A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4(Anscombe–The Cambridge Platonist: Aletheia and Areté)

Visits: 1950

Anscombe, we have claimed, is an enigmatic philosopher. Sometimes she appears in the guise of the Catholic medieval scholar logic chopping her way to conclusions. Sometimes she appears in more “modern” guise, conducting so called grammatical investigations in relation to the very modern concerns of Philosophical Psychology and Epistemology in the spirit of Modern Philosophical Logic.

We have argued in earlier works for the idea that it is only Ariadne’s thread that can lead us out of the labyrinthine cave of our ignorance. The question to raise in relation to Anscombe’s work is the following: “Where should we place her work in relation to a thread that divided our minds into two. Ought we to place her work alongside the Philosophy of Descartes and Hobbes and the “new men”, (Hume Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx, the early work of Wittgenstein, and Russell)? She certainly sides with the work of the later Wittgenstein, which, we have argued, created the logical space for the restoration of the Philosophers of the Greek and German Enlightenment manifested best in the works of Aristotle and Kant. Yet we have also pointed to an anti-metaphysical or a-metaphysical scepticism in Wittgenstein’s work that prevents us from classifying him as a rationalist. Anscombe, to some extent, shares this animus. Her work, however, appears sympathetic in relation to the metaphysics of Platonism that many medieval scholars embraced. The preference for the work of Plato over the work of Aristotle is evident in her assertion that Plato is the Philosophers Philosopher. In this claim she clearly has the work of Aristotle in mind and this is puzzling given the fact that one of the key concepts of Wittgensteinian philosophy is the very Aristotelian sounding idea of “forms of life” which is a hylomorphic idea that Plato would have difficulty embracing in his earlier metaphysical systems. Platonic forms do not relate naturally to the categorical idea of psuche or soul. Anscombe refers to Plato’s relation between the soul and the forms, via the interesting idea of “like knows like”. The key role for Plato’s eternal unchanging forms was to provide a philosophical tool to investigate the Heraclitean idea of panta rei( reality is in flux and subject to continuous processes of change). The forms of “The Republic” were certainly less like Aristotelian “principles” than Plato’s later conceptions. The identification of the forms of the Republic with “substance” and “kinds of substance” is a reasonable interpretation. Indeed we encounter this move from substance to principle even in the developing work of Aristotle.

Aristotle claimed that Being has many meanings. This is not merely a thesis concerning the plurality of substances or kinds of object in one realm of Being, but also an argument for a plurality of principles over the whole domain of Being. The “like-knows-like” principle is still understandable on an Aristotelian account. For Aristotle it is principles that best explain the reasons for change . In volume one of this work we characterised Aristotle’s overall position in the following way:

“For Aristotle, the world-creating forms occur in the media of change(space, time, and matter) and they find their explanation in a theoretical matrix of 4 kinds of change, three principles, and 4 causes.”(A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action, Volume one, P.76)

The forms of life(psuche) manifest their essence in universal life-determining powers, which combine and integrate with each other to produce, for example, the human essence which Aristotle captures in his essence-specifying definition of rational animal capable of discourse. Principles also both constitute and regulate a domain of changing reality in ways that are presented in three different sciences using the above 4 kinds of cause/explanation. The powers of sensibility, understanding and reason all interact in various ways in our acts of perception, conceptualisation, and reasoning. Given the complexity of this account it is therefore surprising to find Anscombe designating Plato as the Philosophers Philosopher.

In Anscombe’s essay “The Origin of Plato’s Theory of Forms” reference is made to Mathematics. The dialogue of the Meno is discussed and it is acknowledged that Mathematics as a discipline contains only a “dream” or an “image” of the forms. Wittgenstein’s contribution to this debate is to fixate upon one of Plato’s criteria for the forms , namely that one must be able to predicate the form of itself, e.g., The form of the good must itself be good. Wittgenstein in the spirit of Russell and Mathematical logic contests this property on the grounds that the class of men is not a man(Russell’s paradox). We cannot say of the Greenwich standard yard that it is one yard long in the language game we play with non-metric measurement. It is rather the final context of practical justification for disputes arising about whether something is one yard long or not. The language game clearly distinguishes, then, between the context of exploration/discovery(measuring something) and the context of explanation/justification. Whether this is a sufficient argument to generate a paradox over saying that the Greenwich yard is one yard long is an open question. The Greenwich standard yard is certainly shorter than the Paris standard metre and does not the fact that we call this yard, a yard, serve to distinguish it from a metre? This is certainly a good illustration of the like-knows-like principle suggested by Plato and if it flies in the face of mathematical logic and the theory of classes so much the worse for mathematical theory. This principle, indeed, might be a good indicator of the metaphysical limitations of Mathematics recognised by Plato, but not by Russell.

Anscombe also claims in relation to the slave example in the Meno, that mathematics cannot be taught. She apparently asked a 9 year old child the same questions Socrates asked the slave of the Meno and was given the same answers. The principles of logic obviously played a role in the questioning process and it does not seem to be paradoxical to suggest that one is not taught the principle of contradiction or the principle of sufficient reason, but rather that the understanding of these principles appears to “dawn” upon one in the same way in which the Kantian “I think” dawns upon the young child. What is not acknowledged in Anscombe’s essay is that both Plato and Aristotle agree upon the overall role of mathematics in logic and metaphysics, which is that Mathematical reasoning works towards the establishing of a principle in exploratory fashion via the manipulation of mathematical variables. This is to be contrasted with Philosophical reasoning which occurs in the context of explanation/justification where the reasoning proceeds from a principle toward the manipulation or understanding of a reality that is constituted or determined by that principle. Our standard example of this position is that of the proceedings of a court of law where we are, for example, working from the principle “Murder is wrong”(against the law) to the judgements “X is a murderer”, “X has committed murder” or “X is innocent of the charge”. The court room procedures contain, of course, an exploration of the evidence but it is important to note that this is not an exploratory scientific activity designed to establish whether people murder each other, but rather activity that is determined by our knowledge of the law. There would, for example, seem to be nothing to tie the preceding judgments relating to X, and the sentence or innocence verdict, into a unity, except the law. The law too, it has to be admitted at some point came into being–it was passed–and this may have involved a process of exploration that was driven by the principle or form of justice. A form which for Plato would have had to possess the characteristics of being both good in itself and good in its consequences. One of the key consequences of this “form” is that everyone ought to get what they deserve, e.g. a judgement of guilty, where that is appropriate, and an appropriate sentence or a judgment of innocence and the restoration of ones freedom, where that was appropriate.

As mentioned above the unity of these legal proceedings are reminiscent of the kind of conceptual unity of the “I think” that Kant discussed under the heading of the relationships of the faculty of Sensibility with the faculty of Understanding/Judgement. Representations were unified and differentiated in an act Kant called the “unity of apperception”–an act that resulted in the forming of a concept. Anscombe, in an essay entitled “Plato, Soul and the Unity of Apperception”(From Plato to Wittgenstein,Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2011) claims that Plato appeared to propose two theses which appear at first glance to be antagonistic, namely, that the soul is a unity but that it can also be divided into parts. Plato claims that there is no contradiction between these theses as long as the parts retain some kind of logical connection to the unified whole. The “parts” Plato proposes are the appetite, spirit, and reason. These parts coexist in a hierarchical relation in which the highest power of reason is the power that produces the harmony in the soul. On this account it is acceptable for someone to give in to the temptations of appetite as long as a measure of self control is exercised and we are not narcissistically consumed by the “thousand headed” monster of desire. Anscombe ignores this aspect of Plato in her essay and chooses to focus instead on the epistemological issue of the relationship of the different sensory systems to each other and the kind of knowledge we have of this activity:

“Plato introduced the topic called ” the unity of apperception” in his Theaetetus. There Socrates asked Theaetetus whether we see with our eyes or rather through them: whether we hear with our ears or through them. Theaetetus answers “through”, and Socrates commends him for his decision, saying how odd it would be “if there were a number of senses sitting inside us, as if we were wooden horses, and there were not some single form(soul or whatever we ought to call it) in which all of them converge, something with which, through the senses as instruments, we perceive all that is perceptible.”(P.25)

What is being obliquely referred to is the relation of the body to the soul. There are many ways to interpret the above text. The Aristotelian interpretation, which it is not clear that Anscombe intends, is a hylomorphic interpretation in which the form organising the matter is like a principle organising change in a realm of Being. Anscombe’s emphasis appears to be instrumental and therefore does not quite capture the interesting Aristotelian conception of a power that is aware of itself and capable of opening onto a world and disclosing the Being of the world. The principle constituting this power has been dubbed the Reality Principle in earlier volumes: this principle helps to reveal both that things are and also why they are as they are. P.M.S. Hacker calls this a “two-way-power”. This interpretation stretches the Platonic idea of like-knows-like to its limits. Yet the Platonic idea of a physical realm of reality “participating” in the realm of the forms remains coherent. The major difference between the Platonic Theory of Forms and the Aristotelian hylomorphic theory is that the latter is tied to the idea of forms of life physically rooted in a system of tissues, organs and limbs. The body that is formed by this system, on the other hand, is also regulated by other principles, e.g. the Energy Regulation Principle, and the Pleasure-Pain Principle. These two principles contribute to what Ricoeur called the effort to exist or what Darwin called the survival of the organism. Our existence is certainly at stake insofar as the efficient operation of these two principles is concerned. It is the quality of life, on the other hand, that is at issue with the operation of the Reality Principle. Ricoeur refers to this aspect of our lives in terms of “the desire to be”. These three principles, we noted in earlier works formed the foundation of Freudian Psychoanalytical theory. This theory appealed to the rationalism of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. Anscombe systematically avoids Aristotelian and Kantian forms of rationalism in her interpretations of Wittgenstein’s work, preferring instead a more Platonic interpretation. Hacker chooses in contradistinction to focus on Aristotelian concepts in his interpretations. Plato’s reference to the sensory powers, however, is less instrumental than Anscombe supposes as is evidenced in the following quote:

“if I am right in my understanding of the matter, the difference between the legs and the sense organs is that the legs do walk and are not instruments by means of which the soul walks: the eyes on the other hand, do not see but are instruments by means of which the soul sees”(P.28).

Are organs, instruments, one can wonder? Instruments are normally regarded as extensions of our organs or limbs, e.g. the telescope and the hammer. They are embedded in other systems of instrumentalities that can repair damage as and when it occurs: instruments require external agents if they break and cease to perform their function. It appears as if Anscombe is falling prey here to the reductionist tendency to divide reality into independent causes and effects–the soul being the cause and the eyes being the effects. This is certainly not in accordance with the Aristotelian hylomorphic theory of the unity of the body and the soul. Wittgenstein makes two claims that are relevant to this discussion. Firstly, he maintains that our attitude towards a person is an attitude towards a soul. This ought to be considered alongside another claim he makes, namely, that the human body is the best picture of the soul. Is this an Aristotelian hylomorphic theory or is it more Platonic, as Anscombe appears to suggest? Anscombe in her writings criticises Wittgenstein’s early picture theory of meaning by claiming that a picture is ambiguous and the picture of a boxers stance, for example, could illustrate both how one ought to stand and also how one ought not to stand. A number of questions immediately present themselves. Firstly, If the soul is a principle of movement and rest, as Aristotle proposes can one have an attitude toward a principle? The only kind of relation we appear to have towards principles are the theoretical attitude of understanding them or the practical attitude of respecting them. If Wittgenstein means to suggest with this pair of statements that we ought to respect other persons, then he places himself in the Kantian territory he seeks to avoid. Secondly his claim that the body is the best picture of the soul has a phenomenological ring to it. Phenomenology we know seeks to investigate the essences of things but the mere citing of the body without specifying whether it is moving or at rest invites a hermeneutic theory of interpretation which “reads” the expressions of a body or “interprets” its physical expression or activity in accordance with some attitude. But what attitude is that? The attitude of respect again suggests itself. What rules of interpretation does this attitude use in its investigative activity? The problem with the Wittgensteinian idea of following a rule is that the concept of a rule for Wittgenstein seems to belong in the context of games such as chess. Rules certainly determine how I move pieces on a board. But is strategically controlling the centre of the board a rule or a principle? Stanley Cavell has drawn an important distinction between following a rule that allows us to play chess and playing in accordance with a principle that determines how well we play a game of chess. This latter activity in Greek minds would be associated with the term areté(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way). Epistemé(knowledge of principles of chess such as restricting the options of the opponents pieces by controlling the centre of the board) would also be involved. It is not quire clear how the notions of attitude, picture, and rule(embedded in an “album of sketches”) can do the same kind of work as the ideas of psuche, areté, arché, epistemé embedded in a complex hylomorphic theory.

Anscombe is very categorical in her philosophical investigations into human life(its origin and extinction). She unequivocally, on more than one occasion via the media claimed that abortion was murder. Her primary argument was an epistemic argument. In cases of human abortion, she claims we know it is a human life in the womb that we are extinguishing. Human conception does not give rise non-human forms of life. This knowledge, for Anscombe means that we are intentionally taking a human life which she claims has a fundamental value or is an end-in-itself. There is, however, an important question as to exactly at which point in time in the developmental process human life emerges. She points to the zygote stage in this process: This she claims is the first new unified cell and we can already call this cell human because it has the individual human tissue, organ, limb system inscribed in its DNA. These in their turn will give rise to the distinctive powers of being human that are constitutive of human psuche. Anscombe, however chooses to discuss this matter in terms of a “new substance” that has been created:-

“I was once a sperm and an ovum. That is the sperm and the ovum from whose union I came were jointly I.The objection to this is just that the sperm and the ovum were not one substance. That is, on a count of individual substances they came out at two until they have formed one cell. I do not mean that each cell is a substance: most are only parts of substances. That they are so is proved by cell differentiation which soon begins to happen as they multiply by dividing. Cell differentiation is for the sake of the kind of structured organised living material whole that gets formed through it.”(Human Life, Action, and Ethics, Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2005, P.42-3)

So, the zygote is a new human substance and any human intervention which brings about the extinction of its life is an act of murder. This, in spite of the fact that the animal life of movement and sensation is not yet present at this stage of the developmental process. Anscombe uses the epistemic argument here too and claims that we know that both self caused movement and sensation will occur at later phases of development. What we are provided with, on Anscombe’s account, is the criterion of identity for the zygote that eventually actualises into the form of a human individual. She argues that even if it is true that the zygote can give rise to twins, triplets etc, this is no argument against the form or essence of the human zygote. There is an analytical focus on the notion of substance but there are also traces of Aristotelian hylomorphism: the latter type of reflection, however, appears to stop at the threshold of Aristotle’s Rationalistic metaphysics. It must be admitted that she has a powerful argument, but it is unfortunately embedded in an “instrumental” context in which the most effective counterargument is claiming that a woman’s body is her “possession”, hers to do with what she pleases. On this counterargument this possessive woman is free to dispose of parts of her body. Engaging with this particular debate in the way in which she does is part of her refusal to engage with the metaphysics that could support her argumentation in a context of explanation/justification. The above idea of freedom would be highly questionable on any Kantian interpretation of this rationalist idea of reason. The role of principle in this discussion is not clear, probably because of the focus on both “substance” and “instrumentalism”. It is not clear that Anscombe can successfully defend her categorical position on abortion and also adhere to her interpretation of Plato’s “unity of apperception” argument. The hylomorphic interpretation of Plato’s argument is that the form or principle of the soul is constitutive of the human body which has obviously been brought about by physical principles associated with material and efficient causation. The way in which these physical principles(Energy Regulation Principle, Pleasure-Pain principle) operate is similar to the way in which the law of gravity acts upon an arrow shot into the air that finally returns to the earth. We use principles not to describe, but to explain changes in the many realms of Being we are dealing with. The principle, that is, provides the unity of all representations and the propositions relating to these representations. Construing the principle of psuche as substance is misleading. Anscombe, in defence of her position, claims that Plato regards the form as immaterial substance. Whether it is this that Plato has in mind when he maintains that the soul is like the form is not entirely clear but it is certainly a possible interpretation of the content of some Platonic dialogues. Plato’s thought, we know, developed over time to include even a criticism of his own theory of forms which some commentators have claimed moved him closer to Aristotelian positions, away, that is from the idea of form as substance and toward the idea of forms as principles.

The key metaphysical idea of psuche as a form of life for Aristotle was that life is a principle of motion and rest in all life forms. Kant’s metaphysics added to this the notion that life forms were self-causing entities, i.e. entities capable of bringing about change in the world. Neither in Aristotle nor in Kant’s case is it appropriate to think of the relation of the soul to the body in instrumental terms, e.g. as a pilot in a ship. A better descriptive picture of this relation is to be found in phenomenological Philosophy where the concept of “the lived body” is articulated in various ways, e.g. in Merleau-Ponty’s work “The Phenomenology of Perception”. In this work we find the claim that my hand does not lie beside the cup on the table but rather “inhabits” the environment it is in. The cup and the table belong in a context of instrumentalities that is different to the “lived space” the hand inhabits. My hand is not merely at the end of my arm waiting to be used but rather helps to constitute the field of instrumentalities that contains the cup, the spoon, the candle, and the table. The hand is part of a body-image best conceived of non-substantially, and non instrumentally, in terms of a constellation of principles of physical activity. Underlying this image is of course the Aristotelian hylomorphic material matrix of tissues, organs, and limbs. For us the principal organ of this matrix has become the brain but whilst this organ is certainly a necessary condition for human life it is not sufficient to explain all human forms of activity. The organs as a whole provide both the physical conditions necessary for activity and representation but they are first order functions that form the matrix of second and tertiary order functions. It was William James in a work entitled “Does Consciousness Exist?” that proposed that consciousness was not any kind of substance but rather resembled a function. Consciousness is of course importantly connected to representation and its relation to representations resembles the relation of the eyes to the visual field. For Kant sight was to the eyes as thinking was to the mind, which for him housed both conscious and unconscious functions. It is surely clear, in the context of this kind of discussion, that the brain is not an instrument to be used just because it is part of my body. For Anscombe the woman’s relation to her womb is similar to the intimate non-instrumental relation of sensory-motor activities to the brain. The relation we have to the idea of freedom is also very different to the way in which it is represented by the instrumentalists. For the Greeks, for example, free choice was bound by the condition of areté which bound the agent to doing the right thing in the right way at the right time.

Aristotle, we know believed that abortion before the 40th day was acceptable,(a period of time in which neither life nor sensation was present in the collection of cells we find in the womb). After the 40th day, Aristotle would have objected to taking the right to live of this little human in the womb, away. Even within the time frame of 40 days there had to be good reason for the termination of the life of the life-form within the womb. Such reasons could include not being able to physically support a certain number of children or reason to suspect a serious physical deformation. Aristotle, on the basis of these reflections, then, may well have agreed with Anscombe that we certainly know at an early stage of the actualisation stage we are dealing with a rational animal capable of discourse. In Aristotle’s time, abortion cannot have been a risk free procedure so perhaps there were additional arguments against performing this procedure. Aristotle would, however, have agreed with the epistemic argument presented by Anscombe. For him it was the essence of this form of life to actualise into a being that reasoned and conversed in the agora. Whether Aristotle would call abortion “murder” is not at all clear. Anscombe is perhaps in this respect more extreme in her position than Aristotle would have been. Anscombe’s position entails seeing the human in a platelet of shapes that has neither animal nor human shape. Her argument for this would probably be that we know that this platelet of cells will eventually roll up into a tube that will be the material basis of the human spinal cord.

This judgment, on the basis of potentiality, suffices for Anscombe to pass judgment in accordance with the moral attitude she referred to earlier. Whether this attitude is consistent with the Aristotelian idea of psuche as a principle of movement or rest, a causa sui, is not clear from her account. It is Kant that introduces the idea of causa sui into the discussion of the human form of life, and it is Kant that also claims that the act of taking ones life when committing suicide, is a practical contradiction(using life to take life). In this context we ought to note that we do not in the case of performing an abortion speak of “committing” abortion, but Anscombe nevertheless insists on using the term “murder” to describe what is happening here. Murder is, of course, a crime that is “committed”.

Anscombe is recognised by many commentators to be an analytical Philosopher, but given the poor record of these philosophers insofar as contribution to the fields of ethics and politics is concerned, her everyday practical position on these fronts shines like the beacon of a lighthouse in the darkness. We recall that when ex-President Truman was to be awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University, Anscombe stood up in a formal assembly to denounce the proposal in English(rather than the customary Latin–the language of Academia). Her objection was of course grounded upon Trumans decision to drop two atomic bombs on civilian populations. On her political account, being at war, requires respect for those who have not actively chosen to fight in the war: ignoring the freedom of these people to carry on leading their lives as normally as they can and dropping weapons of mass destruction on them is a crime against humanity. This accords with the Kantian view of war which saw the activity to lack meaning. Kant claimed that there were two kinds of argument against the activity of war: firstly it is wrong because one can know via reason that it is both morally and instrumentally irrational. Secondly, it is wrong because one can know through experiencing the concrete consequences of such activity that it is entirely pointless. Kant points out that, in spite of the fact that both reason and experience are opposed to this activity, the antagonistic nature of man prevails and we are periodically thrown into this cataclysmic abyss. Anscombe’s objection to Truman’s degree was therefore Kantian. There is , however, a very interesting essay contained in the work “Human life, Action and Ethics” entitled “Knowledge and Reverence for Human Life”. In this essay Anscombe appears to argue analytically for “two kinds of knowledge” that we can possess, namely what she calls mysteriously “indifferent knowledge” and another form of knowledge she calls “connatural knowledge”. The decisive category involved in the characterisation of these forms of knowledge is that of value. In the first form of knowledge we are concerned with knowledge whose truth is indifferent to value and the second form we are concerned with knowledge whose truth is intimately connected to value. The essay cites Hume’s notorious assertion that “Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions”. At first it looks as if Anscombe wishes to contest this assertion but subsequently there is a retreat from any form of rationalism and a tentative advance toward a form of knowledge which is related to value in virtue of being connected to our inclinations or attitudes:

“inclination itself is a sort of perception of the meanness of acting even without the judgement being formulated”(P.60)

Reference is being made here to both “seeing the action in a certain light” and the “unity of apperception”. In a later passage Anscombe continues:

“Connatural….it belongs to a just way of looking at things, and it cant be called a good of fortune. The spirit of such knowledge is what is called a gift of the Holy Ghost: the light of it a light to enlighten everyone who comes into the world. I do not mean that everyone actually has this light in his mind, for it may have been extinguished or never allowed to come on. It may be there as a mere glimmer whose sign is the understanding of the human language with all its multifarious action and motive descriptions, its machinery for accusing others and excusing oneself.”(P.62)

It is not clear what Anscombe means by a “gift of the Holy Ghost” and it is also not clear what the sign connected to the understanding of language might be unless this is a reiteration of the point that language enables one to see things in a certain light. She elaborates upon this train of thought by referring to the “inclination” toward a good will, Such an inclination apparently arises as a consequence of acquiring the habits of a lifetime and the suffering of a lifetime. Curiously, however, Anscombe claims that this kind of knowledge is theoretical. Knowing the worth of a human being is certainly not only a theoretical matter. Anscombe , at the very least, owes us a more detailed discussion of the kinds of knowledge involved in theoretical and practical reasoning. One can wonder here whether and how a mere “inclination” toward a good will could ever suffice to pass judgment upon a murderer: whether and how “inclinations” could ever result in the imperatives of duty Kant refers to.

For both Kant and Aristotle the only possible defence a murderer could have for killing someone is that this someone deserved to die. This obviously cannot be said of the little human being inside the womb. The arguments for and against abortion are familiar territory for Anscombe and she is well aware that she owes an answer to the question relating to how one can avoid the Aristotelian scenario of conceiving too many children. Sexual abstention is her answer, and this fits well with the Greek virtue of self control. For Anscombe, in an essay entitled “the Dignity of the Human Being”, sexual abstention is the only dignified response to the temptations of sexuality and its possible consequences. She appeals here to freedom of choice and the free will but also to reverence for the creations of God. Her final judgment on our current attitude toward abortion is summed up in the following quote:

“I have observed something of the celebrations of VE day, celebrations of the victory of the allies over Nazi Germany…. “Fools!”, I thought. You talk of being armed in spirit against possible future threats of evil. You seem all unconscious of living in an actually murderous world.” Each nation that has liberal abortion laws has rapidly become, if it was not already, a nation of murderers.”(P.72-3)

The judgment is severe but it has its argumentative ground. It is surprising that given the categorical nature of this judgment that the only metaphysics(Kantian metaphysics) capable of justifying such a severe judgment is not actively embraced by Anscombe. It is not even clear whether Anscombe can be called a rationalist retreating as she does to talk of “inclinations” and “attitudes” which appear to be more appropriate to sensible contexts of exploration/discovery than rational contexts of justification. “Description” and “seeing things in a certain light” appear to confirm the above diagnosis. This is puzzling because she clearly uses the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in her deliberations but her reluctance to discuss either Aristotelian or Kantian metaphysics in relation to her argumentation must amount to a rejection of these forms of rationalism. The closest she comes to embracing some of the concepts of rationalism occurs in an essay entitled “Practical Truth”. In this essay she refers to Aristotle’s discussion of decisions arrived at in practical contexts yet requiring a form of reflection Aristotle calls “deliberation”. She quotes a passage from the Nichomachean Ethics:

“So that, since moral virtue, i.e. virtue in actions and passions, is a disposition of decision making, and decision is deliberative will, this means that for decision to be sound the reasons must be true, the will right, and the same thing mist be named by the one and pursued by the other.”(P.152)

Practical thinking, she adds is :

“truth in agreement with right desire”(P.152)

The thoughts in this essay, however, do not quite mesh with the thoughts we encounter in the essay entitled “Knowledge and Reverence for Human Life” in which we pointed out she refers to “connatural” knowledge(knowledge intimately related to value) as a “gift from the Holy Ghost”. The humanism of Aristotle stands in stark contrast to this account. Throughout Aristotle’s work we find reference to the difference between lower level capacities and higher level dispositions. The terms areté and arché especially occur in these latter contexts. The Nichomachean Ethics must be, for Aristotle, one of the key documents of Practical Science, containing all the forms of explanation and justification relevant to the kinds of change we encounter in the arenas of action and passion. This work begins with its basic assumption that all forms of human activity aim at the good. Knowledge, of course, according to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, is a good in itself and this must be a universal and necessary truth because “All men desire to know”. Knowledge in the Metaphysics is defined in terms of the principles of what he calls “First Philosophy”. These principles attempt to provide us with a totality of conditions that help to constitute essence-specifying definitions such as “rational animal capable of discourse”. Sound practical choices are obviously decisive in the matter of whether such an animal will lead a flourishing life or not . The telos of such a rational animal is, in Greek, eudaimonia which in turn is a consequence of living in accordance with the notions of areté, arché, diké, epistemé, and phronesis. This battery of terms indicates that we are dealing with so much more than mere inclinations or attitudes. Eudaimonia was, for Kant, the summum bonum of human existence, a state of existence that rests upon the above charmed circle of Greek ideas and dispositions.

Anscombe, in her essay on Spinoza, once again approaches tentatively and with caution, the practical idea of freedom, reflecting upon Aristotelian hylomorphism. The title of this essay sounds Kantian: How can a man be free?” but she focuses upon the Aristotelian idea of the production of truth. She points out that this idea in modern Universities causes a sense of outrage:

“Admittedly, the idea of production of truth does not seem to fit very well. My own experience has led me to outrage philosophical audiences by maintaining that i can produce truth. E.g., I may say “I am going to stand on this table”, and then I produce truth in what I said by doing that. People protest “You cant talk like that. Truth is eternal. If you do stand on the table, it is always true(before you did it) that you would stand on the table when you did”. I understand this impulse about truth. Nevertheless in such a case I do make something true, which I had said I would do.”(From Plato to Wittgenstein, P.92)

When the primacy of action is the issue it is the telos of the action that becomes the constitutive function of the particular truth describing the activity “standing on the table”. Particular truth belongs in the context of exploration/discovery in which material and efficient causation is regulated by final causation(the why of the action). Particular truths have particular relations to particular sensory-motor systems and it is probably only particular truths that are “produced” in the sense referred to by Anscombe. One cannot “produce” essence specifying truths such as “Man is a rational animal capable of discourse”. Such truths are not in any sense “instrumental” (hypothetical) but are rather categorical or unconditional truths. The categorical imperative is an example of the latter kind of truth relating to Action and the Will, e.g., “So act that you can will that the maxim of your action be a universal law.”. Such a categorical unconditional imperative cannot be indifferent to Truth and must be capable of occurring as a major premise in a practical syllogism. One of the purposes of this class of syllogism is to demonstrate the categorical characterisation of a good will, which is a will that operates both within the domain of categorical understanding(being self causing, causa sui) and in accordance with ideas of reason such as freedom(so important in the realm of ethical virtue) .

Anscombe in the above essay does not refer to areté but rather to the Greek concept of eupraxia. This may be appropriate given we are dealing with particular truths relating to action. The more universal and necessary idea of eudaimonia is not taken up in her discussion. She merely claims that eupraxia ´relates to a general idea of “doing well” which she claims is an objective of rational life. Eupraxia is obviously a concept that belongs in the productive sciences relating to techné rather than in the realm of practical science and the conceptual system constituted by eudaimonia, areté, diké, and arché. The will and action is obviously relevant in both domains but a will regulated by hypothetical imperatives is a different matter to the will acting categorically. In other words there may be a world of difference between “doing well” and flourishing(eudaimonia).

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4:- Anscombe’s Philosophical Psychology.

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Elisabeth Anscombe’s work is not easy to characterise. It is clearly influenced by the later work of Wittgenstein but it also manifests a resemblance to the work of medieval scholars working in the Neo-Aristotelian tradition. The Greek idea of “psuche” underlies some of her reasoning about our human nature. There is also clear reliance on the classical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in her treatment of philosophical arguments. The presence of a spirit of Aristotle, is, then, clearly present in her writings but there is a question-mark hanging over her relation to Kantian metaphysics. There is also a clear and concise commitment to the Wittgenstein methodology of examining the intricacies of the grammar of our language which can be found in the writings of Aristotle but not in Kant who thought language to be nothing but a medium for the presentation of ideas without any commitment to their truth or rationality.

In an essay entitled “The Intentionality of Sensation”, we are presented with Anscombe’s views on Logic and Language but her relation to Metaphysics remains unclear. “Sensation” is, of course a key concept in Psychological Theory and Anscombe submits the concept to a logical and grammatical critique. In connection with this discussion Anscombe discusses the changes in meaning of the terms “subject” and “object”. One common sense approach to the meaning of the term “object” is to think of it as denoting:

“the objects found in the accused mens pockets” Metaphysics and The Philosophy of Mind, G. E., M., Anscombe, Oxford, Blackwell, 1981(P.3)

Objects are at the very least sensory-motor entities that naturally insert themselves into spatial contexts of perception and manipulation. They can also be the abstract entities of thought discussed by scholastic thinkers and they can be the entities discussed by Freud under the category of “object of desire”. Anscombe approaches the discussion about the nature of objects strategically via reference to the grammatical idea of an object. Here the question “What?” dominates the discussion. “What did John give Mary?” is a question asked in a grammatical parts of speech lesson whilst analysing the sentence “John gave Mary a book.”. Anscombe points out in this discussion that we are not dealing with a piece of language and here she does not mention, but is clearly relying on the Wittgensteinian claim, that the concept of the essence of “objects” is provided by grammatical remarks and investigations. Anscombe, like Wittgenstein is eager to steer a course that does not sail too close to metaphysics. She claims that the direct object is not merely a part of the structure of a sentence but also “gives”(pictures?) the object(the book). In Philosophy a book is a physical thing, an artefact, and a cultural object communicating thought for various purposes. In grammar the term “book” is classified or categorised as a “noun”, Wittgenstein claimed that much of ones language has to be understood(mastered) before one can understand fully the use of a term, whether it be a noun or a proper name. From an Aristotelian point of view spoken words are affections of the soul which in turn are likenesses (pictures?)of what they are affections of. Written language symbolises these spoken words, though we should note with Ricoeur that the logic of a book is that it explodes the dialogical face-to-face context. Many Hylomorphic Aristotelian powers, capacities and dispositions are implied by Aristotles claim that the subject -predicate structure is analogous to the thought structure of thinking something about something. The term sumbolon is a designation of the expressive power of voiced sounds in relation to affections of the soul. For Aristotle the complete meaning of a sentences is its logos and may require hermeneia or interpretation, whether it be a declarative, an interrogative , an imperative or a sentence expressive of wants or wishes. For Aristotle this hermeneutic activity cannot occur at the level of the name/noun. It is the verb that brings additional mental powers into the picture via its reference to time and of being an indication of something said about something. It is this latter indication that allows the true and the false to emerge as an element of logos in the declarative case. The imperative case also allows the good and its opposite to emerge in the relation of actions and intentions to the agents of these actions and intentions. Aristotle , of course added another dimension to this discussion when he claimed that Being is said in many ways and articulated his 10 categories of existence which Kant felt was rhapsodic(possibly because it appeared to be merely a prologue to his own categories of judgements). Wittgenstein for his part, at least in his later work, fixated upon the expressive function of language and spent much time exploring the philosophical consequences of the role of language in philosophical thought. Anscombe’s account appears to regard the object of the book as having an intentional existence, a form of existence that has a complex logical relation to the material existence of the object referred to. On the other hand, objects related to actions(e.g. giving) have a clear and obvious relation to the action. This relation is not as clear and obvious when it comes to thought. Upon being asked “What are you thinking?” and being told “I was thinking of Winston Churchill” no one for example will ask if this is possible given the fact that he is dead. This possibility of referring to non-existent objects becomes more controversial if one answers instead “I was thinking of Apollo” or “I was thinking of Zeus”. These “objects” may never have existed in the way in which Winston Churchill did. All names can be described, e.g. “The sun-god” or “The son of Chronos”. Neither the names nor the descriptions have any obvious relation to present or past sensory-motor experience, even if they can be brought to life in the sensory dream-like scene of the imagination. In these latter cases there is no possibility of consulting relatives of Apollo or Zeus, reading their letters, documents that they have signed, or documents containing facts about them (as one can in the case of Winston Churchill). Zeus and Apollo may well be literary creations(fictions) and no less important for being so. The meaning of these names terminate therefore in the use of their names and descriptions in literary documents. Anscombe also takes up the issue of the worship of fictional objects such as “the sun-god” in the light of her discussion of the hylomorphic distinction between formal(intentional) and material objects. The sun-god worshippers are clearly not worshipping a gravitationally bound body of hydrogen and helium gas made self luminous by an internal process of nuclear fusion. What then are they worshipping? The role of the sun in their lives, both real and imagined? Zeus in particular was imagined to be a standard bearer of wisdom, courage and self control–a sort of demiurge of the ethical values and moral space of humankind, acting in the mysterious ways in which supernatural agencies act. So, if to the question “What are you thinking about?” I respond “I am thinking about Zeus, the son of Chronos”, there may well be an epistemological question to raise concerning whether there is a material object of my thought, but this does not for Aristotle disturb the logos of the thought because there is certainly an intentional object located in the realm of ethical discourse that is the subject matter of the discourse. Anscombe does not appear to attribute too much significance to the epistemological concern that may be raised about the status of fictional intentional objects. This might be because this is of no import for the connection between the being of a subject of discourse and the rules connected to the categories of grammar. In this universe of discourse there is no validity to the distinction between subjective and objective entities as construed by science and analytical philosophers. Why, one can wonder, does the subject-object distinction focus upon a putative primacy of the material object locatable by sensory motor encounters and locatable in a space-time continuum. Intentional objects such as the debt of five pounds that Jack owes Jill appears not to be a sensory-motor object or locatable in space(open to ostensive definition). Instead what we appear to be dealing with is a transactional exchange of money and a promise to repay the money. These are indeed sensory motor activities locatable in a space-time continuum but it is the promise that appears to be the most important element of the transaction, conferring as it does the obligation upon Jack to repay the debt. When he does so it is not the physical money but the act of repayment that is the element that makes the promise meaningful. The honouring of the obligation is also connected to the truthfulness of the promise and actualises Jack’s intention. The act of the promise and the act of the repayment fall under both the aspect of the true and the aspect of the good. For Aristotle both aspects are connected to Logos.It is not clear that Anscombe would go this far in her account of what is happening in the case of the incurring and the discharging of the debt. The above account transcends the kind of account she gave in an earlier essay(“OnBrute Facts” in Ethics, Religion, and Politics” (Blackwell, Oxford, 1981) relating to a grocery bill for potatoes. In this essay she speculates upon the relation of the intention to discharge the debt and its relation to brute facts such as delivering some potatoes and the institution of buying and selling. Here we are clearly in the realm of the hypothetical imperative: “If you buy potatoes, the act suffices to generate a debt that you have an obligation to discharge”. There is clearly in this context an implied promise to pay the money given the facts. Were I to refuse to pay and this matter ended up in court, the case would consist of a rehearsal of certain brute facts such as whether I intended to buy the potatoes and they actually came into my possession. In this case where no explicit promise has been made its truthfulness will not be an issue. The transactions themselves will determine the judgement of the case. For Anscombe, the intention is the pivot of the generation of the debt and this is not an interior private matter but an external public matter that is justified in terms of the hylomorphic distinction between the material and the intentional object of the action in question. Truth is an important part of this account because the intentional object is “given” by the description which the agent or a judge and jury would accept as truly describing ones intention, e.g. “I shot at a moving dark object in the foliage believing it to be the deer I was stalking”. Given the fact that my father was shot, the other facts obviously have to bear this description out. It has to be clear what was mistaken for what, and the universal element in this process is, that anyone could have made the same mistake in just these circumstances. The focus here is obviously upon a particular action in particular circumstances and this was neither the case for Aristotelian nor Kantian moral Philosophy. The problem with Anscombes account is that it would appear that the philosophical account of the promise or the debt appears almost instrumental, a matter of following a rule in a way that can be compared with following the rules of chess. For both Aristotle and Kant, the term Logos is related to categorical necessity, a type of necessity connected with the attempt to generate the goods for the soul in which we treat each other as ends. rather than as means to personal ends, a type of necessity related to the general attitude toward being both the potential legislator of a law or principle as well as being subject to this law or principle. The emphasis Anscombe places on intention is a descriptive emphasis and it does not appeal to the necessity specified in the Kantian Categorical Imperative in which it is asserted that it is our duty to act so that we are able to universalise the principle lying behind the maxim(the intention) of our action. It is this appeal to duty that in fact suffices to generate the expectation that we have a right to be treated as an end in ourselves and not as a means to some other persons or institutions needs. This is the metaphysical realm of moral law: a realm far removed from the transactional accounts where appeal is made to “following rules” in moral situations.

It would seem, then, that neither the categories and processes of the external physical world nor the categories and processes of normative moral activity and judgement are easily translatable into the categories and processes of grammar: but all three categories and processes are characterisable in terms of the Greek idea of “logos”, even if parsing sentences is a rule following activity, resembling the game of chess more than the moral creation and discharging of a debt by means of a promise. The grammatical and linguistic investigations of Wittgenstein have philosophical substance because they are grounded in the Aristotelian notion of forms of life but even these failed to provide satisfaction for Wittgenstein who described his own work in the “Philosophical Investigations” as an “album of sketches”. Pointing out, however, to his analytically minded colleagues that the language-game we play with imperatives is different to the language game of reporting was an important milestone in loosening the grip the “new men” of Hegel, Science, and Analytical Philosophy had on the throat of our cultures. These new men dedicated themselves to the questioning the validity of intentional objects of worship, claiming the demise of the notion of “form” that philosophy inherited from Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. Worshipping is an activity embedded in a general attitude of reverence and awe for “forms” or “principles”. The disappearance of this activity is clearly linked to the disappearance of this contemplative attitude and the powers of mind connected to it. Worshipping of the sun is intentional to its core and is so partly because it is an activity embedded in a system of ought concepts and principles that has an important relationship to a source of light and life that has helped to shape all life forms of the planet.

Anscombe claims that perception also has an intentional aspect in which objects are given in sensory experience. The description of what is seen plays a very important constitutive role insofar as the identity of objects of perception are concerned. In perceptual situations it is also the case that the object phrase can be taken materially and indeed this might even be the primary use of the verb “to see”. The secondary use of this verb is also important, e.g. “He who sees must see something”(Plato). This something can be a physical external object but also a formal intentional object. In the latter case there does not have to be a material or physical something to be seen. Anscombe interestingly situates perceptual activity in a wider context of aiming at something such as a dark patch(figure) against a background of lighter foliage. Shooting at the object and subsequently finding out that I have shot my father is the example used by Anscombe to distinguish between the intentional object aimed at(dark patch against background of foliage) and the material object(my father). The intentional object is given via the question “What were you aiming/shooting at?”. This is a particularly illuminating discussion of a distinction important to the law in its consideration of whether any crime has been committed in the performance of this action in relation to the “material object” of my father. So, I aim at this dark patch and shoot and it turns out to be my fathers deer stalker hat. I have undoubtedly shot my father irrespective of what intentions I may have had. If I land in court over this mistake and am asked the question “What were you aiming/shooting at?”, my truthful answer will pick out the intentional object of the act. My defence is obviously that it was not my intention to shoot my father because I did not know that it was him I was aiming at. This highlights the importance of knowledge for the correct attribution of intention to an agent or an action.

Anscombe also raises the question of inner perception and asks whether there is any such thing as an inner perception of myself in which I become aware of myself, become conscious of myself. Kant, we have argued, claimed that prior to spontaneously using the term “I”, the child relates to himself via the medium of feeling. The use of this personal pronoun announces, Kant argues, the dawn of thought in the user, announces the beginnings of the use of a higher mental power. How does Consciousness fit into this account? Animals, for Kant, are conscious beings but are not able to reach the level of self-consciousness achieved by the higher level of thought referred to. Kant is, in the context of this discussion, presenting a personality theory as well as a cognitive theory relating to the battery of cognitive powers, capacities, and dispositions that a “person” possesses. These powers, capacities and dispositions build a circle of conditions that are in a logical relation of mutual implication. O’Shaughnessy has the following contribution to make to this discussion:

“When we speak of “persons” we have in mind beings endowed with a distinctive set of properties, consisting mostly of capacities such as thought and reasoning, but also in the knowledge of certain fundamentals like self, world, time, truth.”(Consciousness and the World, P.103)

In this account, there is an incipient commitment to many of the assumptions of hylomorphic Philosophy, in particular to the bodily conditions that support this circle of relatively abstract conditions. For O Shaughnessy this circle evolved into existence with the assistance of principles and laws of sexual and natural selection over very long periods of time. All forms of life have the principle of psuche in common, driving actualisation processes through different stages of development. The essence specifying definition of the human form of life, namely rational animal capable of discourse, undoubtedly implies reference to a form of self consciousness. Kant referred to this aspect of the human form of life in transcendental terms, to an “I” that thinks truths, to an “I” that knows both the world and itself. We should recall in the context of this discussion that the Ancient Greeks believed that the search for self-knowledge was the most difficult kind of investigation. Wittgenstein and Anscombe contributed to this kind of investigation by claiming that the Philosopher could use the medium of language to assist in this search.

Anscombe’s contribution to the task of condensing a cloud of the Philosophy of self consciousness into a drop of grammar in the quest for self-knowledge is firstly, to classify the term “I” as an indirect reflexive pronoun(what Paul Ricoeur calls a “shifter”). Grammatical analysis reveals that this grammatical category does not share the properties of proper names or demonstratives. In this investigation the idea of truth is used but these truth conditions are not inextricably tied to the technical concept of reference. Rather there is in these reflections more than a passing resemblance to Aristotelian reflections upon language conceived in terms of thinking something about something. For Aristotle the subject-predicate structure is characterised in terms of a subject being designated and then something is said about that subject, thereby creating that synthesis Heidegger called a veritative or truth-making synthesis. The subject for Aristotle is tied to his ten categories of existence that provide a context for this synthesis. Aristotelian “forms” or principles also help to determine what he calls the logos or the account of the sentence.Should the sentence contain the subject “I”, a Kantian extension of this analysis would refer to the operation of thought and the idea of a something that is a cause of itself(not an even caused by something else). This causa sui is not then directly accessible to the exploratory operations of observation and introspection.

The Wittgrnsteinian notion of the self being at the limit of the world and not an object or entity in the world, ought also to be considered in this discussion. As a causa sui, the self in its relation to the world is analogous to the relation of the eye to the visual field it “causes”. The eye is clearly no part of that visual field. The kind of causation involved is formal-final causation as outlined in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory. The difference between these accounts is that in the case of the eye it is natural, if one is a biologist, to also immediately ask why- questions relating to the material and efficient causation of this organ and arrive at the Darwinian theory of evolution(its principles and laws).

In an essay entitled “The First Person” Anscombe seeks to combat the view of many logicians that the term “I” names an entity in the same or a similar way in which proper names name an individual located phenomenally in space and time. She rejects immediately the Cartesian notion of an ego that can coherently doubt the existence of its own body and also the Cartesian idea of consciousness being certain of itself in all its forms. She refers instead to St Augustine’s account of the mind knowing itself in its thought and of its being certain of its own being(De Trinate, Book X(De Civitate Dei)). Anscombe explores the nature of self knowledge by reference to the psychological verbs connected to:

“thoughts of actions, posture, movement and intended actions”(P.35)

Because:

“only those thoughts both are unmediated, non-observational, and also are descriptions which are directly verifiable or falsifiable about the person.”(P.35)

Description, of course, is an important element of discourse. In terms of action, description of what one is doing, is of primary importance for Anscombe. Description in this context is connected to the interrogative activity of questioning, e.g. “What are you doing?”–“I am standing here”–“Why?”–“Because I am waiting for X to come”. The former question on Anscombes account is perhaps what she means by posture and the latter means to inquire into a persons intentions. The former question is definitely requesting a description, but the latter appears to be requesting an explanation with a logical connection to the description of what one is doing: perhaps there is also a logical relation of the explanation to the body and its way of disposing itself in relation to its world. Augustine’s account refers to the mind, and the concept of mind we encounter here is more Platonic than Aristotelian. If this is a correct reflection then, we are probably involved here with a problematic dualistic relation of the body to the mind. On the Aristotelian account “forms” inhabit the body as they do all matter, but only in the way in which the soul “inhabits” a body by providing us with the principle of all the movement and activity of the body. But what then am I doing by saying or thinking “I am standing here”? According to Wittgenstein’s later work I am drawing attention to myself in this act of discourse in much the same way as I do when I am in pain, groan and perhaps say “I am in pain”. In neither of these cases is it true that I am attempting to name or identify anything. The substratum of my sayings and thinkings in these contexts is grounded in my learning or being initiated into the technique of language that enables me to make true statements about my state or condition. The result of this learning is that we can say or think things that were not possible prior to the learning process. So, the grammatical notion of an indirect reflexive pronoun is a way of speaking or thinking about myself that helps to illuminate the mysterious operation of an entity that can will itself to will, or in other words “causes” itself to actualise various powers or capacities. Anscombe ends this essay by claiming that self knowledge is knowledge of the (human) form of life that one is, and that of course is no simple matter to characterise correctly. Neither is it a simple matter to acquire this kind of knowledge.

When we are drawing attention to ourselves, this activity is less like pointing to oneself and more like waving to someone else to attract attention. This is a form of activity not shared by other life forms. The wave is a gesture that begins discourse and the words “I am in pain” may well be related to the gesture of the wave. Here it is not the reference of the word “I” that is at issue but rather its use–a use which the grammarians categorise as the work of an indirect reflexive pronoun. The Kantian “I think” may well be drawing attention to the activity of thinking, which in this case is the combining and differentiating of representations at the same time as drawing attention to the operation of mental powers and capacities that constitute the activity of the understanding. The activity of the understanding is clearly distinguished from the activity of the faculty of Sensibility(affection, perception, imagination) in the critical Philosophy of Kant. The faculty of reason is the third of the faculties of Kant’s personality theory or “theory of persons”. Kant delegated the concrete investigation of these faculties and their relation to each other to the discipline of Anthropology which divides Psychological investigation into two ontological types, namely what the world makes of man, and what man makes of himself . The former is the concern of what Kant calls Physical Anthropology and the latter the concern of Pragmatic Anthropology. The I that thinks obviously plays a larger role in the latter ontological type of investigation. For Aristotle, the search for self knowledge probably extends over a number of mental powers and capacities explored by a number of disciplines spread over three forms of science: theoretical, practical and productive.

In Kant’s critical Philosophy there is very little role for Cartesian first person certainty in relation to the knowledge we have of ourselves. The truth that Kant extracts from the Cogito argument is that the spontaneous use of the term “I” signifies the dawning of a kind of thinking directed at truth and knowledge and the role of consciousness in this account is obscure. For Wittgenstein, the claim that human beings are conscious and knowledge bearing animals are grammatical remarks. My attitude towards a person, Wittgenstein states, is an attitude toward a soul. An attitude is not an experience but rather part of a power or capacity. Such an attitude is obviously tied up with an “I think” that provides us with forms of representation that in turn provide us with “pictures” or narratives related to the being of a human being. It is important to remember that in our grammatical investigations we are not dealing directly with phenomena but rather with what he calls the “possibilities” of phenomena(i.e., the concept of the phenomenon). There is no place for observation or perception(an activity of Sensibility) in such investigations because the issue here is not that of identifying a phenomenon but rather one of understanding a phenomenon. In such a context of explanation/justification rationality or the operation of reason is a better tool than that of the sensory based imagination insofar as both Aristotle and Kant are concerned. It is not clear however, that rationality is the primary tool of understanding for either Wittgenstein and Anscombe.

It is possible, it has been argued, that human beings can be imagined to be automatons. Critics of this position have doubted whether this kind of characterisation contributes to the understanding of the human form of life. Life, it has been argued, is a necessary condition of consciousness and machines can not be conceived to be alive. Perhaps doubting that one has a body as Descartes recommended is the beginning of creating such a science fiction scenario. The Aristotelian idea of a soul as a principle or set of principles motivating the human form of life appears to do much to clear away the philosophical smog surrounding this issue. This idea of the soul as a principle is also a central element in Kant’s investigations into the logic of metaphysics and its relation to experience and thought. For Kant however, the drop that condenses from the Philosophical cloud of Aristotelian hylomorphism is the good will causing itself to act freely as part of an interrogative attitude of awe and wonder at the size of the universe and the moral law residing within. For Kant, the “substance” of our soul was neither something nor something about which nothing could be said. The soul was a “form” manifesting itself in all forms of conscious and mental activity in the faculties of sensibility, understanding and reason. O Shaughnessy’s contribution to this discussion comes in the form of the claim that:

“self-knowledge is a functionally active necessary condition of both rationality and self determination or “freedom”. In short I surmise that self knowledge operates causally at a relatively deep level in the setting up of the circle of developed traits.”(P.103)

Presumably the above reflection also has implications for our relation to others as part of the account of the attitude we have towards other persons that Wittgenstein provides us with. O Shaughnessy cites the translucence of the Cartesian cogito and the Freudian unconscious (a vicissitude of instinct) as important testimony for the proclamation of the significance of self knowledge or self consciousness in relation to the circle of conditions underlying our human form of life. He discusses the limited insight into the workings of our mind when we are dreaming. In the dream we may well believe that we are seeing a figure in a white shirt approaching but the limitation consists in the fact that we are unaware of the fact that this seeing is an imagining. In waking life, O Shaughnessy argues, there is natural insight into the mind which manifest itself in the fact that if we see a figure in a white shirt approaching, we know that we are seeing this phenomenon and not imagining it. We know of the existence, character and content of our mental processes non-observationally, it is argued. This extends the range of psychological verbs relevant to our self knowledge beyond the range suggested by Anscombe. O Shaughnessy further argues that self consciousness of this kind is necessary for grasping consciousness of the world under the aspect of the truth. Seeing lightning strike a tree on this account, immediately and naturally leads to the belief that “lightning has struck the tree”. This is even the case with the use of the indirect reflexive pronoun “I”. I know that I am standing here non-observationally in the same way in which I know “I am hungry”. The child, O Shaughnessy argues, knows that he is hungry because he knows that it is true that he is hungry. Animal forms of life and consciousness lack both an understanding of language and an understanding of its categories and truth conditions. We, humans, on the other hand desire understanding of the form of “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. Consciousness “aims at the truth” not in terms of external observation and correctness but rather in terms of aletheia in terms of the revelation of the nature or essence of things. The truth of “I am standing here” or “I am hungry” is not then a matter of impressions I am having which refer to something else or some object. Anscombe argues that the impressions I experience are not cognitively “correct” but rather possess a self evident incorrigibility. She argues that my sensation of the secondary quality of colour is an appearance concept(p.47) and we know of this concept because of the function of colour language which operates in accordance with the following rule:

“Colours that keep on looking the same to the same eye against the same backgrounds, and in the same light and orientation are the same.”(P47)

An attempted justification for this rule is given by the example of doctors matching blood samples with a colour chart to determine the degree to which the blood examined is anaemic. Anscombe argues that this kind of judgment is not objectively certain but is nevertheless subjectively incorrigible. She notes interestingly, that we are in the realm of Aristotelian “proper sensibles” but fails to note the Aristotelian distinction between the different kinds of change implied by perception and thought respectively . Sensible changes registered by perception relates obviously to particular sensible objects whereas thought relates to more generic intellectual objects. The judgement “This red here” is obviously a very different kind of judgement to the categorical essence specifying judgement “Colour is a function of the interplay of light and darkness.” The former judgement is obviously related to the occurrence of an event in the context of exploration/discovery and the latter refers to no particular event but rather to a category of experience in the context of explanation/justification: a context in which principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason play decisive roles in the truth of the judgement. Matching a blood sample to a colour chart is obviously a perceptual activity at a level higher than the “This red here” judgment, but it is not a judgement requiring the kind of contemplation Aristotle claims is present in rational thinking. On the other hand, determining whether and how a colour is a form of electro-magnetic radiation does require contemplation in a context of explanation/justification. A different region of the mind is required for determining universal truths about objects. All that may be required in the case of “This red here” kinds of judgement may be an opening up of the windows of the soul and the receiving of impressions of particulars. In such cases we let nature take its course with the possible help of the sensible power of attention.

Memory is a higher form of sensible function which Locke regarded as a vicissitude of consciousness. For him individual memories determined the identity of individual human beings: Nestor was Nestor in virtue of his individual memories. The continuity of these memories and their relation to each other guaranteed the identity of Nestor but des not suffice to guarantee (without the presence of other conditions) the fact that Nestor was a rational animal capable of discourse. That Nestor’s form of self consciousness is regulated by the three hylomorphic Freudian principles (ERP, PPP, AND RP) is more concerned with the being of Nestor than his identity. Aristotle’s Metaphysics confirms this account or Logos of Nestor’s being with the opening remark that “All men desire to know”. A condition for this striving is that there is both a form of life and a consciousness that is striving to both understand the world and itself under the aspect of the truth and the good. Nestor fits these conditions being a person with knowledge of the world, other people and the organic form of the City. This knowledge was understood by the Greek mind via areté, arché and diké.

Blurb from back cover of forthcoming volume three of “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action”

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The Juggernaut of War and Economics has flattened our philosophical landscape—transformed it into a cultural wasteland in which facts and information lie strewn about the world like dead bodies. The mother of the Juggernaut was the Minotaur from the Platonic cave and the father was Janus, the two faced four-eyed monster that guarded the territory of Roman tyrants. A number of Philosophers throughout the age have complained about our forgetfulness of the many meanings of Being. We seem, as a consequence, no longer able to view the world “uno solo ochiata”in contemplative mood. The philosophical attitudes of awe and wonder of the Ancient Greeks and the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant have been inverted into the  “modern”moods of terror and boredom. Volume three charts the meandering course of 20th century philosophical history in search for a name for what we otherwise call “Modern”. Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy are our guides on this tour in search of signs of the Progress Kant claimed is present on our cultural journey. At stake in this journey are firstly, our human souls, conceived of metaphysically, and secondly the fate of our Civilisation conceived of in terms of the Kantian Kingdom of Ends. Consciousness is a power that opens onto the external world via the powers of attention and perception. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of reason and understanding which are the doors leading to a world in which we can roam  and transform into a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4 Elisabeth Anscombe Part one.

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Artemis Sistine Chapel

Professor Elisabeth Anscombe occupied the front and centre of English University Philosophy in a similar manner to the way in which Hannah Arendt did in the arena of Political Philosophy and the Philosophy of History in the US. The two figures were otherwise far from congruent. Arendt, for example, did not even consider herself a Philosopher whereas Anscombe was probably the epitome of a professional Philosopher entrenched in the University System of England(Oxbridge). Arendt in her doctoral thesis wrote about St Augustine and the concept of Love. Anscombe is often regarded as belonging to the school of Analytical Thomism insofar as her Philosophy of Religion was concerned and we also know that her religious convictions permeated her life to an extent that we do not see in Arendt, the Political Scientist par excellence, (more fascinated by Rome than Athens). Both women, however were fascinated with the concept of evil in their respective ways. Arendt preferred to view the phenomenon in a worldly fashion, carefully charting the origins of Totalitarianism and the Mind of Eichmann. In so doing she arrives at the conclusion that the origin of evil lies in an inability to think about what one does. In the eyes of many this conclusion underestimated the scope and power of evil in the lives of human beings. Arendt’s possible counterargument to this criticism was to suggest that her critics did not fully understand the power of thought.

Anscombe was less worldly in her criticism of evil whether on a personal or collective level:

“The “preservation of democracy”, the possibility of free speech, and other such ideals which are valuable only as a means cannot weigh against considerations which belong to the essence of the moral law. The death of men, the curtailment of liberty, the destruction of property, the diminution of culture, the obscuring of judgement by passion and interest, the neglect of truth and charity, the decrease in belief and in the practice of religion–all these are the norma accompaniments of a war. We have, as we have seen, little enough hope of a just settlement to set against such prospects. And finally there is a widespread tendency to make what our country chooses to do, the criterion of what may be done, and to call this patriotism. So a war against totalitarianism produces a totalitarian tendency: not only are morals lowered, but the very theory of morals is corrupted”.

This is Anscombe at her most categorical and the above words parallel much of what Kant said about the less destructive wars of his time before the time of the Juggernaut’s of the modern period. This is the Anscombe from Oxford who objected courageously to the conferring of an honorary doctorate degree on President Truman( the man who gave the order to drop atomic bombs on civilian populations). In this objection we encounter also a categorical condemnation of the murder of innocent civilians. War, in her eyes is no excuse for humans to act like animals. Humans have an obligation to fight, if they absolutely have no other choice, in accordance with rules and conventions(e.g. the Geneva Convention). Civilians shall be given the opportunity to surrender and not be forced to forfeit their lives because of an unfortunate circumstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Geneva Convention was an international agreement in the spirit of the kind of International Organisation Kant envisaged in his work on Perpetual Peace. It placed the onus for the protection of innocent civilians squarely upon the shoulders of aggressors. In this essay we find an appeal to the moral law which is dismissed in other essays. We will not find any such appeal to Kantian moral law in Arendt for whom Eichmanns superficial claim that the maxims of his action were in accordance with the categorical imperative sufficed to cast a shadow over Kant’s moral Philosophy.

Arendt is the existential pragmatist and Anscombe is difficult to classify given the above Kantian characterisation of the evils of war and obvious Aristotelian tendencies in other essays on the topic of Human Life. Her reflections upon Philosophical Psychology are more Wittgensteinian than Kantian but as we have argued in earlier volumes, these kind of reflections reject dualist and materialist assumptions: a rejection which both Aristotle and Kant agreed upon. Anscombe’s ethical reflections are in fact more Aristotelian than Kantian but they also embody a Wittgensteinian commitment to analysing language usage: a commitment that was probably necessary to clear away the weeds of dualism and materialism in modern ethical Philosophy. Kant, we have argued earlier, was skeptical about turning to language as a court of justification for theories relating to belief and action, claiming as he did that even if it is true that we share the language we speak together, it is nevertheless true that we can use this language both rationally and irrationally.

One of the differentiating factors serving to distinguish Arendt the pragmatic existentialist from Anscombe, the follower of Wittgenstein, is Anscombe’s schooling in Analytic Philosophy. Her years in Cambridge placed her in the anti-Hegelian environment supported by Russell and Moore. Dialectical reasoning and its tendency to relativise truth and knowledge were anathema to the Cambridge school of Analytical Philosophy. Anscombe points to the possible origin of Hegelian anti-Critical Philosophy in an Ancient medieval thought. She invokes Plato:

“I cant help thinking that the Platonic substance, the idea or Form, is of importance in the tradition whereby intellect came to be thought of as immaterial substance. For that which could grasp those immaterial beings, the Forms, had itself to be immaterial: the soul, Plato said, is akin to the Forms”.(Human Life, Action, and Ethics, Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2005, P.4)

Anscombe also refers to ancient argument which claims the soul to be immaterial on the grounds that thought is not an act performed by any physical or bodily organ. Given that thought must logically be an activity it must therefore be the act of some immaterial substance. Descartes, in his second meditation, constructs his dualistic position by firstly maintaining that nutrition, locomotion and perception are properties of the soul and secondly by detaching thought and sensation from the body. Anscombe claims paradoxically that this position has its roots in Aristotelian thought but it is not clear what she means here, especially considering the fact that she concludes this reflection by maintaining that nutrition, locomotion and perception are partially constitutive of forms of life possessing constellations of organs that are responsible for those forms of life. Anscombe claims that Descartes is performing a “trick”. We have argued in previous volumes that “the new men” of Philosophy worked systematically and manipulatively to redirect the thread of philosophical tradition that flowed from the thought of the Greeks. Analytical Philosophy, Anscombe argues, responds to Cartesian dualism with the Hobbesian strategy of reducing the substance or principle of thought to physical substance: the only substance that can be observed and physically manipulated. The organ of the brain is postulated as the bodily part that acts in order to produce sensation, thought, and understanding: thus embedding life forms inextricably in a causal network of events of type cause and events of type effect that are logically distinguishable from each other.

Anscombe charts the course of spirituality with the help of an examination of the grammatical structures of first person present indicatives. She claims that Descartes spiritualised the soul and helped to separate it philosophically from its physical origins. This, (even though Anscombe does not actively recognise it to be such), is an Aristotelian hylomorphic criticism of Cartesianism that is designed to reject the assumptions of both dualism and materialism. Descartes and Hobbes together neutralised Aristotelian hylomorphism and metaphysics and revived the fruitless debate between the dualists and materialists. Kant once again buried this debate in Aristotelian spirit. Hegel and Science aided and abetted by some forms of analytical philosophy again revived these debates but in turn faced opposition by the later Philosophy of Wittgenstein and Anscombe. The resultant view of Philosophical Psychology made ethical argumentation of the kind we encountered in Anscombe’s remarks in her essay on the Justice of War, almost impossible.

In her work entitled “Intention” Anscombe maintains that categorical ethics had previously been tied to the authority of religion and its philosophical importance waned with the waning of this authority. The categorical justification of ethics thus became problematic. There is, however, no attempt to relate her reflections to Kantian critical objectivity of ethical and moral judgements: to relate her reflections to the founding rational idea of freedom. This idea is a difficult idea to assimilate in religious discourse because it belongs more naturally in a context of the tribunal constructed by ones peers on the basis of Law, truthfulness and rationality. Moreover this tribunal has a purely humanistic history, having been constructed by generations of great souled leaders and philosophers.

Anscombe appears to agree with Wittgenstein in his belief that the only necessity that can be gleaned from practical reasoning is a form of necessity manifested in grammatical propositions. This retreat from the rationalistic tribunal of justification is partly a result of the conflation of an anti-Hegelian critique that placed Kantian and Hegelian Philosophy in the same pair of brackets under the concept of “Continental Philosophy”. Anscombe does, however point out an interesting aspect of practical reasoning in the following quote:

” “Necessity here has a sense little examined by philosophers, but given by Aristotle in his dictionary Metaphysics(delta). Things are, in this sense necessary when without them some good cannot be got or some evil avoided. The pilot must navigate to preserve his ship: the cook must put salt in the potatoes to cook them well: A, very likely must know what is just and unjust for him to do if he is to avoid acting unjustly..”(Ethics, Religion, and Politics(Oxford, Blackwell, 1981, P.9)

This account of Aristotle is also congruent with the opening passage of his Nichomachean Ethics in which it is claimed that every activity of man including science and all areas of knowledge must(of necessity)aim at the good. Anscombe’s reference to Aristotle’s Metaphysics does not elaborate upon the assumption that the activity of practical reasoning is the activity of a rational animal capable of discourse. Neither does it emphasise or highlight the hylomorphic assumptions that found Aristotle’s reflections, namely, that the Theory of Forms has been replaced by a Theory of Change which rejects the dualistic thesis that the existence of forms exists in an independent reality which empirical reality “participates” in. The Theory of change categorically states that the form or principle of all forms of change emanating from psuche is “in” the organism and explains both what this organisms essentially does and essentially is. The knowledge of this change is the concern of the different sciences which explain and justify the necessity and universality involved in the activity of the organism and the forms or principles guiding this activity. The practical necessity Anscombe discusses above is related to the formal and final causes of hylomorphic theory. The concept of “form of life” does not however figure centrally in her ethical and political discussions. Anscombe is neither a materialist nor a behaviourist as is evident in her defence of Wittgenstein against such charges. Wittgenstein’s Philosophy also avoids dualistic and Hegelian tendencies with the aid of an Aristotelian idea, namely “forms of life”. The only space in Wittgenstein’s account of activity(e.g. the ostensive definition of a concept) for the Hegelian idea of “Spirit” is the spirit in which any activity is done. Aristotle would argue, however, as Wittgenstein does not, that ways of acting relate to principles that regulate the particularity of different forms of life. For Aristotle the human form of life is related in an important way to the communication of principles or forms from human to human. These types of activity carries with it the responsibility for the communication of the so called “basic terms” of a universe of discourse and the theoretical, practical and productive sciences. Anscombe’s work on “intention” and her account of intentional action is in the “spirit” of Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory, broadening as it does the idea of causality traditionally embraced by Analytical Philosophy. This spirit is manifested in her remarks on History:

“Let us end by considering the causalities especially involved in a history of a people’s dealings with one another. When such dealings concern or constitute great events, important in the history of nations, they are the greater part of what we call “History”, where this is treated as the name of a subject of traditional lore and of academic study, a special discipline. But public or private, great events or small, the causalities involved in them are much the same type. The first thing to note is : these causalities are mostly to be understood derivatively. The derivation is from the understanding of action as intentional, calculated, voluntary, impulsive, involuntary, reluctant, concessive, passionate etc. The first thing we know upon the whole, is what proceedings are parleys, agreements, quarrels, struggles, embassies, wars, pressures, pursuits of given ends, routines, institutional practices of all sorts. That is to say: in our descriptions of their histories, we apply such conceptions of what people are engaged in…..Given the idea of an engagement to marry, say, you can look for its causal antecedents…”(Human Life, P.107)

There is much to unpack in the above quote. History, as an academic discipline, at some point in its history was presented in mythological form. Muthos for the Greeks retained important connections to aletheia and logos. Given the fact that mythology reached back to the origins of the universe and civilisation it was necessarily speculative and required an allegorical mode of discourse that applied concepts symbolically(requiring “interpretation by the discipline of “hermeneutics” of the kind practiced by Paul Ricouer).There was undoubtedly an intention to present the truth of these matters in the form a true account . Aristotle’s hylomorphic philosophy certainly assisted in the transformation of this symbolic allegorical mode of logos to a more descriptively oriented categorical mode of discourse. Anscombe’s logos of intentional action provides us with a conceptual network that is not designed explicitly with hylomorphic philosophy in mind but this approach does in fact chart some of the collateral territory of this domain of discourse.

History as a discipline also received some assistance in its transformation into an academic discipline from Kant’s Metaphysical theory. Kant distinguished between Theoretical Reasoning where events are categorised for example into events of type cause and events of type effect. Kant in fact focussed on a theoretical view of causation very different to the Humean linear account where investigators follow chains of linear causes and effects. Kant’s theoretical search for the totality of conditions for any given phenomenon related to a logical principle of sufficient reason: a principle which acknowledged the reality of multi-factorial causation arranged in a network of conditions. Kant’s account, in other words, aligned itself very closely with Aristotelian accounts of causation and probably also with the separation of scientific discourse into the domains of Theoretical Science, Practical Science, and Productive Science.

Consequently, in historical accounts we might encounter a search for conditions that reach back into the mists of time where the forms discerned are given substance by the wisdom of muthos. In such investigations we might also encounter descriptions made in the “spirit”, or in accordance with the principle of “freedom” where the chain of explanation ends in a voluntary intentional choice of a historical actor or an institution. Kant pointed out that the broad texture of reality is such that one can conceptualise (describe/explain) the same phenomenon in both theoretical and practical terms. In the former we categorise the phenomenon as an event that has happened, in the latter we practically categorise the phenomenon in question in terms of Action. Anscombe’s theory of Action assists in the construction of this practical characterisation: a theory that neither Aristotle nor Kant would fundamentally disagree with. Nevertheless we will not find in Anscombe any explicit commitment to the Metaphysics we find in either Aristotelian or Kantian theory. Anscombe, in her Introduction to the series of essays published under the title “Ethics, Religion, and Politics”, raises an interesting doubt about her own approach in these essays:

“So far as general questions of moral theory have interested me, I have thought them closely tied up with problems of action-description and unsettlable without help from Philosophy of Mind. Some of these papers represent a struggle to treat all deliberate action as a matter of acting on a calculation how to obtain ones ends. I have now become rather doubtful about this.”(Page IX)

Her doubt most likely had its origins in her study of Aristotelian Philosophical Psychology rather than that presented in Kant’s Practical works. Even if this is the case there is nevertheless no explicit commitment to the Aristotelian Theory of Change and Theory of “Psuche”. Indeed in her volume entitled “From Parmenides to Wittgenstein” Aristotle is discussed extensively in relation to specific aporetic problems in Philosophy but without acknowledgement of the importance of the metaphysical network of kinds of change, principles of change and causes of change embedded in the Theoretical, Practical, and Productive Sciences. The Practical sciences are of course connected to Action as conceived of by Aristotle, namely fundamentally connected to the telos or final cause(explanation) of “The Good”. This is reflected in Aristotle’s claim that the premises of a practical argument show or prove why the action is Good(Anscombe, Human Life, P.114). The major premise in arguments used in accordance with the kind of practical reasoning we encounter in the practical sciences will be more than merely a starting point(as Anscombe mysteriously suggests): rather the major premise will play the role of a principle or justification. In the ethical case, for Kant, the major premise will assume the practical truth and validity of the moral law. If, for example, the major premise or principle/justification is “Promises ought to be kept” and is amongst the totality of Kantian conditions which the principle of sufficient reason is seeking, the justification of the major premise will require support from the three formulations of the categorical imperative. The role of rational ideas such as “Freedom” and “The Good Will” in this type of propositional investigation will also be involved in various ways in tribunals of justification related to the major premise, “Promises ought to be kept”.

The epistemic component of Action is often characterised in Analytical Philosophy in terms of “belief”. Anscombe, however, does not fall into the camp of those analytical philosophers who seek to psychologise the concept of belief:

“Belief is the most difficult topic because it is so hard to hold in view and correctly combine the psychological and logical aspects. Beliefs are psychological dispositions belonging in the histories of minds. But also, a belief, a believing is internally characterised by the proposition saying what is believed. This is (mostly) not about anything psychological, its meaning and truth are not matters of which we should give a psychological account.”(Human Life, P.138)

Indeed not, for such a psychological account would fail to explain the role of good will and freedom in contexts of ethical justification. Objects of belief are of theoretical rather than practical concern and require a shift in the kind of justification required. This shift in turn is related to what Ricoeur referred to as the difference between archeological and teleological justifications(a distinction that in turn relies on different kinds of explanation).

Anscombe, in an essay entitled “Practical Inference” fixates upon the distinction between the objective and subjective elements of belief in a discussion of the expression “I want”. She claims correctly that this expression could never serve as a “good reason” because reasons or the propositions expressing them in practical inference connect not with psychological dispositions but rather with other propositions or reasons(P.144). The drive toward an end is the psychological aspect of the will. This drive or power is not an isolated element but is rather part of an integrated medley of other powers and dispositions involved in the process of of achieving the good ends of a good will. Such good will manifests itself in the action or actions necessary to bring about the end desired by the agent concerned. The “I will” is universalised by O Shaughnessy into “The Will”. In ethical contexts such actions are driven by practical rationality or practical knowledge of “The Good”. Necessity is involved in the form of the categorical imperatives that of necessity leads to doing what one ought to do in the name of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) which in its turn requires practical knowledge(including knowledge of the categorical imperative in at least one of its formulations). We argued earlier that ethical actions have several levels of characterisation that range from a descriptive level of making a promise, to an explanatory level of Principle(Promises ought to be kept) to the even higher level of the moral law that Justifies(Metaphysically and Logically) everything involved with the action and its object or achieved purpose. The Greek term Phronesis in such contexts is connected with the term “Sophia”–the theoretical rational part of the mind. This former aspect of the mind “counsels” the practical rationally aspect in relation to what ought to be done or chosen to be done and also in relation to the means to do what ought to be done. Phronesis is of course connected to the moral virtues of the great souled man and Sophia is connected to the intellectual virtues of such men who love both the good and knowledge.

Anscombe praises Aristotle for being the first to formulate the concept of Practical Truth which obviously is an important part of the above discussion. She refers to Aristotle claim that desire and choice is for the end of eudaimonia and this requires the coordination of thought and desire(manifested especially in the disposition of decision making and deliberation)(P.152). She also acknowledges that Aristotle may be talking about “the will” in this discussion. In relation to this point she maintains:

“There is this special kind of cause operating in the world, and it is man” (P.153)

Desire, then, is a desire for both Sophia(wise understanding), an intellectual virtue, and phronesis, a moral virtue, both of which, according to Aristotle is necessary for a contemplative flourishing life(eudaimonia). Any action which is practically true, according to Anscombe must be in accordance with the description of what is involved in leading a flourishing life, something that can only occur in relation to a deliberative process of practical reasoning. This process of practical reasoning, for Aristotle will contain at least one major premise expressing a principle of action, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept”, “justice ought to be done”. Just as, in the latter case it is “The Law” that finally justifies that justice is done, so, in the former case, it is(according to Kant), the moral Law of the Categorical Imperative(in its three formulations) that justifies the principle “Promises ought to be kept”.

According to Anscombe, Moral Philosophy in Modern Times has been tainted by the collapse of the belief in religious authority. She discusses the uncomfortable relation that “moral earnestness”(as she expresses it) has to Religious and Secular authority:

“If you really want to corrupt people by direct teaching of ideas, moral earnestness would, in fact, be an important item of equipment. But I should also suspect that direct teaching of ideas is not, nowadays, the best way of setting about changing people:public action is much more effective. A good deal was done, for example, by arranging trials of war criminals on the bad side with judges from the good and victorious side making up their law as they went: this educated people out of old fashioned over-legalistic conceptions of justice….”(P.162)

Aristotle once said that his lectures on Ethics were not for those of the followers of his lectures under 30 years of age because presumably their moral characters were not amenable to the moral actualisation process: a process involving the coordination of a number of practical and intellectual dispositions. Yet we found Socrates teaching geometry to a young slave. If that teaching had continued systematically no doubt the slave would have become a geometer. For Plato this was an awakening of forms within the slave. Aristotle, however would have described this differently as a matter of the transmission of principles or forms from the mind of the teacher to the mind of the student, thus contributing to the actualisation process that will assist in the formation of the slaves character.

This hylomorphic idea of being responsible for ones deliberations, decisions, and actions began to wane as the “new men” with their “new understanding” of Justice and The Good began to influence Modern Society. Hannah Arendt’s analysis of our modern human condition pointed to a division in society between those “new men” who thought “everything is possible!” and those who felt that “Nothing was possible”. Both of those groups were expressions of the fact that the moral responsibility as conceived of by Greek Philosophy and Kantian Enlightenment Philosophy was eclipsed by a sociological view of causal networks that made man an instrumental manipulator or victim of these networks. Powering ones path through these networks like a Juggernaut seemed, in such circumstances, to be the only rational response to the challenges of the times.

Anscombe invokes a legal tribunal as holding out the last hope of defending the ancient idea of Responsibility and Good Judgement. For many, in a rapidly changing world with constantly changing conditions and standards, the only reasonable response was to create ones own standards, become a law unto oneself. Anscombe’s response to our modern malaise is the surprising claim that nothing can be done to restore the moral concept of Responsibility, because:

“.. it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy: this should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking…the concepts of obligation and duty–moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say–and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense and “ought”, ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible: because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives…”(P.169)

Anscombe raises a question in relation to Aristotelian ethics, asking why Aristotle does not discuss ethical Responsibility and Obligation. In the context of this discussion she also reduces the Kantian architectonic to what she describes as “legislating for oneself”. She then attacks the universalisation aspect of the categorical imperative in the following way:

“His rule about universalisable maxims is useless without stipulations as to what shall count as a relevant description of an action with a view to constructing a maxim about it.”(P.171)

Firstly, it is not clear that the maxim is related to the description in the way Anscombe assumes. The polarity of the relation may in fact be reversed and the maxim or principle give rise to determining the appropriate description of the action. It is also unclear why the universalising of the description of a particular promise being made(in the minor premise of the moral argument) cannot be conceptually related to the universalisation contained in the major premise of the argument, namely “Promises ought to be kept”. The above reflection by Anscombe is puzzling in the light of her earlier comments on the topic of practical truth. If Anscombe is correct in her doubt about the universalisation of the minor premise in the following moral argument:

“Promises ought to be kept”

Jack promised Jill he would pay the money back that he borrowed from her

Therefore Jack ought to pay the money back to her”

..then the above argument would not be expressing what she earlier referred to as “Practical Truth”. Anscombe continues to reflect upon Kantian theory and discusses the question of whether lying is absolutely forbidden on Kant’s theory. Should, for example, one be truthful with a murderer and tell him upon being asked where the person he is pursuing is hiding?. This example is a curious one and almost appears to be constructed for the purposes of refuting the categorical imperative. Firstly, one can wonder how one knows in this case that we are being confronted by a murderer? Secondly, why should we accept that there are only two possible choices of action in such circumstances? Would it be contrary to the categorical imperative to say nothing in response to the question or to answer in a language the murderer does not understand(asking for example why the inquirer wants the information requested). If it is argued that one ought to reveal the information because one is under threat or duress to do so, then the choice is no longer a free choice. In such circumstances, even if I reveal the information requested under duress and the murderer finds his quarry. Is a murder the inevitable result? What if the potential victim incapacitates the murderer in the ensuing struggle or even kills the murderer. Shall I be held responsible for the murder? Or is it rather the case as Kant maintains that the cause of the evil in this imagined situation is the agent and the maxims behind his action. The belief that my providing someone with information is part of the causal network leading to the murder is a correct belief but it does not mitigate the murderers absolute responsibility for the action he wills. The form of explanation for this state of affairs does not divide the world up into causes and effects but rather seeks for a totality of conditions regulated by the principle of sufficient reason. The will is not a cause that is conceptually independent of events conceived of as “effects”.

On the accounts of both Aristotle and Kant the murderer makes his choices and ought to be held responsible for them. If I am blamed for revealing the deadly information surely the only grounds for such an accusation could be “You could have said nothing!”. Such an accusation is not either in the case of law or morality a matter of accusing me of being an accessory before the fact but is rather an accusation of a lack of prudence on my part. The principle of prudence for both Aristotle and Kant is a power that emanates from the calculating part of our minds rather than a power of categorical deliberation on the part of a will regulated by a principle of sufficient reason.

Anscombe accuses Kant of not being aware of a hylomorphic distinction that is made in the description of the action of a murder. She cites a case in which one believes one is shooting a deer that one has been hunting but in reality one shoots ones own father. She refers to two kinds of object here, the formal object of the deer and the material object of ones father. It is difficult to imagine that Kant would not have been aware of a distinction that 99 out of 100 courts of the time would have recognised and would lie behind the obvious judgement that the agent did not intend to kill his father and was therefore not guilty of murder. In such circumstances there may also be an investigation into whether the shooter took all the relevant precautions associated with the responsibilities of hunting and some other crime may well be judged to have occurred. It is important to realise that the mere accusation of the crime of “murder” does not suffice to categorically conceptualise the event described above as “Murder”. Anscombe claims that the only description that best answers the question as to what was occurring in these circumstances is “X shot his father”–this being the material object of the act. Does the verdict of morality and the courts mean nothing then? Surely after the post mortem tribunal has occurred and the verdict of “accidental death” is delivered , this is also a permissible answer to the question “What happened? If the case goes to court and the son is found not guilty of murder, surely we can say “Yes, the son shot his father, but unintentionally.” This is not to deny the validity of the third person observational judgement “He shot his father”. He did not will to do that from a first person point of view but the observational judgment is true as is the judgement “He thought he was shooting the deer he was hunting”. Anscombe admits that the deer is the “formal object”. It is not clear whether she is conscious of the hylomorphic implications of the choice of this term “formal”. Formal explanations or “causes” for Aristotle take us closer to rational essence specifying definitions than material causes or explanations: that is they take us closer to answering the question “Why did he shoot his father?”: “Because he thought he was shooting the deer he was hunting.” In this later shift we must see that involved in this movement is a move from a context of exploration/discovery to a context of explanation/justification. A further move within the context of Justification might occur if the defendant in this case claimed “I would never intentionally shoot the father that I love”. The Categorical imperative is not operating at the conceptual level of the context of exploration in which one is deciding how to conceptualise a particular action. Once the action has been conceptualised, only then can we judge as to the goodness or otherwise of the action: this is an essential condition for the attribution of responsibility which presupposes the action was blameworthy or praiseworthy.

Anscombe appears to be conflating what is prudent with what is ethical especially when she discusses the very intellectual idea of Truth we find in Hume, which she claims can be expressed as follows:

“Truth consists in either relations of ideas , as that 20 shillings=one pound or matter of fact as that I ordered potatoes, you supplied them, and you sent me a bill. So it doesnt apply to such a proposition as that I owe you such and such a sum.”(Ethics, Politics, and Religion. P.22)

It is nevertheless possible that the above relation(expressed by the above facts) I have established with my grocer is sufficient to constitute a promise to pay the bill. Anscombe, dos not however discuss the concept of promising but prefers to focus upon whether “brute facts” in the above quote are sufficient to justify the description “X owes Y so much money”. The discussion occurs solely in the context of a limited concept of truth as is evident from the assertion that truth does not apply to any proposition claiming that one owes someone money. She does however discuss the injustice of not paying what one owes and insists that a conceptual analysis of this situation must precede any ethical discussion–a conceptual analysis involving “philosophical psychology”. She claims that the “should” or “ought” related to ones need for potatoes are not to be construed in a moral sense. She further claims, somewhat paradoxically, that not paying what one owes has become associated with a moral sense of duty or obligation which in turn was determined by a law conception of ethics propagated by the influence of the Hebrew Torah upon Christianity.

Anscombe suggests that the concept of hamartia was used by Aristotle to refer to a tragic flaw in the heroes of Greek Tragedies. This concept of hamartia, according to Paul Ricoeur, was re-conceptualised by the Christians as “sin” which in turn became associated with the internal feeling of guilt that lies at the source of the activity of religious confession. One is guilty because one has sinned. Here we find ourselves at the end of a cycle of experience which expressed itself in Greek tragedy in the form of an objective tragic mistake(hamartia).

We have discussed several times previously the influence of the Latinisation of Greek terms in the translation process from Greek to Latin. What the Christian and Greek muthos have in common is that the term hamartia appears to be applicable in the domain of religious experience and both cultures would probably accept that the meaning of this term in a religious context is that of a rupturing of the bond between man and what he finds sacred. The Greeks refused to interiorise this objective state of affairs and preferred to exhibit the phenomenon in the spirit of aletheia(truth, unconcealment) on a public stage. For the Greeks the law that had been breached was not merely a private affair between oneself and ones God but rather something to be manifested in a public arena in a context of catharsis in which both pity and fear are encapsulated in a larger context of understanding. The Roman militaristic conception of “Law” was probably also present in the mistranslation of hamartia as “mistake” although this meaning was undoubtedly present in Greek usage prior to its philosophical/poetic transformation into a concept relevant to the ethical and religious idea of “The Good”(which has a categorical meaning not possessed by the more hypothetical meaning of “mistake”). What we witness in such a change is a transformation from something that was mythologically sacred to something that becomes philosophically “sacred” where the focus is on the good of a mans character and its relation to eudaimonia. The conception of law shifted from a divine context into a more humanistic context in which the good became embodied in great souled men such as Solon, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. All of these figures were involved in the very real and pragmatic world of the polis and its manifestly secular injustices. Solon’s laws were designed to prevent the rich from exploiting the poor and the poor from robbing the rich. Solon was convinced that both parties would benefit from obeying his laws. They definitely emerged from a context of pity and fear but transcended this context by a context of justification, a context that would prove to be critical to the survival of the polis. Yet it is only with Aristotle that this bond between man and the sacred appear to be restored via a view of the polis that was less calculative and more philosophical: a view of the great souled man who valued Philosophy, Science, and the contemplative life.

Anscombe continues her discussion in terms of a critique of the is-ought question insofar as it relates to her earlier discussion of “need”. She fixates upon the concept of “what-is- good-for” which is somewhat puzzling, considering Glaucons challenge in the Republic to provide a theory of the good that is both good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences. The constellation of the focus on the facts and consequences also evokes the Humean concept of causality and its matrix of events of type cause and events of type effect: a matrix that destroys the unity of the actions involved in an ethical activity. Anscombe also specifically argues that the transition from is to ought on her account does not carry what she calls the “mesmeric force” of a verdict of a tribunal which in its turn requires the presence of an attitude toward something that resembles “the sacred”(implied by divine law). By implication, her argument involves the claim that there is no longer any respect for the law of the kind we could find during the times and eras of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. One might of course argue that the respect we find in all three of the above philosophers is connected to divine law through their different philosophical conceptions of the divine and this might sustain Anscombe’s objection. There is however a distinct atmosphere of secularisation in the Hylomorphic “Scientific” Philosophy of Aristotle. In Aristotle’s work we encounter God technically represented as a “Primary Form” in a context of contemplation that regards knowledge as a kind of “holy ground”. A very different conception to that superior being created by the fiery imaginations of poets and priests.

Respect for “forms” or “principles” is the focus of Kantian Enlightenment Thought. the tribunal of reason resembles the proceedings of a court of law in which divine beings are conspicuous by their absence. Anscombe misses this relation of morality to law in her reflections on Kantian moral Philosophy. Both arenas of human activity share common attitudes–respect for the law, respect for the moral law–and share common objects, respect for evidence and the due process of argumentation. Respect for the rights of both contesting parties is the political attitude that relates to both kinds of process. Confessions in such circumstances are less sensible objects of pity and fear and more rational objects of decisive evidence contributing to a correct verdict of the tribunal. The giving of evidence in court is inextricably linked to the Kantian conception of promising–“I promise to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God” but also linked to an emotional nexus connected to deus absconditus. Swearing an oath with ones hand on the Bible testifies to the symbolic presence of the divine in the tribunal. Such tribunals, however, have more in common with the secular trial of Socrates and the great souled law makers of the polis than with the figures and processes haunting the Temples of the time.

Anscombe praises Hume for his jettisoning of the moral ought from ethical discussion on the grounds that without divine support, law does not have the required psychological effect. Aristotle is cited as an example of a Philosopher who did not appeal to any divine influence but was able nevertheless to establish the authority of his forms and principles via processes of argumentation. It can indeed also be argued that Aristotle transformed the dialogical presentation of Socratic Elenchus we encounter in the Platonic dialogues into exercises of logic requiring only very abstract tribunals of reasoning in which The Good was expressed in terms of Laws embedded in a system of ought premises. Anscombes invocation of Hume(one of “the new men” of the modern era) actually reduces the force of the meaning of the term, “law”(to bind someone), and the social bond of the law to the more popular notion of a rule which carries no force of an imperative to command obedience. Rather, the rule hypothetically “counsels” that if you wish to drive to Cambridge you ought to follow the direction of the arrow–thus leaving it up to you to change your mind and drive to Oxford instead. Aristotle would not have accepted such a utilitarian conflation of rules with laws. On his account if you do not accept the major ought premise of a moral argument you risk being regarded as irrational. He would have been dumbfounded by our modern tendency to use is-arguments( people contradict themselves in discourse) to undermine the logical force of ought arguments(One ought not to contradict oneself in ones discourse). In moral contexts virtues are related to ought premises that express principles of justice. The argument of Glaucon that laws are only obeyed because man is afraid of the consequences and that an invisible ring would justify all forms of illegal behaviour would have been viewed with contempt by Aristotle(as it was similarly viewed by both Socrates and Plato).

Kant has a similar view of the law-like nature of moral ought statements. He expresses this in his discussion of Promising, an account that cannot be undermined by the simplistic argument that promises as a matter of fact are not kept. A broken promise for Kant is perhaps the most important occasion for the use of the major premise or principle”Promises ought to be kept”. If confronted with the philosophical question “Why?”, the answer would contain reference to one or more of the formulations of the moral law. A promise broken in such a context of justification cannot affect or change the form or principle expressed by the true proposition “Promises ought to be kept”. On the other hand the keeping of the promise not only brings about the truth that promises are kept but also brings good into the world. These are two of the reasons why promising has been one of the building blocks of our civilisations and why we still promise to tell the truth via the oath we take in the court room. Reducing promises to the consequentialist quid pro quo world of the contract is a transactional move that neither Aristotle or Kant would have approved of. The contract at is very best has a role in the tribunal of justification as evidence that a promise was made and such evidence presupposes the philosophical meaning of the principle.

Anscombe claims that ethics must rest upon a theory of Philosophical Psychology that explains the psychological aspects of action. It is not, however clear whether she realises that such an account of ethical action is only a part of the totality of conditions Kant is in search of in the name of the logical principles of sufficient reason and noncontradiction.

We do not find any account of the binding force of the law in Anscombes theories: the law does not appear to bind agents to an action or indeed does not appear to be a bond that one is “duty-bound” to honour. Her reading of Kant in this context is problematic:

“Kant’s major influence has been that of emphasising the motive of duty…..what ought to be done or ought not to be done is somehow derivable from the categorical imperative, “Always act so that you can consistently universalise the maxim on which you act”, …..It leads to a contrast between doing something for the motive of duty and doing it with enjoyment—the more you like doing something , the less of a purely moral agent you are”(P.195)

This is a very poor interpretation of the complexity of Kant’s moral theory, which quite clearly, in the name of a summum bonum, relates the happiness of the flourishing life to the worthiness of a virtuous agent who does feel compelled by areté and phronesis to do what he ought to do(his duty). The agent does this freely as if he were a legislator in a kingdom of ends. This account accords well with the Aristotelian account. Indeed all the virtues require the use of reason in the mode of the “ought” and there is no contradiction in the phenomenon of a man gladly doing what he ought to do (neither in Aristotle nor in Kant).

In conclusion , Anscombe in many respects manifests in her writings many aspects of Aristotelian hylomorphic Philosophy and it may be that her criticisms of Kant rest upon a misunderstanding of the nature of the close relation between hylomorphic and critical philosophy. Anscombe may well be a victim of her fascination for the empiricism of Hume and as a consequence she fails to see the power of the rationalism we find in both Aristotle and Kant. Wittgenstein never produced a moral theory so we do not know whether any theory of his would have sought to emulate Anscombes desire to cleanse ethical theory of the moral “ought”. In this desire she identifies herself with all “the new men” of philosophy since Descartes.

Following these new men is tantamount to following Ariadne’s thread back into the cave of the Minotaur where the population of the cave is divided in accordance with Arendt’s principle division into those for whom everything is possible and those for whom nothing is possible.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4 Anscombe(One of “the new women”)

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Professor Elisabeth Anscombe occupied the front and centre of English University Philosophy in a similar manner to the way in which Hannah Arendt did in the arena of Political Philosophy and the Philosophy of History in the US. The two figures were otherwise far from congruent. Arendt, for example, did not even consider herself a Philosopher, whereas Anscombe was probably the epitome of a professional Philosopher entrenched in the University System of England(Oxbridge). Arendt in her doctoral thesis wrote about St Augustine and the concept of Love. Anscombe is often regarded as belonging to the school of Analytical Thomism insofar as her Philosophy of Religion was concerned. We also know that her religious convictions permeated her life to an extent that we do not see in Arendt, the Political Scientist par excellence. Arendt, for example, was more fascinated by Rome than Athens. Both women, however were fascinated with the concept of evil in their respective ways. Arendt preferred to view the phenomenon in a worldly fashion, carefully charting the origins of Totalitarianism and the Minds of men like Eichmann. In so doing she arrives at the conclusion that the origin of evil lies in an inability to think about what one does. In the eyes of many this conclusion underestimated the scope and power of evil in the lives of human beings. Arendt’s possible counterargument to this criticism was to suggest that her critics did not fully understand the power of thought.

