships with unity. Explained another way, emancipation from oppression is the name of an attribute of human unity.
For example, neurologically, I may always be an Autist. Spiritually, however, my struggle for emancipation from Autism led me, at 51-years old, to the cosmic envelope. A few years after my diagnosis was clarified on the Autism spectrum, I began a simple meditation. Through it, I discovered unity.
By analogy to panentheism (everything in God), Structurization Theory has developed, to coin a term, a type of panenontology (everything in reality). Unifying essences, along with their names and attributes (as beings and things), are enfolded within other unifying esssences. Although I discovered the unities independently from Bhaskar, the concept is similar to his cosmic envelope.
Structurization, or human agency, is an intentional relationship (connection or love) with empirical and spiritual attributes (and individualized attributes, such as particular beings and things) which have been identified by name. Through structurization we acquire, based upon our capabilities, the essential attributes manifested by a being or thing. As illustrations: While practicing meditation, we receive spiritual attributes. Through investigations of nature, we acquire the attributes of various beings and things.
The attributes of essences acquired through structurization are relative to our capacities. For example, knowledge (epistemology) is the name of an attribute of some or all unifying essences. Our indirect understandings of essences, through their attributes which have been identified by name, are limited by our capabilities, biases, perceptions, perspectives, and expectations. Therefore, human knowledge is relativist or fallibilist.
Bhaskar developed a three-tiered ontology or stratified reality:
In developing Structurization Theory, I have modifed Bhaskar’s model:
In relational theory (relational sociology), the basic unit is “relationships.” Other sociological theories take the “individual” or the “group” (as in Georg Simmel’s dyads and triads) as the most elementary level for sociological inquiry. In Structurization Theory, the fundamental units of analysis are the “attributes of unity” (virtues). They are examined and evaluated in terms of their practicality or usefulness in reliably producing particular types of social organization, process, or result.
Bhaskar also places a great deal of emphasis on human agency or willful action. Emancipatory agency (or meta-reality) is interpreted as structurization and defined as establishing relationships with attributes. Bhaskar’s demi-reality (oppression, non-reality, and alienation) is the illusion (Sanskrit, māyā) of separateness between duality from non-duality. Similarly, in Structurization Theory, disunity and oppression are the absence of structurization.
Out of respect for Bhaskar’s own preferences, I generally spell the word, “meta-Reality,” with the lower- and upper-case style. Structurization Theory is a type of critical realism, including meta-Reality. However, since no two people entirely think alike, my approach is not exactly the same as Bhaskar’s philosophy.
Finally, I adopted the uncommon word, structurization, in order to set the perspective apart from Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory (one of the rational practice theories) and from the usually anti-essentialist, or anti-realist in an ontological sense, social constructionism (influenced by Peter Berger’s phenomenology and, later, by Michel Foucault’s post-structuralism).