THE AQAL CUBE
A Second Tier Differentiation
Of Ken Wilber's AQAL Square
THE EIGHT PRIMORDIAL PERSPECTIVES
Fig. 1. The Four Quadrants Model, or The AQAL Square.
Fig 2. Wilber's "Eight Primordial Perspectives".
S t AGES: Growing up is Waking up—Interpenetrating Quadrants, States and
Structures
These traditions seemed to focus on particular areas that make us uniquely human: the
areas of awareness and states
Truyền thống chỉ tập trung vào một lĩnh vực/khu vực nhất định: trạng thái của tâm thức
và nhận thức mà thôi
The growing awareness in this field has propagated- khởi nguồn/sinh sản/reproduce a
full range of human developmental research from birth to death, and on many specific
developmental lines such as
1. moral development (Kohlberg, 1973) (Gilligan, 1993);
2. values (Hall, 1994) (Graves, 2002);
3. lines in context (Stein, 2010) general, and
4. ego development ( Cook-Greuter (2002), R. Kegan (1994), Loevinger (1998));
5. worldview (Gebser, 1985),
6. systems (Commons, 2008)
each categorizing developmental stages in their own particular way
three fundamental elements of
1) awareness/states
2) individual and collective development and
3) development in specific areas known as “lines”; became roots of the Integral
Frame which Wilber categorized into four quadrants (Wilber, 1995).
The most recent version of this evolving theory categorizes levels, lines, states, and
types into four quadrants and eight zones (Wilber, 2006)
Integral Theory is an ontological view that describes a fundamental theory of “being”
from the beginning to the end of matter, concrete, subtle, causal and non-dual
time and space (Wilber, 2001)
The two intersecting polar pairs are:
1. The individual and collective
2. The internal and the external
RUNNING HEAD: REFLECTIONS ON INTEGRAL METHODOLOGICAL PLURALISM
Đọc lại cái này??
two primary ontological divisions: interior/exterior and singular/plural.
they are understood as the necessary, interdependent aspects of the manifest Kosmos
which arise in a four-fold mirroring of each other
>> cái nào cũng quan trọng, cần thiết, tương thuộc lẫn nhau cho sự biểu hiện
These primary perspectives are found universally in human languages as
I, We, and It/Its,
or first, second and third person perspectives
the basis of the three experiential domains found in human cultures: the aesthetic
domain (I or self), the normative domain (We or culture), and the singular and
plural dimensions of the cognitive domain (It/Its or nature).
>> trong quá khứ có nhiều người/ nghiên cứu cũng chỉ ra
Integral theory they are the fundamental dimensions of experience. The quadrants and
the three primary perspectives are related thus:
• Upper-Left quadrant (UL), first person, subjective, self, I-perspective, aesthetic
domain
• Lower Left quadrant (LL), second person, intersubjective, culture, We perspective,
normative domain
• Upper Right quadrant (UR), third person singular, objective, nature/organism, It
perspective, cognitive domain
• Lower Right quadrant (LR), third person plural, interobjective, nature/environment,
Its perspective, cognitive domain
The Eight Perspectives, Methodologies, and Zones of IMP
The first two divisions in the Integral Kosmology, interior/exterior and singular/plural,
establish the quadrants and the four primary perspectives
A third division, inside and outside, differentiates these four fundamental quadrant-
perspectives into inside and outside perspectives dividing the original four into eight
primary perspectives
An example in the UL would be the perspective of the inside of first-person
experience –vs. the perspective of the outside of firstperson experience.
The eight perspectives of IMP are described by permutations of the original four
perspectives as follows (see also figures 2 and 3):
Figure 2. Eight Primordial Perspectives Source: Wilber (2006). Courtesy Integral
Institute.
Figure 3. Eight Methodologies Source: Wilber (2006). Courtesy Integral Institute.
As such, the eight zones of IMP can also identify the essential methodologies inherent
in the various human fields and disciplines allowing one to understand the
relationships between the phenomenal domains seen by those who engage those
disciplines; anthropology (zone #4), neuroscience (zones #5, #6), meditation (zone
#1), psychoanalysis (zone #2), cognitive biology (zones #5, #6), law (zones #3,
#4), economics (zones #8, #4), biochemistry (zone #6), astronomy (zones #8, #6).
Some human fields, approaches, or disciplines utilize one or two methodologies while
many other contemporary fields or disciplines employ two, three, even four of the
primary methodologies presented here.
Zone Pairs and Phenomenal Domains
A Self-Transforming Vision: From Disconnected Factors Towards Uniting
Interconnected Diversities
Wilber’s current AQAL (pronounced “Ah-qwal”) framework has five major elements: all-
quadrants, all-levels, all-lines, all-states, and all-types
All-Quadrants
The first element, all-quadrants, arises from the mapping of two basic intersecting axes,
which are in some contexts the interior/exterior and singular/plural polarities of
existence, and in more complex contexts the interior and exterior perspective-
dimensions of individuals and collectives.
resultant quadrants are often differentiated as first-person (“I”) subjective experience in
the upper left (UL) quadrant, second-person (“We”) intersubjective culture in the lower
left (LL) quadrant, third-person (“It”) objective behaviour in the upper right (UR)
quadrant, and third-person (“Its”) interobjective eco-social systems in the lower right
(LR) quadrant.