Anscombe was less worldly in her criticism of evil whether on a personal or collective level:

“The “preservation of democracy”, the possibility of free speech, and other such ideals which are valuable only as a means cannot weigh against considerations which belong to the essence of the moral law. The death of men, the curtailment of liberty, the destruction of property, the diminution of culture, the obscuring of judgement by passion and interest, the neglect of truth and charity, the decrease in belief and in the practice of religion–all these are the normal accompaniments of a war. We have, as we have seen, little enough hope of a just settlement to set against such prospects. And finally there is a widespread tendency to make what our country chooses to do, the criterion of what may be done, and to call this patriotism. So a war against totalitarianism produces a totalitarian tendency: not only are morals lowered, but the very theory of morals is corrupted”.

This is Anscombe at her most categorical and the above words parallel much of what Kant said about the less destructive wars of his time before the era of the warring Juggernaut’s defining the modern period. This is the Anscombe from Oxford, who objected courageously to the conferring of an honorary doctorate degree on President Truman( the man who gave the order to drop atomic bombs on civilian populations). In this objection we encounter also a categorical condemnation of the murder of innocent civilians. War, in her eyes, is no excuse for humans to act like animals. Humans have an obligation to fight, if they absolutely have no other choice, in accordance with rules and conventions(e.g. the Geneva Convention). Civilians shall be given the opportunity to surrender and not be forced to forfeit their lives because of an unfortunate circumstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Geneva Convention was an international agreement in the spirit of the kind of International Organisation Kant envisaged in his work on Universal History. It placed the onus for the protection of innocent civilians squarely upon the shoulders of aggressors. In this essay we find an appeal to the moral law which is absent in other essays. We will not, however, find any such appeal to Kantian moral law in Arendt for whom Eichmanns superficial claim that the maxims of his action were in accordance with the categorical imperative sufficed, as far as she was concerned, to cast a shadow over Kant’s moral Philosophy.

Arendt is the existential pragmatist, and Anscombe is difficult to classify given the above Kantian characterisation of the evils of war and obvious Aristotelian tendencies in other essays on the topic of Human Life. Her reflections upon Philosophical Psychology are more Wittgensteinian than Kantian but as we have argued in earlier volumes, these kind of reflections reject dualist and materialist assumptions: a rejection which both Aristotle and Kant agreed upon. Anscombe’s ethical reflections are in fact more Aristotelian than Kantian but they also embody a Wittgensteinian commitment to analysing language usage: a commitment that was probably necessary to clear away the weeds of dualism and materialism in modern ethical Philosophy. Kant, we have argued earlier, was skeptical about turning to language as a court of justification for theories relating to belief and action, claiming as he did that even if it is true that we share the language we speak together, it is nevertheless also true that we can use this language both rationally and irrationally.

One of the differentiating factors serving to distinguish Arendt, the pragmatic existentialist from Anscombe, the follower of Wittgenstein, is Anscombe’s schooling in Analytic Philosophy. Her years in Cambridge placed her in the anti-Hegelian environment nurtured by Russell and Moore. Dialectical reasoning and its tendency to relativise truth and knowledge were anathema to the Cambridge school of Analytical Philosophy. Anscombe points to the possible origin of Hegelian anti-Critical Philosophy in an Ancient medieval thought. She invokes Plato:

“I cant help thinking that the Platonic substance, the idea or Form, is of importance in the tradition whereby intellect came to be thought of as immaterial substance. For that which could grasp those immaterial beings, the Forms, had itself to be immaterial: the soul, Plato said, is akin to the Forms”.(Human Life, Action, and Ethics, Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2005, P.4)

Anscombe also refers to an ancient argument which claims the soul to be immaterial on the grounds that thought is not an act performed by any physical or bodily organ. Given that thought must logically be an activity, it must therefore be the act of some immaterial substance. Descartes, in his second meditation, constructs his dualistic position by firstly maintaining that nutrition, locomotion and perception are properties of the soul and secondly by detaching thought and sensation from the body. Anscombe claims paradoxically that this position has its roots in Aristotelian thought but it is not clear what she means here, especially considering the fact that she concludes this reflection by maintaining that nutrition, locomotion, and perception are partially constitutive of forms of life possessing constellations of organs that are responsible for those forms of life.

Anscombe claims that Descartes is performing a “trick”. We have argued in previous volumes that “the new men” of Philosophy worked systematically and manipulatively to redirect the thread of philosophical tradition that flowed from the thought of the Greeks. Analytical Philosophy, Anscombe argues, responds to Cartesian dualism with the Hobbesian strategy of reducing the substance or principle of thought to physical substance: the only substance that can be observed and physically manipulated. The organ of the brain is postulated as the bodily part that acts in order to produce sensation, thought, and understanding: thus embedding life forms inextricably in a causal network of events of type cause, and events of type effect, that are logically distinguishable from each other.

Anscombe charts the course of spirituality with the help of an examination of the grammatical structures of first person present indicatives. She claims that Descartes spiritualised the soul and helped to separate it philosophically from its physical origins. This, (even though Anscombe does not actively recognise it to be such), is an Aristotelian hylomorphic criticism of Cartesianism that is designed to reject the assumptions of both dualism and materialism. Descartes and Hobbes together neutralised Aristotelian hylomorphism and metaphysics, and revived the fruitless debate between the dualists and materialists. Kant would in his reflections once again bury this debate in Aristotelian spirit. Hegel and Science aided and abetted by some forms of analytical philosophy again revived these debates but in turn faced opposition by the later Philosophy of Wittgenstein and Anscombe. The resultant view of Philosophical Psychology made ethical argumentation of the kind we encountered in Anscombe’s remarks in her essay on the Justice of War, almost impossible.

In her work entitled “Intention” Anscombe maintains that categorical ethics had previously been tied to the authority of religion and its philosophical importance waned with the waning of this authority. The categorical justification of ethics thus became problematic. There is, however, no attempt to relate her reflections to Kantian critical Philosophy, whether it be ethical or in terms of the founding idea of freedom. This idea is a difficult idea to assimilate in religious discourse because it belongs more naturally in a context of the tribunal constructed by ones peers on the basis of Law, truthfulness and rationality. Moreover this tribunal has a purely humanistic history, having been constructed by generations of great-souled leaders and philosophers.

Anscombe appears to agree with Wittgenstein in his belief that the only necessity that can be gleaned from practical reasoning is a form of necessity manifested in grammatical propositions. This retreat from the rationalistic tribunal of justification is partly a result of the conflation of an anti-Hegelian critique that placed Kantian and Hegelian Philosophy within the same pair of brackets under the concept of “Continental Philosophy”. Anscombe does, however point out an interesting aspect of practical reasoning in the following quote:

“Necessity here has a sense little examined by philosophers, but given by Aristotle in his dictionary Metaphysics(delta). Things are, in this sense necessary when without them some good cannot be got or some evil avoided. The pilot must navigate to preserve his ship: the cook must put salt in the potatoes to cook them well: A very likely must know what is just and unjust for him to do if he is to avoid acting unjustly..”(Ethics, Religion, and Politics(Oxford, Blackwell, 1981, P.9)

This account of Aristotle is also congruent with the opening passage of his Nichomachean Ethics in which it is claimed that every activity of man including science and all areas of knowledge must(of necessity)aim at the good. Anscombe’s reference to Aristotle’s Metaphysics does not elaborate upon the assumption that the activity of practical reasoning is the activity of a rational animal capable of discourse. Neither does it emphasise or highlight the hylomorphic assumptions that found Aristotle’s reflections, namely, that the Theory of Forms has been replaced by a Theory of Change which rejects the dualistic thesis that the existence of forms exists in an independent reality which empirical reality “participates” in. The Theory of change categorically states that the form or principle of all forms of change emanating from psuche is “in” the organism and explains both what this organism essentially does and essentially is. The knowledge of this change is the concern of the different sciences which explain and justify the necessity and universality involved in the activity of the organism and the forms or principles guiding this activity. The practical necessity Anscombe discusses above is related to the formal and final causes of hylomorphic theory. The concept of “form of life” does not however figure centrally in her ethical and political discussions. Anscombe is neither a materialist nor a behaviourist as is evident in her defence of Wittgenstein against such charges. Wittgenstein’s Philosophy also avoids dualistic and Hegelian tendencies with the aid of an Aristotelian idea, namely, “forms of life”. The only space in Wittgenstein’s account of activity(e.g. the ostensive definition of a concept) for the Hegelian idea of “Spirit” is the spirit in which any activity is done. Aristotle would argue, however, as Wittgenstein does not, that ways of acting relate to principles that regulate the particularity of different forms of life. For Aristotle the human form of life is related in an important way to the communication of principles or forms from human to human. These types of activity carry with it the responsibility for the communication of the so called “basic terms” of any universe of discourse, e.g., the theoretical, practical and productive sciences. Anscombe’s work on “intention” and her account of intentional action is in the “spirit” of Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory, broadening as it does the idea of causality traditionally embraced by Analytical Philosophy. This spirit is manifested in her remarks on History:

“Let us end by considering the causalities especially involved in a history of a people’s dealings with one another. When such dealings concern or constitute great events, important in the history of nations, they are the greater part of what we call “History”, where this is treated as the name of a subject of traditional lore and of academic study, a special discipline. But public or private, great events or small, the causalities involved in them are much the same type. The first thing to note is : these causalities are mostly to be understood derivatively. The derivation is from the understanding of action as intentional, calculated, voluntary, impulsive, involuntary, reluctant, concessive, passionate etc. The first thing we know upon the whole, is what proceedings are parleys, agreements, quarrels, struggles, embassies, wars, pressures, pursuits of given ends, routines, institutional practices of all sorts. That is to say: in our descriptions of their histories, we apply such conceptions of what people are engaged in…..Given the idea of an engagement to marry, say, you can look for its causal antecedents…”(Human Life, P.107)

There is much to unpack in the above quote. History, as an academic discipline, at some point in its development was presented in mythological form. Muthos for the Greeks retained important connections to aletheia and logos. Given the fact that mythology reached back to the origins of the universe and civilisation it was necessarily speculative and required an allegorical mode of discourse that applied concepts symbolically(requiring “interpretation by the discipline of “hermeneutics”– of the kind practiced by Paul Ricouer).There was undoubtedly an intention to present the truth of these matters in the form of a true account . Aristotle’s hylomorphic philosophy certainly assisted in the transformation of this symbolic allegorical mode of logos to a more descriptively oriented categorical mode of discourse. Anscombe’s logos of intentional action provides us with a conceptual network that is not designed explicitly with hylomorphic philosophy in mind but this approach does in fact chart some of the collateral territory of this domain of discourse.

History as a discipline also received some assistance in its transformation into an academic discipline from Kant’s Metaphysical theory. Kant distinguished between Theoretical Reasoning where events are categorised for example into events of type cause, and events of type effect. Kant in fact focussed on a theoretical view of causation very different to the Humean linear account where investigators follow chains of linear causes and effects. Kant’s theoretical search for the totality of conditions for any given phenomenon is instead, related to a logical principle of sufficient reason: a principle which acknowledged the reality of multi-factorial causation arranged in a network of conditions. Kant’s account, in other words, aligned itself very closely with Aristotelian accounts of causation and probably also aligned itself with the separation of scientific discourse into the domains of Theoretical Science, Practical Science, and Productive Science.

Consequently, in historical accounts, we might encounter a search for conditions that reach back into the mists of time where the forms discerned are given substance by the wisdom of muthos. In such investigations we might also encounter descriptions made in the “spirit”, or in accordance with the principle of “freedom”, where the chain of explanation ends in a voluntary intentional choice of a historical actor or an institution. Kant pointed out that the broad texture of reality is such that one can conceptualise (describe/explain) the same phenomenon in both theoretical and practical terms. In the former we categorise the phenomenon as an event that has happened, in the latter we practically categorise the phenomenon in question in terms of Action. Anscombe’s theory of Action assists in the construction of this practical characterisation: a theory that neither Aristotle nor Kant would fundamentally disagree with. Nevertheless we will not find in Anscombe any explicit commitment to the Metaphysics we find in either Aristotelian or Kantian theory. Anscombe, in her Introduction to the series of essays published under the title “Ethics, Religion, and Politics”, raises an interesting doubt about her own approach in these essays:

“So far as general questions of moral theory have interested me, I have thought them closely tied up with problems of action-description and unsettlable without help from Philosophy of Mind. Some of these papers represent a struggle to treat all deliberate action as a matter of acting on a calculation how to obtain ones ends. I have now become rather doubtful about this.”(Page IX)

Her doubt most likely had its origins in her study of Aristotelian Philosophical Psychology rather than that presented in Kant’s Practical works. Even if this is the case there is nevertheless no explicit commitment to the Aristotelian Theory of Change and Theory of “Psuche”. Indeed in her volume entitled “From Parmenides to Wittgenstein” Aristotle is discussed extensively in relation to specific aporetic problems in Philosophy but without acknowledgement of the importance of the metaphysical network of kinds of change, principles of change and causes of change embedded in the Theoretical, Practical, and Productive Sciences. The Practical sciences are of course connected to Action as conceived of by Aristotle, namely fundamentally connected to the telos or final cause(explanation) of “The Good”. This is reflected in Aristotle’s claim that the premises of a practical argument show or prove why the action is Good(Anscombe Human Life, P.114). The major premise in arguments used in accordance with the kind of practical reasoning we encounter in the practical sciences will be more than merely a starting point(as Anscombe mysteriously suggests): rather the major premise will play the role of a principle or justification. In the ethical case, for Kant, the major premise will assume the practical truth and validity of the moral law. If, for example, the major premise or principle/justification is “Promises ought to be kept” and is amongst the totality of Kantian conditions which the principle of sufficient reason is seeking, the justification of the major premise will require support from the three formulations of the categorical imperative. The role of rational ideas such as “Freedom” and “The Good Will” in this type of propositional investigation will also be involved in various ways in tribunals of justification related to the major premise, “Promises ought to be kept”.

The epistemic component of Action is often characterised in Analytical Philosophy in terms of “belief”. Anscombe, however, does not fall into the camp of those analytical philosophers who seek to psychologise the concept of belief:

“Belief is the most difficult topic because it is so hard to hold in view and correctly combine the psychological and logical aspects. Beliefs are psychological dispositions belonging in the histories of minds. But also, a belief, a believing is internally characterised by the proposition saying what is believed. This is (mostly) not about anything psychological, its meaning and truth are not matters of which we should give a psychological account.”(Human Life, P.138)

Indeed not, for such a psychological account would fail to explain the role of good will and freedom in contexts of ethical justification. Objects of belief are of theoretical rather than practical concern and require a shift in the kind of justification required. This shift in turn is related to what Ricoeur referred to as the difference between archeological and teleological justifications(a distinction that in turn relies on different kinds of explanation).

Anscombe, in an essay entitled “Practical Inference” fixates upon the distinction between the objective and subjective elements of belief in a discussion of the expression “I want”. She claims correctly that this expression could never serve as a “good reason” because reasons, or the propositions expressing them, in practical inference connect not with psychological dispositions but rather with other propositions or reasons(P.144). The drive toward an end is the psychological aspect of the will. This drive or power is not an isolated element but is rather part of an integrated medley of other powers and dispositions involved in the process of of achieving the good ends of a good will. Such good will manifests itself in the action or actions necessary to bring about the end desired by the agent concerned. The “I will” is universalised by O Shaughnessy into “The Will”. In ethical contexts such actions are driven by practical rationality or practical knowledge of “The Good”. Necessity is involved in the form of the categorical imperatives that of necessity leads to doing what one ought to do in the name of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), which in its turn requires practical knowledge(including knowledge of the categorical imperative in at least one of its formulations). We argued earlier that ethical actions have several levels of characterisation that range from a descriptive level of making a promise, to an explanatory level of Principle(Promises ought to be kept) to the even higher level of the moral law that Justifies(Metaphysically and Logically) everything involved with the action and its object or achieved purpose. The Greek term Phronesis in such contexts is connected with the term “Sophia”–the theoretical rational part of the mind. This former aspect of the mind “counsels” the practical rationally aspect in relation to what ought to be done or chosen to be done and also in relation to the means to do what ought to be done. Phronesis is of course connected to the moral virtues of the great souled man and Sophia is connected to the intellectual virtues of such men who love both the good and knowledge.

Anscombe praises Aristotle for being the first to formulate the concept of Practical Truth which obviously is an important part of the above discussion. She refers to Aristotle claim that desire and choice is for the end of eudaimonia, and this requires the coordination of thought and desire(manifested especially in the disposition of decision making and deliberation)(P.152). She also acknowledges that Aristotle may be talking about “the will” in this discussion. In relation to this point she maintains:

“There is this special kind of cause operating in the world, and it is man” (P.153)

Desire, then, is a desire for both Sophia(wise understanding), an intellectual virtue, and phronesis, a moral virtue, both of which, according to Aristotle is necessary for a contemplative flourishing life(eudaimonia). Any action which is practically true, according to Anscombe must be in accordance with the description of what is involved in leading a flourishing life, something that can only occur in relation to a deliberative process of practical reasoning. This process of practical reasoning, for Aristotle will contain at least one major premise expressing a principle of action, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept”, “justice ought to be done”. Just as, in the latter case it is “The Law” that finally justifies that justice is done, so, in the former case, it is(according to Kant), the moral Law of the Categorical Imperative(in its three formulations) that justifies the principle “Promises ought to be kept”.

According to Anscombe, Moral Philosophy in Modern Times has been tainted by the collapse of the belief in religious authority. She discusses the uncomfortable relation that “moral earnestness”(as she expresses it) has to Religious and Secular authority:

“If you really want to corrupt people by direct teaching of ideas, moral earnestness would, in fact, be an important item of equipment. But I should also suspect that direct teaching of ideas is not, nowadays, the best way of setting about changing people:public action is much more effective. A good deal was done, for example, by arranging trials of war criminals on the bad side with judges from the good and victorious side making up their law as they went: this educated people out of old fashioned over-legalistic conceptions of justice….”(P.162)

Aristotle once said that his lectures on Ethics were not for those of the followers of his lectures under 30 years of age, because presumably their moral characters were not amenable to the moral actualisation process: a process involving the coordination of a number of practical and intellectual dispositions. Yet we found Socrates teaching geometry to a young slave. If that teaching had continued systematically no doubt the slave would have become a geometer. For Plato this was an awakening of forms within the slave. Aristotle, however would have described this differently as a matter of the transmission of principles or forms from the mind of the teacher to the mind of the student, thus contributing to the actualisation process that will assist in the formation of the slaves character.

This hylomorphic idea of being responsible for ones deliberations, decisions, and actions began to wane as the “new men” with their “new understanding” of Justice and The Good began to influence Modern Society. Hannah Arendt’s analysis of our modern human condition pointed to a division in society between those “new men” who thought “everything is possible!” and those who felt that “Nothing was possible”. Both of those groups were expressions of the fact that the moral responsibility as conceived of by Greek Philosophy and Kantian Enlightenment Philosophy was eclipsed by a sociological view of causal networks that made man an instrumental manipulator or victim of these networks. Powering ones path through these networks like a Juggernaut seemed, in such circumstances, to be the only rational response to the challenges of the times.

Anscombe invokes a legal tribunal as holding out the last hope of defending the ancient idea of Responsibility and Good Judgement. For many, in a rapidly changing world with constantly changing conditions and standards, the only reasonable response was to create ones own standards, become a law unto oneself. Anscombe’s response to our modern malaise is the surprising claim that nothing can be done to restore the moral concept of Responsibility, because:

“.. it is not profitable for us as present to do moral philosophy: this should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking…the concepts of obligation and duty–moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say–and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense and “ought”, ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible: because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives…”(P.169)

Anscombe raises a question in relation to Aristotelian ethics, asking why Aristotle does not discuss ethical Responsibility and Obligation. In the context of this discussion she also reduces the Kantian architectonic to what she describes as “legislating for oneself”. She then attacks the universalisation aspect of the categorical imperative in the following way:

“His rule about universalisable maxims is useless without stipulations as to what shall count as a relevant description of an action with a view to constructing a maxim about it.”(P.171)

Firstly, it is not clear that the maxim is related to the description in the way Anscombe assumes. The polarity of the relation may in fact be reversed and the maxim or principle give rise to determining the appropriate description of the action. It is also unclear why the universalising of the description of a particular promise being made(in the minor premise of the moral argument) cannot be conceptually related to the universalisation contained in the major premise of the argument, namely “Promises ought to be kept”. The above reflection by Anscombe is puzzling in the light of her earlier comments on the topic of practical truth. If Anscombe is correct in her doubt about the universalisation of the minor premise in the following moral argument:

“Promises ought to be kept”

Jack promised Jill he would pay the money back that he borrowed from her

Therefore Jack ought to pay the money back to her”

..then the above argument would not be expressing what she earlier referred to as “Practical Truth”. Anscombe continues to reflect upon Kantian theory and discusses the question of whether lying is absolutely forbidden on Kant’s theory. Should, for example, one be truthful with a murderer and tell him upon being asked where the person he is pursuing is hiding?. This example is a curious one and almost appears to be constructed for the purposes of refuting the categorical imperative. Firstly, one can wonder how one knows in this case that we are being confronted by a murderer? Secondly, why should we accept that there are only two possible choices of action in such circumstances? Would it be contrary to the categorical imperative to say nothing in response to the question or to answer in a language the murderer does not understand(asking for example why the inquirer wants the information requested). If it is argued that one ought to reveal the information because one is under threat or duress to do so, then the choice is no longer a free choice. In such circumstances, even if I reveal the information requested under duress and the murderer finds his quarry. Is a murder the inevitable result? What if the potential victim incapacitates the murderer in the ensuing struggle or even kills the murderer. Shall I be held responsible for the death that ensues? Or is it rather the case, as Kant maintains, that the cause of the evil in this imagined situation is the agent and the maxims behind his action. The belief that my providing someone with information is part of the causal network leading to the murder is a correct belief but it does not mitigate the murderers absolute responsibility for the action he wills. The form of explanation for this state of affairs does not divide the world up into causes and effects but rather seeks for a totality of conditions regulated by the principle of sufficient reason. The will is not a cause that is conceptually independent of events conceived of as “effects”.

On the accounts of both Aristotle and Kant the murderer makes his choices and ought to be held responsible for them. If I am blamed for revealing the deadly information surely the only grounds for such an accusation could be “You could have said nothing!”. Such an accusation is not either in the case of law or morality a matter of accusing me of being an accessory before the fact but is rather an accusation of a lack of prudence on my part. The principle of prudence for both Aristotle and Kant was a power that emanated from the calculating part of our minds rather than a power of categorical deliberation on the part of a will regulated by a principle of sufficient reason.

Anscombe accuses Kant of not being aware of a hylomorphic distinction that is made in the description of the action of a murder. She cites a case in which one believes one is shooting a deer that one has been hunting but in reality one shoots ones own father. She refers to two kinds of object here, the formal object of the deer and the material object of ones father. It is difficult to imagine that Kant would not have been aware of a distinction that 99 out of 100 courts of the time would have recognised and would lie behind the obvious judgement that the agent did not intend to kill his father and was therefore not guilty of murder. In such circumstances there may also be an investigation into whether the shooter took all the relevant precautions associated with the responsibilities of hunting and some other crime may well be judged to have occurred. It is important to realise that the mere accusation of the crime of “murder” does not suffice to categorically conceptualise the event described above as “Murder”. Anscombe claims that the only description that best answers the question as to what was occurring in these circumstances is “X shot his father”–this being the material object of the act. Does the verdict of morality and the courts mean nothing then? Surely after the post mortem tribunal has occurred and the verdict of “accidental death” is delivered , this is also a permissible answer to the question “What happened? If the case goes to court and the son is found not guilty of murder, surely we can say “Yes, the son shot his father, but unintentionally.” This is not to deny the validity of the third person observational judgement “He shot his father”. He did not will to do that from a first person point of view but the observational judgment is true as is the judgement “He thought he was shooting the deer he was hunting”. Anscombe admits that the deer is the “formal object”. It is not clear whether she is conscious of the hylemorphic implications of the choice of this term “formal”. Formal explanations or “causes” for Aristotle take us closer to rational essence specifying definitions than material causes or explanations: that is they take us closer to answering the question “Why did he shoot his father?”: “Because he thought he was shooting the deer he was hunting.” In this later shift we must see that involved in this movement is a move from a context of exploration/discovery to a context of explanation/justification. A further move within the context of Justification might occur if the defendant in this case claimed “I would never intentionally shoot the father that I love”. The Categorical imperative is not operating at the conceptual level of the context of exploration in which one is deciding how to conceptualise a particular action. Once the action has been conceptualised, only then can we judge as to the goodness or otherwise of the action: this is an essential condition for the attribution of responsibility which presupposes the action was blameworthy or praiseworthy.

Anscombe appears to be conflating what is prudent with what is ethical especially when she discusses the very intellectual idea of Truth we find in Hume, which she claims can be expressed as follows:

“Truth consists in either relations of ideas , as that 20 shillings=one pound or matter of fact as that I ordered potatoes, you supplied them, and you sent me a bill. So it doesnt apply to such a proposition as that I owe you such ad such a sum.”(Ethics, Politics, and Religion. P.22)

It is nevertheless possible that the above relation(expressed by the above facts) which I have established with my grocer is sufficient to constitute a promise to pay the bill. Anscombe, dos not however discuss the concept of promising but prefers to focus upon whether “brute facts” in the above quote are sufficient to justify the description “X owes Y so much money”. The discussion occurs solely in the context of a limited concept of truth as is evident from the assertion that truth does not apply to any proposition claiming that one owes someone money. She does however discuss the injustice of not paying what one owes and insists that a conceptual analysis of this situation must precede any ethical discussion–a conceptual analysis involving “philosophical psychology”. She claims that the “should” or “ought” related to ones need for potatoes are not to be construed in a moral sense. She further claims, somewhat paradoxically, that not paying what one owes has become associated with a moral sense of duty or obligation which in turn was determined by a law conception of ethics propagated by the influence of the Hebrew Torah upon Christianity.

Anscombe suggests that the concept of hamartia was used by Aristotle to refer to a tragic flaw in the heroes of Greek Tragedies. This concept of hamartia, according to Paul Ricoeur, was re-conceptualised by the Christians as “sin” which in turn became associated with the internal feeling of guilt that lies at the source of the activity of religious confession. One is guilty because one has sinned. Here we find ourselves at the end of a cycle of experience which expressed itself in Greek tragedy in the form of an objective tragic mistake(hamartia).

We have discussed several times previously the influence of the Latinisation of Greek terms in the translation process from Greek to Latin. What the Christian and Greek muthos have in common is that the term hamartia appears to be applicable in the domain of religious experience and both cultures would probably accept that the meaning of this term in a religious context is that of a rupturing of the bond between man and what he finds sacred. The Greeks refused to interiorise this objective state of affairs and preferred to exhibit the phenomenon in the spirit of aletheia(truth, unconcealment) on a public stage. For the Greeks the law that had been breached was not merely a private affair between oneself and ones God but rather something to be manifested in a public arena in a context of catharsis in which both pity and fear are encapsulated in a larger context of understanding. The Roman militaristic conception of “Law” was probably also present in the mistranslation of hamartia as “mistake” although this meaning was undoubtedly present in Greek usage prior to its philosophical/poetic transformation into a concept relevant to the ethical and religious idea of “The Good”(which has a categorical meaning not possessed by the more hypothetical meaning of “mistake”). What we witness in such a change is a transformation from something that was mythologically sacred to something that becomes philosophically “sacred” where the focus is on the good of a mans character and its relation to eudaimonia. The conception of law shifted from a divine context into a more humanistic context in which the good became embodied in great souled men such as Solon, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. All of these figures were involved in the very real and pragmatic world of the polis and its manifestly secular injustices. Solon’s laws were designed to prevent the rich from exploiting the poor and the poor from robbing the rich. Solon was convinced that both parties would benefit from obeying his laws. They definitely emerged from a context of pity and fear but transcended this context by a context of justification, a context that would prove to be critical to the survival of the polis. Yet it is only with Aristotle that this bond between man and the sacred appear to be restored via a view of the polis that was less calculative and more philosophical: a view of the great souled man who valued Philosophy, Science, and the contemplative life.

Anscombe continues her discussion in terms of a critique of the is-ought question insofar as it relates to her earlier discussion of “need”. She fixates upon the concept of “what-is- good-for” which is somewhat puzzling considering Glaucons challenge in the Republic to provide a theory of the good that is both good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences. The constellation of the focus on the facts and consequences also evokes the Humean concept of causality and its matrix of events of type cause and events of type effect: a matrix that destroys the unity of the actions involved in an ethical activity. Anscombe also specifically argues that the transition from is to ought on her account does not carry what she calls the “mesmeric force” of a verdict of a tribunal which in its turn requires the presence of an attitude toward something that resembles “the sacred”(implied by divine law). By implication, her argument involves the claim that there is no longer any respect for the law of the kind we could find during the times and eras of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. One might, of course, argue that the respect we find in all three of the above philosophers is connected to divine law through their different philosophical conceptions of the divine and this might sustain Ansombe’s objection. There is however a distinct atmosphere of secularisation in the Hylomorphic “Scientific” Philosophy of Aristotle. In Aristotle’s work we encounter God technically represented as a “Primary Form” in a context of contemplation that regards knowledge as a kind of “holy ground”. A very different conception to that superior being created by the fiery imaginations of poets and priests.

Respect for “forms” or “principles” is the focus of Kantian Enlightenment Thought. The tribunal of reason resembles the proceedings of a court of law in which divine beings are conspicuous by their absence. Anscombe misses this relation of morality into law in her reflections on Kantian moral Philosophy. Both arenas of human activity share common attitudes–respect for the law, respect for the moral law–and share common objects, e.g. respect for evidence and the due process of argumentation. Respect for the rights of both contesting parties is the political attitude that relates to both kinds of process. Confessions in such circumstances are less sensible objects of pity and fear and more rational objects of decisive evidence contributing to a correct verdict of the tribunal. The giving of evidence in court is inextricably linked to the Kantian conception of promising–“I promise to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God” but also linked to an emotional nexus connected to deus absconditus. Swearing an oath with ones hand on the Bible testifies to the symbolic presence of the divine in the tribunal. Such tribunals, however, have more in common with the secular trial of Socrates and the great-souled law makers of the polis than with the figures and processes haunting the Temples of the time.

Anscombe praises Hume for his jettisoning of the moral ought from ethical discussion on the grounds that without divine support, law does not have the required psychological effect. Aristotle is cited as an example of a Philosopher who did not appeal to any divine influence but was able nevertheless to establish the authority of his forms and principles via processes of argumentation. It can indeed also be argued that Aristotle transformed the dialogical presentation of Socratic Elenchus we encounter in the Platonic dialogues into exercises of logic requiring only very abstract tribunals of reasoning in which The Good was expressed in terms of Laws embedded in a system of ought premises. Anscombes invocation of Hume(one of “the new men” of the modern era) actually reduces the force of the meaning of the term, “law”(to bind someone), and the social bond of the law to the more popular notion of a rule which carries no force of an imperative to command obedience. Rather, the rule hypothetically “counsels” that if you wish to drive to Cambridge you ought to follow the direction of the arrow–thus leaving it up to you to change your mind and drive to Oxford instead. Aristotle would not have accepted such a utilitarian conflation of rules with laws. On his account if you do not accept the major ought premise of a moral argument you risk being regarded as irrational. He would have been dumbfounded by our modern tendency to use is-arguments( people contradict themselves in discourse) to undermine the logical force of ought arguments(One ought not to contradict oneself in ones discourse). In moral contexts virtues are related to ought premises that express principles of justice. The argument of Glaucon that laws are only obeyed because man is afraid of the consequences and that an invisible ring would justify all forms of illegal behaviour would have been viewed with contempt by Aristotle(as it was similarly viewed by both Socrates and Plato).

Kant has a similar view to Aristotle of the law-like nature of moral ought statements. He expresses this in his discussion of Promising, an account that cannot be undermined by the simplistic argument that promises as a matter of fact are not kept. A broken promise for Kant is perhaps the most important occasion for the use of the major premise or principle”Promises ought to be kept”. If confronted with the philosophical question “Why?”, the answer would contain reference to one or more of the formulations of the moral law. A promise broken in such a context of justification cannot affect or change the form or principle expressed by the true proposition “Promises ought to be kept”. On the other hand the keeping of the promise not only brings about the truth that promises are kept but also brings good into the world. These are two of the reasons why promising has been one of the building blocks of our civilisations and why we still promise to tell the truth via the oath we take in the court room. Reducing promises to the consequentialist quid pro quo world of the contract is a transactional move that neither Aristotle or Kant would have approved of. The contract at is very best has a role in the tribunal of justification as evidence that a promise was made and such evidence presupposes the philosophical meaning of the principle.

Anscombe claims that ethics must rest upon a theory of Philosophical Psychology that explains the psychological aspects of action. It is not, however clear whether she realises that such an account of ethical action is only a part of the totality of conditions Kant is in search of in the name of the logical principles of sufficient reason and noncontradiction.

We do not find any account of the binding force of the law in Anscombes theories: the law does not appear to bind agents to an action or indeed does not appear to be a bond that one is “duty-bound” to honour. Her reading of Kant in this context is problematic:

“Kant’s major influence has been that of emphasising the motive of duty…..what ought to be done or ought not to be done is somehow derivable from the categorical imperative, “Always act so that you can consistently universalise the maxim on which you act”, …..It leads to a contrast between doing something for the motive of duty and doing it with enjoyment—the more you like doing something , the less of a purely moral agent you are”(P.195)

This is a very poor interpretation of the complexity of Kant’s moral theory, which quite clearly, in the name of a summum bonum, relates the happiness of the flourishing life to the worthiness of a virtuous agent who does feel compelled by areté and phronesis to do what he ought to do(his duty). The agent does this freely as if he were a legislator in a kingdom of ends. This account accords well with the Aristotelian account. Indeed all the virtues require the use of reason in the mode of the “ought” and there is no contradiction in the phenomenon of a man gladly doing what he ought to do (neither in Aristotle nor in Kant).

In conclusion , Anscombe in many respects manifests in her writings many aspects of Aristotelian hylomorphic Philosophy and it may be that her criticisms of Kant rest upon a misunderstanding of the nature of the close relation between hylomorphic and critical philosophy. Anscombe may well be a victim of her fascination for the empiricism of Hume and as a consequence she fails to see the power of the rationalism we find in both Aristotle and Kant. Wittgenstein never produced a moral theory so we do not know whether any theory of his would have sought to emulate Anscombes desire to cleanse ethical theory of the moral “ought”. In this desire she identifies herself with all “the new men” of philosophy since Descartes.

Following these new men is tantamount to following Ariadne’s thread bak into the cave of the Minotaur where the population of the cave is divided in accordance with Arendt’s principle division into those for whom everything is possible and those for whom nothing is possible.

Introduction to Volume three of “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action.” To be Published in January 2021

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Volume three in this series focuses upon the work of Arendt, R.S. Peters, Jean Piaget, Julian Jaynes, and Jonathan Lear. Each author expresses in their work a unique relation to mainstream modernism and each also bears an interesting relation to the subterranean substrate of Classical and Enlightenment Philosophy that motivates the Philosophical form of Cosmopolitanism which we claim underlies future structural change. This philosophical form of Cosmopolitanism excludes processes of globalisation connected to militaristic , economic and scientific/technological instrumentalism. This does not, for the foreseeable future, diminish the importance of military defence of ones territory, or the just distribution of economic benefits and the just distribution of technological benefits over the whole world. Nor does it question the important role of Science, understood broadly, in the Globalisation process.

The Greek terms, areté, epistemé, diké, arché, and phronesis are the ideas the Greek Philosophers used to constitute their world-view. At the time, they thought Greece could rule the world with these ideas. Kant, systematised these ideas into an architectonic that divided the regions of the mind into three : Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. Understanding and Reason constituted the intellect of man. Understanding is organised by the principles of special logic relating to the categories of the understanding under which we subsume phenomena. Reason is organised by the principles of general logic, the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason which we use to reason about phenomena and think about noumena.

In the first volume of this work, the image of Ariadne’s thread was used to depict the cultural journey from the Platonic cave of ignorance to the Enlightened zone beneath the Platonic sun that symbolises the form of the Good. Two thousand five hundred years after this “Golden Age”, we still cannot claim that we have left the realm of our cave of ignorance, indeed the task of slaying the Minotaur must still be on our mind. The second volume of this work invoked the Roman image of two-faced, four eyed Janus, a symbol for the anxiety of man if there ever was one. Four eyes are better than two in the darkness if one is searching for the Minotaur but this image does rather suggest that it is we who are being transformed into the monster we are searching for. Janus stood guard at the entrance to the city of Rome waiting anxiously for the troops to return from battle, return from the arena of violence and death, ruin and destruction.

We argued that Socrates, in the eyes of the Greek Philosophers, replaced Achilles, the hero of the Iliad. Socrates was of course a new kind of hero with a new agenda. Janus, possessed no memory of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, and no understanding of arché, epistemé, diké or phronesis. Nothing of the spirit of Eros can be found in relation to this dark being. Janus guarded the territory of tyrants who succeeded one another under his nervous gaze: born in the darkness of the times, thriving in the darkness of our times, and the looking nervously forward to the times to come. The image is that of a split psuche. A charitable interpretation of this image(which I provided in volume two) might suggest he could be regarded as an image or God of History. This interpretation construes one pair of eyes turned to the past and one pair of eyes turned to the future. Could we imagine what the content of the visual field of the future might be ? Janus was in the process of transformation into the Leviathan, a monstrous form of psuche, whose gaze into the future will be at the battlefields of the future, battlefields over which monstrous machines and weapons of destruction will roam in a landscape of almost insignificant strewn bodies. From the machines high up in the sky, the gaze might have picked out the the falling atomic bomb on its way to vapourizing innocent civilians, blowing them to pieces. After the technological devastation of the Juggernaut of war there really is not much left to do except leave such an earth and colonise the planets(The dream of Cecil Rhodes). Had Cecil Rhodes been born in Kantian times he might well have been subjected to the nightmare of Carazan, terrified by his journey(a punishment), flying endlessly through space far away from all human presence and all sources of light. Upon returning to a waking state on earth, Carazan embraces the dignity and value of his fellow man in a way he had not done before. Rhodes was never to be enlightened in this way.

The influence of the “New Men”, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, and Adams was only temporarily neutralised by the Enlightenment and the Philosophy of Kant. Hegel in his turn aimed to turn the Philosophy of Kant, upside down. In so doing he might well have contributed to the inversion of our value systems that helped to create the political phenomena of anti-Semiticism, imperialism and totalitarianism. The Philosophy of Hegel and Marx managed to mobilise the masses with its historical and economic “laws”, with the assistance of the laws of Science(Darwin). Mass movements were mobilised and the technological progress of science managed to create a war machine, a juggernaut, seeking to destroy everything in its path in accordance with the “Spirit” of the “new men” characterised by Arendt as , “Everything is possible”. This “Spirit”, of course, lay behind the creation and use of the atomic bomb, and the landing of men on the moon. The “movement” of Aristotelian and Kantian ideas and activities in such an environment became insignificant and irrelevant. In a world turned upside down it must have seemed, indeed, as if Aristotelian and Kantian ideas were “upside down”. The lever used to invert the world of values began with contempt for the laws of civilisation, laws backed by areté, diké, epistemé arché, and phronesis. The process continues by contempt for all forms of abstract metaphysical (Kantian) arguments.

Janus and the Leviathan are indeed appropriate images to oversee our modern mechanical wasteland. With the world turned upside down there is no significant difference between the flourishing life that was the goal of Classical and Enlightenment Philosophy and the wasteland of modern war, a wasteland which remarkably resembles the surface of the moon. “Ruin and destruction” is, for the new men, merely a factual consequence of warfare, perhaps even a necessary consequence. The question of whether this is a good state of affairs is not a central concern. War is another, fact, another state of affairs, caused by whatever causes it, namely, another fact or state of affairs. Memory of the oracles prophecy has been lost in this world that is merely the totality of facts. All reference to Gods, oracles, and Philosophy are otiose in such situations.

Freud in his reflections on Civilisations and their Discontents saw what was coming with his one pair of eagle eyes. He saw Eros and Thanatos in mortal combat for the fate of civilisation(Ananke). He must be forgiven for his sceptical question relating to whether all the work of civilisation was worth the effort. This was 1929. Anti-Semiticism, increasing numbers of stateless people, and Totalitarianism were gathering momentum in the spirit of “Everything is possible”. Freud’s Kantian Psychology was , of course, fighting on the side of Eros, areté, epistemé, diké, arché, and phronesis. Freud with his eagle eyes may even have imagined another World War, having witnessed the First and its level of mechanisation.

For Aristotle and Kant, the city was not an artifactual entity, but rather an organic entity, an actualisation of the activity of psuche(Eros). The increasing level of mechanisation evoked the Freudian image of Thanatos. The military Juggernaut of the second world war did not become more human merely because human decisions and human aggression lay behind the fuelling of the machinery of war. The Juggernaut is not a life form but is nevertheless a mechanical.

Arendt, the pragmatic existentialist, in response to the above scenario, believes that if there is one fundamental duty, it is that humans forgive humans. This, she argues, is the only human “action” that can reverse the momentum of a catastrophic chain of consequences, leading to ruin and destruction. This together with the power of mutual contracts and promises that emerge from the public space of the agora is Arendt’s answer to the phenomena of the trial of Eichmann and presumably also to both the decision behind the action and the act of the dropping of atomic bombs on civilian populations.

The images of a solipsistic wanderer walking on the surface of the moon or the wasteland of the scene of a battle indicates that with the collapse of De Civitate Dei and the loss of interest in establishing a new “earthly city”, (De Civitate Terrana), the potential for tranquillity to reign in the soul lies in the far distant future.

The spirit of the Hanseatic League is expressed thus in the Biblical Psalms:

“they that go down to the ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep(Psalms 107 -23-4).

…has been lost. Apollo has become a Juggernaut that lands on the moon in the spirit of “Everything is possible”, with the aid of mathematics and pragmatic instrumentalism. The Leviathan of the sea has become the machine flying through space like Carazan. This is the spirit of relativism in which thesis and antithesis give rise to continuous “reversals” without any synthetic resolution in the breeding ground of Juggernauts.

For some time Arendt considered a retreat into the dialectical materialism of Marx. She finally conceded that the Marxist position denied the validity of the founding concepts of politics, namely, justice and freedom. This is a fortunate “reversal” because if ever there was an image of society as a great machine run by the “means of production” it is Marxism. Given this reversal one could be forgiven for expecting a more sympathetic relation to Kantian Critical Philosophy. There was a discussion of Kantian Political Philosophy but no direct engagement with Kantian Transcendental and Metaphysical Philosophy. For Arendt this aspect of Kant’s Philosophy was located in a theoretical domain which signified for her a withdrawal from the concerns of everyday life, e.g. bios politikos, and the vita activa.

It was in fact Arendt who had first provided us with the image of the first manifestations of the spirit of the Juggernaut in her characterisation of the Roman Empire as a military Empire guarded by the monster-god Janus. In this context , areté and techné combined in the fighting of the next battle and securing for the Emperor, the tyrant in power, the title of “Emperor of the World”. The Romans, we argued in previous volumes, Romanised Greek Culture and Latinised the Greek Language to the point that the Greek heritage as a whole was marginalised in History. Later, Hegel, the architect of the upside down world sees in Napoleon a “World Spirit”, willing his way to the World Empire and preparing the field of the world for the entrance of the Juggernaut. It is in such key historical moments that the thinking ego is usurped by the willing ego for whom “Everything is possible”. In such contexts appeals to the gods or God seem almost ridiculous. Consider the fact that the anxiety of Janus in relation to the mourning of Deus absconditis gave way to the extraordinary modernist claim that “God is dead”.

R.S.Peters’ work is a testament to the influence of the Wittgensteinian project of solving philosophical problems by attending to the uses of language. In addition to this focus, however, we can encounter in the work of Peters(especially the later work) the use of elenchus and the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Peters, contributed to bringing about a “clearing” in the philosophical undergrowth: undergrowth created by the prevailing emphases upon logical atomism, logical positivism, pragmatism etc. This clearing, we have agued provided the opportunity for the replanting of the seeds of Classical Greek and enlightenment Rationalism. There is also a clear case for arguing that Peters contributed to the clearing of the undergrowth created by the “new men” of Philosophy, and Hegel.

The work, “Social Principles of the Democratic State” is an interesting example of the early work of Peters, arguing for a view of society based on the use of social and political terms. Aristotle is quoted on page 13:

“Man, said Aristotle, is a political animal. He lives in a society and is therefore able to survive, to talk, and to develop a culture.”

This reflects Aristotle’s position very well, but incredibly it is questioned by Benn and Peters on the ground of “there is no such thing as society”. Peters claims that this is the case because it is not possible to pick out anything that is “extended with recognisable boundaries”. We can only, the authors argue, refer to the pattern of activities which people are engaging in. This is a standard Aristotelian categorial distinction between a substance and other categories. The distinction is certainly a reminder that a society is not in any sense artifactual with parts that are embedded in other parts. Benn and Peters continue however, to maintain that society is partly a “construction” and it is not at all clear that this point can be defended on Aristotelian grounds. That is, it is not clear how “constructive” this discussion is given the fact that any such pattern of activities certainly occurs within the context of a village or a city for Aristotle. If we situate the pattern of activities in the village, it is difficult not to claim that the village is situated within the city. The individuals living in the village, therefore are also living within the city. The problem with the term “construction” is that it is construed by Kantian Critical Philosophy as part of the process of concept formation. In this process there can be no objection to saying that when intuitions are combined and differentiated this can be referred to as a process of construction. The problem with the account we are given by Benn and Peters, is that it comes with a disavowal of the ideas of universality and objectivity. Benn and Peters specifically claim that these terms are not applicable to any human activity involving human desire and human decision. So, in spite of the fact that this work is entitled “Social Principles” there are no universal objective principles governing the patterns of activity that constitute society. This was a common relativistic position adopted by positivists, atomists, and pragmatists of the period. Insofar as Benn and Peters is concerned, this position can be traced to Karl Popper’s Philosophy. For Popper, the laws governing society were constructed by human desire and human decision and were not therefore falsifiable in the same way in which natural laws governing natural phenomena were.

Reference is also made to Piaget in this work and an equivalence is drawn between what Piaget calls the transcendental stage of moral development and the submission and obedience demanded of the child. The use of the term “transcendental” is a very different use(in the spirit of positivism) to the use of the term we can find in the work of Kant. In Kant’s theoretical writings the term carries the implications of being a form of knowledge independent of experience. Kant regards transcendental knowledge as a part of the context of explanation/justification. Transcendental knowledge could be used for example to explain or justify how concepts are “constructed” from patterns of intuitions. Popper was opposed to this kind of knowledge and all the metaphysical discussion surrounding it, preferring instead to focus on the context of exploration/discovery and the human activities of observation and experimentation. These activities were guided by an empirical and positivistic approach to epistemology. For Popper, trial solutions to empirical problems are undoubtedly inductive rather than deductive, and these solutions were only conceptual to the extent that any such activity involved in constructing a concept needs to be guided by organised forms of human desire and human decision that in turn are dedicated to constructing “models” to explain the behaviour of phenomena. There is no finality in the construction of these “models” if one uses Popper’s formula: “Problem 1-trail solution-error elimination–Problem 2”. This formula clearly shows the hypothetical nature of the model “constructed”. There is no final explanation to refer to in the tribunal of justification. Popper would have been familiar with Wittgenstein’s “final justification”, namely, “This what we do”–the “we” referring to the hurly burly activity of man “in” society.

Piaget’s stage theory is obviously related to hylomorphic theory and shares with Freud a developmental commitment. The focus of Piaget’s cognitive theory is however narrower than Freud’s theory, focusing as it does on intelligence and intelligent “operations”. Freud’s theory is wider in scope, being a personality theory that is Kantian to its core, but at the same time incorporating the material and efficient conditions of Aristotle’s theory of change in the form of the reflections of the brain researcher Hughlings Jackson. Piaget too, focuses on an actualisation process of maturation, but one that is narrower in scope. He reflects upon the process of concept construction in terms of the processes of assimilation and accommodation. The more complex process of relating concepts to each other in judgements is not directly addressed but is construed in terms of the relation of variables to each other in judgements involving conservation or reversal. The discussion appears to be unnecessarily mathematical. We know that insofar as the construction of judgements is concerned for Kant, conceptual relations are construed in non mathematical, categorial terms.

Poppers formula for the construction of hypothetical models referred to above is clearly a method designed to “discover” mistakes. It is therefore at best an instrumental tool with negative intent. Such tools do exist in the context of exploration/discovery but they do not meet the Aristotelian criteria for “principles”.

Peters, in his later work, e.g. “The Concept of Motivation” begins his turn away from a reliance upon scientific methodology but he retains a certain fondness for justification in instrumental terms, especially when he makes the following claim:

“Man is a rule following animal”(P.5)

Peters elaborates upon this essence specifying definition by claiming that society is like ” a chess player writ large”. What we are seeing in this image is a similar “turn” from Science toward Social Science and Anthropology: a turn similar to that which we encountered in Wittgenstein’s development as a Philosopher. There are, however, continued unfortunate relativistic references to Poppers idea of “the logic of the situation”. Both situational ethics and transactional ethics owe much to this reduction of categorial to hypothetical judgements. One can, of course, desire to follow a rule or make a decision to follow a rule, and this rule may constitute a “game”, whether it be a game of chess or a language-games. There is, however, no ethical or moral necessity to embrace ethical rules without a necessary reference to a tribunal of explanation/justification that is categorial.

It was in the post-war environment that the Princetown scholar Julian Jaynes emerged from the unlikely arena of brain research to startle the academic Community with his theory of the Origin of Consciousness. He too, in the spirit of the times, focussed upon Language, and he too, like Peters, felt the pull of the work of Aristotle:

The background of this concern with motion was complex, In the Aristotelian heritage motion was of three kinds: change in quantity, change in quality, and change in spatial locality. While the sixteenth century was beginning to use the word only in the third sense as we do today, the mysterious aura of its other two meanings hang about like ghosts into the next century.”(“Animate Motion in the 17th century”–The Julian Jaynes Collection P.69)

The “New Men” we maintained, launched the modern Juggernaut beneath the nervous gaze of Janus. Jaynes is to be congratulated for his acuity and historical sensitiveness to seemingly innocuous changes in the way we think. Jaynes brings to psychological investigations into origins the same kind of insight that Arendt used in her study on the Origins of Totalitarianism. He acknowledges that insofar as change is concerned, the ghosts in the machine have been exorcised. Jaynes conducts his investigations in a context in which the modern Juggernaut has literally flattened the philosophical landscape. He points to Descartes’ penchant for viewing the animated statues in the Royal Gardens of Paris and he also gives us an account of Cartesian amusement at the cries of pain of animals upon being dissected without anaesthetic. Descartes as we know was a military man and the above incident reminds us of a Hobbesian reflection upon life as involving but “a motion of limbs”. The animal cries were mere vibrations in the air and it was a vibration of their bodies that caused this. Both Descartes and Hobbes sought to reduce the Greek concept of life(psuche) to mechanical movement. It was Hobbes, we recall, who brought the Leviathan to life, a monster for whom the words of the law, or of language, would be mere sounds like the crashing of waves upon a beach. Jaynes points out that neither monsters nor machines are language users and as a consequence, cannot possess consciousness. Jaynes’ theory of Consciousness has hylomorphic characteristics although it has to be said that Jaynes’ theory is not committed to the rationalism of Aristotle. Indeed , it is not difficult to imagine Jaynes producing his own essence specifying definition of being human, e.g. “self conscious animal capable of discourse”. For Jaynes, the primary organising factor of language is the “metaphorising process”: a process in which we encounter what he calls an analogue “I” narratising in a mind space that is created by this metaphorising process.

Jaynes also discusses the “Origins of Civilisation” in stark Darwinian terms but supporting his account with systematic references to archeological and anthropological findings. The transition from the primitive group of 40 individuals to larger social entities is obviously a significant change as is the sudden explosion of the diversity of tools, weapons and artifacts, ca 40,000 BC. In connection with these changes Jaynes postulates a similar radical shift in the function of Language: he relates this ultimately to an increase in size of the frontal lobes of the brain.

What we are subjected to are excellent accounts of the material and efficient conditions involved in the origins of civilisation. Insofar as the importance of language in these accounts is concerned we ought to recall the words of Kant in his “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”. Kant claims prophetically that even if as a community we share a common language, we can be as distant from each other as heaven and earth in the use of reason or rationality. Nevertheless, Jaynes’ account of the evolution of Language is the work of a master. The process moves from expressive modifiers, to life nouns, to peoples names, and finally to the written texts of Homer and the Bible. Jaynes’ analysis of the dream of Agamemnon in the Iliad is an exciting application of his “grand theory”. The evolution of Consciousness around 1200 BC in Greece and Egypt emerged from a matrix of a bicameral form of brain functioning. In this phase of transition Jaynes suggests a retreat in the importance of the voices of the Gods. It is Consciousness that begins at this point in history to take control of our lives. This shift is also recorded in the books of the Bible. Amos is a bicameral man controlled by his voices in times of stress. By the time we get to Ecclesiastes, life has become a more reflective conscious affair involving the collection of ones thoughts and calm judgements relating to a time for every purpose under heaven. Jaynes also refers to images of empty thrones and a long period of mourning for Deus Absconditis. The political effects of this new form of conscious functioning are also apparent in the new forms of government that were emerging during these times. It is, however, only as late as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle that these new political forms are classified in terms of the idea of the Good. These classifications were embedded in a theory that was related to areté, diké, arché, and phronesis. Given the fact that Jaynes was a brain researcher, it is also interesting to note that at least two Nobel prize winners in the field of brain research have nothing to say which could be construed as contradicting the theories of Jaynes.

Jonathan Lear, the Cambridge scholar, characterises the Rationalism of Aristotle in terms of a “desire to understand”. Yet we do not find Lear assenting to any of the Aristotelian categories of existence or assenting to the principles of Aristotelian logic. Given the intimate connection that exists between Aristotelian categories of existence and Kantian categories of Judgement, one also could be forgiven for expecting some form of comment upon the Kantian form of rationalism, especially considering the fact that both Aristotle and Kant share a formidable commitment to the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason .

Lear claims that Psychology “seems to have gone missing” but his account of the “logos of the psyche” perhaps partially explains this state of affairs in that Lear celebrates the so-called “concretisation” of the above categories and principles. This is a curious Hegelian claim, given the fact that Lear has in fact written about both Aristotle and Freud. On the face of it, were it not for the Hegelian spirit, this is an exciting combination for those commentators that believe Freud to be both a hylomorphic and Kantian Psychologist. The lack of commitment to rationalism, however, quickly extinguishes any form of excitement. It ought to remembered in the context of this discussion, that both Aristotle and Kant synthesised previous forms of rationalism and empiricism in ways that Hegel did not understand. Aristotle and Kant were also formidable contributors to the Philosophy of Science. The basic argument Lear uses to combat rationalism is a form of the naturalistic fallacy. He appeals to the fact that men think and act irrationally and ignores the norms and principles that govern thought and action. Both Aristotle and Kant noted in this regard in relation to the principle of noncontradiction, that people in fact contradict themselves but this in itself is not an argument against the claim that they ought not to contradict themselves. Similarly, in the sphere of action, the law against murder is not overturned just because of the fact that people murder each other. The law governs the action, contrary actions do not determine the cognitive status of the law. The law, in other words, is normative. The problem with Lear’s account is that it does not understand the reach of the principle of noncontradiction: his account does not, that is, understand the metaphysical qualities of the principle that enable it to show us the essences of things in themselves.

The focus, as we maintained earlier, in Lear’s work is more on desire than on understanding. In the case of the work of Freud this results in an interpretation that ignores its hylomorphic and critical aspects. It may be true, as Lear postulates, that Freud is not strictly speaking, a Philosopher, but he omits in the context of this discussion, to acknowledge Freud’s claim that he was in fact a Kantian Psychologist.

In view of the times we live in, we feel the need to add a post script about the role of Science, which we have criticised as being partly responsible for the marginalisation of the two driving forces of Cosmopolitanism, namely Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy. It is not Science as conceived by Aristotle and Kant that is being criticised, but rather the modern dualistic and materialistic/technological variations of Natural Science. Science in general, for both Aristotle and Kant, includes both the practical and the productive sciences. An understanding of “the broad structure of reality”, to use Lear’s term requires an understanding of all categories and forms of Science. What we have claimed in our criticisms of Science is that the narrower modern conception has marginalised the broader understanding we had of the area. Psychology has gone missing, as Lear put the matter, exactly because it does not share this broader view of Science. It is ironic to point out in this context that it is in fact the Psychology of Freud of all the Psychologists that best exemplifies this broader view. Add to this the fact that it is Freud who has been most maligned in the name of this narrower positivistic/atomistic view of science. Recall it was Freud who conceived of the Juggernaut of war under the symbol of Thanatos, as part of his analysis of our modern Janus-syndrome.

In volume four we take up Stanley Cavell’s Aesthetic view of Modern Art and also his claim that Film views the world via an automated process that suggests the eyes of God. It is interesting to note here that if God is implied in this automatic process of viewing the world at least he does not , this time round, risk the fate of death. Machines are not alive, they are not even artificially alive, lacking as they do the quality of sentience and consciousness. Volume four will take us into the territory of serious commentators upon Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy, commentators who share a desire for a broader understanding of the structure of reality. Aesthetics, Philosophical Psychology and Consciousness will be elaborated upon as part of an account that embodies the rationalistic principles of Philosophy.

The World Explored, the World Suffered: A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action(Volume one–Dutch Translation

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A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action Vol 3: Critique of Cavell ‘s Hegelian transactionalism

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Cavell is one of the more serious critics of modernism in Art but his reluctance to engage with ethical universalism means that even his criticism is confined firstly, to the relation to history involved in the aesthetic situation, and secondly to the transaction between modern philosophy and traditional philosophy. His arguments in this context are dialectical:

“The essential fact of (what I refer to as) the modern lies in the relation between the present practice of an enterprise and the history of that enterprise, in the fact that this relation has become problematic. Innovation in Philosophy has characteristically gone together with a repudiation –a specifically cast repudiation– of most of the history of the subject.”( XIX)(Cavell S., Must We Mean What We Say?” Cambridge, CUP, 1969)

Puzzlingly, Cavell then argues that Wittgenstein is not a modern Philosophy:

“But in the later Wittgenstein( and I would now add in Heidegger’s Being and Time). The repudiation of the past has a transformed significance as though containing the consciousness that history will not go away except through the perfect acknowledgement of it, and that ones own practice and ambition can be identified only against the continuous experience of the past”(XIX)

It is surprising, in the light of the above, that both Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics are not by any means perfectly acknowledged in Cavell’s own account. He curiously places Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein in the same category of thinkers. He also places Dialectical Spiritualism(Hegel) Existential Phenomenology(Heidegger) and the Linguistic Philosophy of Wittgenstein in the same category as Kantian Critical Philosophy. This is, to say the very least, historically and philosophically problematic.

Cavell refers to Wittgenstein’s claim that the traditional epistemological approach in Philosophy bewitches the intellect with its uncritical use of language: words, Wittgenstein claims, need to be brought back to their everyday use, they need to be brought “home”. Kant, Hegel and Heidegger were all Professors in German Universities, and Wiittgenstein was Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge at a time when it was felt that these institutions were drifting away from the concerns of everyday life. These institutions in themselves also constituted a zone of conflict between the secular forces of cosmopolitanism, and the traditional defenders of the faith. Kant, we should recall was ordered by the Emperor not to write on Religious matters. Ever since the closure of the Philosophical schools in the 6th century AD, Universities had inherited the hopes of the Aristotelians and Society, for both defending the system of existing values and advancing knowledge in all the subject areas of the sciences. It was left to Kant to become the philosopher and the “force” that best fulfilled these hopes. Indeed, his fourth question “What can we hope for?” was a question which was asked in awe and wonder and questioned mans moral nature, as well as at his theoretical accomplishments. Unfortunately Hegel, in his own words, turned Kant and consequently this hope upside down, partly by challenging the formal principles of rationality that echoed the Aristotelian heritage: a heritage that the University-system failed to manage consistently. Hegel, when viewed from an Aristotelian and Kantian perspective, continued the Modernist movement begun by Descartes and Hobbes Both of these philosophers, (via the ancient positions of materialism and dualism), sought to deny the historical value of Aristotelian Metaphysics (First Principles). This was, to say the very least, a surprising historical development given the fact that it was Aristotle’s work that first dealt decisive philosophical blows to both these positions. Given the range of his writings, Aristotle, of course was not right about everything he reflected upon, but his hylomorphic metaphysics still contains the major decisive arguments against these positions. Recall that he founded the disciplines of Biology and Logic. Darwin in his writings felt compelled to acknowledged the achievements of Aristotle. Aristotle’s work also represented one of the first methodological approaches to psuche: a form of investigation that firstly, included dissection of dead animals in order to examine organic and tissue structure and secondly, longitudinal observations of the behaviour of these organisms in their natural habitats. Despite many claims to the contrary, Aristotle’s work in Logic has not been surpassed by modern developments in logic some of which elaborate upon Aristotles work in significant respects and some of which fall well outside Aristotle’s conception of Logic. Kant and Frege’s work fall into the former category and the work of the early Wittgenstein and Russell, the latter category(and are therefore part of the modern epistemological project). Neither Kant nor Frege’s “Logic” overwhelmed the founders principles and rules.

In volume one of this work we discussed the Gestalt of the Romans, the god of War, Janus with his four eyes and two faces: we saw in this figure a symbol of anxiety portending the times to come. In volume two we fixated instead upon the image of Ariadne’s thread leading us out of the cave of our ignorance.

The hope embodied in the institution of the university is, according to the 4 volumes of this work, that of  attempting to manage  the journey of the thread of  philosophical tradition running from Socrates, Plato ,  Aristotle, Kant and possibly Wittgenstein into the future. The message of hope is the message of rationalism: a message that refuses to advance the causes of Hegel’s dialectical spiritualism, the Existential/Phenomenological denial of rationalism, the dialectical materialism of Science and Modern Economic Theory, Transactional Ethics : all of which share a project so anxious to deny rationalist metaphysics.

If Kant is correct, the thread of continuous tradition may have a one hundred thousand year journey ahead of it, and this, of course, may be a source of discontent for those “new men” who impatiently wish to leave the earth and colonise the planets of the universe. For the rest of us who are willing to undertake this Kantian journey, distractions are superfluous. On such a journey there will be change—modifications of hylomorphic and critical theory. This change in turn, will be in some respects much less dramatic than that of colonising the planets. On this journey the practice of abandoning an entire theory  because there is a mistaken statement or assumption, is a modern  practice which denies the value of thought and serious philosophising. The declared aim of dramatically turning another thinkers thought “upside down”(Hegel) is a declaration filled with a modern form of hubris: This practice has resulted in the inversion of  the values of morality. The beginning of the “new generation of men” with Descartes and Hobbes were not yet emboldened to such an extent and  these thinkers contented themselves with relatively innocuous attempted criticisms of Aristotle. Descartes and Hobbes were content to lay the foundations for modernism.

Cavell in his reasoning about modern phenomena uses his dialectical approach to problem solving in his transactional approach to Philosophical Psychology and Ethics. The question that needs to raised in the light of the above is whether the World of the Arts was also turned upside down by the activity of the “new men” of modern art. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, published in the 1920’s was a typical attempt at a final solution to all the problems in Philosophy. It is not a well known fact that he attended for a short time the same gymnasium as another final solution propagandist, namely Hitler, who believed he had found a final solution to what he called “The Jewish Problem”, until he was forced to find a final solution to the problems of his own life, namely suicide. Wittgenstein, initially one of the “new men” of the Philosophical world,  provides his final solution with the publication of the Tractatus, and then promptly leaves the university world for the  profession of teaching. After a period in his life that he did not feel was particularly successful and in which he was finally convinced that his earlier conception of philosophy had several serious flaws, he returned to University in an attempt , as Cavell puts it, to acknowledge history. At the  point in time when he wrote the Tractatus, Wittgenstein. Like Descartes and Hobbes, was not well read in the History of Philosophy.  The Wittgenstein family were amongst the richest families in Europe and upon inheriting his share of this financial empire, Ludvig gave his money away thus distancing himself from the “new men” of the economic and political arenas of the time ( e.g. Cecil Rhodes, who probably was never plagued by the kind of dream that Carazan of the Kantian era was forced to experience).

Language is a medium in which firstly, pictures of states of affairs are presented and secondly, judgements composed  of concepts and categories are constructed and presented as the work of knowledge or reason. The importance of this medium in Philosophy depends upon the extent to which Frege was correct in his claiming  the pictorial aspect of the medium to be childish and unable to teach us anything about logic. Logic does, however use Language  in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason .

In an essay entitled “Must we mean  what we say?” Cavell explores the  work of ordinary language philosophers and their focus upon the way in which language  is used in everyday life. Ryle and Austin are discussed, and Cavell refers to the “explanation” of voluntary action:

“X(an action) is voluntary only in circumstances where one is suspicious about the performance of the action”

This is undeniably true in everyday circumstances. Saying, however, that in general a class of actions is voluntary if it meets this condition, is permissible, but we ought to note that this is an example of theoretical reasoning about a practical action, and for Aristotle all practical activities aim at the good. In practical explanations of action there is knowledge that what one is doing cannot be compelled by a cause outside ones control. The complaint one often hears about such action qualifications, is that they formalistically abstract from the particular circumstances of the action. This is not the case with the logical reasoning of the syllogism. The major premise may well abstract from particulars but it is the task of the minor premise to connect to the particulars of the circumstances e.g.

Taking someones property without their knowledge or consent is stealing

P is the property of NN

In Aristotle, as we have pointed out both propositions must be known and actively dispose the agent in the action-situation or action circumstances toward performing the action. This is necessary if one is to draw the conclusion that taking P is an act of stealing. If the agent does not know both of these propositions, then in all likelihood the agent may not be stealing if he thought he had the owners consent or alternatively did not know that P was his property. Also, if an agent removed one of your donkeys from his field to send to the slaughterhouse, believing it to be his, he could be accused of negligence (–because he did not go closer to make sure) but perhaps not of stealing.

The major premise:

All ethical action is voluntary

is a well formed proposition. So, when I say the above in support of the Aristotelian definition of what is ethical and what is voluntary, can I mean what I say? Certainly, this is what Kant meant to say. For both philosophers, logical relations existed between the above major premise and the minor premise of Jack promising Jill to pay the money back he borrowed from her. Cavell’s discussion focussed upon the relation between the circumstances in which we say something and the content of what we say. He pointed out that this cannot be a logical or a necessary relation. “Circumstance” is defined by the OED as follows:

” a fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or an action.”

This suggests that if we are dealing with a logical condition, the relation to what we say must be logical. Similarly, if a fact, e.g. “All men are mortal”, is connected to the event of the death of Hitler, does not a statement formulating this in propositional terms, e.g. “Hitler is mortal” follow logically and necessarily from “All men are mortal “,and “Hitler is a man”,(he is surely only metaphorically a monster –he would not for example, meet the hylomorphic criteria for a monster, namely possessing different organs and a different shape)?

Cavell also discusses the pragmatic implications of an action that might possibly follow from a claim of reasoning that results in the performance of a voluntary action. It is not certain, however, that this idea of a pragmatic implication is helpful in characterising the reasoning process involved. The relation between an action that I ought to do and the reasoned conclusion that I ought to do the particular action in question, is surely something I mean to do, and it is so because I must mean what I say if my knowledge is expressed in the major and minor premisses of my reasoning about that action. Cavell agrees with this, but on the curious condition that the ought expressed in the judgements discussed are not merely expressions of private emotion or an emotional meaning(whatever that might be).

Cavell further discusses S (“When we ask whether an action is voluntary we imply that the action is fishy”). This must be a particular judgement because we are talking about a particular action, and Cavell sees no reason not to classify such a judgement in terms of the Kantian synthetic a priori. It is difficult, however, to see how pragmatic implications or emotional meanings could enter into such a discussion except in terms of causality which is a determining mechanism and not a spontaneous and free choice of an acting self. Furthermore a synthetic a priori judgement works for any particular event but it is necessary to point out that we cannot move from reasoning about a particular action to the generalisation that all actions are voluntary. There might, however, be a synthetic a priori judgement to the effect that “all ethical actions are voluntary”. Kant refers to such actions as deeds. Kant would, however, agree that a will driven by instrumental actions in accordance with an instrumental good will suffice to classify instrumental actions too, as voluntary. Whether this will suffice to regard all instrumental actions as ethical is more doubtful considering the second formulation of the categorical imperative in which we are specifically challenged not to treat persons as means to ends but only as ends in themselves.

The necessity of S, Cavell argues, resides in the fact that it is not clear what would count as a disproof of S: the question of empirical evidence for S appears to be irrelevant to its meaning. Cavell then arrives at the following position:

“There is no way to classify such statements, we do not know what they are”(P.16)

Or alternatively there is no desire on the part of Cavell to explore the possibility of all actions being voluntary. This would place him in a rationalistic position he does not wish to defend. Oliver Wendel Holmes in his work on “Common Law” (1881) considered whether there is any such thing as a voluntary act insofar as the law was concerned. His argument was based on the very astute Kantian sounding claim that “A physical movement of the muscles must be willed”, if an action is to occur. On this argument the law claims that mere states that may even be the product of illegal acts , e.g. being a drug addict because of illegal acts of taking drugs are not subject to the reach of the law. Being a drug addict is not in itself illegal, partly because there is no one identifiable act of will associated with being a drug addict and partly because in the eyes of the law one cannot take ones humanity away by any act other than an act of suicide which removes life altogether. Becoming a drug addict for Kant is a matter of the will being corrupted by ones passions: one does not voluntarily become a drug addict except perhaps as a means of committing suicide, using ones life as a means instrumentally to the taking of ones life.

It comes, therefore, as something of a surprise that the law embraces rationalistic and metaphysical accounts of action in demanding that criminal liability is connected to a voluntary act principle, namely:

“There can be no actus reus (and thus no criminal liability) unless the defendant performed a voluntary action” ( https://law.jrank.org/pages462/Actus-Reus-voluntary-act-principle.httml)

The law recognises that voluntary acts can be both conscious and habitual. In the above article we find the use of the word “metaphysical”. The discussion is indeed Kantian and rational. Cavell, in all likelihood. would reject both the metaphysical and rational aspects of the above discussion of action. But it may well be that it is this type of discussion alone that is capable of resolving the issues of the relation of necessary judgements to particular actions or classes of actions, Synthetic a priori judgements insofar as Kant is concerned are an important part of the science of metaphysics which is not as yet a complete science but nevertheless these judgements demonstrate the important cognitive function of reason in our thinking and in our lives.

The synthetic aspect of synthetic a priori judgements requires a relation to the world which Cavell discusses in terms of the relation of Language to the world. Cavell claims that in learning what a word means, we are also learning what the thing is that we are applying the word to. He refers to the activity of looking up the meaning of the word umiak(a type of canoe) in the dictionary. Dictionary meanings tend to give us both definitions of the things concerned plus examples of how to use the word. He claims correctly, that we bring both knowledge of the world and knowledge of grammar to the dictionary. This is part of his argument designed to demonstrate that the ordinary usage of the term suggested by the definition is normative. Normative statements also describe actions, Cavell claims(P.22). What follows upon this is not a metaphysical discussion of action, but rather a phenomenological investigation into S and the most characteristic feature of action, namely, that it can go wrong. It is further claimed that if someone tells us that we ought to do something ,they are, in so doing, presupposing the existence of a norm but it is doubtful whether he means the norm of the voluntary act principle suggested earlier. This action of telling someone something obviously of itself does not constitute the norm which is clearly a metaphysical issue for a Philosopher. It is unclear from the above discussion exactly what mistake Cavell is referring to, but he does maintain that the mistake is caused by a “disastrous conception of action”(P.24). The voluntary act principle discussed above is central to both Aristotelian and Kantian thinking in this area but no arguments have been presented against such a principle: no mention is made of the kind of mistake it, and principles like it are making. Cavell does in fact refer to Kant’s Categorical Imperative and claims that although this appears to us in the form of an imperative it really has the form of what he refers to as a “Categorical Declarative”(a description rule)(P.25). He poses the question “But suppose I do not want to be moral” and makes the naturalistic error of claiming that this is an argument for the principle being unable to physically guarantee moral action. For Aristotle we recall, if the ought premises are possessed and active, it follows that we ought to do the action, whether we actually do the action, is another issue given the obvious fact that there can always be a temporal gap between the conclusion of my reasoning and the action. I might get hit by a bolt of lightning externally or a chemical or emotional storm from within. Causation can obviously cast a shadow between the will and the deed.

Cavell wishes to relate norms to rules. This is problematic because the former are more like principles. A rule, Cavell argues, guides one to do something, but a principle guides us to do something well. There is no indication of this distinction in Aristotle, Kant or the discussion of the voluntary act principle. The source of this curious discussion may lay in Cavell’s desire to connect ethics to games like the game of chess, where there are indeed rules of the game and strategies for doing well in the game. A game is a transactional activity requiring instrumental strategies of many different kinds if one desires to win over ones opponent. The whole activity reeks of dialectical logic and this form of reasoning is also present in the economically motivated models that are operating in the dilemma presented to “The Prisoner” and his self interested calculations: calculations that have nothing to do with the kind of contemplation required in moral reasoning. There is no obligation to play chess, and no duty to play it well. Here it is certainly apt to pose the question “But what if I do not want to play?” There is no possible world in which not wanting to play a game of chess constitutes a moral mistake. Rejecting the invitation to play does not in any way compromise the rationality of my judgement, or reflect upon my dignity as a person. Even if I decide to play and do not follow the rules , my opponents only recourse is to a hypothetical judgment of the form “If you have decided to play the game you ought to follow the rules!”. A hypothetical obligation has been invoked which is true only of those who have made a kind of promise to follow the rules. The consequences of not doing so stay at the limits of the game. No real King or Queen will order my execution, no Knight will pursue me for the honour of side black. I have frustrated an expectation and have compromised my rationality, if, after having decided to play, I do not follow the rules. But there are no sentences, no suspended sentences, no fines. Symbolically, frustrating someones expectation is an important matter on the transactional stage of Cavell but also on the cultural stage, where mimesis of action and circumstance initiate us into the serious business of life, provoke thought about mans fortune and fate, and perhaps prophetically suggest the end of a civilisation and the beginning of new states of affairs.

It is however, in the real tribunals of explanation/justification that the affairs of men are really settled. In these tribunals, principles and laws regulate activity and thinking. If the law is metaphysical then in the law a chain of “Why?” questions occurring in the process of a legal tribunal will end in a principle, because principles have the status of a condition of phenomena related to other conditions forming the totality we refer to as “The Law”. Given that the legal concept of a “Right” emerged from Kantian moral Philosophy, as did the idea of Human Rights it is not surprising to see some of the totality of conditions involved in metaphysical legal tribunals finding support in the Metaphysics and ethics of Aristotle. Neither for Aristotle, nor for Kant, however, is it the case that that the term “voluntary” is best analysed by describing ordinary usage of the term in a statement perhaps about a particular voluntary actions (e,g. S).Particular statements have to be related to principles and furthermore be related in terms of the conditioned to the unconditioned. Metaphysical judgements relating to the essence-specifying definition of what a thing is, will of course be an important part of what is meant by the word for the thing concerned: they will be among the “circumstances” of the judgement (as defined by the dictionary and not Cavell).

In a later essay entitled “Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” Cavell compares Kant’s remarks on the Deduction of the Categories with Wittgenstein’s characterisation of his own investigation, as being directed:

“not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, toward the possibilities of pheneomena” (Philosophical Investigations , §50)

Cavell also quotes the following:

“We remind ourselves, that is, to say of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena…Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one:”(PI §90)

Cavell then points to what he believes to be the fundamental difference between Kant and Wittgenstein:

“For Wittgenstein it would be an illusion not only that we do know things in themselves but equally that we do not.” (PI P.65)

It is clear for Kant that although the thing in itself cannot be known via the faculty of Sensibility, it can nevertheless be thought, as an ideal. A quick perusal of Kant’s discussions of this matter in his First Critique, reveals that it is usually in the context of the role of intuition/Sensibility, that Kant argues the appearances of objects have only a metaphysical relation and not an epistemological relation to things in themselves. Indeed over 90% of ca 40 references to things in themselves is in relation to appearances: challenging us not take appearances as things in themselves. The type of relation Kant is suggesting here, is very similar to that suggested by Aristotle between a principle and the content it applies to. It would, of course, be logically problematic to take the content for the principle. The relation of Sensibility to the world does not, however, preclude the fact that we can think about things in themselves. This limitation placed by Kant upon the significance of appearances and phenomena also motivates the distinction between noumena and phenomena, because this limitation of a determining reference of noumena by phenomena locates noumena in a realm of thought and objective reality.(Critique of Pure Reason, P.266f). The world of senses provides us with phenomena and the world of the understanding provides us with the “possibilities” of phenomena (the conceptualisation of phenomena) in categorical terms which is just another way of expressing the general fact that we are able to think about phenomena. In this process of thinking about phenomena, if I subtract everything phenomenal from this process, I am still left with the externality of space and spatial relations between things. All this I can know by understanding what is claimed in the Transcendental Aesthetic. Thought, according to the Transcendental Analytic, on the other hand, is a logical function, that takes no account of Sensibility and Intuition. The “I” of the “I think” is neither that of substance or cause. The consciousness of the I in terms of pure thought is a form of existence that is a corresponding internal form to that external form Kant discussed earlier. This form of consciousness is a consciousness of itself, and this is especially transparent in the spontaneity of the reasoning faculty: an a priori form of intellectual activity.

For Wittgenstein, the I is mysterious and the question thus arises whether the many methods Wittgenstein uses can adequately capture the Kantian “I think”. Cavell, claims that Wittgenstein would believe that reasoning about the “I think”, as was done above, is illusory. A Kantian response to this objection would consist in pointing out the metaphysical difference between the phenomenal I and the noumenal I( revealed, for example, in practical reasoning). Only metaphysical inquiry could reveal this difference between the I that appears and the I that spontaneously thinks. The Wittgensteinian practice of imagining or constructing a language-game does not take us into this realm of being. Similarly, finding or inventing intermediate cases , inventing fictitious natural history, investigating a grammatically related expression, will all be useful for remedying confusions of various kinds. Yet it must be pointed out that these different “therapies” do not appeal to principles of reason or logic in the way that Aristotles metaphysics of the Philosophy of first principles do. Describing the possible different uses of language can only investigate the possibilities of phenomena to a limited extent, if one has already methodologically decided to exclude all forms of Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysical reasoning.

Cavell claims that self-knowledge is a major concern of the work of Wittgenstein. He claims that this topic has been almost systematically neglected in the works of Bacon, Locke and Descartes, but he fails to mention those two philosophers that have reflected the most about this topic, namely Aristotle and Kant. He claims that classical epistemology has been concentrating upon the knowledge of objects at the expense of the knowledge of persons.

The method of comparing and contrasting individual particular cases may be a good method of constructing concepts but this may not be very relevant to the combining of concepts to form judgements about persons. If actions are by necessity voluntary, as was suggested above, then making the statement :”When we ask whether an action was voluntary we imply that the action is fishy”(S) will not take us into reasoning about principles such as the voluntary act principle. Having doubts about exactly how to categorise a particular action does not take us into the philosophical realms Aristotle or Kant highlighted as important. The kind of doubt that ought to be raised about particular actions is expressed in the question”Was the physical movement we witnessed willed or not?”. If whilst standing in a queue, a man pushes into me, deliberation about whether he willed the movement is deliberation about whether he acted intentionally. If it turned out to be the case that he was in turn pushed willfully by the man behind him in the queue, then we are only dealing with his movement under the category of something that happened to him and not something he had done. We are not. that is, dealing with an act of will– there is no action here, not according to Wendel Holmes. Kant’s ontology of willful action is clear. What we are dealing with in this case is a matter of something just happening to someone whether it be a question of external causation-a push–or internal causation-the passions dragging reason about like a slave. Apart from the initial willed action, what we see is not a chain of actions but rather a chain of events.

Knowledge of persons and Culture is contained in the account given by Wittgenstein. Many of Cavell’s essays aim at claiming that Wittgensteinian methods aim largely at the modern epistemological project of analytical Philosophy(P74). These methods serve as diagnoses of the “disease” of bewitchment of the intellect by extraordinary uses of language. Given Cavell’s chosen perspective upon the work of Wittgenstein, it remains an open question whether the work is as much of a positive influence upon the History of Philosophy as we have maintained in this work. The Wittgensteinian “attack” on Analytical Philosophy (Logical positivism, logical atomism etc ), and by implication, his attacks on naturalism, pragmatism, existentialism and phenomenology are in the name of his methods and the attempt to bring language “home” to its ordinary use. None of these methods have metaphysical intent.

Cavell is particularly concerned with Aesthetic issues. In a famous essay entitled “Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy”, the issue of the translatability of metaphor is discussed. He points out that, even though the meanings of metaphor are bound up with the words used in the metaphor, it is nevertheless obviously possible to paraphrase metaphors.Earlier in this work (volume 2) we discussed the particular metaphor, “Man is a wolf”, and settled upon an analysis in terms of the conceptual components of the claim which includes the essence-specifying definition of man (rational animal capable of discourse). The above particular metaphor suggests or “uses” the animal essence of man to express the deep truth formulated by Aristotle, namely that man can be both the best of the animals and the worst of the animals. The essential relation between the concepts of man and wolf is that we therefore share some essential characteristics, but our essences are not identical: wolves are neither capable of discourse nor rational beings.

There are metaphors that are less hylomorphic, and perhaps more empirically inclined, e.g. “Juliet is the sun”: if, that is , one accepts Cavell’s paraphrase. Even this metaphor can be “deepened” if one considers the sun Platonically or hylomorphically, i.e. as a principle (Aristotle) or condition (Kant)of all earthly forms of existence. The paraphrase would then run as follows: “Juliet is the principle or condition of Romeo’s existence.” This paraphrase is largely borne out by the events of the Shakespearean play “Romeo and Juliet”.

Kant’s Anthropology is all about the metaphysics and political psychology involved in “being a person”.

“The fact that the human being can have the “I” in his representations raises him infinitely above all the other living beings on earth. Because of this he is a person, and by virtue of the unity of consciousness through all the changes that happen to him, one and the same person–i.e. through rank and dignity and entirely different being from things such as irrational animals.”(P.15)

The grammatical form of the “I” is in fact very Kantian. The first person form in the statement “I promise” is relating an action to a particular being. Kant broadens this account into the more general role of a person in the culture they inhabit:

“The sum total of pragmatic anthropology in respect to the vocation of the human being and the characteristic of his formation, is the following. The human being is destined by his reason to live in a society with human beings and in it to cultivate himself, to civilise himself and to moralise himself by means of the arts and the sciences. No matter how great his animal tendency may be to give himself passively to the impulses of comfort and good living, which he calls happiness, he is still destined to make himself worthy of humanity by actively struggling with the obstacles that cling to him because of the crudity of his nature.”(P229-230?

So, for Kant too, man can be the best or the worst of animals and his destiny hinges upon his rational capacity, which in turn depends upon a capacity for active discourse. Culture ennobles man, Kant argues, (P.230). For Wittgenstein on the other hand it appears that the capacity for discourse is the primary consideration:

“the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life”(§23,PI)

The reference to a form of life does, however, suggest Aristotelian hylomorphic theory but whether Wittgenstein wants to attach his argument for the importance of logic to rationality is not clear. Cavell in his essay on “Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy”, makes the claim that Wittgenstein’s work brings us back to more natural forms of life and puts the souls back into our bodies (P.84). For Aristotle, the only way for our souls to be in our bodies that makes sense, is in the form of a principle responsible for all its forms of movement, and this would appear also to be the case for the positive articulation of Kant’s Philosophical Psychology.

Modern Art , Cavell argues, involves us accustoming ourselves to a new and different form of life, and a “new world”( P.84). The question left hanging in the air in relation to these remarks is whether this new world requires “new men” or an attempt to transform ourselves into these new men? Is, one can wonder, Modern Art, part of a wider process of expected transformation, a process that created the new men named Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau and Hegel?

The following were the major “tools” of the transformational process:

The changes in the form of operation of consciousness noted by Jaynes earlier in this work,

The dismantling of the influence of hylomorphic metaphysics,

The diminishing influence of sound(rational) religious belief(of the kind referred to by Kant in his work “Religions within the bounds of mere reason”),

The colonisation of all forms of discourse by the method and materialistic assumptions of Science,

Analytic Philosophy with its transformation of Ethics into a game of persuasion and its distaste for metaphysics of all forms

The waning influence of classical art forms.

Rationalistic counter-influences included the persisting influence of Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy and

The political discourse supporting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(based on a concept of Right derived from Kant’s moral philosophy.

The influence of the law and its rationalistic argumentation for principles and laws.

The growing political awareness amongst the masses of the importance of freedom and knowledgeable politicians.

Wittgenstein’s declared wish was to provide us with a perspicuous representation which enables the disappearance of both philosophical problems and the problems of life. Cavell claims that this is Wittgenstein’s re-conception of the world. The fundamental question is whether this re-conception requires the understanding of “new men”, or whether his therapies and methods are designed to treat the bewitched thinking of the new men. We know in the cases of Descartes and Hobbes, the soul was taken out of the body in different ways and the ancient assumptions of materialism and dualism emerged with renewed vigour.

In his essay “Aesthetic Problems” Cavell provides us with a story from the work of Cervantes that establishes the role of the context of exploration/discovery in the “test for taste”:

“Two of my kinsmen were once called to give their opinion of a hogshead which was supposed to be excellent, being old and of good vintage. One of them tastes it: considers it; and after mature reflection pronounces the wine to be good were it not for a small taste of leather, which he perceived in it. The other, after using the same precautions, gives also his verdict in favour of the wine, but with the reserve of a taste of iron, which he could easily distinguish. You cannot imagine how much they were both ridiculed for their judgement. But who laughed in the end? On emptying the hogshead, there was found at the bottom, an old key with a leather thing attached to it.”(In Humes “Of the Standard of Taste)

Here is a transactional account of Judgement if there ever was one. Both experts are in a sense right, and in a sense wrong and the synthesis of their correctness reveals itself at the moment of “discovery”, at the end of the exploratory tale. Taste related to sense, for Kant, could not be defended with a universal voice and always needed to await the “discovery” of something particular. Sensation in the taste of sense is not coupled to conceptualisation. Modern wine critics would, of course, seek to connect their experience to concepts via reference to origins of the grapes and the “body” of the wine. Cavell appears to recognise the Kantian distinction between reflective aesthetic judgements and judgements related to the “taste of the senses”. He claims that the latter are merely “pleasant”(P.88) and the former judgements are connected to the mode of “speaking with a universal voice”. Cavell does not, however, refer to the role of conceptualisation in this more universal response, fixating instead upon the synthetic event of “agreement”. Such agreement may well be presupposed when we speak with a universal voice but only because of the essence- specifying definition of a concept which Wittgenstein himself indirectly acknowledges when he admits that concepts are for use on more than one occasion. Wittgenstein also comments on universality of the concept in the following quote:

“What we have to mention in order to explain the significance, I mean the importance of a concept, are often extremely general facts of nature; such facts as are hardly ever mentioned because of their great generality.”(P. 56e)

The world is changing all the time (the wine is ageing and perhaps souring), but as Wittgenstein points out, if lumps of cheese put on scales were to increase and decrease in size whilst being weighed, the institution of weighing cheese would lose its purpose or point. Indeed, if all entities behaved in this way, our language-games over a broad area of activity would lose their purpose and point. Enduring entities over change is a principle of Aristotelian metaphysics. The conclusion we draw from this discussion is that there is often more to Wittgensteinian Philosophy than meets Cavells aesthetically-oriented eye.

In an essay entitled “Music Discomposed” Cavell discusses the issues of “New criticism” and “New Critics” who apparently suggest that criticism should confine its attention to the object itself (P.181). The poem, painting, building, statue itself should be examined and not the intentions behind the object, it is argued. If a work is the product of a voluntary act, as presumably it must be, then on Oliver Wendel Holmes’ account, it must have been willed. If it has been willed, then on Kant’s account , it must be intentional. Elisabeth Anscombe defines intention in terms of the question “Why did X do A?” and the answer given being a reason for, rather than a cause of, the action A. Reasons are not evidence, Anscombe argues, which entails that no inspection of the object of the action (even if it is a material object) can produce the reason. On this account one refuses any answer to the question “Why?” which entails that the movements at issue (being pushed in the queue) were happening to the man being pushed. Consciousness as such is not defining of intention, because the man being pushed can be fully conscious of what is happening to him. The man also, moreover, has to know that he has not willed this movement of his body. This knowledge, on Freud’s theory, need not be conscious, but is rather a function of what he called the Preconscious system of our minds (where knowledge and the meanings of words are “located”). The kind of knowledge we are talking about here is characterised by Anscombe as non-observational. Given that observation is the only route we have to the discovery of evidence, it is clear that evidence cannot be relevant to the intentionality involved in the activity of the artist, (and the object produced as a result of it). Yet this activity requires the agents awareness of what he is doing, a non-observational awareness of the kind we can encounter in the intentional activity of speaking (in which I am aware of what I have just said, am saying, and am going to say).

Anscombe insists that this idea of intention is very complex and provides us with an example of a man pumping water into a house and poisoning the inhabitants. She cites Wittgenstein and refers to what she calls the history of the circumstances of the case, which of course would be an appropriate thing to do if the case was to land in a legal tribunal. Anscombe divides the case up analytically into the following possible forms, each moment progressively widening the circumstances:

  1. Moving my arm up and down with my fingers around the pump handle
  2. operating the pump
  3. replenishing the water supply of the house
  4. poisoning the inhabitants of the house

We have here 4 descriptions. The first is an intuitive description of a muscles being contracted by an act of will. The next level moves to a conceptual description of what is being willed, which as a matter of fact is an answer to the question “Why?”, being asked as a response to witnessing the first willed movement, e.g. “Why are you moving your arm up and down and…?” The next level, 3, conceptualises the case in terms of widening circumstances, and is also an answer to the question”Why are you operating the pump?”. The journey of the water into the house widens the circumstances still further and the final end or telos of the action is given in description number 4. It would, of course, be impossible to agree to the description “poisoning the inhabitants of the house”, if one did not agree to the descriptions of what one was doing in moments 1-3. The first three act-descriptions are means to an end, and for Kant instrumental reasoning governs the shift between these different moments. This instrumental reasoning process is governed by the principle: “to will the end is to will the means”. This indicates that the connection of the means to the end must be conceptual or logical (practical logic). “Poisoning the inhabitants” is an end that is described in the following way by Anscombe:

“Thus when we speak of four intentions, we are speaking of the character of being intentional that belongs to the act in each of the four descriptions: but when we speak of being one intention we are speaking of intention with which: the last term we give in such a series gives the intention with which the act in each of its other act descriptions was done, and this intention, so to speak, swallows up all the preceding intentions with which earlier members of the series were done.”(Anscombe, G., E., M.,(Oxford, Blackwell, 1972, P.46)

It is, Anscombe argues, an error to characterise the content of the intention only in terms of the initial intuition of the contraction of ones muscles because concepts are already conceptualising this intuitive knowledge. Anscombe cites Aristotle:

“In general, as Aristotle says,, one does not deliberate about an acquired skill; the description of what one is doing, which one completely understands, is at a distance from the details of ones movements, which one does not consider at all.”(P54 Intention)

This was a point Wittgenstein made in relation to the sensation of pain, namely that the feeling of pain (this detail) is playing no role in the language game related to pain. The agents description is a dispositional piece of knowledge rather than a detail. The material details of the case (the intuition of muscle contraction)would not normally be decisive in a legal case relating to the poisoning of the inhabitants of the house. Imagine that in the course of the legal process relating to the above example, it was discovered that there was poison in the water, but the water for some reason did not reach the house (there was a leak in the pipe). Circumstances such as knowing the water was poisoned would suffice under the law for a charge of attempted murder. This charge is based on the last three descriptions. Anscombe discusses this possibility in terms of a mistake occurring in action (P.57), and not in any of the descriptive statements. We still use the intention to characterise the action. The man was not just operating the pump or replenishing the water supply of the house: he was poisoning the inhabitants. Anscombe elaborates upon this in the following way:

“Can it be that there is something that modern philosophy has blankly misunderstood: namely what ancient and medieval philosophers meant by practical knowledge? Certainly in modern philosophy we have an incorrigibly contemplative conception of knowledge. Knowledge must be something that is judged as such by being in accordance with the facts. The facts, reality, are prior and dictate what is to be saved, if it is knowledge. And this is the explanation of the utter darkness in which we find ourselves.”(P.57)

One can wonder whether Anscombe meant that we are generally in the dark with Practical Philosophical issues or just in this particular case. She certainly felt us moderns to be in the dark about the concept of life, and the abortion of a foetus. If the tribunal of legal proceedings were driven solely by the facts rather than the conceptualisation of the facts, in terms that is, of our intentions, it would suffice for the man accused of attempted murder to point to the hole in the pipe and thereby be acquitted of the charge. This in spite of the fact that he knows he willed the destruction of the inhabitants (politicians) of the house. If the proceedings of the trial can recreate a sufficiently complex picture of the circumstances, we and the jury can also know what the mans intention was—the will is not a mysterious inner phenomenon. Anscombe also cites with approval Aristotle’s normative reasoning pattern resulting in the conclusion “I ought to do X”(e.g. Keep my promise). As is the case with all Aristotelian logical reasoning the conclusion of the argument rests upon the truth of the premises (so the facts might play some role) and this in turn rests on the relation of the concepts that constitute the premises.

