The Demiurge in our brain’s left hemisphere

The Demiurge in our brain’s left hemisphere

Arthur Haswell, BA 

The jealous and alienating gnostic Demiurge, a certain mode of attending to the world described by Heidegger, and Iain McGilchrist’s characterisation of the brain’s left-hemisphere, all share remarkable similarities, according to Arthur Haswell. He suggests thus that the Demiurge may be a symbol of something that lives in us, modulating how we relate to others and the world at large. As such, the holistic perspective of the right hemisphere may be a corrective that brings us closer to the transcendent and truly divine.

A crucial aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy is his idea that there are two modes of attending to the world. The more primordial mode is the ready-to-hand. This is the kind of attention we give to tools we use when we are performing tasks that we are engrossed in, such as painting or cooking. In such activities, we don’t think about the wooden spoon we use to stir the pan, or the paintbrush in our hand. They are of-a-piece with the whole activity that we are engaged in. The second mode that Heidegger describes is the present-at-hand. If the head of the paintbrush snaps off as we are using it, we become suddenly very focused on this tool, and it is no longer of-a-piece with the activity of painting. We focus on the broken paintbrush and view it as a discrete object. This also anticipates the kind of attention we inhabit when thinking theoretically or analysing something in a laboratory. Our perspective becomes detached and there seems to be a subject-object divide, between us and what we are attending to.

It’s fascinating how closely this dovetails with McGilchrist’s own analysis. He regularly relates wisdom to the more profound, holistic kind of attention that belongs to the right hemisphere, while the left tends towards breaking the world into pieces, a preoccupation with quantity, and an insatiable desire to obtain a greater abundance of material things.

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