Anscombe believes that practical syllogisms involving ethical principles and concepts can only be sustained if supported by a philosophical psychology that can explain, for example, Why we ought to keep our promises (Major premise). Surprisingly, Anscombe makes no mention of Kant’s Philosophical Psychology, so we do not know whether she regards Kant’s system of principles and concepts as fulfilling the function she proposes. People must want to do their duty she argues. Given the Aristotelian claim which Kant accepts, rationality is a potentiality that is a long way from being actualised in the species, so it is not clear whether Anscombe’s claim fully understands the Kantian logical force of the ought. Kant, for example, maintains that practical conceptual knowledge is the cause (in an Aristotelian sense) of what its possessor understands. In this state of affairs the intention is the cause of both the object and the action.

Considering the above reflections it is indeed questionable if it is possible to carry out the program of “new criticism” to attend only to the object itself. As Cavell rightly points out it would be problematic to use a theoretical view of intention that attempts to study intention in terms of the contents of the artists mind (it is, according to Aristotle and Kant, the principles we are searching for.) Cavell focuses instead on the idea of meaning and claims that he is sure that we are meant to notice some aspects of the material work rather than others. He cites two scenes in Macbeth in which there is a knocking on a door directly after the murder of Duncan. This idea of Shakespeare necessarily meaning or intending this conjunction of scenes enables us to understand the play without consulting Shakespeare about his particular intentions.

Cavell also interestingly places the movement of the successive styles of art in a larger cultural context. He asks the important Kantian question of whether we can detect in this succession of events any progress. Cavell claims that this is certainly true of certain stretches of the succession:

“And a new style not merely replaces an older one, it may change the significance of any earlier style “(P.184)

In the above case one could interpret the above succession of styles in terms of the subsumption of one style under another, and one can also regard such a relation in practical logical terms-perhaps even in terms of the kind of intentional subsumption that occurred in the above individual chain of intentional descriptions–a chain proceeding from an action and toward a telos that might land in court. Without a commitment to rationalism, however, Cavell has no foundation for explaining or justifying the subsumption of one style under another. Cavell’s remark, however, does allow for an explanation of regressive ages such as the Age of Romanticism that succeeded the Classical era. The rationality of the classical age was temporarily subsumed under the emotional passionate age of Romanticism, and the criticism of this age focussed upon criticising the rationally based tradition of criticism. The classical tradition prized, for example, the sometimes lifetime history of an artists apprenticeship in his medium. This was an important qualification for becoming an artist and building a reputation. “Modern Art”, “New Art” for the “New Men” like Duchamps, required no apprenticeship in a medium, required only minimal work on “ready-made” objects (e.g. displaying a urinal in a museum) and a decoupling of artistic intention in favour of a revolutionary intention that begins with the focussing of attention on these “ready-made” objects. This “revolution” continues with a shift of attention away from the object, and toward the revolutionary posed question”Is this object an art-object?”Fortunately in view of the minimal work involved on the part of the artist in producing the object, the question was not formulated in terms of the “work of art”. The question, however, is clearly an open ended exploratory question with no clear answer. The overarching philosophical question, which Cavell does not raise in this context, is whether Modern Art is a continuation of the art of the Romantic period, where the focus was on feeling and passion(which Kant regarded as pathological). Whatever the answer to this question, it is clear that Modern Art promotes both an anti-rational and anti metaphysical position. Cavell attempts to steer a middle path between rationalism and romanticism by focusing on judgment and language, rather than understanding and reason, in an attempt to situate the philosophical judgement at the intersection between intuition and concept rather that at the more overarching intersection between intuition-concept-reason. Urinals, empty canvases called “space”, and “pieces” of music entitled “4 minute 33 second silence”, are hardly in any sense transitional objects in relation to classical depictions of the human figure, building, walls and paintings that symbolise forms of life in accordance with what Kant called the form of finality of the object. The artist from the classical era of art is focussed not on the matter of sensation, but its form. Adrian Stokes is a critic of classical art. In his critical writings he speaks about the mass-effect of the stone of a building upon an appreciator. This is an intended global effect of the material on the sensibility of the appreciator.

Kant would not have regarded an object such as Duchamps urinal as a work of art. It is even doubtful whether he would have regarded it as handicraft, if it was a mass produced object. The activity of those involved in producing such an object is a mechanical type of rule following, and this places this type of object , for Kant, in the realm of agreeable sensation. The appreciation of an art-object, on the other hand, according to Kant, does not occur at the level of the sensation. The act of appreciation is rather connected to estimating both the beauty of the object and the artists intention. The attempt of modern art, some have suggested, is not to invoke agreeable sensations but rather to invoke a disagreeable “shock” and thus provoke a pseudo-philosophical discussion about Art. If this was the intention of the Modern Artists, it is certainly “sensational” in more senses than one. Controversy was the inevitable result even amongst those artists that were firmly committed “Romantic period” artists, but especially amongst those artists inspired by the classical era. This world of shock and controversy was a far cry from the calm mass-effect of QuattroCento architecture, Giorgiones calm rendition of a Tempesta, and the contemplative mood of Michelangelo’s “Times of the Day sculpture. The appearance of a urinal in the company of such objects encourages the accusation of “Fraud!” which Cavell points to as a typical reaction in this “new” form of life. Kant claims that production of fine art is the work of genius which is designed to produce a work of appreciation (not a sensational response or a response to a sensation, or a philosophical discussion). The work of genius often takes place in a medium and consists of an original use of that medium—consists that is, in a way of presenting an object that depends upon appreciating the original use of that medium. Kant describes this process in the following way:

“…..the artist having practiced and corrected his taste by a variety of examples from nature or art, controls his work, and after many, and often laborious attempts to satisfy taste, finds the form which commends itself to him. Hence, this form is not, as it were, a matter of inspiration, or of a free swing of the mental powers, but rather of a slow and even painful process of improvement, directed toward making the form adequate to his thought without prejudice to the freedom in the play of these powers.”(P.)

This is a perfect description of the process involved in the creation of a classical art object. The idea, suggested by Cavell, of viewing the Classical period through the eyes, assumptions, and world-view of the Romantic period is indeed problematic, very like repression on the cultural level. The idea, that we should use the assumptions of Modern Art (are there any?) to criticise or characterise Classical Art is absurd. We have elsewhere in this work argued that what is called by some the “Modern Age” really has no historical credentials to be entitled to the term “Age”, containing as it does the following battles of the giants: Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Freud, and Wittgenstein. Three of the contests of importance are, Kant v Hegel, Freud v Science, Analytical Philosophy v the work of the later Wittgenstein. It is namely, the case that it is not clear what the philosophical landscape will look like when these battles are over–whether for example, as we have proposed–the figures of Aristotle and Kant will emerge from the smoke of battle, or whether the destruction of classical norms and values will be completed and other figures emerge to install other world views, ideas and assumptions. The so called technological achievements of science of this Modern Period, including as they do the landing of men on the moon and the construction and use of atomic bombs on civilian populations, do not qualify as achievements for any premature naming of the age in which we live. Much can happen in one hundred thousand years, the period Kant claimed was necessary to actualise the potentiality of rationality in the species of man.

Cavell in the essay “Music Discomposed” claims that one line of aesthetic investigation is to attempt to make sense of the idea of the role of feeling in Art. Whether he meant sensation or intuition here is irrelevant: sensations are situated in a causal network leading to a causal end that is difficult to conceptualise (cf. the earlier discussion of the sensation or detail of pain). Intuitions that cannot be conceptualised are blind (Kant). At the end of the essay Cavell , in a final attempt at the justification of the spirit of modernism characterises the quality of sincerity in art as a feeling and the following bewildering claim is made:

“But I haven’t suggested that sincerity proves anything in particular–it can prove madness or evil as well as purity or authenticity. What I have suggested is that it shows what kind of stake the stake in modern art is, that it explains why ones reactions to it can be so violent…” (P.)

This is the risk of dialectical reasoning. One may be taken in by the thesis or the antithesis, however much the one position accuses the other of fraud: this battle to achieve a synthesis in a concept is not a battle of the giants but rather a battle of the dwarves on a smaller cultural stage.

In the following essay entitled “A Matter of Meaning It” Cavell responds to criticisms from Analytical Philosophy: criticisms relating to his previous remarks on the nature of Modern Art. He sees no problem in the objection to his position that modern art works need to be worked. Indeed he sees in modern art objects something novel that is of interest. He discusses Cato’s sculpted “works” and claims that his coloured beams of iron are “placed”: the colour of the beams disguises their mass, it is argued, leaving us with a particular sensation of “weightlessness”. Cavell claims in the context of this discussion that these pieces of iron are no longer things. He is in no doubt that this is a modern work of sculpture, in spite of the curious admission that he no longer knows what sculpture is. He claims the following:

“It is a statement of the fact of life—the metaphysical fact one could say—that apart from ones experience, there is nothing to be known about it, no way of knowing that what you know is relevant, for what else is there to rely on but my experience?”(P.218)

In the above example of Cato’s “weightless” pieces of iron, the placing and the painting of the beams is decoupled from the work of the sculptor that intends to explore the properties of his material and the medium his material is a part of. Cavell mentions Monroe Beardsley’s criticism of his concept of intention, which Beardsley finds obscure. We encounter once again a dialectical argument in which a thesis is confronting an antithesis. Berdsleys” thesis” is that the concept of intention takes us outside the work and Cavell opposes this with his antithesis that the intention takes us further into the work. Given the reluctance, however, of Cavell to connect sincerity with the intention of a genius that lies behind the originally created art-work as well as the rejection of the classical concept of form, the focus inevitably rests upon “facts”of various kinds. What Cavell refers to as the facts of life/art are now:

“disgust, embarassment, impatience, partisanship, excitement without release, silence without serenity.”(P.)

Added to the above must be grammatical facts that define this new “form of life”. Cavell continues this discussion with a transactional description of situations in which an agents intentions are obscure due to a lack of adequate knowledge of the circumstances– an important element of understanding and establishing the agents intention. Cavell is concerned here to highlight what he calls the “acknowledgement of intention”(P.233) a more psychological account compared with that kind of logical account we find in Anscombe’s work on Intention. We find, for example, the following curious statement in Cavell’s account:

“To say that works of art are intentional is not to say that each bit of them, as it were, is separately intended; any more than to say a human action is intentional is to say that each physical concomitant of it is separately intended, e.g. the grass crushed where I have stood”(P.236)

Surely the artist has responsibility for every part of the art work: failing to unintentionally paint a piece of sky on ones canvass, is to be the artist of an unfinished work. Cavell wishes to replace intention with a notion of “meaning”. In the above case the artist did not mean to leave a part of the sky unpainted and it is this “fact” that is the basis for declaring this work to be incomplete. This is a complex substitution which is not sufficiently argued for. There is again, toward the end of this essay, a confusing reference to games where Cavell claims intentions do not count. Games are transactional and what happens occurs in relation to rules. The only way to understand these elaborations is to see in them some kind of account of the new “form of life” that is being created by Modern Art and art activity. Different kinds of rules are being followed and thus a different kind of game is being played compared to that “game”( a term that would be too transactional for a classical critic) of classical art.

We can, without doubt, agree to the proposition that Modern Art is “dramatic”(this is an argument for modern art being a consequential development of Romanticism). The Wittgensteinian question is whether the participation of a part of a community in the modern game (involving a group of people that has culturally lost its way) is sufficient to give the activity validity. It does not yet allow us to see a path of progress from the classical to the “modern”. At best this latter era, if it returns to the commitments of rationalism, might be seen as a period of transition rather than a straightforward regression.

In his work “The World Viewed” Cavell considers film to be the last bastion of traditional art: the only form that has not as yet succumbed to the self questioning attitude of Modernism. Cavell poses the interesting question, “What happens to reality when it is projected and screened?”. He argues that just as photographs present us with things themselves as evidenced by what we say in relation to them, e.g. “That is your grandfather”, film with its photographic base shares some of the characteristics of photographs. Cavell also points to other larger issues such as :

“The unhinging of consciousness from the world interposed our subjectivity between us and our presentness to the world. Then our subjectivity becomes what is present to us, individuality becomes isolation.”(The World Viewed(Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1971, P.22)

This is, Cavell argues, a goal of romanticism, to restore reality and a sense of selfhood. He ties three historical events to this process:The Protestant Revolution, Shakespearean Theatre, and Cartesian Philosophy. These are, according to Cavell, cataclysmic changes mobilising forces that seek to escape the isolation of subjectivity. Cavells response to this scenario of the terror of isolation is to seek a transactional self seeking acknowledgement.

The photographic base of film is a part of the medium those that work with film have to take into account. Cavell argues that the automatism involved in the processes of projecting and screening “accepts” the absence of subjectivity. Human agency has been removed from these automatic processes. Human agency does however help to shape the product via the creative activities of preparing for the filming (the writing of the script for the director).

The objects and the people projected upon our screen are real even if they are not in our presence. The World we see, Cavell claims, is a world past, and this ties the mode of narration we are witnessing closer to myth than to fiction. The human somethings that appear on the screen of this historical imagination are not the characters we find in the theatre (Macbeth, Richard II) but rather types such as “The Dandy”, The Tramp”, “The Villain”, “The family man” etc. We are faced then with a historical imaginative recreated magical world. We sit and view this world in the dark, unseen. This, argues Cavell is expressive of the metaphysical isolation we all now experience. Objects like trains and cars are dramatised in the presentation of them on film: Cavell names this process, photogenesis. This is a name for the process that transforms the reality of everything, including that of humans to human “somethings”. Cavell calls these human somethings types but a better term for them might be in terms of the Aristotelian concept of “forms of life”. The genre of the “Western” attracted such attention because it suggested an origin to the form of life we know as civilisation, manifesting as it did the tragic costs of the building of our societies, not through discourse and rationality but through the violence of the form of life we call heroic.

Cavell’s psychological notion of acknowledgement is the modernist equivalent to Hegelian “Recognition”, embedded in a transactional dialectical discourse and its telos. For Cavell, all knowledge is a mode of acknowledgement. The camera, being a machine and not a form of life interacting in the context of the world is rather a kind of mechanical origin of experience (like the eye) that lies at the boundary of the world. The camera is to the world presented on film as the eye is to the visual field. We recall from volume one, the Cartesian fascination for magical automated beings that moved hydraulically. We recalled also the mechanical dissections of living unaesthetised animals by Descartes who did not seem to respond to their cries of pain. There seems a clear line of transformation from this scenario to that in which the camera(God’s eye) is the source of everything in the world of film. This suggests that even God has become a machine, providing the means for the metaphysical solipsist to explore all the dimensions of loneliness. For Cavell, as we suggested earlier there is nothing beyond experience, no thinking form of life as construed by Aristotle and Kant. There is only a machine that may eventually pass the Turing test for being God.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action, Vol 3 Critique of Cavell’s Claim of Reason

Visits: 1808

The Wittgensteinian Philosophical Revolution connected to his later work was an event to behold, not because the Cambridge Philosopher provided the final solution to Philosophy promised in the early work but because he began to see the breadth and depth of problems in areas of Philosophy he previously thought irrelevant: not because he began reflecting in the name of Science and ended reflecting in the name of Social Science: not because he managed in either his earlier or his later work to provide more than an album of sketches: but rather because his later investigations shared some of the animus of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. In regard to this last point we encounter a belief in, and use of, the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in what appears to resemble a hylomorphic and critical spirit. In this shift towards the region of the social sciences and the use of these principles in an appropriate spirit, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy succeeded in removing the weeds of 20th century, namely scientism, logical positivism, logical atomism, naturalism, pragmatism, existentialism phenomenology, logical solipsism, mind independent realism, dualism, empiricism. In doing this important work he managed to produce a “clearing” in which the seeds of hylomorphic and critical Philosophy could be sewn again.

Stanley Cavell is one of the major American Wittgensteinian scholars who saw in the work of Wittgenstein a unifying influence insofar as the warring factions of analytic and continental Philosophy is concerned. There are many facets to Cavell’s work but one of his more interesting claims is the wish to shift the focus of Philosophy from statements and facts, to judgements in general, and intuitional/experiential/conceptual judgments in particular. In a work entitled “The Claim of Reason”(Oxford, Oxford university Press, 1979) he claims the following:

“All I want from these considerations so far is a prospective attention to Wittgenstein’s emphasis upon the idea of judgement. In the modern history of epistemology, the idea of judgement is not generally distinguished from the idea of statement generally, or perhaps they are too completely distinguished….The problem is to see whether the study of human knowledge may as a whole be distorted by this focus. The focus upon statements takes knowledge to be the sum(or product) of true statements and hence construes the limits of human knowledge as coinciding with the extent to which it has amassed true statements of the world…The focus on judgement takes human knowledge to be the human capacity for applying the concepts of a language to the things of a world, for characterising(categorising) the world when and as it is humanly done, and hence construes the limits of human knowledge as coinciding with the limits of its concepts(in some historical period).”(P.17)

It is difficult not to recall in this context the opening salvo of Wittgenstein’s early work, the “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus:

1.0 The world is everything that is the case

1.1 The world is the totality of facts not of things

(Wittgenstein. L, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, trans Ogden C.K., (New York, Cosimo classics, 2007, P29)

We noted in volume 2 of this work, in the opening essays on Kant, the role of, firstly, categories of understanding/judgement, and secondly, the search of reason for the totality of conditions of a phenomenon in knowledge claims. The focus for Kant is not on truth alone but on a definition of knowledge that can be characterised in terms of the classical definition of Justified True Belief, a definition connected with the works of Plato and Aristotle. In Kant’s work, concepts are obviously constituents of these judgements but the Kantian account of concepts reaches far beyond the account we find in the later work of Wittgenstein which admittedly has both Kantian aspects and pragmatic/empirical aspects:

570 Concepts lead us to make investigations, are the expressions of our interests, and direct our interest.”(P.151e)

Kant famously claimed that without concepts intuitions are blind. For Kant, concepts are the instruments of thinking that organise the manifolds of representations: concepts unify and differentiate intuitive representations. The telos of Kantian concepts is not merely to conduct investigations but also to combine with other concepts in the formation of judgements or statements. This combination of concepts is controlled by both the Categories of the Understanding and the rational logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Using these concepts to categorise the things of the world is one conceptual function. Another function of conceptualisation is to use concepts in different ways, e.g. to characterise our actions, use concepts to characterise what happens to us and to characterise what we possess(e.g. the power to act, think, speak, reason). These are all Aristotelian categories of existence. Concepts are also used in accordance with Kantian categories of judgement and what for Wittgenstein is the language-game of the reporting of facts, for Kant is a judgement or statement in which something is being said of something via the combination of concepts. For Kant also, reason uses concepts in its investigations into the totality of conditions for any given phenomenon. These “conditions” are not criteria but rather grounds and these grounds will be in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.

The reference by Cavell to the focus on statements and truth rather than judgements and concepts appears to disregard the Aristotelian and Kantian rationalistic accounts of concepts , judgements, statements, and knowledge. Both Aristotle and Kant would have largely agreed with much of what was said in the above quote by Wittgenstein in which it is claimed that pragmatically, concepts can be used to both direct interests and express these interests. Both Aristotle and Kant would also have agreed with Cavell and Wittgenstein in opposing the modern epistemological project. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy takes up epistemological problems in terms of the grammatical rules of language, and in terms of a narrative dimension that was not present in his early Philosophy. Kant would probably have regarded these rules as being related to the above mentioned conditions for the application of concepts. It is not clear however, whether Kant would have shared Wittgenstein’s commitment to the role of language in this context of explanation/justification. Kant might, that is, have shared Frege’s view of the role of language in philosophical investigations:

“it cannot be the task of logic to investigate language and determine what is contained in a linguistic expression. Someone who wants to learn logic from language is like an adult who wants to learn how to think from a child. When men created language they were at a stage of childish pictorial thinking. Languages are not made to match logic’s ruler(Letter to Husserl).

Wittgenstein’s earlier picture theory of meaning and his statement that the limits of my language are the limits of my world raises questions relating to epistemologically oriented accounts of language. The paradigmatic shift of Wittgenstein’s later work involved moving from an attempt to link Logic and language directly via a form of logical atomism, to the use of language and the normative rules governing this use. This of course leaves a question hanging in the air regarding metaphysics and its relation to Language. For Aristotle and Kant metaphysics governs logical principles and to the extent that logic is an important consideration in the use of language(All the statements of ordinary language are in perfectly logical order (Tractatus 5.5563)), there must be some relation between metaphysical conditions and language. Yet we do not find in either Wittgenstein’s earlier or later work any mention of Aristotelian or Kantian metaphysics. We do, however, find the following in Zettel:

“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”(Zettel §55)

This remark suggests that there is no essential quarrel between the Aristotelian and Kantian search for the totality of conditions of the phenomenon/phenomena being investigated. The following Kantian characterisation of Logic (quoted in volume 2 of this work) supports the claim that there is no essential difference between the Kantian and the Wittgensteinian view of logic:

“Logic, again can be treated in a twofold manner either as the logic of the general or as the logic of the special employment of the understanding. The former contains the absolutely necessary rules of thought without which there can be no employment whatsoever of the understanding. It, therefore, treats of the understanding without any regard to difference in the objects to which the understanding may be directed. The logic of the special employment of the understanding concerns the rules of correct thinking as regards a certain kind of object. The former may be called the logic of the elements, the latter the organon of this or that science. The latter is commonly taught in the schools as a propaedeutic to the sciences, though according to the actual procedure of human reason, it is what is obtained last of all, when the particular science under question has been already brought to such completion that it requires only a few finishing touches to correct and perfect it”(Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Trans Kemp Smith N., London, Macmillan, 1963, B76)

The special use of the understanding may well be what we see Wittgenstein exploring in his grammatical investigations. This may also be (though it is doubtful) what Cavell is referring to in his account of concepts and criteria. Whether these observations have any substance will largely depend upon whether the Kantian position would share the Fregean or the Wittgensteinian view of language. For Wittgenstein, grammatical rules do not determine the truth of a judgement, only whether or not the judgement makes sense. At the same time, Wittgenstein claims that grammatical investigations reveal essence (what is essential). On the other hand, Wittgenstein also claims that language itself does not have an essence and this might support the Fregean view that language has an essentially pictorial nature (as insisted upon by the Tractatus). This might also explain why, in Wittgenstein’s later work, the account of language games and forms of life amounted to no more than an “album of sketches”.

Science of course investigates the essences of many different kinds of object (events, actions, artifacts) and in this context the Aristotelian division of the Sciences into the theoretical sciences, practical sciences, and the productive sciences is still useful and relevant. Kant complemented this system with his division between Pure Reason, Practical Reason, and Judgement. We find, however, very few references to Aristotle or Kant in Wittgensteins “album of sketches”, apart from a curt acknowledgement that Kant’s method (the special use of understanding) resembles the grammatical investigation.

Cavell interestingly fixates upon the Wittgensteinian idea of a criterion in discussing the role of a judge in the application of criteria to cases. This analogy of a tribunal is an interesting one. Cavell suggests in the context of this discussion that the judge does not make the law but only applies it. The tribunal is a forum in which criteria are used to establish what counts as evidence (truth conditions) for a claim, and what does not. Criteria are therefore in their structure normative, and this is reflected in the normative judgement “An X ought to be classified as a Y if it satisfies the criteria for a Y”. This is the general form for a normative value judgement that is concerned with conceptual classification. An aesthetic value judgement can then be characterised thus: “An X ought to be classified as naturally beautiful if it meets the criteria of disinterestedness, not related to a concept, related to the form of finality of an object etc”. In the ethical context an ethical value judgement might take the form of ” An action ought to be classified in terms of the good if it is done with a good will”.

In relation to the above Cavell states:

“Without the control of criteria in applying concepts we would not know what counts as evidence for any claim, nor for what claims evidence is needed.” (P.14)

We should remind the reader here, however, that the form of conceptual judgement being discussed by Cavell is object-specific and the scope of the judgement is restricted to the “things of the world” rather than widened to include the relation of concepts to concepts in the categorical form of a judgement that is generally truth conditional (rather than merely one part of the judgement being criteria-dependent).

Cavell points out that as a matter of fact we agree in our judgements (thanks to criteria, he argues). Wittgenstein, we know asks himself the Aristotelian question “Why do we agree?” and gives himself a very Aristotelian answer, namely “Because we share forms of life”. This justification for Aristotle, however, would in turn be an argument for his essence-specifying definition of being human: namely, “rational animal capable of discourse”. Embodied in this definition is a hylomorphic commitment to a community that takes it for granted that our forms of life are both involved in processes of actualisation and thus organically “given”(not needing a social contract to exist).

Cavell also points to how Wittgenstein uses his conception of criteria to demolish all forms of logical solipsism:

“An inner process stands in need of outward criteria”(Wittgenstein L, Philosophical Investigations Trans Anscombe G., E., M., Oxford, Blackwell, 1972, §580)

This is not to say that an inwardly located sensation such as pain is to be regarded as nothing. It is not nothing, but rather something, about which nothing can be said (philosophically). This comment when generalised increases in significance especially insofar as those first structuralist Psychologists were concerned. Wundt and many other Psychologists after him have regarded sensations as a building block of Psychological theory. Wittgenstein as we know claimed in his Philosophical Investigations that:

“The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a “young science”; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory) For in Psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion.(As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think that we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.” (P. 232)

Put simply in the context of the above discussion, the language game with pain is a game in which language is substituted for the cry of pain. Language functions, that is, as a signal for the people in my vicinity to do something. The expression of the pain is not an assertion that I am in pain. This not to deny that a practical principle–the pleasure pain principle–could be formulated to explain human behaviour in general and pain behaviour in particular. This in turn means that pain is not a detail in our lives to be observed and conceptualised but rather some kind of principle to be understood. Why this is so, is explained by Wittgenstein in terms of an account of the natural history of the helplessness of the child. The child falls and scrapes their knee, crying inconsolably. The parent teaches the child to stop crying and instead say “I am in pain”–i.e. teaches the child to “think” in relation to the pain, using the Kantian “I” in an effort to distract attention from the pain.

Cavell is puzzled by the following “parable” of Wittgenstein’s:

“If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust, I shall do well to examine these rags very closely to see how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on.But if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous. But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an examination of details in philosophy.”(§52)

Cavell reflects upon this in terms of states of mind when perhaps it might have been more appropriate to relate the above to the claim that it is not objects that steer investigations but concepts and principles. In the initial stages of a context of explanation we may begin this process by attempting to form concepts by organising intuitions or representations, but once a concept is formed the intuitions are subsumed and determined by the concept: they no longer steer a process in the context of exploration/discovery but rather participate in a process in a context of explanation/justification. Concepts in their turn, in this latter context of explanation/justification relate to categories and logic and it is primarily this constellation of intuitions, concepts, categories, and logic that determine the relation of judgements to each other.

Wittgenstein, interestingly, in his reflections upon the problems of Philosophical Psychology distinguishes between states and processes, thus introducing his own system of categories into his “album of sketches”. The remarks made in this area are reminiscent of the Aristotelian account of virtue (areté) and its dispositional character:

“Expectation is, grammatically a state; like being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something….What, in particular cases do we regard as criteria for someone’s being of such and such an opinion?When do we say: he reached this opinion at that time? When: he has altered his opinion? And so on. The picture which the answers to these questions give us shows what gets treated grammatically as a state here( §572-73)

“”Understanding a word”, a state. But a mental state?-Depression, excitement, pain are so called mental states….We also say “Since yesterday I have understood this word. “Continuously”, though? To be sure one can speak of an interruption of understanding. But in what cases? Compare: “When did your pains get less? and “When did you stop understanding that word?”(P.59)

Aristotle in his work distinguishes between capacities and dispositions. For Kant , understanding a word must be a power of our understanding whereas feeling a pain is a power of the sensible dimension of our mind. The expression “I am in pain” is a substitute for a cry of pain and is a signal or a criterion for you (because sentience is private) to help or sympathise. It is a signal, not to attend to the detail of my pain,(unless one is communicating with a doctor) but rather to attend to me, the bearer of the pain, perhaps with words of sympathy that help to distract attention from the detail of this uncomfortable feeling. This use of the word “pain” in the community is systematic and reflects not just an agreement in judgements but is an agreement in relation to human forms of life. Wittgenstein elaborates upon his idea of communal agreement by claiming that it includes agreement in definitions. Given his commitment to the role of logic in processes of understanding and his use of the idea of human forms of life, there is nothing in Wittgenstein that could serve as a basis to deny Aristotle’s definition of being human: being, that is, a rational animal capable of discourse. In such a context perception or seeing something as something is a perceptual capacity that plays a role in the willingness to say “He is in pain”. Cavell claims this is a moment of proclamation (P.34) in which we need to see his wince as pain behaviour (P.35). Wittgenstein situates this moment of proclamation in a wider context of predication when he claims:

“it is what human beings say that is true or false” (§241).

What people say is of course expressed in propositions which are either true or false. Subsuming something (either an intuition or a perception) under a concept is not itself a propositional activity but obviously it is a condition of naming the experience which one is then going to characterise in a subject predicate judgement using concepts. “He is in pain” is saying something about his scraped knee or stomach ache and the effects this pain is having upon him as a person. Pain statements appear to fall between pure physical statements about physical objects such as a body e.g. “He is two metres tall” and statements about his soul “He is talented(can produce an album of philosophical sketches) but he is not a genius”(like Aristotle or Kant). The predicative moment of judgement is clearly a more complex moment in which something is asserted of something, producing a categorical judgement in accordance with a list of Categories Kant outlined in his first critique. Cavell’s account of these different levels of activity is different:

“Criteria do not determine the certainty of statements, but the application of the concepts employed in the statements.”(P.45)

This reminds us of the function of a dictionary that does not teach us how to explain and justify the truth of a proposition but teaches us how to use a concept and perhaps justify that use.

Much of the later work of Wittgenstein is designed to combat the dogmatism and scepticism behind the furious debates we encounter in modern epistemological discussion, and in that respect Wittgenstein’s later work shares much of the animus of the work of Aristotle and Kant.

Kant’s philosophy is discussed by Cavell in an essay entitled “Austin and Examples”(Must We Mean what we say?(Cambridge, CUP, 1969). Cavell claims here that Kant’s Categories did not register the sense of the externality of the world and he also claims that, had Kant been more thorough in his account of the a priori intuitions of space and time, there would have been no necessity to postulate a world of things in themselves. Cavell further argues that Kant uses things in themselves to justify an idea of God.

It is interesting to note that in the above criticism Cavell conveniently ignores the Kantian account of practical reason: an account that takes us much further into the realm of the noumenal, further than any theoretical reasoning could, and it does so not by appealing to the idea of God, but rather to the idea of Freedom in answer to the philosophical question “What ought we to do?” God makes a brief appearance in this account but only as a means to connect the good in itself (leading a worthy life by following the moral law) with good in its consequences (leading a flourishing life). This is not the defensive appeal of a Descartes to a God to support his shaky reasoning about the Cogito, but rather a fulfillment of a Philosophical promise that stretches back in time to Glaucon and the demand made upon Socrates to give an account of justice in terms of the principle of sufficient reason. Kant. we have agued, was a rationalist who kept his philosophical promises. Cavell has also failed to register Kant’s hylomorphic commitments. Matter for both Aristotle and Kant is mysterious as is God (primary form for Aristotle): both of these “ideas” have aspects of existence that lie outside our finite understanding. The origin, but perhaps not the entire nature, of our souls is also mysterious demanding a complex hylomorphic account as far as Aristotle is concerned: an account that involves actualisation processes over long stretches of time. This process of actualisation gives rise to sentience (capacity for feeling pain, sensation) perception, judgement, understanding, and reason. Principles (forms) direct this actualisation process and the task of reasoning attempts to grasp the totality of these principles or the totality of the conditions of existence of the soul, the world, and God. A task that might come closer to its completion in one hundred thousand years, when a cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends is actualised. Cavell, in his criticism of Kant is also ignoring the metaphysical aspects of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. In the context of this discussion he insists mysteriously upon a transcendental deduction of the thing in itself, about which nothing can be said. It is not clear, however, whether or not the thing in itself can be proclaimed in accordance with Cavells account of the proclamatory moment of judgement.

Cavell acknowledges that many aporetic philosophical questions might not be answered via an appeal to criteria:

“Am I am implying that we do not really know the difference between hallucinated and real things, or between animate and inanimate things. What I am saying is that the differences are not ones for which there are criteria: the difference between natural objects and artifacts is not one for which there are criteria. In such cases the role of origins is decisive, indeed definitive.”(P.63)

There is not however any reference to the necessity of rational explanation in the justification of criteria. What does emerge from this discussion, however, is an admission that Austinian criteria are not sufficient to account for, or explain, the existence of anything, but can at best serve the more limited function of the identification or recognition of something, e.g. a goldfinch. Wittgensteinian criteria, on the other hand, Cavell claims, do not relate

“a name to an object but rather relate various concepts to the concept of that object”( P.73)

This means that the test of whether someone in fact possesses the concept of something, becomes far more complex. Any such test must involve investigating whether they are capable of a range of judgements and activities( e.g. acts of sympathy). But what, then about the concept of the soul? Is this the concept of the “I” noted in Wittgensteinian notebooks? We find this mysterious comment in the Philosophical Investigations:

“The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”(P.178)

We also find:

“My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a person.”(P. 178)

Here there is a category distinction between the movements of an artifact, e.g. a machine, and the movements of a human being. We are clearly dealing here with a categorical disposition which Wittgenstein prefers to call an attitude. A disposition, for Wittgenstein is not a mental occurrence because inward processes are in need of outward criteria. This attitude might demonstrate itself in a form of life in which we sympathise both with our action and with our words. This is something that can only be claimed metaphorically when dealing with artifacts like machines, e.g. “how are we feeling today?” said to a computer appears almost ironic, a kind of private joke.

One of the reasons why the album of sketches Wittgenstein produced, left its author with a sense of incompleteness, is that the distinction between kinds of living beings requires a hylomorphic account of psuche (life) of the kind given by Aristotle–an account supported by a metaphysical matrix that appears to lie outside the realm of Wittgenstein’s concerns. We saw Wittgenstein, however, using the category of possession or “having” in his discussion of “pain”. Even if it cannot be true to say that I know that I am in pain, we can claim to have, or bear our pains: this is the basis or the condition for saying that one is in pain. This is one example of a general relation to all sensations that belong to that dimension of our mental lives Kant calls sensibility. It is not clear, however, that our relations to our sensations are the most important part of our mental lives insofar as Psychological investigations are concerned. Psychology, for Kant, begins with the “I think” which in the young child heralds a new kind of awareness of himself and everything around him. Do other people, then know what I am experiencing only from what they observe of my behaviour? In relation to this question Wittgenstein refers to a complex relation between a persons behaviour and their state of mind. He claims that we know of the one via the other. The behaviour of depression, for example, reveals or manifests a depressed state of mind (PI P. 179e) The full account of the essence of depression however, must be a wider question relating to origins and the telos of depression as a complex state of a person: a state intimately connected to his behaviour. In such an account, Freudian reference to mechanisms of mental activity involving the loss of objects we value (the Freudian triangle of desire, refusal and wounded desire) will play an important role in providing an account of the sufficient conditions of this complex state. Any sensations that are part of this state must surely play a relatively minor role (the role of a detail) in the operations of the principles regulating these mechanisms.

When we reach higher levels of mental activity and ask more complex questions such as “Why the depressed man committed suicide” we are appealing to the regions of the mind Kant called understanding and judgement–a region Socrates unequivocally claimed is responsible for the “Knowledge of “The Good”. Socrates’ response to the behaviour of the depressed man would have been similar to his response to Medea who claims that he knows what crimes he is about to commit in his anger, but his anger is greater than his knowledge. On the account Socrates favours, Medea has not fully recognised the nature of the Good. What this meant had to await Aristotle’s more systematic account of akrasia in which the knowledge being referred to, was logically structured in syllogisms consisting of premises that need to be actively acknowledged by the agent. Merely knowing what crime one is committing, e.g. “murdering oneself”(if one intends to commit suicide) is not in itself sufficient: the knowledge must be actualised and active in the agent at the time of considering the act: i.e. the agent must not be overwhelmed by either anger or sorrow, states of sensibility that are capable of dragging our reason about like a slave. When full knowledge of murdering oneself is active we become aware of the mechanisms that have weakened our ego (to the extent that it(the ego) is no longer able to protect the body of the person concerned). Kant’s diagnosis of this state of affairs is to point out that the agent actually murdering himself (a situation in which the requisite knowledge cannot be active) is not conscious of the contradiction involved in using ones life to end ones life. The knowledge of these mechanisms will of course be strewn over the theoretical, practical and productive sciences, all of which are embedded in a matrix of hylomorphic metaphysics. For Aristotle, the principles (arché) involved in such contexts are not a series of album sketches or pictures at an exhibition. These are the principles we need to understand if we are to understand ourselves, the world, and God to the extent that we can, given our finite natures.

Cavell in his discussion of “Knowledge and the basis of Morality” cites on P.250 (Claim of Reason) Schopenhauers dark opinion on this matter. For Schopenhauer all attempts to lay a foundation for Morality consist of:

“stilted maxims, for which it is no longer possible to look down and see life as it really is with all its turmoil.”(Schopenhauer’s “The Basis of Morality. P. 133)

What this actually means is not immediately clear but it is clear that it is meant as a criticism of Kant’s moral law, given that this law was proclaimed by Kant to be the basis for morality and the foundation of ethics. For Schopenhauer the man that thinks he knows the good, and leads a flourishing life as a consequence is like a beggar dreaming that he is a king. Suffering is everywhere, Schopenhauer argues, it is the essence of life to suffer. This is an intuitive form of ethics that regards the moral law as an illusion. This is also an epistemological view of ethics which demands that we explain rather than justify moral action. For Schopenhauer the facts speak for themselves–suffering is everywhere and this is confirmed by observation. He fails to understand that Kant’s theory is a justificatory theory, not of what we in fact do, but rather of what we ought to do. Appeal to facts in such a context, is merely a variation of Thrasymachus’ naturalistic argument against Socrates’ value laden account of justice. This kind of naturalistic argument fails to see that the believer in the moral law could acknowledge all the relevant facts to be true e.g. that many people do not keep promises, that many people commit suicide, but still logically believe that one ought not to make promises one had no intention of keeping and one ought not to murder oneself.

Cavell points out in the context of this discussion that it is disagreement over what we ought to do that makes people angry with one another, and he quotes Socrates on this issue. Indeed if anyone knew this fact it was Socrates. And yet even while the state was unjustly putting him to death, he believed in this normative idea of the Good, which in turn allowed him to transcend the fact of his impending death. Cavell argues also, that we ought to believe in the possibility of rational disagreement about what ought to be done. Is this kind of disagreement possible? In his prison cell there were friends trying to persuade Socrates to ” cut and run” as Lear put the matter in the previous chapter. Does Cavell believe that this is an example of a rational disagreement? Socrates’ interlocutors failed to get Socrates agreement : hoping he would choose to escape the injustice inflicted upon him. Does this hope alone sustain the claim that their argument was rational? This much is clear:

“We are often told that “there are”(meaning what?) certain moral “rules or principles”; but when these are formulated I find that I am unclear whether the assertions in question ( e.g. “Promises ought to be kept,” “keep your promises!”) are rules or principles or “stilted maxims”, and unclear whether I believe or am convinced of them.”(Claim. P.257)

In the following passages Cavell then appears to settle upon a psychological account, in which agents with cares and commitments to the attitudes of others, and certain forms of argument, constitute what is ethical. Moral persuasion becomes the mechanism of this transactional account in which moralists and propagandists share a commitment to the same mechanism. The rationalism of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Kant are conspicuous by their absence. So, if I say to someone “You ought to keep your promise to X” this, on Cavells account, is a mode of presenting the action to be done and not the subject of a rational inference. This mode of presentation involves taking a position with respect to the content of the factual premises involved in the argument. If, then, the content of the above is “You ought to return the money owed” this, on Cavells account, is the same content as “You ought to keep your promises”. Also, on Cavell’s account the modal imperative of the ought is a mode of presenting the reasons one would use to support these imperatives and:

“What makes their use rational is their relevance to the person confronted, and the legitimacy your position gives you to confront him or her in the mode you take responsibility for.”(P.323)

Legitimacy? Is it not the very point of the universal essence of the universal justification of the categorical imperative that anyone with the right argument has the right to confront anyone with their argument? Of course, not just any argument will do, as Charles Stevenson claims in his work “Ethics and Language”. Imagine, for example that one is confronted by an interlocutor who produces a transactional argument of the kind we have encountered in Cavell’s reflections and his/her opponent is persuaded by the legitimacy of the position and the mode of the argument. Is this sufficient to make the argument an ethical argument? Is ethics transactional? Is ethics a kind of game?

What we have been presented with above is a theoretical account of morality that attempts to chart the psychological conditions of the transactions that occur in an argument. In cases where the issue cannot be resolved, Cavell claims (P.326), what breaks down is not the argument but rather the transactional relationship, perhaps because one or both participants have mistaken the others cares and commitments: or alternatively one or both parties fail to be persuaded. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Kant would all refuse the ethical validity of this transactional account. Psychology, we know, detached itself from Philosophy perhaps partly for the purposes of engaging in such transactional analyses. It would be a tragedy of monumental proportions if, after this grand divorce, ethics, the queen of Philosophy, would be reduced to a Psychology that ceased to search for causes of different kinds(including teleological causes) and satisfied itself instead with correlations between variables and the probability values of such correlations.

For Kantian Philosophy (waiting for the day of the feast when rationality invites the guests), the above account reminds Kantians of the presence of the ghost of Hegel at the feast of dialectical spiritualism attempting to synthesise antithetical concepts in a process that appears very transactional. One can of course label such a synthesis with the term “agreement” if one conceives of the process in terms of transactional partners, but the ethical categorical imperative does not tolerate antithetical transactional components. For ethics transactional synthesis is a kind of game that aims at agreement. To agree is to win the game and part of the agreement is the transactional act of agreeing to play such a game in the name of ethics.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 3(Jonathan Lear—Self Reflection, Morality, Religion and Politics–Aristotelian and Kantian Critique)

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In the work entitled “Freud” Jonathan points to the fact that Freud listened to his patients with care and claims that this was the only significant source of psychoanalytical theory. In these consulting rooms, Lear claims, Freud’s patients were responding to the question”How ought we to live?” with curious transformations of the human psuche graded on a scale by Freud: a scale stretching from neuroses to psychoses. Lear also notes in his chronology over Freud’s works that Freud had confided with a Hungarian psychoanalyst concerning his reluctance to work with psychotic patients because their mode of transforming the human psuche aroused in him feelings of anger. Freud’s frustration was probably partly due to the fact that these patients were so difficult to treat given their compulsion to repeat and destructive tendencies–tendencies that had created havoc in their lives. These patients, it is clear, defined the limits of Freud’s form of rationalism.

Lear, however, rejects this rationalist interpretation of Freud’s work with the words:

“in my own attempt to figure out how to live something is going wrong” Lear, J. Freud, Routledge New York, 2005 ( P.10)

He continues:

“Freud was not well placed to hear this master complaint. He was a doer and he conceived of himself as engaged in scientific research though his image of science was by todays standards naive. Just as a doctor pushes for the hidden causes of physical diseases, So Freud took himself to be probing the unconscious for hidden meanings making the patient ill. With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that a certain clinical brutality flows from this self understanding. It also blinds him to the profound philosophical and ethical significance of his discoveries.”(P.10)

There is much to unpack here. Freud was obviously a practitioner, but also a thinker whose thoughts captured the attention of the world. Lear is ostensibly attempting to criticise the scientifically inspired sport of Freud bashing, but his form of criticism actually weakens Freud’s otherwise strong philosophical position, by misconstruing both Freud’s theoretical assumptions and what was being aimed at by Freudian therapy. Freud was the thinker that opened the eyes of the world to his discoveries in Psychology(which he claimed were Kantian), a feat he could hardly have been achieved if he was blind to the philosophical and ethical significance of his work. This claim by Lear is questionable given the fact that he had earlier written an influential work on the Philosophy of Aristotle. The above quote demonstrates many things, but it particularly ignores the role of hylomorphism in the theoretical assumptions of Freud. The description that Freud was searching for “hidden meanings” ignores the central focus of Freud on primary and secondary processes. This description of Lear’s is problematic, as is the claim that Freud’s essentially Kantian view of science was naive. Many scientists cannot of course see “science” in Freud’s account because of their atomistic, positivistic, naturalistic, or pragmatic views of metaphysics and Transcendental Psychology. The metaphysical and transcendental view of course includes the Kantian view of the normativity of freedom that Korsgaard (quoted by Lear) characterises in the following terms:

“And this sets us a problem no other animal has. For our capacity to turn our attention onto our own mental activities is also a capacity to distance, and to call them into question. I perceive and I find myself with a powerful impulse to believe. But I back up and bring that impulse into view, and then I have a certain distance. Now the impulse does not dominate me and now I have a problem. Shall I believe? Is this perception really a reason to believe? I desire and find myself with a powerful impulse to act. But I back up and bring this impulse into view and then I have a certain distance. Now the impulse does not dominate me and now I have a problem. Shall I act?Is this desire really a reason to act? The reflective mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason.(Korsgaard, C., The Sources of Normativity(Cambridge, CUP, 1996, P93)

Aristotle and Kant would endorse the overall rationalist intent of the above quote which Lear finds problematic because he believes, paradoxically, that in cases such as that of the Rat Man the doubts that this patient feels are an exercise of his freedom. Lear claims. again paradoxically, that in the grip of his compulsive feeling of doubt, the Rat Man is employing self conscious reflection of the kind referred to above. Lear argues that this case illustrates that the process of “stepping back” from ones experience is an illusion. Much hinges on whether Korsgaard imagines the above activity of “stepping back” to be a kind of introspection or a more theoretical account of the role of reason in believing and acting. In relation to the claim that the above reflective process is illusory, Lear maintains that Philosophical reflection per se, is a defensive form of activity that blocks rather than promotes self understanding. We pointed out in the previous essay on Lear’s work “Open Minded”, that he was missing the point of rationalism and attempting unsuccessfully to substitute for it a non-Freudian hermeneutical idea of “Interpretation”. The famous chapter 7 of Freud’s work “The Interpretation of Dreams” is clearly in the spirit of Kantian science(which includes regulative teleological explanations) and also in line with the Kantian division of the human psuche into the realms of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. This Kantian division also has interesting relations to the essentially Aristotelian principles of Energy Regulation Principle(ERP, Pleasure-Pain Principle(PPP) and the Reality Principle(RP). The ERP and the PPP are clearly operating in the realm of practical sensibility, and the RP is operating in the realm of the Categories of the Understanding and the Principles of Logic, namely the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory relates these three principles in the context of a hierarchy of capacities or powers: a hierarchy in which the lower powers are subsumed under, or enveloped by the higher powers. This approach to reality was evident in Freud’s early unpublished scientific “Project”. A document that was clearly influenced by the work of Hughlings Jackson’s research on aphasia. In this work Hughlings Jackson argued that the higher centres of the brain relate in complex ways to the lower centres, and the effect of lesions cause both negative symptoms that inhibit the lower centres and positive symptoms where the lower centres are released at the expense of(colonising the energy of the system) the higher centres. There are obvious hylomorphic aspects to Hughlings Jackson’s account which Freud, in accordance with Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics, elaborated upon. Freud was therefore not a dualist and he insisted in his writings at the end of his life, that his theory would be confirmed by future brain research. This is strong evidence of the influence of his hylomorphic approach to psychological phenomena. Freud would certainly have endorsed Hughlings jackson’s approach to case studies in which we must begin by studying firstly the damage to tissue, secondly the disease in the organs, and thirdly consequential disorders of function. Hughlngs Jacksons proposes three evolutionary levels of the nervous system. The Cambridge Journals Medical History has the following to say about Hughlings Jackson’s theory of the evolution and devolution of nervous system functions:

“He conceived of diseases of the nervous system as a process of de-evolution or dissolution. He came to believe that the nervous system is a hierarchy of three evolutionary levels that represent, re-represent, and re-re-represent movement and sensation of parts of the body. Higher levels suppress the function of lower levels. Negative symptoms result from the loss of function of higher levels, and positive symptoms result from the appearance of the function of previously inhibited lower levels.These emergent functions are inherently less organised, less definite and more general than the functions that are lost.”(Internet source:–nebi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2640105(2020))

Hughlings Jacksons model is a neurological model that influenced Freud’s theories significantly, especially at the beginning of his theorising. It is a model that supports the Aristotelian more psychologically oriented model of powers building upon and integrating with other powers. The model is also influencing the account of the psychical apparatus we are given in the famous Chapter 7 of Freud’s “interpretation of Dreams”, as well as the account of the 1895 Scientific “Project” which Paul Ricoeur characterises as ” a non-hermeneutic state of the system”(Ricoeur, P., Freud and Philosophy, Trans Savage, D.,(London, Yale University Press, 1970, P.69)

This early account of the apparatus Ricoeur continues to argue, functions principally in accordance with the ERP but also in accordance with the higher level principle of Pleasure-Pain. Ricoeur does not, however, see the connection of Aristotelian hylomorphism to the account of the psychic apparatus Freud provides us with in Chapter 7 of his “Interpretation of Dreams”. Ricoeur claims that in this later sketch of the psychic apparatus that there is no relation to the later theoretical account of the topography and he claims further that we are in such a context dealing with actions that need to be “interpreted”.

The early Scientific “Project” of 1895 defines psychical processes not in terms of actions but rather in terms of the material particles of the neurones of the brain. There are three systems and these systems are all innervated by a Quantity Q, of energy. According to a letter Freud wrote on this topic he appears to be characterising an early version of the primary and secondary processes:

“the main trend and the compromise trend of the nervous system, the two biological rules of attention and defense, the indications of quality, reality, and thought, the state of the psycho-sexual group, the sexual determination of repression, and finally, the factors determining consciousness as a perceptual function.”(Origins P.355).

There can be no way of connecting these ideas to the sphere of action and the activity of the human psuche except via a hylomorphic framework in which material, efficient, formal, and final causes(action explanations) are theoretically operating. The phrases “indications of quality, reality, and thought” and “factors determining consciousness” are clear traces of the influence of Hughlings Jackson and his concept of “levels of functioning” of the nervous system. There are both Philosophical and Scientific motivations operating in the Freudian account. The latter is evident in the opening words of the “Project” which refers to the “Scientific Aim” of the work. What we encounter in this early work, however, is not a science of observation and measurement. This is evidenced by the fact that the concept of Energy used is not a measurable entity, even though it is placed in a category of “Quantity”. In this account, Quantity refers to the property of the system to reduce tension in a system, returning the system to a state of homoestasis in which tensions remain at a low level . There must be some energy remaining in the system , Freud argues, to enable it to provide energy for “specific actions”. We shift upwards in the system when we move from quantity to quality–a shift that takes us to the level of Consciousness, which for Freud, is the home of indications of quality. This transformation forced Freud to postulate a third system of neurones, a system he designated with the letter W. The first set of neurones he called phi, and they discharged their quantities completely without retaining any trace of their discharge(e.g. in reflexive actions). The second system he called psi-neurones and these retained a trace of their discharge via chemical alteration. Ricouer in his work on Freud, claims that this whole system rests upon a purely scientific idea of “the material equivalences of the the sensation of rise in tension and unpleasure and the sensation of discharge with pleasure.” There is no obvious evidence for this interpretation if it is the case that Hylomorphism is an influential factor in Freud’s theories. For hylomorphic theory there are three kinds of pleasure-unpleasure and these kinds might be related to the three system of neurones and the three principles of the functioning of human psuche. Add to this the claim of Hughlings Jackson, that the whole system of neurones is controlled at the highest level by a system of neurones that will qualitatively represent and re-represent reality for the human psuche. It is this last level of functioning that allows us to speak of the understanding of the external world, e.g. food, and the sexual partner etc. This level of functioning will also generate the secondary learning processes that enable the human psuche to generate knowledge spontaneously through self reflection and reasoning processes that Lear believes are illusory. Freud, in the context of this discussion makes a very important distinction between the modes of functioning of primary processes versus the mode of functioning of secondary processes. In the former mode of functioning, fantasy produces an image that is a representation that bears some similarity to the memory trace of a perceptual quality. The difference in this mode of functioning resides in what motivates the fundamental theoretical distinction between the real and the imaginary, between, for example, activity aiming at conceptual and propositional understanding, and activity aiming at pleasure (or pain reduction). It is in this context that Freud begins to talk of an ego whose primary process function is the protection of ones body, and whose secondary process function is to reality-test ones thoughts. If the Hughlings Jackson account is correct, then we can postulate that another function of the ego would be to inhibit primary processes from disrupting the homeostasis of the system or from causing unpleasure.

Lear in the beginning of his work on Freud points to Agamemnon and his explanation for his action of stealing the mistress of Achilles. Agamemnon blamed Zeus. Lear paradoxically characterises what is happening here in terms of the influence of “another mind”. The account of Julian Jaynes referred to earlier in this work carries more of a Freudian stamp. Jaynes maintains that there was an executive part of the human psuche located in the right hemisphere that has since disappeared with the appearance of the integrating function of Consciousness. Julian Jaynes, that is, contradicts the “another mind” thesis with a more plausible account of “another kind of mind”. Jaynes supports his thesis with extensive reference to both literary and archeological evidence. It may be this account in terms of “another mind” and its highly questionable logic that is causing the problem of understanding what Korsgaard is referring to in her account of rational self-reflection.

According to Freud a defining characteristic of the ego is its ability to choose not to cathect motor ideas or images of objects that are desired. This raises, of course the question of whether these ideas or images generate unconscious or preconscious memories, whether, that is, the psi system of neurones is related to the phi system. One can also wonder whether defence mechanisms are operating in such processes. It is clear that perceptual discrimination requires the use of psi-neurones, a necessary activity if a memory is to be formed: something which is in turn necessary for the recognition of a previously encountered object. This might be the beginning of the process that Freud characterises as indication of thought or reality. Freud’s suggestion here is that if one wishes to ascend up the neuronal hierarchy to the function of a perceptual judgement, a wishful cathexis must be attributed to the recognised object, and further, it is this interaction of perception and wish that gives rise to what he calls a “belief”(a cathexis of psi-neurones). In the above process the function of attention would also be involved. In such a context the ego has learned to hypercathect processes of perception. On the Kantian view what has been described does not yet take us to the level of the the interaction of concepts that form truth making judgments. We remain at the level of Sensibility.

This suggests that on the Freudian account the next shift of level up to the level of understanding occurs when we turn from perceptual indications of reality to indications of speech which are indications of thought reality. Perceptual functions are located on that part of the cortex of the brain situated in the occipital and parietal lobes. The areas of the brain that principally differentiate us from the higher mammals of the animal kingdom are firstly, the language centres(Wernicke’s area located in the temporal lobe and Broca’s area located in the left frontal lobe and associated with the motor use of language) and secondly the frontal lobes generally associated with the planning and organisation of action. Hughlings Jackson in one of his early publications recognised the existence and importance of Broca’s area and we might conclude from these reflections that both the language centres of the brain are involved in the higher mental functions of understanding and reason: functions which differentiate themselves from the sensible functions of perception and imagination. Language, for Freud, belongs clearly in the domain of the secondary process and is a higher function of thought. This is the so called second level of reality that constitutes a higher level of function than that of biological and perceptual functions. It is at this level that reality testing in accordance with the RP occurs. At this secondary level, energy is bound in chemically transformed psi neurones and this diminishes the quantity of energy flow in the system. From this point of view it appears that the electrical potential of neurones have been diminished by this chemical transformation. The brain is, of course, an electro-chemical system, something that seems to escape those commentators, including Lear, who wish to talk in terms of the “lighting up” of neurones.

The interesting observation that Freud makes in relation to “thought indication” is that it is not related to biological unpleasure. This presumably means that the kind of pleasure that is related to thought is not connected to the mere absence of pain(relief from pain), as is the case with lower biological and perceptual forms of pleasure. In this context it appears that the presence of thought about reality is intimately connected to the presence of reality. On this account certain thought functions are not related to brain states of the perceptual kind but rather connected to the somato-sensory area of the brain which in turn is connected to motor and language activity. This may create the interrogative space of the self-reflective process Lear claims is an illusion.

Ricoeur treats this advance in levels from what he calls the energetics to the understanding as a discontinuous process. In a sense there is a physical discontinuity between the lower perceptual and higher thought functions of the brain, but it is nevertheless the case that the brain is one organ even if the central sulcus partly defines the division between these areas. Hughlings Jackson and hylomorphism postulates a continuity of function whereby the higher functions have continuous relations with the lower, e.g. sexuality and anxiety are functions possessing both biological and psychological aspects. Freud notes that sexual tension can be anxiety provoking. This anxiety is then transformed into psychological emotional affects perhaps involving sexual memories.

Ricoeur points to the different applications of Freudian theory in the experimental laboratory and the clinical setting of his consulting rooms, suggesting tension where there is none. The Freudian concept of Science is hylomorphic and the essence specifying definition of rational animal capable of discourse is obviously a multi-level definition of the human psuche. The various diagnoses of the neuroses and the focus upon the dream work(a work of the imagination) and the work of mourning(a work of the Ego), require an account in which the agencies of the id, ego, superego work together to complement logically the topography of the systems of consciousness, preconsciousness, and the unconsciousness. Embedded in this structure is the assumption of a logical differentiation between levels of consciousness and differentiation between agencies. This account obviously arises both from the clinical setting of the work of psychoanalysis with its methods of dream interpretation, free association, the handling of the transference neurosis, and the interpretation of everyday behaviour. The method partly aims at recovering ideas and images(psychical representations from the unconscious system). These are by definition not items of knowledge that could be accessed by normal interrogative methods. The point of retrieving this difficult to access material is to install indications of thought reality in place of these essentially sensible images and ideas. These indications of thought reality(concepts judgements) are necessary for installing an attitude toward the world and reality that better answers the normative question of life, namely “How ought we to live?”

Korsgaards work “Sources of normativity” will give us a Kantian perspective of the above question. This question is clearly a normative question for Korsgaard, and, we might add, this is also the case for all ought-judgments including those civilisation-building obligation judgements such as “Promises ought to be kept” and “laws ought to be obeyed”. Korsgaard has the following to contribute to this discussion:

“It is the most striking fact about human life that we have values. We think of ways that things could be better, more perfect, and so, of course, different than they are, and of ways that we ourselves could be better, more perfect, and so, of course, different than we are. Why should this be so? Where do we get ideas that outstrip the world we experience and seem to call it into question, to render judgements on it, to say that it does not measure up, that it is not what it ought to be? Clearly we do not get them from experience at least not by any simple route…The fact of value is a mystery and philosophers have been trying to solve it ever since. But it is important to see that during the transition from the ancients to the modern world, a revolution has taken place..The world has been turned upside down and inside out, and the problem has become the reverse of what it was before.”(P.2)

Korsgaard goes on to explain why both Plato and Aristotle spoke of forms in relation to values and how for them:

“being guided by value is a matter of being guided by the way things ultimately are.”(P.2)

She adds, in Delphic spirit:

“Being guided by the way things really are is, in this case, being guided by the way you really are. The form of a things is its perfection but it is also what enables the thing to be what it is.”(P.3)

We are, as Kant argued, ” the crooked timber of humanity” and our human matter is not easily “formed” by rationality. Aristotle too, shares this view. The “matter” of the animal is not easily “humanised” in accordance with the Greek ideas of areté, epistemé, arché. diké, phronesis, all of which are value laden terms. In Aristotle’s view, the actualising process “aims at the good” but for him it is not only the “matter” of our animal nature that needs to be “formed” but also a recalcitrant environment or reality needs to be understood as well as “formed” by motor activity. The principles ERP, PPP, and RP are obviously also involved in the actualisation processes connected to the above. The telos of a thing is metaphysically what various philosophers have referred to as the perfection of a thing. The revolution Korsgaard referred to above depicts either a failure of humanity to actualise its potential, or alternatively, a regression back to the dominance of the mind by symptoms of the sensible part of the mind. Korsgaard refers to Plato, and an event of a “fall” because of an illusion that the sensible form of the world is what it is independently of how we conceive or understand it to be.

Language is the means by which children are introduced into the world of concepts and the medium which is used for self-reflection, an activity conducted in an interrogative mood.It is interesting to note in this context that for the Greeks who believed in arché, areté, diké, epistemé, thinking was construed as talking to oneself. Compare this with the Freudian “talking cure” and it becomes apparent that transforming sensory images and motor ideas into indications of thought reality is an important part of both the communication process and the therapeutic process. Conceptualising what is happening occurs partly in the interrogative mood in a context of exploration/discovery because the very long work of psychoanalysis–the mere occurrence of the “material” in Consciousness, is ,of course a necessary condition but obviously not a sufficient condition for the manifold of sensible representations to be conceptually organised. The act of apperception, the “I think”, obviously will play a major role in this activity. The more practically oriented Freudian triangle of “Desire-Refusal-Wounded Desire” will also play an important role in strengthening the Ego of the patient. This will ensure that many wishes will be transformed into lost-cathected objects.

Korsgaard contributes to this discussion relating to the recalcitrant matter of reality and the struggle to achieve “The Good”:

“Im not sure about Plato. But at least in ethics, Aristotle doesn’t seem to have made much of this problem. A well brought up person would not need to have excellence forced upon him–he would move naturally towards the achievement of his perfect form.. In Greek thought becoming excellent is as natural as growing up. We need to learn virtue, but it is as we learn language, because we are human and that is our nature.”(P.3)

There is no “fall” or “fault” in human nature for Aristotle, Kant or Freud. The normal response of modern philosophers(especially in the US) is to regard Aristotelian and Kantian ethics as opposing systems of ethics, with the former emphasising teleology and excellence and the latter focussing upon deontological duty and obligation. Korsgaard does not fall into this category, because she openly admits that for Aristotle there is a commitment to the role of law in the activity of striving to lead the flourishing life: in other words a commitment to duty and obligation. Korsgaard does, however, problematically characterise obligation as compulsive, thereby creating tension with what she calls the “attraction” of excellence(areté). In a sense, looked at from the point of view of a narcissist who cannot understand the rationality of the law, following the law to avoid punishment(in the spirit of Glaucon) could be described by this kind of patient as a compulsive act. Obeying the law in such circumstances for a narcissist is a matter of the good consequences for themselves. For these narcissists avoiding unpleasure or punishment amounts to avoiding the consequences of breaking the law and thereby avoiding a wounded ego. Consequentialists operating on the above form of instrumental reasoning are, however, just as likely to regard the wounded ego as the worst of all evils and prefer to break the law rather than experience the compulsion of following the law which wounds their ego. This is a game regulated by the PPP and can be regularly seen in the obsessive behaviour of Freud’s patients, especially the Rat Man for whom the psychical distance between his reason and his action is not traversed by knowing the good(knowing what ought to be done) but is rather traversed by doubts about what ought to be done and the anxiety associated with this doubt. For Freud, acting according to the RP involves learning to subject ones appetites to a form of reflective self control in which unrealistic desires are not acted upon. This is a different kind of game altogether.

Korsgaard points correctly to the complication in the development of our concept of the human psuche caused by the concept we are provided with by Christian metaphysics. Christianity diminished the space of the metaphysics of action in favour of a more passive relation to God, the law maker, and man the fallen soul, who is being punished for an act of freedom motivated by a desire for knowledge in the Garden of Eden. This interpretation regards the act of eating the apple of knowledge : an act motivated by a desire to know rather than by appetite for a transient foodstuff. Such a scenario for the Greek Philosophers and Kant is a celebration of the importance of knowledge and freedom rather than an opportunity to mourn over offending ones God.

For Kant the idea of freedom is the central idea of practical reason governing our active lives. The theoretical idea of God is also an idea of reason but regulates the belief system rather than the action system. The Christian imagination provides us with an image of God the lawmaker, and man the lost soul in need of guidance. This imaginary account leaves us with the impression that it is only through this belief system that we can strive effectively for “The Good”. For believers, the idea of God being dead might indeed suffice for the collapse of the idea of the Good, and perhaps as a result a collapse of even the idea of the good of the law. Korsgaard claims interestingly, that when the idea of God retreated(deus absconditis) the response of returning to a belief in Greek metaphysics was no longer possible because God had replaced the idea of “Form”. When God retreated we were left with a world of matter without form: a world in which our sensible relations to matter dominated our lives. This we can call the materialists revolution. The Ancient Greek response to this revolution would have been to point to the importance of knowledge and associated concepts of arché, areté, epistemé, diké and phronesis insofar as defining our human form of life as “rational animal capable of discourse is concerned. The phenomenon of Kantian critical Philosophy would for them have been testimony to the fact that the outcome of the revolution is still hanging in the balance. These ancient Greeks would have also been mildly amused at sceptically feeling the world to be inside out and dogmatically viewing the world upside down. They would of course have objected to the viewing of the world in exclusively perceptual terms at all. For them ,thinking about the world and acting in a world in accordance with our knowledge of The Good is not just an indication of thought reality but also an indication of our sanity.

Kantian Critical Philosophy whilst being a destroyer of traditional non Aristotelian Metaphysics does not reject the view that God may be the theoretical source of our principles and laws. Kant does, however, reject all claims connected to the imaginative idea of God. For him God is an idea of reason and a possible source of normativity: a source of the forms we impose on the matter of the world and our belief system. Reason, can, of course present itself to us as an order to do our duty as in the Kantian cases of the tax man demanding his taxes or the military man demanding obedience, but for both Kant and the Greeks there need to be good reasons to pay tax and obey: unless, that is, these demands were subjected to a critical tribunal where reason and argument would determine whether the reason was good or not: in which case these imperatives were empty commands without any authority. This critical attitude is the mark of the free man and after this tribunal, the interrogative attitude gives way an imperative attitude in which if there is a question remaining it is immediately resolved with judgments from the tribunal of explanation /justification. For the man possessed of reason and its form of ethical thinking and understanding, the normative is an end in itself, without further need of questioning or justification. In other words the moral law is what it is and it also is justified true belief, i.e. knowledge(of the good).

For Korsgaard the effect of the revolution, which in the name of modern science removed teleological explanation from the tribunal of explanation/justification (or what she refers to in a material mode), was that of removing the purpose of the world. A further effect is that the search is on for the sources of normativity(in an interrogative mood–the mood of an explorer looking for the truth). This is a regression from the Greek and Kantian position where principles and laws and their truth is no longer an issue. Science has succeeded in fighting the battle over normativity on the continually shifting ground of its choosing. Another interpretation of the cause of this revolution is the one we have presented, namely the rejection of Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics. The reasons for this state of affairs is manifold and deserves investigation.

For Kant, the hylomorphic Philosopher, the form of a moral judgement is related to the way in which an act and its purpose are related. Plato, another rationalist, established the importance of reasoning in his consideration of three maxims:

  1. I will keep my weapon because I want it for myself
  2. I will refuse to return your weapon because I want it for myself
  3. I will refuse to return your weapon because you have gone mad and may hurt someone.

Plato uses both the ideas of the Good and the True to classify these maxims: maxims 1 and 3 are good and 2 is bad. There is also a short tribunal of explanation/justification. The maxims are not true in virtue of the actions being in essence good or bad because maxims 2 and 3 mention the same actions(refusing to return the weapon). Neither is it the case that the maxims are true in virtue of sharing the same telos or purpose because maxims 1 and 2 have the same purpose(keeping the weapon for myself). This establishes that the form of the Good is constituted by the relation between the action and its purpose. It is this complex form of reasoning that constitutes the idea of the good and justifies willing the maxim to become a universal law. Involved in this reasoning is the logical consequence of treating everyone(including myself) as ends in themselves(second formulation of the categorical imperative) as well as in the more distant telos of a relation to the law that is such that I could be both the legislator and the citizen-recipient that obeys the law because it is rational.Notice how my own desires and interests have been universalised into everyones. Note also how logic supports this structure with syllogistic forms of reasoning that move from a concrete action expression of the moral law in the imperative:

Promises ought to be kept

to an action

“Jack promised Jill he would do A”.

This in turn leads to the necessarily true conclusion that Jack ought to do A(which he might not do if he gets hit by a truck). Of course an Aristotelian attack of akrasia or a Freudian attack of anxiety might prevent the premises from being “activated”(in the higher centres of the mind of the agent). The lower centres might , that is, be narcissistically activated and neutralise the activity of the higher centres(Hughlings Jackson). If this happens the accusation of akrasia(weakness of the will), of failing to do the right thing, becomes justified. In Aristotelian terms the agent is “drunk” with desire or anxiety.

Obsessive compulsives have more serious anxiety problems and it is somewhat puzzling that given the above analyses there is a conflation of the obsessive’s condition with the condition of the agent following the moral law freely, (thus possessing a feeling of self worth, and leading a possible flourishing life as a consequence). On the other hand the man who is not freely following the moral law but feels compelled to do so(against his desire to do something else), is being compelled by the consequences, is being in a sense “caused” to act rather than freely acting for the right reason(Areté)

Lear claims, somewhat controversially, that Freud was not a Philosopher(P.20) This is a mystifying claim, a revolutionary’s perspective of a man who could translate Sophocles, had studied Aristotle and Brentano at University and subsequently studied the works of Kant, Plato, Anaxogoras, Empedocles, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. It is undoubtedly true that he did not situate his work in relation to the Philosophers of his time who were participating in the revolution against Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics. It is also true that Freud complained about the logicians of his time and their resistance to the theory of psychoanalysis but that resistance, we are sure, he diagnosed, was a consequence of the Cartesian view of Consciousness: a view that claimed to be a rationalist view but in essence flirted with dualism and materialism in a way that would have been anathema to both Aristotelians and Kantians. For these philosophers/logicians knowledge was necessarily related to Consciousness: the unconscious on this account could not be known and moreover, the very concept, in their view was contradictory.

Descartes was a mathematician and regarded analysis of a problem as the reverse of the process of a Euclidean synthesis in which elements and operations such as points, space, straight lines, triangles, squares etc., are constituted. Analysis from this point of view was merely the reverse of the process of synthesis. The role of definitions in this process is a matter of moving from the more simple definition of a point to the more complicated definitions of a straight line, triangle etc. These simple definitions begin with a definition of an intuition, e.g. a point is a place in space with no magnitude. Even if there is an imaginative operation in the construction of a straight line between two points, we are nevertheless dealing with intuitions which are designed to be measured quantitatively and form figurative relations. Both Kant and Aristotle, as we know, would have objected to construing analytical reasoning and synthetic reasoning in mathematical terms. Arbitrarily fixating upon intuitions as distinct from concepts, and attempting to characterise them in terms of only two Aristotelian Categories, namely Quantity and Relation would have been problematic for both Aristotle and Kant. To the extent that Freud was influenced by Plato, Aristotle and Kant, this form of reasoning would have been problematic for Freud too. Plato we ought to recall would have placed Mathematics lower on the scale of reasoning than many of Freud’s contemporary logicians.

Imagination for Freud, however, is not to be regarded as purely related to theoretical intuition and intuitive representations, where the manifold of representations is organised by mathematical(quantitative and relational) considerations. There is, in Freud’s writings several interesting descriptions of the practical relation of the imagination to biological (ERP)and psychological activity(PPP).

In the interpretation of Dreams Freud, in a chapter entitled “Wish Fulfillment”, outlined how a sensation/stimulus of hunger produces in the infant, the reflexive activity of kicking and crying: an activity not useful for bringing about a cessation of the stimulus or sensation. It is outside help that brings about this cessation by providing the infant with food. A mnemonic image of this experience of satisfaction of this need is associated with the sensation/stimulus of hunger. On the next occasion of the appearance of this stimulus/sensation two alternative responses are now made available, namely reflexively kicking and crying, and the appearance of the hallucinatory mnemonic image of the experience of satisfaction. This latter is a primary process manifestation of wish fulfillment. Freud connects dreams to primary process activity and argues convincingly that the hallucinatory appearance is connected to the immobilisation of the motor system during sleep–thoughts about specific actions to meet specific stimuli/sensations are also in a state of suspended animation. In such a physical state a wish can only be fulfilled in a hallucination. Obviously upon waking the motor and sensory systems begin to function and the secondary processes emerge as the ERP and PPP are subsumed under the workings of the RP. The RP demands specific actions in relation to the demands of sensation/stimuli. The secondary process and the focus on thought indications of reality mean that the contexts of explanation/justification become more important than the occurrence of perceptions and emotions in the contents of exploration/discovery. Ideas of the Truth and the Good in relation in to the categories of the understanding, concepts, and reasoning(principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason) are the aims of a human psuche striving to lead a flourishing life.

Sexual sensations and stimuli, owing to our long childhood and the prohibitions of society, have difficulty finding appropriate avenues of expression and therefore become the playground of the primary process, forming fantasies and experiencing anxieties. Freud’s early biological account claimed that the biological condition for both the operation of the primary and the secondary processes is the delay in the transmission of the sensory impulse to the motor region. It is in this delay that both primary process and secondary process activity occur(in different regions of the brain). The problem with primary process activity is that one of its primary goals is the restoration of homeostasis via the ERP. The relief of the tension involved(absence of pain) is experienced as a primitive form of pleasure. This pleasure is from the point of view of less transient forms of pleasure connected to the operation of the RP, a substitute satisfaction. This is well illustrated by the example of the infant hallucinating the breast and perhaps temporarily suspending the motor activity of kicking and screaming. The problem that is present in this state of affairs is that there is a crisis in energy regulation of the concerned organism, due to lack of nourishment, and this will, in spite of the response of the primary process hallucination, reassert itself probably in the form of kicking and screaming until external help arrives on the scene and restores the state of homeostasis. In the course of such activity an erotogenic zone around the mouth is being installed in the body: pleasure and pain is centred around the experiences of the mouth. At this point what we are dealing with is a non sexual form or eros. According to Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual stages, sexual erotogenic zones will only be established around three years of age during the phallic stage, long after the child’s view of the world is transformed by the use of the egocentric grammatical “I”.

Shakespeares seven ages of man is a literary view of our long childhood, maturity and decline, moving from a stage of helplessness where we whine about our condition, learn to live with love and its issues, fight about our condition, judge our condition, muse about our condition, and then finally with a whimper return to a state of helplessness. The message of Shakespeare is clear: “All men are mortal”. Shakespeare sees in these phases of life before we shuffle off this mortal coil, Eros present in the form of an actor strutting on a stage playing various roles all of which fade into insignificance at the fact that Thanatos presents us with, namely “All men are mortal”. Life is bracketed by helplessness at birth and death and the overarching judgement is that life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. If Plato was the spokesperson for Eros, Shakespeare is the spokesperson for Thanatos and Freud synthesises these positions insofar as he attempted also to synthesise Philosophy, Literature, Aristotelian and Kantian science into one great account of the human psuche. Sexuality plays an important role in the work of both Freud and Shakespeare. The phallic stage for Freud is a reenactment of the tragedy of Oedipus who, in desiring his mother and wishing his father dead, calls upon himself the Erinyes(the fury of fate, Ananke). This drama is actualised in the context of the Freudian triangle of Desire-Refusal-Wounded Desire. It ends relatively peacefully in terms of a successful identification with both parents and marks the beginning of a phase in which insight into the idea of the good(what is right, what is wrong) is actualised. This is the psycho-sexual stage in which we begin to decentre, to delay gratification, and accept with a greater resignation the march of events through ones life, responding to them less impulsively and more thoughtfully. This history is of course strewn with lost cathected objets and tragedies lurk in the shadows as one learns to love(Shakespeare’s lover). This stage marks the beginning of the subjects entrance into one of the major institutions of society, the educational system. The Freudian triangle will now be activated in the context of a desire for understanding and the striving for the acquisition of knowledge as a preparation for the next major challenge for the ego, namely work. Freud’s eagle eye discerned in this process a hylomorphic transformation of the Instincts. He saw in this actualisation process the presence of Thanatos seeking to return everything back to an earlier mysterious state of matter–the matter of a corpse awaiting the final dissolution into its elements. He also paradoxically, for many, saw Thanatos in the compulsion to repeat of the obsessive compulsive. Similarly, Freud sees more in sexuality than meets the eye: he sees the presence of the life force, Eros– a force which seeks not just transient satisfaction but satisfaction in the search for the totality of conditions of both life and knowledge. This Eros is undoubtedly the eros of Plato seeking to love the beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul as well as the beauty of the laws of the city. This requires work, and this work is not simple because civilisation has its discontents who believe that the work demanded by civilisation may not be worth the effort. This work may even require sacrifice of the kind we saw in the cases of Socrates and Jesus. Life may do more than merely wound ones ego. Tales of the active comprehension of death as a good which was more clearly the case with Socrates than Jesus(“Father why has thou abandoned me”) are no longer tales told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. These tales testify to a strong ego and a new type of hero. In such tales we are presented with the presence of phronesis and sophia.

Freud is famous for his acknowledgement of the complexity of sexuality(a vicissitude of the life instinct). He is also famous for his acknowledgement of the role of dreams in helping us to understand mental illness. Dreams as dreamed are locked up in the casket of sleep until we awake and consciously remember what we dreamed. We do not remember all our dreams, only those that were experienced immediately prior to awakening. Dreams are fragments of an imagination operating in a strange spatio-temporal landscape. They are only strangely real and it takes the genius of Freud to trace them back to their sources in the biological wish to sleep, hallucinatory wishes and anxieties: sources which appear isolated from the normal operation of our sensory-motor and cognitive systems. Wishes and anxieties play a major role in mental illness and Freud regarded them as symptoms of the absence of the operation of secondary thought processes. Wishes and anxieties work out their hidden “logic” in a causal environment that we are not fully aware of. Freud insisted, as Lear rightly claims, that dreams have a meaning and that meaning is not completely displayed in the so called manifest content of the dream: the content that is reported via the patient’s narrative of the dream. Ricoeur refers to this structure of the dream as a symbolic structure. Aristotle we shall recall claimed that:

“a dream is a thinking that persists in a state of sleep.”

In sleep our sensory systems are deactivated by shutting the eyes. Whatever has affected the system persists in its activity as heat does in an object that has been heated or as motion persists in an object that has been set into motion. When, for example, in the dream a figure is approaching, Aristotle claims that this is an assertion in the dream state. Perceiving in such a dream context might even be complex enough and assert properties of the object(Bearing a white shirt). There are clearly presentations going on in the dream and these appear to have a similar character to the after images we see in special sensory circumstances. If the dreamer is in a state of anxiety when he goes to sleep, the figure in the white shirt that is approaching may be seen as a foe. If the sleeper falls asleep in an amorous state the figure approaching in the white shirt may be seen as a figure of the lover and arouse sexual desire. This implies that the RP is operating in the dream and the question then arises as to how we regard what is going on here. Aristotle claims in his essay on dreams that:

“the faculty by which, in waking hours, we are subject to illusion, when affected by disease is identical with that which produces illusory effects in sleep”(Part 1)

The illusion in both the dream and the hallucination is that what we perceive to be an X or a property of X may not be what we perceive it to be: nevertheless we see something that is real in the dream, hence there is a semblance of the operation of the RP here:there is, however, no summation of confirmatory stimuli, nor reality testing of other kinds(investigating causes etc). In perceiving a tree in reality there is a sensory form that is transmitted from the presentation to the perceiving psuche. Summation of stimuli(an object, according to Merleau-Ponty is an intersensory-motor unity) and testing of causes is occurring concurrently. This is not the case with the dream. The material, the mnemonic images that are mobilised by the imagination, refer to something real, as real as the elements of the wings and the horse in the image of Pegasus. Here too, the possible causal relation of wings and horses(lifting a horse into the air) are somehow posited or opined , but nevertheless illusory. If the illusions of mental illness resemble this example–positing causal relations where there are none, then this might be a consequence of the fact that the consciousness/attention systems of the mentally ill are not as active as they are in the case of normal perception and thinking. The presentations of the imagination that occur in mental illness and perhaps also dreams use a sensory system that might not be active but still contains traces of previous activity. In dream activity Freud referred to this phenomenon as “residues of the day”. These “residues” are not in any straightforward way susceptible of being at the time of experiencing them, processed by the categories and rules of conceptual understanding. Interpreting the dream, of course, is a way of processing these experiences via language, the categories and also using rationality to reason about the different causes involved. In this category of mentally ill patients there are patients who are motivated by the primary process to return to an earlier state of things(pre-conceptualisation): to Freud’s frustration these patients were very reluctant to engage with the therapist, instead feeling a compulsion to repeat traumatic experiences and fantasies, e.g. the Rat Man. These patients may in fact be situated in a hinterland beyond the scope of a psychoanalytical treatment, in spite of the fact that they may even have some kind of theoretical understanding of their illness.

The dream work, on Freud’s theory is a work akin to the work of symptom formation in a neurosis. Dreams appear then, for both Aristotle and Freud, to be a particular way of thinking about something. The material of the dream is obviously rooted in the real but it is also the case, Freud argues, that the dreamer is in a way responsible for the dream work. The dream work is not straightforwardly an action chosen consciously for a Reason. Yet neither is it something that just happens to an organism like the onset of a heart attack. On this account the dream is part of the dreamers wish not just to sleep but to lead a good life. Yet learning can be said to occur in relation to the dream only to the extent that the dream is consciously remembered and processed conceptually. The former is the condition of the latter. The dream is regarded as a regression in three respects: from conceptual representation to pictorial representation, from maturity to childhood, and from the motor pole of the psychic apparatus to the perceptual/hallucinatory pole.

In the dream of the father of a dead child who has recently died and whose body is still in the home, the dreamer dreams the words “Father father, cant you see that I am burning!”. The words partly refer to an idea of the body being burned by fallen candles(subliminally perceived). This subliminal experience is in turn transformed into the sensory experience of the utterance of the above word. In the dream work there is also the presence of the indestructible wish or desire that the child be alive again. This desire is given a temporary hallucinatory gratification in the child’s complaint about the fever that killed him. The hallucinatory pole is the shortest path to fulfillment, and it should come as no surprise that this is the chosen path of the primary process. The secondary process requires a longer journey in accordance with the Freudian triangle, via a mourning process and a subsequent strengthening of the ego in which the death of the child is finally accepted. This is not a process regulated by the ERP but rather a process regulated by concepts, understanding and reason–the RP. If this process is impossible, for whatever reason, there is always the possible response of a weakened ego in repressing the experience. The experience concerned does not then form a normal memory image but rather a traumatic image connected with anxiety. The moral of this response is that the patient or agent that has engaged in repression is responsible to some extent for his primary process response in the same way in which one can be held responsible for ones dreams. For Freud this was ultimately a question of freedom and this places a question over the accusation of determinism in Freud’s account. The patient, upon hearing of the attribution of responsibility may of course throw up their hands in despair and declare “I could do no other”. If the patient were correct in this claim there would of course be little point in a therapy such as Freud’s. In the view of Freud and Kant, the “I” can always think, can always choose what ought to be done, namely to subsume the primary process under the secondary process, and choose the hard work of mourning : the road of sorrow leading not to a different “I” but to an I that knows more about itself. This potential route is also possible.

Lear claimed that Freud was not a philosopher but fails to note that Freud specifically claimed that he was a Kantian Psychologist. The above reflection on the responsibility the agent must take for his dream work and the operation of the primary process in his waking experiences is conclusive evidence for Freud’s claim. The dynamic agency of the superego will use this standard of freedom to judge all the actions of the ego including its involvement in the dream work and all primary process functioning. The ego, we are told by Freud, submits to the tribunal of the superego that demands responsibility from the ego. If, as a result of identification with a very aggressive parent the superego becomes a “cruel captain”,the resultant guilt may even result in self destruction. Such a tribunal may “wound” the ego. How the ego responds to this will eventually determine the autonomy of the ego. In this higher level process the ego may then transform the id processes driving the critical judgements of the cruel captain and this may be part of the process of the transformation of the superego into the strong ego that incorporates this ethical tribunal into its own reasoning about what it ought to do. It is this transformation Freud was pointing to when he proclaimed “Where id was there ego shall be”. If however, the ego is too weak and to return to the case of the father with the dead child, the chid is identified with–the words “Father, father cant you see that I am burning”, might in the end censure the life of a guilt laden father.

If the dream has an ethical dimension as Lear claims then it is important to point out that the responsibility is not attributed to the dreamer but rather to the human psuche that dreams and who lives in the world that provides the dreamer with the material of desire for the dream. The reality of the assertions of the dream e.g. “A foe approaches!” constitutes the reality of the dream even if the approaching figure in the white shirt is composed in a similar way to the way in which Pegasus is composed of a horse and some wings. It is true that the combination of the lover approaching and the white shirt may be a more natural(organic) combination to that which we encounter in the case of the winged horse, Pegasus (which expresses the hypothetical sentiment(wish) “If horses could fly”). This wish is of course embedded in the context of a mythical plot that it can be argued, is more structured than the sequence of events we experience in dreams. The fact of the matter is, that, even if a dream contains reality, it may not be as “meaningful” as Lear in his work on Freud suggests.

Brian O Shaughnessy in his work “Consciousness and the World” echoes the hylomorphic(anti-phenomenological) view of dreams in the following words:

“However there is a further dissimilarity between waking and dreaming streams of consciousness–and it is this which leads me into the topic of the present chapter. It concerns the phenomenon of meaning. Dreams differ from waking experience in lacking meaning in a quite central sense of that protean term. One might say of dreams that each element is linked to its successor merely by an “and”, that no further significance accrues to these elements as they come together, that the content of the dream is what it is and nothing in addition. In short the dream seems to be a mere “piece of Nature”. When we turn to experience in the conscious, matters prove to be very different. While the conscious mind is a natural phenomenon, it introduces into the stream of experience novel elements which are closely linked to sense and interpretation. Thus wherever we look in a conscious experience we encounter wide encompassing projects and the destinations imported by intentions, totalities which confer meaning upon their constituents, and running through the whole some form of pervasive unity of which the subject is aware.”(P.235)

The above suggests that there is a lack of temporal structure in the dream. It is almost as if this “piece of nature” is not the human nature of activity but rather constituted of that which happens to man as a passive agent. The present of the dream does not link to the past and the future in the way that occurs in a conscious stream of experience . There is no telos related to any of the elements, no expectation of what is to come next. We do not, for example, perhaps as a consequence, know that we are dreaming. This lack of structure has serious consequences for enduring entities through time, and this explains how I can suddenly without traversing any distance, be in a different place. There is no cognitive attitude to any of the dimensions of the present or the future: each element is what it is and has not become what it is nor will it become anything in the future. It might be the case that it is this lack of structure that is the only sense that resides in Freud’s claim that the unconscious is timeless and can contain contradictions. The next instant in the dream has strictly no logical relation except the conjunctive relation, to the previous instant. We are in the land of the Primary Process. Transformations of one entity into another such as the transformation of a horse into a flying horse needs no support from a conception of what is causally possible. Connections are then, not temporal, causal, or logical but are instead “associational”. These associations are not however random and unregulated. There are two different principles that explain what is happening in the zone of the primary process. Indeed it may be possible to insist that these principles give all events in this zone their meaning and while regulation may be timeless, logic must apply to the application of these principles. What Freud conceded in terms of these principles in terms of temporality and satisfaction, hallucination and dream wish fulfillment, are not forms of pleasure that endure through time. It is rather the cognitive attitudes of everyday life, categorical understanding, and the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason that produce more long lasting states of contentment. This contentment is the result of a long journey along the road of the RP that leads to the flourishing life(eudaimonia).

The RP transforms the pleasures and pains of the PPP and the energy of the ERP into the tools the human psuche uses to achieve its telos: a telos involving arché, areté, epistemé,´diké, phronesis etc. The reflections above point clearly to the important distinction between the theoretical and practical aspect of the RP. This latter aspect relates to the autonomy and freedom of the subject.

Lear discusses the hierarchical structure of the principles that form relations to each other in the hylomorphic actualisation process in which there is a shift from primary process activity to secondary process thinking. On the hylomorphic account the latter process develops out of the former activity as a potential that lies latently inherent in the organism: it is the long road to satisfaction of the RP and the Freudian triangle that makes secondary processes more stable.Lear however, confusingly presents this state of affairs in the following terms:

“Taken literally the developmental account makes no sense. How could a mind operating according to the pleasure principle make a (realistic) decision to operate in a different way? At the very least we need an account of how realistic mental functioning comes to be selected on the basis of infantile experience. But it is worth noting that one could tell a very different story of the origin of the mind–one that moves in the opposite direction.. On this story it is the pleasure principle which develops out of the reality principle.”(P.146-7)

A Hylomorphic Philosopher or Psychologist would, of course, have no problem with a developmental account of a human psuche characterised in terms of matter and form, potentiality and actuality. The conditions for the actualisation of the potentiality of rationality are part of the human psuche and some of these are tied to the material and efficient causes that in turn are related to the configuration of the organs of the body and the nature of these organs, limbs, bones, tissues etc. In response to Lear perhaps we can say that it is no more difficult to see the conceptual and propositional powers of rationality emerging from a being that is capable of discourse and thinking, than it is to see the emergence of the sensible form of an oak tree from an acorn. Lear is pointing to a lacuna in the account of form where it is sometimes characterised by neo-Aristotelians in terms of substance. In the mature work of Aristotle form is essentially connected to principle. It is Aristotle’s mature work of the “Metaphysics”, rather than the earlier work of “Categories” that should be used as a reference point for this discussion(see Politis, V.,and Shields, C.)

Infantile experience evolves into childhood experience, a process in which the use and understanding of language play a formative role in the actualisation of the different powers of the human psuche. The long childhood is then spent in the care of institutions of learning such as schools and universities : the child is also surrounded by institutions of information propagation such as the media and social discourse. The knowledge of the sciences and the Good become what Habermas in his theory of communicative action characterises as “steering mechanisms” of the cultural system. Lear’s claim that the pleasure principle(that essentially governs the formation of fantasies and dreams and neurotic symptoms), develops out of the reality principle, ignores the Freudian account of the psychic apparatus to be found in chapter 7 of the “Interpretation of Dreams”. It also ignores the later works where it is clear that hallucinatory activity, for example, is closer to the perceptual pole of the apparatus(at the opposite end to the motor system). It is clear on Freud’s account that hallucinatory response is a substitute form of response for motor activity, when, for whatever reason, the passing of the wave of energy from sensory reception to motor activity is closed off.

Many brain researchers, influenced by both Hughlings Jackson and Freud, including Julian Jaynes give evolutionary accounts of how one vicissitude of the Instincts, namely Consciousness, evolved into being through cultural events such as the invention of writing and catastrophic environmental events such as huge volcanic eruptions. Psychologists such as Luria and Vygotsky believe that the sources of social behaviour and consciousness are very much tied to the biological function of speech. Naturally occurring experiments such as the discovery of feral children abandoned in the woods testify to the disruption of actualisation processes connected to language. The absence of human care and the failure to learn a language during infancy and childhood lead to remarkable developmental problems. The lack of human care and attention obviously disrupts the normal functioning of the ERP and the PPP. The failure to learn language, a key developmental function, also makes the development of the cognitive attitudes associated with this function difficult if not impossible.

Lear’s claim that the developmental process might move in the opposite direction is difficult to take seriously(could the oak seriously transform into the acorn and not just produce acorns?) Of course it is theoretically possible that someone produce a diagram of a psychic apparatus where the primary movement of the wave of energy is from motor activity to perceptual /hallucinatory activity but for whom and by whom would such a diagram be used.

Lear also ignores the theoretical background to Freud’s theorising and claims that everything valuable in his account is extracted from Freud’s clinical experience. Kantian Philosophy claims of course that all knowledge begins with experience but it does not all arise out of experience and this seems to apply to Freud’s theorising as well, which is composed equally of those elements of experience that are organised and those categories and principles organising the experience. The evidence is that many of Freud’s judgements were theory laden, laden , that is, with biological, psychological and philosophical theory.

Lear also questions the Freudian judgment that “neurotics turn away from reality because they find it unbearable”. On one interpretation this might be a reasonable application of the Freudian triangle of Desire-Refusal-Wounded Desire: a triangle that is in accordance with Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical psychology. Human psuche can respond to a history of wounded desire by developing a mental illness. This was already recognised during Greek times when Plato and Aristotle were urging that sufferers requiring care and attention from their surroundings ought to be treated differently to those who respond to wounded desire with courage and many other forms of activity connected with areté, epistemé, diké, phronesis. Activities that on the Freudian theory, assist in the formation of a strong ego on the basis of lost cathected objects. Kantian theory of mental illness is characterised in terms of derangements or disruptions of the faculties of understanding, imagination, judgement, and reason. Kant reiterates Aristotelian reflections upon akrasia in which the human psuche’s pleasure pain principle overwhelms a number of powers connected to the ability to reflect upon and engage with reality, e.g. understand reality, form judgements about reality, reason about reality. Kant discusses desire in his work “Anthropology”:

“On the other hand, the feeling of a pleasure as displeasure in the subjects present state that does not let him rise to reflection(the representation by means of reason as to whether he should give himself up to it or refuse it) is affect. To be subject to affects and passions is probably always an illness of the mind, because both affect and passion shut out the sovereignty of reason.”(P.149)

Insofar as Reason, Understanding, Judgement, and Imagination bring us into contact with reality then, Kantian theory would also describe mentally ill patients as in a metaphorical sense “turning away from reality”. Kant was not a psychoanalyst dealing with mentally ill patients but that is no reason to deny that Freud’s theorising was embedded in theorising of the kind we find in Kant. Kant would have found it incoherent to maintain the reversal between the pleasure-pain principle and the reality principle that Lear suggested. Kant would have objected to such a position on many grounds. One ground would be Kant’s account of child development in his Anthropology, whereby he claimed that the child begins by feeling himself to be an individual: only when the child begins to use the word”I”(is capable of thinking himself) does a cognitive reflective relation to himself begin to form. It is at this moment in time, Kant argues, that he becomes a person. Kant also argues that it is this moment in the developmental process that is the condition for what he calls the “voluntary consciousness of ones representations” and he describes this state of affairs in the following manner:

“To be able to abstract from a representation, even when the senses force it on a person, is a far greater faculty than that of paying attention to a representation because it demonstrates a freedom of the faculty of thought and the authority of the mind in having the object of ones representations under ones control(animus sui compos)”(Kant, I, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Trans Louden R., B., Cambridge, CUP, 2006, P.20)

This is a direct refutation of Lear’s earlier claim that, what he called “self reflection”, is an illusion. Perhaps Lear was imagining the process of reflection to be more like an act of observation of the self than it actually is, but it is clear that Korsgaard’s account is referring to the Kantian description and it is this that provides us with the conviction that we are compos mentis rather than non compos mentis. The claim by Lear that the PPP and the RP are essentially ethical in nature omits the above cognitive characterisation and its role in our mental health.

Lear appears to wish to deny this last point when he says:

“The reality principle is treated as though it were a straightforward perception of the empirical world. But the basis of Freud’s theorising is his observation of of neurotic patients within a psychoanalytic setting.(and his own self analysis)(P.153)

Firstly, Freud does not characterise the RP in exactly the way Lear describes. It is true that clinical observations were necessary as the minor premise in an essentially rationalist argument, seeking to draw a particular conclusion about a particular class or group of patients. Without theoretical assumptions forming part of the major premises of the argument, there can be no deduction to the conclusion Freud draws in the name of the RP. We need to recall that the later characterisations of the RP by Freud, become less metaphysically epistemological and more metaphysically ethical. The figure of Ananke signifies the effect of reality on desire that has arisen as a consequence of an understanding of, and a judgement about, reality: such desire has been short circuited by the long route of thinking conceptually about what one is experiencing.

According to Ricoeur, the Reality Principle is:

” expresses an aim or task to be achieved”(Freud and Philosophy, P.267)

Whilst the Pleasure Pain Principle:

“represents an actual mode of functioning”(P.267)

Suggesting that it is not the case that the RP matures biologically out of the PPP but rather that the RP may be the consequences of the learning that occurs as a result of the pain related to wounded desire, is to say the very least, problematic. Freud, reminded us even in his very early work that pain is the great educator of mankind. Observing his patients without any of the theoretically formed assumptions embodied in the triangle of desire-refusal-wounded desire, would not have produced Freudian Psychoanalysis. The response of Freud’s patients to wounded desire is not to learn or become educated but rather to turn away from these activities via various defence mechanisms. Whether we ought to describe this as Freud did in terms of turning away from reality is questionable. There does not seem, however, to be any problem with the judgement, if we take it to be a metaphorical expression of the above state of affairs. It deserves reiterating, however, that replacing the deductive supporting theory with an inductive structure will not support the philosophical and theoretical structure of Freudian theory.

Ricoeur confirms this objection by claiming that even in the early “Project”(P.265) it was clear to Freud that Energy discharge in the form of hallucination, and the kicking and screaming of the infant, brings about an understanding with his care givers that specific action is needed to alleviate the infants “suffering”. This locates very well the source of all moral motives, namely the helplessness of the infant and the imperative of helping someone in need. Ricoeur also points to the natural evolution of a perceptual function whereby the person concerned discriminates between a hallucination and a perception perhaps by the summation of several perceptual stimuli from different perceptual and motor sources. Perhaps engaging in discourse could have produced the same result, e.g. using the Macbeth example, “Do you see that dagger in the air”. This latter reality testing mode of discourse functions both at the level of Sensibility and at the level of the understanding and its categories: perhaps reasoning too may become involved in the exchange of views in the discourse.

Ricoeur points to the systemic phase of theorising and the involvement of the Ucs(unconscious-system) Pcs(Preconscious system) and Cs(Conscious system) in explaining the regressive shift to hallucination, a shift that abolishes reality testing and conscious thought about the image and its discharge of pleasure. In this shift reality testing is intimately linked to the process of becoming conscious. Reality testing makes it clear that the system of Consciousness is not merely a state of mind but a system that includes processes. Contact with reality can obviously occur in different ways via both perception and conception, with the imagination playing an intermediate role between Sensibility and the Understanding. The participation of changes in reality as a result of specific action occurring in the context of the thought of what ought to happen also plays an important role in the Consciousness of Reality. Freud characterises reality testing in the following way:

“We shall place reality testing among the major institutions of the ego alongside the censorships which we come to recognise between the psychical systems”(GW 10, 424; SE 14,233)

It is in connection with the relationship between these systems that Freud uses the expression “turning away from reality”(not in virtue of observations in the clinical setting). Ricouer also points to yet another domain in which we witness the :

“supersession of the pleasure principle by the reality principle”(quote from Freud)(Ricoeur Freud and Philosophy(P.272)

The theory of the libidinal stages concerns desire and object choice. The shifting of erotogenic zones in this development process is a shifting of where pleasure is located. This changes when we arrive at the genital stage, when pleasure as a result of the influence of the reality of object love, relates to the needs of the species rather than narcissistic solipsistic desire connected to autoeroticism. The erotic objects, cathected and then abandoned in this process, are in fact difficult to abandon. It is, for example characteristic of desire in the phallic stage that it wishes for impossible objects(wishing to have a child with the opposite sex parent, wishing for the removal of the same sex parent). The wounding of the desire in this situation was inevitable given the prevalence of our long childhood and family norms in the society.

Freud talks about the pleasure ego and the reality ego and he talks about wishful fantasy as being central to the former. The protection of the body and a commitment to and care about the useful(the territory of the instrumental imperative in Kant’s Philosophy) is central to the latter. Given this characterisation and the description of the Oedipal Complex as part of the process of identification (and the formation of the superego), the reality ego appears to be a function of the calculative part of the mind: the part that calculates means to ends. Yet implicit in the account of the superego as being the defender of the norms of the society there must be a reality super-ego that has a categorical nature and operates more contemplatively in accordance with the categorical imperative. This part of the mind is obviously more concerned with ends rather than the means to achieve those ends.

Science of course is committed to and cares for the useful(techné) and this fact links theoretical science to productive science and the instrumental form of practical reasoning. This is clearly also what Freud believes to be part of the RP. Freud claims that in the developmental process of building a strong ego, the superego will become integrated into the ego and presumably the consequence of this will be that the censorship activity between the Ucs and Cs will be used less, and obey the physiological/psychological rule:–“What you do not use you lose”. Perhaps it is also the case that in a strong ego the calculative instrumental reasoning part of the mind will coexist more harmoniously with the categorical contemplative part that reasons categorically about ends in themselves. If this happens there will be less of a hypothetical material spirit in the activities of the ego. Less of “if you make a lot of money you will be happy” and more of a categorical spirit, “Keeping promises makes you worthy of a flourishing life”. It has to emphasised however that this work of integrating the superego with other agencies is no easy task.

Lear discusses Freud’s essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”: an essay inspired partly by the experience of patients in a clinical setting who returned from the Great War with shell shock or what we today would call PTSD. The Freudian revision of the wish fulfillment explanation of dreams in favour of an account which admits the possible influence of the death instinct in which there is a striving(or wish) to return to an earlier state of things is also characterised in terms of a compulsion to repeat. Lear notes that patients are continually woken up by a repetition of the past trauma and agrees that this raises a question about the reign of the sovereign master of the pleasure principle in our lives. This phenomenon was puzzling because ever since the early “Project” Freud claimed that unpleasure or pain is our greatest educator. At this point in time many empirical theorists were claiming that it ought to be the case that one of the sovereign masters of our life is the PPP, the pleasure-pain principle(given the importance of the Freudian triangle). Freud’s discussion of this confusing issue made reference to the case of the child and his compulsive activity with the cotton reel. Here there is clearly a wish to master anxiety, a wish to master the pain, and surely this is an important aspect of education. The continuous re-presentation of traumatic events, then, may be a continuous attempt to conceptualise them, transform them into normal mnemic images or memories that fade with the passing of time. Freud saw variations of this phenomenon occurring in the therapeutic situation. Patients compulsively and repetitively brought repressed material in its anxiety laden form into the therapy sessions. This was indeed the stuff of tragedy since this also happened in the everyday life of the patients, calling misfortunes down upon them again and again. This suggested to Freud a role for the operation of aggression against oneself, a primordial masochism, occurring in a psychological forum suggesting a wish for a return to an earlier state of things preceding the mysterious complexities of consciousness and life. The active desire to understand sponsored by the life instinct may in the case of these patients be complemented by a more passive response of “being punished” by the continuous experience of misfortune. On the psychological plane, the description of “taking pleasure in pain”, a partial definition of masochism) does not violate the principle of noncontradiction. The potential pleasure at the possible understanding of ones condition outweighs in most cases the pain of the punishment caused by misfortune after misfortune. Even in such tragic circumstances it appears as if the end-in-itself takes precedence over the unfortunate consequences of ones condition: it appears as if the concern for reality is primary and the consequences of pleasure-pain less significant. This suggests that even the death instinct can be sublimated. If this was not possible the ultimate loss of the ultimate value(of ones life) could never have been calmly accepted as a good by the true heroes of humanity, e.g. Socrates. This kind of sublimation is not however a substitute satisfaction in the normal sense of the term. Lear suggests that we abandon the idea that the compulsion to repeat is the aim of compulsion and does not take up the possible interpretation that the aim of this compulsion may be connected to a further aim of sublimation: of education through the pain of the PPP. Lear claims in the first of two interpretations that the compulsion to repeat might merely be an epiphenomenal manifestation of the minds failure to master the problematic event: a state of affairs that involves the decoupling of the event from all forms of teleological explanation, leaving us with a bare description of the event in question. Freud would certainly have rejected such a description. Secondly Lear suggests paradoxically(considering his earlier rejection of the two-mind thesis) that the mind in its repetitious activity is seeking to disrupt itself. It has to be admitted that the hypotheses formulated in the essay “Beyond the Pleasure principle” were hypotheses Freud himself remained uncertain about. Lear claims categorically that these hypotheses failed because they did not understand the deeper workings of aggression in the human psuche(P.163). The alternatives presented however are materialistic and dualistic and these forms of explanation , independent of their content would have been rejected on both Aristotelian and Kantian grounds by Freud.

Lear attempts to argue that both Socrates and Plato are the first psychoanalysts and there is something of interest in this claim. He begins with the argument for the tripartite nature of the soul(established by the principle of noncontradiction). Socrates argued that I can both wish to drink some water(because I am thirsty) and wish not to drink the same water(because I believe it is contaminated). These are distinct wishes that could be true of one and the same psuche at one and the same time concerning one and the same object. This could only be the case, Socrates argues, if there are parts of the psuche, e.g appetite and reason. Socrates then develops this line of reasoning further and claims there is also a spirited part of the psuche which he illustrates with the tale of Leontes and his desire to view dead bodies– a desire which he claims was curbed not by the rational part of the mind but by a spirited part that functions not rationally but rather passionately(the emotion of shame). Aristotle does not share this position and claims instead that the facts speak for two parts to the human psuche, that part ruled by rationality(RP) and that part ruled by irrational principles(ERP and PPP). The Platonic idea of Spirit is for the Greeks an idea that incorporates at its best the positive passion/virtue of courage and at its worst, not only cowardice and shame but also narcissism. Courage is probably then, what it is because of the presence of a decentering operation that must have a component expressed by the term areté(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way).

The problem with the idea of Platonic parts versus Aristotelian stages of the actualisation of powers of the psuche is that the parts, if they are not to be sources of dualism or divisiveness must contain traces of the principle of the wholeness of the organism: principles that enable us to integrate the parts into the whole seamlessly. Stages of the actualisation process proceed hylomorphically, that is, through the shaping effect of the form or principle that is driving the change involved in the development of the organism towards its telos. This telos for Aristotle is rationality, a characteristic that also requires the development of a number of other psychological powers. In the light of this argumentation what is the status of Socrates’ argument for the existence of the “parts” of the psuche, namely that the logical principle of noncontradiction demands that one and the same person at the same time and in the same respect cannot both want to drink and not want to drink the same water? Surely, however, it is possible for one and the same agent to want to drink the water because they are thirsty at time T1 and at time T2 not to want to drink the water (even though they are still thirsty) because he/she believes there is reason to believe that the water is contaminated. All that is required to sustain this account is the concept of free choice. Both actions can be weighed in thought and one alternative chosen at the expense of the other. Thinking that this water before me is contaminated(having a good reason for ones belief)is probably sufficient for the desire to drink the water to disappear. I may remain thirsty, but this object before me now is no longer a possible object or source of satisfaction. I know this, and rationality has therefore triumphed over appetite. Aristotle’s logic only allows him to conclude that it is a contradiction to both, want to drink the water, and not drink the water at the same time: hence he is prepared to cede to the claim that there are two parts of the human psuche–the rational and the irrational. Freud’s two non-rational principles(ERP and PPP) and one rational principle(RP) is therefore more Aristotelian than Platonic, especially considering the fact that his idea of form is more akin to a principle than to an idea.

Freud’s commitment to hylomorphism is philosophical and whether this makes him a philosopher or not should at least be a matter for discussion, especially given Freud’s knowledge of the work of a large number of philosophers, e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Brentano etc. This is, however, not open to debate for Lear. Freud is not a Philosopher and that is the end of the matter. This claim is repeated more than once throughout Lear’s work. The claim appears for example in a section devoted to an evaluation of Freud’s reflections upon religion and morality. In connection with this evaluation it is asserted that Freud’s work on the meaning of Western Civilisation is the least valuable aspect of his work!

Lear and Ricoeur are clearly not in agreement on this issue. Ricoeur asserts the following on the role of the death instinct and its relation to Civilisation:

“The death instinct, however, involves a reinterpretation of culture itself. Cultural development like the growth of the individual from infancy to childhood, is the fruit of Eros and Ananke, of love and work, we must even say, of love more than work.. But the paradox soon appears: as an organised struggle against nature, culture gives man the power that was one conferred upon the gods. And so the question arises again. Why does man fail to be happy?”(Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, P.303)

Ricoeur gives us Feud’s answer to this question:

“The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved…they are, on the contrary, creatures amongst whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.”(GW 14,470-471:SE 21, 111)

It is, that is, the death instinct and its manifestation in aggression that disturbs mans relation to man and is thereby dubbed by Freud as the “anti-cultural instinct”. The solution that culture has to the problems caused by this destructive instinct, is the ingenious one of using institutions endowed with a power to respond to this violence with an institutional right to a regulated but coercive response–thus confronting aggression with itself. The guilt of having to use this last resort when all rational solutions have failed produces a feeling of discontentment with our civilisation, thus provoking the furious question whether all the work put into the civilisation is worth the effort.

This negation of work which creates discontentment is further analysed in a paper entitled “Negation”. In this paper the negative judgement is linked to the death instinct. We saw the operation of this tendency to negate in the infants play sequence with the cotton reel, the disappearance of which represented an attempt to master the anxiety connected with the absence of the infants mother. This game may lie at the origins of the process of learning to use the negative judgement. It certainly appears to be an attempt to use language to lessen the anxiety connected with the absence of the mother. The learning process involved in this compulsion to repeat may be a rehearsal on life’s stage for the more intellectual use of the negative judgement. This “play” may be a “work” of language. The Aristotelian pleasure involved in the learning process, insofar as painful experiences are concerned, may then be connected by the judgement that both expresses the core of the judgement(Mother) and the negation(Mother gone). The mastery involved in this play incident may be similar to that of the patient who learns to talk about his illness–thereby in a sense negating it.

Ricoeur has the following to say on this issue:

“Desire qua insatiable demand, gives rise to speech. The semantics of desire which we are focussing upon here, is bound up with his postponement of satisfaction, with this endless mediating of pleasure.”(P.322)

Aristotle would have no issue relating to anything said above. If, then Negation in speech is not just related to death and a compulsion to repeat, but also creates the psychical space for man to face Ananke(the harshness of life) with resignation, then this too might be to the satisfaction of Socrates. This incidentally is also the message of the Kantian deontological ethics of duty. Freud and Kant clearly agree on some important aspects of the world view generated by an ethical perspective. Kant is more optimistic about the human condition than Freud in his reference to a Kingdom of ends but this is an optimism tempered with realism considering the prognosis that this end lays one hundred thousand years in the future. The difference between the two Philosophers may of course relate to the time of writing “Civilisation and its Discontents”, namely 1929(a time of recovery from the Great War and standing on the threshold of a second war anticipated by many intellectuals). The desperation of the times was very clearly registered in this great work of Freud’s. The space for considering the possible value of religion also disappeared with the times. We find the Kantian respect for the idea of God is demoted in the hierarchy of ideas in favour of the idea of freedom which was being threatened politically. The Freudian response was to claim that religion is an illusion. Lear characterises this state of affairs in the following way:

“Freud argued that religious belief is an illusion. And he meant this in a precise sense: a belief is an illusion if it is detached from human wishes. Illusions are by their very nature misleading.”(P.203-4)

Lear admits, however, that Freud did not comment upon the truth or falsity about religious beliefs. The issue, for Lear, is couched in terms of an infantile wish or longing for a father and an experience of helplessness. This interpretation is motivated by Freud’s own comments upon Religion being the universal neurosis of mankind and also by reference to the private religion of the neurotic. Freud is specifically in this comparison referring to the rituals of religion in which the original meaning of the ritual has been forgotten. Ricoeur asks the following interesting question:

“And how does the forgetfulness of meaning in religious observances pertain to the essence of religion? Does it pertain to a still more fundamental dialectic, the dialectic of religion and faith. These questions necessarily remain as background, even though Freud does not raise them himself.”(P.233)

There is, however, a more important relation between ethics and religion that may explain the Freudian position in terms of the Kantian relation to religion, which though largely positive, is also intent upon placing Morality at the centre of concern for man. Kant, too, we should recall, focuses upon the good will and eschews the meaningless rituals of religion that absolve man from striving to make himself worthy of what Kant calls the state of Grace. Indeed, the only time Kant uses the qualifier “holy” is in the context of the good will striving to make itself worthy of a flourishing life. One should not, however overemphasise (as far as Kant is concerned) the focus on the practical idea of freedom at the expense of the theoretical idea of God.Even at the end of his ideas when he was engaged on the project that was to be published posthumously as “Opus postumum”, Kant was insisting that there is a practical idea of God that has rights but no duties(P.203 Opus postumum). In these writings Kant also claims:

“There is a God in the soul of man. The question is whether he is also in nature.”(P.203)

God is for Kant, theoretically One, a pure intelligence. This is a very similar view to that of Aristotle’s view of God thinking himself. God the creator, a demiurge, is not a categorically important being for Aristotle. Such an idea turns God into a technical being, manipulating the elements to bring about an end, situating thereby the acts of God in time, and introducing the imperfection of wanting to bring about a Good that does not yet exist: a state of affairs more perfect than that which presently exists. The characterisation of an acting God would, for Kant, be in accordance with technical practical reasoning(Hypothetical imperatives) rather than a being related to the categorical reasoning of the categorical imperative. Kant also claims in the context of this discussion:

“The cause of the world regarded as a person is the author of the world. Not as a demiurge of matter which is passive.”(P.213)

Kant goes on to characterise God as a transcendental ideal that emerges from transcendental Philosophy. This is a being that cannot be claimed to exist outside our idea of him/her. Kant refers to Spinoza’s dictum that we see ourselves in God which of course raises the burning question “In what sense?”. It is clear rom this that God too is the object of an idea of reason and also a noumenal existence. The evidence for the latter characterisation is contained in the following quote:

“The concept of God is the concept of an obligating subject outside myself.”(P.222)

Kant’s conclusion is that if God is transcendentally ideal there can be no question of whether such an object exists. God is an apriori concept and transcends experience. The origin of the idea of the Good becomes somewhat problematic in this sequence of reasoning but Kant reflects upon this:

“Whether God could also give man a good will?No, rather, that requires freedom”(P.237)

And yet it is clear in these remarks that God exists as some kind of power over man to follow the moral law. Nothing can be said, however, about this power, coming as it does from the noumenal realm. Reason can therefore not know God but can only think the concept in an idea of:

“A being who knows everything, is capable of everything, and wills what is good. The highest wisdom.”(P.241)

Kant combines religion and politics in this chain of reasoning, arguing that Man in the Kingdom of Ends is a world citizen possessing rights and duties. It is this idea of rights following from the categorical imperative and moral law that forms the basis of the idea of Universal Human Rights regulated by the international institution suggested by Kant(The UN).

We must concede that Freud is attempting to cast doubt upon all of the above. He does not see the intimate connection between religion and reality in positive terms, preferring instead to see the helplessness of man undergoing a long childhood as the cause of what Kant calls the transcendental concept–a transcendental ideal. Kant’s rationalism, in this respect appears more efficacious, without denying the original helplessness of man, but, like the Ancient greeks, seeing the power of reason to transcend his animal condition, believing in ones dignity and the telos of the human race. Kant’s view is that we can rely on the Grace of God only if we do all that we can to be worthy of his Grace. We are not helpless beings wallowing in our discontentment is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from Kant’s account. Yet, as Ricoeur points out, it is not clear that the dialectic of faith is negated on the Freudian account. It is, that is, not clear whether the Freudian concept of Ananke carries much of the weight of the transaction between religion and morality. Lear acknowledges this when he claims that accepting Freud’s diagnosis of Religion as both illusory and neurotic does not give us a reason to abandon the importance of religious belief(P.206). Yet neither is it the case that this Freudian account necessarily leaves space for the interaction between the mythical figures and powers of Eros, Thanatos, and Ananke, and a transcendent concept of God connected to a super-sensible principle. Lear does, however, produces a quote from Freud that might be construed as an argument not for a popular idea of God but rather for a philosophical concept of God:

“Our God(logos) will fulfil whichever of these wishes nature outside us allows, but he will do it very gradually, only in the unforeseeable future, and for a new generation of men. He promises no compensation for us, who suffer grievously from life. On the way to this distant goal your religious divinities will need to be discarded, no matter whether the first attempts fail, or whether the first substitutes prove to be untenable. You know why: in the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable. Even purified religious ideas cannot escape this fate , so long as they try to preserve anything from the consolation of religion.”(Freud:The Future of an Illusion, SE XXI:54)

The above words could well have been written by Kant who also criticised the falsehoods of religion and some questionable rituals, without feeling the need for diagnosing the patient of religion. These falsehoods and rituals without reason have been criticised throughout the ages by philosophers , and given the fact that these criticisms continue it is clear also that they will disappear as we progress on that long road(one hundred thousand years) toward world citizenship and the Kingdom of Ends where all lead dignified and worthy lives. Lear responds to this quote with the following words:

“Obviously there is no reason to go along with this fantasy about the significance of human history(P.212)

Both Aristotle and Kant would have endorsed the view of an actualisation process in history that is a process of development using both reason and experience. Lear, on the other hand asks what Freud takes reason and experience to be and he also asks whether “Our God logos” is an ironic comment. He cites the Christian view of logos but forgets the origin of this term “logos” in Greek thought. Lear, in contrast to Aristotelian and Kantian endorsement claims that Freud’s words provide us with an illusion of the future.

Lear also claims that Freud’s account of the band of brothers (acting rationally in the name of instituting a law to ensure a more peaceful form of coexistence in the community) is an illusion of the past. He claims in the context of this discussion that Freud’s hypothesis of the murder of Moses was an extraordinary claim based on no evidence. Freud in his article claimed that the murder of Moses was probable. Probability theory in the form of Bayes’ theorem claims that the probability of an event is related to the information about that event. With closed systems such as a sack with 50 white balls and 50 black balls one has complete information about this system–the number of balls stay constant and they will not change colour. The events surrounding Moses comes down to us from ancient texts written in ancient languages and what we know is by no definition complete “information” about what happened. Indeed complete information may never be possible. Given the information, however, and the knowledge Freud possessed of the human psuche, and his grasp of how to reason about the experiences of man, Freuds claim that his hypothesis is probably true: a fair claim about what is obviously an open system of information. Lear’s sceptical hermeneutical approach focuses upon the possibility that because we do not have sufficient information to be certain about what happened to Moses, we can never know if he was murdered or not. It is true that we could never, on the basis of the information, make a particular historical judgment to that effect. Is whether the particular event did or did not occur to the satisfaction of historians the most important issue on Freud’s mind when he wrote his article? Or was his reasoning seeking for something more universal, something about human nature? We saw that for Freud both experience and reason were important in the determination of the essences of events and things. Given our knowledge of what happened to Socrates and Jesus, given our knowledge of the dynamism of love, hate and aggression toward agents of fundamental change, what reason can there be for believing that the fate of Moses was not caused by the same dynamic? “Evidence” can be experiential or it can be conceptual and logical. The reason there is no evidence, Freud suggests, may have to do with the fact that it was not in the interests of the authorities of the time for the truth of the fate of Moses to be revealed. This suppressive behaviour may not necessarily have been connected to malign intent. The claim by Lear that the motivation of Freud’s claim was primarily “Oedipal fantasies from the psychoanalytic situation.”(P.215) once again ignores the philosophical reasoning relating to the dynamic of politically threatening figures in ancient civilisations. Lear then concludes by arguing paradoxically that in maintaining that Moses was murdered, Freud is “attacking his own life work”(P.215). Given the Aristotelian and Kantian aspects of Freud’s work it is not clear that Lear’s argument is coherent.

Freud, according to Lear, has claimed that it was not possible to transmit Religion throughout the ages via the use of only cultural and psychological processes. Much of the substance of this criticism hangs upon what Freud meant by the term “cultural”. Is, for example, learning a language a part of the cultural process? Being capable of discourse is obviously an important necessary condition of becoming rational. Feral children and Helen Keller are testaments to the importance of the role of the learning of language in the capacity for discourse. The only evidence there is for the putative murder of Moses is in ancient texts. Individual texts could have been lost in the historical process but if we ceased to learn language we would probably lose the capacity to reason about such possibilities. Freud in speaking about the “cultural” is certainly referring to the reality-ego and its utilitarian essence. Without discourse and the general utilitarian and cultural activity of learning language, the reasoning necessary for explaining and justifying moral action would not be possible. There is also a connection between religion and the categorical imperative that might evade explanation. Aristotle pointed out the necessity of instrumental reasoning in the forming of habits–of doing something not because it is an end in itself but for some utilitarian purpose or consequence connected to ones self interest or happiness(the principle of self love in disguise). Unless however a reconceptualisation of the reason for doing what one is doing in the habitual behaviour occurs, there will be no categorical understanding of ones action: instrumental reasoning is necessary but not sufficient for transmitting the categorical elements involved in the understanding of religious metaphysics(of the Kantian kind). Pure imitation of others beliefs and actions could never for Aristotle constitute the areté and epistemé associated with the intellectual and moral virtues.

In the introduction to Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of mere reason written by R M Adams the following is asserted:

“Kant speaks of a “righteousness that is not our own”, being that of an “ideal of humankind” which we know by reason, whether or not it was manifested historically in Jesus of Nazareth…but he acknowledges that “rendering this appropriation comprehensible to us is still fraught with great difficulties”(Trans by Wood A,(Cambridge, CUP, 1998, PXXIII)

This righteousness is a decree of Grace “fully in accord with eternal justice”(Religion AK 6:66). The mystery of Grace is connected both to the mystery of the future and to the 3rd Philosophical question of Kant’s, namely “What can we hope for?” The answer Kant gives to this is, of course “Grace” which for Kant is also intimately connected to the 2nd of his Philosophical questions: “What ought we to do?”. The answer to this question is: “Act with a good will and make oneself worthy of God’s Grace”. There is nothing hypothetical about Kant’s reasoning which is clearly categorical, unconditional, and not dependent upon empirical evidence or chance happenings of good fortune. The central keystone of this entire edifice is the only absolute in the moral system, namely the Good Will(Groundwork). Hope is therefore also hope for the perfection of ones goodwill.

The connection between Religion and the State has ben discussed earlier but Adams elaborates upon the relation in the following way:

“Kant is sharply, in places, even bitterly, critical of much organised religion, but he is not opposed to organised religion as such. On the contrary, he thinks that a church, as an ethical community is required for a flourishing moral life(Religion AK 6:93-102). The ethical purpose of a church, for Kant, is to provide a social structure in which people instruct, encourage and support each other in virtue, instead of providing each other with temptation to vice. Church and state are parallel but distinct institutions equally rooted in practical principles. The state rightly embraces laws of justice or right, whereas the church is to inculcate voluntary compliance with laws of virtue which cannot properly be enforced by any human institution because they extend to motivation and govern the inner life. A good will must effectually embrace the laws of virtue as well as those of virtue.”(P XXVIII)

It is not clear what Freud would object to in the above quote given the fact that the Jewish faith has traditionally been an institution that takes its role as instructor and supporter of its members very seriously. It is probably true, however, that Freud would have shared with Kant an aversion to certain forms of prayer and incantation, in which praise may be lavished upon God or alternatively God is asked to perform specific actions in relation to ones life. Given the psychoanalytical value of the confessional mode of discourse, it is not clear that Freud would reject confessional prayer. Kant, too, would see such confessional activity in a positive light(especially if thinking is talking to oneself).

In his conclusion Lear asks the question, “How can a conversation change the structure of the human soul?” The question is tied irrevocably to the ethical question “How shall I live?”. He argues that the neurotic person speaks with different voices none of which speak for the genuine “I” of the self.It is not clear what Lear means here. If I am neurotic and giving a speech about my life am I not speaking about myself? What would I say if someone came up to me afterwards and said “I can tell you are not speaking for yourself”. Freud is surely not committed to such an extreme position: the reality ego can surely remember facts about itself. Of course, if I am neurotic I do not “know myself” in the sense of knowing transparently the reasons for all my actions and all my beliefs. Regions of my life might have ben censored but surely we can imagine the neurotic making confessions in the psychoanalytic situation.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Vol 3(Lear–Metaphysics and the Open Mind)

Visits: 1534

Lear, in his work “Open Minded” claims that the discipline of Psychology seems to have gone missing and he cites a number of reasons for its putative disappearance. Firstly, and paradoxically, (given Lear’s questionable acceptance of the Hegelian criticism of Kant), the concretisation of the abstract in Philosophical thinking is praised without qualification:

“The most philosophical formulation of this disappearance is expressed by Hegel. For him the account of human beings in the Western philosophical tradition had become too “abstract”, too formal to yield anything substantive about who we are. If we want to learn anything valuable about the human condition, Hegel argued, philosophy has to become more “concrete” . But how can philosophy become more concrete without collapsing into an empirical discipline like anthropology or empirical psychology? Can philosophy become “concrete” without itself disappearing. And if all that is left is , say empirical Psychology, has Psychology itself survived?”(Lear, J., Open Minded, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998)

The question “who we are” is of course a problematic formulation of the Philosophical question relating to the essence of being human, but it is a formulation invited by modern rejections of the kind of metaphysics espoused by rationalist Philosophy: whether it be hylomorphic or critical. What follows in Lear’s argumentation is an ode to Plato, who, it is argued, attempted to provide us with a “logos of the psyche”. This form of Platonic logic is not formal logic, but rather a logic that provides us with a rational account of the human condition. And yet it is clear in Lear’s account that it is not the rationality of Platonic forms or ideas that attracts him to this account, but rather the Platonic account of Eros or Love that we find in The Symposium. In this dialogue, we find Socrates arguing that Eros is not a God, but human-like with a resourceful father and a poverty stricken mother who conceive Eros at a party whilst they are in a drunken state. The party may well have taken place in the Platonic Cave amongst the flickering shadows. Their offspring Eros is pictured as a bare footed figure padding about the streets of Athens searching for something we know not what (the flourishing life(eudaimonia)?) Eros clearly exhibits a desire to understand but he is also limited by other human desires whose telos is determined by the wish to explore and the will to explain/justify.

For Lear, Plato’s work “The Republic”, (that early work on the nature of Philosophy, Politics, Education, Ethics, Aesthetics, Psychology and Religion) is merely a literary defence mechanism:

“designed around the issue of how to avoid despair”(P.8)

Plato’s message to posterity was the claim that Ideas or Forms are Good. The failure of Philosophy and Politics to grasp these forms or ideas is, Lear argues, the primary cause of our disappointment with the human condition.Lear claims that it was Plato who, in response to this state of affairs, invented psycho-analysis. The division of the soul into three parts, the appetitive id, the spirited narcissus seeking recognition, and the thinking ego driven by Eros to seek the truth about the world that it loves is a blueprint for Freudian theory. This division of the soul was not the same as that we find in Aristotle’s account of the logos of the soul. Aristotle divides the soul into the rational part and the irrational parts but he would probably agree that the above differentiation into three functions is an important contribution to Philosophical Psychology. For Aristotle the appetitive and the spirited functions would belong to the irrational part of the soul. The rational part of the soul may also in its turn encompass two functions: understanding and reason. It could also be argued that Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory is related to later Freudian theorising where different forms of arché(principles) are operating at both biological and psychological levels(Energy regulation Principle,(ERP), Pleasure Pain Principle(PPP), Reality Principle, RP). It is unclear what Aristotle might have thought of the Freudian appeal to the mythical figures of Thanatos and Ananke that were used to consolidate his theory of the Instincts and their relation to the world. Thanatos is of course relevantly present in Plato’s account of the aggression of the tyrant and the steady deterioration of his state of mind. The Republic is a study in Philosophical and Political Psychology that remains relevant today. A full understand ing of Plato’s case study of the tyrant requires of course a fuller understanding of what Eros is searching for and trying to become. The Aristotelian account is more systematic than the account we find in Plato, but it achieves this without denying the truths embedded in Plato’s mythical dialogical reflections. On the Aristotelian view, it is rationality that is the telos of the human psuche, and one achieves the valued state of eudaimonia by systematically using ones rationality in contexts of discovery and contexts of explanation/justification: this systematic use can be found encoded in the theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. For Aristotle, the Philosopher will not invoke the wrath of the community in the way Socrates did because he will share with that other great-souled man, the Phronimos, respect for arché, phronesis, epistemé, techné and diké: a state of affairs Socrates no doubt played a role in achieving. Socrates must have seemed to the Athenians, an Eros-like figure, searching for things above the earth and in the clouds. Lear criticises Socrates for the fact that, in his attempt to lead an examined life, he provoked what Lear calls a “transference storm”.

The Ego, Freud claimed is a “precipitate of abandoned object cathexes”. If during his last hours in the cell, Socrates own ego became an object of concern and examination, the losing of his life as a result of what Lear called a “transference storm” must have unleashed a work of mourning which the Platonic dialogues do not explore. The Cell scene, however, can also be interpreted as manifesting an ego that is so strong and unified that even the loss of his own life was not a matter of significance compared with the significance of what was happening to him. The justification that Socrates gives for his refusal to escape is his respect for the laws of the city. He was also convinced that if he had requested the alternative of exile, he would have continued to lead his “examined life”, and merely experienced the same fate in some strange land. What we have learned from Plato’s account of the death of his teacher, is that both Thanatos and Ananke wait in the wings of all human activity, including the professions of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Indeed the threats to these existential projects seems even greater today than they were in ancient times. The imperative of life issued to the world, “Love me!” is clearly modified by Thanatos into “Love me or else!”. In comparison with this turbulent form of existence, the contemplative world of Aristotle in which we quietly explore, explain, and justify, appears to be a paradise. In this spirit, the world explored is explored in an interrogative mode: a world that Thanatos and Ananke find it difficult to invade. The Aristotelian endeavour reveals a broad structure of reality that Freud characterises in terms of his triangle of Demand-Refusal-Wounded Desire: a structure so well characterised in the oracles prophecy that “All things created by humans are destined for ruin and destruction”. In the light of these considerations the Aristotelian life may be the only refuge(given the Socratic failure of the examined life) for a man in love with such a dangerous world.Socrates perhaps moves from a commitment to the active political examined life, to the more theoretical contemplative life in his cell when he contemplates the fact that even death may be “Good”. Such a reflection testifies to the fact that his final thoughts are not a defence mechanism, or an escape, but merely the only response in such a situation to a dangerous world. In this moment we encounter the wider meaning of Eros that Freud was trying to capture in his later theorising when he was expanding his earlier conceptions of the sexual and life instincts. Lear refers to the role of Aristotle in Freud’s theorising (but he fails to refer to the role of Kant). This role is evident not just in the later theorising but everywhere, even in the early work of the famous chapter seven of Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams”. The famous quote from the later work of Freud, “Where id was there ego shall be”, (Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. Strachey (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 112) relies heavily on the actualising process of hylomorphic theory.

The Ego, for Freud, is an agency of the human psuche that serves several masters: the id, the external world, and the superego in accordance with the operation of three principles(ERP, PPP, RP). The Id is the metaphoric reservoir of energy and the instincts. Socrates in his death cell scene represents then, historically, a new kind of hero, an intellectual contemplative hero, who has brought the death instinct into the clearing of consciousness and begun to examine it Philosophically in the light of the Reality Principle. Freud, then applies this model and this lesson to his most difficult patients when he discovers that there is something of importance “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. For Freud, the Ego evolves into existence in a developmental hylomorphic process that diplomatically acknowledges the existence and importance of the instincts(of which it is a vicissitude–like Consciousness). The Ego also manifests the structural aspects of the human psuche, namely, the unconscious, the preconscious and Consciousness. In this complex Freudian account, the parts of the soul are not merely argued for analytically, but also synthesised into an account that has both Ancient Greek and Enlightenment affiliations.

Lear insists that psychoanalysis, like philosophy is an impossible profession without caring whether such a statement will unleash its own transference storm. It would appear that both disciplines are committed to forms of open-mindedness, but there is a suggestion in Lear that the opposite is the case. Lear calls the lack of open-mindedness an evasion of life (P.4). He claims that there is a kind of bureaucratic method of fixating upon one problematic judgment and on the basis of the criticism of this problematic claim dismissing a whole corpus of thought, that perhaps has not even been read in its entirety. Lear cites the American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Philosophical Association and accuses them of engaging in such pursuits, which he describes as “symbolic murders”. Insofar as this is occurring he accuses these organisations of being based on illusions, on wishes rather than a perception of the world.

One of the key objects of the Ego must be institutions, both social and transient(such as the social institution of promising) and legal and concrete, such as the American Psychoanalytical Association. Psychoanalysis arose historically, in the heavens of a space created by Plato, Aristotle and Kant, but the metaphysics of these philosophical positions was at the time of Freud, in the process of being dismantled by Hegelianism, Marxism and Science. The only institution that was capable of sustaining open minded endeavours was the University, but it was difficult for this institution to survive the waves of change sweeping through its corridors. As a consequence both Philosophy and Psychology have metamorphosed into monuments of illusion, monuments that are testaments to obsessive compulsive desire or the compulsion to repeat in rituals of revelation and disguise. It is in accordance with this spirit that Philosophy , in the name of materialism and dualism, relegated Plato, Aristotle and Kant to its marginalia. Psychology, in its turn has marginalised Philosophical Psychology, and thinkers such as Freud, in the name of a scientific method that demands a reduction of action to event and reason to cause.

The above is only a variation of Lear’s complaint because his mind is closed to the Philosophy of Rationalism. There is, for example, no acknowledgement in Lear’s account of the Kantian element of Freud’s theorising, in spite of the fact that Freud himself claimed that his Psychology was Kantian. Lear has, admittedly acknowledged some of the Aristotelian affiliations of Freudian theory but he does not acknowledge the rationalism of Aristotle: nor the attempt of rationalism to build a network of concepts and principles. Lear prefers to see Psychoanalysis as Platonically inspired. He refers here not to the Republic of Plato that seeks to establish the importance of the rational idea of “The Good” but rather to the Plato of the Symposium where the rhetoric of speeches are dedicated to an enconium of Love: Love for the beauty of the souls of other men, the beauty of the laws of the city and the beauty of sound reasoning. The Symposium denies that Eros is a God and portrays him as a restless spirit, wondering and exploring the world, in the hope of catching a glimpse of something important. Eros, in this account does not appear to be an embodiment of rationality: this is not a picture of a calm contemplative being seeking sound explanations and justifications. It is clear that it is the Spirit of Hegel that is haunting the lines of this dialogue.

Lear quotes Wittgenstein’s criticism of Freud, but fails to appreciate the context of this criticism which was that Wittgenstein believed that Freud was one of the few Psychologists with something interesting to say. The criticism Wittgenstein offered us was that Freud’s work was seeking for deterministic causal laws when, according to him there were no such laws. It is not clear here, whether Wittgenstein was with this criticism denying the role of principles in Psychology: principles that explained psychological phenomena. Wittgenstein in the context of this discussion admits that Freud does provide us with speculative explanations that we are inclined to accept. Wittgenstein also points out that the attractiveness of Freudian explanations are similar to the attraction of mythological explanations. What Freud is providing us with, Wittgenstein argues, is not illusory, but rather the kind of speculation one produces prior to the formation of hypotheses. Wittgenstein appears to be thinking in a similar way to Ricoeur about mythology. For Ricoeur, myths are important cultural creations, speculating about the origins and ends of the universe, life, and civilisations. Wittgenstein is correct in claiming that Freud’s aim was to provide us with essence-specifying characteristics of, for example, dreaming, but it is not clear that he was doing so in the spirit solely, of theoretical science. The ultimate aim of Freud was to provide a practical theory on the basis of principles which were more than mere “hypotheses”. A dream was a wish fulfilment for Freud and a testament to both the archeological(childhood fantasies) and teleological aspects(immature fulfillments) of mental life.

The scientific obsession with causation is under the illusion that we can characterise actions and cultural phenomena in general in terms of a material-like structure that disregards teleological types of explanation. Freud’s characterisation of wish-fulfillment clearly has teleological aspects. It is true, as some commentators have pointed out, that not all dreams might meet this definition. The dream-image I have of missing a step and the impression I have of having being woken up by this image, may be purely causal in the sense that Wittgenstein means(The image was caused by the waking up and not vice versa), but there is nevertheless still room for an interesting Freudian counterargument to the effect that the wish that is operating is the wish to carry on sleeping–hence the production of the image even in the process of waking up.

In the light of these considerations, then, there might be less substance in Wittgenstein’s criticisms, especially if one considers the Kantian aspects of Freuds theory–aspects guided more by principles and actions than events and causes. Freud, in other words, is guided more by the reasons for psychological phenomena than any other kind of explanation. In this respect we have to regard Freud as a rationalist par excellence: a rationalist in the spirit of the Ancient Greek and Enlightenment traditions.

Lear objects to what he calls “Freud-bashing” but given his suspicion of rationalism his defence of Freud appears defensive(laden with defence mechanisms). Underlying Freud bashing may be a spirit of anti-rationalism that Lear shares. Freud, in this context, is merely a straw man for a much older pastime–the dismantling of Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics: repetitions of an old obsession or wish fulfilment that the world is really composed of matter without form or dualistically split into two kinds of Being: material and mental. Aristotle and Kant demolished these platforms of their time but they returned with a vengeance with Hegel, Marx and Science all collaborating to dismantle both hylomorphic and critical theory. It was in such an environment that Freud bashing was able to become the annual sport it has become. Freud, it must be insisted, was not right about everything, even after 50 years of theorising and writing, but when the materialists of our age, the Nobel winning brain researchers, admit the importance of Freudian ideas , we ought to begin to look more closely at these ideas and their assumptions. There are a number of platforms from which criticisms of Freud have been launched, .e.g naturalism, atomism, positivism, pragmatism, existentialism, phenomenology, analytical Philosophy etc., and all these platforms have anti Aristotelian and anti-Kantian agendas. Freud’s own relation to metaphysics was probably ambivalent and this ambivalence manifested itself partly in a very secular attitude toward the religions of his time. He claimed, for example , that religion was the opium of the masses and a kind of mass delusion or psychosis rooted in childish anxieties and fantasies. There is however no attempt to critique the religious attitude both Aristotle and Kant found to be so important in their reflections.

Lear chooses to characterise Freud’s achievement in terms not of rationality but rather of meaning: the meaning humans create. For Lear Psychoanalysis then, is not an attempt to explain puzzling phenomena in terms of principles and essence specifying definitions embedded in a matrix of hylomorphic and critical theory, but rather a more phenomenological attempt to make obscure meanings intelligible.(P.19) Meaning. for Lear, is not related to truth. For Aristotle, meaning is obviously subordinate to rationality and the principle of noncontradiction. The statement that something is both true and not true in the same respect and the same time is a statement that lacks meaning and proves the priority of rationality. Lear does not wish to connect truth to rationality so tightly, claiming that truth is more related to evidence than to logic. This is clearly evident in Lear’s discussion of the “memories” involved in Freud’s early child seduction theory. In this discussion it is clear that he wishes to shift the centre of gravity of the discussion from that of knowledge and the role of concepts and principles, and toward “interpretation” and the spirit of creativity and love(Eros). The motivation for this shift is the claim that it is in the realm of meaning that we must seek to validate “causal” claims. Lear, like Ricoeur, believes that Psychoanalysis is an interpretative science. Humans, he argues, are self-interpreting animals(P.26). This shift away from Being and toward meaning may however, itself be what Freud would have called a “reaction formation”. Such a shift of the scene of the battle for the intelligibility of Psychoanalysis may leave the battling parties only “symbolically” fighting in different locations. For Aristotelian hylomorphic theory, Psychoanalysis is a mixture of all the sciences, all of which make reference to principles and essence specifying definitions embedded in a hylomorphic matrix. Freud would have appeared to Aristotle as a modern version of Eros, manifesting a desire to integrate a number of universes of discourse in order to provide mentally challenged patients with a humane moral form of treatment.

In illustration of his interpretative approach to meaning and Psychoanalysis, Lear refers to the tragedy of Oedipus and claims paradoxically that:

“Oedipus’s mistake, in essence, is to ignore unconscious meaning”( P.29)

This is in accordance with neither a Greek account nor Freud’s account of this tragedy. The Greek’s take Oedipus’s mistake to be one of claiming to know something he did not, believing falsehoods relating to who his parents were, and subsequently acting without sufficient justification. For the Greeks this tragedy refers to prophecies of the oracles challenging us to “know ourselves” and warning us that “Everything created by man is doomed to ruin and destruction”. In this tragedy there is an absence of areté and the inevitable result of the absence of both knowledge and areté is ruin and destruction. For Sophocles the breach of principle(arché) we see in the actions of Oedipus is the reason the tragedy occurs, and this is especially vexing considering the fact that the source of these principles was regarded as divine. Lear’s claim that the message of Sophocles was “You ignore the realm of unconscious meaning at your peril!” is a clear projection of the language of meaning and interpretation onto a situation that demonstrated both a lack of self understanding and lack of the presence of rationality. It is not even clear what Freud might have thought about such an interpretation that was much more concerned with the relation of Oedipus to his mother and father and the development of the superego than any revelation of “unconscious meaning”. Lear also claims that the issue of interpretation testifies to the fact that “humans make more meanings than they can grasp”. This utterance sounds oracular but may leave even Wittgesteinians confused(Wittgenstein claimed that we can use words in novel ways as long as we have an understandable explanation for the change of use).

Interpretations may be explorative and cover different aspects of a situation at a conceptual level of the unity of representations in a manifold. At this level of conceptualisation we are not dealing with the intentional structure of statements that relate concepts to each other, in what Heidegger called, a veritative synthesis–a truth making synthesis that is reflected in the subject-predicate structure of an assertion. Assertions say something about something categorically. If the mood of a statement is hypothetical we have moved to an interrogative mood which is the typical attitude manifested in an explorative interpretative activity. Faced with a seemingly contradictory interpretation it seems that the only space in which the subsequent dialectical issue can be resolved is in a tribunal of explanation/justification, where principles organise concepts which in turn organise intuitions in accordance with essence specifying definitions, and the logical requirements of the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. This is a closed court: a rationalist court: not the open court of the agora in which doing philosophy, for example, can be interpreted as the introduction of new gods into the sacred Pantheon or the corruption of the minds of the youth. The logic that is used in the tribunal of explanation/justification must understandably have seemed to the average Greek as an esoteric form of activity but that it also seems so to us moderns is a state of affairs that requires psycho-analytical or philosophical investigation. For Lear this closed court appears to be indicative of closed mindedness in comparison with the open minded attitude of those who take as their paradigm of thinking, discourse in accordance with an interrogative hypothetical mood.

Lear elaborates upon his position by arguing that once one accepts the phenomenon of motivated irrationality one is thereby committed to the importance of unconscious meanings dwelling in the psyche. The picture that the psyche is a mansion and every room houses a power or a corpus of knowledge that is a telos of these powers may not be a useful image because the image of artefacts is a problematic image. The material of wood and stone of a mansion is unable to assemble itself: the idea that the power to construct the house stretches the power of the imagination too thin. The claim, then that unconscious meanings dwell in the cellar of the mansion of human psuche(something which at higher levels only manifests itself in activity) is too abstract and dialectical for hylomorphic or critical philosophy. Lear defends his position, however, by referring to Plato:

“This is the same structure as Freud’s topographical model, though Freud continues a tradition which begins with Plato of placing this other realm of meaning inside the human psyche”(P.53)

It is not clear that this is a correct characterisation of Plato’s position. Plato, like Aristotle gives an account of the levels of psuche in terms of the powers of emotion and sensibility: the power of Spirit and the Power of Reason are for Plato higher powers. He certainly attributes ideas or forms to the higher intellectual realm, but when it comes to characterising the lower powers, he prefers not to speak in abstract terms but rather embodies these powers in mythical figures like Eros or Thanatos. Aristotle refrains from the latter form of characterisation. In his work entitled Poetics, Aristotle analyses works of tragedy in terms of the ethical conditions of character, action, and plot (plot ties actions into a whole). Also presupposed in this analysis is the everyday term areté (which in terms of action means doing the right thing at the right time in the right way): it is areté that the human psuche expects of another human psuche and this we categorically classify in terms of doing the “right” or the “good” thing. Sophocles’ Oedipus is a tragedy. Oedipus was abandoned by his parents on a hillside to die but was rescued from his fate by a shepherd. The full implications of the action of Oedipus’ biological parents, the action of abandoning their child, is well explored by Sophocles and much of the tale depends upon Oedipus not knowing this fact about himself: the fact that he was abandoned by his parents. The telos of such an action from a modern perspective was always going to be tragic, though it has to be said that this practice was common among Spartans. In the course of Oedipus’ life we witness actions of considerable magnitude and significance in a largely interrogative mood. The final ontological category of these actions, heroism or hubris, has to await the unfolding of the plot. As events unfold we become more and more convinced that we are dealing with hubris, and it is clear that Thanatos and Ananke haunt the ending of the tale. It is also clear that Oedipus is a figure like Narcissus who was consumed by his own desire. We, in the audience know this, and it is not a matter of “interpretation” or of divining”unconscious meanings”. Pity is felt for Oedipus. If this were, for example, a matter of “interpretation”, then we would have to accept the interpretation of the narcissists in the audience who blame the gods for the fate of Oedipus. In such a case there would be no fear in the face of an external world so capable of wounding our desires. If it were Sophocles’ intention to criticise the gods then it would seem more like a work of propaganda for a controversial cause than a timeless tragedy illustrating the workings of the Freudian triangle and the Aristotelian criteria for tragedy.What would one learn from such a work? Not to trust the gods? Not to trust artists? Sophocles was a dramatist of stature unlike Aristophanes who was not above satirising Socrates and raising sceptical doubts about all forms of Philosophy. Aristophanes falsely made the claim that the early Socrates did not believe in the gods, thus corrupting the minds of the young and making the worse argument seem the better. Satirising Socrates in and of itself is of no consequence until one understands that the charges levelled at Socrates in this work of “fiction” then became the charges that led to his death. On these grounds some would argue that Aristophanes’ work is a work of propaganda. “Interpretations” that is, do not take into consideration the different categories of literature. Lear’s “interpretation” of Sophocles’ Oedipus leaves space for artists to engage in the rhetoric of propaganda and target contemporary figures with their poison pens. Indeed, the memory of this play connected to the fate of his teacher may indeed have led Plato to consider what has seemed to many to be the extreme measure of excluding artists from living in his ideal Republic.

Further, in his “Interpretation” Lear includes several questionable claims about the nature of tragedy:

“The tragedy is meant to terrify us out of self-confidence and into religiosity”(P.52)

If “hubris” and heroism were not clearly distinguished in all respects in the Greek culture at the time of this play, this work may have been an interesting literary milestone in the shift of the concept of heroism: a shift that had been occurring since the time of Homer’s Iliad. Homers Odysseus is obviously a different kind of hero to Achilles who, according to Julian Jaynes, was a violent bicameral man steered by the voices of gods in moments of stress.Odysseus is more like Oedipus, he is a violent king like Oedipus, trying to find his way back to his wife after the Trojan War, blinding, killing en masse , and lying. He too ignores the prophecy or advice of Tiresias but unlike Oedipus he is able to lead a flourishing life at the end of his Odyssey and the trials encountered, which included the slaughtering of 100 citizens of his kingdom. It is not clear that Oedipus is a hero if we claim that what we are seeing in this tragedy is an advancement of what the Greeks were prepared to acknowledge as a hero. In this tragedy it seems the combination of the prophecies of the oracle, namely “Know thyself”, and “Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction” are playing a role in coupling the fate of Oedipus to Diké and Areté, thus setting the stage for the definition of diké offered by Socrates: that people get what they deserve. There is also the suggestion of a connection of the worth of the person with areté(his doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Oedipus ignores Tiresias because he is a pragmatic explorer whose fate is to be blinded and exiled. The pity and fear involved in the appreciation of this play may not be as religious as Lear wishes to maintain. This is a time when the voices of the gods are retreating and perhaps Sophocles’ aim was to confront his audience with a new kind of message, namely the human consequences of not knowing oneself and not knowing the limitations of pragmatic reasoning. This is not to deny that a possible refuge in response to such tragedy is to turn to the gods, but another strategy is to do as Socrates did and lead an examined life. Socrates clearly emerges in Plato’s writings as a new kind of hero, an intellectual hero and a martyr to the cause of Philosophy. The pity connected to the tragedy of Socrates is for a man seeking to solve the complex problem of knowing oneself. The fear may be connected with the realisation that even the attempt to do this may in itself be connected with tragic consequences that prevent one from leading a flourishing life.

Lear argues that the Oedipus tragedy is also about abandonment in two forms: abandonment by ones parents and abandonment by the gods. Our modern secular response to deus absconditis is the Enlightenment response of seeing that Reason needs to be complemented by the knowledge provided by the categories of the understanding/judgement. In the spotlight of the above telos, the tragedy of Sophocles may be a prophecy about the importance of knowledge in general, of the kind we see prefaced in Aristotles three forms of science: theoretical science, practical science, and productive science.Aristotle attempted in his hylomorphic account to neutralise the influence of materialistic and dualistic theories but a complex set of circumstances in turn neutralised his Philosophy until that point in the enlightenment when Kant’s critique of pure reason restored Aristotle’s form of hylomorphic rationalism to the philosophical agenda along with Kant’s own critical Philosophy.

Lear reflects upon the above theme in terms of the negative concept of “knowingness”. Oedipus, the pragmatic explorer of riddles fails to fully explore his childhood and who his parents were. Not knowing the role of ones parents in ones life is of course a general theme of Freud’s explorations of his patient’s childhoods. Lear points intuitively to Nietzsche and the claim that “God is dead!” but he fails to reflect upon the Aristotelian use of the concept of catharsis via pity and fear, which, in its turn, presumably precipitates a moral categorical understanding of the importance of knowing oneself, and perhaps also an understanding that without this form of knowledge there is a risk that “Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction”.

Kant’s theory of Aesthetic Judgement reflects upon the role of the imagination in preparing the sensible manifold for conceptual processing: either the understanding or an idea of reason may be involved in this process. The actions of Oedipus may have been fictional but they were nevertheless in a sense universal in that they could be recognised to be illustrations of concepts we could apply to our modern situation, thereby carrying a moral message. This message might have taken the form of a hypothetical judgement:”if you do not explore the relation of your childhood to your adult life there are things you may never know about yourself.”. The Freudian exploration of his patients childhoods are not only for the purposes of catharsis(bringing memories and “reasons” to consciousness and conceptualising pity and fear) but also to help the patient avoid acting in pathological ways that might bring their life to the brink of ruin and destruction. It is almost irrelevant in this context of ethical communication (in which the major point of moral messages is related to the categorical ought(what we ought to do, not what we in fact do)), that the work of Sophocles’ Oedipus may be fictional. Is there really any difference between the learning process insofar as the moral message is concerned when the series of actions occurs in real life compared to their composition in a plot? It is also important to point out in the context of Lear’s discussion of motivated irrationality, that the pathological behaviour of many mentally ill patients. from one point of view(rationality), can be described as motivated irrationality. From another perspective, however, such behaviour can be explained in terms of the principles that govern, for example, the emotions, namely the energy regulation principle and the pleasure-pain principle. In the light of this account claiming, as Lear does that unconscious meaning is involved in behaviour one wishes to conceptualise in terms of “motivated irrationality” does not clarify matters. Freud himself might have balked at the idea of “unconscious meanings” because of his preference for characterising mental activity in terms of processes(primary and secondary processes). Meaning is not a process with a beginning and an end. Aristotle in his discussion of the phenomenon of akrasia also acknowledged that the weak willed actor is not motivated by meanings of any kind but rather by the failure to acknowledge one or more conditions of a proposed action: conditions expressed by a set of true premises about the action concerned. For both Aristotle and Freud, reasons for actions, are best expressed in the form of principles(ERP, PPP, RP). For Aristotle akrasic action is motivated not by meanings but by a flaw in ones character. Aristotles account of non pathological action is simple: if one actively believes in the truth of premises–knows them–then the action that follows from these premises must be done—unless one is overwhelmed by desire to such an extent that ones knowledge no longer becomes cognitively active and no process of deliberation over the action can occur. The cognitive understanding and reasoning part of the human psuche(the secondary process) is temporarily shut down when the primary process(excessive anxiety, strong narcissistic desires) is caused to become active. The akratic man is driven by primary processes and even in this state he may be capable of discourse and be able to rehearse the premisses of his proposed action which ought to be performed but is not. That is, the akratic man is like the inebriated man who can recite the verses of Empedocles without understanding them. When the attack of anxiety or mania passes, the mechanism of his recovery will be determined by the retreat of primary process thinking and the possibility of a process of deliberation over action will actualise once again. In such circumstances the human being will not be caused to act but will be free to choose to act again. The incontinent man cannot be said to, in any sense, “know himself”. Even if after primary process thinking subsides and he regretfully reflects upon what caused him to behave in the way in which he did(feeling ashamed or guilty about doing things he knows he ought not to have done), he would not, on Aristotle’s position, be regarded as someone who knows the logos of their soul. The akrasic man is, not on the above account, necessarily mentally ill because he might have sufficient presence of mind or insight to realise that his reason or power of rationality has been dragged about like a slave by his passions. The phenomenon of akrasia occurs, Aristotle argues, because of the features of potentiality/actuality and activity/passivity: it is these features that are used to explain the distinction of having knowledge about something and not using it and having knowledge about something and actively using it. If the knowledge of what one ought to do is active in a deliberative process, then akrasia, on Aristotelian hylomorphic theory, is not possible. High levels of anxiety or manic states, however, activate powers of the mind that are not rational(are they therefore irrational?). They may be processes that operated earlier in ones life, in ones childhood for example: processes that “motivate” behaviour by causing it to occur independent of any deliberative process. We need to bear in mind that the argument that is deliberative is in the ought format and possesses both a major premise which functions like a universal maxim of action, and a minor premise which is descriptive of a course of action that is subsumable under one of the terms in the major premise. The logic of the process is the following: the deliberator might actively believe the major premise, e.g. “Everything sweet ought to be tasted” and be using it in the deliberative process(not necessarily consciously). The deliberator may know the minor premise of the argument–“This is sweet”, but not be actively using this knowledge. If this is the case or if it is the case that the deliberator knows the major premise but is not actively using this knowledge, akrasia is possible in both of these cases. There are further possibilities connected to not even having the relevant knowledge of either premise. Having the relevant knowledge is a condition of actualising the knowledge in the form of active use in a practical context. In a theoretical context one could use this knowledge in order to arrive at the belief that one ought to taste this X that is sweet. It has to be noted that, in such a theoretical context, it is the truth of the conclusion that is at stake and not the areté or good of the action. We should also point out that this simple example of the sweetness or the taste of foodstuffs clearly has nothing to do with diké, given the minimal cognitive content of experiences relating to simple pleasures and pains. It is, doubtful whether any virtue is at issue here unless one changes the scope of the example to be a part of a series of actions that exhibit a lack of self control in relation to sweet foodstuffs. Promises ought to be kept, on the other hand, is a complex action that is a universal generalisation of a civilisation building activity that is centrally involved in both areté and diké(the passing of laws, the obeying of laws). Promising, that is, is a principle of practical action applicable to both the individual and at cultural levels.

Socrates clearly has an awareness of the individual and cultural significance of promising: a form of awareness that it seems neither Odysseus nor Oedipus possessed. Plato formalised this moral awareness into one of the major building blocks of his ideal Republic. This idea of the form of the Good that according to Plato’s theory in the Republic is more important than even the idea of the Truth(meaning presumably not that the truth is not important but that it somehow is subsumable under the idea of the Good). Aristotle further formalised this idea of The Good through the use of logic which partly manifested itself in the relation of propositions to each other in a context or tribunal of explanation/justification. Knowing oneself for Aristotle is a more complex process than it was for either Socrates or Plato because for Aristotle knowing the origins and essence of living phenomena was a vital aspect of the logos of psuche. Involved in this knowledge was knowing the forms constituting the physical-biological actualising powers in which powers build upon and coordinate with more basic powers to give rise to the essence of being the kind of animal that one is, e.g. in the human case, a rational animal capable of discourse. One should also add that a key part of his account is that we humans possess the potentiality of rationality. For Aristotle when we engage in the activity, firstly, of acquiring knowledge(including knowledge of the good) and ,secondly, once possessing that knowledge, i.e. exercising it in the appropriate circumstances, such activity was a form of exercising areté with respect to the passions and refusing to be dragged about like a slave. Freud’s patients possess the potentiality for acquiring the power of rationality: perhaps a process of catharsis is necessary to bring problematic memories into consciousness and subsequently into the Freudian tribunal of explanation/justification that arises in the therapeutic process. Memories that have been isolated are thus integrated into, firstly, the system of discourse, and secondly, into a system of rationality. Knowledge of how to live that has not been acquired is explored in an interrogative mode or context of discovery.

Odysseus and Oedipus meet Tiresias on their journeys. They do not heed what he has to say because they are kings without insight into the state of their souls. Masters are obviously the last to admit that their minds have been dragged about like slaves by their passions. Tiresias too must have been hesitant about suggesting that these masters of their worlds were not completely rational.

Lear claims that the Socratic method is an ancestor of the psychoanalytic method(P.56). Elenchus obviously has a rational profile that is more actively exploratory than the more reserved psychoanalytical method where one for long periods of time relies on the patient to produce material for interpretation. Psychoanalytical theory with its recourse to energy regulation, pleasure-pain and reality principles is a discourse based therapy even if the theory has clear allegiance to the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. One can argue that Socrates was prepared to bring the cathartic method into the agora when he without fear or pity questioned the lives of the powerful people of the city. In the eyes of the young men, including Plato, it must have seemed as if Socrates was ransacking Athens in the name of justice and thus in their eyes he became a new kind of hero. Socrates set up a tribunal of explanation/justification in the unlikely space of the agora. Lear claims that when Socrates is put on trial he fails to defend himself adequately and he also wonders whether this was not an indictment of his method(elenchus). Perhaps. But what in Lear’s view was the mistake of Socrates?:

“He acted as though the meaning of his activity would be transparent to others and thus he provoked a transference storm. He argued, for instance, that it is better to suffer injustice than to be unjust but he seemed oblivious to the fact that in the marketplace of 5th century Athens such an argument would be experienced as an unjust attack.” P.57)

It is doubtful that the Athenians would have experienced just this piece of advice as an attack. They are more likely to have viewed it as a piece of poor advice– suggesting as it does that they should be dragged about like slaves by an idea of Justice they did not quite understand. Glaucon proposed the view that if it was the case that one possessed an invisible ring and could do exactly what one pleased without suffering any consequences, everyone would abandon the idea of justice. Glaucon clearly defined justice in terms of its consequences: without any consequences –no justice is the implication of his little tale. Socrates counters this line of reasoning with an idea of justice that is good in itself and good in its consequences, and defines the consequences not in terms of being punished by the law but rather being punished by the kind of life that one will be forced to lead. It was this logical relation between ones actions and getting what one deserved in terms of a tribunal of justification(judging actions in terms of the Good) that confused Glaucon and many Athenians. At the same time the common notions of areté and Ananke left space for the Socratic interpretation of diké. What obviously caused consternation for the more powerful citizens of Athens was the fact of their public humiliation by Socrates when they were argued into contradicting themselves. A fact which suggests a certain kind of respect for the principle of noncontradiction and subjecting ones beliefs one by one to a tribunal of justification. To some commentators it has appeared to be problematic that the soul has a part that judges other parts: the role of judging in the minds of many Athenians was the province of the gods. This suggests something very interesting, namely, the possibility of turning ones thought upon oneself. Socrates claims, for example, that he would never consider murdering anyone because he would not be able to live with a murderer in the same thought-space. These reflections indicate that, with Socrates, we begin to be living in a different world to that of Odysseus and Oedipus, both of whom certainly had blood on their hands. Socrates, in other words, could be regarded as a Gestalt standing on the threshold of of a moral shift toward choice and the taking of responsibility for ones actions by attempting to know oneself. This new world was a world in which the gods were retreating into the mountains to argue and fight with each other, leading divided rather than communal lives. Poseidon ruled the sea, Zeus the sky, and Hades the earth and the underworld. Powers of the universe were divided. Socrates too suggested that the soul was divided but argued that it should not be–one should not be able to believe P and not-P, do A and not A(at the same time and in the same respect). For Socrates it is the tribunal of pure practical reason that rules the realm of the soul. Rationality is the new god in the Socratic system of thought. Given these reflections it is not clear what mistake Socrates made. J L Austin pointed out that insofar as the ordinary use of the term is concerned one must in accusing someone of making a mistake be able to say exactly what is being mistaken for what. If for example I shot your donkey by mistake there must have been some reason for making this mistake–I thought I was shooting my donkey. So, where is the evidence for suggesting that Socrates was surprised at what happened to him? In his Apology(his speech to his accusers) he appears to be preparing himself for his inevitable fate. Socrates, we know, had the opportunity to suggest expulsion from Athens as an alternative sentence once found guilty in his trial. Had he done this, it has been argued, the death sentence could have been avoided. He chose not to escape from his cell when given the opportunity to do so, preferring to become the figurehead for the new God of Philosophy, a figurehead for the examined life seeking to know the self. If Socrates knew the consequences of his actions much earlier in the process of leading his examined life, could one then say that he was willfully doing something he knew to be wrong(not saving his life from extinction)–surely, one might argue no one does what one knows to be wrong. There was no individual mistake here because Socrates knew both what he was doing and knew why, that is , that what he was doing would, in the course of history, prove to be the right thing to do. History has proved Socrates right and the Athenians that condemned him wrong.

Lear argues that Socrates did not have an idea of the structured psyche that can be in conflict with itself. But the claim that he would not be able to live with a murderer and also his willingness to consult his inner daimon when there were difficult decisions to be made(including what to do about his indictment) belie this claim. We can suspect that when Socrates referred to the theory of the division of the soul in the Republic, he may have been a mouthpiece for Plato’s theories. Yet we have also pointed out his references to living with himself. Consulting an inner daimon certainly implies, at least a division in the soul between the rational and the non rational parts.

It is indeed a thorny discussion to outline the contributions that both Socrates and Plato made to the question of the relation between the psuche and the polis.Lear claims that man is a polis animal. Even if Socrates was, in Plato’s “Republic”, being used as a mouthpiece for Platonic theories, in the earlier books, there is reason to believe that Socrates may have been speaking for himself. In his earlier comments Socrates outlines the idea of a healthy city, and it is clear that he, like Plato and Aristotle believes that man is a being that functions best in the context of a civilised polis. This, together with his clear acceptance of the right of the law to sentence him to death in Athens, enables us to regard Socrates as a supporter of the idea of a just polis. When he claimed that the Polis is the psuche writ large he may well then have been representing both his view and Plato’s view of the relation between the polis and the human psuche. It is not clear, however, given his early definition of justice as a principle of specialisation in which everyone has the right to engage in the work they are best suited for, (and that no one should interfere in the work of others), whether Socrates would necessarily have agreed with the Platonic separation of the polis into classes of people representing parts of the psuche. We can, however, be certain that there would have been no agreement over the necessity for the so called noble lies that the rulers of the Republic use to control the people. He might well have wondered(given his own fate) what fate awaits the rulers or philosopher-kings of the ideal Republic. There is a moment in the Republic when, after their training, the Philosophers are asked to return to the cave(with a clear risk of being killed given what happened to Socrates) and a weakness of the project thus reveals itself. Aristotle recognised this weakness of forcing philosophers first to rule, and then to educate citizens whom they lie to. Plato himself abandoned this approach in his later work “The Laws”. Aristotle’s solution to this problem is to suggest a public system of education which no doubt will teach philosophically grounded knowledge and the principles of theoretical, practical and productive science. This system is designed to create a large middle class that embraces the strengths of oligarchy and democracy. Areté, diké, epistemé, techné, phronesis will be important elements of this education in hylomorphic metaphysics. The hope is that if Philosophy and Logic become part of the educational system they will also become part of the culture of the polis. Had Aristotle been able to comment upon the advent of Psychoanalysis, he certainly would have appreciated its relation to Kantian metaphysics and thereby its relation to his own metaphysics: he undoubtedly would have been relieved at the initiation of a movement that had not been inhibited by Modern Science, Hegelian and Marxist Philosophy. Interestingly, Psychoanalysis did not originate in the university system which had been the home of Kantian and Hegelian Philosophy. The fight of psychoanalysis for acceptance in Universities testified to the diminishing importance of both Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. The ostensible cause of the delay in the integration of Psychoanalysis into Universities was the doubt about how to classify it, given the fact that it claimed to be both a science, a technique, and a morally constituted humanistic subject. To this day the war cry of the scientists insofar as psychoanalysis is concerned, is that it is not a science. Psychologists from the behavioural school or from the cognitive information processing school also have difficulties with the theory-driven clinical longitudinal process of psychoanalytical therapy.

Lear claims that Plato constructed a system of pathological character types that represent the class structure of the ideal Republic. We should recall that the types of political system are also reflected in this first attempt at the classification of pathological types. Both the oligarchic and democratic character types display divisive behaviour patterns. It is, for example, the disgruntled sons of oligarchs plotting in the agora in the name of freedom and democracy that provides the conditions necessary for the worst of the pathological character types , that of the tyrant. It is this type of ruler, this character type, that will prove to lead the city on the path of ruin and destruction. The timocratic polis type is the second best form of government system according to Plato: it is the not a type of government system that divides the city in the same way in which the oligarchic and democratic systems appear to do. The reason for this is that the timocratic polis is governed by emphasising the virtue of courage, which invites citizens to regard the needs of the city as more important than their own personal needs.It is not clear what Aristotle would have thought of the Timocratic form of rule given the Spartan hatred of Philosophy and their interpretation of the virtue of “honour” in military terms. Aristotle would certainly,( given his humanistic attitude toward slavery), have been sceptical of the Spartan treatment of slaves.

For Aristotle the polis is a hylomorphic compound composed of the material cause of citizens and a territory, a ruler (efficient cause), the final cause of “The Good” for the city-state and the citizens, and the formal cause of a constitution formed by the abstract goods of arché, areté, epistemé, diké, techné, and phronesis. Aristotle’s so called “constitutional” form of government is formed of government institutions directed by the above goods. In such a form the justice of the city is not determined by the needs of the wealthy who may demand political rights in virtue of their wealth, nor is it determined by the needs of the democrats who demand equal political rights in virtue of being born free(not in a state of slavery). It is rather Aristotle’s position that political rights should be allocated to those who “virtuously” contribute to political society by “noble actions”. Presumably such actions have to possess considerable political magnitude if they are to be noticed and rewarded by the city. The extent therefore, to which the Timocrat contributes to the state with noble actions of magnitude will be the extent to which they will be rewarded with political rights. Defining “noble” in terms of “courage” to the exclusion of the other intellectual and moral virtues would have seemed to Aristotle to be an extreme political position, especially considering the respect for the plurality of forms of life that he argued for in response to Plato’s attempt to ignore the differences Aristotle thought to be important.

Lear, in contrast to Aristotles argument that the polis is a hylomorphic compound, argued that Athens was in fact an artifactual creation. It is difficult, however to see the state as an entity created by a constellation of institutionalised rituals and military activities necessary to defend its borders. If the state were such a materialistic creation there would undoubtedly be oracles prophesying the end of ruin and destruction. Embedded in our metaphysically constituted states is History–the history of lost and cathected objects such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Kant and a host of other thinkers of importance who have performed through their work “noble actions” for the human cause: actions of considerable magnitude.

Lear also wishes to claim that the institutions of our cities are mere artifactual creations(P.67). This is a decisive departure from the positions articulated by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle: a departure that resurrects the spectre of materialism which in its modern form defends its position by referring to a dualistic distinction between what is subjective and what is objective. In the context of this discussion, Lear paradoxically argues that we should not take the social world to fall on the objective side of this dualistic distinction. The social world, he argues is something transitional between the subjective and the objective. The social-cultural world is real( artefacts are real), Lear argues, because it is intersubjectively accessible and subject to debate(discourse) in which there is a considerable element of reality-testing. The meaning of any activity in the state can be brought to consciousness in debate and subjected to a tribunal of explanation/justification. If the objective realm of discourse is what can be rationally defended by the various sciences in rationally structured argumentation, then it is difficult to see why Lear does not allow himself to bite the bullet of rationality and allow logic and hylomorphic metaphysics to play a leading role in the above tribunal. The appeal to intersubjectivity appears to be a refusal to commit to the power of rationality to shape our institutions and psuche. The space that is then created in this tribunal is a space in which interpretation can dialectically compete for recognition or acknowledgement. There is no doubt that a whole has various aspects, and that different interpretations may well focus on these different aspects, but when discourse turns to the task of formulating the essence specifying definition or form(principle) of the whole, interpretations need to be synthesised into arguments and conclusions which form a part of the totality of conditions of the phenomena to be explained or justified.

Lear refers to Interpretation in Freud’s work, “The Interpretation of Dreams” but he fails to refer to the famous chapter 7 of the work in which the psychical apparatus and its functions are described and explained. It is this apparatus that provides the dreamer with a network of beliefs, desires, and wishes that in their entirety, together with knowledge of the way in which the apparatus functions, together explain the meaning of the dream. The meaning of the dream, in other words, is a drop condensed from the cloud of these considerations. Lear notes that Freud refuses to isolate meanings from the above network of significance.

Lear asks the mischievous question: “What would have happened if Socrates “decided to cut and run”. At stake for Lear is the claim that the defence of rationality would have fallen if this had happened. The question is an interesting one, and raises the further question of whether Plato would have used Socrates as a leading figure in many of his dialogues if Socrates had decided to escape from Athens instead of face the music. The power of rationality perhaps partly relied on the tight bond between the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Would the bond have been loosened if Socrates ‘ courage had failed him? Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were certainly efficient causes of the foundation of Rationalism. It surely cannot be denied that it is the thoughts and texts of these three philosophers that provided the matrix of significance out of which grew so much of our knowledge and our social/Cultural institutions. There was also, involved in this process of the evolution of rationalism, an actualisation process that began with Socrates(elenchus) and ended with Aristotle’s form of hylomorphic rationalism(regulated by logic).Plato’s Theory of Forms and dialectical reasoning, unfortunately, became the driving force of rationalism after the death of Aristotle and the closing of the Philosophical schools/academies. Neo Platonism and its alliance with religion ensured that the marginalisation of Aristotle’s ideas continued even with the institutionalisation of philosophy in the Universities. The Universities became the bearers of academic traditions but they failed to resist the modernist “revolutions”(waves of change) of Descartes, Hobbes, and Rousseau and their forms of materialism and dualism. The consequence of this process was the marginalisation of the areas of philosophy of ethics and political philosophy.Descartes’ form of rationalism, for example, was a curious hybrid of Religion and the Cogito argument, that appeared to place inner consciousness and introspective thought at the centre of Philosophy. For both Descartes and Hobbes, life, especially animal life, was best explained in mechanical terms. The concept of “form of life” and the principles involved in biological and psychological actualisation processes disappeared from the agenda of Philosophers.

Some philosophers experienced Aristotle’s reaction to the indictment issued against him by the Athenians as a “cut and run” decision. Two points need to be made about the Aristotelian response. Firstly, Aristotles indictment , as Aristotle described the matter, is a “second offence ” against Philosophy. The difference between the reason Socrates gave for staying and Aristotles reason for leaving, revolves around Socrates being born inAthens and enjoying the protection of its laws all his life, whereas Aristotle born in Stagira comes late in his adolescence to Athens and lives in the city as a resident alien, non citizen. Anti- Macedonian feeling as a result of Alexander’s conquests also may have played a role in Aristotle’s indictment. It is nevertheless interesting to note that Aristotle, after leaving Athens lived for only one year: he was the youngest of the triumvirate of rationalists when he died at the age of 62 years old. It is not clear whether the trauma of his being forced to leave Athens contributed to his early demise. In conclusion we do not know the answer to Lear’s question about Socrates’ decision to stay and face the music. Was the appearance of a triumvirate of rationalist philosophers in Athens within such a small period of time an accident, something that happened by chance, or was Athens a matrix of conditions that would have produced other rationally inclined figures.

Lear’s overarching claim is that the assumption of the essential rationality of the mind must be questioned because of the obvious presence of irrationality in the lives of men. Firstly, it must be countered, that it is not the mind that is rational in Aristotle, but rather the form of animal life that constitutes human being that is rational. Hacker in his work “Human Nature: A Categorical Framework(Oxford,Blackwell, 2007) embraces a holistic view of the human being in which the mind is to the body as sight is to the eye. This is a rejection of the idea that the mind is a kind of substance and an argument for the mental being a kind of power or principle. If the mental is more like a power or a principle this in itself would be an argument against Lear’s claim that the mind can be irrational and restless: this claim must be a kind of category mistake–neither powers not principles can be irrational or restless. For it is human beings that are substances:

“human beings are animate substances–sentient space occupying, spatio-temporal continuants of a certain animal kind. They possess a distinctive array of powers, some characteristics of animal kind in general others unique to rational natures.”(P.29)

The above is clearly an account that is in the spirit of Aristotle. It is also, we know, (given the fact that Hacker is a Wittgensteinian scholar), inspired by the grammatical Philosophy of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein situates his contexts of explanation/justification at the level of discourse rather than rationality, but he does not reject the relevance of logic in this context. In this respect both Wittgenstein’s work and that of Hacker can be seen to be an attempt to restore Rationalism to the agenda of Philosophy.

The Cartesian and Hobbesian revolutions obviously inspired a Scientific form of Psychology that eventually detached itself from Philosophy in the name of a curious definition of Psychology that may have contained a contradiction: namely:Psychology is the Science of Consciousness”.

For Aristotle and Kant neither “Science” as we moderns construe this activity, nor Consciousness, were central concepts in the account of man, the rational animal capable of discourse. Hacker suggests that for Wittgenstein consciousness was not an epiphenomenon flowing from the activity of the brain. For him the Cartesian redrawing of the boundaries of the mind meant that we needed to return to the drawing board. If it was the case that Consciousness is a vicissitude of life, then clearly the category of being an artefact would carry more materialistic implications than could be defended by hylomorphic theory. For Aristotle, society and the city state were organic forms connected both conceptually and logically to life. Regarding these forms as the product of artificial conventions as Hobbes or Hume recommended would also have prevented analysis of these phenomena in terms of Wittgensteinian “forms of life”. The logical consequence of the Aristotelian position, therefore, is to deny that political and social institutions are artifactual kinds of substance.

Lear continues to elaborate upon his conception of mind in the following fashion:

“First, it is inherent to our very idea of mind that minds are restless. Minds are not mere algorithm performing machines and they do not merely follow out the logical consequences of an agents beliefs and desires.”(P.84)

Lear continues on this path to insist that the mind “makes” meanings and here again we see an attempt to assimilate a vicissitude of a life-form or living body to an artifactual form of existence. Freud’s primary process is invoked to illustrate the thesis of “the restless mind”. “Embodiment” of the mind is also imported into the account and it is “drives” rather than “Instincts” that “take up residence in a restless mind”(P.88). Minds, like artefacts, can also “fall apart”(P.89).

Lear then claims that insofar as Eros is concerned, Freud added this idea almost as an afterthought(P.125). This is a misreading of Freud’s earlier work where the reliance on Aristotelian and Kantian principles were implicit even in chapter 7 of the Interpretation of Dreams. In this chapter all three principles(ERP, PPP, RP) are presupposed in the context of explanation/justification of the interpretation of dreams. Eros, as presented by Socrates in the Symposium, is neither human nor divine but dwells in a transitional zone between the gods and man–bringing prayers and sacrifices to the Gods and commands and gifts from the gods to men. Amongst these gifts is clearly the gift of being human, and amongst the commands we will probably encounter the early ancestors of the Virtues and the categorical Imperative. It is in this transitional space, Lear argues, that meaning is born. Eros or Spirit is the bearer of meaning. Lear refers to Thanatos(the death drive)as an attempt on the part of its bearer to return to an earlier state of affairs. This characterisation obviously runs counter to the telos of Psychoanalytical therapy which wishes to actualise the gifts of being human and improve the quality of life of the analysand. The power of therapy involves mobilising Eros in the ego in order to strengthen it in terms of its desire to protect its own body and be positively creative in the world. This task lies within the domain of psychotherapy. On Plato’s theory, Spirit is amenable to reason and this must also be the case in Freud’s complex theory of the relation between desire and understanding. There are desires, that Lear terms “paranomos”(beyond the law, lawless). Such desires are destructive of the law and Plato characterises them in terms of omnivorous appetites that know no limit, thereby anticipating the picture of “modern man” as described by Hannah Arendt in her work “Origins of Totalitarianism”. This picture of a man being consumed by his own desires was also present in Plato’s characterisation of the tyrant. There may be a sense in which we can interpret the behaviour of the man possessing paranomos desires in the tribunal of explanation/justification. In so doing we understand this behaviour under the aspect of the law but also from the first person perspective of the destructive desire to destroy–and there is a clear sense in which this involves a return to an earlier state of affairs, prior to a state in which life and the virtues organised our existence–life itself , that is, may be destroyed in this regressive dynamic.

The paranomos is paralogos, Lear argues, in spite of the fact that it is clear that logic reigns in this space of interpretation: logic in the form of the Aristotelian principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. These principles are necessary to understand paranomos actions in a context of explanation/justification. Describing such action may of course be problematic if we require the description to be independent of explanation/justification. The description of an intention that wishes to return to an earlier state of affairs prior to life, is an archeological form of desire and in a sense is paranormal insofar as the concept of intention is concerned(if intention is essentially teleological and future oriented). Lear suggests interestingly that what he calls the death drive or the tendency of living things to die, is an entropic force in the universe. Death in the end relates to the mystery of the ontological status of matter and perhaps also to the enigmatic way in which forms organise matter . In spite of this mystery and this enigma we have an understanding of tragic actions and events. Catharsis would not make any sense if it was purely a material purging of substances without any element of logos or understanding involved. Lear, given the above reasoning claims that Aristotle’s account of tragedy is ultimately a failure.(P.183). The mimesis of the tragic play is illusory, he argues, because this mimesis appeals to a transcendent order that eludes logos. We are, Lear argues, mysteriously invited into an imaginary world. Oedipus’ mistake in such an illusory world would, of course, transcend understanding. The question that arises in relation to such a position is “What then are the objects of pity and fear?” If tragedy is beyond our understanding, beyond logos, beyond rationality, such a limitation would surely call into question the essence specifying definition of man as a “rational animal capable of discourse”.

What would Aristotles archeological account of this definition be: “All men are mortal”? This universal generalisation is certainly the conceptual basis for the necessary truth of “Socrates is mortal” given the supporting premise of “Socrates is a man”. Are these truths related to the pity and fear that arises in relation to Thanatos or what Freud calls the death instinct (what Lear puzzlingly calls the death drive)? What if one claimed in the name of what can be hypothetically imagined that the universal generalisation “All men are mortal” , is a truth confined to a certain point in the space-time continuum and that consequently in other possible worlds there may occur the phenomenon of an immortal man. This of course would be an impossible contradictory claim because situating the phenomenon in space and time entails that whenever in the temporal span the phenomenon is located the claim that the phenomenon is timeless is an impossible claim precisely because of the temporal situatedness of the phenomenon. Such a use of the imagination would indeed be paranomos, and one can but speculate upon the cause–a desire to contradict? An attempt to stand behind the putative truth “Not all men are mortal”? This purely theoretical desire to negate or contradict(so common in the mentality of the “new men” of the modern era) is unfortunately possible in the dialectic space of interpretation, but practically wishing that something is possible does not make it theoretically possible. The truth is located in the context of explanation/justification. The context of desire(wishing the negation to be possible) is on the other hand in the space of exploration/discovery. As this reflection indicated, the wish that men or a man could be immortal is not rationally located in the context of exploration: how could one explore a truth that could not even be imagined (if the imagination imagines objects events, actions etc in space and time). Theoretically there is also a distinction to be made between particular truths(the “location” of an immortal man) and the conceptual universal truth of “All men are mortal”. The latter is a conceptual truth pointing to one essential characteristic of man.

Lear claims that :

“Aristotle’s reluctance to countenance the opacity of human destruction is, I believe, the central failure in his account of tragedy.”(P188)

Lear’s judgement as a consequence of this supposed failure is that there is a “lack of breadth” in Aristotles account of tragedy(P.188). This is a strange accusation by Lear whose interpretation of Aristotles ethical theory did not capture either the depth or the breadth of the Aristotelian account. Aristotle opened his Nichomachean Ethics with a broad perspective relating to ALL human activity:

“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice seems to aim at some good, accordingly, the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”

This is Aristotle at his most Platonic. The above quote contains a declaration of the breadth and importance of the idea of the Good. This surely means that the tragic action and the tragic work must be subject to evaluation in a tribunal of explanation/justification: an evaluation in terms of metaphysical foundation of the good referred to above. For Aristotle, it is clear that there is a broad connection between the aesthetic realm of tragedy and the metaphysical realm of the ethical. Tragedy and tragic action embedded in a work of tragedy are aimed at a teleological aesthetic end, related to the pleasure of learning, an end that for Aristotle clearly has ethical aspects because there is an ethical aim involved in the learning process. We ought to recall in the context of this discussion that for both Plato and Aristotle the form of Truth was embedded in the form of the Good. This is a broad view of reality that does not take us into the imaginative possible science fiction world in which contradictions are possible and reality testing impossible.

Lear raises the question of the meaning of “catharsis”. Christopher Shields in his work “Aristotle” clarifies the scope of the ambiguity of the concept by pointing to the first person experience of catharsis. Shields analyses the idea, hylomorphically, into its form which he initially calls purification, and the matter of the emotions involved in this process. The latter can also vary in scope from the physically expressed emotions to more intellectual and cognitive attitudes that might be involved in the learning processes that arise in contexts of tragedy. The audience, engaged in the learning process whilst experiencing a tragedy, may be experiencing something that can be described as “clarification” in the spirit of areté(experiencing pity and fear at the right time in the right way). This occurs in the context of a medium of mimesis(which we take delight in): a context in which the significant actions of good and bad men are embedded in a coherent plot. Shields argues persuasively that:

“The function of tragedy is not catharsis”)P.396)

Catharsis, Shields argues, is incidental to the learning/clarification process that is the telos of the true end of the form of mimesis we call tragedy. Clarification concerns the relation the particular tragedy we are witnessing has to the knowledge connected to the rational animal capable of discourse: e.g. the practical knowledge of the good life(the flourishing life, eudamonia) and the categorical and universal knowledge we have of ourselves.

The breadth of the Aristotelian account of tragedy can be perhaps better illustrated by the real tragedy of the death of Socrates. We can begin this account with the thoughts that this first rationalist had about death. Dying is an activity, and sitting in his cell after having been condemned to death, Socrates knows that he is going to die. What are his thoughts? He claims, in line with the opening of the Nichomachean ethics that death is a good. Either he will meet the great souled thinkers of the past and engage them in discourse, or else death is a peaceful dreamless sleep. Even dying is good: a peaceful affair that ends with Socrates wishing for a sacrifice to be made to Asclepius(the “god” of medicine) as an act of thanks for the painless working of the poison. Here we have a catharsis of fear: fear is conspicuous by its absence, by the fact that it is under Socratic control when it appears as expressed by visitors. There is also an evident catharsis of pity: present in proportion to the logos of the situation. We are witnessing a good death happening to a good man. Had there been a mistake made by Socrates in his attempt to challenge people to know themselves then diké would have demanded that this flawed character suffer a less peaceful death. The interesting point to be made about this piece of biography is that Plato would not have chosen to represent this tragedy in a historical act of mimesis if it did not illustrate well the theme of justice that runs through all his writings. This is both a real tragedy and an aesthetically presented imitation. Justice is well represented in the Republic that attempts to provide a Platonic argument to the effect that justice is both good in itself and good in its consequences. There is no reason to believe that Aristotle, given what we are presented with in his Poetics and Nichomachean ethics, would adopt any different position to the one we find in the Republic(one can reject dualism without rejecting the rationalism behind it). Aristotles account of mimetic tragedy, i.e. would not be metaphysically organised any differently. Learning entails clarification and learning about the good must be one of the more important ends-in-themselves. The clarification is produced by a commitment to rationalism that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle share. The kind of rationality at issue is universal, and categorically organises the schema of “Reason-Action-Consequences”.In the Republic the sceptical Glaucon, not convinced by the use of elenchus on the reasoning produced by Thrasymachus, demands that Socrates prove that justice is both good in itself and good in its consequences. If this could be proved, the proof would probably suggest a logical relationship between this kind of action and its consequences.

Lear does not agree with the above reflections and he mysteriously claims that there could be no pleasure taken in real life tragic events–thereby suggesting that the account of the death of Socrates must be flawed and make no sense. Yet it is this that is the central component of Plato’s presentation of this new type of hero. The Catharsis of fear and pity are incidental consequences: courage is the virtue(areté) that is being given prominence in this mimesis. Learning what something is, (e.g. a tragic event), is always pleasurable whether it be in real life, or in the context of Art. In the aesthetic context any pleasure is probably enhanced because of the involvement of the skill needed to represent the event or sequence of events in the chosen medium of representation( use of language, construction of plot, and character presentation) Areté will govern the techné used in this process. The artist will obviously need to characterise correctly the Good involved in proportion to the worth of the character, hoping to call forth the judgement “That was a good tragedy” from the audience. So when Lear claims that to take pleasure from tragic events is somehow an inappropriate response he might be imagining the response of Leontes to dead bodies reported by Plato in his dialogues–the response of the thrill at the sight of the dead bodies. This is obviously a kind of pleasure but not the kind that is being discussed above which is a more intellectual form of pleasure that is felt in relation to knowledge(justified true belief). The thrill felt by Leontes is transient and also subject to the critique of judgement that occurs when guilt about ones uncontrolled appetite is felt. Lear’s resistance to connecting pleasure to real tragic events, then, is perhaps connected to a failure to understand the difference between the various types of pleasure outlined in Plato’s Republic and also in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. We ought also to mention in the context of this discussion, the Platonic objection to the presence of artists in the ideal Republic which grounded itself upon artists producing imitations of imitations of reality. Aristotle objected to this objection because for him there is no difference in the meaning of the term “tragic” if it is used in mimetic representation or in real life(the ethical content is the same- we get what we deserve). The Platonic objection to artists may also have more to do with the way in which the poets portrayed the Gods as unethical beings, or the way Aristophanes maligned Socrates, thereby raising questions about the nature of the Good.

Lear also specifically elaborates upon his position by claiming that “the pleasure we derive from tragedy is not primarily that which comes from satisfying the desire to understand”(P.200). This contradicts the account provided by Shields and what we find in Aristotelian texts. Aristotle claims, for example, in relation to mimesis and the function of tragedy which is:

“learning, that is, figuring out what each thing is”(Poetics 1448b 16-17)

This is clearly connected to the desire to understand, which in turn is also connected to the reason why Aristotle sees no reason to exclude artists or poets from any philosophically founded society. Aristotle would also agree with the claim that areté, insofar as it is involved in ar,t is different to that we encounter in politics partly because we are dealing with different forms of science: productive science v practical science. Aristotle would no doubt also criticise poets who fail to use phronesis (knowledge of the good) or poets who pretend to possess knowledge of epistemic principles which they do not have(e.g. the knowledge the military man has of the art of fighting battles).

Lear denies not just that tragedy is a cognitively understood event, but he also questions whether it has any pedagogical function. Aristotles response to this is well known. Poetry is a universal discipline, unlike history (which initially records chains of particular events without any reference to any universal plot of progress or regress). Memory of these historical events is the minimum cognitive function required but if there is an appeal to causation and the principle of causation is universal(e.g. every event has a cause) then there would appear to be a universal element involved in History. The type of explanation however is archeological and not teleological which the ethical principle, knowledge of the good, appears to require. Aristotle would also, in support of different ways of representing this ethical principle, refer to his claim that young men under the age of 30 appeared not to benefit from his lectures on ethics. The young men were not, however discouraged from attending the performance of tragic plays like Oedipus, and given Aristotles comments in the Poetics on the importance of learning ethical principles from tragedies it would seem as if tragedy does have a pedagogical function in the society.

The Theoretical, Practical and Productive Sciences all operate on the principles of logic, namely the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and they also differentiate themselves ontologically by being about events and their causes, actions and their reasons, artefacts and their techné. There is, however, no reason why an artist constructing a plot with universal characteristics, should not seek to portray the influence of universal ethical imperatives in their work. There is, that is, no reason why they should not use ideas from the theoretical and practical sciences to convey their message. Freud, we know typically used both theoretical and practical ideas in the name of the art (techné) and science(epistemé) of medicine to bring about an improvement in the mental health of his patients. Freud, as we have seen also used literary figures(Eros, Thanatos, Ananke) to illustrate his very technical concepts.

For Aristotle, Philosophy aims at the systematic understanding of the world and the principles of logic play a significant role in holding all the parts, whether they be principles or sciences or concepts, together. For both Aristotle and Kant, Practical Reason was a central concern of the philosophical endeavour. The Kantian restoration of Practical reason after a long winter of theoretical discontent for almost two millennia, was quickly overshadowed by the Philosophy of Hegel and Marx and the obsession with scientific method of scientists, all of whom were ready to abandon rationalism and its commitment to the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in favour of the old wine of materialism and dualism in new bottles. The civil war between Religion, the communicator of our traditions, and Science, the ignorer of tradition, had the effect of diminishing the influence of practical reason in general, but also Political reasoning in particular. Politics became viewed as a form of techné, used to bring about the artificial construction of political artefacts. The connection of Politics to practical reasoning ought to be self evident, whether it be the in the spirit of the ancient Greek ideas of the Good and Diké, or the the more modern Enlightenment/Kantian idea of promising and its relation to the biological/psychological entity of the state. We moderns have left the tradition of the Enlightenment behind, and ceased to conceive of the state organically, preferring to regard it as a conventional artefact. The modern conception also fails to view civilisation teleologically in terms of a process advancing toward the good in virtue of the operation of laws and promises. It was Socrates, we ought to recal,l that pointed out an important relation between the structures of the psuche of a person and the structures of the polis. For Plato it was obvious that the institutions of the state and the class-structure of society are a reflection of the parts of the psuche. A state that allowed the appetites to run amok without the control of Reason in the form of Laws and promises as means of social control is destined for ruin and destruction. No oracle was needed to point out this rather obvious fact for Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Rationalism for these early rationalists was both a theory and a practical necessity. Only reason could ensure the flourishing life(eudaimonia) of the citizens of a state.

Practical causation in the sphere of techné was a mechanism for ensuring that the tools and physical conditions needed to build civilisations are produced: “causation”, was also, we know, for Aristotle an explanatory concept which he claimed fell into 4 different forms: material and efficient causes, formal and final causes. The latter two being somewhat more abstract than the latter two. Learning what something is , is obviously important in all situations where these different kinds of cause are operating. Even in the very technical activity of building a house we find Aristotle arguing that a form or principle is being transmitted from the idea of the builder to the material that is used in the product of the house that is being built. This house is both a product of psuche(of psychic activity) and the polis where we find psuche writ large. Similarly laws and promises are principles of the psuche designed to create and maintain order in a society with many institutions(organs of government). Laws and promises are broken when appetites and aggression runs amok in the polis. When this happens, we see Thanatos at work, and it can be argued that its aim is to return civilisation to an earlier uncivilised state of affair where the inhabitants are at war with each other. In the Symposium, Socrates sees functioning laws as a beautiful principle of order, that is loved for its own sake. There is also in the Republic a Socratic concern for activities in the polis that call into question the respect for the Laws themselves. Such activities are tragic for the polis if a sufficient number of citizens participate in such a process. Laws are constitutive of civic life and without them ruin, destruction, and tragedy are the consequence.

The Ego, for Freud, the author of “Civilisation and its Discontents” is a precipitate of lost cathected objects. This places loss at the centre of our mental life. The loss of a valued object is obviously something tragic, requiring a period of mourning and adaptation to life without the lost object. The lost object Freud specifically says can be an abstraction. For Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the loss they feared the most was probably the loss of our potential for rationality and all the consequences that flowed from this which was for them a clear and present danger. The cognitive awareness of what is at stake is largely determined by the knowledge of what is the good, namely respect for the law, and the keeping of promises. Reason plays an important part in the making of judgments based on this knowledge.

What kind of analogy, then, is the analogy between polis and psuche? We discussed earlier the example “Man is a wolf” and suggested that in this case it is not a commonality of structure that is the source of the analogy, but rather a commonality of the principle of the form of animal life we share with the wolf. There is also the commonality of the application of the principles of logic(noncontradiction, sufficient reason) operating in accordance with Politis’ work on Aristotelian Metaphysics:

“For he(Aristotle) will argue(in IV 4-6) that PNC(principle of noncontradiction) is indeed true of things themselves and of things without qualification: it is not only true of things as they appear to us and as we conceive them.”(Politis, V., Aristotle and the Metaphysics, (London, Routledge, 2004)

Politis supports this argument with a variation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and argues that:

“For it is in virtue of having an essence that a thing is a determinate thing in the first place; i.e. it is in virtue of having an essence that a thing is the very thing that it is, as opposed to every other thing. This means that Aristotle thinks that the defence of the view that PNC is true of things is at the same time a defence of the view that things have an essence”(P.150)

Kant’s view of metaphysical judgements concerning the nature of reality is of course a complex matter based on the faculty of reasoning, which is clearly differentiated from the faculty of understanding: a faculty that confines itself to what Kant calls the “island of truth”. Sebastian Gardner in his work “Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason” points out that the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic explore the limits of our knowledge and understanding of the world. The Transcendental Dialect, on the other hand, proves that the rationalist concern with God, freedom and the immortality of the soul, is motivated by the conception of things in themselves: a conception which is in accordance with logical principles, namely noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The Analytic and the Aesthetic showed that all our knowledge is limited by what it is we can experience, and in this sphere reasoning operates as Aristotle emphasised, syllogistically: from the universal down to the particular. Kant, emphasises, however, that the journey from the particular upward to the totality of conditions is an operation of reason that takes us beyond what he called the island of truth and into the noumenal realm of things in themselves. On our reading therefore, Kant would support the idea that logic and the principle of noncontradiction helps to formulate the ideas of what is noumenal and what is not. For Kant of course the practical investigation of this noumenal realm via moral law is a more promising avenue of philosophical investigation than that via the physical laws of science that rely on the law of causation. In the moral realm, reason operates in the two fold manner outlined by Gardner: upward from particular actions to universal generalisations and downward from moral law to judgements about particular actions. This of course is the way in which reason operates in tribunals of justice. This is also one of the ways in which reason operates in the psuche. There must therefore be some essential relation between psuche and the polis. The question is: is it sufficient to use the term analogy which basically is claiming that the two forms of reasoning are like one another? Is there not a more intimate relation: an identity? We claimed previously that the world is like the human psuche and the human psuche is like the world.

There is a clear material continuity of the essence of life with the essence of the elements of earth, air, water, and fire insofar as Aristotle is concerned. There is also a clear continuity of human psuche with animal psuche: the organisation of an assemblage of organs, limbs, tissues and bones in both cases is an analogous organisation. Both animal bodies and human bodies are regulated by the ERP and the PPP and these principles in both cases serve the purposes of a practical survival imperative, requiring powers some of which are shared by both animal and human. The human organ system generates a more complex system of powers: cognitive powers, the power of speech, the power of reason which together create a matrix capable of building cities and nations. These powers are manifest in, amongst other things, the creation and passing of the laws of the city and the creation of complex philosophical texts explaining the nature of the world and the human psuche. The fundamental analogy, then, between the human psuche and the polis is an analogy between the way in which the organs and associated principles organise the body and the way in which institutions regulated by laws and principles aim at a Good that include the benefits of survival and the benefits of the flourishing life. This state of affairs is well represented in a term coined by Martin Heidegger, namely that of “Being-in-the-world”. The world has a form of being -here and the human has a form of being-there that are analogous, they are like one another.

So, when Socrates claims in the Republic that the city is the soul writ large and justice in the city is analogous to justice in the soul it is not just commonality of structure that justifies the analogy but rather the commonality of logic and the commonality of principles of organisation. Laws have an ought structure analogous to the Kantian ought structure:

Promises ought to be kept

Jack promised Jill X

Jack ought to keep his promise

The individual is expected to exercise his freedom and responsibility in accordance with the ought argument above. The city’s laws are based on an expectation that laws will be obeyed in the way in which promises are kept on an individual level. Aristotle supports this reasoning in both his Metaphysics and the opening statement of the Nichomachean ethics: Every art, inquiry, action and choice aims at the good(unless caused to do otherwise). This practical imperative is the reason why the good is present in our institutions and only akrasia can cause pathological behaviour in the institutions of the polis(especially when ruled by greedy oligarchs, disgruntled democrats or narcissistic tyrants). The potentiality for rationality in the institutions of the polis can of course fail to be actualised and when this happens, troubled souls like Thrasymachus or Machiavelli can point to “the evidence” of this pathological behaviour and claim that the good is an illusion and exists only in the unreliable minds of people. If promises are not kept or laws not obeyed, what else can practical reasoning be but Hobbesian words without swords. Hobbesian Covenants are meaningless unless defended by power. In such a state of affairs it is clear that the unhappy polis mirrors the state of the unhappy, troubled soul that does not believe in the Good. Freud characterised this analogy of the soul and the polis very Platonically and poetically when he claimed that there is a battle raging between Eros and Thanatos and the fate of Civilisation hangs in the balance. This statement becomes even more poignant when one notes the date of the the work(Civilisation and its Discontents)—1929.

In an interesting chapter entitled “Transcendental Anthropology”(Open Minded) Lear discusses the Philosophy of Wittgenstein and rightly insists that it is opposed to relativism. His characterisation of Wittgenstein in terms of mindedness rather than human psuche leaves open the inevitable question of how to characterise the ontology of the mind. Aristotelian “substantive” principles as we have seen were marginalised in the historical development of Philosophy but especially during the times of Descartes, Hobbes, and Hume. These “new men” of Philosophy inspired a number of Philosophical positions that contributed to the marginalisation of rationalism, e.g. logical atomism, logical positivism, solipsism, naturalism, pragmatism, empiricism, relativism, phenomenology, existentialism etc. Wittgenstein’s later work certainly successfully criticised the anti-rationalism of these positions and created a logical space for the restoration of the principles of hylomorphic and critical Philosophy. The concept of language-game is a more differentiated concept than “capable of discourse”, but “form of life” is very much in the spirit of Aristotelian philosophical psychology. “Forms of life” we know is also for Wittgenstein the ultimate justification for language games–i.e. “what we do” is the final court of appeal for Wittgenstein. The Wittgensteinian concept of “form of life”, however, characterises rationality in terms of “rule following” behaviour and this may not be sufficient to capture the power of the logic of rationality. The definition of man as a “rule following animal” raise its own set of questions concerning whether this new position is merely a non pragmatic form of instrumentalism that both Aristotelian hylomorphism and Kantian Critical Philosophy would eschew. In his earlier work “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Wittgenstein maintained that the limits of Language are the Limits of the World. This thread continues into his later work when he insists that we do not know what to say about witch doctors because we do not share the form of life that installed them as important figures. This has puzzled many philosophers for whom Anthropological observations of social cultures have clearly put on display a magical belief system that is both unscientific and unphilosophical. Kant would probably have characterised magical thinking as the “dreams of a spirit seer”, and he would have known what to say about the claim that there is a causal relation between a witch doctor piercing the head of a doll and the headache of a man in the next village. Kant , in the context of metaphysicians who disregard the categories of understanding(causation) and support superstitious explanations and justifications, referred to :

“High towers and the metaphysically great men who resemble them, around both of which there is usually so much wind, are not for me.”(Prolegomena 4: 373n)

We should also note that Kant regarded belief in Miracles such as those presented in the Bible as superstitious and outside even the realm of Faith.

Aristotle would have insisted that we study foreign cultures from the perspective of his theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. The witch doctors behaviour would not have fallen into any of the four categories of “causation” proposed by Aristotle who further maintained that these 4 species of causation are exhaustive in all contexts of explanation/justification. Aristotle, like Kant would have regarded the irrational fear that some men have for the gods as analogous to the fear of a slave for cruel master: such fear is, Aristotle argues, unworthy of a rational animal capable of discourse. Tragedies of course clarify such fears, regarding them as cowardly and not in accordance with areté.

Lear wishes to suggest that we regard Wittgenstein’s inquiry into rule following as a transcendental inquiry. This might make sense in a theoretical discussion of the universality of a rule and particular instances of its application, but it does not make sense in a Kantian practical transcendental inquiry which insists upon the acknowledgement of a distinction between an instrumental attitude towards a rule and a categorical attitude towards any action. Lear believes that there is a problem with combining Wittgenstein’s Anthropological investigations(which resemble investigations into the natural history of mans activities) and what he regards as Wittgenstein’s Transcendental Investigations, although he appears to concede that the Transcendental Investigations take precedence(P.255) He does not however see the problem with characterising rule following transcendentally, independently of the biological psychological matrix we find in both hylomorphic and critical Philosophy: the problem namely that a machine is also a rule following language using entity(that, according to many, is capable of passing the Turing Test). The major problem with Wittgenstein’s claim that man is a rule following animal is that his transcendental deduction takes the form of “This is what we do!”. This, however, is less like a deduction of the validity or justification of rule following and more like an anthropological description with a transcendental label placed upon it. Neither Aristotle nor Kant would have accepted this kind of explanation as constituting a sufficient condition of rule following. They may well have conceded that Wittgenstein has provided us with a necessary condition. Rule following would for both Aristotle and Kant need to be connected to normative patterns of reasoning–namely following a rule was something that ought to be done and done freely. No one would seriously insist that computers which do pass the Turing test follow rules freely, i.e. view rules through the lens of the ought system of concepts where one freely chooses to do what is right. The tribunal of explanation/justification requires the kind of deduction that is de juris and not de facto. The kind of justification for rules should be the same as the kind of justification we use for laws. If the judicial system asked for a justification of a particular law responded with “This is what we do!” such a response would largely be met with bewilderment or amusement..

The hesitancy of Wittgenstein to concede that the limits of the world are related not only to language but rather to thought, reasoning and even faith is not a denial of the importance of these aspects. His commitment to the concept of “form of life” in relation to language games rather than rationality may lay behind his own remark in the preface to “Philosophical Investigations” that he was able only to provide his readers with an “album of sketches” that he could not form into a coherent whole. Without the operation of reason in the ascent upward to the totality of conditions in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason there are only empirical mechanisms available for those wishing to defend rule following as an essential characteristic of human psuche.

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A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action:Volume Three Jonathan Lear and Aristotle(A Kantian Critique)

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Kant, the “all destroyer” of Metaphysics is assumed by some critics to be directing his attention to what they call the “metaphysical heritage” stretching back to, and including, the metaphysics of Aristotle. We wish to argue that Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics are not incompatible and that Hylomorphic Philosophy and Critical Philosophy share a concern that is not manifested in the speculations of materialistic science or dualistic religion. Both forms of Philosophy rejected the metaphysical aspects of materialism and dualism.

It is true that one will not find in Aristotle reference to either the modern psychological terms of Consciousness or the Will, but the former is certainly implied in Aristotelian accounts of perception and the later is implied in Aristotelian discussions of choice and akrasia. The most important aspect of the Kantian account of the Will in moral contexts is its first principle or moral law, the categorical imperative. The question”Why?” when posed in relation to human action can be answered at three levels. At the first level if one is confronted with a puzzling action and responds with “Why did you do X?”, the response may well refer to an intention, e.g. “I took the job because I owed Jill an amount of money that I have promised to pay back next month”. This explanation in turn may prove puzzling to a child or an immoral criminal and may be countered with “Why do you want to pay the money back?” The second level response to this may take the form of ,”Because promises ought to be kept”. It is conceivable , if one is a philosopher, to ask why promises ought to be kept and this inquiry will take us back to the first principle or categorical imperative(“So act that you will that the maxim of your action(the intention) can be willed to become a universal law”). This third level categorical imperative is the first principle or moral law that we encounter in Kantian Metaphysics of Moral Action and Judgement. For Aristotle, the keeping of promises would be a virtuous activity(in accordance with areté–doing the right things at the right time in the right way) and there would be no reason why Aristotle would not accept some form of the categorical imperative( a legislator in a kingdom of ends) as an elaboration upon the meaning of the major premise “Promises ought to be kept”. Areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) is certainly a broader practical principle than the categorical imperative, embracing, as it does, the political activities of law making and rhetoric( in which one argues for the validity of political laws). These activities also belong to the Area of practical science as conceived by Aristotle in his Catalogue of Sciences. Any political law that undermined the unity of the state would, for Aristotle, be a practical contradiction, as would the failure to keep a promise one had no intention of keeping, be a practical contradiction for Kant. Laws which are unjust and did not contribute to the unity of the city would be no law at all and this is an expression of the fact that there was no principle beyond them. Such laws would be laws in name only: failed attempts to regulate the social activity of the state. Laws for Aristotle are embedded in processes that navigate between extremes: processes that obeyed the procedural rules of the golden mean.

There is no reason to believe that Kant would question any of the above Aristotelian claims. The Categorical Imperative is not a destruction of Aristotelian Metaphysics but rather a restoration of Metaphysics purified of materialistic and dualistic commitments. Such a restoration had only occurred once before in Philosophical history in the form of hylomorphic metaphysical theory. The above reflection highlights the importance of both the contexts of exploration/discovery(seeking the intention of the action) and the contexts of explanation/justification(seeking the principle that explains or justifies the intentional action). The reflection also highlights the important human aspect of the Aristotelian essence specifying definition of man(rational animal capable of discourse), namely, the way in which the human form of life responds to the complexity of the world in the interrogative and imperative modes.

Jonathan Lear in his work “Aristotle: the desire to understand”, appears to emphasise the important aspect of rationality in the form of the desire to understand. Aristotle, we have argued in this work set the stage for critical Philosophy by claiming that understanding ones own role in the attempt to comprehend the complexity of the world is part of the attempt to understand the world. Kant is focussing on this aspect when he gives us an account of the human mind in terms of the faculties or powers of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. Both philosophers are attempting to provides us with a logos of the soul. The use of understanding and reason in Aesthetic judgement, and in the realms of theoretical and practical sciences as well as the use of Sensibility in relation to the powers of Perception and Imagination, create the critical matrix necessary to meet the ancient Greek challenge to “Know thyself”. “Form” is a concept Kant continually refers to in his reflections upon his matrix. For Kant, the key commitment to hylomorphic Philosophy manifests itself in a reference to those organismic elements in the world that possess the power to cause themselves to move and act. For both Aristotle and Kant this phenomenon is characterised in terms of an internal principle that energises organisms during their life but departs from them upon their death. It is this principle of self causation that demands higher levels of explanation/justification than that which is provided in terms of material/efficient causation. As Socrates so wisely pointed out, reference to his bones and muscles carrying him to the prison does not and could never explain why he chooses to stay(when he is offered the possibility of escaping). Saying that his bones and muscles are at rest may be true but it is irrelevant in the face of the question “Why does Socrates stay in prison?”. The answer to this question is obviously that Socrates has chosen to accept his fate. The answer to the follow up question “Why?” would refer to his respect for the laws of the city-state of Athens. The latter “explanation/justification is obviously a more relevant answer. The former “explanation” seems to be more of the order of a “description” of the state of the body of Socrates than an explanation or justification of what is going on in the mind of Socrates. The principle of self causation precludes, in the name of the principle of sufficient reason, appealing solely to material and efficient causation. Even in the case of Socrates being taken to his cell, reference to what his muscles and bones are doing could, if we stretch the meaning of the words involved, “explain” the walking action(the change), but it is perhaps more appropriate to regard this characterisation as a description of the walking action. Both Aristotle and Kant would accept the distinction between external causation and internal self-causation. The latter form of causation, for Aristotle, is related to the choice involved in all forms of self initiated activity but especially virtuous activity. In this latter form of activity, asking the question why, in moral contexts, is an important aspect of knowing oneself in the course of leading a contemplative life. For Kant, self causation is involved in the exercise of freedom and practical reasoning. When the telos of the action is connected to duty and the responsibility associated with freedom, the issue is a normative issue in two senses: firstly knowing oneself is importantly focused upon the end-in itself of ones self worth, secondly the focus is on the normative end in itself of the cosmopolitan Kingdom of ends. Processes of actualisation (development) are obviously involved in the bringing about of all stages on the way to final ends: whether they be hylomorphic principles that organise the formation of tissue, organs and limbs into a human body or hylomorphic principles of justice organising collectivities of people into a state run by the rule of law. These principles are inherent in the bodies and the minds of the citizens. This is in contrast to the Platonic account in which “forms” or principles are not located anywhere in space whether that be actual space or the metaphorical space of the mind. These “forms” or principles, prior to being actualised are potentialities, potential powers. Powers are teleological. The “forms” or principles involved in powers of perception, imagination, judgement, understanding, reason, and language are not properties of the man but rather constitutive of mans “Being-in-the-world”. Phenomenology prefers to focus on the powers or perception, imagination, and a non abstract form of understanding that does not acknowledge the role of Aristotelian or Kantian Categories, or the role of Aristotelian-Kantian practical and theoretical reasoning. To acknowledge these forms of cognition obviously requires a conception of Science that does not correspond with the self-conception of Modern Scientific Psychologists. More seriously, Phenomenology fails to generate a sustainable practical view of Politics and Ethics. Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, and even Arendt, early on in her career, fixated upon Marxism as the Political Philosophy most in accord with their world view. Arendt’s later realisation that Marxism respects neither freedom nor justice is an interesting confessional moment and it moves us toward the world views embodied in hylomorphic and critical theory. Paul Ricoeur’s political commitment to Socialism does not quite fit into the category of Marxist dialectical materialism, but it does share with dialectical reasoning an anti-rationalistic spirit that prevents both a scientific world view, and an ethical world view that is synchronised with hylomorphic or critical thought. Ricoeur retains a Greek orientation to his investigation by declaring an interest in achieving an ontological understanding of Being(similar to that of Heidegger), but his route to this understanding is distinctly Heraclitean or Hegelian, via the discipline of hermeneutics and the conflict of interpretations of Being. Each interpretation, of course, claims to situate itself in the context of explanation/justification but opposing one interpretation(e.g. the Freudian so called archeological explanation) against another teleological explanation(Hegelian) places the whole investigation once again into a context of exploration/discovery. Aristotle might regard this activity as an attempt to navigate between extremes, especially if we are speaking about early Freudian theorising. Such an exercise for him might be a valid attempt to establish what he regarded as the basic terms of the science of hermeneutics. The model for this speculative judgement is, of course, derived from practical reasoning and the striving of agents to acquire the virtue of courage after experimenting with the extremes of wildly rushing into battle and running away from battle. Plucking up the courage to enter battle, deliberately and prudently, is in accordance with the essence specifying definition of virtue( doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Areté is the categorical imperative of Aristotelian politics and ethics. This will include judging within the privacy of ones own mind as well as publicly saying what one is going to do in the agora. What is interesting in the above reflection is the dialectical activity that is involved in the journey toward a final context of justification for ones actions or ones beliefs. There is, in modern hylomorphic and critical reflections, a refusal to ally oneself with Ricoeur’s belief in the role of the conflict of Interpretations in processes leading up to final contexts of explanation/justification. We need to insist in the light of the above reflections that such conflicts are confined to contexts of exploration/discovery: and realise activities of this kind do not call into question the telos of aletheia (truth). One can, that is, despite dialectical objections, continue to be committed to the Aristotelian and Kantian view of Knowledge as Justified True Belief.

So, on this account Ricoeur endorses Aristotelian dialectical activity in the fields of all the sciences(theoretical, practical and productive) but suspends judgement on the status of explanations and justifications in the field of Aristotelian and Kantian theoretical and practical sciences. We do not, however, find in Ricoeur the extreme political commitments we normally find in existential and phenomenological positions(e.g. Sartre, Merelau-Ponty, Arendt, Heidegger’s mistaken commitment to German National Socialism). We encounter rather justifications of Socialism that appear to be in compatible with Aristotelian and Kantian ideas and knowledge of the Good

In Ricoeur’s hermeneutics there is a clear reference to a dialectical play of archeological and teleological theories in relation to the topic of the symbolic structure of language. Ricoeur claims in his work “Freud:an Essay in Interpretation” that the dialectical interplay of archeological explanations and teleological “explanations” is a necessary preliminary to a General Theory of Hermeneutics:

“As I said in the “Problematic” a general hermeneutic does not lie within our scope: this book is no more than a propaedeutic to that extensive work. The task we set ourselves was to integrate into reflection the opposition between conflicting hermeneutics. Now that we have made such a long detour we are simply at the threshold of our enterprise.”(P 494)

The aporetic question to pose here is: “What lies on the other side of this threshold?”–Heiddegger’s view of Being? Aristotelian or Kantian views of Being? Or a variation of these positions? The archeological meaning of symbolic language involves the restoration of ancient meanings of language. The teleological meaning of symbolic language ,for Ricoeur, on the other hand, is more Hegelian than Aristotelian, and has to do with the emergence of Concepts in a historical adventure that anticipates the telos of our culture. Both remembrance and prophecy are intertwined in a reflective process that is clearly embedded in the context of exploration/discovery. The dialectical route to aletheia is manifested in the density of a symbolism that both conceals and reveals.

Instincts are concealed when vicissitudes are revealed in a journey of Consciousness toward self-consciousness(self knowledge). This process of exploration centres around the key signifiers of the instincts and Consciousness in a journey from the images of the imagination to the concepts of the understanding. Reason appears in the course of this journey but only at the level of the relation of concepts to each other in propositions and more complexly in the relation of propositions to each other, especially in the corpus of a science.

Jonathan Lears work is involved on many levels of the above reflections. His work on “Freud” supports Ricoeur’s analysis of the role of sublimation in the above journey toward a final context of explanation/justification:

“sublimation is not a supplementary procedure that could be accounted for by an economics of desire. It is not a mechanism that could be put on the same plane as the other instinctual vicissitudes, alongside reversal, turning around upon the self, and repression. Insofar as revealing and disguising coincide in it, we might say that sublimation is the symbolic function itself.”(,Freud an essay in interpretationP.497)

Sublimation is a mechanism of exploration/discovery and it certainly might be involved in conceptual activity as a form of substitute satisfaction. Such activity occurs in relation to the pleasure-pain principle at levels of Consciousness lower than that of the rational thinking in contexts of explanation/justification (when it operates in accordance with the Reality Principle). Such thinking requires real rather than substitute satisfactions. The symbolic function is, of course, a linguistic phenomenon, a power intimately connected to an Ego whose primary functions are to protect the body, and the capacity to love and to work in accordance with areté. The strong ego, according to Freud, is well aware of the ways of the world and it is also aware of the fate of men who are unaware of the role of Ananke in the affairs of men. Ricoeur suggests that Freud reduces the symbolism of work to the symbolism related to sexuality, but this may be a problematic interpretation of Freud’s later work which suggests that both the activities of work and sex stem from the Life instinct. There may be, that, is a “language of life” that sexual symbols and symbols of work emerge from. The language of myth then may be better characterisable in terms of the language of life.

Ricoeur points to a hierarchy of Desire, Spirit, and Reason in his work on Freud. Spirit is divided as it is in the work of Plato, sometimes cooperating with emotional Desire in the form of anger and aggression, and sometimes cooperating with Reason in the form of virtues of courage and courageous indignation. Desire is, of course, represented at all levels of mind and this is a position that would be maintained by both Aristotle and Kantian Critical Philosophy. At the level of Reason, pleasure or satisfaction changes its form and becomes part of the contentment of the telos of a flourishing life rather than part of a transitional process aiming at the homeostasis of the body.

Human action inspired by areté (knowledge of the good) does not, however, accord with the Hegelian emphasis upon dialectical reasoning given the obvious commitment of both Greek Philosophy and Kantian Critical Philosophy to the form of Logical Rationalism. Such a commitment involves appeal to principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in a context of explanation/justification. Desire in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory is explained partly in terms of its role in the actualisation of the potentiality of rationality in the development of the powers of a human being. In Kant’s “Anthropology” desire is structured around three modes of manifestation; possession(having), power, and worth. These are also hierarchically organised modes of Consciousness that reveal themselves in the culture in various institutional forms: economical, political and ethical. These institutions then become objective manifestations of a human desire guided by areté and principles of organisation. The Platonic Eros appears to bind all these institutions together into a totality or unity against the background of the shadow of Thanatos and Ananke–a state of affairs indicating that there is no rest for desire, that mans work must continue unhindered if it is to maintain the levels of organisation necessary for a whole culture to flourish.Freud’s commentary on this state of affairs, during the late twenties of the last century, asks us to reflect upon whether all the work we put into civilisation, in the final analysis is worth the effort. This testifies to the clairvoyance of the Ancient greek prophesy that “All things created by men are destined for ruin and destruction”. Hannah Arendt’s work on the “Origins of Totalitarianism” is also testimony in favour of this warning by Freud and the Ancient Greeks: a testimony to the power of Thanatos and Ananke in the actualising process of economic and political institutions. Arendt refers to the 20th century as “This terrible century” but it is only after a flirtation with Marxism and a rejection of the rationalism of Kant that we find Arendt moving toward the political writings of rationalists in general and the Greeks in particular. The form of desire related to understanding and reason in both the work of Ricoeur and Arendt is related to power and the mechanism of recognition. It is through a dialectical relation of master to slave that ones worth is established. Self knowledge in the twentieth century may be more complicated than Hegel imagined and at least in the case of Ricoeur, cultural texts play an important role in this context of exploration/discovery. The dignity and worth of man will certainly be partly constituted by what is contained in the texts of art, law, literature and Philosophy.The ability to interpret these works obviously rests upon the power of educational institutions to create, preserve, and communicate such works. Ricoeur points to a kerygma embedded in cultural works–a kerygma related to arché or principles of interpretation. This kerygma also contains reference to a promise of salvation–that all manner of things will be well at the end of the cultural actualisation process. Here we return to the power of the Platonic Eros to hold things together in a totality of conditions.

There is a difference between a rational desire to hold things that belong together in one irreducible totality, and the scientific desire to analyse totalities into causes and effects. This process is well illustrated in Jonathan Lear’s discussion (in his work “Aristotle”) of the cultural activities of building a house, students learning, and doctors doctoring. All 4 “causes” or “forms of explanation” are necessary if one is to give complete hylomorphic accounts of these activities.

The CartesianCoordinate system provided science with a matrix of possible logical/mathematical points situated in the continuity of space. This system conceives of what is occurring in space in terms of “events” that are capable of being identified by separable acts of observation stretched over the continuum of time: a continuum of before-now-after. This coordinate system also provides science with a powerful tool to divide the world up into divisibles–logically independent indivisibles subsumable under the idea of event and the category of causation. The causation Cartesian scientists appeal to in this context of exploration/discovery, is not, however the notion we encounter in Aristotelian or Kantian Philosophy. It resembles rather a Humean concept where the hypothetical division of reality into an event of type cause and an event of type effect suffices to provide the elements for an explanation/justification of what is happening in this region of reality. Aristotles notion of causation (aitia) is very different, and does not in any way presuppose a matrix of the above kind, but rather presupposes everyday assumptions about the categorical nature of the 4 different kinds of explanation that act as a framework for all kinds of human activity including building, learning and doctoring. For Aristotle the “scientific” knowledge of the principles of these different activities are operating throughout these activities. We can observe the role of the material, the role of the principles, and the role of the final product, as well as the role of the agent. In so doing we do not observe “two” events connected by a mysterious unobservable mechanism but rather unified activities occurring in accordance with the knowledge the various agents possess of what they are doing.This is a hylomorphic account that Kant would not contest in its essentials, and indeed endorses in his account of the logic of instrumental and technological imperatives. The key concept in Kant’s account of the operation of practical reasoning is not that of the event, but rather that of action. In action contexts the intention with which the agent performs the action explains “Why” the action was done, describes the goal of the action in terms of a future state of affairs to be brought about(rather than a past “event”). There is, in other words, a kind of logical or conceptual relation between the intention and the action that is not present in the relation postulated between an event of type cause and an event of type effect. Understanding the why that constitutes the above context of explanation/justification in the realm of action is not an archeological matter that takes us back to the biological instincts of the agent. It is, if anything a teleological matter that looks forward prospectively to a flourishing life.

Instinct does, however, play a role in hylomorphic theory. The psychological aspect of instinct will be a kind of vicissitude of the biological material, and it will in later Kantian theory, be the origin of the will that is in its turn being organised by a maxim or intention in accordance with a higher level rational principle. This rational or reality principle will organise lower level principles such as the pleasure-pain principle(controlling the stability of Consciousness) and the energy regulating principle(controlling the homeostasis of the body). The energy regulation principle, for example will have its own telos in which pleasure is basically the absence of pain : organ relations and the relation of organ systems to one another will provide the conditions necessary for the use of the limbs in particular and the body in general. This is only one aim of the instincts. More complex aims obviously produce more complex objects and as the level of complexity increases more areas of the brain are involved.

Jonathan Lear invokes the Kantian categories of agent and patient in his analysis of Aristotelian activities. He points to three kinds of forms or principles that are communicated in human activity. Firstly, sexual reproduction, which is primarily a biological activity, communicates a human essence( a bundle of potentialities) to a patient . This activity occurs in accordance with a biological imperative that we share with the animals. Immerse sexual reproduction in Consciousness, and in an environment of human higher mental processes, and it is transformed into a psychological and social necessity. Secondly, building a house may on the surface be comparable to the activity of bees or beavers, but these latter activities cannot be said to be driven by “maxims” which only language-users can be said to possess. The biological/instrumental imperatives governing bee and beaver activity are clearly less complex than the human forms of activity driven by instrumental imperatives: building a house obviously meets a set of needs that are far more complex than the building of a hive or a dam. Thirdly, we come to the communication of forms or principles that cannot be found anywhere in the animal kingdom, that of learning and teaching: an activity that communicates knowledge. Students minds are “formed” by this activity in institutions of learning and they end up becoming geometers, politicians, and philosophers.

For Kant the decisive issue of the separation of the two forms of Metaphysics(The Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals) centres around the “Basic Terms”(Aristotle) of “event” and “action”. Given the law or category of causation which must relate particulars under the universal “Every event has a cause”, there is no logical resting point in a first cause which is a contradiction of the above universal. The Law of causation must be regulated by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason(i.e. regulated by Logic). The principle of sufficient reason is particularly relevant in the human sciences where multi-factorial causation is involved in the producing of an effect( e.g. the operation of a number of powers or capacities may be necessary for a sufficient explanation of the form a particular effect takes.). For Kant, then, Logic is involved in theoretical reasoning about events, even if the events are in fact actions. Events are divisibles that can be measured, manipulated and numerically related in a space-time matrix. Actions, on the other hand, are multifactorial effects of powers.The action of making a promise one intends to keep probably involves(if one takes into consideration the Psychological aspect only) the Energy regulation Principle, the Pleasure Pain Principle and the Reality Principle(relating to what ought to be the case). The Principle of sufficient Reason involved in motivating the the action of both making and keeping a promise will involve a variety of explanations appealing to a variety of principles. The complete explanation of these phenomena will have essence-explanation characteristics and these will include archeological and teleological elements. If we are dealing with the action of keeping a promise(the act of paying a debt back for example), the action of making the promise is part of the justification of the action: a justification that rests upon the logic of noncontradiction(it is a practical contradiction to make a promise one does not intend to keep) and the principle of sufficient reason. For Kant the major metaphysical division in his critical Philosophy runs between theoretical and practical Philosophy: the Metaphysics of Nature is categorically distinct from the Metaphysics of Morality. In the Metaphysics of Morals there is no law of universal causation(every event must have a cause) operating, because freedom is self-causing-has its source in an agent with the powers of life, discourse, and rationality. Kant, in his deduction of the categories makes reference to agents, patients, and community and points to a relation between agents and patients in judgements of community(These judgements fall under the heading “Of Relation” in the table of Categories).In such judgements the logical relations between the concepts and the judgements is very different to the relation of causal concepts and judgments to each other. These in turn differ from the logical relations involved in judgments of substance in relation to its inherents. Basic concepts apply a priori to the objects of intuition we find “constructed” in human sensibility. Such construction does not take place in a matrix of divisibles of points and times but rather in a matrix of externality and orientation in space and a matrix of a present embedded in the before and after of the past and future. Both of these aspects of intuition are quantifiable but such quantification does not , for example, affect the substantive nature or the qualitative nature of the object of intuition. The table of categories, for Kant, is a table of:

“pure concepts of synthesis that the understanding contains within itself a priori”(Kemp Smith, N., Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, London, Macmillan, 1963, P.113)

It is these categories of judgement/understanding that make Metaphysics possible. Manfred Kuehn in his biography of Kant describes Kant’s relation to metaphysics in the following terms:

“what Kant tries to answer is the question of whether the kind of knowledge sought by metaphysicians–including himself–is possible. The bulk of his work is meant to show that traditional metaphysics rests on a fundamental mistake, since it presupposes that we can make substantive knowledge claims about the world independent of experience, and Kant argues we cannot make such claims. Kant calls the claims of traditional metaphysics “synthetic a priori judgements” and he argues that it is impossible to know anything a priori about the world as it is independent of experience. But he does not simply follow the route of previous empiricist philosophers who considered all knowledge to be derived from experience alone and thus tried to trace all knowledge back to sensation and reflection. Kant thought rather that knowledge has an a priori component….we supply form to the knowable world. Indeed the formal aspects of the knowable world are constituted by the cognitive apparatus that we, and every other finite being like us, must have.” (P.242)

The above contains a clear commitment to the importance of the powers of cognition that include the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding and Reason. All these powers or faculties are necessary for the task of knowing the world. These faculties are three epistemic conditions of knowledge. The world for Kant is both empirically real and transcendentally ideal. Part of what is involved in the empirical reality of the world is the experience of particulars in Space and Time. Knowledge of these a priori forms of Sensibility, Kant argues, can also be systematised in a quantitative form via the disciplines of Geometry and Arithmetic.

Insofar as the cognitive powers of the mind are concerned it is evident that for Kant Consciousness of Self has a different form to knowledge of the self. I can be aware of my phenomenal self as it appears to me in imagination etc., but I cannot be aware of the noumenal “I” of the “I think” that is the vehicle of all concepts(A 342, B 399). It is impossible to know anything about the noumenal I, but we nevertheless Kant argues, have “before our eyes” the identity of the acts of this I: these acts manifest themselves in the unity of the act of apperception.

For Aristotle, the building of the house is techné: the learning that occurs in the interaction between the teacher and the student in the name of education is epistemé. It is epistemé that is transmitted between the soul of the teacher and the student. There is a clear separation between the knowledge of skills from the knowledge involved in the theoretical and practical sciences. The building activity of the builder in the construction of the house is, for Aristotle, a means to an end whereas the knowledge of the theoretical and practical sciences is something to be valued as an end in itself. In both techné and epistemé there are principles regulating the changes that are occurring even if the principles have different logical structures: practical/instrumental versus categorical/theoretical. Both principles involve powers of the soul and not antecedent events prior to their logically independent consequents. For Aristotle it is the builder building, the teacher teaching, or the doctor doctoring that are the source of the primary principles of the changes that are occurring. Teaching and doctoring involve a patient(a recipient of the “form”) and the matter that is undergoing change is, firstly, the students soul and, secondly, the patients body. In the former case the soul will take on an epistemic form. Teleological explanations of human activities of all forms will involve a “that for the sake of which” the action is directed at, or intending. This of course does not yet exist as an actuality until it is brought about by an actualising process of activity. Underlying this process is, of course, a potentiality of a thought process rather than a physical process. Jonathan Lear points out the inadequacies of some modern argumentation against teleological explanation. He uses the example of the claim that neuro-physiological and genetic structure is sufficient to ground all forms of teleological activity. Certainly this physical substrate can contain the principles of its functioning but this is not something detected solely by observation. Aristotle regards this physical substrate as very relevant in material and efficient forms of explanation but these are very different forms of explanation to both formal and teleological forms. The role of chance in everyday life testifies, Aristotle argues, against the deterministic picture of structures determining outcomes. If one takes a walk to the marketplace in the agora to buy a chicken, and coincidentally meets a debtor who repays the money he owes–the “that for the sake of which” which defines the ontology of the action could not be construed as “the agent went to the market to collect a debt” because, quite simply, the agent did not know that the debtor would be at the market. This absence of knowledge would make any such intention impossible to formulate. An observer observing this state of affairs might of course be ignorant of the intention of the agent(buying the chicken) and might well have concluded on the basis of observation that collecting the debt must have been the telos of the agents activity. Yet as Aristotle points out, this event occurred wholly by chance. The modern postulation that teleological explanation is a form of backward causation from an effect to a cause, rests of course upon an idea of matter that is not organised in accordance with forms or principles: this is a contradictory idea for Aristotle. The idea of pure matter is a hylomorphic nonentity( a mere hypothetical possibility), in Aristotle’s account: a result of an impossible subtraction of principle or form from the changing entities we encounter in experience. The paradigm of the principle directed actualisation of simpler life forms into more mature life forms is, Aristotle argues, the process responsible for the form the mind takes in its thinking about such forms. The human agent’s development into a mature agent with the potentiality of rationality requires powers of mind that build upon one another in similar ways to the way in which body-tissue changes shape and function as the body grows and develops–forms build upon forms. The mind is like the world and the world is like the mind. Lear expresses this as follows:

“Nor is Aristotle committed to the idea of conscious design in nature. Indeed, he explicitly denies that nature is the expression of some divine purpose or divine craftsman.We tend to think that if there really is some purpose in nature there must be come agent whose purpose it is. That is why it is so common to hear that purpose is just a projection of mind into(mindless) nature. Aristotle would disagree. Aristotle believes in the basic reality of form, and he everywhere sees natural processes as directed toward the realisation of that form. It would, however, be a mistake to conclude that his primary conception of purposefulness is mindless. Whether or not a teleological development is mindless or mindful depends upon what is meant by “mind”. If mind is simply equated with consciousness, then the growth of a natural organism is certainly mindless. In realising a developed form, a natural process achieves its goal even though no mind has directed or created the purpose. And yet Aristotle’s world is intelligible. It is a world that is so ordered, structured, saturated with purposefulness that it is meant to be understood in the sense that it is in mans nature to inquire into the world order and come to understand it.” (P.41)

The complexity of the powers of our mind obviously plays a role in the process of understanding because of the fundamental analogy of mind and world. It is the concepts of building, teaching, doctoring that produces a house or the knowledge of geometry or physical health. These concepts embody principles and it is understanding of these principles that renders the world intelligible.Principles make the world mind-like and the mind world-like. There is a teleological aspect to the connection of the parts of a building to each other and to the whole of the house. This is also the case with both the axioms and theorems of geometry and the connection of the parts(organs etc) of the body to each other and to the whole of the thinker /agent. The parts are “for the sake of” the whole. In the living organism this aspect is expressed in the body’s using every part in its striving to continue its form of existence. This aspect is also manifested in the reparative activities of the body if a part is wounded or damaged. This is a kind of hypothetical necessity which indicates that rationality is not only and merely in the mind, but is also operating in the processes of change in the world. In the context of exploration/discovery, of course observation and perhaps even experimentation is required if we have no idea of the principles operating in a form of life or in the creation of a new and unique artefact.: but in such cases what is being observed and understood is the rationality of hypothetical necessity. Such observations and experiments result in an understanding of the essence of what is being explored. In Aristotle’s speculations upon the essence of man we encounter a hierarchy of elements ordered either from the bottom-up(in terms of the biological characteristics of our animal nature) or top-down( in terms of the possession of the potentiality of rationality). In Aristotle’s biological investigations the context is one of exploration/discovery and observation and experimentation are the primary activities. In his philosophical reflections the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason are the primary determiners of the essence specifying definition of man: the rational animal capable of discourse. Observations and experiments are obviously closely related to the power of perception and its discriminative capacity. Beginning at this level ultimately leads to resting ones case on a universal generalisation or principle. The reasoning operative is inductive and dialectical. If, on the other hand, one begins at the level of conceptual based judgement, the reasoning is archeological via hypothetical necessity to the phenomenon in question.

Aristotle believes that rationality is an essential characteristic of man, even if man at a particular point in time has failed to actualise this potential(if he is for example an infant). In such an account, rationality appears as the basis of an essential potentiality man possesses. A frog obviously does not possess this potentiality in its arsenal of powers which are rather limited and even confined to a lower form of animality: there is, however, a principle explaining the behaviour of a fully-formed frog. Natural organisms possess an inner principle of change for Aristotle, and Kant characterises this in terms of self causation. This characterisation suffices to remove this principle from the orbit of reasoning in the realm of events and the law of causation(every event must have a cause). In the realm of the actualising processes of natural organisms there must, however, be a substance that persists throughout the change and which in a sense must remain the same. The cause of death of an organism can be construed as an event that happens to an organism, even in the case of human organisms that die by their own hand. Such an event however, neither in hylomorphic nor critical theory, is justifiable, because it is a contradiction to use ones life to take ones life.(There are exceptions to this “rule” in which the explanation of why one took ones own life are understandable without being justifiable). Death, then is the cause of a change that removes the essence of the human, testifying thereby to the necessary truth of the major premise in the famous syllogism, that begins with the major premise, “All men are mortal”. The conclusion “Socrates is mortal” also then becomes necessarily true on the condition of including the minor premise “Socrates is a man”.

The builder building and the house being built, then, are not two activities or events but only one activity seen under two aspects. The matrix of such activity is the matrix of change which Aristotle defines in terms of the actualisation of potential being as such. This is not a hypothetical judgement made in a context of exploration/discovery but rather a categorical judgment made in a context of explanation/justification. It is this categorical judgement that is a necessary condition of ought judgements, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept”. In such contexts the role of knowledge is clear and unequivocal: if we do not know what promises are, we are not able to understand this form of change. We also need to now that in such a change there is an agent of change that actualises the form or principle of promising. The agent is a self causer of change. Within this agent are, of course, other principles operating that compete for the energy and attention of the agent. The Pleasure-Pain Principle, for example (when decoupled from the Reality Principle) occurs in the spirit of self obsession that may well weaken ones resolve to keep a promise that has been made. The pain, for example, involved in keeping a promise to pay back a debt, may be sufficient to abandon ones duty. In this universe of discourse all discussion of events described from a third person point of view(an observational point of view) will be unable to reveal the principle that is operating in either the activity of keeping a promise or the activity of failing to keep a promise. Events are value-neutral and their causes or effects are what they are, and it makes no sense to claim that they ought not to have happened or ought to have happened. The exercise of the powers of an agent occur in the kind of matrix that resists analysis into a spatial-temporal quantitative/causal network of elements. In other words, the ought system of concepts/principles is a normative or prescriptive system, to use the language of the analytical philosophers. There is more than a suggestion that this normative system is essentially psychological and connected intimately with the the subjectivity of the emotions. Rationality may be a pure potential but for both Aristotle and Kant it actually regulates the will and neutralises the narcissistic operation or principles that seek to cause the will to blindly express its emotions in a spirit of affect. Desire moves the will but different powers located in different faculties of the mind produce different kinds of actions(which are “effects” in the language of “events”) and there are conceptual rather than causal relations between certain of these powers and the actions they bring about. The exercise of a power is not normally attributed to a part of the agent but to the agent as a whole. The admission by Aristotle that there is a part of the agent that moves, and a part that is moved, is not to be taken as an invitation to divide the agent into two events, one of type cause and one of type event.

Aristotle’s reflections on the soul begin with an essence specifying definition:

“The form of a natural body having life potentially within it”. (Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Edited by Jonathan Barnes(Princetown, Princetown University Press, 1984), (P.656)

Soul is a principle of living organisms(psuche): a principle that explains the changes initiated by that organism: changes such as movement, rest, and the forms of change such as perception, action and thought. The soul is not an event or a constellation of events but rather a principle that explains a number of the properties of life as well as different life-forms. Lear connects the hylomorphic account of psuche to the powers of the organism:

“But how can we investigate a power? There is no substitute, Aristotle thinks for investigating as carefully as possible the various exercises of the power and seeing how they occur.From Aristotle’s point of view the problem with the characterising of the soul given so far is that they are all too abstract. One can say that the soul is the form of a living body, but if we do not understand how to distinguish clearly the form from the matter of living organisms, this characterisation will be of minimal help….His strategy is…to engage in a detailed investigation of the soul–the power of living things to lead their lives..”(P.99)

This ensures that the context of exploration/discovery involves interrogating the power of different forms of life: their power to both continue in existence and in the case of the human psuche, to strive for a principle-guided quality of life that other forms of psuche are not capable of. Such investigation ought to result in an understanding or internalisation of principles that are epistemic. The powers of psuche form a hierarchy in human psuche which also can be found in simpler organisms. At the lowest level we find the powers of nutrition, growth, and reproduction: plant life manifests these forms. Such powers operate almost exclusively on the energy regulation principle and relatively simple forms of physical energy.The next level up in this chain of life or being, is the animal psuche that possesses sufficiently complex nervous systems to produce sensations and movements that express the state of the body to the consciousness of the animal. At this level both the energy regulation principle and the pleasure pain principle are operating to move the organism toward positive life enhancing stimuli and away from negative life threatening stimuli. When we reach the level of human psuche, we encounter these principles in more complex form because the distinguishing characteristics of the human species are the power of speech(thought) and the power of rationality, which together constitute what Freud referred to as the Reality Principle: a principle that embraces knowledge and desire in all their complex forms. Rationality itself takes three forms outlined by its use in the three sciences of theoretical science(metaphysics, theology, physics, biology), practical science(ethics, politics, rhetoric) and the productive sciences of techné(crafts, the arts). These sciences manifest so much more than the mere desire to continue in existence(to survive). They testify to an attempt to create a form of existence that can meet a manifold of needs including those needs for knowledge which have become an end in themselves because they are an integral part of the contemplative and examined life that defines the realm of the divine. In such a form of existence all human potential is actualised in accordance with the essence specifying definition: rational animal capable of discourse. We moderns can interpret Aristotle in terms of levels of consciousness. Aristotle distinguishes between perceiving the sensible form of a tree and the thinking of the reality of a tree that is manifested in the judgement”This is an oak”. Here he invokes the apparatus of potentiality and actuality, and their relation, and claims that the tree and the eye are two potentialities interacting in order to produce the actual perception of the tree: two potentialities are thus transformed into an actuality. It is in this interaction that the form of the tree actualises in the consciousness of the perceiver and becomes epistemologically the “form-of-the-tree-in-the-mind-of-the-perceiver”. Perception is thus an activity or a power that results in a form of knowledge that for Kant forms part of the faculty of Sensibility. If this faculty awakens in one or “quickens” in one the activity of the understanding, the manifold of representations experienced is thought and organised into a concept. A concept that can in turn Be expressed in the medium of language by the judgement “This is an oak”. At this level of complexity the self is organising the conscious state into a unity of apperception that Kant calls “I think”.

Lear in his chapter on Perception refers interestingly to the meaning of the Greek words psofos and psofesis. His discussion reminds one of Aristotles account of perception. The term psofesis is used in a way that testifies to the Aristotelian claim that the location of the activity of perception is in the “patient” (the perceiver). The English equivalent of this word would be “sounding” which we distinguish from the English word for “sound”. The Greek word for “sound” is psofos and it designates both the sound in the world and the sound in the hearer or patient. Such hearing is a more passive activity than the active listening that is implied by the term psofesis(sounding). Such an active listening would be expressed in the judgement “The sounding of x”. In this active process the experience is both a sound, and the experience of a sound, reflecting the analogical complexity of veritative perception. It would indeed be difficult to do justice to such subtle perceptual distinctions using the Philosophy of materialism or dualism. One more move needs to be made, however, if we are to fully understand the essence or ultimate reality of the entities we perceive. Mans understanding takes a conceptual form which includes principles. Man not only understands these principles but he also understands how these principles play a role in organising his own human form of psuche: a form which itself understands essences or ultimate reality. Lear refers to this part of the human psuche as “nous” and he believes that this Greek term is the closest analogue to the English term “mind”. “Nous” is the contemplating part of the mind to be distinguished from the calculating part which is involved in inductive explorations or excursions into the world. Mind or “nous” is pure potential and only becomes itself or actualises itself when thinking occurs. The thinking of this contemplative part of the mind is conceptual in nature: concepts are the intelligible objects of nous. Concepts are not material entities. We see in this discussion something analogous to the concept of sounding: the contemplating mind uses concepts which are identical with the object being contemplated. The role of language is absent from this account. The Greeks believed that thought was in fact a form of talking to oneself. This is surely a power. Or is it merely a medium for our conceptual power? Who is talking to whom? For Julian Jaynes it appears that there is an analogue I discussing matters with a metaphorical “me” in the “space” of consciousness. It is not entirely clear how to “parse” these claims using either the Aristotelian or Kantian accounts of thinking.

Politis in his work on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, argues that Philosophy is a series of difficult to answer aporetic questions, and whilst it is difficult to fathom how these questions could even be framed without language, it is also difficult to envisage asking oneself questions which are so difficult to answer, without the aid of language, if this is what is occurring in philosophical thinking. There is, in Aristotle an important distinction to be observed between the ideas of passive and active nous. Are these the “partners ” involved in talking to oneself. Active nous, for Aristotle is divine, it is the primary principle or form that lies at the source of all other principles or forms. It is the first principle of the Universe:the unmoved mover. When human nous contemplates, it contemplates essences or ultimate reality, and thereby glimpses briefly what God steadfastly and timelessly beholds. It is this activity that best illustrates or manifests the human desire to understand. Otherwise human desire is manifested in action: in the desire for an object or state of affairs that appear at the end of an agents “deliberation”(the practical form of contemplation). Actions can occur as a result of being “caused” by impulse or affect but they can also be motivated at a higher level by a potentiality for rationality: deliberation refers to the latter type of action where the desire for understanding is also playing a significant role, as is the knowledge the agent possesses of the task he is engaging in. Deliberation is a process of reasoning that is teleological, beginning with a wish for a state of affairs, and ending with the performance of the action that is to bring the desired state of affairs about. Aristotle uses the example of a doctor doctoring to illustrate the process of deliberation. Doctoring combines both science(epistemé) and art(techné) marshalled for the telos of “Health”, a basic term of medicine. The Energy Regulation Principle obviously plays a role in the health of the body and is clearly operative in the doctors attempts to restore the homeostasis of the patients body. If suffering is involved, it is part of the Hippocratic oath to relieve the patient of the condition causing the suffering, by relieving physical pain(pleasure-pain principle). If the suffering or pain is caused by the lack of heat in the body(a cold) the doctor attempts to restore the heat of the body by wrapping the patient in blankets. This is part of the techné of doctoring and it occurs against the background of the doctors knowledge(epistemé) of the functioning of the body. There is clearly a process of deliberation in this chain of knowledge-symptom-treatment. Lear claims that in deliberation, desire is transmitted from premisses to a conclusion(P.147). It is important, however, to emphasise that deliberation is a form of instrumental reasoning following instrumental imperatives. In this sphere of action we clearly see the self conscious organising effect of practical reason upon desire. Lear criticises Kant with the familiar Hegelian claim that Kant’s moral philosophy detaches the agent from his desires. This is the reason Lear invokes for discarding Kant in Favour of Aristotle. The claim that Kant’s categorical imperative somehow detaches the transmission of the agents desire from firstly, the understanding of The Good and secondly from the imperative of the action, is a criticism that is not in our opinion motivated, and rests upon a misunderstanding of firstly, the categorical nature of the understanding and secondly, the categorical nature of rationality. The claim that this criticism is widely accepted is also questionable. It is not widely accepted amongst Aristotelian and Kantian scholars.Lear also interestingly points out in the context of this discussion that no competing account of freedom has emerged. This in itself might be good reason for remaining sceptical about the Hegelian detachment thesis.

Stanley Cavell in his work argues along similar lines to Lear when it is claimed that the formal respect for the moral law somehow mysteriously implies that this respect is detached from the people involved in the context of this respect. Cavell further claims, in the spirit of Hegel, that this respect for the moral law entails less respect for the moral position of people who disagree. It is not clear what is being claimed here. If it is, as Kant says, a breach of the moral law to make promises that one has no intention of keeping, and further that doing so is a practical contradiction with the very practical consequences of the destruction of the human institution of promising in all its forms, it is indeed a peculiar criticism to suggest that Kant does not respect positions of antagonists whose ultimate aim is to destroy human institutions of promising. What is there to respect?

One of the major criticisms of the moral law made by antagonists, is that it is not universally necessary, as Kant claims, because if one agent makes a promise and fails to keep it, this suffices to falsify the universal generalisation that Promises ought to be kept. This criticism may be a prelude to insisting that we ought to respect this kind of antagonistic position. The position of course is an illustration of the naturalistic fallacy , reducing as it does “Promises ought to be kept” to actual concrete instances of promise making and promise keeping. That one ought to keep a promise does not of course imply that everyone who promises something always means to deliver upon that promise. Whether or not one is persuaded to embrace this norm, of course, is going to depend upon whether in general one is persuaded by the logic of practical reasoning, that in turn involves appeal to , for example, the categorical imperative, which as a matter of fact in its second formulation refers to respecting people as ends-in-themselves. It is difficult to see how such a formulation can be thought to embrace the above detachment thesis. Lear and Cavell appear both to be arguing(on Hegelian grounds) for a pragmatic form of naturalism, a position not shared by Aristotle.

In a chapter entitled “Ethics and the Organisation of Desire”, Lear claims paradoxically that we find it difficult to justify and explain our moral beliefs, and he ties this to the diminishing relevance of religion and diminishing influence of the Judea-Christian tradition. The Enlightenment of course had a role in the loss of confidence in the divine and all forms of authority and brought with it an increasing confidence in the powers of the agent to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. Lear again here is relying on pragmatic and naturalistic arguments that found moral positions upon an array of facts based on the observation of what people are doing, rather than on judgements relating to what people ought to do. The love for Hegelian dialectical reasoning is clearly taking precedence over Aristotelian and Kantian Logic which we use to the formulate the counterargument to the naturalistic fallacy. Reference to the Ancient Greeks and their emphasis upon action rather than intention, is ignoring Aristotle’s commitment to teleological rationality. This teleological kind of explanation/justification is exactly what we moderns call “intentional”. Lear also claims that Kant severed the connection between morality and the very natural and pragmatic “pursuit of happiness”. Kant takes up the problem of happiness in his discussion of the concept of the “summum bonum”. In this idea Kant places happiness in brackets and claims that happiness will only supervene in an agents life if that agent consistently does their duty. For Kant, the force of the understanding of the good was revealed in the desire for the Good that was present in all moral reasoning, judgement and action. There is no detachment of that desire from moral judgement, understanding, or action. One is not innately moral insofar as Kant is concerned, one becomes moral in an actualising process that involves becoming more rational about ones life, and, incidentally, this involves becoming more focussed on the telos of a future Cosmopolitan world in which all agents aim at becoming more rational about their lives. Lear rightly says that Kant would frown on focussing on happiness per se, but he fails to mention the way in which Kant argues for its role in striving for the summum bonum. Kant’s discussion in this context resembles Aristotle’s, and we also see here distinctions drawn between transitional forms of pleasure and Happiness that dawn and fade away unless this pleasure or happiness is connected conceptually with virtue: with the agents deserving to be happy. There is no fundamental difference between the ethical positions of Aristotle and Kant in this respect. There is, admittedly, a difficulty with translating the key term of eudaimonia which is often translated barely as happiness but is often better translated as “good spirited” or “flourishing”. Areté only persuades against the background of the knowledge of the good.

The virtues, for Aristotle are dispositions that are formed on the ground of potentialities that exist in the human psuche. The acquisition of these virtues is in the form of habits that help to form our character(the virtuous state of our soul). Virtue is defined as doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. In the Nichomachean Ethics(ii,i,1103a 31-62). Aristotle claims in the context of this discussion that the acquisition of the virtues is a process resembling the learning of the arts. Practical knowledge is involved in both processes. The man who has achieved a state of mind that we can describe as virtuous, manifests wisdom(sophia) in the form of phronesis. Such a man is named a Phronomos by Aristotle. A phronomos is a great souled man who possesses epistemé in his soul: this knowledge is combined with nous(insight) into the way in which nature works and the truth of judgments about nature. Aristotle philosophically defends the theoretical state of mind, claiming it is the highest form of thought and an important part of the contemplative life. The phronomos is not only a man of good character, he is also a knower of what is good. Absence of this knowledge on the part of our rulers leads to the ruin and destruction predicted by the oracles and leads to the divided society predicted by Plato. Aristotle’s Politics begins with an epistemological account of the types of state that are good and the types of state that are flawed. Monarchy, aristocracy and constitutional rule are the forms of state we ought to strive to create, but there are also perversions of these three forms: tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. These perversions occur because rulers and citizens do not understand the importance of areté and diké in social life. There is a suggestion of a devolutionary process operating in these perversions that determine the descent of oligarchy into democracy and the descent of democracy into tyranny as suggested in Plato’s Republic. There is also a suggestion of an evolutionary process beginning with one good man, a monarch, extending to a group of merited rulers, aristocrats, and finally actualising into constitutional rule by a mass of enlightened citizens. The enlightened body of citizens demand a different form of freedom to the disgruntled sons of oligarchic fathers, who sit in the agora and plot in the name of democracy to become rulers and tyrants. The best form of government, according to Aristotle, is the constitutional form, and during the time of Aristotle this must have appeared a utopian solution, yearning for a state of affairs that lacked the conditions for actualisation. One of these conditions is the existence of a universal education of sufficient quality to create great souled men en masse in a middle class that shared the virtues of the oligarchs and democrats without sharing their vices. Constitutional rule is no longer a utopian conception, but it still appears to lie beyond our reach in the near future. Kant’s equivalent of constitutional rule is the kingdom of ends which, according to him, is not an idle wish but rather a possible state of affairs that lies one hundred thousand years in the future. The key to achieving this state must lie in the achievement of the political golden mean of a middle class that possesses the virtues as defined by both Aristotle and Kant. Constitutional rule was necessary if man was to fully actualise the potential to be rational. Kant’s contribution to Aristotle’s Political Philosophy was to formulate more fully an account of the conditions necessary for constitutional rule, e.g. the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative for Kant is the foundation for his Theory of Right and peace that does not confine itself behind the borders and walls of nationalism and assumes a law of equality and freedom that we moderns recognise to be the foundation for International Human Rights. One of the more neglected works of Kant is his Metaphysics of Morals which contains a Doctrine of Right. This together with other political writings that suggest the need for a trans-national organisational body similar to the United Nations we have today, form the foundation of a Political Philosophy which is Aristotelian in its inspiration but fell victim to Hegelian criticism:a criticism that sought to promote the idea that ought judgements are “impotent”. The Kantian argument “Promises ought to be kept”, “X made a promise to do A to Y”, Therefore “X ought to do A”, is an argument that forms the foundation of many institutions including but not confined to The Law. Hegel’s position that arguments of the above form are impotent, points to one reason why the prophecy that all things created by men are doomed to ruin and destruction is a modern rather than an ancient threat to our civilisations. The threat of Hegel was both metaphysical and existential. In a work entitled “Kant´s Cosmopolitan Theory of Law and Peace”, Otfried Höffe points out that naturalism and the appeal to natural law ignores the fundamental basic term of ethics and politics, namely obligation:

“It is widely understood today that Kant advocates a cognitivist ethics of right and law and of peace that does not concern facts(“Is”: “it is not the case that P”) but rather obligations(“Ought”: “it is right/wrong that one should do/refrain from a”). But even the latter do not comprise subjective attitudes or convictions to the extent that they imply contingent approval or disapproval, but rather demand rigorous objectivity. Within the large family of cognitivists(legal)ethics, Kant explicitly rejects the family of meta-ethical naturalists prominent today( e.g. Brink 1989 and Schaber 1997). He does not agree that the capacity for truth in moral assertions can be taken in an empirical or general descriptive sense. For Kant, moral principles cannot be traced back to assertions about the world alone, neither to those concerning the external world nor to those about the “inner world”. The latter describes needs, interests and their optimal fulfilment, happiness, along with their minimal fulfilment, self preservation….The plausibility of “anti-naturalistic cognitivism” is immediately apparent if one considers the Is/Ought fallacy, a component of theories of argumentation according to which a natural Ought does not follow from a mere descriptive.”(P.5-6)

The above reference to the Metaphysics of Morals and treating people as ends in themselves also requires elaborating upon the role of knowledge as an end in itself in the civilising process of education. Theoretical Knowledge and Truth rely on basic terms, principles, and essence specifying definitions in contexts of explanation and justification. The context of exploration/discovery searches for basic terms at the beginning of a science, builds upon these to create conceptual systems and attempts to discover the principles operating in the realm under investigation. At the later stages of a theoretical science, essence specifying definitions emerge. Principles and essence specifying definitions are the matrix out of which a possible totality of facts emerge. Essence specifying definitions such as:

“A star is a gravitationally bound ball of hydrogen and helium made self luminous by internal nuclear fusion.”(Shields, C., Aristotle(London, Routledge, 2007, P 98)

The above definition is related to the laws of gravitation and thermodynamics and motion in general. Here we encounter a complex relation of concepts, principles, and laws requiring metaphysical theories for their interpretation and support. Lear wishes to contrast the activity of theoretical understanding with the kind of practical understanding involved in political life. This does not have support from hylomorphic or critical philosophy. Aristotle’s account does not separate the theoretical and the practical in the above way. Kant would point to an ontological difference between what is being justified in these two domains, namely belief and action, and he would attribute putative different kinds of knowledge to the different “objects” or “subjects” of theoretical and political discourse. Logic, for both Aristotle and Kant governs both domains of discourse in the form of the laws/principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.

Lear points out correctly that Logic reveals both the rationality of our beliefs and the inherent intelligibility of the world. For Aristotle, the “logical form” of arguments in general and syllogisms in particular are deductive and the truths generated are necessary truths in virtue of the matrix of explanation/justification they presuppose: this matrix is essentially metaphysical. The major premise of an ought based syllogism is the universal generalisation that justifies the derivation of the minor premise and the conclusion(given the metaphysical matrix). Lear, in the name of naturalism and pragmatism, appears to have doubts about this matrix, but he correctly claims that both Logic and Mathematics are important theoretical tools for the investigation of what he calls “the broad structure of reality”(Aristotle…P.231)

All forms of explanation relate to the changes occurring in the world and mathematics is no different in that respect. The Mathematician studies the same world as the Physicist. Mathematics abstracts for example the substance/quality of bronze from the bronze globe on my desk and characterises it in terms of a a sphere with merely quantitative properties. In this activity there are laws governing mathematical calculations and operations. This act of abstraction is necessary for the calculation of the quantities of surfaces and objects in the world as well as for objects in motion. Thought about the sphere at rest or in motion from a mathematical point of view lies outside the metaphysical matrix.

The divine too has its own metaphysical matrix in which there is no separation of the thinker from the objects of his thought. The study of being qua being, is a study that is composed of a series of aporetic questions relating to Primary Form or Primary Being, relating that is to a First Principle that is not to be confused with the more problematical explanatory principle of a First Cause. If the law of causation is defined in terms of the major premise “Every event must have a cause”, then the conception of a first cause must be a contradiction in relation to Aristotles principles of Logic. A First cause argument, then, aims at explaining everything, but ends up explaining nothing. A first Principle, if such there be in metaphysics must indeed explain and justify everything.

The World Explored, the World Suffered 34th Issue of Philosophical/Educational Journal of Humanistic Lectures

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A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Vol 3(Jaynes, Aristotle, Kant, Freud: Cultural Morphology, Cultural Evolution, Consciousness, Language, and the Bicameral Mind)

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Change is the perennial condition of life but not of knowledge. We understand change because we have knowledge. If everything was changing and nothing at all could be seen as enduring we could not understand anything: there would be, for example, no sufficiently constant conditions for the language-game of naming(the simplest of language-games) to exist. Without naming there could be no reference to change in the past or to change in the future. Consider the changes occurring in cloud formation: if we were unable to identify the change as a change in the configuration of clouds–if for example clouds just disappeared beneath the Greek sun as they sometimes do, then, if we were to talk of this region of reality perhaps it would have to be in terms of something else changing–perhaps the air is getting hotter. If we could not talk of the air because it was very windy then we might need to talk about the motion in space over time. If there was no identifiable motion to talk about, we are left only with an extensive region of space and counting the nows to give ourselves an idea of the passing of time–but what is counting if not a kind of naming? What we are differentiating is a before, from an after, and perhaps with this pure form of consciousness, we are at the limits of the human cognition of change–the past changing into the future. The role of language in the organisation of experience according to the Philosopher Stuart Hampshire in his work “Thought and Action”(London, Chatto and Windus,1959) is formulated thus:

“Men may think with a view to knowledge, as they may think with a view to action. They may ask themselves “Is this statement true or is it not?” and also Shall I do this or shall I not?”. Both kinds of question can be formulated in words, and there would be nothing properly called thought unless such questions could be formulated into words. Words are by definition parts of a language. A language is, among other things, a set of signs used by intelligent beings to refer to recurrent elements in their experience and in reality. Men may use language to refer to recurrent elements in their experience and in reality for many different purposes. They may refer to something in order to give some information about it, to make a request about it, to give an order about it, to give a promise about it, to express admiration about it and for countless other purposes which are distinguishable as different forms of human behaviour and as different social institutions…….a language is always a means of singling out, and directing attention to, certain elements of experience and reality as subjects which can be referred to again and again.” ( P. 11)

Amongst these forms of linguistic behaviour must be included all kinds of rational activity including that of the systematic forms of reasoning we encounter in the productive, practical, and theoretical sciences. This elevation of language from a mere medium for communicating thought, to one of the more important conditions of thought, is shared by a fellow Princeton scholar, Julian Jaynes. Hampshire, later in the above work, confirms the claim of Aristotle that certain forms of knowledge build upon the premises of arguments(endorsed by the wise men of many millennia) that are only probably true and may change. Hampshire in the context of this controversial claim also claims paradoxically that knowledge of our mind may change as might the objects of that knowledge(Thus creating new forms of life and consciousness). A Wittgensteinian notion of freedom is postulated. We are all familiar with Wittgensteinian claims that the rules of language can be changed. It is, that is, possible to combine concepts variously(in a metaphorising process?) to create new and original thoughts . This is a consequence of man being defined as a rule following animal. What is being claimed here runs of course counter to Kantian critical Philosophy which claims, for example, that the formal rules or principles of logic cannot change. Hampshire may well be confusing the material rules of grammar with the formal laws of logic in this discussion. Certainly the latter may be amongst the conditions of thought, but the former is the condition of the relation of thought entities(premises) to one another. Hampshire does, however, acknowledge that the division of the the powers or capacities of the mind are external to language(P.274). Hampshire does not, however acknowledge the rule of principles or laws that organise these powers or capacities into virtuous dispositions. Given the above discussion, it is then somewhat surprising to then find Hampshire admitting that psychoanalysis provides us with a reflexive knowledge of the mind in which the reality principle presupposes knowledge of historical restrictions of freedom. This knowledge enables us to become aware of the relation of the pleasure pain principles and the energy regulation principles to unconscious motives and purposes. On the grounds of an argument that complete knowledge and rationality is an ideal limit beyond the possible scope of our understanding or achievements, Hampshire concludes that these principles and laws can only ever be hypothetical rather than constitutive or determinative. He claims, for instance that there are no starting points for logical reasoning, either in ethics, or in theoretical reasoning(P.257). This is undoubtedly a controversial standpoint and undermines both hylomorphic and critical philosophy in general, as well as the success of these positions in the integration of ethical, religious political and aesthetic judgements in relation to Thought(Truth) and Action.

The question to pose here is whether Julian Jaynes, a fellow Princetownian, shares the above position. We know Jaynes would agree with those popularisations of Freud that romanticises the idea of the Unconscious: an idea that Freud characterises as requiring specific techniques of investigation. We know that Jaynes in his youth doubted the relevance of the Kantian Philosophy. Annoyance with a lecturer who refused to discuss the scientific validity of the categories of the understanding turned Jaynes away from Philosophy and Metaphysics. No details of this rejection are provided but it is certainly possible to assume along with Kant that if the categories of the understanding form the necessary and universal propositions of science, these conditions must be in a different logical realm to that which they condition. A trace of interest for Kant remained because Jaynes on several occasions refers positively to the Kantian Transcendental ego in the context of discussions of the “analogue I” (Julian Jaynes Collection, P.160) It is also clear, however that Jaynes is a biologically inclined scientist who rests a part of his characterisation of Consciousness upon brain research. There are also phenomenological aspects of his research which manifest hylomorphic characteristics. For Aristotle, however, it does not appear as if consciousness is necessary for many reasoning processes. Logic, for Aristotle made no reference to the actuality of consciousness but was rather merely the name for the discipline specifying the principles of thinking. There was, that is, no necessity that I be conscious of these principles whilst using them in the activities of speaking, writing, and understanding. Kantian critical Philosophy does not require consciousness of rational principles. It merely requires that there are logical grounds to connect the conditions with the conditioned. In both hylomorphic Philosophy and Critical Philosophy, the relation of matter to form, is critical in determining the relation of the conditions to the conditioned. In contexts of exploration/discovery we would certainly encounter the phenomenon or actuality of consciousness especially in connection with the posing of the question why in relation to a change which is describable. The answer to this question may or may not surface in consciousness.

Rationality emerges in the human form of life where discourse is abstract and in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. This is actually acknowledged by some Psychologists, e.g. A R Luria in his work, “Cognitive development: Its Cultural and social Foundations”:

“with new forms of abstract categorical relationships to reality, we also see the appearance of new forms of mental dynamics. Whereas before the dynamics of thought occurred only within the framework of immediate, practical experience, and reasoning processes were largely limited to processes of reproducing established practical situations, as a result of the cultural revolution, we see the possibility of drawing inferences not only on the basis of ones own practical experience but on the basis of discursive, verbal and logical processes as well. It becomes possible to take assumptions as they are formulated in language and use them to make logical inferences, regardless of whether or not the content of the premises forms a part of personal experience…..Finally, there are changes in self awareness of the personality which advances to the higher level of social awareness and assumes new capabilities for objective , categorical analysis of ones motivations, actions, intrinsic properties, and idiosyncracies…….sociohistorical shifts not only introduce new content into the mental world of human beings…They advance human consciousness to new levels.”(London, Harvard University Press, 1976)

Luria’s Psychological approach allows one to embrace thought in accordance with the theoretical principles of noncontradiction, sufficient reason and practical moral laws. Luria’s Psychology as we know begins at a base level of reflexes and brain function and advances into Wittgensteinian territory when appeal is made to sociohistorical conditions. The above work was published the same year as Jaynes’ “Origins of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral mind”. We know that Jaynes cited Lurias earlier work, but it is not clear that he would have endorsed the above Aristotelian/Kantian rationalist position. Jaynes the scientist as we know, wished for the rationalist categories of the understanding to be justified scientifically. Whilst it can be argued that much of Jaynes’ work is in the spirit of Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy, its scientific commitment prevents it from exploring the sweep and scope of its rational implications.

In a chapter entitled “The Origins of Civilisation” Jaynes discusses the evolution of groups in relation to primates, the following is claimed:

“Primates…are evolved to live in close association with others. It is the group that evolves. When dominant individuals give a warning cry or run, others of the group flee without looking for the source of the danger. It is thus the experience of one individual and his dominance is an advantage to the whole group. Individuals do not generally respond even to basic physiological needs except within the whole pattern of the groups activity.”(Origins if Consciousness, P 127)

A communication system(which is not the same thing as a language) based on a system of signals that communicate emotions(but not information) assists in this process of protecting the group from danger. The system limits the size of the group to ca 40 individuals(except in extremely hospitable environments). Jaynes claims that there is no reason to believe that the direct descendants of these primates ca 2 million years ago employed any different system of organisation and communication. His grounds for this are archeological. He argues that if more advanced forms of organisation and communication had existed this would have entailed a complementary advance in the development of tools and weapons: we do not see this in the archeological evidence from the Pleistocene age. We encounter diversity in tools, artefacts, and weapons only around 40,000 BC. Jaynes argues, that this is because frontal lobe activity becomes involved in mans activities, in particular Broca’s speech area. Language activity had of course begun much earlier but the base line was signalling behaviour which required a considerable amount of time to become intentional. This was a consequence of a biological movement from the limbic system to the cortex and involved a sensory shift from visual to auditory signalling. Many ecological pressures contributed to these shifts and the development of language. These intentional auditory signals underwent modification of the endings of the calls and signified the beginning of the process of the communication of information about environmental danger (nearby or far off). The endings of these signals could then be separated off as linguistic entities, and used in the activity of hunting, making it a more deliberate and organised activity. These hunting commands could then be transformed into interrogative signals embedded in a context of problem solving. Negation is obviously also a possible consequential response that is connected to a representation of a possible action, and a decision whether to perform the action or not–thus introducing the idea of practical negation and perhaps also an idea of the negation being a practical contradiction, if, for example, it is not appropriate to draw near to the hunted prey at that moment. Jaynes suggests that the cry of disgust or disappointment upon making a mistake in this context and losing the prey, is the emotional nexus of the cry of negation “NO!”: an emotional nexus composed of postural and gestural signals. Failure in the hunt in certain circumstances might of course threaten the survival of the group.

Nouns, Jaynes argues, may have arisen from the imitation of animals behaviour and the modification of a syllable in the command signal–a different syllable for different animals sighted. This stage occurred between 25,000 and 15,000 BC. This may be the best account we have of the “form of life” that precedes the language-game of naming that Wittgenstein was referring to in his later work, “Philosophical Investigations”. These reflections fall into the sphere of concern for Anthropology which Keuhn in his Introduction to Kant’s work bearing that name, defines in the following way:

“Anthropology as understood today is a discipline concerned with the study of the physical, cultural, social, and linguistic development of human beings, from prehistoric times to the present. It is a relatively new phenomenon, which comes into its own only in the 19th century. Its roots, however, can be traced back to the last third of the 18th century. Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Condorcet in France, Lord Kames, Lord Manboddo and William Robertson in Scotland, and Immanuel Kant, Georg Forster, Christoph Meiners, and Ernst Platner in Germany were among the most important early contributors to this new field of study. It grew ultimately from a fundamental concern of the European Enlightenment and as a reaction to the theological understanding of the nature of man.”(Anthropology from a Pragmatic point of view” (vii)

The proper study of the world, it was argued by these anthropologists, was that man ought to be the focus of attention rather than God: principles rather than substances ought to guide this study. Kant in his work “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view” claimed:

“In this discipline I will, then, be more concerned to seek out the phenomena and their laws than the first principles of the possibility of modifying human nature itself”(10, P.145)

The above refers to the Aristotelian distinction Kant draws between first principles and the principles we encounter in the diverse forms of science(essence specifying explanations). The reference to the “laws of the phenomena” suggests a rationalistic transcendental view of phenomenology that many phenomenologists would reject. In contrast to the type of phenomenology we encountered in the 20th century, connected to, for example a transcendental ego, Kant’s Anthropology had a clear ethical import, a clear teleological aspect that attempts to discover and use laws relevant to the emergence of cognitive powers, powers of speech, and other civilising socio-historical processes: processes that led from an animal form of life to a fully rational cosmopolitan form of life. Kant’s work entitled “Logic” contains his mission statement for Philosophy:

“What can I know?”,”What should I do?” “What may I hope for?” “What is a human being?”. The first question is answered in metaphysics, the second in morals, the third in religion, the fourth in Anthropology”(Logic, 9, P.25)

Kant’s ethical works are “Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals”, “Critique of Practical Reason”, and The Metaphysics of Morals”. Kant’s reflections upon Religion are principally contained in “Religion within the bounds of mere Reason”. His epistemological reflections are to be found in the “Critique of Pure Reason”, “Prolégomena to any future Metaphysics”, “Metaphysics of Material Nature” and “Opus Postumum”.

The fourth question cited in the above quote divides into two realms: Physiological Anthropology which firstly, deals with the phenomena and laws under the maxim of “What happens to man”, and, secondly, Pragmatic Anthropology, dealing with the phenomena and Laws of “What man makes of himself”. Observation is an important part of the methodology of Physiological Anthropology which for Kant is guided by principles and laws. Observing ones own mental activity via “Introspection” for Kant is a useless form of activity, and can be a form of self obsession that underlies the role of , for example, moral law in contexts of explanation/justification. The answer to the fourth question is obviously connected to the answers to the other questions especially the first two, both of which require reference to the roles of sensibility, understanding, and reason. Anthropology, for example, investigates sensibility and “the primary springs of the will” in relation to man, the community and the nation. The aspects of morality that are rational( using understanding and reason) are obviously to a certain degree independent of the empirical role of sensibility, given its categorical nature. The integration of the four questions is well illustrated in the following quote from “Anthropology”:

“The sole proof a mans consciousness affords him that he has character is his having made it his supreme maxim to be truthful, both in his admissions to himself and in his conduct toward every other man. And since having character is both the minimum that can be required of a reasonable man, and the maximum of the inner worth(of human dignity) must be possible for the most enduring reason to be a man of principles(to have determinate character) and yet according to its dignity, surpass the greatest talent”(P.195)

Kant addresses the Aristotelian characteristic of language use and understanding, implied by the expression “capable of discourse”. For Kant, language is a means or medium for expressing our thoughts which are composed of intuitions, concepts, and judgements:

“All language is a signification of thought and, on the other hand, the best way of signifying thought is through language, the greatest instrument for understanding ourselves and others. Thinking is speaking with oneself: consequently it is also listening to oneself inwardly(by means of the reproductive power of imagination)…But even those who can speak and hear do not always understand themselves or others, and it is due to the lack of the faculty of signification, or its faulty use(when signs are taken for things and vice versa) that, especially in matters of reason, human beings who are united in language are as distant as heaven from earth in concepts. This becomes obvious only by chance when each acts according to his own concepts.”(Anthropology P.86)

Sharing a language, then, for Kant does not entail sharing a form of life. Kant would therefore classify Jaynes’s theory as an interesting Aristotelian exercise in what he called Physiological Anthropology–an exercise, that is, in investigating the material and efficient causes of thought and language. The structure of language is built up gradually over generations of users, and although it is true that the expressive element of language is embedded in Instinct, thought in the form of speaking to oneself is a vicissitude of the instinctive structure of mind: a structure that can be modified into new forms by the formation of new aims. Jaynes takes up the thread of this discussion:

“each new stage of words literally created new perceptions and attentions, and such new perceptions and attentions resulted in important cultural changes which are reflected in the archaeological record.”(Origins P. 132)

The stage of the use of life nouns(built upon modifiers and commands)corresponds, insofar as the archaeological record is concerned with a diversification of weapons(harpoons) tools and artefacts(pendants, pottery etc). Cave drawings of animals also correspond with this stage of language. The fossil evidence from this period indicates a corresponding increase in the cubic capacity of the frontal lobes of the brain.

Jaynes argues that Peoples names evolved into existence during the period from 10,000 BC to 8,000 BC. with the “advent of Agriculture”: from which followed fixed populations, longer life spans, and larger community sizes. Archaeological findings include large areas reserved for ceremonial graves(up to 87 graves). Jaynes argues cogently that it was the use of names that gave the practice of burying ones dead its meaning. Language represents the presence of things in their absence, perhaps primarily in order to engage the action system by intentions to bring these things into ones presence in accordance with ones wishes. When the wish remains and the intention cannot motivate the action to bring about the state of affairs wished for, the inevitable result is grief in proportion to the strength of the wish. Jaynes asks the pertinent question:”In what would the grieving consist if there was no mechanism in language to represent the presence of the forever absent deceased?” The marvel of Jaynes’s account is his thesis that auditory hallucinations of the voices of kings and gods helped to build civilisation priori to the onset of a conscious state linked to language use: a use which was becoming more and more complex as one stage developed into another. He maintains with considerable psychological insight that tool making for most of pre-history occurred via the imitation of those that knew, by those that did not know how to make a weapon or a tool or artefact. When language complements this process we are then able to explain how a voice of an absent knower can with the command “sharper!” keep a man at work for most of the day during a period in history that was not ruled by obedience to timetables and schedules. With the agricultural revolution we stand at the threshold of the process of city-building. Villages spontaneously coordinate their resources and manpower to unite many into one under the rule of law connected to the voice of authority, or the great-souled men of the past and present. These figures were the problem solvers of the society and either may have simply had more knowledge or alternatively possessed some means of organising their own thought that others in the society did not. Whichever was the case they used the mechanisms of language and more complex memory systems to solve both everyday and unique problems. Mental powers were actualising in the populations during this period, and this process would ultimately lead to the type of discourse and the type of rationality we encounter in the discourse and forms of argumentation that we witnessed in Ancient Classical Greece. Recall that the first of the Philosophers, Thales, was one of the seven sages, one of the great souled men of Greece.

Jaynes refers to the Natufian culture, burying their dead ceremonially in cemeteries. “Towns” of ca 200 people have been excavated but the inhabitants, Jaynes claims, were at this point not conscious as were the Sages of Greece. The Natufians possessed “bicameral minds”(a term invented by Jaynes). Much of their everyday activity was carried out habitually and in accordance with the traditions and accepted forms of life of the community. When novel situations presented novel problems that called for solutions which lay outside these everyday routines, the stress caused by the situation would result in consultation with the wise men of the town, or alternatively with the preserved remains of such a wise man whose visual presence was apparently capable of causing their voice to occur in the thoughts of the agent involved in the problematic situation( a memory mechanism). These voices, Jaynes claims, would have a similar experienced quality to those “heard” by modern schizophrenics. These modern schizophrenics would, of course, have more control over their voices because their memory systems are probably more developed thanks to the possession of a more advanced form of language and modern universal educational systems. The appearance and wide use of the medium of writing may well have contributed to the unifying of the mind and caused the disappearance of the voices, which were mourned in various ways by various cultures. Preserved remains of the dead, when consulted during the times of transition fell “silent”: they no longer possessed the “Power” to call forth auditory hallucinations. At this point these kingly, godly figures were obviously buried in common burial areas and they were no longer publicly presented. The dead kings or Gods in these public houses were obviously the precursors of the Greek Temple which in turn was the precursor of our modern Churches. If several dead Kings or Gods were installed in the Tomb, their voices tended to fuse and become “the voices of the Gods”. Civilisation began with the rule of great souled men and their voices, up until that point in time when their judgements could be written down and recorded in the form of Laws. Writing enabled towns to grow into cities like Athens, where both the Laws and the great souled men behind them were the steering mechanisms of Society. Laws were of course important in large communities where everyone did not know everyone else. Bicameral kingdoms could reach the size of Kingdoms as was the case with the Inca and Aztec sun worshipping civilisations, but as History indicates, these kingdoms were vulnerable to dissolution in many different ways. The bicameral mind was being transformed continually by the influence of writing and the formation of educational institutions dedicated to the study of writings of various kinds. Such activity over millennia transformed the bicameral mind into the conscious mind. In such a transformation, Jaynes argues, we encounter an analogue “I” narratising with the assistance of metaphors that in turn eventually created a mental “metaphorical space” which he calls “Consciousness”.

Jaynes analyses the first systematically organised written literary texts in order to ascertain the picture the author of the works had of the people he wrote about. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not written by the same person but the two works stand together on the cusp of the “Origin of Consciousness”.In the Iliad(ignoring the later additions to the texts from later ages) the heroes , Agamemnon and Achilles( real figures from real cities) were bicameral men and waited in moments of stress for the voices of the Gods to tell them what to do(e.g. begin the war with Troy, steal Achilles’ mistress). These bicameral men did not have the power to solve problems using an analogue I that narratised imagined events in the metaphorical space of the mind. Even the great Agamemnon waited for a God to appear: and sure enough, one did, when he was half asleep in a dream like state that was probably unlike our modern REM dream-sleep. Agamemnon “dreamt” he was lying in his bed(which he was) when the God appeared “at his head” and told him to begin the Trojan war.

This hypothesis of the bicameral mind is the only coherent explanation for the fact that all early societies of any significant size were theocracies, structured, along the lines of the hierarchically structured elements of The Gods-Agamemnon–Achilles–the army or the people. In battle, all eyes were on Achilles and here the mechanism of imitation probably sufficed for allaying the stress of the situation caused by the problems thrown up during the course of the battle. If, then, things still did not go well, all eyes would turn to Agamemnon who may in his turn need the voices of the Gods to resolve the problem and determine what to do next. The critical cultural event that transformed this fragile state of affairs(motivating the oracles of Greece to claim that everything created by men is doomed to ruin and destruction) was the invention of writing. Jaynes defines writing in the following way:

“What is writing? Writing proceeds from pictures of visual events to symbols of phonetic events. And that is amazing transformation. Writing of the latter type, as on the present page is meant to tell a reader something he does not know. But the closer writing is to the former the more it is primarily a mnemonic device to release information which the reader already has”(Origins P.176)

Jaynes points out that the hieroglyphics from distant cultures, where there is no knowledge of the culture in phonetic writing, may never be correctly interpreted, simply because the relevant knowledge connected to the images is not available to the interpreter and may indeed be lost forever.Natural disasters that forced the displacement of populations to other areas may well have seriously disrupted the transmission of knowledge of these cultures. Suddenly, men interacting as a result of these natural catastrophes and wars were faced with alternative perhaps contradictory bicameral voices.

The practice of the written transmission of knowledge would prove in the future to be more durable in the face of catastrophic natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and massive tsunamis. When bicameral and literary based cultures with their mythological writings, are juxtaposed, we can see how, at least insofar as the survival of cultures are concerned, bicameral civilisations are selected against in the process of cultural evolution. The transmission of hallucinatory based knowledge in contexts where there are competing voices is more unstable, especially if the great souled men of the culture were eliminated. These great souled men may also have been the victim of plagues that swept through the towns and villages of these bicameral civilisations. Archaeological evidence points to the curious phenomenon of villages and towns being uninhabited for long stretches of time. This phenomenon may point to either a natural catastrophe, or the murdering of the leaders behind the voices by invading forces.

The Egyptians referred to this bicameral voice in terms of a persons ka: to hear ones ka was to obey. Language in a written culture has probably lost most of its hypnotic effect. The awesome authority figures behind the written words we read may have been dead for centuries or even millennia. The “suggestion” of what ought and ought not to be done leaves, consequently, a free space for consent or dissent. The imperative mood has been weakened. In Egypt, the King or God’s Ka, resembled his father’s voice with experiential modification. As we approach the age of Consciousness in Egypt the number of ka’s the steward king listens to, could number up to 14(accumulated generations of the voices of previous wise kings). This was probably also a consequence of the increase in the size of Egyptian civilisation. Jaynes suggests that bicameral control is no longer possible once a civilisation reaches a certain size. His arguments for this position are manifold, but he points to the fact that amongst the first phonetic writing, mention is made of overpopulation. There are also pictorial representations of a king approaching the throne of a God who is no longer there: these are the first historical representations of the advent of consciousness in the face of a deus absconditis. These are the symptoms of, and testaments to, the breakdown of the bicameral mind. We know from a considerable body of evidence that at the end of the so called Old Kingdom, the civilisation of Egypt collapsed. This did not happen to the cities of Southern Mesopotamia probably because of the influence writing was having on those great souled men that could read. Writing was used to record judgements and this body of text became known as “The Law”. This kind of activity initiates a new form of government. Hammurabi used this literary tool to unite the Mesopotamian cities under the God Marduk. We believe Hammurabi wrote the laws himself without the aid of scribes. The source of his proclamations was probably the voice of Marduk, and there is an interesting picture of these two figures which is a representation of Hammurabi “under-standing” Marduck ( on the black basalt stele called the Code of Hammurabi) . The God and the steward king stare at each other. The texts of Hammurabi remind us of the text of the Iliad: Hammurabi boasts of his conquests and power in ways that remind us of Achilles and Agamemnon.

Money was not in circulation during these times, but there was a form of tithe taxation–a system where a part of the produce of a field was given to the owner. Wine was not bought but exchanged. In such simple contexts, the voice was seldom wrong in its judgements because they largely reflected the long established practices of tradition. Wars, catastrophes, and resultant migrations destroyed the system of transmission of these practices via the hallucinogenic voice-steering mechanism. In such societies there were no individuals reflecting consciously upon the laws: narrations were usually communicating the grandeur of power and conquest. The “I” did not plan, decide, and then act, but was rather propelled into action by either the practice of imitation, habits of everyday life, or a hallucinogenic voice in situations where problems that could not be solved emerged. In this context, the meeting between two individuals living in different communities steered by different voices, could of course be problematic, but if the communities in question had been living in peace for some time the voices would inevitably be friendly and may result in an exchange of gifts. Jaynes argues that this is probably how inter-city trade began. If, on the other hand, tensions and conflicts between the two communities existed, the steering voices would be hostile, and the individuals would regard each other as enemies. Our modern conscious voice of peace is of course a voice of toleration and compromise requiring the building of friendships where they do not exist: it is a voice, seeking unique solutions to unique problems. In situations where trade occurred between different bicameral cities, traders who had immersed themselves in “foreign” cities, would return to their original communities with traces of other bicameral voices in their memory systems.

Jaynes, the brain researcher, points out that when input to the brain was via the auditory channel, the demand for response was immediate. If the input was in a physical location that was command neutral, namely a written text containing imperatives, an act of will would be required to read the texts which then needed interpretation in terms of knowledge before any action could be engaged upon. Such action in such contexts was, of course not propelled but rather freely chosen. The picture of deus absconditis, then, was partly picturing the ascent of freedom in the world of human affairs.

During the second millenium BC, half the worlds population became refugees. Civilisations were destroyed by geological catastrophes and wars–the volcanic eruption of Thera and the rise of Assyria were two of the major causes of massive upheavals. The subsequent confrontations of bicameral minds subject to different possibly conflicting habits and voices in a situation of uncertainty, must have contributed to the weakening of the steering power of the voice, and perhaps strengthened the freedom connected to reliance upon written texts, both of a narrative and a legal form. The story of the emergence of Consciousness is, as we have seen, intimately connected to the evolution of language throughout its different stages. The experience of difference between myself and others, Jaynes argues, may have led to a postulation of something inside of others that can not be generalised to oneself. Narration of significant events in auditory form was an important part of bicameral activity. Homer’s work “The Iliad”, provides us with an account of the lives of the bicameral heroes, Agamemnon and Achilles. Jaynes’ analysis of the Greek in the text results in the conclusion that although there are many terms that appear to have psychological significance, these have been misinterpreted by moderns to indicate the presence of Consciousness. The terms referred to were actually being used to refer more to the activity and symptoms of the body or to characteristics of the environment. The term “Noos”, for example, derives from the word “noeo” that refers to visual perception which for some obscure reason was internalised in the chest of the body and not the eyes–perhaps because during this era we are still dealing with the domination of the voice and the ears and as yet have not transitioned to the analogue visual “space” of consciousness. Even the word psuche, during the period the narrative of the Iliad is about, is at this point in time a very physical internal “stuff” like breath that comes out of the mouth or stuff that bleeds out from a wound. Jaynes further claims that:

“no one in any way ever sees, decides, thinks, knows, fears or remembers anything in his psyche”(Origins, P.271)

The mind-space in which the I engages spontaneously in the above activities is not present in the Iliad. The words of the narrative themselves obviously proceed from the unconscious stream of narration of the bards of the time. The Odyssey was written at least a century later than The Iliad. Odysseus is much closer to the modern idea of a hero than Achilles was. Odysseus was an actually existing character engaging in deception and subterfuge in a very different world to that depicted in The Iliad. The Gods had to some extent receded and in Homer’s text they talk almost exclusively to each other. The words noos and psuche are now used in very different ways and they are also used more often. The god-like voice is transformed into the Socratic Daimon, so difficult to access. The Platonic idea of the Good appears in a context in which Life, psyche, and Time begin to become more closely associated, and abstraction becomes more apparent in relation to the psychical space of the psyche. Together with an interesting abstract conception of Time and Life, comes the beginnings of an abstract sense of justice, probably connected to the Greek idea of areté and doing the right thing in the right way at the right time(doing what is good in a good way and at a good time). This conception is only possible if time is spatialised as a kind of journey or Odyssey. Violence at one stage of the journey begets consequences at another stage. The past and the future can now become a part of reflection upon the present. The idea of a life working itself out emerges from the Odyssey. Solon of Athens stands as one of the great-souled men of early Greece. Here we encounter one of the first ethical and psychological qualifications of noos when Solon speaks of it as being at its worst in bad leaders and at its best in good leaders. He also talks about the wholeness and completeness of noos. It is clear in the figure of Solon that consciousness and morality are emerging simultaneously. Diké for Solon connects the areté of morality with the areté of the law. The Delphic Oracle’s “know thyself” which Solon is also associated with, now becomes more and more associated with a journey in which life works itself out–a journey filled with plans, choices, and their consequences. It also becomes associated with an active conceptualisation of ones beliefs and actions in the arenas of areté and diké. In The Iliad the psyche could leave the body. We also see in the Philosophies of Pythagoras and Heraclitus that psuche and soma are differentiated, and psuche and noos become more and more integrated in their uses. Psuche is sometimes pictured as being imprisoned in a tomb, and this picture reappears throughout the millennia in various forms of dualism. Jaynes, in a comment upon the changes of use of these terms has the following to say:

“Let no one think these are just word changes. Word changes are concept changes and concept changes are behavioural changes. The entire history of religion and of politics and even of science stands shrill witness to that. Without words like soul, liberty, or truth the pageant of this human condition would have been filled with different roles, different climates.”(Origins P.292)

Biblical literature supports Jaynes’ thesis of the evolution of the bicameral mind into conscious mind. The 8th century BC work of Amos is clearly bicameral, whereas the 2nd century work of Ecclesiastes is clearly a more reflective conscious collection of thoughts relating to the time for every purpose under the sun. Jaynes importantly points to the central use of the words “The Elohim” in the Pentateuch. It is usually, Jayne argues, translated into the singular form of “God” but probably a better translation means to refer to the great souled judges and powerful figures of the past. The most important elohim is Yahweh, He-who-is. Jaynes traces the fading of Yahweh’s voice in the Pentateuch: from being a physical presence walking in the Garden of Eden and talking to Adam, to being present in the lives of Cain and Abel and Abraham, to wrestling all night with Jacob. Moses only speaks to Yahweh once and the voice disappears once the writing on the tablets from Mt Sinai appears. Here we witness the appearance of another Deus as the Law of the Ten Commandments begins to regulate the collective life of the Israelites. We are now in the age of the Prophets considering the wholeness of souls, the rightness and wrongness of actions, and the consequences of these things for ones life. Prayers begin to be offered to deus absconditis and attempts to conjure up his existence no longer occur. He-who-is, recedes into the past. Several millennia later we still can be found praying in our modern Churches, we also take oaths of office(so help me God) and we take oaths in front of judges and juries as if the final severing of the bicameral umbilical cord would set Consciousness adrift in a storm of Biblical proportions. Yet there is an important sense in which our knowledge of our bicameral past is necessary if we are to “know ourselves” completely, a knowledge which involves knowing what is right and wrong. Denial of the past or failure to remember the past often takes the form of rejecting everything connected to Religion and its view of the world. This is a recipe for disaster in the transitional period we currently find ourselves in, namely, the phase of the journey of civilisation from its present form to a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends. Believing as some scientists do, that we can find our way to a destination we have no conception of, using only the scientific method and materialist assumptions of various kinds, is fraught with danger, as is the belief that “the invisible hand” of market forces will suffice to answer the aporetic questions and problems thrown up by the complexities of our existence. Such approaches deny or fail to remember in their different ways the important role of Aristotelian and Kantian Rationality as embodied in the actualisation of our human potential in contexts of exploration/explanation/justification.

The age of prophets at the collapse of bicameral mentality began in Greece with a thousand years of heeding the words of oracles. At the height of her power 35,000 people per day visited the oracle at Delphi. Kings and Statesman consulted with this servant of Apollo. Jaynes claims that oracles retained a dying ability to organise experiences with the right hemisphere of the brain and as this capacity too waned, it was necessary to place oneself in a trance or a hypnotic state of consciousness for the relevant processes to be activated. The idea of “possession” probably originates from this time when the capacity for more “rational” left hemisphere activity neutralised this ancient capacity. Being possessed was not the same as listening to ones bicameral voice, but these states are obviously related. Jaynes points out, as part of the logic of women becoming oracles ,that even women today are more lateralised in their thinking, being more inclined to use both hemispheres. Today it is only the phenomenon of schizophrenia that reminds us of the power of the bicameral voice. It is however, uncertain whether the Greek oracles were using a form of Philosophical reasoning to arrive at their prophecies. Certainly the challenge to “Know thyself” must have been the product of a unique form of reasoning that eventually resulted in the Aristotelian systematic account of the virtues and Eudaimonia. One can wonder whether these prophecies were poetically or religiously inspired or merely advice connected with the practical organisation of lives that is demanded in more complex societies. Jaynes argues that the first gods were poets, and that this form of imagination was associated in complex ways with the activity of the right hemisphere. Dactylic hexameter(a form of rhythmically patterned repetitive discourse) was the characteristic of what he calls “divine language”. The Delphic Oracle of the first century AD spoke in both dactylic hexameter and prose so it is difficult to determine whether the prophecies were poetically/religiously inspired or whether they were the result of rational argumentation. Dactylic hexameter was particularly suited to “commanding” attention whereas prose merely “asks” for attention. The mood of the imperative and the mood of the interrogative are obviously different grammatical and psychological categories. There is both a similarity and differences between the responses of obedience to a command and the answer to an aporetic question. Aporetic questions most often are why-questions raised in contexts of explanation/justification, and sometimes the why question is raised in the context of a justification for a claim relating what we ought or ought not to do in the realm of action. This justification for Kant must be a universal categorical truth that functions as a law in the realm of virtue and moral action(what Kant refers to as “deeds”) These modes of discourse clearly interact in ways reminiscent of the interaction of Platonic forms of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. For Jaynes, as we have seen, words, concepts, and action intertwine in forms of life regulated by Aristotelian forms or principles.

Jaynes also maintained that consciousness emerged ca 1200 BC(partly as a result of the growing complexity of language: its expressive function, its naming function, describing function, truth function, metaphorising function) and theorises that many psychic faculties and powers were destined to be affected, e.g. dreaming and reasoning on either end of the psychic spectrum. In an essay entitled “The Dream of Agamemnon” Jaynes claims:

“Any theory of mind, any theory of consciousness, has to also be a theory of dreams. And the theory I am representing very simply says that dreams are consciousness operating primarily during REM sleep.”(Julian Jaynes Collection, P.196)

If the point of comparison is Freud’s theory of drems, Jaynes describes the dream work in more cognitive terms. The argument that dreams are a phenomenon of consciousness is supported by brain research which clearly shows the activation of the reticular formation during REM sleep/dreaming(A.Hobson and R McCarthy). Jaynes begins his account by referring to the residues of the day, week, or month and points to a mechanism he calls “conciliation” that helps to form the structure and course of the dream work. Internal sensations are also integrated into what he claims is a narrative structure. This kind of narrative, however involves an analogue I, vicariously moving in a “space” that is created in the dream scene. Whether the elements of the dream present themselves to the narrating structure for conciliation or whether the narratising process selects the elements is not discussed by Jaynes. It is, however clear from an example he gives relating to nervously anticipating giving a talk, that walking nude on a beach, running into the water to hide ones nudity and thence being swept away by strong currents is an analogy constructed by the narratising and metaphorisation processes: underlying the dream work is anxiety related to anticipated problems in the giving of a lecture.

The implication of Jaynes’s analysis of the dream work being a work of consciousness tied together with his claim that the Origins of consciousness can be dated to ca 1200 BC, is that conscious dreams did not exist prior to the onset of consciousness. Jaynes brilliantly analyses 4 dreams from the Iliad, the first sustained literary record of bicameral activity. The Greek term “oneiro” is not used to name dreaming but is rather the name of a God that comes with messages to the other Gods during the night. Agamemnon dreams of Nestor coming to him while he is “sleeping”: standing at the head of his bed is not a REM dream(Given Agamemnon’s awareness of being in bed). Agamemnon does not dream Nestor and his message to start the Trojan war in a conscious dream-space but rather in a sense “experiences” Nestor as being beside his bed and bringing the news everyone had been waiting for, namely to start the war. There is no analogue I of Agamemnon inhabiting this conscious dream-space–there is no vicarial activity. The space of the dream is the space Agamemnon is sleeping/waking in. Nestor’s “standing at the head” of Agamemnon’s bed manifests none of the aforementioned characteristics of the modern REM dreams of Conscious man. Nestor tells Agamemnon that he is asleep. Why would he need to do this unless Agamemnon somehow doubted this. Jaynes also analyses Hebrew dreams in similar fashion. Jacob’s dream of the ziggurat on the hillside of Beth-El is more or less hallucinated in the space of Beth-El–the scene of the dream is Beth-El, which means the house of God.

The above account is particularly interesting if it is placed in a hylomorphic coordinate system, e.g. life forms-animal life forms-human life forms-divine forms of life. The risk with using such a framework is that if one does not map the essence of the human form of life correctly, there is a tendency(as was manifested by behaviouristic psychology) to overemphasise mans animal and instinctive nature. Behaviourism was of course a reaction to the equal and opposite risk of over emphasising the divine (rationality) elements in man that were suggested in religious texts about the prophets. Aristotles hylomorphic definition of man as being the rational animal capable of discourse situates the power of discourse in a space that Jaynes investigates in terms of the metaphorising process and consciousness. In Jaynesian theory, Animality(Instinct) as investigated by Freud, is marginalised, as is the rational form of life that is investigated by both Aristotle and Kantian Critical Philosophy. The power of discourse for Aristotle obviously actualises the potential inherent in the collective instincts of the human form of life and the power of discourse in its turn obviously actualises its potential for rationality in a further process of cultural evolution. Matter-form is intrinsically involved in this process, each previous stage becoming the matter to be organised by the principles of organisation. Freud’s major claim that Consciousness is a vicissitude of Instinct is a testament to the continuity between the forms of life that are obviously encapsulated in each other in a way analogous to a series of Russian dolls. The Aristotelian and Freudian Principles(ERP, PPP, RP) are related as matter is to form. The psychological PPP subsumes the biological/homeostatical ERP under it: the RP in its turn subsumes the objects of the PPP under it(the objects we advance towards, and retreat from). The RP also subsumes the ERP under it. The connection of the Aristotelian definition of man to the principles, against the background of Freud’s later theorising about Man and Civilisation, is a theoretical search for the totality of conditions. In this totality Eros, Thanatos and Ananke are all involved in the characterisations of Man the Scientist, Man the Philosopher, Man the ethical Being, Man the Political being, Man the Religious Being, and Man the artist. Kantian Anthropology, Ethics, Politics, Epistemology, Rational Religion, and Aesthetics will also need to be assimilated into the modern Neo-Aristotelian definition of Man and his World.

The risk with focussing on Consciousness to the exclusion of its animal substrate and rational powers and potentialities, is that we risk exaggerating its role as part of the holistic categorical framework of Mans Being-in-the-World. Jaynes correctly claims that Consciousness is not involved in much instinctive and learned habitual activity. He also adds that some creative problem solving may not occur consciously. The major characteristic of Consciousness, according to Jaynes, is that it is constituted of analogous elements of the world partly built up by the metaphorisation process: a process that Aristotle referred to when he claimed that epistemologically we understand less familiar things through the lens of more familiar things. For Aristotle this was a conceptual power. The Jaynesian evidence for this position is overwhelming and includes the usage of the terms of perception and behaviour(sensory-motor activity) which we use to characterise what is happening in the “constructed” space of consciousness.

One of the Kantian mysteries concerns the relations between the a priori intuitions of space and time, and the only clue to the mystery is given in the Kantian claim that space is the form of external intuition, whereas time is the form of internal intuition. The Aristotelian definition of Time shows us how time becomes spatialised by our measurement of motion in the external world—a measurement determined by counting “nows” and arraying them on a scale of before and after. The absolute Time of Newton would obviously not have this structure. All that can be said of Newton’s conception of absolute time is that is “flows” in the direction of the future. But even with these words Newton may well have been metaphorising or spatialising this aspect of our existence. This raises the question of whether there can be transcendental analogies that attempt to speak about that which we cannot speak(the noumenal world).

The discipline of History obviously has a complex relation to Time. It attempts to provide a structure for the past that is both relevant to the present and our future. The weaving of a narrative around a cast of characters may be a more poetic attempt to provide us with a structure of Time. Narrative obviously develops a more formal scientific and logical structure in the historical context. All of these activities may have been involved in the rational structuring of our social existence via Laws. Once we are at this stage of civilisation we have the means to evaluate human forms of existence in multiple ways–but the key is metaphorisation of life as a journey from birth to death, a journey that searches for Eudaimonia. Bicameral men are described as automatons by Jaynes and this reminds us of the animated statues Descartes visited in the Royal Gardens of Paris. The attribution of intelligence to machines is also a modern phenomenon. It is, however, more difficult to attribute the more holistic term of personality to a machine: in fact it is impossible and absurd. The analogue I Jaynes postulates does not merely permit the interior dialogue that the Greeks called thinking(talking to oneself) it also introduces the possibility of deception–the analogue I snarling inwardly as its external body “smiles” deceptively like the actor on a stage. Only in a conscious mind can one meaning be manifested and another opposite meaning be thought. This is a learned and not an instinctive activity. Achilles and Agamemnon were not capable of this form of consciousness. They were not capable of the form of thinking that involved talking to oneself. The first literary hero of consciousness was Odysseus. The first philosophical hero may well have been Socrates, although the Pre-Socratic Philosophers have a claim to this title. Plato and Aristotle were heroic in their battles against bicameral mentality of which there was still a trace in Socrates(e.g. his need to consult his daimon) but it was probably Aristotle who left bicameral mentality the furthest behind with his idea of a God that was not a voice and not anthropomorphised in any way(God for Aristotle was pure Form–pure Principle). With Plato we begin to see recorded for the first time concern over mentally challenged people who he recommended be kept under observation. Plato’s ambivalent dualism unfortunately continued to dominate the cultural scene after the death of Aristotle, probably because the dominating interpretation of religion continued to be bicameral. Aristotle’s recentring of the centre of gravity of Culture in the human being had to wait firstly until the translation of his work into Latin(the academic language). Unfortunately this translation was religiously biased and pulled Aristotle back into the bicameral camp. Secondly, Kant’s use of Aristotelian hylomorphism preserved enough of the “logic” to allow us to call Kant a hylomorphic Philosopher, thus linking Critical Philosophy with hylomorphic Philosophy

Prior to Jaynes’ theory Darwin and Behaviourism dominated psychology to the extent that Consciousness was regarded as an evolution of animal consciousness and its relation to Language was largely ignored. It was sufficient to study animal forms of life and generalise to human forms of life. Philosophers during this period were working on theories of meaning for Language, but many attempts assumed that language was “picturing” the world and that these “pictures” were private manifestations of a linguistic soul which had no relation to the principles or laws of Aristotle or Kant. It is almost as if the more complex mental activities of narratising or rationalising were marginalised. Such theorists were seldom placing political or ethical reasoning in focus. Political rationality is obviously tied to the power of reasoning unleashed by the stress of problematic situations occurring in our communal environments. Any solution thought of, requires to be embedded in the context of explanation/justification. Pre Socratic Philosophers and Solon are at the beginning of attempts to justify diké and areté–attempts that coincide with the replacement of the voices of the Gods with written Laws that themselves arose in contexts of justification(reasoned arguments about what ought to be done). If Jaynes is correct in his fixing of the “turning point” where consciousness began to organise essentially bicameral mind and behaviour then it can be argued that forms of government only became “political” in a sense we can recognise ca 1200BC. In his Princeton Interview Jaynes claimed:

“There is no question about politics in the bicameral world…After the bicameral world we have to invent new ways of governing. So, if we take the broad view of history, we find we go into a dictatorship this time, an aristocracy this time and a democracy this time. I think of course mankind is learning just what kind of government is best.But these are slow and agonising things and the whole history of wars and battles is indeed the history of mankind trying to solve this problem of governing. You can almost look at nationalism as one kind of replacement for gods at one time. This is slowly disappearing and we are becoming more of a world culture now.”(Julian Jaynes Collection, P.255)

Current world events may have surprised Jaynes. It seems that massive displacements of populations would retain the potential to cause regressions to earlier solutions that have caused major problems in the past. Nationalism is of course the enemy of both Globalisation and its telos, Cosmopolitanism.

Prior to Socrates,Plato, and Aristotle, there were no systematic attempts to classify political systems. Perhaps the first attempt to both classify and philosophically justify one form of government above another, occurs in Plato’s Republic, in which an ideal state run by Philosophers is regarded as the only form of government that can withstand succumbing to dissolution in accordance with the oracular prophecy “All things created by men are destined for ruin and destruction”. The next best form of government for Plato were Timocracies followed by Oligarchies. Democracies came next in the rank ordering of forms of government but these were looked upon basically as the rule of a mob composed of disgruntled oligarchic sons. Democracies were a breeding ground for tyrants where the leaders suffered firstly a form of mental degeneration not at this point recognised as a mental illness, and secondly, death at the hands of the very soldiers they hired to protect them from the mob. Plato’s Philosopher-Rulers found themselves in a situation where there was a need for “noble lies” and even killing unwanted children. This system did not meet Aristotelian requirements whose political systems accorded better with what we moderns regard as good government(according to areté and diké). For Aristotle three forms of government meet his ethical idea of the Good(based on areté and good character): monarchy(rule by one great-souled man), Aristocracy(ruled by a group of great-souled men) and what he called constitutional rule(rule by an enlightened multitude from the middle class). Perversions or deviations of these three forms of rule are tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Tyranny is the worst form of these perversions followed by democracy(the mob steered by the bad tempered sons of oligarchs congregating in the agora). The best of the worst forms of government is oligarchy: a form of government which also displayed Machiavellian or Thrasymachian characteristics. It is Aristotle’s system that best characterises the dynamics of modern Politics–the dynamics created by the rich v the poor which is still with us after millennia of economic and political experimentation. The dynamics has begun to create an educated middle class–for whom areté and diké are essential elements of political and social life. This class has been produced by an inductive process that has been presenting us with extremes to navigate between via the use of our practical reasoning. It is clear, then, that the gold standard of Political government–constitutional rule in accordance with the values of an enlightened middle class, is a telos we are moving toward. Nationalism is not a phenomenon that Aristotle anticipated. Totalitarianism, however was a perverted form of government he would have recognised and he would have seen the two world wars of the twentieth century as partly a product of not just a world order obeying the principle of a balance of power but also of an underlying positive force of globalisation that found itself in an environment that failed to recognise the importance of areté, diké, epistemé. Jaynes’s final comment relating to “world culture”in the above quote is probably inspired by the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant but he would in all likelihood fail to recognise how Kantian his Psychology is. Globalisation is a process, and its telos Cosmopolitanism, we have been arguing in this work, are both part of ongoing historical processes that began with Aristotle and continued with the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant which envisaged a world culture in the form of what he called a “Kingdom of Ends”. Freedom is an important part of these processes–not the freedom the disgruntled oligarchic sons yearned for, a freedom to do whatever one wished and no longer be subjugated by the will of an oligarchic father, but rather the freedom to choose to do what is right and just in general in ones (political, moral)life. Knowledge and Reason are obviously important aspects that must be actively involved in our choices. Cultural evolution has thus supplanted biological evolution in the affairs of men. Consciousness plays a mediating role in actualising processes now that the gods have disappeared and we live in an age of deusu absconditis. Jaynes concludes his Princeton interview with a theoretical biological observation:

“The gods have no migrated out of what I have called the posterior part of the temporal lobe of the right hemisphere, outside the skin, into the temples, ad churches, where we still seek them. Leaving us uncertain: seeking archaic authorisation, looking around for what is right and wrong, looking around for tests of logic and reasoning–leaving us conscious”(Julian Jaynes Collection, P.256)

Jaynes, having once experienced the disappointment relating to a question he raised about the scientific status of Kantian categories of understanding and judgement, appears in the above remarks to reject the role of Reason and Logic as presented by Critical Philosophy and by implication Hylomorphic Philosophy. Yet both forms of Philosophy would probably recognise Jaynes’ theory as a genuine advancement of our knowledge of homo sapiens–perhaps even to the extent that it might warrant a revision of the hylomorphic essence specifying definition of man.

It is certainly the case that the brain research of Jaynes’ time was heavily embedded in an anti-theoretical perspective that supported the scientific methodologies of observation and experimentation. Jaynes admits that he began his career with an idea of consciousness that was primarily biological(rather than cultural) and that it would have been difficult to defend his idea in the court of cultural evolution. Research into the function of the right hemisphere of the brain in the 1960’s helped to shift focus from an experimental methodology to a more conceptually based methodology. The very special features related to cognition, spatial relations, facial recognition, and musical appreciation forced Jaynes into appreciating the synthetic connective activity of the right hemisphere–a synthetic activity that must remind one of the Kantian idea of a telos of reason, namely a holistic conception of a totality of conditions of cognition. The left dominant hemispheres function is that of analysing thought about wholes into their parts and focusing attention upon these parts. Jaynes in his research very quickly realised that the brain functions of the motor systems and the sensory systems are bilaterally represented. Language appeared to be an exception. He formed the hypothesis that language may well have been bilaterally represented earlier on in mans history thus laying the foundations for his theory of the bicameral mind. If this were the case , he further argued, right hemisphere language would be understood synthetically. One can imagine a hierarchy of possibilities here ranging from narratives aiming at Kantian exemplary necessity and universality to non- narrative, non metaphorising forms of argumentation designed to answer the 4 aporetic questions of Kant(What can I know, What ought I to do, What can we hope for, and What is man). All cognitive activities associated with the use and understanding of aporetic principles may well involve right hemisphere activity. Such cognitive investigations would also require using the inductive technique of the golden mean to navigate between extreme metaphysical positions such as materialism and dualism, empiricism and rationalism, oligarchy and democracy. Jaynes obviously felt that Kantian critical philosophy was too rationalistic for his investigative spirit: a spirit that felt more at home in the context of exploration/discovery than in the higher context of explanation/justification. Brain research obviously is explorative and prefers not to commit itself prematurely to any form of theory. In Aristotelian terms such forms of investigation will provide us with many of the answers to questions relating to the material and efficient (physical)conditions of cultural phenomena. When it comes, however, to understanding the phenomena connected to action, whose essence is largely determinable by its telos or end(rather than its physical causation), we need to move from the context of exploration/discovery to the context of explanation/justification and think conceptually in terms of formal and final “causes”(Explanations). Strategically, the Jaynesian account ignores the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of the higher mental processes used by man and focuses instead upon the middle ground of human psuche: that of the putative missing link of conscious and linguistic processes. These missing links are undoubtedly important for the understanding of the relations between, for example, religion and politics, politics and ethics, aesthetics and ethics, poetry and philosophy, history and philosophy, philosophical psychology and ethics etc. In charting this unknown territory Jaynes remains faithful to one of the primary aims of hylomorphic philosophy which is to systematically understand the world(Being-in-the-world) as a systematic whole,

The modern contribution to this endeavour is empirical. Brain research is empirically motivated. Yet it has been argued by Nobel prise winners in this field that such research requires a theoretical understanding of the powers of the mind. Gerald Edelman in his work “Bright Air Brilliant Fire” claims that it is impossible to do brain research systematically without reference to Freudian theory. Insofar as Freudian Psychological theory claims to be Kantian and Kantian Philosophy in its turn owes a huge largely unacknowledged debt to Aristotle’s Hylomorphic theory and Jaynes provides us with many of the missing theoretical links as part of an investigation into the totality of conditions that lie behind conditioned phenomena, we would maintain that all of the above elements are necessary for systematic brain research. We should also recall in this context that Jaynes in his Stafford interview specifically claimed in the spirit of both hylomorphic and critical theory that his account is not a neurological account.

Jaynes was writing at a time when Cognitive Psychology had moved away from Piaget’s biological-clinical approach toward information theory embedded in a mechanical/machine paradigm that more or less eliminated the idea of consciousness. Even those cognitive Psychologists that did not share a commitment to the above more technological paradigm preferred to define cognition in terms of attention, awareness, perception, etc(the lower forms of consciousness). Jaynes in his Stafford interview, when asked to criticise his own theory maintained that he would attempt to speak more about modes of consciousness and mechanisms such as repression which he would present very differently to the Freudian account of the concept. He would, he claims, also focus more on the psychological correlate of attention, namely concentration and the bodily(gestural) and musical modes of consciousness.

We conclude with a short note on the brain research following the publication of Jaynes’ major work “The Origins of Consciousness in the breakdown of bicameral mind”. Jaynes in his Stafford interview referred to Buchbaum’s research into the role of the right hemisphere in schizophrenic hallucinations. Buchbaum confirms Jaynes’ thesis and endorses his neurological model for the bicameral mind. One fascinating aspect of Jaynes’ neurological model is the role of the the anterior commissure: a structure which connects the temporal lobes in the region of Wernicke’s area. In a recent article published in Frontiers in Psychology(May 2014) it is stated by Winter, T., J., and Franz, E., A., that this structure is not sufficiently studied. It is further stated that this is an older structure than the corpus callosum. The study contained in this journal is not a language related structure bur rather seeks to establish the role of the structure in the allocation of attention to action. Jaynes describes this structure in the following way :

“Here, then, I suggest, is the tiny bridge across which came the directions which built our civilisations and founded the worlds religions, where gods spoke to men and were obeyed because they were human volition….The speech of the gods was directly organised in what corresponds to Wernicke’s area in the right hemisphere and “spoken” or “heard” over the anterior commisure to or by the auditory area of the left temporal lobe.”(Origins, P.104-5)

The code used in this exchange was the code of Language.

Erik Kandel, the 2000 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine makes the following claims which fully accord with Jaynesian theory:

“The right hemisphere, in contrast, becomes active only when a novel stimulus, or a novel task is presented. Activation of the right hemisphere decreases as a stimulus or a task becomes more routine through practice, whereas the left hemisphere continues to process the stimulus…. Goldberg’s earlier work had suggested that the right hemisphere of the brain plays a special role in solving problems that require insight…)”The Age of insight”(New York, Random House, 2012) P.476)

Further in his “Principles of Neural Science”(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1991), Kendel says:

“nonetheless the right cerebral hemisphere does play a role in language. In particular it is important for communicative and emotional prosody(stress, timing, and intonation)….In addition the right hemisphere plays a role in the pragmatics of language. Patients with damage in the right hemisphere have difficulty incorporating sentences into a coherent narrative or conversation ad using language in appropriate settings.”_(P.1182)

It is clear that given the focus upon mechanical explanations and mechanical devices such as the computer, brain research has not been following a path laid down by Jaynesian theory nor has it followed the path of investigating the role of the brain in cultural morphology, i.e. in tracing the forms of civilisation produced throughout history by rational thinking and thought. Gerald Edelman claims that the morphology of the computer is a completely inappropriate form of comparison insofar as the human morphology of the brain is concerned. He locates conceptual thinking in the frontal lobes of the brain and claims that it is these centres that best characterise what he refers to as the Morphology of the Mind, in particular what he calls Higher Order Consciousness. Higher Order Consciousness is a form of consciousness which he claims frees us from the tyranny of “the remembered present”. The fact that people break promises in “the remembered present” would no longer on such an account suffice to invalidate(as it seems to on almost all scientific and positivistic accounts of consciousness) the logical/universal ought character of the categorical imperative. Neither would the conceptual approach invalidate the Aristotelian ought imperative implied by a commitment to areté (doing the right thing at the right time in the right way).

Kandel, like Edelman praises Freudian theory for its insight but focuses upon its early failures before Freud resorted to the Philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and Kant in order to fully explain and justify the extension of his theory to the cultural aspect of his patients world. The accusation therefore of Freud not being a philosopher and remaining a scientist fails to appreciate the extent to which Aristotle and Kant were both scientists and Philosophers.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action( Vol 3) Language, Modernism, Consciousness and the Metaphorisation process.(Jaynes and Ricoeur)

Visits: 1631

In the published articles of Julian Jaynes we encounter an article entitled “The Routes of Science” in which he argues that Psychology is indeed a science but it is not to be compared with the science of physics which he characterises thus:

“Physics is like climbing a mountain: roped together by a common ascetisim of mathematical method, the upward direction, through the blizzard, mist, or seering sun, is always certain though the paths are not. The problem of each new generation is easy: rope on, test the pitons, follow the leader, look out for the better lay-backs and foothills to the heights.”( The Julian Jaynes Collection, Edited Kuijsten, M., Jaynes, J., The Julian Jaynes Collection. (Henderson, The Julian Jaynes Society, 2012. P.37))

Psychology, however, is characterised by a very different image:

“It is less like a mountain than a huge entangled forest in full shining summer, so easy to walk through on certain levels, that anyone can and everyone does…..The direction out of the forest is unknown, perhaps nonexistent, nor is it even certain that that is what one is meant to do. Multitudes cross each others paths in opposite directions with generous confidence and happy chaos. The bright past and the dark present ring with divergent cries and discrepant echoes of “here is the way!” from one vale to another. Ear plugs and blinds curiously replace boot cleats and pitons.”(Ibid, P.38)

The subject matter of the inorganic world does not naturally oppose itself to the atomistic reduction of the elements of the field of exploration to variables in accordance with the maxim “To be is to be the value of a variable”. This maxim motivates a scientific view in which to manipulate a variable is to bring about a change in the world that is viewed in terms of a cause-effect schema—a schema of causes and effects in a physical world represented by the values of the respective variables of cause and effect: values that are logically independent of each other. We recall in this context, the claim by Piaget that a cause can “imply” an effect. This, he maintains in relation to Pavlovian experiments with dogs where there is a learned response of salivation to the artificial stimulus of a bell. The only explanation for a logical relation between two independent events would be that the two events were related by a principle, e.g. an energy regulation or pleasure-pain principle in the case of Pavlov’s dogs. Behaviourism, however does not appeal to principles, but prefers to inductively “discover” the relations between events that appear to be juxtaposed in space and time. Mere juxtaposition, however is not sufficient, and requires the postulation of a connecting “mechanism”. In this case the postulated mechanism is the Humean psychological mechanism of “association”(stimuli are associated with responses and with each other). What is discovered in such investigations are Humean regularities. The justification or explanation of such regularities requires 1. behavioural concepts embedded in a theory of conditioning which describes the experimental process of the manipulation of an independent variable in order to observe and measure the effect on a dependent variable and 2. the postulation of connecting mechanisms. The question that Psychologists themselves have raised in this context is whether the behavioural explanations /justifications we are provided with, is in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. Even Psychologists committed to the scientific method are sceptical about the claims of any theory that does not admit the role of Consciousness in the production of behaviour attempting to solve a problem that cannot be solved with habitual responses. The claim is that the relevance of animal experiments for Psychology and Human Learning Theory is questionable because the variables involved fall outside the realms of human consciousness and rationality. Even experiments involving humans raise questions as to whether all possible variables have been controlled, especially those connected with expectancy effects and demand characteristics. Kant would question such experiments and place them in the category of what he called Physical Anthropology. Humans can of course be conditioned, but this, if adopted generally as an educational practice would deny the freedom, choice and self determination of human learning. For Kant, a bell ringing, signalling dinner, does not signal salivation but rather perhaps the thought “I ought to go to dinner”. In the human world regularities are important(e.g. bells signalling dinner) but such regulators are consciously produced by principles, e.g. expectancy of restoring the energy regulation system of the body to a state of equilibrium,(ERP) eliminating the pain of hunger(PPP), anticipating the pleasurable banter of discourse during dinner, and perhaps expecting after-dinner cultural activities relating to conversations about books read, countries recently visited and perhaps musical recitals(RP). In this form of life (going to dinner, having dinner, after dinner socialising) three Freudian-Aristotelian principles are involved: energy regulation principle(ERP), pleasure-pain principle(PPP), and the reality principle(RP). In this form of life, we find ourselves in the realm of action discourse and rationality: a realm that animals do not inhabit, In this realm the stimulus of the bell might well “imply” my thought-responses and the kind of awareness we can expect at this symposium-like dinner event. The bell in such a context is more than a physical stimulus because it “signals” a complex response that manifests the presence of all three principles from the context of explanation/justification(ERP, PPP, RP). The dinner is an activity that is regulated by activities that take the form of instrumental imperatives(teleological judgements) and categorical imperatives(making a promise to pay a debt, not violently attacking disagreeable guests, not stealing their wallets). A human relationship to a bell would also assimilate it under general schemata of instrumentalities, whereas a dogs relation to the smells and the bell is a relation to particularities that might not even categorise these particularities as persisting objects. It is not clear that the dogs representations are unified in an inter-sensory system of the kind that anticipates thought.

The bell ringing would, for Aristotle, constitute a change in the world, a change that can be thought about in the human world in terms of a sonorous category, and inserted into a human context of involvements that can be studied in various ways by the various Aristotelian sciences(productive science, practical science, and theoretical science.) Such studies would reveal much more than the bare bones of conditioning theory. Modern theoretical science would reveal, for example. the events of sound waves of a particular frequency, a spatio-temporal phenomenon uniquely individuated as part of a spatio-temporal matrix. This is only one of the paths in the Jaynesian forest of explanation/justification relating to the entity of the bel,l and the phenomenon of its ringing. Another path leads to and from the bell of a church that signals the time for worship and reflection. Here the bell, viewed from a Kantian perspective , would be inserted in a context of involvements or matrix of belief and hope. Bells are so much more than signals especially when they are muffled as they are in the case of the summons to a funeral. Three chimes symbolise the dying, the death, and the final chime announces the potential arrival in another kingdom.

Jaynes claims in an essay entitled ” A Study of the History of Psychology” that Psychology is necessarily a historically constituted study. He claims:

“There is, for example, a kind of truth in the history of a science which transcends the science itself. The history of a science as a kind of meta-science is rarely seen by the individual scientist confined to his own specialty. For the historical contexts that bestow significance on any discovery or specialty reach back in time to prior contexts, which in turn have been generated by still prior causation.”(P.66)

Kant. of course, would be sceptical of such reasoning and insist that science ends and begins with principles embedded in the search for the totality of conditions. We do not, that is, have to forever forage in the forest for these conditions primarily because answers to the question “What can we know?” reveal themselves in the tribunal of explanation/justification in which the principles of science are applied to phenomena. There are of course, limits to what we can know: one of the laws regulating such activity is the law of non contradiction. Kant argues in the context of principles and laws, that the domain of philosophy is circumscribed by 4 philosophical questions: “What can we know?”, “What ought we to do?”, “What can we hope for?” “What is man?”. The 4th question in its turn is linked to a number of conditions and principles that are historically based, rationally contextualised and understood universally. Aristotle would have attempted to answer this 4th question by referring to three sciences: productive sciences(techné, rhetoric, poetry), practical sciences(ethics politics anthropology), and theoretical sciences(Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics,Theology, Biology). Perhaps only physics and mathematics can be said to be about the physical world per se, and claim to exist independently of the thinker, (but perhaps not independently of his sensibility, if space and time are principles of intuition-sensibility). If this latter Kantian thesis is true, then even the spatio-temporal framework owes a debt to the human mind.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were obviously problematic in many different respects for the advance of philosophical thinking, connected as they were, with the eclipse of Aristotelian thought. The sixteenth century post Renaissance period saw a rise of the practical science of engineering and increasing interest in technology of all forms, especially those forms involved in animating stationary objects. Jaynes discusses this in an article entitled “Animate motion in the 17th century”:

“The background of this concern with motion was complex. In the Aristotelian heritage motion was of three kinds: change in quantity, change in quality, and change in spatial locality. While the 16th century was beginning to use the word only in the third sense as we do today, the mysterious aura of its other two meanings hung about like ghosts into the next century.”(The Julian Jaynes Collection P.69)

What Jaynes refers to above, is one of the consequences of the decline of hylomorphic theory during the period when Platonic dualistic theories and materialistic theories were in the ascendency. The spirit of the time is well reflected in Descartes’ conscious rejection of Aristotelian theory. Many attribute Descartes’ penchant for the meditative method associated with the cogito, to Mathematics (the lone mathematician in his study with his pencil and paper making calculations). In the above essay Jaynes provides us with a fascinating psychological portrait of Descartes that not only explains his modernism but perhaps also helps us to understand one of the propelling forces of the modern era. Jaynes points out that Descartes was a maternally deprived 18 year old when he experienced the first of a number of mental breakdowns. He retired to St Germain where the only recreation possible would have been a visit to the Royal Gardens in Paris. He would have been able to visit the gardens in virtue of having been a student at the King’s school for Jesuits. The Gardens were famous for their hydraulically propelled statues that spoke and danced in the eery setting of a series of underground chambers or caves. These figures, Jaynes argued might have provided companionship for the melancholically disposed young man trying to find substitutes for the absence and loss of highly cathected objects from the past. These surreal companions were not just infecting the fragile ego of Descartes but also expressing the signs of the times.

The Latin term machina, Jaynes argues, carries the meaning of trickery and in this connection Descartes would have been familiar with Louis Brabant and the trickery of ventroliquism advertised widely at the Royal Court. Stepping on hidden plates in the catacombs of Paris released the eery machine like movements and speech of the statues. Our modern attitude toward the word machines of our times no longer are associated with trickery or fraudulence but we moderns have become used to the fantastic and may even be prepared to believe the Cartesian claim that animals are machines. This fantastic claim shattered the Aristotelian framework used for all forms of life and partially explains the eventual referral of Cartesian theory to the materialistic machine of all machines, namely, the brain.

Materialists throughout the ages have, of course, been grateful for the Cartesian claim that only I can know what I am thinking, others must guess that I think. Others must hypothesise that I can think, many materialists now argue. That the brain should be the final explanatory source for both movement and thought well reflects a world of absent or lost objects, a world whose motion and speech is machine-like, a trick of the brain: a world in which both life and quality of life has been suspended. This also creates a space for a substitute world which can be dominated by machines: a world that would eventually find a principle(the Turing principle) which will ensure that no one will be able to tell the difference between a human activity and the activity of a machine(e.g. the difference between a chess master playing chess and Deep Blue, a chess program).

Hobbes too, participated in this modernist attempt to transform the world by attacking Aristotle and dualism. Hobbes goes further than Descartes and claims that human life and movements are like the moving mechanism of a clock. The Greek conviction that the movements of automata were only “poor imitations” of living movement was being slowly and surely replaced by a striving to identify these two categorically very different kinds of motion. Much modern brain research indeed over the ages, but especially in the 20th century, was motivated by the principle that the brain is an electro-chemical system that happens as a matter of fact to possess the property of life. The elements of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen sulphur, phosphate and a few trace metals are organised into bone, tissue and organ forms and this picture reinforces the idea of a continuum of physical reality in which the brain is merely a specific combination of these elements. The Greek concept of arché(principle) has almost completely disappeared in this account( even if the energy regulation principle must be operating in all forms of living material. With Descartes, we conceive of motion as a means to an end that springs into existence and comes to an end(magically like the speech made by a ventriloquists doll or puppet). In some brain research, the brain is conceived of as a magical source generating motion, speech and even consciousness. The form of consciousness was such that it encouraged the use of the Turing test to support the claim that a machine may be conscious, or at least, may become conscious in the future(despite the major differences in the combination of the elements we find in the brain compared to that of a machine). These latter reflections and conceptions were typical of 20th century mind/brain discussions that sought among other things to refute dualistic views of the mind(a task fully accomplished by the theories of Aristotle and Kant).

For Descartes, the movement of animals resembled the hydraulically propelled statues in the caves of Paris. Jaynes describes how Descartes dissected animals without anaesthetic and with mild amusement at their screams of pain. According to Jaynes these responses were no more to him than the hissing and vibrations of the statues in the Royal Gardens. Jaynes concludes with the following fascinating observation:

“He seems to view the entire physical world as though it were modelled on Francini’s work. It was nothing but a vast machine. Just as in the Queen’s Gardens, there was no spontaneity at any point. He loathed animism. He loved the statues. Later he named his only child, and illegitimate daughter, Francine, perhaps after their creator.”(P.74)

The loathing was perhaps broader and deeper than Jaynes imagined, incorporating as it did a loathing for the Philosophy of Aristotle, in spite of the fact that there is considerable evidence that he never studied Aristotle’s work carefully. Add to the above biographical reflection, the fact that when Descartes was a soldier he combined his fondness for mathematics with his fascination with machines, when, as a member of the corps of Engineers he occupied himself with the design of machines to protect and assist soldiers on the battlefield. This concern with the world as a vast machine may have led to Descartes being forced to leave France when Richelieu began to imprison the free thinkers of the French realm. His involvement as a mercenary in a war is of course a very modern combination of the influence of military and economic globalisation mechanisms. The mercenary is a fighting machine fuelled with money. The mercenary obviously dreams of possessing the ultimate weapon and the destruction it can cause, a dream that would continue well into the technological era of the 20th century where the dream would bear the fruits of a nightmare. By this time , of course war had become a combat arena for machines in the sky, machines on the sea and machines on land. We should also recall that Descartes lived and fought in the 30 year war, one of the most brutal wars in History with over 8 million casualties(20%of the German population died). The treaty of Westphalia called forth a new International order based on the dubious principle of “The balance of power” in order to maintain the elusive prospect of “perpetual peace” sought later by Immanuel Kant. In Kantian terms the above negotiated peace was transient and lacked the backing and authentication of being rooted in the ideal of Human Rights which was to follow from Kantian moral and political philosophy.

The absence of reference to arché or principles during this pre-Kantian Cartesian period, often regarded as the historical beginning of the modern era, is rooted in a materialist machine-obsessed mentality that projects the absence of psuche into a world without arché. This, as we know, eventually resulted in a mathematical world of variables whose values are in question and solely to be determined by methodologically based observation and experimentation. This idea of “the value of a variable” is a key idea in mathematics and has acquired categorical status because mathematics has a logical structure relying partly on hypothetical forms of deduction . In scientific contexts, however, this idea takes on a technical instrumental value whereby a quantitative content is searched for, and subsumed under the name of the variable. The variable is a quantitative universalisation for use on a number of different occasions, and thereby meets the Wittgensteinian criterion for a concept(a concept is for use on many occasions). This is in contrast to the categorical universality we encounter in Kantian critical Philosophy, where substantial, qualitative, quantitative, and relational categories are characterised logically, and the activity of measuring the content of a variable is relegated to the level of sensibility and intuition(the empirical level). The idea of a variable is also critical in the activity of computer programming in the 20th century, because by this time, the motion of a machine and the action and thought of men to all intents and purposes fall into the same category of judgement and understanding. Recall that the Hobbesian Leviathan begins with the assumption that life is matter in motion. The inevitable consequence of such a state of affairs is a dehumanised world in which good and evil is reduced to the realm of pleasure-pain(the two sovereign masters of mans existence). Life is then characterised in terms of the simplistic operation of moving toward and away from objects. The Leviathan of Hobbes is a reference to an overwhelming power(of the state) that in turn is represented by the image of a sea monster(found mentioned in the book of Job). A more modern conception that incorporates the mechanisation of mans thought about himself and his society could be illustrated by the image of a Juggernaut. Just as on Hobbes ‘ account mans motion was merely an impulsion to keep moving and avoid death, so the idea of this huge machine is merely to keep moving and eliminate all resistance in its path. In this barren world of variables, mans value is calculated by Hobbes as determined by a market: in terms, that is, of the value placed upon the use of mans power . This power in Hobbes’s view is best used for the purposes of commodious living and for the behaviour associated with the fear of death . The market itself is constituted of covenants or contracts of various kinds. The implicit social contract each man has with the state is imposed upon him irrespective of his will and if this covenant is broken the threat of punishment by the sword is in the background:

“Covenants without the sword are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”(Hobbes, T, Leviathan, (London, Penguin Books, 1651, Ch 17, P.85)

The Sword , of course, refers to one of the instruments of absolute power of the Commonwealth Leviathan. Hobbes clearly does not believe that the pen(that writes and signs the laws) is mightier than the sword. Such a belief would be a consequence of embracing the Aristotelian definition of the citizen of the commonwealth(rational animal capable of discourse). For Hobbes the Commonwealth is not “organic” it is an “artificial being” whose body is constituted by social contracts with the head representing the Sovereign. There is the suggestion of something sinister and fearful underlying this image, the source of which is a Biblical sea monster. The Leviathan is an animal that lives in a state of Nature and for whom the words of language or the law would be mere sounds like the waves crashing on the shore. Arché has been replaced by the image of an artificial machine like monster that Hobbes has named very concretely, avoiding any reference to the idea of principles.

So on one side of the channel we have the dualistic worlds of humans and animals differentiated by the hyper quality of consciousness: on the other side there is only one form of substance, matter in motion best explored by the Baconian formula for activity in a context of exploration/discovery. Animal and human activity is merely a special case of this motion that at best obeys the two “sovereign masters” of pleasure and pain, expressed best in the activity of retreating away from an object and advancing towards it.

The question to raise in the context of Descartes view of the world as a huge divinely created mechanism in which animals do not and humans do possess the hyper-quality of consciousness is the following: “What is preventing us from conceiving of the animal and human forms of life as spatio-temporal entities in a spatio-temporal matrix?” Hylomorphism and Critical Philosophy claim that such a scientific characterisation of these life forms is possible on the condition that there is no attempt to regard such characterisations as sufficient explanations of the essence of the life form. Both philosophical positions would reject the reduction of the organic to inorganic elements(carbon, hydrogen oxygen nitrogen sulphur phosphate and a few trace metals) either for the purposes of explaining the behaviour of these life forms, or for the purposes of characterising the arché or principle of life (psuche). Inorganic elements cannot of course possess the arché of the life principle that in turn is necessary for the development of the hyper quality of consciousness.

Freud claimed that the preconscious “image”(perhaps capacity or disposition would have been better terms) is a critical condition for the forming of the vicissitude of instinct he called Consciousness. He also claimed that the formation of this vicissitude required a hypercathexis of energy.

Julian Jaynes in an essay entitled “Representations as Metaphiers” claims that machines cannot be conscious because their mode of functioning is not linguistic:

“Representationalism has of course been central to problems of artificial intelligence and is now influencing aspects of neuroscience…Metaphiers such as “information”, “memory”, and even “representation” have all but thrown off their psychological meanings. We may read that in order to build a computer that can pass the Turing test of conversing in a conscious-like manner we must build into it ” a representational system, an active self updating collection of structures organised to mirror the world as it evolves”—as if this abstract simplification were really what was going on in ourselves. It perhaps seems as if this were our consciousness but careful examination of introspective experience shows that it is not. Consciousness is primarily an analogue”I” “narrating” in a “mind-space” whose features are built up on the basis of metaphors. Even if computers could simulate metaphoric processes, they still would not have the complex repertoire of physical behaviour activities over time to utilise as metaphiers to bring consciousness into being. Computers, therefore, are not..and cannot be -conscious”.( Julian Jaynes Collection, P.145)

Metaphier is a term for the understanding of something in terms of something else: the metaphor is the thing to be understood and the metaphier that which we use as a standard of comparison(e.g. physical behaviour patterns such as remembering or imaging something). Jaynes also points out that a consequence of his theory is that it is not just computers that lack consciousness, but also animals. Animals, however, for Jaynes are not machines as they were for Descartes, but forms of life behaving in accordance with the ERP, PPP, and a truncated form of the RP principle. The relation between the ERP, PPP and rationally based RP is not however raised in this article. This is sufficient to raise doubt as to whether we can connect the theory Jaynes presents with the hylomorphic theory of Aristotle. In this essay Jaynes wishes to challenge a conception of representation even insofar as it applies in the context of the simple experience of colour. Jaynes argues that we have convinced ourselves that colour is the wavelength of light impressing itself upon the eye which in turn gives rise to a sensation that represents the colour concerned. He points to experiments from the 17th century which prove this not to be the case. Jaynes argues that it is likely that the colour field of the retina works rather in terms of the ratio and relations between different specialised colour areas of the retina. This activity is also related and weighted by comparison with activity in the pre-striate areas of the visual cortex and other neural networks.

Jaynes’ theory of Consciousness is , however, hylomorphic in the sense of conceiving of conscious activity as built upon an evolutionary history of animal instinctive and affective behaviour. Reptiles evolved with an instinctive repertoire generated by genetic mechanisms. In an essay entitled “A Two Tiered Theory of Emotions: Affect and Feeling” we encounter in fact a three tiered hylomorphic account of the emergence of consciousness. First reptilian repertoires of instinctive behaviour(regulated for the most part by the homeostatic energy regulation principle) constitute a range of what he calls affects or attitudes toward specific classes of stimuli. With the evolution of the mammalian brain and a more advanced form of life, certain areas of the key organ of the brain(limbic and cortical area) began to function in an inhibitory fashion for a certain sub set of affects or attitudes. This in turn generated a more complex form of behaviour. The human brain, in its turn, with its more complex brain structures, including frontal lobe development, generated a future orientation connected with language and planning that simpler mammals were not capable of. Expectation and curiosity became key attitudes toward the environment. These attitudes were spontaneous characteristics that differed from what Aristotle called “pathe”, a term applied to states that appear to happen to the agent and affect him(cf the effect of alcohol). Recall that Aristotle, when speaking of the phenomenon of akrasia, claims that one can “be drunk with passion”. “Pathe” is a state of mind related to external stimuli, bodily expression, and behaviour. Such states are propelled by desire, yet are susceptible to rational influence and voluntary action, but probably not to the extent that one can spontaneously form the conscious intention to be angry, afraid, and choose the accompanying bodily expressions and behaviour.

The difference between the human form of life and the animal form of life also relate to structures of the brain that not merely inhibit existing capacities and dispositions but also produce a system of interactions that generate an internal evaluation of these capacities and dispositions–create, that is, a higher capacity or disposition to experience the pleasures and pains associated with them. Jaynes claims that Consciousness must be a necessary condition for such an evaluative activity and he connects language(language centres are not present in the mammal brain) with the formation of this vicissitude of instinct. Consciousness, for Jaynes, is not a genetically produced state or function, but rather a capacity or disposition to be acquired sometime during the course of human history. It needs conditions of acquisition that include the cultural acquisition of language: a process which itself shows its connection with instinct by the fact that there is a window of opportunity for acquisition which, when it closes, prevents the acquisition of the language capacity and its associated dispositions. This critical period regulates the syntactical substrate of language and points to a limitation of the neuro-plasticity of the brain. The critical period for the acquisition of language depends of course upon ones definition of language. Naturally occurring “case studies” of deaf children learning a sign language seem to suggest that a critical condition may involve the areas of the brain responsible for the perception of an object and areas of the brain responsible for the naming of the object.

Aristotle in his comments on the structure of language pointed to the subject predicate structure of a sentence which in its turn appears to be intimately connected to the activity of thinking something about something. For both Aristotle and Kant there is no truth unless a property is “predicated” of something. Something has to be either affirmed or negated of something else. In De Interpetatione (The Complete Works of Aristotle (Guildford Surrey, Princetown University Press, 1984, P. 25) Aristotle uses almost Freudian language when he characterises linguistic symbols in terms of affections of the soul. These “affections” are “likenesses” of things. What is involved in the process of becoming conscious of these affections, then? Jaynes suggests that conscious thinking is partly constructed by the analogue “I” “narrating” in a mind space and this might be a preparatory stage for the act of conceptualising or predicating something of something in a context of explanation/justification.

The imperative judgement, “Promises ought to be kept” displays this structure of saying something about something, but here the verb is in the future tense and can therefore be regarded as a “property” predicated of promises(which are meant in a quantitative universal sense): a property that can be brought about by a logical implication of the act of promising, or rather the act of making the judgement true by delivering upon the promise. The justification of this judgement is Kantian: “So act that you may will the maxim of your action to become universal law”. The categorial imperative is the result of practical reasoning in the ethical realm of knowledge. We should recall that, for Kant, as was the case for Plato and Aristotle, Knowledge is defined as Justified True Belief. It is also important to recall in this context of ought-judgements, that pointing to actual instances of agents failing to keep promises cannot logically falsify the major premise of the argument simply because the verb is in the future tense and the property to be actualised is a potentiality and not a present actuality, It was Aristotle who alerted us to the fact that the verb of a sentence is tied to an indication of time in a way that substantives or nouns are not. The form of the verb is obviously also important in judgements relating to the metaphysical existence of Being which Aristotle maintained can be said in many ways. Two of the Aristotelian categories of Being are particularly of interest in the context of this discussion, and these are the categories of acting and being acted upon. Both hypothetical and categorical imperatives fall into the Aristotelian category of acting. Hypothetical imperatives are divisible into imperatives of skill and imperatives of prudence. Moreover, relating this discussion to Kant, and his four questions defining the realm of Philosophy (What can I know?, What ought I to do?, What can we hope for? What is man?), we find that two of these questions are teleologically structured. Their meaning is very much concerned with the above Kantian ontological distinction between what one does and what happens to one(what affects one, “Pathe”).

It is conceivable that when the Kantian activity of apperception(“I think”) is organising the manifold of representations ( apart from preparing the representations to be conceptualised( by abstracting from the differences between representations)) there is a possible operation of comparison of the representations in accordance with the principle of the resemblance of differences. This may be occurring in the metaphorical judgement “Man is a wolf”, where there is a resemblance relation between animals that is being referred to at the expense of the conceptual species-difference. The question to raise in this discussion is whether the metaphor is merely a species of analogy and we are using an analogical reasoning process similar to the proportion model we encounter in the mathematical model A is to B what C is to D. If this were the case the analogy of Being involved in the claim that Being is said in many ways would be merely calculative, a mathematical matter. Aristotle clearly differentiates between the mind when it is contemplating the Being that can be said in many ways and the calculating mathematical mind. This position, of course, rests upon the correct interpretation of the term “ousia”:an interpretation that translates the term as “primary Being” as Politis does in his work “Aristotle’s Metaphysics”:

“Summarily, the aporia is this: we cannot conceive of Being by distinguishing it from not-Being, but neither can we conceive of being as the sum of all kinds of beings that there are. So, apparently we cannot conceive of being at all either by distinguishing it from something outside of it, i.e. from not-being, or by distinguishing it from what is inside it, by conceiving of it as the sum of all kinds of being that there are in general, i.e. the sum of everything that there is….for something to be primary being is for it to be a being, something that is simply in virtue of itself, and not in virtue of its relation to other things.”(P 10-11)

Politis further correctly argues that it is incorrect to characterise being in terms of substance. Substance is Latin for what underlies something, and it carries materialistic implications which Aristotle does not accept. Aristotle’s term for something that underlies something else is hypokeimenon. Politis argues that it is the essence of being that is more important to primary being than its particularity or universality. One of the keys to understanding this idea of primary being that we find in the work of Aristotle, is to be found in the relation between Aristotelian and Platonic metaphysics. Plato’s theory states categorically that changing things do not have an essence whilst Aristotelian theory focuses upon the forms as principles of change. Categories of existence, for Aristotle, must therefore be seen against the background of Change and not (according to Politis) to be interpreted in terms of the bipolar opposition of particular beings and Universal being. This it should be added is an interpretation attributable to the dominance of Platonism in the post Aristotelian period in which we saw Aristotelianism wax and wane as religious scholasticism aligned itself with what was Neo Platonism or at best a Platonic interpretation of Aristotle.

The fundamental metaphysical attitude in Aristotle’s metaphysical theory is reflected in the grammatical category of the interrogative, which is unleashed by a change from something into something else: a change that raises the question “Why?” in the consciousness of man. It is this principle that moves the mind to desire to understand the change that occurs, a desire that seeks different kinds of explanation in accordance with the metaphysical structure of the thought of Aristotle. These kinds of explanation are essence specifying explanations/justifications and incorporate the idea of principle(arché) Aristotle embraces. This idea is captured in an essay on Aristotle entitled “Inquiry into Principles” (Articles on Aristotle 1:Science Edited by Barnes J., et al London Duckworth, 1975):

“What matters here is not the triad of being, coming to be, and coming to know, so much as the fact that in all these spheres there is an analogous formal structure supplied by “the first from which”(to prôton hothen), the expression used to specify the concept of a principle. The important role which the pollachôs legomena(“things which are called what they are called in many ways) play in Aristotle’s thought is to be understood precisely in terms of the fact that a plurality of concepts is held together by the unity of a formal structure. Thus the four causes, for example, have in common the fact that the formal structure of the question “why?” (dia ti) underlies them all.” P.139)

The kind of formal abstraction Aristotle is highlighting here is not the conceptual form of abstracting from the differences between objects( although there is the use of the idea of resemblance between entities, e.g. man and wolf). The resemblance referred to is obviously suggestive of a relation between the essence of men and wolves, a resemblance, that is, between the principle regulating the essence of men and wolves: a principle encapsulated in the conceptual truth that both entities are animals.

The essence of man, for example, is given in the essence specifying explanation that he is a rational animal capable of discourse(Logos). If man resembles a wolf, it is of course the case here that we are not speaking of the essential potentialities he possesses of being rational and capable of discourse. The metaphor “man is a wolf” is then, highlighting his animal nature.

To metaphorise well, Aristotle claims, requires an intuitive operation of the mind(imagination), that enables one to see similarities in entities that may be fundamentally dissimilar. We need, that is, to see man as a wolf and register this in a linguistic expression that creates a new meaning by the juxtaposition of two fundamentally different terms. This new expression then re-describes reality hypothetically but not fictionally. The metaphor “Man is a wolf” obviously is an assertion that says something about something and in that sense is striving to say something true about man(not that he literally is a wolf). Hylomorphism is a philosophy of change and not of classes where particulars are classified logically. A hylomorphic theory of language will therefore follow the transposition of meaning in new metaphorical expressions in terms of logical and metaphysical principles. Aristotle uses the word “epiphora” to characterise this linguistic movement which is not intended as a deliberate falsehood but rather a revelatory linguistic operation, the analogy of which could be expressed by the Greek term phusis. Phusis is the Greek term for Nature, the part of physical reality that is actualising a process into a telos( e.g. the growth of the plant that produces ultimately a flower). The power of nature both creates an actuality and “reveals” the end or telos of the growth process. This actualising of a potential in the metaphorising process is a linguistic process in which the power of the imagination strives to reveal what the Greeks called “The Truth” and “The Good”. The understanding of the revelation is schematic. The schema focuses upon the resemblance between man, the animal, and wolf, the animal–a focus which presupposes the essence of animality. The schema is essentially aimed at a perceptual recognition of a resemblance.

There is an important analogy between meanings of Being and forms of life. Primary being or ousia focuses on the many meanings of being and Life is the principle of many forms of life we understand the essences of.

Initially the statement “Man is a wolf” looks like a category mistake but this fails to notice the cognitive role of the schema of the resemblance between the human form of life and the lupine form of life. There is no mistaking the role of the essence of animality in this transferring of meaning from the wolf to the man. Resemblance alone, however, is not a sufficient reason for metaphorising. There are experiences for which there is no name and these experiences are not easily communicated. Metaphor reaches into this region of the unnamed world and uses existing terms and processes to identify and individuate these regions. In the movement of meaning from genus to species, species to genus, species to species, there is very often an anthropomorphisation involved in the metaphor, e.g. the arms and legs of a chair: this latter is an example of so called “dead” metaphors. The concern referred to above with the unnameable is more related to to practical goods rather than theoretical truths. Naming the arms and legs of the chair enables us to ask someone to fetch the newspaper on the arm of the chair or asking the removal men to place the chair in the removal van with the legs pointing upward. There is also metaphorising in poems where there is no practical interest at issue. Monroe Beardsley claimed that a metaphor is a miniature poem and this interpretation is supported in the complex metaphor “Man is a Wolf”. From Aristotle’s point of view we are clearly, with reference to this example, in the realm of learning and the pleasure associated with learning: a realm in which some of our practical attitudes are suspended in favour of a more contemplative attitude toward Being. The message behind the metaphor of man being a wolf is partly the Freudian message that all forms of consciousness and rationality are vicissitudes of instincts. The message behind the message may also involve learning that man can be the best of animals(worship the gods, lead the contemplative life) and the worst of animals(prey upon his fellows , savage them). Aristotle’s purely grammatical remarks about metaphor include claiming that there is an application of an alien name”Wolf” to the subject of the statement.

Paul Ricoeur in an essay entitled “between Rhetoric and poetics: Aristotle” claims the following:

“In giving to a genus the name of a species, to the fourth term of a proportional relationship the name of the second term, and vice versa, one simultaneously recognises and transgresses the logical structure of language.”

Logical structure requires as a logical condition that a term does not shift in meaning when it occurs in different premises. When, therefore, the metaphor metaphorises by the suggestion/creation of a new meaning, there is no logical contradiction and the new meaning must be judged on the basis of whether it contributes cognitively to the understanding of the subject. In the above there are two linguistic contexts to bear in mind, each one of which operates under different principles. The operation of the creation/discovery of a new name, e.g. “the arms of a chair” is logically related to the principle behind the transference of meaning. What once needed either to be ostensively defined is described in relational terms, and has thus become an easily identifiable term for a region of reality that had no name, but can now be used in a naming operation. This region as a consequence of this operation can be referred to “in absentio”. There is no violation of the laws of logic in this metaphorising process because ,in the case of “Man is a wolf”, the message is not a contradictory one for a mature language-user. The only sense in which it is true to say that the logical structure of language is “transgressed” is through the process of semantic enhancement in which a new use of words is suggested to a community of users. Logical principles relating to constancy of meaning will once more come into play once the new meaning is accepted: in the case of the “Man is a wolf” metaphor, the genus in common between the two species of mammal more or less guarantees acceptance. The underlying reason for the success of the metaphorising process takes us into the territory of the theories of Aristotle, Kant, Freud, Ricoeur, and perhaps also Julian Jaynes for whom this process of metaphorisation is partly constitutive of Consciousness. The process obviously enables the designation of an analogous “I” living in an analogous world. Indeed, the narrative of ones life by someone who knows you, may carry the message “NN is the worst of animals”. Metaphor for Aristotle is clearly a cognitive phenomenon that focuses on the genus of the entity involved in the metaphorisation and, as Aristotle puts it in the Rhetoric, “conveys learning and knowledge”. This obviously could not be done if there was a problem with the logical structure of the metaphorical judgement. A conceptual hierarchy, determined by logic, is obviously involved in a process of re-describing or renaming reality thus enabling us to see Man as a wolf or the chair as having arms and legs.

Whenever imagination is involved we seem to eventually encounter the term “genius”(Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement). Aristotle too, argues that to metaphorise is a gift of genius to see resemblances. Aristotle also claims in the “Poetics” that it is the poet who “perceives similarity”(1459 a 8). The Rhetoric refers to an excellence of mind. Both Rhetoric and Poetics are creative productive sciences for Aristotle but they obviously contain some reference to theoretical and practical knowledge. Productive science concerns itself with technai and the knowledge involved in this kind of activity is knowledge of the probable. The kind of argument we encounter in both Poetry and Rhetoric is dialectical argument in which it is common practice to juxtapose opposites and attempt to synthesise theses and antitheses. Enthymemes differ from inductive procedures because they have an essentially deductive character. They are rhetorical devices in the arena of probable judgements of authoritative judges and can therefore be placed categorically in contexts of explanation/justification. We are also likely to encounter enthymemes in the realms of Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics. Practical principles are as important in Aesthetics or Technai as they are in Ethics and Politics: these principles guide action. Rhetoric, for example, is the task of politicians and must also relate in various ways to Ethics and Politics. The aim of rhetoric is to persuade people but not at the expense of rational argumentation. In Aesthetics, principles are used to construct plots with characters and imitated actions of significant magnitude that induce in an audience the emotional responses of pity and fear. Learning will still take place, but probably in the realm of Sensibility and intuition, via the mechanism of imagination. Audiences obviously bring their knowledge of the world to the performance but because of the requirement of psychical distancing connected to the fact that muthos in this context is in the mode of mimesis, the audience will see the events of the play organised in accordance with the principle of exemplary necessity rather than in accordance with the hard logical requirement of metaphysical necessity( found in the theoretical natural sciences). In the case of the moral sciences the major premises of moral arguments are usually those assented to and believed in by wise authorities, but are nevertheless only probably true(predicated perhaps on the continuing stability of the state or community we live in). Positivism in its various forms have interpreted this state of affairs to mean that moral judgements cannot be proved and are therefore “probably false”, which if one considers the Kantian proof by means of three formulations of the categorical imperative, is a misleading judgement. The following is the account Kant provides of exemplary necessity:

“But what we have in mind in the case of the beautiful is a necessary reference on its part to delight. However, this necessity is of a special kind. It is not a theoretical objective necessity–such as would let us cognise a priori that everyone will feel this delight in the object that is called beautiful by me. Nor yet is it a practical necessity, in which case, thanks to concepts of a pure rational will in which free agents are supplied with a rule, this delight is the necessary consequence of an objective law, and simply means that one ought absolutely(without ulterior object) to act in a certain way. Rather, being such a necessity as is thought in an aesthetic judgement, it can only be termed exemplary. In other words, it is a necessity of the assent of all to a judgement regarded as exemplifying a universal rule incapable of formulation.”(P.81)

For Kant, even if aesthetic judgements are subjective, it is still the case that everyone ought to give the object(“Man is a wolf”) their approval. Kant speaks in this context in terms of a common sense which refers to principles that we find relevant to our sensible/imaginative responses to aesthetic objects. Judgements of Taste, e.g. “This(aesthetic object) is beautiful” are formed in “free conformity to law of the imagination”. This is a complex claim referring to both the pleasure-pain principle and reality-principles as conceived of by Aristotle and Freud as well as to the aesthetic idea governing the organisation of the object(Kant), e.g. the idea of the relation of the species of man to the genus of animal and species of wolf in the metaphorical judgement “Man is a wolf”. The organisation is “analogous” to conceptual organisation but different. In this context the aesthetic idea can be either an indeterminate concept of reason(judgement of the sublime) or an indeterminate concept of the understanding(a schematised idea). The interesting question to raise in the context of this discussion is whether the judgement “Man is a wolf” is a judgement of taste or some other kind of judgement. The mind obviously either meets some resistance or rejects the idea expressed in the metaphor “Man is a wolf” because the suggestion that there is a connection between animals and man in the practical and productive sciences is problematic. The pleasure associated with the learning involved in a creative metaphor must be linked with ideas of reason which appeal to what Kant calls a “higher finality”( C of Aesth Jud P.92). What appears to be different( the different species of man and wolf) is in fact subsumable under the schema of resemblance in spite of the seemingly shocking effect of applying lupine predicates to homo sapiens. Perhaps the shock to the imagination results in the imagination being “quickened” into the attitude of reflection upon the subjective finality of the judgement. This process of reflection for Aristotle will be guided by the psuche principle in forming the judgement based upon an indeterminate idea. For Kant it is ideas that are sublime and not forces of nature. The process of judgement upon the sublime awakens a supersensible faculty, but it is not clear that the forces of psuche can overwhelm the imagination in the way required for a judgement of the sublime. One can imagine that, involved in this metaphorical judgement, is a narrative of events that might illustrate the meaning but it is clear that the scientific and logical link between genus and species must transcend any imaginative narrative. Any justification of this judgement must involve an appeal to the essence of animal life and the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Ideas of the sublime typically transcend the faculty of Sensibility and the power of the imagination. The idea of the animal kingdom as a whole(including man) is an idea that exceeds the power and capacity of the imagination, but it does not exceed the capacity for thought, which can obviously think the infinite whole without contradiction. In this sense, and perhaps also in the senses of space being infinite, the idea of the infinite is perhaps involved in the thought process connected to our metaphor. The idea of the infinite is an idea of reason because the understanding cannot grasp it in one quantitative act of (numerical) understanding. Here we are attempting by means of a sensible/intellectual faculty to grasp the noumenal aspect of nature via an idea that quickens in us the feeling of our own moral power and dignity. This latter power is obviously an analogous power to the physical powers of nature. Kant suggests that it is in this experience of the sublime that the roots of religion may partly lie. The man, he argues, who is overwhelmed by the presumed presence of his God prostrates himself before him, or bows his head , all as part of the behaviour pattern of fear: whereas the man who holds his head high and reflects upon his own capacities to resist overwhelming physical forces, reflects upon his own dignity, and can as a consequence more readily meet these forces unbowed but with respect and esteem. Here man finds himself on one of the battle grounds between the giants of Eros and Thanatos fighting for the fate of civilisation. We can see in this Kantian reflection, an interesting possible opposition between an immature religion demanding the behaviour of fear, and a morality based religion that acknowledges ones own self sufficiency and dignity. Kant speaks in this context of the possible withdrawal from society on the grounds of refusing to witness the evils man brings upon himself by his own acts of will: a state of affairs that Kant describes as “melancholically haphazard” and which can provoke a motivated state of melancholy. For Kant it is the activity of the super-sensible faculty of our thought(reason) that invokes the idea of God, an idea that is closely allied not just to the power of nature but to its infinity. In a footnote to the chapter entitled “Analytic of the Sublime”(Critique of Judgement) we find the following:

“Perhaps there has never been a more sublime utterance or a thought more sublimely expressed then the well known ascription upon the Temple of Isis(Mother nature): “I am all that is, that was, and that shall be, and no mortal hath raised the veil before my face.”

In this footnote of Kant’s we encounter the metaphor of “The veil of isis” which Kant claims is a sublime thought. Indeed the idea that even the sun was born from the womb of Isis carries with it the suggestion of the infinite magnitude of nature: its noumenal aspect, an aspect that lies beyond the scope of human understanding and comprehension. The question to raise here is whether the metaphorical judgement “Man is a wolf” is of the same form as a judgement of the sublime. Certainly the metaphorical judgement puts into question the rational powers and dignity of man in a similar way to the way in which a powerful waterfall does. The movement of resistance to the initiating stimulus in the case of the wolf analogy, might be somewhat more intellectual in the sense that the categories of understanding appear to be more involved than any particular idea of reason. This might suggest that there are different species of metaphor on the Kantian analysis: or perhaps the image of “The veil of Isis” is a metaphysical analogy? This image emanates from the linguistic imagination which , Aristotle claims in relation to the metaphorising process, “sets something before the eyes”. Aesthetic ideas also use this metaphorising process to place something before our eyes. Some commentators, however, insist upon a significant difference between ideas of the imagination, insofar as the reference of the respective kinds of discourse is concerned. Imagination works in the region of schemas of the mind that have been created in various ways by various processes.: some by perceptual processes, some by categories of the understanding( e.g. causal schemas) or by ideas of Reason(God, immortality of the soul, freedom etc). Most kinds of metaphors such as “Man is a wolf” set something before the eyes(e.g. man seen as the worst of animals). Metaphysical analogies, on the other hand,(e.g. “The veil of Isis”), lying as they do at the limits of thought, may anthropomorphise Nature, but this in turn assumes a noumenal reference to a world of things-in-themselves about which we can both metaphorise and conceptualise. The linguistic space of the metaphor for those philosophers who wish to marginalise the significance of poetical and rhetorical discourse is an imaginary space composed of the connotations of terms rather than their denotations. This together with the view that the meaning of literature is to be found in itself rather than in its relation to the world merely confuses the issue of how to logically characterise this form of judgement. Paul Ricoeur in an essay entitled “Metaphor and the New Rhetoric” comments on this issue in the following way:

“The space of language, in effect, is a connoted space, “connoted more than pointed to, speaking rather than spoken of, which betrays itself in a metaphor like surfacing of the unconscious in a slip or a dream.”(Genette Figures, I, 220)….On this basis, when the author writes “one could almost say that it is space that speaks”(ibid, 102), his own speaking is to be interpreted more in terms of what it connotes than in terms of what it denotes: “Today, literature–thought– no longer articulates itself except in terms of distance, horizon, universe, surroundings, place, area, routes, and home-ground: naive figures, but characteristic figures, par excellence, in which language spatialises itself in order that space having become language, may speak and inscribe itself in it”(ibid 108). In fashioning this brilliant maxim, the author produces the sign of his allegiance to the school of thought for which the meaning of literature is to be found in literature.”(P.147)

Ricoeur contests this position and objects to the suggested suspension of the function of reference. Yet it is clear that the metaphorising process of literature cannot occur anywhere else than in the mind. Ricoeur suggests that the concept of a mood that is rooted in being-in-the-world is a better alternative than the subjective entity that was marginalised by the Philosophy of logical positivism (and logical atomism). The metaphor ought to be conceived as having a reference, Ricoeur argues, because:

“it teaches something and so it contributes to the opening up and the discovery of a field of reality other than that which ordinary language lays bare.”(P.148)

Heidegger is obviously a source of inspiration behind these reflections. We know that, for Heidegger, mood indicates a way of being aware of something in the world. According to him, our being-in-the-world manifests itself as a burden which expresses itself in the state of mind we possess, a state of mind that accompanies all our forms of understanding. This “ontological” state of mind discloses how we are faring in the world. Heidegger argues that we have been thrown into the world, and there is therefore nothing more natural than a tendency to turn away from such a state of mind in an effort to avoid thinking about our being-in-the-world as a whole. There is, that is, a resistance to this disclosure, a resistance to submitting to a world we desire to master(with , for example, our presence, our discourse, our technology). Even the most theoretical state of mind, Heidegger argues, manifests a mood which reduces everything it reflects upon in terms of entities uniformly present-at-hand. The anxious state of mind is perhaps what ultimately transforms itself into fear and thence into the reaction formations that wish to master the world rather than contemplate its holistic complexity. That man is an animal is the underlying assumption that prevents the metaphor above from embodying a contradiction. That the infinite complexity of Nature surpasses the categories of the understanding is what partly generates the sublimity of this metaphysical analogy. Heidegger insists that what is understood in such an analogy is neither an actuality nor a necessity but rather falls under the modal category of possibility. Dasein, Heidegger argues, understands itself in terms of its possibilities, possible ways of being-there. The Kantian schemata invoked in this process are obviously results of the operation of the productive imagination rather than the reproductive imagination(the home of sensory images). It is the productive imagination that creates and understands “figurative meaning”. The figure of Dasein is obviously best represented by the expressions of the face which are intimately associated with both state of mind and behaviour. The metaphor “Man is a wolf” ignites the productive imagination to schematise the possibility of being a wolf via the verbal image of the term “Wolf”, that must include the image of the possible uses of the term. In the metaphorising process, it is man that one is thinking about and applying the schema of the concept of wolf(against the background of our knowledge of men and wolves). Ricoeur suggests the application of the Fregean apparatus of sense and reference in order to solve the problem of metaphor. Ricoeur points to the Fregean maxim that “all sense strives toward reference”. Frege does not however say anything about how this occurs in the metaphorising process. Firstly , it must be pointed out that generally, sense relates to a way of picking out the reference of an expression. “The author of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” and “The Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College Cambridge” share the same reference but picks this reference out via different concepts. Heidegger points out how in the process of saying something about something in a subject-predicate statement, when we say or think something about something, the process is a truth-making or veritative synthesis into a fact.

In the metaphorising process, on the other hand, the synthesis may state a fact(that man behaves like a wolf in certain situations) but the primary purpose of the synthesis of these concepts may be somewhat different. What we may be dealing with here is an ethical judgement made on assumptions expressed in ethical premises relating to what we ought and ought not to do, what one ought or ought not to be. In such contexts of explanation/justification, practical reasoning will be decisive in determining the exact implications of the statement. In the case of the metaphysical analogy relating to “The veil of Isis”(out of whose womb the sun was born)we are clearly invoking a theoretical idea of the origins of the universe as well as the limitations of our knowledge of this vast physical realm. It is, therefore, not clear whether one can subsume metaphor under analogy or vice versa, since categorical knowledge and categorical imperatives belong to different universes of discourse for Kant. In the universe of practical reasoning , action and its telos is of central concern, i.e. the reasoning is an attempt to answer the aporetic question “What ought I to do?” in categorical and universal terms. In the universe of discourse of theoretical reasoning it is belief and its justification that is the central focus. In this context of explanation/justification the reasoning involved is attempting to answer the question “What can I know?”. The implications of the meaning of the metaphor “Man is a wolf” is clearly, then related to the judgement “man ought not to behave like the worst of animals”. The implication of the metaphor “The veil of Isis”, on the other hand, will be closely related to the Kantian distinction between things in themselves in the noumenonal realm of reality and empirically real things and events in the phenomenal realm: the issue of the limits of our theoretical knowledge and the practical knowledge of the noumenal realm is part of the meaning of this metaphor.

Ricoeur, in an essay entitled “The Work of Resemblance” discusses the possible relation between a verbal moment and a non verbal sensory moment in terms of what he calls the “wolf of psychology” let loose on the “semantic sheepfold”(The Role of Metaphor, P.208).In accordance with the above discussion we must acknowledge that involved in what Ricoeur calls the schematism of the metaphoric attribution, there are two kinds of schemata involved: one, non verbal to do with the objects of man and wolf, and one verbal to do with the possible uses of the terms “man” and “wolf”: both aspects are integrated into one mood or attitude. Psychologism is of course a risk here, especially if one conceives of these relations causally in the context of a method seeking to reduce one aspect to the other. Ricoeur wishes to “anchor” the imaginary in a semantic theory of metaphor, and speaks of “the pairing of sense with the senses”(P.209). Poetic language is contrasted with ordinary language which, according to Ricoeur, exhibits its reference to reality more directly than is the case with poetic language. He accuses Wittgenstein in the course of this discussion of not having a theory of poetic language. Wittgenstein himself would not regard his remarks in this domain of discourse as constituting a theory but they are nevertheless both descriptive and explanatory. In a lecture entitled “A course of lectures on Description”(Wittgenstein’s Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Edited by Barrett, C., (Oxford, Blackwell, 1970, P.37) Wittgenstein contrasts the use of poetic language with description and claims, as is the case with music, there is a tendency to be unable to describe what one experiences, and further that what one experiences is similar to experiencing the sound of the music one hears as a gesture. Wittgenstein then further specifically argues against reducing this gesture to a set of sensations. In his “Lecture on Aesthetics” he elaborates upon these remarks by challenging us to look closely not just how words are used, but also at how they are taught. Aesthetic terms, he argues, are substituted for facial expressions or gestures in an enormously complicated situation involving a matrix of activities. He further points out that in the case of many Aesthetic Judgements of a critical nature, the terms of the judgements are often applied to practices, e.g. “appropriate”, “right”, “correct”, and these can be likened to linguistic gestures of approval. He is trying to describe appreciation:

20 “It is not only difficult to describe what appreciation consists in, but impossible. To describe what it consists in we would have to describe the whole environment.”(P.7)

He elaborates upon this claim in cultural terms:

27. “You can get a picture of what you may call a very high culture, e.g. German music in the last century and the century before, and what happens when that deteriorates. A picture of what happens in Architecture when you get imitations–or when thousands of people are interested in the minutest details. A picture of what happens when a dining room table is chosen more or less at random, when no one knows where it came from.”(P.7)

Wittgenstein is pointing to the fact that the language associated with great art is embedded in a Culture of expectations and responses that are not merely correct. Generally, however, for Wittgenstein aesthetic terms are used as gestures accompanying complex activity embedded in a Culture. In such a language-game and form of life it is unimportant if an individual claims a poem is boring and another claims that they cannot stop thinking about it. For Wittgenstein it is the hurly burly of groups and communities and their forms of life, that decide the meaning of the terms of their language-games. He also specifically rejects any form of causal explanation for his gestural theory which means he also eschews any attempt to situate Aesthetics in a Psychological context of experimentation. He claims:

36. “Aesthetic questions have nothing to do with Psychological experiments, but are answered in an entirely different way”(P.17)

We need, rather, Wittgenstein argues, to ask the question “What is in my mind when I write or read a line of poetry?”. Some form of contentment related to the learning process associated with aesthetic experience is always an element for both creator and appreciator. Aesthetic appreciation of a poem, for instance might also involve placing it in a genre, relating the style of the poem to the style of other poets or other poems written by the same poet. When the poem employs metaphors, suggesting perhaps that “Man is a wolf” in line with the Delphic prophecy that everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction, the poet is saying “See man like this!”. Freud used much of his theoretical language in the spirit of metaphor when he urged us to “See mental illness like this!”. The poem might pick out mans achievements in a certain way reminiscent of the way in which sense picks out the reference of individual expressions and descriptions. Many commentators see persuasion as a form of propaganda but this is merely failing to appreciate the role of persuasion in the realms of poetry, rhetoric and theories of the mind. Freud’s theories have consistently been portrayed as unscientific exactly because they employ the philosophical technique of persuasion insofar as both his patients and his critics are concerned.

Wittgensteins remarks on Aesthetics and Culture transported us into the realm of Culture where the theme of resemblance can be raised to the level where we attempt to see the likeness between a poet and a musician living at the same time in a “high Culture”:

“You can sometimes find the similarity between the style of a musician and the style of a poet who lived at the same time, or a painter. Take Brahms and Keller. I often find that certain themes of Brahms were extremely Kellerian. This was extraordinarily striking.”(P.32)

Now it would be extremely difficult(without describing the Culture of the time completely) to say exactly what this resemblance consists in, but we do know the kind of description that would not be acceptable–one in which causes in the form of spatio-temporal events, brought about independently characterisable effects. Context is obviously very important for Wittgenstein as it was for Aristotle. Recall Aristotle’s political remarks that the laws of a society are what help to make a bad man good. Laws, that is, provide a society with an ultimate actualisation framework(for the actualisation of rationality). Wittgenstein imagines Culture to be constituted by large groups of people leading complex forms of life and speaking a language constituted by complex language-games. This whole context would be part of a world view or picture of the world that is an assumed background of aesthetic, ethical, and political judgements. We know the important role rhetoric played in Ancient Greece and we know the importance of persuasion by good arguments and enthymemes insofar as the political and aesthetic life of the community was concerned. Paul Ricoeur, discusses this issue in an essay entitled “The Decline of Rhetoric: topology”:

“Indeed, since the Greeks, rhetoric diminished bit by bit to a theory of style by cutting itself off from the two parts that generated it, the areas of argumentation and of composition. Then in turn the theory of style shrank to a classification of figures of speech, and this in turn to a theory of tropes. Topology itself now paid attention only to the complex, made up of metaphor and metonymy, at the price of reducing the first to resemblance and the second to contiguity.”(P.44-5)

Aristotle is named as the father of this model for reasons that are unclear but may hark back to Aristotles early work of the Categories where substance(and its attributes)is defined in terms of particulars. This account was later replaced by substance and its attributes as defined in terms of forms or principles. Converting the discussion of sense and reference( in the context of naming and predication) into a Wittgensteinian discussion in terms of language-games and forms of life, is indeed an Aristotelian move that enables one to move away from the simple primitive language-game of naming to the more complex language games at issue in the metaphorising process. This move is manifested in Wittgenstein’s discussion of style in which it is claimed that practical reason and argumentation has not been severed from composition and style.

Metaphor is clearly a rhetorical tool requiring argumentation, composition and style all of which are required if metaphor is involved in the learning and teaching processes. If, then, metaphor is a teaching tool–one that “teaches through genus”, to use Aristotle’s words, then the understanding must also be involved in such processes. Genus is the principle of all the species that are subsumed under the genus. Its use in fictional contexts retains this learning teaching aspect with some modifications. In the metaphorising process, however , where we think or say something about something by partly seeing something as something, e .g. making a tiger of an angry man or a wolf of a man, there is a transformation of nouns involved in this process, but there is nevertheless much more to be described and explained. This “much more” refers to argumentation, composition, and style in a context of actualisation processes organised by principles or forms. All of these aspects are involved in the mood or attitude that is organising what it is we are thinking about and the way in which we are thinking about this something(this part of the world). Imagination and perception also play different roles in the formation of metaphorical schemata: metaphorical schemata have a different structure to the veritative schemata controlled by categories of judgement used in knowledge claims in the context of the justification of beliefs. Truth is still part of the structure because even in practical ought-claims, reference is made to premises of arguments that claim to be probably true. Persuasion is needed because even if the premises concerned are self evident for the wise, common people need to engage in a process of learning to arrive at the position argued for.

What is interesting is Ricoeur’s claim that we have seen a decline of the importance of Rhetoric throughout the ages. He refers to a marked decline in the mid 19th century but the process may well have begun much earlier with the decline of Aristotelian Philosophy we described in the Cartesian- Hobbesian period which in its turn built its materialistic and dualistic structures on the colonisation of all forms of Culture by Religion and Science. A restoration of Hylomorphic theory occurred during the Enlightenment with the Philosophy of Kant but this was only for a short period until the eclipse of Kantian Philosophy by the usurper Hegel who colonised the Humanities.The underlying actualisation processes of Culture created by Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy continued an underground form of existence in the University system and permeated society slowly and painfully as a Cultural Cosmopolitan counterpoint to the militaristic and economic globalisation forces.

The role of reference to the world that we find in metaphorical ascription and the metaphorising process is undoubtedly enigmatic. Ricoeur, in an essay entitled “Metaphor and Reference” claims that the central operation of discourse is the synthetic act of predication and that this act “intends” an extra linguistic reality. This interesting move is however overshadowed by Ricoeur’s admission that the working hypothesis of his paper hopes to use the ideas of sense and reference found in Fregean theory. This thesis is further diluted by a problematic characterisation of “Sense”:

“The sense is what the proposition states: the reference or denotation is that about which the sense is stated.”(The Role of Metaphor, P.217)

Aa we indicated above this is only a partly correct characterisation of sense. A better characterisation would point to the way in which sense picks out or selects the reference of the expression. Ricoeur also wishes to use this dualistic pair(sense and reference) in relation to larger units of discourse than the sentence. In Frege’s theory we encounter a tendency to return to his controlling idea of the logic of proper names, even in relation to the truth-value of sentences. Frege claims, for example, that the proper name of a sentence refers to a state of affairs. That the synthesis of subject and predicate should result in a rigid designator like a proper name does appear to be a form of logical atomism that would be difficult to apply to larger forms of discourse of the kind we find in literary and poetic texts. Given these assumptions, Ricoeur is forced to concede the possibility that literary terms:

“seem to constitute an exception to the reference requirement.”(Ibid P.219)

Ricoeur does however agree that when we are dealing with complex works of the above kinds new categories of evaluation must emerge, namely activity categories, or as he calls them:

“categories of production and of labour” (Ibid P.219)

The work of composition involved in the production of literary and poetic texts testifies to a “disposition”, a totality that is irreducible to the sum of its elements, even if these elements are objects or states of affairs. “Disposition” is the word that Aristotle uses for the form of organisation we find in the mind of those who are virtuous. It is this form of organisation of the mind that is responsible for the organisation of the text into a genre via “rules of the game”, to use Wittgensteinian language. The controlling science of such activity is techné, a productive science. The activities involved in this process obviously strive towards a world and presuppose the world that a reader or audience brings to the work. Hermeneutics, Ricoeur argues, is the philosophical theoretical science that is best equipped to explore the relation between literary/mythical works and the world.

If, as Aristotle claims, “Being has many meanings”, then hermeneutics for Ricoeur is the roundabout route one takes to catch a glimpse of this Being–perhaps in the spirit of the claim by Turbayne:

“We cannot say what reality is, only what it seems like to us”(Turbayne, Myth and Metaphor, 64).

Aristotle is surprisingly invoked in support of the above position:

“We shall use as our touchstone the Aristotelian doctrine of the analogical unity of the multiple meanings of being, ancestor of the medieval doctrine of the analogy of being. Aristotle’s doctrine will provide the occasion for showing that there is no direct passage from the semantic functioning of metaphorical expression to the transcendental doctrine of analogy. On the contrary, the latter furnishes a particularly striking example of the autonomy of philosophical discourse.”(Ibid, P.258)

The earlier work of Aristotle focussed upon substance and its particularity as well as its relation to other categories of existence. Aristotle’s later work(hylomorphic theory) transformed substance into principle or form in a context of actualisation that involves powers or potentialities actualising over time given appropriate conditions. This hylomorphic theory of change invokes principles and causes(explanations) for the 4 kinds of change(substantial, qualitative, quantitative and locomotion). Being is said in many ways in this theory and it is this theory that provides us with the categorical framework that contains the metaphorising process or metaphoric attribution in the epistemological context of the justification of probable truths understood by the great souled men of Aristotle’s time.

We know that Kant regarded Aristotle’s Categories of existence as rhapsodic rather than as essence determining principles but there nevertheless would probably be agreement upon the following idea we find in Aristotle’s Metaphysics:

“the causes of all things are the same or analogous”(Metaphysics A 5, 1071, a 33-5)

We are no longer in the territory of the Categories but rather in the labyrinth of hylomorphic theory. Analogy in this context clearly has a transcendental quality which exceeds the scope of the mathematical idea of analogy defined in terms of proportionality: A is to B as C is to D. In this mathematical idea of analogy we are in the realm of the calculating faculty of the mind rather than the more philosophically inclined contemplative faculty. We know that Aristotle used this form of mathematical reasoning in his biological investigations of animals but he also uses it in the arena of Psychology–“as sight is to the body, so is reason in the soul”(Nichomachean Ethics 1:4 1096 b 28-29). Such a statement of course could also be embraced by a dualist.

Logical positivism, logical atomists, pragmatists, dualists and materialists all view metaphysics sceptically and would also view the idea of transcendental resemblance among the primary meanings of being as unverifiable and unscientific. Theological speculation on the nature of our relation to God is reconstrued in Aristotle on the model of perfection and imperfection. The Aristotelian God does not act authoritatively in relation to material in the way in which an artist does, but rather creates and organises the world in acts of self reflection. God, on this theory is primary Form in relation to analogous forms rather than Substance and its infinite modes(Spinoza). Matter is a mode of God’s thought but not separated from it. Human thought at its most philosophical, proceeds in accordance with hylomorphic theory and is guided by forms or principles analogous to God’s thought but is imperfect in being restricted to finite spatio-temporal limitations: i.e. limited in power and possessing the virtues(dispositions) to a limited degree. God, in other words, is perfection(omniscient, omnipotent, absolutely good, etc) and man can only strive for these “virtues”. One is reminded here of the Platonic metaphysical relation of “participation”(man appears to be “participating” in the Being of God). God communicates his being to us in his self reflective thought. Here there is reference to a transcendent resemblance that humans have access to via analogical calculation. Being, however is not a genus and if this is so, then the function of metaphor to teach via genus means, it could be claimed, that we are not in the realm of metaphorical discourse. If, however, God is the ordering principle of being, the Primary Form of Being, he would be the genus of all principles or forms that we humans understand. If this argumentation holds there are grounds for maintaining that a metaphorising process is occurring when , for example, we attribute(metaphorically) the virtues of wisdom, etc to Man. This would relate to poetic and theological discourse in which the relation of God to Man is the issue and this in turn might explain the poetic quality of Religious texts and the divine quality of poetic texts. This line of reasoning accords with Heidegger’s claim that “The metaphorical exists only within the metaphysical”. We should recall that in the contest of this discussion poetry is as revelatory as Philosophy of the Being of the World.

Analogies abound in Plato’s Republic and perhaps the three most famous analogies are those of the sun, the divided line and the Cave. The sun is a metaphor for the knowledge of the Good and here the analogy concerns the relation of 4 terms: the sun is to the health and necessities of the body as the knowledge of the good is to the health and necessities of the soul. The divided line is a mathematical metaphor where the mathematical divisions symbolise the different organising principles of knowledge in the soul. The Cave is an all embracing metaphor best summed up in the maxim “Knowledge sets you free”.

Let us now return from our long detour to Julian Jaynes and his claim that “Consciousness is primarily an analogue “I”, “narratising” in a “mind-space” whose features are built up on the basis of metaphors”(Julian Jaynes Collection, P. 145). In another essay entitled “The Origins of Consciousness” Jaynes elaborates further upon the above view of consciousness:

“What then is it?….Subjective conscious mind is an an analogy of what we call the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogies of behaviour in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to short cut behavioural processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics it is an operator rather than a thing or a repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision. Consider the language we use to describe conscious processes. The most prominent group of words used to describe mental events are visual. We “see” solutions to problems, the best of which may be “brilliant”…these words are metaphors and the mind space to which they apply is a metaphor of actual space. In it we can “approach” a problem perhaps from some “viewpoint” and “grapple” with its difficulties. Every word we use to refer to mental events is a metaphor of something in the behavioural world.”

The real world is obviously made up of sensory-motor activity and the residue of such activity in the mind. Language has both sensory and motor connections but it also possesses an ability or power to represent reality in its absence via the meaning of words and our knowledge of the world that emerges from the “residues” of our experiences of the world. Metaphorisation is therefore a key function of language and leads us to ask whether Freud’s claim that Consciousness is a vicissitude of instinct is an answer to Jaynes’s question “What is it?”. For Jaynes, Consciousness and Language are interrelated in various complex ways: both would appear to be “operators” sharing the task of problem solving. Both assist in the process of delaying the instinctive reflexive reaction to stimuli in the environment via a characterisation or picture of the environment and/or residual memories of previous encounters. The typical cause of the delay between sensory stimulation and behavioural response is that a question arises if the stimulus suggests a problem needs to be solved. This requires a conscious representation of the future and of something that needs to be done in order for the representation to be actualised. It is this delay in the behavioural response that Freud characterises as the secondary process–the process of thinking. At its most complex and abstract levels we will encounter conscious reasoning about the problem, but prior to that we encounter a more concrete form of consciousness involving the analogue I narrating what metaphorical me’s ought to do in this virtual constructed space, the space of planning and decision. This carries with it the implication that the operator of Consciousness is working in accordance with a practical logic designed to bring about an action-response to a problem. The operating space for this activity is a normative space operating in accordance with the logic of “the good” or “ought-premises”. This space contains both instrumental and categorical imperatives as principles in which both imagination and reasoning is working. Recall Aristotle’s claim that the metaphorisation process “places something before the eyes”. Language places what is absent before the eyes, metaphorically. The question that this poses is whether language possesses a necessarily metaphorical structure. We are reminded of the Kantian account of language acquisition in which the first use of the word “I” awakens the intellect and this may be part of the structuring of the “space of consciousness”. Prior to that moment children typically narrate what they are doing(egocentrically according to Piaget) and they use the model of narrating what others are doing that others have used in relation to their activities. They use, for example, the name that others use to call them, e.g. Charles wants to eat. At this stage(before the use of the “I”) there is no evidence of planning and decision making in the narrative of the narrator. The case study of Helen Keller and the awakening of her intellectual powers with the first use of naming in sign language, indeed suggests that the naming of things is a necessary condition of the development of consciousness. Wittgenstein testified to this fact when he claimed that the language game of naming was a primitive language game which of course was not Primitive in any atomistic sense , since it too required other conditions.

In A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action:Volume three(Insights and Illusions of Psychology–Kant, Piaget, and Freud)

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How a concept is formed in a context of exploration/discovery is a very different matter(philosophically) from how a concept functions in a context of explanation/justification. The former organises a manifold of representations in an attempt to arrive at a concept or a truth, the latter coordinates our representations and actions into a unity that possesses both theoretical and practical components. A concept whose function it is to explain or justify, is like a law or a principle, or what Aristotle calls a “form” which to some extent gives an answer to the aporetic question of what a thing is in its nature. Principles or laws have the logical structure of an ought statement and relates primarily to what we practically do with the concept rather than what the concept passively represents in a passively reflective situation.

History is clearly important in determining both the context and the use of a concept but the factor that determines its use on future occasions is of greater logical significance. The Kantian reference to the “I think” as the primary organiser of a manifold of representations is something that is occurring when I am learning a concept, but the consequence of this (the result of this learning process) is more akin to what Merleau-Ponty referred to in terms of “I can”(apply the result intelligently to future instances). This latter places conceptual activity into a de juris rather than a de facto context, requiring categorical judgment rather than an investigation designed to collect evidence.

Fact, according to Kant can be categorically established in a number of ways that correspond to his table of categories of the understanding. In many cases here we are dealing with a higher level of understanding than that of understanding the isolated atom of a concept. Concepts are combined or coordinated as Piaget would claim but it is important to note that in saying this we are referring to the practical aspect of the concept.

The genius of Piaget’s Psychology is manifested in many ways but his integration of sensory-motor activity into schemas which we use to assimilate what we encounter in reality, illustrates well what is implied by the above discussion. The process of accommodation which is part of the process of the formation of representational schemas reminds one of the “I think” Kant referred to in his appeal to the unity of apperception. The “material” of this work of construction of the concept consists of elements that are not directly derived from experience but are not necessarily genetically innate. These elements may indeed be the result of previous accommodations at lower levels of organisation, which, according to Piaget, extend back to the reflexive/instinctive sensory motor stage. At this level it appears as if maintaining an equilibrium in terms of the organisms survival is an important aspect of this process. This stage is succeeded by activity of a self centred organism striving for a more psychological form of satisfaction via a coordination of actions and interests. This form of organisation, according to Piaget, ends at seven years of age when the child begins to acquire the power of seeing things from another point of view. The child at this stage also develops the power to organise his relation to objects in reality (assisted by an idea of number) with the help of rules relating to conservation and reversibility. This activity is the key to conceptual thinking, a form of thinking that Wittgenstein characterises as seeng the same occur with variations( cf Aristotelian and Kantian categorical thinking). Piaget examines this issue in the light of an “experiment” where, in the presence of a child, he forms a row of 10 objects that he then reforms into groups of 4 and and 6 objects. He discovers that children under 7 do not conserve the number 10 and instead see a change that does not conserve this number. He notes the same phenomenon in relation to pouring a liquid from a vessel of one shape into a vessel of another shape. The volume of liquid in a vessel is obviously, for us conservatives, a function of the variables of the height and circumference of the container. Children under seven focus upon only one variable. What we appear to be dealing with here in both cases is a mistake in perception rather than a mistake in mathematics. Seeing the different groupings of objects as instances of the same number, and seeing the volume of liquid to remain the same throughout the change requires, Piaget argues, the mental operation of reversibility. With this operation and the more general attitude of decentring, when we see the same thing from two different points of view, we are encountering the origins of what he refers to as the birth of the “epistemological subject”. These operations in his opinion are not derivable from previous experiential encounters, but rather the emergence of new characteristics of the mind that enable more complex coordinations of actions and representations. The above internalised operations are coordinations of actions and replace earlier essentially perceptual intuitions of change. This transition from an intellectual intuition to an intellectual operation is also mirrored in the reorganisation of affectivity, will, and moral feelings. Affectivity, Piaget shows, in the beginning of a child’s psychological development, is egocentric and heteronomous, and at this stage the child’s relation to its care giver and other authority figures is essentially one of obedience. Imitation is the activity that drives reorganisation of the child’s psyche. Piaget tracks the responses of children through different intellectual stages which he calls pre-operational(2-7) and concrete operational (7-11) in relation to the use of rules in a game of marbles. For the younger pre-operational child the justification of the rules does not tolerate an innovation or change of the rules by a peer. Such change would be disrespectful of the institution of the rules of the game. Children at the concrete operations stage, on the other hand, because of their respect for one another, will accept any innovation or change of rules by a peer that facilitates the playing of the game. Seeing the game from another point of view obviously plays a role in this change of attitude, as does the operation of reversal which allows the child to believe that the game remains the same in spite of a change of rules. Piaget claims that at this stage the acceptance of the new rule is a consequence of a kind of contract between the players of game with the new rule. Cheating is no longer something violating some eternal law but rather a violation of an agreement between the players, an act of disrespect toward them. A shift from respect for elders and authority is also reflected in the view of children that lying to each other is a much more serious matter than lying to authority figures. It is at this stage, Piaget argues, that a communal attitude toward justice is being formed. In the pre-operational stage the question of justice appears merely as an emotional reaction to perceived injustices on the part of the authority. At the concrete operations stage, emotionally motivated intuitions are replaced by the activity of the will: it is the will that is the affective equivalent of the intellectual operation.

O Shaughnessy in his work “The Will: a Dual aspect Theory” characterises this so called “affective equivalent of the operation” in more Freudian terms and in so doing is perhaps expressing a more fruitful relation to Aristotelian hylomorphic and Kantian critical theory:

“Now “Will” is often construed either as “impulsive act urge” or else as striving: the latter phenomenon being uniquely the expression effect of the former: a kinship that explains the fluctuating sense of the word. And my concern is mostly with “striving”..Now “the Will” is in either of these senses, generally speaking an ego-affirmative phenomenon, i.e. manifestative of the distinctive individual personality with its distinctive system of beliefs and desires and values”(PXX11)

The above quote, in contrast to Piaget’s concern with intelligence appears to be opening the discussion up by reference to a theory of personality that can say something about our ethical and political relations to each other. There is also, in the above, reference to the complex relation between the spontaneous impulse to act and the more thoughtful reflective form of action so well characterised by Aristotle, Kant, and Freud. The idea of “levels” is suggested by various meanings of the word “will”, and these would be variously characterised by Freud in terms of his three principles(Energy Regulation Principle(ERP) Pleasure-Pain Principle(PPP) and the Reality Principle(RP)). The Reality Principle is the principal concern of the Freudian ego whose major task is to relate systematically and holistically to the external world whilst simultaneously regulating the emotions.

Piaget’s work is obviously relevant in this discussion and although you will not find an “I” that thinks and that functions as a central organising agency, there is nevertheless much that reminds one of Aristotelian and Kantian concerns. In particular Piaget’s sensory motor stage giving rise to sensory motor schemas subject to accommodation processes and used for the assimilation of reality could find a home in the Kantian process of apperception. Piaget’s end-game of an autonomous ethical agent is also reminiscent of Kantian ethical concerns: although it is not clear that Piaget would accept that such an agent would regulate their actions by means of universal and categorical imperatives. In a work entitled “Six Psychological Studies”(Translated by Tenzer, A, New York, Vintage books,1968), we encounter the following Freudian/Kantian words:

“Will appears when there is a conflict of tendencies or tensions, when, for example, one oscillates between a tempting pleasure and a duty. Then what does will consist of? In such a conflict there is always an inferior tendency that, in and of itself is stronger(the desire for pleasure in this example) and a superior tendency that is momentarily weaker(the duty). The act of will does not consist of following the inferior and stronger tendency: on the contrary one would then speak of the failure of the will or lack of will-power. Will power involves reinforcing the superior but weaker tendency so as to make it triumph.”(P.59)

The above quote could also be regarded as a Hegelian type of response to Kant in the form of dialectical reasoning. A form of reasoning that attempts to find a synthesis between the master and slave tendencies, a synthesis between a thesis and an antithesis. We see here no positivistic equivocation over which of the above “subjective” positions to defend. Talk of the power of the will, on the other hand, might suggest a naturalistic interpretation of a phenomenon that rather requires interpretation in terms of principles. The categorical imperative does appear, however, not to possess the operational quality of reversibility because the relation at issue here is between that of an action, a maxim of an action and a universal, necessary law governing the action and not a reversible action. It is, however, possible that while reversibility is a concrete operation, the categorical imperative can only be made sense of, from the point of view of the stage of abstract operations. Nowhere does Piaget say or even suggest this possibility, however. At this stage we do abstract from objects and actions and the focus is on propositions, or in the case of ethical action, maxims. The moral personality is formed at this stage. Authority becomes “abstract” and the moral personality subjects itself to some form of discipline that is self originated. It is during these formative years that a life-plan is generated. The plan is eventually completely decentred and may be constituted entirely by abstract principles. This plan and the discipline associated with it its idealistic ambitions can, Piaget argues, reach Messianic proportions. As part of the process leading up to this ideal state we can often find the adolescent reflecting hypothetically upon the society he wishes to reform, perhaps without always understanding Chesterton’s fence principle(which states that one ought to understand why the fence was erected before dismantling it). Perhaps Piaget’s classification of this stage of the formation of the moral personality as metaphysical, is a mistake. Perhaps the metaphysical age is best reserved for those elders who later in life fully actualise their rational potential, and understand the whys and the wherefores of the institutions of society and what these institutions require of them. The adolescent loves discussion. Aristotles definition of being human is rational animal capable of discourse. Perhaps discourse is an intermediate stage on the road to actualising ones potential of rationality and thereby actualising in Aristotelian terms ones virtue(areté-doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Areté also implies making the right judgements with the right motivations at the right time. These judgements can manifest mans rationality not just at the level of discourse, but at the highest levels of thought when he, for example, makes laws(constructs fences). Here indeed there is a demand that the law maker must understand the why’s and wherefores of all that will be affected by the law. Law making is political metaphysics.

This raises the issue of justification. For Aristotle the “metaphysical age” would refer to those that understand the 4 kinds of change, the 3 principles of change, the 4 causes of change, and the 3 Sciences that that systematically explain and justify all change. Kant would hesitate over the completeness(in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason) of this characterisation and add understanding in terms of the categories of judgment and the limits of our reasoning powers.

Piaget in his clinical studies of children proved that, at the level of facts, whether these facts be at the simple perceptual level or a more complex intellectual level, this apprehension involves interpretation using existing structures or forms in the mind(which in Kantian terms means concepts in relation to one another and categories of the understanding). Piaget points out in this context, that a fact is established by requiring changes in ones environment be subject to a process of questioning, e.g. an apple falls from a tree whilst the sun is going down and a question with universal intent is asked about these changes(by, for example, Newton). The question has its background in a conceptual network and particular forms of categorical understanding, kinds of change, principles of change, causes of change, and Natural Science with its methods and history of development. There is in this complex process, no simple “reading” of properties of reality to compile a picture. The initial universal question of Newton’s relates to motion, a form of physical change in the universe. The interpretation of this phenomenon requires an advanced form of abstract operational theoretical activity which includes principles, laws, and mathematical calculations as well as the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The facts are embedded in, or emerge from, both categories of judgement and principles of reason. These Aristotelian and Kantian aspects are only partially acknowledged by Piaget, perhaps because of a bias in favour of a theoretical commitment to scientific verification as practised by a community of positivistically inclined scientists who eschewed all forms of metaphysical commitments(whether they be critical as in the case of Kant or principled as in the case of Aristotle). What is at issue in this discussion is also a de juris view of concepts, rather than their de facto content. Facts therefore occur at a high level of understanding and reason on the basis of a matrix of concepts and propositions which allow questions to be posed and answered: these answers can be characterised as verifications(Piaget). This procedure is, in essence, very similar to a court room proceeding in which lawyers and judges put questions to witnesses: questions to which they most of the time already know the answers. The law and its human embodiment in the form of judges provide the categorical framework in this context of explanation/justification. The court room is the practical and concrete manifestation of the law that determines the form and nature of the proceedings. Here, the truth and knowledge of the law determines the outcome of the battle between the dialectical opponents of the prosecution of a case and its defence. The court room is the metaphysical realm in which the application of knowledge in the context of human conduct occurs. By conduct Piaget means “conscious action”, and his psychological investigations begin by investigating the questioning activity of our sensory motor systems insofar as they are intentionally directed at the environment. The primary intentions are either to assimilate what is occurring in the environment under the schemata involved in the questioning activity, or alternatively, to accommodate(change) ones system of schemata so that future assimilation can take place. This process cannot but remind one of some of the exchanges we encounter in the epistemological dialogues of Plato in which the intention appears to be to prove that one must know what one is looking for before one can know that what one has found is what one was looking for. The Greek spirit inhabits our courtrooms and justice systems in more senses than one.

Consciousness for Piaget is tied up with both intention and meaning and thereby appears to align him more with the phenomenological tradition than the empirical tradition in Psychology. He rejects the latter concentration upon a methodical resolution of the whole of experience in search of “atoms”: a search which later requires a mythical law of association to synthesise the elements back into a recognisable whole. Piaget is, however critical of both the Phenomenological and the Existential traditions as represented by Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger, partly because of his conviction that rationality in the form of a logic governing mental activity has its origins not solely in the coordination of sensory and thought processes but rather also in processes which coordinate action. Piaget would agree, however with phenomenological/existential criticisms of empirical traditions that reduce action to behavioural movement subject to Humean causation and the association of stimuli and responses. Piaget’s concept of action lies closer to the later Wittgenstein’s appeal(as a form of justification) to “What we do”, but it is not clear whether Piaget would have responded positively to the Wittgensteinian appeal to “forms of life” in order to justify the way in which we use language. Wittgenstein’s appeal is very Aristotelian. In his later work Wittgenstein undoubtedly would have agreed with Piaget that facts are answers to questions, but it is not clear that either thinker would have agreed to differentiating questions that occur in a context of exploration/discovery from questions that occur in a context of explanation/justification. Certainly it appears that we can impose this contextual distinction upon Piaget and argue that questions which give rise to simple observations and the manipulation and quantitative measurement of variables may be a part of the human activity of exploration/discovery. The human activity of explanation/justification may, in stark contrast, refer to conceptual questions seeking to identify the essence of a phenomenon where the answer arises from the logical connection between a number of propositions and the justification of this connection.

Kant pointed out that in Science we are dealing with several different kinds of explanation ranging from the verification or proof that we are applying concepts to new and different situations(assimilation), to Transcendental judgments constituted by the combination of judgments in accordance with the categories of substance, causality etc. The kinds of mistake that occur in one context is very different to the kinds of mistake that can occur in another. Wittgenstein takes up this theme in his later Philosophy when in his criticism of Philosophy he points to a tendency to extract terms or judgements from their natural home or universe of discourse, and use them in another universe or discourse in which they may not belong. Gilbert Ryle in his works referred to this activity as a category-mistake but Wittgenstein would probably characterise this phenomenon more broadly by saying our intellect has become bewitched by our language. For Kant the issue would be a straightforward reference to a confusion of category judgments with each other. The most obvious example of this, in an ethical context, would be Kant’s refusal to accept the claim that the fact of our happiness or unhappiness are central to the justification and explanation of our moral judgments. This, for Kant, would be a kind of category mistake in logic: a mistake that refuses to recognise the fallacy of deriving an ought statement(statement of how things ought to be) from an is-statement(statement of fact, of how things are). Normative ought statements are primary in that they govern the actualising processes that result in our rational belief that we are worthy of being happy. This latter form of judgement obviously resides in the form of life Socrates. Plato and Aristotle were discussing in their search for an answer to the question “What is justice?” One of the key elements of this discussion was that the just and the unjust alike ought to experience what they deserve to experience. Indeed in the Republic there is a long proof that the tyrannical ruler will lose his mind and be put to death by his own guards as a consequence of his own bloodthirsty behaviour.

At the conceptual level, the question “What is justice?” is not asking for an empirical instance or verification but rather a more abstract form of answer for those who refuse to accept the positivist picture of the world as a totality of facts. The question is undoubtedly an example of what Aristotle would have called an aporetic question, requiring an aporetic answer in the form of, at the very least, a complex definition incorporating principles of justice that can be used to identify examples of both justice and injustice. These principles in Plato’s Republic included both the principle of specialisation and knowledge of the form(principle) of the good. Whether or not we use the Wittgensteinian idea of man as a rule following animal is going to depend upon what we exactly mean by the term “rule”. If we mean some concrete schema that we have temporarily agreed upon with our peers then this will obviously prove insufficient to characterise the differences between just and unjust actions. The unjust man might well be following an agreed upon rule with his peers. The rule should meet Kantian criteria and enable one to situate the rule in a context of explanation/justification such that one can in a tribunal of questioning establish whether the maxim/rule is universalisable and subsumable under the formulations of the moral law given by Kant.

Wittgenstein, we know from his Tractatus(an inspiration for positivists), believed that both ethics and religion were important areas of human existence and they were so because their principles or laws were guiding humankind in the right direction. He shied away from a full blooded justification of the importance of ethical and religious judgments because he felt that they could not be logically justified, claiming instead(in his early work) that they mystically “showed” us their importance. In his later work “On Certainty” he refers to language embodying what he called a “world-view” and the idea of man being merely a rule following animal appears to have diminished in importance, thus making more logical space for ethical and religious judgements although Wittgenstein is at pains to include in this world view numerous particular/contingent statements such as one can be certain that one has not been on the moon. Whether or not this world view would contain categories of judgments of the understanding is not clear. What is clear is that logic is not abolished in Wittgensteinian justifications.

For Piaget the ethical decentring process begins by the development of the capacity to see things from another persons point of view which, in turn, has developed from a centration in sensory motor activity. Piaget, unfortunately, as we mentioned above refers to adolescence(15-17) as a metaphysical age committed to a form of metaphysical idealism. The term “megalomanic” is used. It is not clear how this form of hypothetical reasoning fits into the propositional focus of the abstract operations stage. Is any hypothesis about how the world ought to be, only to be measured by the factual happiness/unhappiness of the agent concerned? If this was the case one can certainly imagine a world view of a megalomanic appearing. It is not clear here whether Piaget would insist upon propositions having the logical form of the categorical imperative to be the constitutive element of actions and judgments of a well balanced moral personality. It is not clear, that is, how the good will that Piaget referred to in an earlier quote is to be correctly characterised.

In the developmental process many things can go wrong, of course. One might be a part of a family/village/city constellation where it is common for inhabitants to transfer filial feelings and affections(connected to the believed omniscience and omnipotence of parents) onto divinities and it may also be common that there is projection of some aspects of divinity onto parental authority. In another scenario Adolescence, perhaps, may find fault with parental authority and search for safety in the houses of the divinities: the “true home” of omnipotence and omniscience. Reason and rationality are conspicuous by their absence in these emotionally laden activities: the belief in omnipotence and omniscience have their roots in fear and anxiety. Adolescence we know is a stormy period of life. For Piaget equilibrium is best restored by the power of Intelligence. This still raises the question of the role of personality: many unstable geniuses are capable of great success in instrumentally oriented activities. Intelligence was defined by William James as the selection of the most appropriate means to desired ends. Romeo is blocked by many obstructions that block his path to Juliet but he overcomes them all only to die tragically in the end–a very stormy end. Clearly intelligence has its limitations and these limitations may be best presented in a theory of personality rather than a theory of intelligence. Exactly what Piaget means by the concept of Intelligence he refers to is not clear. There is certainly a tendency to couple the term to Consciousness rather than the life force of Eros and the fate of Ananke.

Piaget in one of his published conversations with Bringuier(Conversations with Piaget, Translated Bringuier, J, Chicago, Chicago University Press,1980, p.6) claimed that the consciousness of other people is impenetrable. He also claimed that philosophical questioning is a means of asking questions it cannot answer because of the lack of an appreciation of the concept of verification( P.3), the battle cry of the positivist movement. Metaphysics, argues Piaget in this conversation has made no progress in its journey from Plato to Heidegger. Why Piaget chooses these two figures to landmark this particular philosophical journey is a question worth asking, especially given the thesis of this work that the two primary landmarks of this journey are Aristotle and Kant. Kant, for example, had no difficulty in seeing, in the Scientific work of Newton, the presence of propositions of both transcendental and metaphysical significance intertwined with an acceptance of empirical verification for empirical judgments. In his first work of the “Critique of Pure Reason”, there is also an advancement of the use of both transcendental and metaphysical logic in relation to the categories of judgment which incorporated Aristotles appeal to categories of existence as terms of final justification in scientific matters. Kant also applied metaphysics to Ethics and significantly advanced the cause of ethics to be regarded as an objective universal form of discourse governed by a moral law. If one wishes to ignore all the evidence of the advancement of Philosophy via transcendental and metaphysical logic then one may be forced to rest ones case on intelligence, agreement over rules and verification in epistemological contexts, as well as contractual forms of cooperation in practical contexts.

We do not find the same kind of metaphysical problem in Kohlberg’s theory of moral stages. There is a paradoxical reference to Dewey but in the 6th and final stage of Kohlbergs theory , a stage based on principles, and which follows a social contract stage based on maxims of the greatest good for the greatest number. In this final 6th stage justice as conceived of by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is characterised categorically and universally(as it is in Kant). In this stage of Kohlberg’s theory principled action becomes an end in itself that presupposes transcendental and metaphysical characterisation. Kohlberg even postulated a possible 7th stage of development in which religious concerns play a more significant role. Kant was less tentative in his characterisation of the role of religion in the postulated end which he called the summum bonum(the greatest good). In this final end, life practically guarantees a flourishing form of existence. Kohlbergs account is not however a Kantian account, partly because he would share certain anti-metaphysical concerns of Dewey, but also partly because there is a distinctively Hegelian influence in the reference to a dialectical/inductive process of conflict between alternative positions which in turn gives rise to a forced compromise between the alternatives : a compromise in which an equilibrium or synthesis is established.

Kohlberg uses Piaget’s principle of reversibility to prove the equality of his moral principle. Such a principle, he argues is the same for all of us. This has clear normative implications because it claims that all agents ought to use the principle in the appropriate circumstances. According to Kant, if the moral agent embraces the categorical imperative continually and consistently a flourishing life will be the just consequence.

Piaget is, as we have argued earlier, more inclined to positivism than transcendentalism, but there are elements of the latter in Piaget’s account. Piaget characterises his own position as scientific or genetic epistemology(Conversations P.16). His focus is partly on how consciousness can function intelligently in contexts of exploration/discovery. There is a concession to Philosophical reasoning and philosophical forms of justification in his attitude toward causation which he characterises as problematic in contexts of psychological reflection. Piaget claims, for example, that the Pavlovian ringing of a bell in a conditioning experiment “implies” salivation. The argument he would use for this, presumably, would be a variation of a Quinean position to the effect that the salivation is conceptualised as a theory laden response logically connected to the ringing of a bell in virtue of a theory, that coordinates actions and schemata. It is difficult to see how one could attribute intelligence, or any form of consciousness to the salivating dog. In Kantian anthropological language, salivation is not something the dog does, but rather something that happens to the dog. We can be conscious of what happens to us, but without a principle of identity for consciousness (which does not stop at the boundaries of my own consciousness and allows us access to other peoples consciousness) we can not regard consciousness as a principle governing what we are experiencing. Piaget to some extent agrees with this because he does appear to see consciousness as some kind of product of the development of various capacities and powers. Perhaps a dog does not possess consciousness, or if it does, it may be a different form of consciousness to the form that I possess. In any case, Piaget does not choose to experiment upon dogs to obtain his results, even if it is easier to control the variables of the experiment. Animals are simpler forms of life than man, and though they can be relatively complex life forms in themselves, they cannot possess the range of powers of the species man. The history of the development of these powers is an epistemological concern for Piaget:

“The problem is how knowledge is formed, how the structures of intelligence are formed. Well, in contemporary man, and enormous number of structures have already been formed, and we dont know their history. No matter what word is used, it has thousands of years of history behind it. Its a concept that has been collectively elaborated over an enormous number of generations. You dont grasp the mode of construction, you get the product. Products are not enough for me.” (P.20)

This partly explains why Piaget chooses to study children: particular forms of intelligence have particular structures and actualising histories. (The history of words, or at least of written words are accessible in the preserved writings of the ages and even if there are thousands of years of written works to study it is a possible area of study for a psychologist as we shall later when we discuss the work of Julian Jaynes).

Piaget believes that children are forms of life in the process of actualisation, and can therefore be profitably studied in a clinical setting. A number of important points emerge from the above quote.One can question whether products of culture such as words are difficult to chart the history of. Certainly a word, like a part of the body, can change its function, but if it does so, there are two possibilities; either the former use completely disappears in which case(if we are talking about the use of a word in the oral tradition before language was written down) investigation might be limited if there is no family resemblance of the lost word to words we do have traces of. The second possibility is that we still have access to present or past recorded uses and these can be recorded as the basis for the learning of the word in the culture. Studying the mode of the production of the use of the word presents no difficulty if we are dealing with writing.

Piaget’s products might either be schemata or operations produced by the mechanisms of accommodation and assimilation. The products of operations incorporate elements that “imply” each other. The “operations” of reversibility and conservation are also aspects of intelligent use of our perceptual and intellectual powers. Charting the history of schemata or operations would undoubtedly situate us in a context of discovery and reveal some of the necessary conditions of the product, but not the totality of conditions which would provide us with a sufficient reason for the essence of the product. Aristotle’s metaphysics is a metaphysics of first principles, principles of justification. Focussing upon contexts of exploration/discovery is unlikely to to reveal the nature or truth of principles whose very constitution results from abstracting from contexts of exploration/discovery.

The fact that Kohlberg made a move toward universal ethical justification that Piaget refused to, requires an explanation. The reason for Piaget’s refusal probably resides in his skepticism toward metaphysics and what Kant referred to as the realm of the super-sensuous. In a chapter entitled “The False Ideal of Super-scientific Knowledge”, from his work “Insights and Illusions in Philosophy”, Piaget discusses the problem of teleological explanation in Science: the problem of finality. His discussion refers neither to Aristotelian arguments supporting this form of explanation, nor to Kantian arguments. He approaches the problem by distinguishing between what he claims are two modes of knowledge, namely, scientific knowledge and philosophical knowledge. Piaget maintains that Philosophical knowledge claims that its own knowledge is essential knowledge but scientific knowledge, in contrast, is limited by being tied to the spatio-temporal world as conceived by the positivist. Now while Kant certainly would not have been impressed with positivist science or observationally based methodically determined mechanical processes of exploration/discovery, he was notably impressed with philosophically based Newtonian science and teleologically based biological science in which appeal is made to what is supersensuous(that which cannot be experienced either because it is a principle or because it is lost in a historically based process of development). Kant has the following to say in defence of teleological explanation in his Critique of Judgement:

“..the mechanism of nature is not sufficient to enable us to conceive the possibility of an organised being, but that in its root origin it must be subordinated to a cause acting by design–or at least, that the type of our cognitive faculty is such that we must conceive it to be so subordinated. But just as little can the mere teleological source of a being of this kind enable us to consider and to estimate it as at once an end and a product of nature. With that teleological source we must further associate the mechanism of nature as a sort of instrument of a cause acting by design and contemplating an end to which nature is subordinated even in its mechanical laws. The possibility of such a union of of two completely different types of causality, namely that of nature in its universal conformity to law and that of an idea which restricts nature to a particular form of which nature, as nature, is in no way the source, is something which our reason does not comprehend. For it resides in the supersensible substrate of nature, of which we are unable to make any definite affirmation, further than that it is the self subsistent being of which we know merely the phenomenon.”(P82-3)

Piaget has a conception of Philosophy(form Plato to Heidegger),as armchair epistemology which he wishes to criticise from the point of view of his genetic epistemology that revolves around intelligence and the logically constituted transformational structures of propositions. Structures and transformations play an important role in his account of the development process but he rejects finality and teleological explanation of the form that Kant refers to above. He does so because his programme of genetic epistemology is aligned with the logicians of the age, whether they be logical positivists or logical atomists. It is ultimately the presence of logical operations that enables the construction of the physical, biological, and social worlds. Behaviour at all stages of development manifests some kind of logic of coordination. In this he resembles Aristotle but without the breadth of interest, and understanding of the final causes of ethics, politics, and culture.The rejection of teleological explanation also coincides with the rejection of the Kantian idea of man as both a phenomenon and a noumenon. The rejection of this latter form of reasoning we find below:

“Now we have in the world beings of but one kind whose causality is teleological, or directed to ends, and which at the same time are beings of such a character that the law according to which they have to determine ends for themselves is represented by them themselves as unconditioned and not dependent on anything in nature, but as necessary in itself. The being of this kind is man, but man as regarded as noumenon. He is the only natural creature whose peculiar objective characterisation is nevertheless such as to enable us to recognise in him a supersensible faculty..his freedom–and to perceive both the law of the causality and the object of freedom which that faculty is able to set before itself as the highest end–the supreme good in the world.”(P.99)

The above for Piaget would be both an example of the metaphysical thinking he rejected, and an example of philosophy claiming “knowledge” it could not defend on epistemological grounds (the grounds of verification). Kant, in this context, claimed that no appeal to empirical verification procedures, or mechanical causation, could ever completely explain even the generation of a blade of glass. We must even here introduce the level of an unknowable thing in itself as the basis underlying our theoretical characterisations of phenomena. Critical reasoning clearly regarded epistemology as inadequate from the point of view of the principle of sufficient reason. Critical reasoning, however, aligns well with hylomorphic theory in this matter given that Aristotle would have insisted on all 4 kinds of cause in his explanations of the phenomena of life forms. These explanations aim to reveal the underlying metaphysical nature of what we experience.

Piaget speaks in this context of two different senses of truth: philosophical truth which he mysteriously reduces to an intuition and an ordinary meaning of truth:

“The ordinary meaning of “truth” refers to that which is verifiable by everyone. The method of verification does not much matter provided it is open to all.”(P.80 Insight and Illusion)

The positivistic tone of the above is unmistakeable, and it clearly clashes even with Heidegger’s account of truth as aletheia (unconcealment) in which the supersensible, the metaphysical, can be revealed by rigorous reasoning processes of the kind we encounter in both Aristotle and Kant. Neither Philosopher would base their reasoning processes upon an intuition. Standard positivist moves are then made that claim philosophy to be attempting to persuade or convert, rather than rationally convince their audiences. The interesting question to ask in this context is “Why does Piaget mistake reasoning for intuition?” The answer resides in what he regards as “the products” of Kantian reasoning which he claims was produced by the obscure nature of its content plus its falsification by Fichte , Schelling and Hegel. Kant as we know invoked transcendental idealism as necessary to explain the relation between phenomena and noumena and thereby found himself placed in the field of German Idealism together with Fichte, Shelling and Hegel. Kant’s proclamation that he was also an empirical realist insofar as intuition was concerned, appears to have escaped Piaget’s attention. In the years after Hegel’s influence began to wane, the Hegelian idea of the absolute was falsely projected onto the Philosophy of Kant. This idea of the absolute, according to Piaget brought with it a commitment to viewing science as a limited inferior form of thought which we know is a false claim insofar as Kantian and Aristotelian Philosophy were concerned. Piaget’s criticism of Kant is not however absolute and we can see him positively referring to critical Philosophy in a discussion of the philosophical psychology of Maine de Biran:

“Kant has shown that the “self” is not a substance, a force, or a cause but owed its identity to an internal unity of apperception.”(P.86 Insight and Illusion)

This of course is not a wholly accurate representation of the Kantian position which, as we know, regarded the practical self causing itself to act as an important condition of freedom. Piaget appears to believe, however that German idealism created the absolute self out of the Kantian a priori(P.86). He notes also, following his argument relating to “the products” of German Idealism, that Romanticism followed this philosophical movement and championed irrationalism in the name of mystical metaphysics. This in turn led to the Philosophy of Bergson that in turn led to Existentialism. Piaget’s response to this chain of events is:

“But existence is one thing and knowledge of existence another. If the philosopher does not wish to be mistaken for a novelist, whose peculiar genius is to depict reality through his vision of the world without looking for that which is independent of it… he will then need to acquire an epistemology of the knowledge of existence…We will in chapter four return to the fundamental psychological illusion that consists in looking for an absolute beginning in an elementary conscious realisation when all knowledge is connected with action and is therefore conditioned by the earlier schemes of activity: and we shall later in this chapter examine critically Husserl’s epistemology(P.86-87)

Looking for a reality that is independent of both our intuition and conceptualisation of it would, of course, be problematic for Kant because intuitions without concepts are blind and concepts without intuitions are empty. For Kant, thinking can only occur when concepts organise intuitions in the unity of apperception. Piaget’s comment about action fails to recognise once again the Kantian concept of the possible free self-causation of action by the agent. For Kant, when we freely choose a course of action our will is capable of transcending a strong desire(as Piaget noted earlier) with a weaker desire by supporting the latter with a process of reasoning that is in favour of the weaker desire.

Piaget also engages with Phenomenology and Existentialism in criticising Merleau-Ponty for claiming that Science is constructed upon the basis of the lived relation we have to the world. In the following quote we encounter the paradoxical claim that:

“The aim of scientific thought is always to get away from the lived world, contradicting it instead of utilising it”(P.87)

Piaget here is partly objecting to the phenomenology of perception because he believes that science originates in a logic of action and not a perception “abstracted from its motor and practical context”(P.87)

It is not clear however that Merleau-Ponty is ignoring the intimate relation of the sensory and motor systems in his reflections, although it is clear that there is no concern with logic in his phenomenological investigations. Piaget sees in some forms of phenomenological reflection, a commitment to metaphysical transcendence that goes hand in hand with a critique of science. He cites the work of Bergson and its appeal to a number of dualistic antitheses, e.g. lived organisation and matter, instinct and intelligence, time and space, internal life and action or language. Piaget elaborates upon this citation by arguing that these antitheses obscure continuities which science acknowledges, e.g. the return of the organic to the inorganic upon death. Bergson postulates the above antitheses in order that we may side with with one of them. With respect to the antithesis between life and matter Piaget mysteriously claims that the science of cybernetics is an interesting study here, in that it lies somewhere between physics and living phenomena: cybernetics constructs mechanical models that simulate finality. Issues relating to AI lie close to the surface of this form of reflection. The Turing Test, for example, claims that machines can be said to behave intelligently if human observers cannot tell the difference between human behaviour and machine response . This has been tested in a language translation exercise. Computer programmes that can beat chess masters in a game of chess is also invoked as evidence of machine “intelligence”. The computer is clearly following programming rules and this raises the question of whether we can say of a computer that can automatically translate Chinese into English, that it can be said to “understand” Chinese. Does a computer that can beat a chess master necessarily “understand” the game of chess? John Searle claims that we cannot say these things, that we cannot therefore truly predicate the concept of natural “intelligence” to these artificial” causal responses.

For Piaget instinct may be involved in the first sensory motor stage of development and intelligence emerges naturally and continuously even in activities that are prior to the acquisition of language, in the ability the infant has, for example, to construct the schema of the permanent object, which applies when the object is no longer present in the infants perceptual fields. Following these demonstrations of “intelligence” come the conservation of the volume of a liquid and the conservation of number in the concrete world of objects and events. Subsequent to this in the stage of concrete operations all these intelligent responses are reconstructed on the plane of representation. In this process Piaget points to what he calls a “logic” of the instinctively regulated body seeking equilibrium at even very primitive levels. This “logic” is related first to the coordination of actions and then subsequently to the ordering of operations which Piaget defines as internalised reversible actions. It is in this discussion that we find Piaget’s arguments against the discontinuity of the antitheses of instinct and intelligence. The coordination of action is one of the central pillars of Piaget’s “logic”, e.g. actions of combining, ordering, correlating one thing with another etc. These actions have transformational qualities.

Piaget’s account, like that of William James’s, descends into a materialistic abyss when he claims that the coordination of actions is a biological phenomenon based on neural coordination in the brain. Logic is recognised to be a form of mental regulation but the question naturally arises as to whether intelligence is the best principle to postulate as responsible for developmental growth of the individuals powers or capacities over the range of activities extending from the instinctive level to the more mature actualisation of understanding and reason. Piaget uses the term psychogenesis to describe this developmental process. Freud agrees with the use of this term to describe the cause of mental illness, but Freud also emphasises, however, the importance of physically based appetites(somatogenesis) in his account of psycho-sexual development, and thereby brings his account closer to the kind of account we find in Plato and Aristotle(an account of personality in contrast to an account of intelligence). The Freudian and the Greek accounts would refuse to accept the claim by Piaget that mechanical simulations of finality of the kind we encounter in cybernetics can simulate the essential aspects of life The grounds of this refusal relate to the objection that simulations only superficially resemble the complex activities of complex life forms.

Piaget praises Husserl for his opposition to Kantian idealistic a priorism, and for his commitment to empiricist and positivistic assumptions that takes the reality of the object as its central focus. Both Piaget and Husserl also find common ground in the idea of the intention of the subject and the object. Phenomenology, however, in Piaget’s view completely neglects the role of the actuality of the object considering the fact that the object has both a historical or genetic dimension (that was revealed in the earlier quote we discussed relating to “the product” of this history or genesis). Piaget points out that Husserl’s method is anti-historical: it begins from a starting point in consciousness and its relation to reality, and believes its results to be ontological because of the synthesis of subject and object. The method Piaget referred to was used in Husserl’s book on arithmetic which, Piaget argued, failed to account for the normative nature of mathematics. Husserl has been accused of “psychologism”, and Piaget agrees with this criticism on the grounds that a norm can never be generated from a fact. This accusation of “psychologism” in fact caused Husserl to move to a more Platonic position in which non-temporal truths can be apprehended, i.e. he moved from what he called “mundane” consciousness to a more transcendental form of consciousness. Yet it is a subject that is conscious and the fact that this subject is conscious is a fact and not a norm. Logic is as we know a system of normative rules that relate to reality conceptually in the mode of the “ought”. One ought to think logically(not contradict oneself, etc) but if one does not do this there are no consequences for the normative rules of thought. These rules do not, that is, describe what people in fact do, e.g. contradict themselves, but rather demand that they ought not to contradict themselves. What is happening in our spatio-temporal world does not suffice to reject these principles or laws. In fact the actualisation of the operations of thought are part of this process of distantiation from the spatio-temporal part of the process, in which the subject moves from particular actions to the more general coordination of actions. Reversibility, for example, Piaget argues, marks the characteristic nature of a maturing subject. It is the reason why counting 7 pebbles in a circle retains its quantitative identity when the pebbles are placed in a column and counted. The operation of reversibility both coordinates the actions of counting, and simultaneously justifies the conservation of the counting of the pebbles when they are arranged in a different configuration. Now the recounting of the pebbles certainly looks more like a verification than a new explorative activity of counting the pebbles as a means of answering the question”how many are there?” It appears in the recounting case we are attempting to prove something rather than discover something. Reversibility in this context, however, appears to be a technical concept generated in a clinical experimental context which calls upon the subject to engage in activities that belong in both the context of exploration/discovery and the context of explanation/justification. Quantitative conservation is the problem at issue when the question “Do we have more, less, or the same number of pebbles?” is posed.

Piaget’s argument here is complex: he is claiming that what he refers to as a philosophical intuition in the name of philosophical wisdom(rather than philosophical reasoning) is a complex composed of experimental and deductive components(P.116). He also claims that this appeal to philosophical wisdom ends in a realm of the coordination of values which he believes to be the chief illusion of Philosophical thinking. Neither Kant nor Aristotle would have characterised their metaphysics in this fashion, and it is not clear either what the phrase “coordination of values” means” or which philosophers are associated with it. Piaget again refers to the attempt to obtain an unverifiable supra-scientific form of knowledge, and he admits that Kant’s critical program was aimed at demolishing the above form of supra-scientific knowledge. Piaget does not, however tell us what he thinks about the realm of the noumenon that lies at the foundation of phenomenen.

Piaget does discuss Heidegger in the context of the divorce between Being and epistemology, and reference is made to aletheia and its claim to reveal the essence of Being. The failure of aletheia to produce particular truths is used to justify the judgment that Heidegger is only ultimately concerned with the coordination of values. Piaget’s concluding judgement in this discussion is in favour of the method of the scientist because, he argues, philosophers cannot prove that the metaphysical field of inquiry is in essence different from scientific inquiry. The suspicion here is that Piaget has failed to engage deeply with the Heideggerian position or indeed any critical or hylomorphic metaphysical position.

What is the consequence of Piaget’s position for Philosophical Psychology inspired by metaphysical assumptions? We know that many Philosophers see a fundamental distinction between scientific psychology and philosophical psychology. Many Philosophers of different persuasion, e.g. Wittgenstein have accused scientific psychology of conceptual confusion, telling us at best what we already know in the name of “discoveries” and at worst promoting falsehoods about various human powers and capacities.

Piaget dates Philosophical Psychology to Maine de Biran who he claims was aware of the distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal realms of reality. Maine de Biran attempted to provide an account of the “phenomenon” of man. Piaget claims that the International organisation, the “International Union of Scientific Psychology” experiences no difficulty in setting goals for their research projects and this is due to a positivistic commitment to a method of verification. There is, Piaget continues, no comparable organisation devoted to either the communication of Metaphysical ideas or the communication of ideas in the realm of Philosophical Psychology, apparently because of the difficulty in agreeing with one another over central commitments and central concepts such as “facts”, “essences”, “intuitions”, “intentions”, and “meanings”. Indeed there is even difficulty, Piaget argues, in agreeing over the subject matter of Philosophical Psychology. According to Piaget, Maine de Biran and Bergson are presenting facts, whilst Sartre and Husserl are focussing upon essences that require a special mode of dialectical reasoning or a phenomenological reduction. It is in the context of this discussion that we are given a definition of a fact: a fact, he argues, is an answer to a question: an answer that is a verification of a sequence of interpretations implied by the assumptions behind the question. It is a search for the facts that determines the only procedure possible to avoid confusion, namely:

“to study experimentally subjects in the process of verifying a fact, so as to analyse what this verification consists in” P.126-7)

This of course requires a theory that provides us with the possible interpretation of what is revealed experimentally. Piaget is referring here to his own clinical studies which even at the perceptual level of investigation requires a theory for the interpretation of the results. The facts that emerge in such procedures are, Piaget argues, denied in Existential investigations such as those we find in the work of Sartre. The reason for this is that there is an assumption behind these investigations that the origins of subjectivity are irrational, thus denying the role of intelligence: a role Piaget believes plays a decisive role in mental life.

Husserl’s phenomenological investigations are also criticised for focusing on subjective rather than objective forms of explanation. This antithesis of subject-object calls into question the idea of intentionality which Piaget insists can be clearly seen to be operating in his account of the way in which sensory-motor schematism and assimilatory schemas assist in coordinating actions. For Piaget intention is not a descriptive term.

Piaget asks whether Consciousness, together with the method of introspection, can provide us with the subject matter of Psychology: taking us back to the moment of the Divorce between Psychology and Philosophy in 1870 when Wundt and William James claimed consciousness for the Scientists as part of the divorce settlement. We all know that another divorce was in the works when behaviourism initially claimed that there was no such consciousness,: on this account Consciousness was at best an epi-phenomenon of behaviour as smoke was an epi-phenomenon produced by fire. This divorce was partly caused by the failure of psychologists to produce results in their experiments: results that everyone could agree with. There was, in other words a failure to control all the variables associated with pioneering experiments whose intention it was to chart the waters of consciousness. Indeed these experiments may have partly given rise to a discussion in which the subjective-objective distinction emerged as an explanation for the failure of the experiments. Philosophical Psychology, initially identified with the subject matter of Consciousness around the time of Hegel was then relegated to the lower division of the “subjective”.

In Kant’s work we find reference to a distinction between a phenomenal self and a noumenal self but there is no suggestion that the phenomenal self is in any sense “Subjective”. In the work, “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view” we are told that the explanatory principle of causation, when used to explain effects upon the self, produce knowledge of what can happen to man, but not knowledge of what he has the power to do. There is here no reference to a difference between what is subjective and what is objective embedded in a hierarchy of knowledge forms. Kant of course uses the distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal self to characterise the difference between scientific psychology and philosophical psychology. The account given in the Anthropology, is, according to Kant in answer to the aporetic philosophical question “What is man?”. The answer we find in this work contains reference to the Questions “What can I know?”, “What ought I to do?”, and “What can I hope for?”. All 4 questions are related in complex ways to each other yet it is important to point out that the Philosophical intention of the Anthropology was not solely epistemological but also practical. The Kantian definition of Anthropology was , “a doctrine of the knowledge of the human being, systematically formulated”. The discipline included what Kant referred to as Physical Anthropology which can be either observationally or speculatively grounded. If it takes the form of the latter it is a waste of time, Kant, argues. Observationally based anthropology, whether from the third person point of view or from the point of view of the first person introspection is subject to the 4 following criticisms:

1) A human who notices that he is the subject of observation will either become self conscious so that he is not manifesting natural behaviour or he willfully disguises his true intentions.

2)Introspection or the attempts to study oneself from a first person point of view is problematic especially in action contexts in which when an intention is active prevents self observation. When one “introspects” of observes oneself, however the intentional structure of the action dissipates

3)Constant circumstances generate habits that efface the role of the self whether it be from the first person point of view or the third person point of view.

4)Similarly, continually varying circumstances make it difficult to conceptualise what one is observing.

Kant, in the context of this discussion also discusses consciousness in a section entitled “On Consciousness of oneself”. We humans, it is argued, are raised above the level of consciousness that animals possess, because we possess a unity of consciousness acquired partly via thinking and reasoning. This actualises when I begin to use the word “I”. Prior to this moment the unity of consciousness I possess is merely felt. Anthropology will have difficulty, Kant insists, in fully explaining this complex form of consciousness we refer to as self-consciousness. In the beginning consciousness is, Piaget suggests, egotistical until about the age of 7 when the conditions for becoming rational begin with the actualisation of the capacity for seeing things from another persons point of view. Understanding in this context is not achieved by observation or imagination but rather from conceptual operations. In the world of the imagination forms of experiencing are not fixed but fluctuate continually in a stream of consciousness. If one abstracts all thought from this stream and attempts to describe what is happening in a context of exploration/discovery, this image-salad, in Kant’s view, could lead to the madhouse. Employing introspection continually in such a context may also create a compulsive state of mind that generates anxiety and ritualistic behaviour.

Piaget rests his account on the intelligence of the human being as defined by the power or capacity to select the means for ends. For both Aristotle and Kant this instrumental form of reasoning cannot constitute moral reasoning, which is reasoning about ends: for the simple reason that once the agent desires the end and focuses on the means, the end is no longer the theme of the action because instrumental ends are contingent and can be abandoned by the agent if his desires change (since the ends are self-related(related to ones own happiness)). Moral ends, on the other hand, are not self related and come in a context of duty and necessity from which the agent cannot escape on pain of diminishing his own self worth significantly. An agent may, for example, form a desire to build a house and select a builder in his mind to build his house. As long as no moral action has been performed in connection with this project, for example, promising the builder payment for his services, the desire to build the house and the project can legitimately be abandoned without moral objection. Now undoubtedly much intelligence may be required to build a house, but this, if defined as the means to achieve ends is not sufficient for moral actions, which require both intelligence and moral personality: any promise made to the builder must be kept and they cannot be abandoned in the way in which the project to build the house can be abandoned. Duty, that is, is a test of both intelligence and personality. This is not Piaget’s view of moral behaviour. He does speak of the autonomy of the individual and the Will as a regulator of feeling, but it is not quite clear what the idea of a good will means on Piaget’s account. The will for him cannot coordinate values because there is no account of the universality and necessity of these values.

Piaget’s distinction between verifiable science and unverifiable values raises a huge question about whether these two things can be coordinated. Perhaps intelligence is the organiser of these values but this then merely raises the further question of the nature of the relation between intelligence and personality, especially in the absence of the kind of categorical understanding we find presented in the work of Kant. For Kant. then, the only kind of “introspection” that is useful to refer to, is an intentional process of conceptualisation that is evidenced in our abstractions from intuitive content. Constantly fixating attention upon particulars in the stream of our consciousness without the intention to conceptualise them, transforms the mind into a stream of bric-a-brac and debris that cannot be described. It is this lack of structure that we encounter in the word salad of the schizophrenic or the manic ravings of the manic-depressive in the midst of a psychotic episode. Introspection as described by many Psychologists resembles the description of an eavesdropper, the image of which we find well represented in the Philosophy of Sartre. For Sartre describes an eavesdropper caught in the act by an observer who transforms the eavesdropper into an object by ” a look” which in turn gives rise to the emotion of shame where one lives ones freedom and becomes what the observer makes of one. The project of eavesdropping is of course a project embedded in a context of bad faith, the project of a voyeur whose stream of consciousness is in need of content, even if this content merely takes the form of the debris and bric-a-brac of life, not gathered for any particular rational purpose.

Trying to conceptualise the above experiences and the attempt to find the laws of these kinds of experiences using the cognitive functions of perception or intelligence appears to be a lost cause but it is one that many Philosophers and Psychologists are determined to engage in.

Piaget attempts to characterise personality in terms of rules in his work “The Moral Judgement of the Child”(Translated Gabain, M., New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1965, pp 95-6):

“We have, in connection with the actual facts examined, pointed to the obvious correlation between cooperation and the consciousness of autonomy. From the moment that children really begin to submit to rules and to apply them in a spirit of genuine cooperation, they acquire a new conception of these rules. Rules become something that can be changed if it is agreed that they should be, for the truth of a rule does not rest on tradition but on mutual agreement and reciprocity. How are these facts to be interpreted? In order to understand them, all we have to do is to take as our starting point the functional equation uniting constraint and egocentrism to take the first term of the equation through the successive values which link up constraint and cooperation. At the outset of this genetic progression the child has no idea of his own ego: external constraint works upon him and he distorts its influence in terms of his subjectivity, but he does not distinguish the part played by his subjectivity from the part played by environmental pressure. Rules therefore seem to him external and of transcendental origin….Now insofar as constraint is replaced by cooperation the child dissociates his ego from the thought of other people. For as the child grows up the prestige of older children diminishes, he can discuss matters more and more as an equal….he will learn to understand the other person and be understood by him.”

“To be is to be the value of a variable” Willard van Orman Quine has argued. There are some respects in which this quote could be applied to the above discussion of values especially considering the mathematical and logical characterisation of activity in the concrete and abstract operations stage. In concrete operations we saw how the two variables of the volume of the liquid were determinants of its perceived quantity. Relations between variables and their quantitative dimensions, even if Piaget might not be in agreement with this characterisation, occurs in terms to the Aristotelian principle relating to something remaining the same throughout change. Even if the height of the liquid changes we know that there has to be a cause to either add or remove liquid, and that neither of these events have been involved in the transference of liquid from one shaped vessel to another. That Piaget chooses to discuss value in terms of variables, places his work in an entirely different category to the work of both Aristotle and Kant. Mathematical logic is intimately involved in his characterisation of the formation of structures in the abstract operations stage. These structures are formed into a system which has the form of an algebraic lattice in which a simple classification system is transformed into combinatory binary operations that form a propositional system. Abstract operations no longer use the material of objects and events in the thinking process but rather propositional relations. This kind of logic is certainly abstract in the sense that has now left the realm of the grammatical structure and grammatically determined meanings of language. Indeed Piaget believes that intelligent actions (selecting and sorting objects) precedes the formation of language based classification and grammatical structures. Piaget has this to say on this difficult topic of the relation of language to thought and intelligence:

“language is not enough to explain thought, because the structures that characterise thought have their roots in action and in the sensory-motor mechanisms that are deeper than linguistics. It is also evident that the more the structures of thought are refined, the more language is necessary for the achievement of this elaboration. Language is thus a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the construction of logical operations. It is necessary because without the system of symbolic expression which constitutes language the operations would remain at the stage of successive actions without ever being integrated into simultaneous systems or a set of independent transformations.. Without language the operations would remain personal and would consequently not be regulated by interpersonal exchange and cooperation.”(Six Psychological Studies, P.98)

The above words indicate the reasons why Piaget believes the power of intelligence to be a different kind of power to the kind of reasoning involved when the moral personality considers what ought to be done. Aristotle in this context contributed to this discussion by pointing out the differences between using the calculative part of the mind that is involved in instrumental reasoning, and using the “contemplative” part of the mind which presumably focused upon the solution of metaphysical aporetic questions. There is, however, no discussion of the kind we find in Freud in which we encounter the claim that Language plays an important role in the transformation of preconscious and unconscious material into the form of consciousness. This we should recall for Freud was an important part of his therapy. In the above quote by Piaget we also see important references to decentering, rules and cooperation, with no mention of consciousness, but we are meant to see these elements as a part of the development of the will which normally would be considered by most Philosophical psychologists to be an important part of the moral personality. The problem with relating the will to the moral personality is that we cannot see any correlate in Piaget to Aristotelian and Kantian Principles and Laws of morality. Indeed even Freud’s system of principles: the energy regulation principle(ERP)the pleasure pain principle(PPP) and the Reality Principle(RP)) appears to be a more coherent system than that of rules, decentring, and cooperation. The above Freudian principles designate in a more formal manner the journey of life on the road to the examined moral life characterised in terms of the laws of freedom and justice. Piaget believed that much of Freudian theory was true but he could not see any epistemological intent behind the theory. The question this raises is whether he separated the affective life from cognitive operations too rigidly. The following is a conversation from the work “Conversations with Piaget”(Translated Gulati, B., M., Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1980:

“Bringuier: “…can it be said that you generally agree with Freud.”

Piaget: “..in the main lines of repression with the basic mechanisms of the unconscious, of course.. I probably said then that affectivity is basic as a motive for action. If a person is not interested in something he will not do anything, of course: but it is only a motive, and it is not the source of the structures of knowledge. Since my concern is with knowledge, I have no reason to consider problems of affect, but it is not because of a disagreement(with Freud) but because of a distinction, a difference of interests. It is not my domain. Generally speaking–and I am ashamed to say it—I am not really interested in individuals, in the individual. I am interested in what is general, in the development of intelligence and knowledge, whereas psychoanalysis is essentially an analysis of individual situations, individual problems etc.”(P.86)

The above is an interesting and revealing interview that points to a number of misunderstandings: firstly to a misunderstanding of the relation we find between the concepts of intelligence and personality in the works of Aristotle and Kant, and secondly a misunderstanding of Freudian theory(mistaking what the theory is about for who the theory is for). Freud, we know, turned to the work of Plato to characterise what he enigmatically called “the mythology of Instinct”. In Freud’s final wave of theorising we encounter the mythological characters of Eros, Thanatos, and Ananke. The final shift in his theorising toward more philosophical concerns was, it is true, probably triggered by a concern that his technical system of a psychological structure connected to agencies was still not sufficient to treat his most difficult patients, especially those suffering from obsessions. The life instinct and the pleasure principle was not sufficient to explain what was wrong with these patients. He needed to go beyond the pleasure principle and the life instinct . The Platonic mythical figures of Thanatos and Ananke enabled Freud to explain not just what was happening when an individual like the Rat man was terrified by his fantasies of rats eating people alive, but it enabled him to explain what was occurring in all patients suffering from similar patters of symptoms. As we all know it is difficult to treat such patients so Freud had to satisfy himself with explanations as to why they are difficult to treat. Freud, that is, would not have agreed with Piaget’s characterisation of his theories as being solely designed for the therapy of mentally ill individuals. We also find a cultural intention in Freud’s theorising that we do not find in Piaget. In Freud’s 1929 work “Civilisation and its Discontents”, we are provided with a cultural theory with universal intent in which the giants of civilisation, Eros(the life and knowledge instinct) and Thanatos(the death and aggression instinct) are engaged in a battle whose outcome will decide the fate(Ananke) of civilisation. Freud, we also know, characterised his psychology as Kantian, and although we find in Kant, as we do in Aristotle, a distinction between theoretical and practical rationality, there is a significant difference in the subject matter of these different forms of rationality: e.g. events v actions. Differences in subject matter also explains the differences in the concern of the three different forms of science Aristotle outlined, namely Theoretical science, Practical Science, and Productive Science. As we have pointed out earlier, Freudian theory was probably related to all three forms of science(as well as to the individual sciences subsumed under these forms, e.g. metaphysics, mathematics, physics, theology, ethics, politics, rhetoric, literary science etc). There is, then, no rigid compartmentalisation of powers in Freudian theory, but rather an implied belief in the continuity of the world and the continuity of rationality. We know there is continuity in the Freudian system between the “systems” of the unconscious, the preconscious, and consciousness. Piaget in his later work appears, however to be in agreement with this latter form of continuity which does therefore cast doubt about the validity of the remarks in the above conversation. A later conversation sheds more light on a possible continuity thesis in relation to desire and knowledge. In this conversation Piaget claims that there is a cognitive equivalent of Freudian repression in scientific activity. Piaget begins by stating that consciousness does not emerge in cognitive problem solving unless there is a need for it, i.e. it emerges when there is a failure to solve a problem and a necessity to focus on a new means. This clearly implies some form of connection to a desire to reach some particular end: consciousness appears in the context of this discussion to be continuous with desire. We know Consciousness was for Freud, a vicissitude of Instinct and that he located both knowledge of skills and knowledge in general in the preconscious system. We also know that in the Freudian system the giants of Eros and Thanatos dwell partly in the cave of the unconscious system.

Piaget saw the social activity of cooperation to be an important aspect of a persons autonomy and the important question to ask here is whether he envisaged this cooperation to take place within the confines of an identifiable group, and if so, what was the size of the group? In his more theoretical writings Piaget was envisaging the world community of scientists: a sizeable group indeed, possessing Kantian cosmopolitan characteristics. Freud’s theory of Group Psychology in his work “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”(The Penguin Freud Library, Vol 12, Trans Strachey, J., (London, Penguin Books, 1955) characteristically in Aristotelian fashion, returns us to the origins of groups, namely the family, where all social bonds are forged, especially given the unique fact that humans of all the species experience such an extended period of childhood before the moment of autonomy and independence arrives. Aristotle too points to the family as the original social formation that through a series of actualisation phases arrives at a self sufficient independent city-state ruled by laws and Philosophy. We find developmental stages in both the works of Freud and Piaget, but we are not clear whether Piaget envisaged the family or smaller groups to be the forerunners of the scientific community. One of Piaget’s experiments takes place in the schoolyard which is the play area of a small community of schoolchildren of different ages. The activity that interests Piaget is the game of marbles. Here he focuses on rules and the agreements upon rules but he does not unpack the content of these rules. It is clear here that Piaget, like Wittgenstein, sees rules to constitute the game:perhaps we are meant to project the results of this experiment onto the scientific community.

In the work “The Moral Judgement of the Child”, Piaget claims:

“All morality consists in a system of rules, and the essence of all morality is to be sought for in the respect which the individual acquires for these rules..The reflective analysis of Kant, the sociology of Durkhein, or the individualistic psychology of Bovet all meet at this point.”(P13)

Piaget, later in this work, states the obvious, namely that there is a significant difference in the methods employed by Kant and Durkheim. Kant’s reflective method obviously does not require verification in the form of experimentation, but Piaget insists that this verification is necessary if one is to explore all the possible avenues leading to truth and knowledge. Piaget notes that as a child gets older, less and less attention is paid to the older children, and more attention is paid to peers and engaging in the process of agreeing over rules(do we need clinical experiments for this or is this something we already know?) Piaget notes that at the age of 13 the child is beginning to escape adult supervision and is becoming a part of a widening social circle. Piaget in the context of this discussion attributes to Kant the position that respect is independent of experience (a priori) and that this respect is directed at the rule(the moral law?). Kant certainly in some texts claims that we ought to respect the moral law but he also gives a second more humanistic account of the moral law which claims that:

“So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”(The Cambridge Edition of the works of Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, Cambridge, CUP, 1996, P.80)

Piaget does not(as is the case with Kohlberg) acknowledge the universality and necessity of the moral law in its application to moral experience. Experience is a difficult idea. Dewey claimed that it included both doing and undergoing something(Art and Experience), and on this premise one ought to accept that moral experience in some sense is relevant to both the formulation of the moral law and connected to its application. As a corollary to this it ought also to follow that respect for others is respect for them conceptualised as ends in themselves. This is no empty formal characterisation of our relations to others but is rather an important part of the philosophical justification of human rights as conceived of by institutions such as the United Nations(another of Kant’s “progressive conceptions). When Kant uses the term a priori in this context he is, of course, claiming that the law is primarily relating to doing rather than undergoing, but doing in the context of ends-in-themselves rather than instrumental ends that are hopeful of a personal experience of “undergoing” happiness. The agent in this context is acting freely and dutifully, yet it is important to note that the intent of this law is to be applied in experience of moral contexts such as the intentional making of a promise which one has no intention of keeping. In Piaget’s account of the will this would merely be an example of the weakness of the will, and that is perhaps a correct characterisation of this state of affairs from an experiential point of view, but from a Kantian point of view, what we are witnessing in such a case is a practical contradiction (which could only be the case if the moral law is to be found in the premises of a rational argument that ought to have been invoked by the will).

A strong will for Freud would be a fundamental concern of a strong ego battling on the front of a struggle between Eros and Thanatos(a front containing parental taboos, religious prohibitions, group impulses, sexual temptations etc). The strong ego will be driven by knowledge of all kinds, but especially by knowledge of the Good(what ought to be done, how one ought to judge) and the question that emerges from this discussion is whether a community of scientists motivated by the frantic wish of Cecil Rhodes to colonise the planets for profit or motivated by their own curiosity to develop weapons of mass destruction, is an example of a community with strong egos. We know Einstein detested war and refused to work on the American bomb project for obvious reasons, but there are other aspects of Einsteins moral life that might not stand up to the test of the moral law and even if these incidents do not amount to possession of a weak ego, Einstein by himself is not a community. It is also doubtful whether, for Piaget, Einstein was the ideal scientist given the fact that he did not concern himself with experimental work and the verification of his own theories, preferring to work on the laws of physics. Freud’s theories, on the other hand, may well explain why large groups of scientists were prepared to work on the construction of a weapon of mass destruction: aggression(Thanatos) and identification with a group leader or the leader of a country may have played a role in this process. The Socrates of the Republic would have argued that the power of the group signifies the power of the soul writ large. This is also true for our larger institutions and communities that also clearly are reflections of human wishes, wants and needs.

It is to Freud, however, that we need to turn for a modern account of Group Psychology: an account that retains the spirit of hylomorphic and critical Philosophy. Freud in his essay on Group Psychology uses the German term “Masse” which is particularly interesting given that he is writing at the time of the political mobilisation of masses both in Russia and Germany. He does not make the Kantian distinction between Civilisation and Culture. Civilisation gives the impression of a process whereas Culture points more to a substantive actualisation of the values embedded in the civilising process. Freud, as we shall see later has his own reasons for the refusal of this distinction, but it does create a divide between the Philosophy of Kant and Freud’s psychological account. In particular it prevents us from using Freud’s writings to justify another important Kantian distinction between the globalisation process( of which the political and military mobilisation may have been an early phase) and the final end of Cosmopolitanism. What we do encounter in Freud, however, in both his works “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” and “Civilisation and its Discontents”, is that the book of the soul must be written in the language of “Transcendental History”(a hylomorphic language). The soul can only be writ large if this form of temporal language is used.

In this spirit Freud engages in a historical exposition of the successive incarnations of Rome, the so-called “Eternal City”.We know that cities in many cases can outlive countries, e.g. Königsberg(before it was renamed). Freud is here equating unconscious memories of early experiences with the origin of a city like Rome which began as Roma Quadrata, an enclosed settlement or village on the Patalin. This was then expanded into a federation of villages on different hills which eventually in Aristotelian fashion became the city bounded by the Servian wall, which in turn then underwent several transformations during the time of the early Ceasars until finally the Emperor Aurelian erected another surrounding wall. We have knowledge of these transformations via historical documents supported by archeological findings. Considerable historical and archeological work, is required, however, before a full picture or image emerges of this ancient city-state. Freud is attempting in his work “Civilisation and its Discontents”, to show how the processes and contents of the mind have an analogous structure to physical/social/historical entities in the external world. He is also claiming that the structures of the soul such as memory are actually more complex articulations than physical structures, principally because of the limitation that the same space in logic cannot present two different contents(a proposition of Transcendental History). Freud also draws an interesting conclusion from this reasoning: a conclusion that relates to psychoanalytical theory:

“It shows us how far we are from mastering the characteristics of mental life by representing them in pictorial terms”(Civilisation P 258)

Nevertheless the analogy of the history of a city, well illustrates the effects of military destruction and the failure to maintain and preserve buildings and walls. The organ of the mind for Freud has its material substrate and its psychical superstructures, both of which when traumatised can cause mental problems and illness(here Freud demonstrates a commitment to both somatogenesis and psychogenesis as possible causes of mental illness). The important point that Freud is making here is that although the actual physical origins of Rome may never be both archeologically and historically discovered, the sedimentations of memory are accessible to psychoanalytical investigations that will reveal not merely the bare traces of events, but the actual events-in-themselves. One cannot here but be reminded of the Platonic thesis that it is ideas that are more eternal than so-called eternal cities.

Freud, as part of his account of somatogenesis, draws a parallel, in Aristotelian hylomorphic spirit, to the growth and development of organisms. He points out that in such life-forms original structures are not preserved but used up as material for the next stage of development/actualisation. In the bodies of animals and human beings:

“the earlier phases of development are in no sense preserved:they have been absorbed into the later phases for which they have supplied the material. The embryo cannot be discovered in the adult. The thymus gland of childhood is replaced after puberty by connective tissue but is not longer present itself…The fact remains that only in the mind is such a preservation of all stages alongside of the final form possible, and that we are not in a position to represent this phenomenon in pictorial terms.”(P.259)

That is, no observational report will be able to capture the conceptual complexity of the actualisation process.

Freud, in his work “The Future of an Illusion” referred to one his friends and critics who claimed that Freud had failed to acknowledge the true source of religion in his work: a source which he described as a peculiar feeling which he called a sensation of “eternity”. Freud recognised in this criticism a long standing dream to reduce all psychology to an account of atomic sensations. He claimed that what his friend was referring to was more likely an intellectual perception or idea which he denied was important for religion, because it probably named a very early state in infancy when the child is unable to distinguish between itself as an entity and the external world. Freud called this feeling, the “oceanic feeling” and situated it at a very early stage of development in which the agency of the ego was being formed. It is one of the earliest functions of the ego to be able to direct ones sensory activity and muscular action toward an external world which is separate from the infant. This original form of the ego is named by Freud, a pleasure-ego, and in line with the account given above of the persistence of earlier states alongside more mature states, the oceanic feeling can continue to exist under special circumstances well into adulthood.

Freud refuses of course to concede that such a feeling or intellectual intuition can suffice to ground the grand illusion of religion. He then embarks on a speculative reconstructive “history”, based on the idea that gods were originally leaders of primal hordes whose underlings feared the leader and obeyed their every word and wish. The emotion of fear, that is, was for Freud, a much more important emotion than that associated with the oceanic feeling. In other words it is aggression, a specific kind of activity related to Thanatos, the death instinct, that provides us with a more realistic origin for Religion. The oceanic feeling is clearly associated with Pleasure, and Freud felt that the complexity of human phenomena demanded that one move beyond the pleasure principle and its associated “atoms” of sensation.

The above is a very different account of the origins of cooperation to that we find in Piaget. Freud is very aware that cooperation was important in civilisation-building activities. If Freud’s friend and critic were correct in his judgement, there would be no need to feel discontentment with ones civilisation and the interesting question to pose here is whether Piaget does not rest his case in the end on the pleasure principle. Floating serenely on the ocean of emotion is a picture of man Freud would find alarmingly narcissistic, pathological, and loaded with defence mechanisms(concealing hidden anxieties). The feeling conceals an infantile wish to return to a world that never existed. Freud links this back to the family:

“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a fathers protection”(Civilisation P.260)

Freud admits that the idea of being generally in a state of equilibrium in relation to the world is an intellectual perception and this perception may be an expression of an idea of religious consolation but he sees in this idea, a denial of real dangers in a real world. Given the Aristotelian characterisation of man as a rational animal capable of discourse, the Freudian band of brothers killing a tyrannical father is by no stretch of the imagination a rational act. A rational consideration of the universal consequences of such an act for all future leaders, however, leads to the institution of a law to prohibit assassination of leaders. This scenario however is a political rather than a religious matter for Freud, probably because Freud does not appear to be able, as Aristotle does, to admit that the idea of God is a rational principle in the mind. Freud cannot see the theoretical idea of God meeting the needs of common man as religion has done for thousands of years. Freud, we know, would question the Kantian idea of progress towards the cultural telos of a cosmopolitan kingdom of ends, and he might even deny that religion had any rational basis at all. The question then arises: “What is the basis for the claim that religion is an important element of civilisation? ” Freud quotes Goethe in answering this question:

“he who possesses science and art also has religion: but he who possesses neither of these two, let him have religion.”

Aristotle’s Canon of works stretches over multifarious areas of scientific activity: Metaphysics(Religion, Theology), Science( Maths, Physics, Philosophical Psychology, , politics, ethics) and Art. The phronimos or great-souled man would probably be well versed in all these areas of knowledge as would the philosopher in pursuing the contemplative life. It is difficult, however to anticipate how Aristotle might have responded to Goethe, the Romantic thinker. There probably would have been agreement over science, art, and religion on the condition that these areas were understood in terms of their first principles. This for Aristotle would have included the first principles of Theology, an understanding of which would have been necessary to lead a contemplative life.

Freud’s relations to the above activities was ambiguous because it was in the following context:

“life is too hard for us, it brings us too many pains, disappointments, and impossible tasks.”(P.262)

In response to such a life all that is left to us, Freud argues, is to employ defensive palliative measures; e.g. powerful deflections such as scientific activity and cultivating ones garden, substitute satisfactions like a commitment to Art and intoxicating substances that alter the chemistry of the body. These are possible responses, more or less rational, to the aporetic concern expressed in the question, “What is the meaning/purpose of life?” which Freud claims stands or falls with religion. This is a view, partly shared by Kant, who would qualify this claim by maintaining that the answer to this question stands or falls primarily in virtue of our relation to Ethics and the rational use of our freedom. For Kant, however, we also know that his Ethics requires a God as a principle which ensures that leading a Kantian ethical life will enable the agent concerned to lead a flourishing life. Freud is silent about the role of ethics in the flourishing life and he instead retreats to the safe harbour of how people show in their action what they believe to be the purpose of their life. Freud is in no doubt that what Kant referred to as the principle of self love or happiness is what men in fact demand and wish for. In Freud’s eyes such a life is steered by the pleasure principle dominating the psychical apparatus. Freud’s response here, however is Kantian:

“There can be no doubt about its efficacy and yet its programme is at loggerheads with the whole world…There is no possibility of it being carried through, all the regulations of the universe run counter to it. One feels inclined to say that that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation”(P.263-4)

Indeed the dangers of the forces of the external world and the sufferings incurred in our dealings with other men all contribute to a state of affairs in which unhappiness is the more likely outcome than happiness. Further there is not much that we can do in response to these factors of the constitution of our bodies and psychic apparatus, the constitution of the external world, or the melancholic haphazardness of the actions of other men: on the contrary, we have our hands full in dealing with the tasks of the mitigation of the sources of suffering. Aristotle and Kant obviously thought otherwise, as did Socrates, whose fate was unjustly determined by the evil intentions of other men and the whims of a crowd of 500 Jury members. Leading the examined life for Socrates did not produce the flourishing life but his fate raised the aporetic question of justice under the law for millennia in the future. Freud points to how one can solve the problem created by the processes of the external world by becoming a member of a community that uses Science to subject the forces of Nature to the human will. Piaget focuses upon this form of cooperation to the exclusion of solving the aporetic problem of the melancholic actions of other men ínsofar as they can be the source of tragedy, injustice, and discontentment. The final remedy available to man is to manipulate the chemistry of the body in order to produce sensations of pleasure.

The most effective route to the flourishing life, according to Freud, is to harness the instincts via the Ego and its associated objects of love and work. This work can be artistic and dedicated to the power of actualising the power of the imagination in a work of art. Alternatively, the work can be that of the scientist using understanding and reason to discover the truths that someday will constitute the complete volumes of our books of Nature. There is, however, no mention here of Aristotelian first principles. Freud, like Piaget, may also harbour suspicions about Philosophy and its tendency to swing between the material scepticism of the empiricists and the dualistic disjunctions of the so-called Philosophers of consciousness. Yet we are forced to acknowledge that the Metapsychology of Freud contains many more elements of Aristotle and Kant than we can find in the theorising of Piaget whose criticisms of all forms of Philosophy is distinctly positivistic. Piaget, probably inherited the distaste for metaphysical speculation that was circulating in the cultural atmosphere of the early 1900’s in Europe. This comparison is somewhat paradoxical, especially considering the fact that Freud resided in the fortress of logical positivism, namely Vienna. There was some sympathy for psychoanalysis in some quarters of this movement, but largely the view was that the theory lacked possible verification. It seemed to many positivists that if anything could count as a verification for the theory than there was no possible falsification either, which would strictly speaking entail on positivistic premises that the propositions of psychoanalysis had no meaning. Piaget’s projects, connected to verification via clinical investigation, would obviously be of greater interest to the positivistic movement. The fact that Freud’s theories probably extended over the regions of three different sciences as conceived by Aristotle, escaped the notice of many. Freud was certainly more of a rationalist than Piaget because his focus was upon a mind and a vision constructed roughly in accordance with Aristotelian and Kantian first principles.

Freud, however, is also more concrete in his descriptions of mans activities when he claims that work rather than love best sublimates our instincts and provides us with nonsexual forms of substitute satisfactions, whilst simultaneously embedding us in our society. In this description the faculties of understanding and reason appear to play a significant working role in relation to the faculty of the imagination which is the faculty of play. This same reasoning ought to apply to science and its work compared to the “work” of art that uses intuitions and imagination to create a feeling of pleasure that is surely transient.

In Freud we do not find as we do in Kant a respect for the role of Religion in mans life. Indeed Freud is convinced that religion is a defensive activity that seeks to remould reality in order to provide a false sense of satisfaction on the part of the faithful. It is difficult to fathom the depth of Freud’s objections from his scattered comments, but they must amount to an objection to the view we find in Kant’s “Religion within the bounds of mere reason”. In this work, Kant sought to correctly situate the place of religion in our lives by pointing out that even if there is no possibility of demonstrating the existence of God by Reason, neither can we disprove this existence. This does not leave Kant with the popularly conceived conclusion of agnosticism, but rather prompts him to claim that the issue of God is not an epistemological issue i.e. it is a faith based issue falling into the realm of practical rationality and ethics. Faith in God, then, for Kant, amounts to the role the God-principle plays in our moral life: a role which ensures that if we to a large extent do what we do in relation to our bodies, the external world, and other men, then we can be practically certain of leading a flourishing life. We find no reference to this position in the writings of either Freud or Piaget. Piaget appears to believe in some transcendental principle immanent in mens minds that is the source of our idea of God but without a commitment to the universality and necessity of the moral law we find in Kant’s ethics. It is difficult to know what kind of principle Piaget is conceiving of here. There is no indication that he thought a theoretical demonstration of the validity of the idea of God was possible. Practical cooperation of faith based communities, then, seemed the only alternative left, but this would seem to destroy the role of logic, universality and necessity completely.

Perusing Freud’s attitude toward the idea of God is also difficult. Was he an atheist or agnostic given his silence over the Kantian solution to the dilemma of Gods epistemological existence? Kant cannot be regarded as an agnostic because he did believe he had rational ethical grounds for the existence of God. If Freud then, believes that there are no such grounds, then this creates a hiatus between the metapsychology of Freud and the Philosophical Psychology of Kant. The key characteristic of illusion for Freud is the remoulding of reality by the imagination, whether it be for the sake of pleasure, or for the sake of fleeing the world of suffering. It is difficult to believe that the philosophical works of Aristotle and Kant were intent upon remoulding reality in the same way, using the pleasure principle. It is far more likely that he would have seen the work of the reality principle in their writings. Indeed he must have seen in these writings the battle between Eros and Thanatos for the fate of civilisation(Ananke)

Piaget has been criticised for not believing in a personal God but this criticism could be levelled at Aristotle and to some extent at Kant. Aristotle, Kant, and Freud would have seen the work of the imagination in any attempt to personally embody a principle. They might, however, have appreciated the symbolic value of such an embodiment as long as one focussed on the works of the figure symbolised. For them a mans works too, ought to be the standard by which to measure a man’s worth. Here we can also include the love involved in marriage and raising a family, as a work in an environment constituted of a smaller number of individuals.

Love for other people is, Freud points out a precarious affair, and we never suffer so much as when we lose a loved one. The moral act that provides assurance against the fickleness of a love based on sexuality or emotion alone, is the Kantian moral act of the promise based on the universally justified maxim of “promises ought to be kept”. In religious terms we are bound by an essentially religious text that regulates the clerical act of marriage by the words “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to cherish until death us do part, according to God’s holy law and in the presence of God I make this vow”. This vow or promise is reciprocal and here the ethical principle “promises ought to be kept”is the condition of the whole ceremony even if it is not explicitly stated. The ultimate justification of God’s holy law is the Kantian moral law which states that man ought to will that the maxims of ones action(Promises ought to be kept) be seen as a universal law.

Freud’s analysis of the pain involved in the loss of an object of love is both technical and systematic but also reaches back into the wisdom of the ages all the way back to the Symposium where Socrates argues that Eros or love is not a God because he symbolises a desire that seeks completion, on pain of a form of suffering that cannot be borne by all. The image of Eros. the son of a father that was resourceful, and a mother that was poor, padding about the streets of Athens barefoot, is hardly a divine symbol, but rather a figure motivated by an unrequited desire for immortality, motivating us all to search for immortality via offspring or works of excellence in the realms of beauty and the good. Famous law-makers and philosophers for Socrates were great-souled men who we remember for their virtue(areté). Eros was a timeless symbol in this pursuit of a timeless existence and endless continuity. The power of Eros manifested itself for Freud in Mourning and Melancholia. Freud charted the power of wishing something to continue to exist in reality which cannot be brought about by what Freud called “special action”. The pain involved in this frustrating situation requires a work of resignation to the facts, a work that specifically involves de-cathecting a lost object until that point is reached when the object is finally seen through the lens of Ananke, through the lens of the kind of practical knowledge that a phronimos possesses. The power of Thanatos also emerges in this discussion. There are individuals who lose an object which they have cathected with positive emotions and also narcissistically identified with: if this activity occurs under the auspices of a weak ego, the result might be the pathological condition Freud terms melancholia(depression), a condition that can lead to self destruction. In this process we see the operation of technical terms such as identification, which Freud also uses in his discussion of Group Psychology where identification with a leader of a group or a society is one of the key mechanisms of the process that they lead to the formation of a “Masse”. Weak egos in search of strength in the realm of values can easily be lured into the hypnotic zone of popular leaders using the language of images and symbols. In this realm of symbols and images, reversal of the values of right and wrong is possible as is the fixating upon minority groups as the cause of misery and discontentment. Such minds, and societies composed of such minds, becomes divided in a way that Plato would have found problematic. The rule of law may be questioned and the will of the tyrant becomes the law as he remoulds reality, and the mass delusion is almost complete. The “illusions” of religion that seeks the brotherhood of man and individual salvation seems harmless in comparison, and precisely because of this may also become a target of popular masses led by tyrants.

Both Judaic and Christian religions, for Freud, emerge from the primal horde where a band of brothers who have assassinated a tyrant are forced to install the rule of the law if the horde is to have a leader( who does not fear being murdered). Yet Freud does not view Christianity favourably seeing in its rituals the presence of Thanatos, the obsessive compulsion to repeat, designed superstitiously to ward off pathologically imagined dangers. Surely, however, the vows of the marriage ceremony for the man who spent his life with only one woman cannot fall into the category of the illusion? Surely these words are the words of a wisdom that we find in the Symposium: the words of Diotima communicated via Socrates, or the reasoning of the moral law we find in a Kantian enlightenment. Yet in spite of a presumed familiarity with the arguments of Kant for faith in religious ideas, Freud disregards these and his theorising forms a part of the wave of secularisation sweeping over the world: a wave whose purpose is to remove the idea of God from the minds of men. Some thinkers have accused Kant of reducing God to an idea in the mind and beginning this whole process with an academic earthquake that would release the later popular wave. The wave of course gathered momentum with the Work of Darwin and his discovery of the mechanism of “natural selection” operating in the theory of evolution. The wave reaches the coast with the suggestion by Freud that this idea is a product of a delusional mind. The ritualistic observances and belief system as a whole is the product of a weak mind, it is suggested. It is not, however clear that this is a fair criticism of Freud. The question is whether we can find a space in his work reserved for the idea of god and a religion within the bounds of mere reason. This question reduces itself to whether he would have accepted the idea of God as a principle as conceived by Aristotle or Kant. Freud is certainly unequivocal in his condemnation of many of the ritualistic observances but what did he think of the marriage ceremony?

Suffering was a major concern for Freud, whether it have its origins in the body with all its susceptibilities, or in the failure of man to combat the forces of external nature. Freud believed that there is not much man can do in response to such realities. However, suffering that originates from our own social attempts to improve the quality of our lives is controllable, even if the historical example of a Socrates wrongly condemned to death might suggest otherwise. Sentencing a man to death using a system that was supposed to be life enhancing would have appealed to Freud’s sense of irony. By the time we get to the Enlightenment and Kant’s work we still have not yet managed to control the forces of progress: but the disappointment has not at this point grown into the discontentment that Freud was forced to deal with in his theorising. The discontentment indeed takes a regressive form with the widespread conviction that the work of progress is not worth the effort, and perhaps a return to a more primitive life would be preferable. This “solution” is, Freud argues, the expression of a fantasy that had no basis in fact. Primitive tribes did not lead the idyllic lives one supposed they did. Freud pointed to four historical events as the cause for mans widespread discontentment with his civilisation. Firstly, the triumph of the Christian religions over pagan religions which Freud claimed led to a devaluing of earthly life in favour of a heavenly life to come. If we historically recall the speech of Socrates from his cell whilst awaiting his death we find Socrates claiming incontrovertibly that death was a good and that two possibilities existed: either there was a heavenly form of the continuance of life where one could for example meet the great people of the past, or death was a peaceful dreamless sleep. This latter suggestion that we cease to exist with the death of our body was a serious possibility for both Socrates and Aristotle and perhaps also for Kant. For Aristotle the intellectual part of the soul was the part that survived death, but exactly how this was to be conceived is not clear. We know Aristotle characterised psuche as a principle, and the intellectual existence of principles would obviously be a different matter compared to the survival of some form of non physical substance for which there ought to be some principle of individuation. This suggests that the Aristotelian belief in God as a self causing entity that thinks intellectually about itself, might also fall into the category of that form of life which devalues any “earthly” form of life that in turn fails to lead a contemplative flourishing life. Indeed, compared to this ultimate form of life characterised by areté, epistemé, diké, phronesis, any more earthly form of life would appear to resemble the mass form of life that sheep appear to enjoy: a horde protected by a shepherd. indeed the Bible occasionally favours this image of believers in terms of a flock under the protection of Yahweh: for Aristotle and Kant a more earthly form of religion would be difficult to imagine. A horde of Brothers forming a brotherhood of man also appears to be a down-to-earth image. Brotherly love replaces the good, the true, and the beautiful(ideas from the realm of reason).

The second historical cause of discontentment was created, Freud argues, by the voyages of discovery that brought home tales of people living idyllic forms of existence. It was not until anthropologists began to unveil the truth about these tribes that this “cause” began to fade into insignificance.

The third event was another more intellectual form of discovery, that of psychoanalysis which appeared to claim that the neuroses of men originated in frustrations generated by the demands that arbitrary cultural ideals made upon the minds of men.

The fourth event was attributable to the incredible technological achievements of science that promised to deliver happiness whilst we are still alive. These achievements did not, however, deliver on this promise and confirmed the view that science was merely another deflection or distraction from attending to the serious business of living. Freud does however conceive that some contribution is made to civilisation which he defines in the following terms, Civilisation:

“describes the whole sum of achievements that distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serves two purposes: to protect man against nature and to regulate their mutual relations.”(P.278)

Given the fact that the weapons of mans own destruction are fashioned in his own mind, and given the fact that it is largely Freud that lies behind the articulate conception of this self destructive tendency, it is somewhat surprising that protection of man against his own nature is not obviously one of the purposes of civilisation. This realisation was presence in the challenge of the Delphic oracle to men to “know thyself”. It is also behind Aristotle’s claim that knowledge of the psuche(soul) is the most important of all the forms of knowledge. Given the failure of Philosophy until the times of Kant and Freud, to provide us with a theoretical framework for this kind of knowledge, it is not surprising that we saw in the beginning of Freud’s career a painful divorce between the disciplines of Philosophy and Psychology. Kant of course had provided the philosophical foundations for the Freudian framework, but the powerful deflection of Science was pulling Freud in a different direction as part of its attempt to colonise much of the cultural territory delineated by the earlier works of Aristotle and Kant.

The question that naturally arises here is whether science is an instrument of what in German is called Zivilization or whether it is a product of Kultur. Kant, in his “Conjectural Beginnings of Human History” made a clear distinction between civilisation and culture, suggesting that the former is concerned with the techné of living and its material conditions, whilst the latter is more concerned with the important intellectual and artistic aspects of our lives in communities. The latter, of course, is not concerned merely with the life of the citizen in a particular community (Empirical History) but rather with the rights of the citizens of the world (Universal History): ie, with the moral conditions required for Perpetual Peace. For Kant the structure of History is clear. Social life begins in a state of nature which is overcome by man striving to “master” nature via instrumental imperatives that will provide the material conditions of his existence. Empirical History will proved the account of this utilitarian journey where the end is not absolutely clear but may be characterised in terms of happiness.This stage of the actualisation of social and political processes (which include laws) is called Civilisation(Zivilization). Embedded in this journey are the seeds of the principle that will determine the next stage of actualisation which the Germans called Kultur: a stage in which Law, Metaphysical/Transcendental Science, Moral law, Cosmopolitan Politics, Philosophical Psychology and Aesthetics play important roles. The Kantian Cultural process also has its telos, namely the kingdom of ends, a moral and political endgame.

Freud refused several times to make this distinction between Civilisation and Culture, between Universal History and Empirical History. We can see this position clearly articulated in the following quote from his work “The Future of an Illusion”:

“Human civilisation, by which I mean all three respects in which human life has raised itself above its animal status and differs from the life of beasts—and I scorn to distinguish between culture and civilisation–presents, as we know, two aspects to the observer. It includes, on the one hand all the knowledge and capacity that men have acquired in order to control the forces of nature and extract its wealth for the satisfaction of human needs, and on the other hand, all the regulations necessary in order to adjust the relations of men to one another and especially the distribution of the available wealth.” (P.184)

It is difficult to judge whether reason is hidden behind the scenes of the above characterisation, or whether it is conspicuous by its absence. Is it primarily in terms of knowledge and following rules designed to regulate relations to each other that ensures we can distinguish between animal and human forms of life? Are those thinkers that make the distinction between civilisation and culture the victims of a Kantian illusion? No argument to this effect is presented. There is much description of the activities of men engaged in the civilising process, but relatively little account of the engagement of men in higher ethically justified activities or metaphysically justified science. There is, in other words, a bias in favour of activities that are ruled by instrumental imperatives. We find no accounts of men striving for freedom, no account of the rational categorically good will engaged in the performance of what Kant called “deeds”. According to Kant, this is the region of mans activity where the reasons for pursuing the good is located. Acting in accordance with a maxim that is an instantiation of the moral law, with the intention of treating others as ends-in-themselves, in a context of a law governed community in which human subjects both make and obey the law, is the Kantian arena where we will find ethical contentment . One must, that is, on the Kantian account, be worthy of happiness before such contentment can supervene. There is also a religious and political aspect involved in this cultural process of actualisation: a belief in God that rewards those possessing a holy will(the telos of a good will) with a flourishing life, and a belief in a political future kingdom of ends that has a distinctively cosmopolitan intention. In this final state one has both political and moral human rights. This is not a Hegelian prediction predicated upon a totality of empirical historical conditions that lead to the Absolute. This is a transcendental judgment predicting what ought to happen. If the kingdom of ends does not actualise, freedom will not completely actualise and we will return to a Platonic state of bondage, and presumably in a state of transcendental discontentment with all forms of civilisation which are merely different forms of enslaving the intellect.

Acts recorded by empirical history such as the first creation and usages of tools and fire are catalogued by Freud, as is the moment in which man constructed homes or dwellings. The bodily symbols of tools and scientific instruments are interpreted by psychoanalytical theory in a hylomorphic spirit. Both psychoanalysis and hylomorphic theory agree that a human being is human because underlying their form of life is a constellation of complex organs. Tools, microscopes, and telescopes are enhancements of limbs or organs for usage in instrumental and scientific contexts of discovery. Such contexts are of course logically related to contexts of explanation/justification, but we see no reference to these contexts in Freud’s writings. This is a strange omission given the clear relation of Freud’s later wave of theorising to Classical Greek Philosophy, the birthplace of rationalism and logical argumentation. Add to this the clear and self confessed relation of Freud’s theorising to Kantian Critical Philosophy and the plot definitely begins to thicken.

The positive cathexes of dwelling places are in typical Freudian fashion interpreted as embodying wishes to return to the warmth and safety of the womb that was lost so long ago. As one gets tired, and ones powers wane late in the day, this would appear to be a natural regression. Photographs and grammaphone recordings are interpreted as mechanical extensions of our power of memory. Writing is interpreted as being the written record of the voice of significant others who are absent. If the writer was dead these writings obviously took on a greater historical significance, extending our power of memory even further. Freud calls these objects, cultural acquisitions, but does not go into the practical relations between other items in the context of involvements these items are embedded in. The suggestion is, rather, that these concrete items, like the gods, were manifestations of projected wishes. Gods were of course projected cultural ideals conceived under the aspect of eternity, possessing both omnipotence and omniscience. But with the progress of time it seems to Freud as if man himself, with all his material achievements, has in his own eyes become God, with the power both to create and prolong life by curing disease. Freud predicts even more technological progress, increasing mans power even further, and removing any need for God. Despite all of this technical progress, however, man feels discontent with his civilisation,Freud notes. Freud does note that achievements also occur in the realm of higher mental activities involving science, religion, philosophy and art but it is not quite clear exactly how these achievements fit with the goals of civilisation which are:

“utility and a yield of pleasure”(P.283).

These intellectual achievements would normally be associated with the cultural achievements of a civilisation, but as we pointed out Freud pours scorn on the distinction between civilisation and culture.

One of the key historical landmarks of a shift from a state of nature to civilisation, is the replacement of the power of one strong individual by the power of a strong community, in which individual desires can be sublimated by higher social concerns, especially those related to order, discipline, and justice. Freud insists that, in a certain sense, man feels less free because he is forced to give up his wishes and desires in accordance with the law. This, Freud claims, may be one root of our discontentment with the civilisation we have created. Freud further insists, in the context of this discussion, that civilisation is not concerned with the perfection of man. Mans instinctive endowments are subject to vicissitudes of which Consciousness and Repression are specifically named along with Sublimation, the defence mechanism that plays a significant role in the direction of libidinal energy into “cultural” objects. This defence mechanism has its roots in wishful thinking(mastery of the universe)and anxiety, and it is forced upon man by the demands of civilisation, Freud argues. It almost appears in this process as if the instinct is being renounced and this too results in an ultimate state of discontentment. There is danger, Freud argues, in other places, in denying an instinct its satisfaction. If the loss is not compensated for somehow, serious consequences will ensue.

What follows in the work of “Civilisation and its Discontents” is a conjectural history that is presumably intended to rival the account given by Kant: an account that must deny Kant’s principal thesis of the progress toward perfection of man in the journey toward the future. Kant’s account of this progress given in his Conjectural History” is only partly a history of the development of instinct and its vicissitudes. It is also partly and principally a description of the the history of the development of Reason. In this essay there is no reference to a primal horde but rather with what might have been a prior condition of the horde, namely the first man and woman living together in a vale of plenty containing its own dangers(such as poisonous substances?). Without any knowledge of what was poisonous and what was not, this pair needed to rely on instinct in the form of the sense of smell and taste, assisted, of course, by the motor powers of being able to stand upright, walk and speak a language, and other skills acquired over a period of time. Kant begins his account at the level of the instinct and claims that instinct(which he curiously characterises as the voice of God, (obeyed, he claims, universally by all animals)) favoured certain foodstuffs above others. This instinct was more active given the fact that early man was more preoccupied by sensuous experience than his more social successors. One can imagine in such circumstances that instinct might have been doubtful about a fruit like an apple and one can also imagine an emergent curious tendency to want to test the apple.

Kant argues that, in general, the regulation of sense by reasoning probably occurred because there was a tendency for the imagination in combination with memory to create a whole host of artificial and unnatural desires. The curiosity desire, or the desire to master nature, probably resulted in the choice of the apple over its rejection by instinct and the senses. The moment this occurred must have been symbolic because it opened up a horizon of alternative forms of life in comparison to those dictated by instinct (the voice of God). Kant called this moment the moment of freedom the moment when man was released from a servitude to a nature dictated by Instinct, but it is doubtful whether Freud would have shared this judgement, given his commitment to a form of life that had to be committed to instincts and their vicissitudes. Kant in his account also refers to the sexual instinct and the change in mans biology that led from periodic sexual activity dictated by periodic smells to a sexuality stimulated by the visual senses in combination with the imagination. Walking upright and firstly, the sight of the genitals and secondly, the sight of the clothed genitals produced a different pattern of sexual behaviour and attraction. The solution of clothing may also have been a rudimentary act of reason aimed at the curbing of the impulse. This whole series of events elevated sexuality into the realm of social conduct : a realm regulated by the postponement of satisfaction(the concern of the reality principle, according to Freud). This postponement was an indication that that man had come to expect the re-occurrence of certain events in the future. Kant argued that this future orientation of consciousness induced anxiety, owing to the uncertainty of the future. Such a state of mind signalled trouble and demanded an attitude of Care in relation to the external world and others. A future filled with troubled expectation, demanded in its turn Work, which becomes more burdensome as expectations for a future improved form of life became a possibility. The form of the attitude, as a result, shifted from Care to Duty. Kant mentions in the context of this discussion that there is a moment of realisation that this troubled or burdened form of life was caused by Reason, and this in its turn also might produce a negative attitude toward the role of our own minds in this situation. Also death might at any time end this life of commitment and care, without experiencing the benefits of ones life’s work. This fact, Kant argued, might cause man to live his life vicariously through the lives of his children. The human form of discourse and sociability are obvious manifestations of the distinctively human form of life which all men equally possess. Such a state of affairs leads inevitably to the thought that, in comparison with other forms (species) of life humans possess, a form of consciousness and reasoning powers that are superior to other animals is responsible for the complexity of the human form of life. This in turn results in reason comparing means and ends(something valued because it helps to produce something else) and ends-in-themselves(something valued for itself). In social terms this is manifested in the determination by all men not to be used without their consent by other men in superior stations of life. This is the problem filled road that reason has chosen to travel. Men will attempt to use each other for their own ends, and when life choices come down to a choice between two evils, the inevitable result is discontentment with the situation. Kant argues in an article entitled “Perpetual Peace” that man needs a master, but does not want one because he wishes to impose his own individual will on any situation– a recipe for a general attitude of discontentment if there ever was one. The general Kantian response to this form of discontentment is obviously to refer to the answer to the question “What ought I to do?”, namely the moral law: a law which rules out action aiming at ones own individual happiness. This form of discontentment might, in Freudian terms give rise to regression back to a simpler time and a simpler world when pleasure reigned– a time before civilisation took its toll. Alternatively, we might use our reason in Kantian fashion to imagine a future utopia in which cares and commitments give rise to contentment with ones world and oneself.

The Kantian move from a state of nature ruled by the voice of God/Instinct resulted in a civilisation that, according to Freud, is characterised by universal discontent in spite of the hard work of generations of civilisation builders, some of whom have achieved the status of enduring voices or gods because of their influential activities and judgements. Ordinary men, according to the voices taking us out of the state of nature, “fell” from Grace in choosing to embark upon the path of civilisation building rather than remain in a state of status quo following the calls of nature. Some forms of discontentment obviously was in accordance with this religious form of disappointment with man, but some discontentment takes the Freudian form of wondering whether all the work is worth the effort, and some takes the more optimistic Kantian form which acknowledges that the end to the cultural journey is 100,000 years in the future and although normal life manifests the features of what Kant called “melancholic haphazardness”, there is a way of life that looks to this distant future with hope in the heart. For Kant, we are in the beginning of a process of perfecting our powers of rationality, and perhaps we ought to reckon with erratic attempts to solve the aporetic problem of the pursuit of the flourishing life. We can see in Kant’s work a classical Greek conflict between the nature of man, and the moral demands of areté and diké. Only a civil constitution of sufficient moral complexity can resolve this conflict: a constitution that presumably includes an enlightened upbringing, and enlightened educational and political systems. None of these conditions have managed to establish themselves.

Kant discusses historical transitional events such as that from a hunter/gatherer form of existence to a more settled form where tame animals are kept in captivity and crops are grown. Sometimes in history these forms of existence came into conflict, especially if the hunter-gatherers strayed onto the farmers land. In some sense the farmer may see being tied to his land through the lens of being less free. Possessing land brings with it the responsibility of defending it. This fact necessitated that communities of farms establish themselves(in Aristotelian villages) and the concern for justice and law emerged in order to keep order and resolve conflicts. These villages became centres which then grew outward and concentrically. Kant points out that the nomadic form of life need recognise only one authority, God, whereas the village dweller must also recognise the law and the civil authority that reinforces it. The village expands into a city and the luxuries that emerge with the formation of this new social unit occupy the senses and imagination to such an extent that Reason, or what Freud called the Reality Principle, is marginalised. The overworked imagination also concerns itself with imagined enemies and their imagined qualities with a view to conflict and war. Preparations for wars and actual wars consume all the available resources of the society. Leaders under these circumstances must have a healthy respect for their citizens and their desire for freedom. This respect stems from the fear of the war and the fear of imagined enemies. The citizens of such societies become aware at some point that they are the means to the leaders warlike ends, and this can become a major source of discontentment. Only in a state of perpetual peace, Kant argues, will citizens eventually become categorical ends in themselves endowed with universal human rights. Only then can the existence of a global society or cosmopolitanism become possible. Kant, insists, however, that there is reason to believe that progress toward such a state is occurring and the future will contain more contentment than the past. The time span however, we should remind ourselves is 100,000 years which means that experiencing the recent “terrible 20th century”(Arendt’s diagnosis) or even 10 more regressive centuries is not sufficient to constitute a significant deviation: not sufficient i.e. to constitute a falsification of such a long term rational and faith based expectation.

The Freudian horde is obviously a part of the history of the state of nature for Kant. Freud in his reflections on this segment of our history points to an ape-like history of early man and the tendency to live in extended families. At this stage of the development of the human race, the families were probably nomadic. At this point, presumably after a long period of walking upright which diminished the importance of smell and increased the importance of sight, sexuality and protection of the family became the primary foci of family life outside of work. Sexuality as a consequence was no longer periodically activated by smell, and this may have been a motivation for the hunter to keep his mates close. Similarly, difficult to protect children, was probably the motivation for the female to stay within the sphere of protection of the dominant male. Connected to this change of sense modality, excrement became associated with infection and disease, and this probably reversed the polarity of the attitude toward ones waste products: a social concern with hygiene was the probable result. These changes and others brought us to the brink of civilisation and what Freud called the totem-taboo society where the paracide committed by a band of brothers led to the discovery that collective leadership via regulative laws was the best means to avoid tyrannical rule. The brothers agreed to collective regulation of everyones actions and the taboo stage of law was instituted.

Freud’s characterisation of early family life placed work continually in the foreground. Members of these early families all contributed to the tasks of living under the threat of extinction. It was thus Eros and Ananke that enabled large numbers of families to finally form a village or a community. It appears that love and the work connected to survival were the primary motivations to form wider associations. The questions that are posed in Freud’s account of the Conjectural Beginnings of History are rationally oriented only to the extent of reality being related to its instrumental mastery. Kantian “Conjectural Beginnings”, we saw, acknowledged the importance of sexuality in the formation of the first social unit of the family. Kant and Freud, however, may well disagree on the relative importance of work in relation to the actualisation processes that bring civilisation about. For Freud the brothers choose taboos in response to the tyrannical rule of the father. Sexuality may have played some minor role in the decision to assassinate the tyrant but a form of rationality is also involved in the formation of Law regulating future behaviour: an instrumental/consequential form of rationality.

There is no doubt that Freud is correct in his observation that, initially, in the early stages of civilisation the strongest experience of satisfaction may well have been connected to sexuality, and this may have provided the template for the form that the pursuit of happiness took. Work obviously also provided us with a competing template–a template that requires a rational organisation of sensibility(imagination, perception etc). Work also requires a constant monitoring eye on the community, and a demand that it provide the conditions necessary for the activity involved, e.g. Laws and the Platonic Principle of Specialisation: allowing people to choose work activities in accordance with their need and abilities. Freud points to an instability of a love relation where much libido is invested in the love-object. Should the love object reject the lover or die, the work of decathecting the object is extremely painful and long lasting. Christianity involves a vicissitude of this form of love when it claims somewhat paradoxically for Freud that we ought to love our neighbours and our enemies. Freud thought this to be impossible and dangerous advice. Freud, in this context, says rather surprisingly, that not all men are worthy of love(P.291). Kant prefers to speak in terms of respect for ones fellow man, and there is no sign that this attitude has it origin in the sexual cauldron of emotions. The pleasure-pain principle is according to Aristotle constitutive of the emotions, and in Kant’s work, Pleasure is defined as a non cognitive feeling that functions as a form of desire that links theoretical judgement to practical judgement: i.e. connects knowledge to freedom. In Freud, pleasure-pain ascends to the level of a principle even if it regulates only singular judgments. Understanding and reason are only marginally involved in aesthetic judgment which may be a consequence of the sublimation of emotional forms of sensibility. The interesting point to make in the context of this discussion is that both understanding and reason are not clearly situated on the psychological map of the psychic apparatus that we encounter in the famous chapter seven of Freud’s work “The Interpretation of Dreams”. In this work the conception of the psyche is a complex one involving a direction of functioning that transmits energy both progressively and regressively in a system that is evolving over time in an environment of conflict. Barring physical insult and injury to the physical substance, nothing is ever completely lost in the system. The two major poles of the system are motor activity and perception. Memory is related to perception,and a critical agency engages with the motor pole together with the preconscious system of operations (constituting our knowledge and the meanings of words). The preconscious system must be connected to reason if knowledge is defined in Aristotelian and Kantian terms. Behind the preconscious system lies the unconscious system that has access to the motor system only via the preconscious. The sensory images of perception are generated as part of the regressive pole of an apparatus that prefers to work in a progressive direction discharging energy for the purposes of homeostasis. Sensory images as we know are central to dream activity when the motor system is immobilised in sleep. The unconscious system prefers to express itself in images, but these images can bypass the conceptual systems of the preconscious and generate impulsive motor activity. Dreams are the means by which we discharge energy in sleep. The images in a dream are either generated by wishful, or anxiety related constructions. The interesting question to pose is that of the role of verbal images, the core of the preconscious system. Freud claims that it is these images that give rise to consciousness( that “sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities” associated with two degrees of reality testing via perception and thought). One of the aims of consciousness, according to Freud, is to free us from the tyrannical reign of the pleasure-pain principle via the activity of thinking. This, of course, requires a delay in energising the motor system and postponement of the possible satisfactions associated with such activity. The question that remains unanswered in Freud’s work is whether this thinking activity is truth directed via categories of judgement, and rationally directed by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Consciousness is a vicissitude of instinct requiring a hypercathexis, but the question remains whether thinking ever succeeds completely in its aim of freeing itself from the pleasure-pain principle, especially given the claim that all happiness is attempting to model itself on the template of sexual satisfaction. It is not clear what Freud thinks about the Kantian claim that happiness is the principle of self love in disguise: accepting such a restriction on the role of happiness obviously requires the promotion of an alternative. The only serious alternatives appear to be understanding and reason in relation to the critical desire of wanting to be worthy of happiness. This system is founded on the attitude of Respect, an attitude involved in the attempt to rationally understand ourselves and an attitude that is necessary for the realisation of an essence defining potential. So, for Kant, the love which founded the family and the happiness associated with it is confined to the realm of Sensibility, the realm of imagination and its cathected and constructed objects. The context of work and instrumentalities, on the other hand, is less concerned with objects and more concerned with the cooperative relationships of activities to each other, and the relationships between groups of active cooperating agents. Cooperation, we should recall is an important part of Piaget’s account of moral development

Freud notes the tension involved in restricting the scope of sexual life and the expansion of cultural life and explains this by claiming that the libidinal ties of the family resist the sublimated drive that motivates cultural activity, presumably because of the possible influence of Thanatos and its relation to the obsession/compulsion to repeat. Yet surely, it could be argued that this compulsion to repeat is surely symbolic of the (impulsive?) motor activity of an organism that is engaged on the task of dispersing anxiety in the cause of homeostasis. This is, of course, in opposition to using energy progressively and creatively in the activity of work. In compulsive activity, the libido is clearly reluctant to give up old positions and means of discharging energy, and this is in direct conflict with an Ego oriented toward a future and engaged in the work of creating and maintaining cultural activities and institutions(techné, epistemé). This is also in conflict with a Superego function which is concerned with principles that relate to the worth of the moral agent. The question that arises from these reflections is whether the bond that ties (legere, the law) a community together is a libidinal or a moral/intellectual bond, and whether the attitude of Respect is a better goal than love for the community to strive for.

The role of aggression(vicissitude of Thanatos) in the inhibition of our cultural aims is signifiant in Freudian theory. Eros, of course, is a counteracting force in, for example, reaction formations such as identification with aggressive or charismatic leaders, but the outcome of of this “battle of the giants” was not a foregone conclusion for Freud and he felt himself forced to pose the question whether all the work involved in building and maintaining our civilisation is worth the effort. In such a context, the challenge to love ones neighbour and enemies is otiose. The question is whether his mythical account was intended to undermine the Kantian account in which we are not enjoined to love everyone equally, but rather to respect everyone equally. The Kantian challenge does not deny the role of love residing in the faculty of Sensibility, but rather sublimates or overrides it with rational justifications of a categorical nature. Here the fundamentally instrumentally oriented nature of pleasure is substituted by ideas of reason regulated by categories and principles and also ultimately a moral law in which our freedom raises our level of consciousness above instinctual recommendations(“Do not eat the apple!”). This is the power of consciousness suggested, but not elaborated upon, in chapter 7 of Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams”. Only abstract thought of the kind of the moral law carries the rational power to regulate mans aggression. Loving those that want to kill you would appear to be a confrontation between two instinctive forces in the same faculty of Sensibility and the question here is whether the imagination possesses the power of regulation required. Freud points out in his “Civilisation and its DIscontents” that man is a wolf waiting for an opportunity to attack its prey. The response of rationality to this state of affairs is symbolically captured in the statue of Lady Justice who bears a sword in one hand. Before all are equal and have a right to expect, in the name of respect, not love, equal treatment in accordance with the Aristotelian definition of formal justice. Man is thus challenged to give up his aggressive responses and this together with regulation of his sexual activity by the law suffices according to Freud to cause him to be discontent.

The instinct referred to in the myth of Adam and Eve is initially an ego-instinct(related to the preservation of the body) and not a sexual instinct. The compulsion to repeat referred to earlier was not libidinal but rather an activity whose telos it was to master reality and oneself(an ego activity disrupted by moral anxiety). In Freud’s view it is Thanatos and aggression that is the greatest obstacle to the progressive development of civilisation and here both Freud and Kant appear to be in agreement. Freud’s dualism of instincts is then, writ large on the plane of civilisation where two giants battle for the fate of civilisation. There is however, a more theoretical battle raging beneath the surface of Freud’s theory and that is the ancient war between Platonic dialectical dualism(ideas v reality) and Aristotelian monistic hylomorphism, which refuses to recognise any position that divides the organism into dialectical units. Aristotle also refuses to regard the organism as a materialistic whole, explicable solely in terms of mechanical principles of causation. For both Aristotle and Kant the organism is striving toward rationality from an initial non-rational state and given this fact, only freedom can explain the choice against an object cathected with positive or negative emotion. Kant characterises this state of affairs in terms of the ought system of concepts, and claims that the only rational justification for not doing what one is tempted to do(not eat the apple of knowledge) and for doing what one ought to do(eat the apple) is the moral law. The act of duty then is the manifestation of the transcending of instinct by rationality.

For Freud, the initial outwardly directed aggressive instinct whose telos it is to master ones enemies is internalised and transformed into a superego or “conscience”. The energy source, then, is Thanatos, and the mastery is via the sword rather than the rationally roundabout weighing of actions in the scales of justice. The context is clearly one of helplessness in the face of the harshness of life, and the associated fear of the overwhelming forces of nature, fear of the internal power of the id and the fear of the power of ones own conscience. For Freud it is only natural in such circumstances that Religion should emerge as a source of consolation in the face of mans discontentment. Freud does not however believe in the rationality of the more philosophical forms that Religion can take, and we therefore see him using psychoanalysis to examine the most extreme forms of Religion as well as the most popular forms. He claims that in some forms both desire(Eros), as well as fear are involved in its cultural productions. These emotions assist in the installation of the garrison of the superego inside the walls of a conquered region of the Ego. As man matures, the Ego reclaims the garrison in the name of the prophecy “Where id was there ego shall be”. The Freudian mechanism behind the installation of the Garrison of the superego is that of identification, a defence mechanism connected to the fear of the loss of love of the figure one is identifying with. For the child’s identification with the parents, the fear is more critical, involving as it does, the loss of the love of ones parents, the only means of protection. This garrison neutralises narcissism and installs a critical agency that not only criticises actions that have been performed but also intentions that have been formed. This is, according to Freud, an important source of curtailing anti-social behaviour. It is an internal action regulator but it is unclear how much understanding and rationality are involved in this initial imitative activity. As the child matures and identifies with other authority figures that become a part of the garrison, narcissism is reduced and the Ego learns to love and work in a manner that civilisation/culture finds acceptable. When this does happen anxiety levels remain high and can be experienced as guilt. It is in such circumstances that the image of man as a sinful being dominates his self image, if he is religious. The Kantian variation on this theme is less dramatic and relates more to the rational process of thinking in which judgement of what ought to be done asserts its presence: here thought about action and the will(being good by nature) merely strengthens the thought of of what ought to be done, until the appropriate action supervenes, even if there are competing narcissistic wishes to do what one ought not to do.. What Kant is envisaging here is a form of response that emerges relatively late in an actualising process ruled by moral law. In the practical reasoning involved in this process we will find the operation of the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and the operation of the idea of freedom rather than the theoretical idea of God, although the action motivated by the moral law is to some extent divine, given that it is free from contradiction and in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, i.e. displaying the necessary and sufficient conditions for “The Good”. For Freud, man is “destined to remain a child forever”(Totem and Taboo) and the child’s conception of God is an image constructed by wish fulfillments and anxieties. This transformed the contemplative idea of an Aristotelian or Kantian God into a longing for a protective father, a longing that Freud interprets in terms of being the latent content of a manifest illusion generated by the primary process of the mind.

Society has been transformed since the time of Freud, presumably for the better, at least in terms of the increasing complexity of its educational system, but also because of the important lessons learned from the work of Freud in the field of child upbringing. Whether the educational system has succeeded in replacing the garrison in the ego with an integrated ego , replacing the sword of justice by the scales, is open to question. The rejection of aggression in the field of justice is of course an important part of becoming fully rational. This can be done with a questioning look or a questioning judgement e.g. “Was that a good idea?”. In such contexts the conceptually laden secondary process of the mind completely dominates the image laden primary process. The critical process has become completely decathected, and wholly Kantian or Aristotelian. With Kant we are no longer witnessing the aggressive encounter between the giants of Eros and Thanatos but find ourselves on the plane of a Culture where rational animals engage in discourse and judgements that are both truthful and just. Such judgments are categorical and employ principles of Logic. Here the telos is not the elusive goal of happiness, but rather the goals of epistemé (truth), diké (justice) and areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), i.e. the collective goals of wisdom which are embodied in the examined or contemplative life. Such a transformation of Civilisation into a Culture has significant consequences for Religion. Religion may be displaced and devalued but it is not without value. The rituals of religion that remind us of the world of the obsessive compulsive(thanks to Freud) are of course to be criticised as are the projections originating from latent anxieties and wishes .

Freud concludes his long essay by claiming that he is unwilling to make a final judgement on the value of civilisation. He refuses to ally himself with those that believe civilisation is on the road to perfection, thus distancing himself from the ethical and political philosophy of Kant. He does not, he claims, have the courage to rise above his fellow man as a prophet, but instead uses the popular standard of happiness which he claims is the source of mans judgement on such issues. He does, however, have the courage to note that mans obsession with control over the forces of nature linked with a latent aggression will have no difficulty in exterminating the human race to the last man.

Freud’s Philosophical Psychology has clearly greater cultural significance than that we find in the work of Piaget, interacting as it does with religion, ethics, and politics via the broad concept of personality in contrast with the more cognitively restricted concept of Intelligence. Piaget is, of course partly targeting the work of Sartre and Husserl with counterarguments that rest upon the foundation of coordinations of actions and points of view in a scientific/mathematical spirit: a context which presupposes a reduction of events to a matrix of variables that can be both manipulated and measured. Piaget criticises claims that lived experience and introspection can be cognitive routes to obtaining psychological knowledge. For Piaget, the intuition of essences is not more than just another fact in the universe of verification. In a chapter entitled “The Ambitions of a Philosophical Psychology”, Piaget arrives at an idea of the self:

“The self is not a “force”, since the energies involved are organic, but a regulator which controls its output: or rather it is system of meanings, values, intentions, etc., which translate in terms of consciousness the regulation of the whole action of which the self is the expression.”(insight and Illusion, P.144)

We see in the above quote a mechanical image qualified with phenomenological properties but there is also baked into the idea of Intelligence, the idea of a way of doing things that is vaguely connected to the Kantian idea of “I think”. In Piaget this idea is also connected to a concept of causality and rational deduction. Actions, for Piaget, are different at different stages, finally becoming internalised in the mind and reversible in virtue of their possible representation. The schemas emanating from this matrix are certainly more potent in their power to assimilate and conceptualise phenomena in the external world. Piaget also subscribes to the Aristotelian view of general powers, e.g. to form intentions and attribute meanings(via schemata) which can also be associated with one another. This is a consequence of sensory motor activities being represented by an intelligence in a thinking activity. Yet facts are the primary concern for Piaget who claimed that experimentation is always far more complex than deduction. This is why Piaget, unlike Freud, engaged in direct experimentation with his subjects: his experiments concentrated upon varying the values of variables. Piaget, therefore, in contrast with Freud, would require a definition of instinct that would allow its characterisation in terms of variables that can be systematically manipulated and measured.. Piaget quotes a work by Ruyer(Elements de psychologie(p.u.f, 1940) in which onP.41 Ruyer claims:

“Instinct is the aspect taken by the dynamism of real cyclical form from which it imposes itself on an individual so as to relate to its unity.”

Piaget admits that this explains nothing but he does allude to a form of organisation that transcends the individual located in space and time: thus posing the Aristotelian question of the principle of the thing. Ruyer is then accused of projecting higher mental functions into simpler life forms in the name of teleology (something that is certainly not true of Aristotelian teleological explanations).

Piaget claims that the philosophers challenge to “know thyself” is questionable because he parses it into epistemological terms and asks whether one can in fact ever know oneself, thus truncating the above challenge by trimming away all normative content(one ought to strive to know oneself). Piaget points out in the context of this discussion that, having knowledge of oneself does not entail knowledge of earlier developmental stages. It may not, for example, entail knowledge of the totality of particular facts that have assisted in the constitution of my current autonomous adult state. If, however, one, for example has a knowledge of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis, one can at least claim recognition of the principles involved in knowing oneself(.e.g. energy regulation principle, pleasure-pain principle, and reality principle): this obviously also entails a knowledge of the phenomena that fall under these principles. Knowledge of the primary and secondary processes of the mind will also be involved, as will the role of consciousness and language in the developmental process. This knowledge will include a concept of Instinct that is much broader than that of a mechanical self regulator of an apparatus whose output is “behaviour”.

Freud we know did not perform experiments in his consulting rooms but rather engaged in consultations, the kind of activity so important to rational animals capable of discourse. Freud’s self analysis was not a long stream of introspective data, but rather the subjection of memories to a questioning process inserted in a matrix of concepts and principles that were both biological and psychological. Piaget mentions positively the experimental “school” of psychoanalysis led by D. Rappaport: a school that included Wolf and Erikson and associated itself with a technique called “didactic psychoanalysis”. The fact that different schools of psychoanalysis have emerged appears however to reveal a weakness in Piaget’s eyes, given the importance he attaches to public agreement. He admits that the mechanism of evolution and the nature of life have not yet been fully explained, but fails to acknowledge that Freudian theory may well concur with the Delphic oracles normative challenge to know oneself with the help of philosophical and conceptual investigations.

Setting Prometheus free: A lecture by A C Grayling on the role of ethics and religion in Society.

Visits: 11930

“God will not be tested”. The application of proof in the non deductive setting is what we must use to prove the existence of God, Grayling claims. The question is whether there is more wisdom in the Biblical words than in Graylings analytic/positivist claim.

Aristotle claims that the issue of God is a metaphysical aporetic question and that there is a divine element equivalent to the potentiality of rationality residing within us.

Kant’s arguments against all the current proofs of his time and his insistence that existence is not a predicate places the idea of God outside of the categories of our understanding yet Kant continues to insist that God is a theoretical idea of reasoning(that emerges from our theoretical and practical reasoning): an idea that we can think without contradiction but not know. The justification for God in Kantian Philosophy is a matter of faith connected to a practical expectation of leading a flourishing life if ones will is sufficiently engaged with ones duties. God is a condensed drop of a cloud of practical reasoning.

My thesis is that agnosticism is partly a consequence of the dominance of empiricism and science and leaves space for Aristotelian and Kantian arguments for the non-phenomenological, non phenomenal meaning of the idea of God

Wittgenstein lecture by A C Grayling

Visits: 1357

Excellent lecture on the early work and the later work and the contribution of Wittgenstein to the religious discourse debate and the refutation of 1. the reductionism of natural and social science, 2. the starting point of private episodes of consciousness

Grayling is a master of the lecture format and condenses clouds of Philosophy into drops of wisdom about a controversial figure of 20th century Philosophy.

Grayling is an analytical Philosopher and shares with this movement the animus of scepticism toward religion thus risking missing an important element of Wittgenstein’s Kantian commitment to the relation of the ethical and the religious. In a lecture entitled “Setting Prometheus free” he separates religion from the facts about us as social beings and wishes to rest his case on the totality of these facts which as lovers of Kantian practical reason acknowledge can never lead to an understanding of the spiritual value of striving to be worthy of being human, (of, in Aristotelian terms, actualising our potential in accordance with ought judgements). We all possess this organised form of consciousness we call will, thus releasing the angels within whose lives transcend not just appetites but appeal to the world as a totality of facts. Grayling complains about the reductionism of social science but engages in his own form of reductionism of the spiritual to the social world thus truncating the History of much of our most important Philosophy.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action(Volume three): R S Peters, P H Hirst and the Concepts of an educated man and a Cosmopolitan Education.(The Philosophy of Education)

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R S Peters is an important figure in any account of the progress of Ariadne’s thread throughout the ages, because, firstly, we are a long way away from seeing the sunlight and secondly, because he understood the central importance of Philosophy of Education for the progress of Society toward more enlightened times. The progress of the thread towards the light awaits the events to record that will assist in the naming of this provisionally so-called “Modern- Age”. Neither the Industrial Age nor the Technological age will suffice on philosophical grounds to characterise the Spirit of the time from the Age of Enlightenment because firstly, both are so called “revolutions” and therefore lack the necessary moral references to characterise the event of the progress of civilisation: and secondly, civilisation-constructing activities and culture constituting activities have difficult logical structures. The events of inventing atomic bombs and the landing of a man on the moon are “modern achievements”. The intentions behind both projects were of course very modern but they were not in Kantian terms displays of good will. Neither activity has its sites set upon treating men as ends-in-themselves dwelling in a just and peaceful kingdom of ends that has a Cosmopolitan character.

Reading Peters and Hirst during a time when International Education was being discussed amongst educational experts around the world raises the obvious question as to their Cosmopolitan commitments. This question arises because there are elements in their theorising that suggest a commitment to Philosophy of Education which was obviously present in Ancient Greek and Enlightenment Philosophy. Science obviously played a role in the above revolutions but it is important to point out that “Modern Science” is not the science envisaged by Aristotle, Kant and a number of Post Enlightenment Neo-Aristotelians and Neo-Kantians. The spirit of exploration and discovery dominates modern science to such an extent that the roles of both explanation and justification are significantly diminished. Science differentiated itself out from the realm of philosophical explanation and justification very early on in Ancient Greece (with the exception of the Philosophy of Aristotle). Science since Descartes has continued to lead an independent life, whilst actively criticising Aristotelian science. Science after Hegel also distanced itself from the Philosophy of Science we find in Kant. In these movements there has been a systematic commitment to differentiating particular events from each other by perception and observation and connecting particular events with each other via a Humean concept of causation. Perception and observation are obviously involved in all scientific activity which needs to differentiate things and events from each other, but these forms of consciousness are also used to see something as something. Perception, according to O Shaughnessy(Consciousness and the World) opens a window onto the world. Perception is one of the most important tribunals of justification in the tribunal which examines the question “Why is there Something rather than Nothing?” It is a function of consciousness that allows the things of the world to appear and be experienced. The conscious function of attention can be directed by the rues of concepts to organise manifolds of representations and intuitions and both concepts and intuitions are required in the more complex experience of seeing something as something. These operations can also be situated in a context of awe and wonder: a desire to understand a world that is in turn partly formed by discourse in which we do not merely say something but use subject-predicate constructions to say something about something. This latter activity is one of the building blocks of knowledge and reasoning. According to Heidegger, this activity involves the truth-making synthesis or what he calls the veritative synthesis. The question “Why do you say that Socrates is wise?”, takes a judgement as its object of concern in a context of explanation/justification that supersedes the form of awe and wonder connected with the context of exploration/discovery that is dominated by our perceptual interactions with the world. This reasoning also applies to the actions we perform and the judgements we make about them. Actions do not always carry their character on their sleeve but very often require explanation/justification in terms of intentions and acts of will expressed in discourse. The question “Why did you do X?” is not of the same kind or category as “Why do swallows migrate for the winter?”. This latter question clearly situates itself in a context of exploration/discovery requiring the particular methods of the theoretical science that concerns itself with such events. In this domain there is a relatively well defined realm of investigation in which basic terms organise representations that have relations to other terms in accordance with principles such as noncontradiction and sufficient reason. In such explorative investigations theoretical methods are related to forms of life and powers associated with discourse(e.g. reason) and these are used to ask and answer questions.

Peters, as we have pointed out in earlier essays, is reluctant to entangle himself in metaphysical discussions whether they be of the kind we find in Heidegger or of the kind we find in the works of Aristotle and Kant, but he is prepared to offer transcendental arguments to support his method of conceptual analysis. Analysis of the concept of education is obviously one of his major concerns. Issues of Justification(quaestio juris) are of greater importance than issues of attempting to form a new and competing concept in a context of exploration/discovery. There is, however, in Peters, a reluctance to be guided by the Kantian recommendation that we approach such matters much us a judge in a tribunal would:- in the light of the knowledge of the law.

The Concept of Education, according to Peters, articulates itself in two linguistic categories, firstly, that connected with the processes of education and secondly, that connected with its telos( its different forms of achievement-using different principles from the domains of theoretical science, practical science and productive science). In his essay “Aims of Education– A Conceptual Inquiry” Peters argues that the concept of education functions as a principle for specific kinds of activities in which teaching and learning occur. Peters points to criteria that are different depending upon whether one is discussing the processes or the achievements(outcomes) of education. The most important holistic outcome for Peters was the educated man, but this outcome, of course, presupposed the processes of teaching and learning which in their turn were directed to acquiring knowledge and understanding. Peters, in his essay entitled “The Justification of Education”(Peters,R., S., The Philosophy of Education, Oxford, OUP, 1973) characterises knowledge in terms of belief for which adequate reasons for its truth can be given. Here it is what a language user says or thinks, that is the central concern, and understanding is involved insofar as a general principle is used to explain(particular events, for example). Mysteriously, in Peters’ discussion, the context of action is omitted. It could perhaps be assumed that it is implied that actions have their reasons and principles.

Education also has an important normative aspect, Peters argues in his early work “Ethics and Education”. This aspect has two significant related functions: firstly, the activity of teaching is concerned with intentionally transmitting knowledge that is worthwhile. Secondly, it is a practical contradiction to maintain that someone has been educated but in no way changed for the better. We are clearly dealing here with an intrinsic aim of education. Extrinsic aims of education, such as its use for society(e.g. economically) or its usefulness to the individual insofar as earning a living is concerned, rely on characterisation in terms of the language of causality, which in turn requires the reduction of action to physically observed and measurable/manipulable events. Skills obviously differ from knowledge in that they are more easily characterised in terms of causal networks, and as a consequence given explanations referring to causal relations between events. In Ethics and Education Peters has the following to say:

“For a man to be educated it is insufficient that he should possess a mere know-how or knack. He must have also some body of knowledge and some kind of a conceptual scheme to raise this above the level of a collection of disjointed facts. This implies some understanding of principles for the organisation of facts. We would not call a man who was merely well informed an educated man. He must also have some understanding of the “reason why” of things.”(P.30)

This is interestingly related to different types of learning in the practical sphere of activity. In the skill situation we have to learn (imitate?) what to do when, without necessarily having the understanding of the principles behind the activity(e.g. building a house). These principles can be found, for example in Aristotles canon of the productive sciences. For Aristotle, skills are mainly concerned with the goods of the body and the goods of the external world, and do not necessarily transform the soul of the learner for the better. Some Knowledge connected to the theoretical and practical sciences, on the other hand, are connected with the goods of the soul that transform the learner for the better and in accordance with the aims of education connected to the idea of the educated man. Skill is also relevant in the theoretical sciences if one for example has a good memory of historical facts. Here the learner appears to know what has happened when, but may not know why . Some skills involved in the productive sciences can be expressed by instrumental imperatives and these can be theoretically disconnected from the principles that are operating in these skillful performances. The Greek term areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) refers to the principle behind the skill rather than the ability of remembering what ought to be done in such circumstances. Areté, in contexts of practical reasoning, refers to what categorically ought to be done as a matter of practical necessity or duty. Areté obviously refers to a concern for standards in a field of knowledge, for example, and it also refers to the Greek philosophical ideal of an educated man. An ideal that would demand firstly,knowledge and an understanding of the principles of theoretical science in a broad sense(including metaphysics) , and secondly, knowledge and understanding of the principles of practical and the productive sciences. The Statesman(Phronimos) and the Philosopher were regarded by Plato and Aristotle as great souled men: lovers of the examined and contemplative life respectively. The principles being referred to, would be connected to essence specifying definitions such as the definition of man(rational animal capable of discourse). These forms of life were manifested in the judgements of objects, events and human deeds, compelling nature to bear testimony in response to questions which were clear an unambiguous and could be judged in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.

The goods of the soul are also intimately connected to the understanding we have of ourselves and the world we dwell in. This power of understanding is part of an architectonic of powers operating in harmony to produce the good of the soul, Kant called the harmony of the faculties. This harmony is particularly manifested in Ethical Practical Reasoning and ethical judgements that possess the same universality and necessity that we encounter in the justification of Newtonian Laws. There is a difference between the forms of universality and necessity found in practical reasoning, compared with that found in theoretical reasoning. In the former, for example, we are not called upon to reduce “what appears” to events that can be observed, manipulated, and measured in a context of exploration that seeks to uncover the effects of causation for the purposes of mathematical description. Practical reasoning is about action which is conceptually and “logically” connected to its effects or telos via intention and mental acts of will. The same movement of my hand, signalling to someone in a cafe detached from its intention, becomes a mere movement, a mere transitory event in the world with no more meaning than any other movement in the world. The intentional activity of signalling, on the other hand, in Aristotelian language, has 4 causes (explanations) in accordance with 3 principles of change which can be of 4 kinds. In describing and explaining this change there will be no application of the scientific method of resolution-composition that begins by dividing wholes of activity into parts that do not have a logical relation to the whole. Just as the principle of the house being built precedes and endures through all actual activity of building the house, so does the intention in general of all activity both precede and endure throughout that activity. This building activity proceeds in accordance with the idea or ideal of a house that is being actualised in the world- an ideal that in the language of Gestalt Psychology is a whole that is more than the sum of the parts. This concept of a system and its parts is discussed problematically by R S Peters in a discussion of understanding or “Verstehen” in the realm of the human sciences:

“I am more interested in “understanding” than in “knowledge” and partly because there is another approach which is likely to be of pertinence in a conference between psychologists and philosophers. I refer to the sort of approach pioneered by William Dilthey who was impressed by the methodological differences between the natural sciences and human studies. He thought that the sciences of man would get nowhere if the methodological paradigm of the natural sciences was copied….Dilthey claimed, first of all, that Psychology is a descriptive science whose principles can be extracted from what is given to the individual in his inner perception. Secondly, he claimed that inner perception reveals not isolated units of mental life such as sensations, feelings, or intentions but a unity of cognition, affect and conation in a total reaction of the whole self to a situation confronting it. This unitary reaction constitutes the general rhythm of mental life, and is called the “structural system”. Psychology is an elaboration of this system which is given to us in “lived experience”. Thirdly, our understanding of others is not, in essence, an inferential process. We are able to understand the expressions of the mental states of others because of the psychological law that expressions have the power, under normal conditions, to evoke corresponding experiences in the minds of observers. We feel in ourselves reverberations of grief, for instance, when we see another human being in a downcast attitude, with his face marked by tears.”( Peters, R. S. Psychology and Ethical Development, London, Allen and Unwin, 1974, P 390)

That Peters regards the above parts in a materialistic spirit is evidenced in the above reference to “structural systems”, “units” and a “grand rhythm”. Unfortunately, a clock would meet the requirements of such a system. This risks conceptualising intentions and thought as internally inaccessible, private events only discoverable in a context of exploration similar to the opening of a clock to examine its inner workings. In a later discussion of Michael Scriven’s views, Peters specifically references a clock and the springs and levers that constitute it. Of course, understanding how a clock works has little to do with, for example, how Newtonian laws explain phenomena, e.g. how the law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction is operating in relation to the workings of the clock. The reason for this discrepancy probably relates to the intentional difference that exists in the contexts of exploration/discovery and the contexts of explanation/justification. In the latter case there is no intention to describe the relation of the parts of the system of the clock to each other. Both kinds of context would be involved in fully explaining why the clock could be a trustworthy device to measure time but the description of the parts of the system of the clock would do nothing to give us an account of time in the way in which Newtons laws do. This mechanical view is the view that Scrivens supports in his account of the psychological account of the understanding of other persons. He uses systems theory, which was originally used to explain changes in fish populations, to explain human personality! Scrivens argues that we “understand” other systems via the system of our own personality. This contradicts both hylomorphic and Kantian theory. Both theories would claim that personality is a complex idea requiring a number of different principles operating in different regions of the mind.

Peters reject Scrivens’ account but not in the above terms. Peter’s argues that our minds are “social products”(P.392). He elaborates upon this by claiming that our understanding is “programmed” by our social experiences but immediately backtracks on the implications of this machine analogy by maintaining that most forms of human learning presuppose consciousness(p.393). He then points to the categories of the understanding which cannot be taught. Piaget, rather than Kant is referred to, but both thinkers would have subscribed to the position that the principle of noncontradiction is not merely a product of social experience. This principle is a principle of reason and is responsible for extending our understanding without any assistance from sensible experience. Peters brings Chomsky into the discussion and refers to the categorical concept of “purpose” and ” means to ends”, as concepts that are not connected to the learning of rules. Peters still, however, uses the unfortunate machine analogy when he claims:

“both our behaviour and our understanding would be programmed in terms of these universal categories.”( P.394)

Peters also fails to embrace the idea of categorical imperatives that are distinct from the instrumental imperatives we find associated with “purpose” and “means to ends”. Moral purposes have a different logical structure in comparison with instrumental utilitarian purposes. Peters also discusses our animal nature and points to the “mechanisms” involved in the empathic transmission of emotions: he claims that the mechanisms involved are more primitive than imitation. The terminology of being programmed is replaced with “being wired”. We see in these meanderings among the language of machines and mechanics, the absence of the role of knowledge that Plato and Aristotle thought was so important in the realm of action where the purpose is to change the world in a known direction. Peters does, however acknowledge the role of knowledge in his essay on “The Justification of Education”, but here too, the emphasis is not on its categorical structure but rather its social utility. He does, however, discuss the non-instrumental attitudes that are involved with the intrinsic values of Education. The pursuit of truth is obviously an important element in the learning process: a truth conceived of non-instrumentally. For Peters, the virtue of truth telling and of justifying moral actions categorically with reasons, are “aims” of education. Truth telling as a value obviously extends over the whole range of the “sciences” in the broadest sense of this term(a term with for Aristotle and Kant would include ethics and metaphysics). Peters points out that an educated man is not a specialist in any of the sciences–he must in a sense master the essential or principles of most areas of knowledge. That is, this great-souled person must know, or be able to, recognise the reasons for many of the truth claims we make about our world. Peters is much concerned , however, with how this state of mind comes about and he focuses on imitation and initiation etc. He draws attention to the fact that, in this process, some principles responsible for the organisation of concepts and facts are acquired and some are not(in line with Aristotles claims that powers are not all acquired and in line with Kant’s a priori forms of knowledge). How one describes these principles that are not acquired is, of course, a key difficulty that Peters does not directly address. Kant would merely say that certain principles are a priori, meaning that they are in some sense independent of experience. Aristotle is more useful in this context because he does address the nature of these a priori principles: they are the result of the exercise of our powers of understanding and reason. They are potentialities or forms, awaiting actualisation. For Kant, we do not learn that objects are in space outside of us or that changes in the external world and in our thought processes are organised in terms of before and after(time). Piaget extends this sensory form of organising the world to objects continuing to exist when no longer in ones visual field, and later in the developmental process to the power of seeing the same object from another point of view. Peters, in the context of this discussion, adds that consciousness is one condition of the form our social experience takes, and perhaps he means to suggest here that the above operation/power of decentring from our own point of view is an important sensory power to be taken into consideration, especially insofar as our social life is concerned. Another sensory power that is a condition of our perception of objects, is that of seeing something as something, a disposition that rests on the Aristotelian capacity and principle of seeing something enduring as something throughout a process of change. Behind this principle lies the psuche principle which, in terms of human Psychology, is the actuality of a body endowed with a set of human organs from which similar powers systematically emerge to produce similar experiences and behaviour. This, then, for Aristotle, is the sensory ground of the agreement there is between the forms of consciousness that belong to the same form of life.

Kant in his work, “The Critique of Judgement” refers to the role of common sense in our sensory transactions with the world. This common sense gives rise to representations that, according to Aristotle, have two aspects, firstly as phenomena with no reference beyond themselves, and second, representations that do refer beyond themselves(representations which are essentially symbolic). It is common sense, according to Kant, that lies behind judgements of taste, in which it is claimed that experienced objects are beautiful. Judgements of taste are not conceptual representations, but rather sensory representations embodying a subjective principle that communicates universally and by necessity, a harmony of the sensory and intellectual faculties. The common sense as a mental faculty also lies behind what displeases us, i.e. whatever diminishes our existence or the quality of our existence. In its connection with the Judgement of Taste, however, it communicates only what pleases us universally and by necessity. Whether the object concerned be a natural object, or an art object that requires aesthetic ideas and genius to produce, the faculties harmonise (though in the latter case both ideas of the beautiful and the good combine in a way that is not the case in the former experience). Aesthetic judgements are therefore based on the Pleasure Principle, and this principle underlies the communication of all knowledge claims, given the fact that knowledge increases the quality of our existence necessarily. Kant also specifically says, in relation to this capacity, that common sense is not learned or acquired by experience, but is rather a condition of experience. The perception of what is beautiful is obviously also connected to to the furtherance of life that gives rise to the pleasure principle. Kant claims that the imagination is involved in the representations we have of the beautiful. In the case of representations relating to the Sublime, however, the intellectual faculty makes its presence felt because, in the presence of a waterfall which represents a superior physical power, the imagination is eclipsed in its function and requires the faculties of understanding and reason to assert their power in order for the feeling of the furtherance of life to reestablish itself. In this transition from anxiety to pleasure, the playfulness and freedom of the imagination is surpassed by a sensory evaluation of life that is more serious. It is not the waterfall that is per se sublime but the emergence of Eros in a mind overwhelmed by forces that indirectly suggest physical destruction(Thanatos). Here, the mind moves from the mode of sensibility, to the mode of the intellectual, into the real mode of ideas of Reason presented in sensible form, presented symbolically. We are not dealing with representations acquired by experience in this latter phase, but rather a priori forms of mentality. When the mind moves away from the perception of the waterfall and towards the idea in us of our moral power there is “an awakening of a feeling of a supersensible faculty within us “(P.97 C of J) Kant calls this a supersensible intuition.

The issue of modernism lies behind our reflections upon the work of Peters which so often suggests a classical intent only to return to more modernist concerns when attempts at justification are made. Stanley Cavell in a work entitled “Must We Mean What We Say?” characterises Modernism in the following way:

“The essential fact of(what I refer to as) the modern lies in the relation between the present practice of an enterprise and the history of that enterprise, is the fact that this relation has become problematic.”(Foreword xix)

We shall in a later chapter take up this issue of the disruption of continuity between historical reasoning and practices by modern and contemporary attitudes and experiences. Cavell’s position, however is very relevant to the theorising of Peters because, especially in his reflections upon the Philosophy of Education, Peters oscillates between modernist attachments to anti-rational and anti-metaphysical sentiments and a concern for classical ideas and arguments. Peters in his later work became aware of the ambiguity of his earlier positions in relation to Ethics and Education. R Barrow in his essay entitled “Was Peters nearly right about Education? writes:

“he feels his earlier work(particularly in the seminal “Ethics and Education”, 1966) was flawed by two major mistakes: firstly. a too specific concept of “education” was used which concentrated upon its connection with “understanding”…..while the second flaw was a failure to give ” a convincing transcendental justification of worthwhile activities”. He goes on to say that the concept of education is “more indeterminate than I used to think. The end or ends towards which processes of learning are seen as developing, e.g. the development of reason which was stressed so much are aims of education, not part of the concept of “education” itself and will depend on acceptance or rejection of the values of the society in which its takes place” “(P.14)

The above quote rings true especially when considered in the light of Peters’ own words in his Introduction to Ethics and Education:

“For during the twentieth century philosophy has been undergoing a revolution, which has consisted largely in an increasing awareness of what philosophy is and is not. Few professional philosophers would think it is their function to provide such high level directives for education or for life: indeed one of their main preoccupations has been to lay bare such aristocratic pronouncements under the analytic guillotine. They cast themselves in the more mundane Lockian role of under-labourers in the garden of knowledge. The disciplined demarcation of concepts, the patient explanation of the grounds of knowledge and of the presuppositions of different forms of discourse has become the stock in trade. There is as a matter of fact, not much new in this. Socrates, Kant and Aristotle did much the same. What is new is an increased awareness of the nature of the enterprise.”(P.15)

Whereas we wish to maintain that that the thread of continuity from the philosophers mentioned has been bifurcated unnecessarily in the name of modernism. In relation to the modernist spirit Cavell claimed that there is, in the realm of Modern Art, the impulse to shout “fraud!” and walk out. Examine the language that Peters uses: “revolution”, “aristocratic”, “guillotine”, and one can see that the spirit of Peters’s criticism is to create an academic environment in which metaphysical ideas and transcendental deductions of the kind we find in Kant’s Critique of Judgement(and elsewhere) are not welcome in the garden of knowledge where analytical underlabourers are at work. Underlying these reflections of Cavell is the academic spirit of Freud which does not imply a rejection of what is metaphysical or transcendental, but perhaps questions the value of working in the calm retreat of the English garden of science.

The Peters of 1983 does not fully embrace metaphysical or transcendental logic but his “Justification of Education” does go a long way in the right direction. In this essay Peters claims that the educated man distinguishes himself from the skilled man in that he possesses a considerable body of knowledge which presumably includes not just understanding of the principles of the productive sciences, but also the principles of the theoretical(including metaphysics) and the practical sciences(including ethics and politics). The understanding of these principles transform the way in which the world is seen through organised and systematic conceptual networks. All such theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding have not been acquired in an instrumental spirit, but instead in the spirit of viewing knowledge as an end-in.itself: in the spirit of Plato’s Republic where knowledge of the good was the end of the whole Platonic system. This categorical view of knowledge encouraged a pursuit of knowledge independent of any benefit it may bring to the knower. The processes of learning the educated man has participated in, have contained conceptual and logical links between the means of acquisition of the knowledge and the ends. Peters discusses in connection with this point the Aristotelian paradox of moral education, namely, that:

“in order to develop the dispositions of a just man the individual has to perform acts that are just but the acts which contribute to the formation of the dispositions of the just man are not conceived of in the same way as the acts which finally flow from his character once he has become just…..doing science or poetry at school contribute to a person being educated. But later on, as an educated person he may conceive of them very differently.” ( The Philosophy of Education,P.242)

The underlying Aristotelian justification of the above paradox is not at all paradoxical, involving as it does the metaphysics and epistemology of hylomorphic theory. In this theory certain kinds of explanation pertaining to how something comes to be something is distinguished analytically from formal explanations of the principles relating to something being something. All of these explanations, however, are required in the name of the principle of sufficient reason, and are also important in tribunals of explanation/justification. Causation of different kinds will be essential elements to consider in these tribunals. Both the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of Knowledge, defined as “Justified True Belief”, will be involved in epistemological investigations relating to both what we believe and why, and what we do and why. Reasons for believing will not necessarily be observationally based, but rather related to the principles that guide our observations, and also our experiments with reality. In the process of acquiring knowledge, and understanding principles, the educated man transforms his powers or capacities into ordered dispositions in domains of belief and action. Reasons for doing what one is doing are also grounded in moral dispositions embedded in the concept of justice. Moral dispositions include moral imperatives as part of their justification, as well as the idea of Freedom. Here, concepts such as “right”, “good”, and “ought” determine both how we view actions as well as their teleological results. Even the irrational uneducated man has his reasons for acting, argues Peters(P.254), and these will not fall into the category of “events that happen to him” but rather into the category of what was in his power to do. Peters here contrasts falling off a cliff with jumping off a cliff. In his criticism of Peters, Barrow claims to find a “confession” of insufficient justification in relation to the work “Ethics and Education”. He finds this confession very “odd” but Peters explains his “mistakes” himself when he maintains that he relied too heavily on the method of conceptual analysis which he criticises thus:

“criteria for a concept are sought in usage of a term without enough attention being paid to the historical or social background and view of human nature which it presupposes.”(P.43-44).

This criticism is not rooted in either Kantian or Aristotelian philosophy both of which would have referred to the principles implied by Peters’ own account of the educated man. Reference to historical and social background may or may not suggest illicit reference to causes that bring about the educated state of mind:causes that are not logically related to that state of mind. Peters may be using here a Wittgensteinian appeal to the natural history of linguistic practices to explain the mastery of the techniques of language and may also thereby be violating his own insistence upon non instrumental forms of justification of what is occurring in the name of education. There is, of course, an Aristotelian interpretation of Wittgenstein’s appeal which suggests that the principles of causation that are instrumental in bringing about a state of affairs can be relevant in a context of exploration/discovery, but they are nevertheless not identical to the principles which explain what a thing essentially is.

Barrow’s argument dos not proceed along the above lines but instead curiously adopts the anti-metaphysical and anti-transcendental attitudes of analytical Philosophy, Barrow paradoxically claims in this context that there are no assumptions behind analytical philosophy. He agrees that Philosophy is defined by its questions which he claims are :

“generally imaginative and reflective rather than technical and calculative”(P.17)

Barrow curiously also claims that these philosophical questions are “hermeneutical” but it is not clear that this means to include the kind of aporetic question we find, for example, in Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”(First Philosophy or First Principles). Barrow notes with regret the decline of the influence of the analytical school of Philosophy in relation to issues that arise in the realm of Philosophy of Education, and again paradoxically claims that analytical philosophy is not just another “school of thought”. Barrows argument here is that we have failed to do the necessary conceptual work needed to provide the philosophical foundation needed for the Philosophy of Education. He suggests further that we lack the necessary cultural background but it is not clear how analytical philosophy with its commitment to science and causality, method and observation, can provide us with what is culturally needed.

M J Laverty, in an essay entitled “Learning our Concepts” raises the relevant question as to whether Peters’ principles were too like Wittgensteinian rules to function adequately in our explanatory frameworks. This criticism bites deep, especially when we note that Peters does appear most of the time to be working at the level of the Concept rather than the level of the Judgement(which Kant defines as a categorical combination of concepts). Laverty has this to say about Peters on the issue:

“Since the experience of grasping a principle is so subjective he feels justified in not giving it any sustained serious attention.”(P.29)

The above criticism does gain traction when one considers Peters’ emphasis upon the privileged role of the spectator observing any proceedings(irrespective of whether the spectators intentions are to explore or to judge). This prejudice against the first person form of the use of language in favour of a third person anthropological reporting of ones observations, obscures many philosophical nuances. Laverty also notes the decline of the influence of analytical philosophy and he too wishes more attention be paid to the definition of concepts. He appeals not to Aristotle and Kant but to Nietzsche and Foucault.

Peters uses the pragmatic/anthropological concept of “initiation” very much in the way in which an anthropologist would, in a context of exploration/discovery of the unknown habits and rituals of a primitive tribe. Initiation may well transform the initiate but the philosophical issue is not the scientific problem of discovering the cause that brought about the transformation, but rather an investigation into the principles constituting the resultant state brought about by the transformation. Here Peters himself is not paying sufficient attention to his own key distinction between the processes of education and the achievement aspects of education. We should also recall that Peters has written an article on the role of ritual in education. In this 1966 article he defines ritual as:

“a relatively rigid pattern of acts specific to a situation which constructs a framework of meaning over and beyond the specific situation meanings.”

Rituals when they are socially sanctioned serve the “sociological function” of unifying the community, even a community as small as a school. This reference to this strange concept of justification is probably a consequence of the anthropological emphasis we encountered in the early theorising of Peters: a period of theorising in which he abandoned transcendental deductions, metaphysical reflections and rationality. in favour of the spectator equipped with a power of imagination capable of varying the object of his investigation hypothetically. One of the more interesting aspects of Peters’ investigations contains a reference to one of the principles of imaginative activity, namely the psychoanalytical concept of identification. This principle, Peters argues, explains what is happening in the learning-teaching transaction between the learner and the teacher. Freud taught us that identification only occurs in very unique emotional contexts, involving wishing to be like someone, or identifying with the aggressor, and whilst this might sometimes be happening in education it certainly does not happen universally or necessarily. It is also difficult to equate the educational content of a lesson or a course with the kind of limited conceptual content that is transmitted in a ritual, but this is nevertheless what Peters is inviting us to consider.

Aristotle would have conceded that in the initial phases of education, during the earlier years, imitation plays a central role in the process, but it is doubtful whether he would have insisted that identification is necessary for imitation to occur. Imitation also plays less of a role in the later phases of education where the point of the whole process for Aristotle would have been a self sufficient thinker, an autonomous thinker equipped with knowledge of the principles of all three kinds of science including metaphysics which contains hylomorphic theory. Critics such S. Warnick in his essay “Ritual, Imitation and Education” points out that appeals to ritual violates one of the key requisites for a liberal education ( Reading R S Peters Today, P.63)

Rituals assuredly emotionally transform participants if they are initiates, but the required intellectual actualisation of rational understanding necessary for understanding the world intellectually, does not seem to be present. Emotions may transform us, in the sense of changing our state of mind, but the mere experiencing of emotion does not necessarily possess any normative value: that is we are not transformed for the better into a more worthwhile person( the achievement aspect of education). The role of reason, knowledge and understanding must be, for the later theorising of Peters, an important aspect of the dispositions of the educated man. It is difficult to see the positive role of ritual in the pursuit of the goals of forming worthwhile persons and worthwhile societies. It is in this region of the discussion that Kantian Philosophy becomes important, because it examines this issue in the right context, namely the context of philosophical explanation/justification. Reason, knowledge and understanding are all involved in transcendental arguments. The context of such arguments is the context of “right”–e.g. with what right is this or that judgement made. This kind of argument is at a higher level than the kind of argument we find in relation to the method of conceptual analysis. Knowledge and understanding are certainly involved at the conceptual level in the early stages of learning, but when we approach the later stages of what Piaget called the stage of abstract operations, the teacher is assessing not knowledge of concepts, but rather what judgments are made, and how they are justified. This tribunal of justification is very like that of legal proceedings. In such proceedings the judge is less interested in the justification of the legal concept of murder, and more interested in firstly, the facts of whether the accused did murder the victim, secondly, whether he intended to murder the victim, thirdly, the reasons the accused murderer had for his actions, and subsequently the judgment of guilt in accordance with the law, The questions involved in such a tribunal are both factual and normative, to do with both truth and right. Rights, however, are related to Laws that ensure the reality of rights by giving responsibility to an authority to actualise them. Subsequently both the murderer and the victim have rights under this system, even if, in the latter case of the murder-victim, these rights are only experienced by family and concerned parties. At issue in the tribunal prosecuting the case against the accused, is his/her freedom or in extreme cases in extreme systems his/her life. The entire proceedings rest upon the truthfulness of the parties involved and various oaths are administered and agreed to in order to ensure both the reliability and the validity of the proceedings and the judgements made in these proceedings. The Principles of Practical Reasoning are assumed , including the law of the categorical imperative in all three formulations. (including the third formulation where ideals of a kingdom of ends , rational lawgivers and rational citizens abide by the laws unconditionally). The ideal of a kingdom of ends for Kant, we know, included a peaceful cosmopolitan world that only emerges once rationality actualises itself in the human species. In Kant’s opinion the crooked timbre of humanity would ensure that this ideal end was at least one hundred thousand years in the future.

Knowledge is of course one of the key elements of this actualisation process, and this in turn required the presence of an Educational system that is both transcendentally ideal and empirically real. Peters, it can be argued, in his earlier work was more concerned with what for him was empirically real, and this can be clearly seen in his systematic avoidance of the metaphysical questions that naturally arise in relation to the study of Philosophy of Education. His later work attempted to grapple with the transcendental aspects of teaching and learning, and this can be seen in the shift from seeing the achievement aspects of education in terms of the processes, to evaluating the processes in terms of the achievement or telos of these processes: a shift from viewing education in the context of exploration/discovery to viewing education in the context of explanation/justification. Unfortunately the focus is still on Language, rather than reason: language has meaning, is embedded in forms of life and is both variable and “conventional”. There is a manifest commitment to the kind of grammatical investigations we find in the work of Gilbert Ryle, Austin and Wittgenstein, and these investigations are used for the purposes of addressing conceptual confusion of various kinds. Even though these investigations discuss ideas such as freedom and respect for persons, and the “holy ground” of education these discussions do not remind us of the Greek or Enlightenment positions. The term “liberal Education” is presented, but it is Hirst in his essay ,”Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge”, that most reminds us of the above positions. Hirst characterises the Greek position as follows:

“The fully developed Greek notion of liberal education was rooted in a number of related philosophical doctrines: first, about the significance of knowledge for the mind, and secondly about the relationship between knowledge and reality. In the first category there was the doctrine that it is the peculiar and distinctive activity of the mind, because of its nature, to pursue knowledge. The achievement of knowledge satisfies and fulfills the mind which thereby attains its own appropriate end. The pursuit of knowledge is thus the pursuit of the good of the mind, and, therefore, an essential element in the good life.”( in Peters, The Philosophy of Education,Oxford, OUP, 1973, P.87)

For Aristotle the good life was the flourishing life(eudaimonia) a state that could only be achieved by living a life constituted by areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and sophia. What distinguishes this Greek position from our own modern view is that knowledge of the good, and the desire to know and understand, are intertwined themes. Aristotle’s metaphysics best illustrates this position in his work entitled Metaphysics(a term that Aristotle in fact never uses). Aristotle refers to what he is aiming at in this work as “First Philosophy” or “Wisdom(Sophia). The work opens with these words:

“All men by nature desire to know”

Aristotle then takes us on a tour around the mind, beginning with perception which enables us to know the differences between perceived particulars, continuing with memory which connects perceptions, experience which is of particulars and contains a form of non-explanatory general knowledge, art(universal judgements based on induction, e.g. medicine), science that seeks knowledge as an end in itself, e.g. mathematics and metaphysics. First Philosophy is then used to explain the first principles of things. This latter is what Aristotle regards as Sophia. This is the preferred knowledge of the wise man and it may be that this is the knowledge Peters is evoking in his discussion of “the educated man”. The wisest man, however, for Aristotle is he who teaches First principles or causes. He knows , for example that this kind of knowledge is furthest from the senses, and also that the knowledge of the good is one of the first principles or causes, thus agreeing with his teacher, Plato. Here we see examples of the aporetic questions that concerns the great souled man. It is the awe and wonder in the face of such questions that provoke the activity of Philosophising. This is not to be confused with curiosity that we find involved in the sensory activity of exploration and discovery, which is largely a journey amongst the particulars of experience. Curiosity searches for the what, awe and wonder searches for the why. Aristotle discusses the structure of mathematics in this work and suggests that Pythagorean theory, together with Platonic theory, focuses upon the material and formal causes of phenomena, thus omitting firstly, the efficient cause needed to study all forms of change, and secondly, the final cause or telos that is necessary to study forms of life and action. It is in relation to this discussion that hylomorphic theory is presented to account for the final cause of the Good that is necessary to refute the universality and necessity of Pythagorean and Platonic dualistic theory. Hylomorphic theory, we argue is the nucleus of Liberal Education: a nucleus that was articulated and improved upon by Kantian Critical Theory.

In Kant’s work “On Education”(Kant, I., On Education, New York,Dover publications, 2003) Kant begins with a comparison of the life of man with the life of animals and compares these forms of consciousness with each other. Both forms of consciousness possess instincts, but humans possess law and reason to discipline these instincts. Man desires to know and to lead a flourishing life, and these are the reasons why discipline is needed to transform the consciousness of man. This is done via the instruction of one generation by another. It is in this process of education that man discovers the laws and principles governing all forms of existence. This discipline of submitting instinct and sensibility to organisation by understanding and reason is important early on in life, for it is at this stage that our minds are most formable. No animal needs culture, Kant argues, but man is literally what education makes of him. This observation fits in well with Freudian theory which claims that both consciousness and repression are vicissitudes of instinct. Presumably sublimation is also a vicissitude of the life instinct or a form of Eros. This Kantian idea of discipline meshes well with the Greek notion of areté, which also suggests the important idea of moral discipline or duty. Kant in his work “On Education” goes so far as to suggest that “Neglect of discipline is a greater evil than neglect of culture”_(P.7). Here, we are clearly in the realm of teleological explanation: the form of explanation patented by hylomorphic Philosophy, but systematically rejected by generations of modern scientists. The central duty of man, Kant argues, is to improve himself(P.11) and Kant elaborates upon this theme by claiming that Providence reveals the secret of the nature of man in the following words:

“Go forth in the world! I have equipped thee with every tendency towards the good. Thy part let it be to develop these tendencies. Thy happiness and unhappiness depend upon thyself alone.”

Some philosophers (e.g. Anscombe) have claimed that there is no logical connection between God and his creation, between the theoretical idea of God and the practical idea of human freedom. According to Kant, however, there is an indirect connection between these two ideas, because he who does his duty systematically and possesses a good(holy) will has the right to expect to lead a flourishing life. This diminishes God to an idea in the mind, but as long as the mind is not diminished into a private subjective cauldron of feelings and ideas perhaps this is of no consequence.

The Greeks avoided the obvious problem of conceiving of the relation of God to something as worldly as matter and life, by postulating an intermediary, the Demiurge, that controlled the fate of man and justice in the human sphere of existence. Nevertheless, for Kant, Education is “the greatest and most difficult problem” together with perhaps the problem of “the art of government”. Both education and government require discipline, a good will, and good judgement, exercised in accordance with sound principles. The idea of the humanity of man lies behind the exercise of these arts that both aim at the good, aim, that is, at a better condition of things that will hopefully terminate in a Kingdom of Ends. Kant hints at one of the obstacles standing in the way of reaching such an ideal Kingdom, namely, the fact that “Sovereigns look upon their subjects merely as tools for their own purposes”. This hint takes us back to the classical confrontation between Socrates and Thrasymachus over Justice in book one of the Republic. Aristotle’s concept of justice is clearly reflected in the Kantian idea of a Kingdom of Ends. This idea is a more formal variation of the Socratic claim that justice involves each person getting what they deserve. Roughly, Aristotle’s formal principle of Justice is that we should treat similar people similarly, i.e. we should treat equals equally and people who differ significantly from equals, differently. The key to exactly how, and in what circumstances, to apply this principle requires knowledge of the virtues (areté), which great souled men have acquired. The Phronimos, i.e. acts virtuously(in accordance with areté). Aristotle of course believes that the great souled man is a wise scientist, in the broad sense of the term, and his judgements are in accordance with the principles of political science, the Queen of the practical sciences insofar as Aristotle was concerned. The Queen of the practical sciences for Kant is Ethics. This shift reflects a state of distrust for politicians during the Enlightenment period which we can see reflected in the above judgement relating to Sovereigns using citizens for their own ends. For Kant it is clear that the Kingdom of ends is an ethical Kingdom and sovereigns are not even mentioned.

Aristotle criticised Platonic Political theory for its artificially imposed uniformity claiming that a principle of pluralism ought to be exercised in the name of phronesis. Kant’s Kingdom of Ends embodied this principle by postulating that the citizen of the Kingdom of Ends is a Cosmopolitan citizen(a respecter of different forms of life in accordance with principles laid down in the Metaphysics of Morals. This implies that the arts of education and government share Cosmopolitan aims or a Cosmopolitan telos.

Religious concepts such as the concept of Evil have motivated Kingdoms of Hell for many theologians. Such a conception would be a practical contradiction for Kant:

“for the rudiments of evil are not to be found in the natural disposition of man. Evil is only the result of nature not being brought under control.”(P.15)

In this context Kant comments upon the poor education of our rulers. Even for rulers, then, it is necessary to subject oneself to the discipline of education. The task of a society is to construct a better civilisation, a culture. A culture which includes moral training as part of the educational system: a state of affairs that was not the case during Kant’s time where moral training was left to the Church. A culture which focuses upon utilitarian goals of wealth and comfort results in material prosperity, but spiritual misery, and Kant, like Freud, asks the uncomfortable question whether all the effort involved in building our culture is worth the effort. This is an evaluation which is only valid if it is in accordance with the idea of the Good.

The nurturing of pupils autonomy or freedom is of course a central element of the culture Kant envisages. The success or failure of the educational and political systems of a society will of course determine how one answers the Freudian question “was the effort worth the result?”. A negative answer to this question obviously produces the discontents of civilisation that Freud is referring to. These reflections enable us to postulate(as Aristotle did not) that there are at least three stages to pass through if one is to actualise a Kingdom of Ends, namely, an animal like state of nature, a civilisation characterised by utilitarian principles, and a deontological state we call Culture with well functioning educational and political systems. A Liberal Education, that is, would be an important part of this process leading to the “achievement” of a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends. Discipline is an important part of such culture-building activity. Discipline is manifest in the culture’s attempts to instill the habit of Work in children. Kant claims that man is the only animal that is obliged to work(P.69) and that although there shall be time for play, the pupil must be made to realise that work is a serious pursuit, and a duty. The sensible faculty of the imagination is obviously critically involved in play but Kant insists that it should be cultivated only together with the cultivation of other intellectual faculties such as understanding and reason. A similar point is made with respect to memory where it is claimed for example , that understanding a word must build upon memorising a word but can never be reduced to the rote production of a word. Also memorising of facts may be necessary for the study of History, but it is not sufficient for understanding and reasoning insofar as these are a part of many Historical Judgements relating to Politics and Ethics.

Schooling, Kant argues, should attempt to construct what he calls an “orbis pictus” via the study of botany, mineralogy, and natural history–modelling and drawing will also be necessary in this process together with some knowledge of mathematics. Geography ought to follow and be gradually extended to political and ancient geography. Ancient History should then follow. In this process the pupil will be taught to understand the difference between knowledge and opinion/belief. This prepares the way for an understanding of principles with full consciousness. This latter will prepare the learner for making judgments with understanding, and in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. Kant recommends in the context of this discussion the training of reason via the Socratic method as exemplified in the Platonic dialogues containing Socrates.

In the educational process the teacher should seek to transmit ideas of right and wrong by focusing upon maxims of action. Here it is important, Kant claims, to understand that this kind of discipline must not be associated with punishment. The maxims in question must contain an understanding of the nature of man as part of their content. Punishment therefore is conceived of narrowly and merely amounts to a manifestation of dissatisfaction with the conduct of the child. No anger shall be connected with this expression of dissatisfaction. The ultimate aim of this discipline is the development of character:

“if a man makes a promise, he must keep it, however inconvenient it may be to himself ; for a man who makes a resolution and fails to keep it will have no confidence in himself.”(P.99)

Character is constituted by a number of duties toward oneself and others, and these duties such as telling the truth are categorical, i.e. will always to be actualised:

“there is never a single instance in which to lie can be justified.”(P.104)

It is almost as if, for Kant, telling the truth is a duty to God, but young children will not understand fully an idea such as divine law: at least not until they understand the idea of the laws of men. Divine law will include the laws that contribute to the design of the world e,g, the state of equilibrium amongst all life forms, and the regularity/continuity of natural events.

A child’s imagination(before the development of the powers of understanding and reason) can be terrorised by the imagined power of God. The knowledge of God can be problematic even for adults with a developed moral conscience. The more the faculties of rationality and understanding mitigate the power of the imagination the less fear as an emotion is involved, and the associated anthropomorphism of this very theoretical idea will dominate our belief and action systems. The God of our imagination becomes a more particular phenomenon with particular characteristics which detract from the universal characteristics of this very abstract idea. The gravitas of the idea of God obviously increases with its association with principles and laws rather than with individual and emotional characteristics. The idea of a Phronimos might be tied up with this divine gravitas.

Kant asks himself the question “What is Religion?” and he gives himself the following answer:

“Religion is the law in us, insofar as it derives emphasis from a Law-giver and a Judge above us. It is morality applied to the knowledge of God. If religion is not united to morality, it becomes merely an endeavour to win favour and but preparations for good works and not the works themselves: and the only real way in which we may please God is by becoming better men.”(Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, P.111-112)

Such is the role of education in a Liberal Education that insists upon a Religion within the bounds of mere reason. The limits of Reason obviously prevent us from directly conceiving of the existence of God because as Kant pointed out, existence is not a predicate. This difficulty may lie at the root of the tendency to represent God in our imaginations, but for Kant such representations are in bad faith. We should also be aware that Kant claims that we might not be able to prove the existence of God, but neither can we prove God’s non-existence. This is the logical space in which faith is born: faith in an idea of God grounded in knowledge of the moral law. This kind of philosophical theology belongs then, not to theoretical knowledge(which by definition cannot access the noumenal world or the supersensible substrate of our minds), but rather to practical knowledge that operates in accordance with the practical idea of Freedom. There is, consequently much in traditional Christian Religion that is not in accordance with the above reflections, but perhaps the most radical idea that Kant rejects is that of original sin and original evil: this is the idea that we are to be held responsible for acts committed by other members of the human race. Evil, for Kant, is not actually present in humans, but is, instead, a hylomorphic potentiality that may or may not be actualised. Evil is, when actualised, only an empirical reality and not transcendentally ideal. This latter logical possibility is reserved for actualisation of actions done with good intentions or a good will.

Kant would, in the name of rationality reject the religion of revelation but there is nevertheless a role for what he refers to as the “true church” and “ecclesiastical faith” in religious belief systems. Basically anything that does not contradict the tenets of reason and thereby contributes to the actualisation of the ethical kingdom of ends is a part of the “true church” and “ecclesiastical faith”. Historically-based rituals that do not meet the above criteria should be abandoned, in Kant’s view. Historical faith is subordinate to philosophical faith, but both are necessary, and historical faith plays the role of an empirical motivator striving for the same rational telos via the empirical installation of the “judge within”, or the religious conscience that judges not merely the rationality of the action but also the worthiness or the justification of the person. In this context religious belief relies on historical facts relating to the lives and judgments of the prophets(including Jesus).The judge within, operating in relation to empirical feelings of guilt, attaching holistically to both particular actions and the agent or personality is fundamentally important to Kant, irrespective of the answer to the question pertaining to the existence of God. This is clearly an anti-utilitarian position. On this account, the good will is an intrinsic first person good. The feeling of guilt, however, is not a consequence of ones self-love, but rather a consequence of the objectivity of the inner judge, who does not judge in accordance with any utilitarian happiness principle(the principle of self-love in disguise), but rather on the grounds of a moral law that relies on a principle of practical noncontradiction. Forgiveness for what has already been done, also has a role in this system, but only if there is progress toward worthiness. Here we have the shift from the ethical question “What ought I to do?” to the religious question “what can I hope for?”–a shift from knowledge of the good, to faith in the good. In this connection Kant speaks of a feeling of awe and wonder rather than dread. This is a feeling related to the voice of conscience within, which in turn:

“rouses a feeling of sublimity”(Religion, P.48)

It is this constellation of awe and wonder and the feeling of sublimity that perhaps defines the state of Grace that we encounter also in Greek contexts, e.g., the response of Socrates to his impending death. Here the noumenal self emerges in all its dignity and freedom.

Kant in his first Critique criticised Pure Reason for its pretensions to soar in a stratosphere disconnected with our knowledge. Sceptical metaphysics, Kant claimed, brought the Queen of the Sciences down to earth where it belongs, but in doing so compromised the tribunal of reason needed to provide the difficult to achieve self knowledge that metaphysics was striving for. Reason, and its pure thinking, in accordance with the principles of logic(principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason). Through the continued use of reason we are enabled to enumerate all the acts of reason completely and systematically(Critique of Pure Reason, P.10). In this type of categorical investigation, hypothetical thinking is contraband–absolute necessity is the only acceptable philosophical standard. Reason requires the deduction of the categories of the understanding if the above result is to be achieved. It also requires a methodological commitment toward the Kantian Copernican revolution in which:

“Hitherto it has been assumed that all knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have mire success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori determining something in regard to them prior to them being given.”(P.22, First Critique)

Here we are presented with a justification for metaphysics and its possibility, as well as the kind of reasoning we must encounter in the tribunals of explanation/justification: tribunals that feature a judge putting questions to Nature in accordance with the understanding that principles and laws lie behind all change in Nature. This is not the context for the student of nature aiming to conduct his observations and experiments or futile attempts to “discover” these principles and laws (that inevitably go beyond the information given). One should not forget, however, that in the above quote the focus is upon objects and not the powers of the mind.

P H Hirst, after discussing Greek Liberal Education, refers to the relatively modern Harvard Report on Education(1946). He notes that there is a shift in focus to regarding knowledge as necessary to develop the mind in various desirable ways. He points out that such an approach requires the ability to state these desirable qualities of mind. Kant stated above that concentration upon faculties of mind, independent of objects of experience, leads only to subjective justifications that can become problematic if one uses a cause-effect schema in the analysis of this experience. Hirst comments upon the Harvard report as follows:

“The report attempts the definition of a liberal education in two distinct ways: in terms of the qualities of mind it ought to produce and the forms of knowledge with which it ought to be concerned. What the precise relationship is between the two is not clear. It is asserted that they are “images of each other”, yet there is no escape from “describing general education at one tie as looking to the good man in a society and at another time as dictated by the nature of knowledge itself” “(Peters, The Philosophy of Education, P.91)

Hirst points out that is is clear that the focus of the report is on the characteristics of mind that general education values. The dualistic character of the above quote is clearly manifested in the term “image”: forms of knowledge are characterised in terms of “image” rather than the categories of the understanding and principles of reason contained in Knowledge claims. Three phases of “effective” thinking(cause-effect schema?) are identified by the Harvard Report: logical, relational, and imaginative, and these in turn are linked to three arenas of learning, namely natural science, social studies, and the humanities. Hirst responds in Kantian spirit to the Harvard proposals, and argues that characterising mental abilities independently of specifying the forms of knowledge involved is false. Effective thinking must carry with it an achievement criterion that is not confined to consciousness of different kinds of mental processes. The achievement criteria of these different forms of “effective” thinking are Hirst argues, logically connected with what he calls the public features of forms of knowledge: public features that must include truth conditions and be in conformity with the essence specifying definitions we find in forms of knowledge. These essence specifying definitions further meet the Platonic and Aristotelian definition of knowledge in terms of justified true belief. These essence specifying definitions are also an acknowledgement that there are different kinds of explanation/justification that belong to different areas of knowledge. The Harvard committee dogmatically claim that logical thinking is only developed by the natural sciences, relational thinking only by social studies and imaginative thinking by the humanities. Hirst correctly points out that all three forms of thinking are present in most examples of thinking. One could add to this criticism that there are logical relations between different natural sciences and also between different areas of study outside of the natural sciences. The above classification system merely obscures these obvious facts. Hirst correctly concludes from his criticisms that liberal education requires a more logical characterisation f forms of knowledge. His attempt at characterising them, however, is questionable:

“Each form of knowledge if it is to be acquired beyond a general and superficial level, involves the development of imagination, judgement, thinking, communicative skills etc, in ways that are peculiar to itself as a way of understanding experience.”(P.96)

We see no reference here to either laws of nature, laws of logic, other principles or essence specifying definitions of the kind one would expect to see in Aristotelian and Kantian accounts. Hirst refers to the “rational mind” in his appreciation of Alex Peterson’s “Art and Science Sides in the Sixth Form” which he claims comes closer to meeting his criterion for Liberal Education, but again we see in the quote below only a very vague reference to the role of rationality :

“Whatever else is implied in the phrase, to have ” a rational mind” certainly implies experience structured under some form of conceptual scheme. The various manifestations of consciousness in, for instance, different sense perceptions, different emotions, or different elements of intellectual understanding, are intelligible only by virtue of the conceptual appearances by which they are articulated.”(P.97)

Principles are not mentioned in the above, but perhaps they are implied in the expression “elements of intellectual understanding”. Principles, as we noted earlier, were an important part of what it is that the educated man understands, insofar as R S peters was concerned. Hirst appears in the above to be more concerned with consciousness and the privacy issues that arise in relation to characterisations of the various forms of consciousness. This tendency is emphasised later in the essay when Hirst claims:

“To acquire knowledge is to learn to see, to experience the world in a way otherwise unknown and thereby come to have a mind in a fuller sense.”(P.98)

For Hirst it appears as if he is seeking to restore the earlier Greek condition of a Liberal Education, namely the relation of knowledge to reality, which he claims is a conceptual matter. Categories of the understanding and principles of logic may be involved in this reasoning, but it is not clear that this is the case. Hirst in the context of this discussion has a curious argument against transcendental justification, e.g.:

“To ask for the justification of any activity is significant only if one is in fact committed already to seeking rational knowledge. To ask for the justification of rational knowledge itself, therefore, presupposes some form of commitment to what one is seeking to justify.”_(P.100)

This is a puzzling argument which appears to remove the possibility of transcendental and metaphysical justifications/explanations. Later in the essay, Hirst then seems to admit that rational knowledge demands a higher level of justification, as long as it is not backed by what he calls “metaphysical realism”. It is not, however, clear what he means with this expression, or whether he believes that Aristotle and Kant are committed to this form of metaphysics. Having engaged in this inconclusive theoretical discussion, Hirst then asks what the implications are for the concept and conduct of education. He then attempts to outline the different forms of knowledge and the practical consequences for the school curriculum. Forms of knowledge are not defined in terms of the objects of knowledge as is the case with Aristotle and Kant but rather in the following puzzling terms:

“by a form of knowledge is meant a distinct way in which our experience becomes structured round the use of accepted public symbols.”(P.102)

What distinguishes , for example, the science of physics from the practical science of ethics must of course be connected to the concepts of these sciences as Hirst claims, e.g. “gravity”, “acceleration”, “hydrogen”, etc vs “ought”, “right” “god” etc. Kantian forms of knowledge are only partly determined by essentially defined central or basic terms that are formulated and constituted by true judgements about objects and events subsumed under the concepts concerned. It is not only concepts that have logical relations with each other, but also judgements, especially those belonging to the categories of the understanding specified by Kant in his First Critique. Kant would acknowledge the validity of the so called “category mistakes” highlighted by linguistic philosophers like Gilbert Ryle, who were indeed concerned with the public criteria for concepts linguistically presented. These are not exactly the same as categorical mistakes of the kind we encounter in, for example, the confusion of attempting to found the validity of ought judgements upon the truth of is- judgements. This kind of problem is situated at a higher level than that of the conceptual: the level of the logical relation between judgements. The mastery of a language of course requires an understanding of the criteria for concepts(e.g. Ryle’s example of a university being more than a collection of buildings and sites). It also requires an understanding of the principles of logic and the categories of the understanding. Hirst acknowledges this point but does not alter his puzzling definition of a form of knowledge. He adds to the confusion by claiming that scientific forms of knowledge, moral forms of knowledge, and artistic forms of knowledge are all testable against experience, referring again to the criteria for concepts alluded to earlier. The judge uses his knowledge of the laws and principles of procedure to organise the events that are the concern of the court. In a law court both the moral law and the law of the country have a similar logical structure. The inner judge and the external legal judge both use their knowledge of the law in order to judge whether an action such as killing someone is right or wrong(murder). The testing of experience does not occur here as it does in the context of discovery (which might have occurred earlier in relation to the criminal investigation). In the court, the context has changed, and the law is not going to be tested but rather used to make a judgment. the judge will not explore nature in order to discover if there are murders occurring and then and only then formulate a law against murder. If there was no idea of what is right and wrong controlling the experience upon discovering that murders actually do occur why should not the judge argue that murders are happening in the world therefore they ought to be happening in the world? Normative Knowledge is obviously a condition of the testing or organising of experience. The fact that murders occur is expressed in factual language-in is-statements. The judgements that they ought not to occur is expressed in ought-judgements/statements. The observation that murders as a matter of fact occur does not suffice to falsify the universal generalisation that “Murder is wrong”. This is merely a rehearsal of the is-ought debate that was occurring at the time both Peters and Hirst were writing. Is-statements belong in the context of discovery and ought statements belong in the context of explanation/justification. The is-statements involved in action situations divide up the reality of the situation into observable events that have been caused, and in turn may be the causes of other events that are subject to observational and experimental investigation. In the context of explanation/justification where “deeds” are the issue, reality is selected and divided up in accordance with relatively abstract ideas such as the good will and intention, each of which is defining for human deeds: converting action from a mere event into a deed which actualises knowledge in the world. In ethical forms of knowledge change is brought about in the world not experimentally in the context of discovery but rather in a context of explanation/justification: in a spirit of “This is the right thing to do!”

The full difference between scientific forms of knowledge and ethical forms of knowledge will obviously require recourse to metaphysics–of the kind we find in Kant’s writings about the metaphysics of nature and morals. In Kant’s reflections, for example, we will not find any reference to mathematics in the ethical form of knowledge. In Natural Science we will find the claim that a natural science is only fully a science to the extent that it uses Mathematics. Political science and knowledge will obviously be logically related to ethics and not at all to Mathematics. These points are made by Hirst and he elaborates upon them by suggesting a classification system. He claims, that is, that forms of knowlege can be classified in the following way:

“(1)Distinct disciplines or forms of knowledge(subdivisible): mathematics, physical sciences, human sciences, history, religion, literature and the fine arts, philosophy. (11)Fields of knowledge; theoretical, practical(these may not include elements of moral knowledge)”

The obvious hesitation over the issue of whether practical knowledge will include elements of moral knowledge, is puzzling. For both Aristotle and Kant there is no hesitation over the relation between practical reason and moral knowledge. For Kant the human/social sciences could both divide reality up into events in order to explore causal relations as well divide reality into intentions and deeds. Both of these aspects are supported by metaphysics in different ways: a metaphysics that supported the division of ultimate reality into the phenomenal and noumenal world. There is no sign of any acceptance of these lines of reasoning in Hirst’s essay. For Kant the understanding of this underlying metaphysical distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal is critical for the forming of a program of Liberal Education. We should recall in the context of this discussion that the period during which Hirst wrote this essay was a period of opposition to Hegel which manifested itself in a general academic rejection of metaphysics and transcendental argumentation and a preference for different forms of scientifically based materialistically oriented explanations such as logical positivism and logical atomism. These waves of change brought with them a suspicion of Kantian philosophy. Simultaneously, after the second world war, many educationalists formed part of the wave of globalisation that was gathering to sweep across the world in the name International Education. Alex Peterson was the first Director of an International Organisation(IBO) financed with a start up grant from the Ford Foundation. There are currently ca 900,000 International Baccalaureate students studying around the world. The beginning of this movement , according to Peterson began at a Nato conference around the time of the Harvard Report. The participants were discussing the causes of the two world wars during what Arendt called “this terrible century” and the consensus amongst those connected to education was that the school curriculums of many countries were too insular, too provincial . The interesting question to pose here is whether in the light of Kantian Cosmopolitanism and the implied Cosmopolitanism of Aristotelian Political Philosophy, International Education would firstly meet the criteria of Liberal Education, and secondly, whether it would meet Kantian and Aristotelian criteria. Hirst claims that Liberal Education requires a:

“sufficient immersion in the concepts of logic, and the criteria of a discipline for a person to know the distinctive way in which it works.”(P.106)

Certainly seeing reality in different ways is importantly referred to but the categorical distinctions we find in understanding and judgement are conspicuous by their absence in the above account. Such categorical distinctions are of course critical for correctly describing and explaining agency and action, but they are also important for explanation and justification in the theoretical realm of physical science in which categories will be involved in how we characterise the phenomena of change we encounter in the world of events and causation. Hirst disagrees with the Kantian view of how one ought to introduce Science to young minds. Kant claimed that in the name of constructing an “orbis pictus”, botany should be one of the first subjects. Hirst claims that physics is the better beginning point:

“Many sections of physics are probably more comPrehensive and clear in logical character, more typical of the well developed physical sciences than, say botany. If so, they would, all other things being equal, serve better as an introduction to scientific knowledge.”(P.108)

The concept of a life form which is present in botany but not in physics is, of course an important concept to introduce early on in education, and botany is a discipline dealing with one of the simplest forms of life. Its strategic value lies in the central and basic term of psuche(life) and the manifold forms of its variation.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action (Volume Three): R S Peters’ Philosophical Psychology– Freud, Piaget, Maslow, Kant and Aristotle

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Psychology was consolidated as a region of Philosophy primarily by the later Philosophical Investigations of Wittgenstein which partly attempted to address the conceptual confusions of Modern Psychology and partly attempted to refute the theories of those Philosophers seeking to characterise the human psuche in terms of Hobbesian, Humean causal mechanisms and/or Darwinian instinct-theory. There is, in Wittgenstein, no ambition to furnish a competing theory, but there is in the reflections of R S Peters a startling resemblance to the kind of aporetic reflections we find in Wittgenstein (We find in Peters’ work arguments that in turn bears more than a passing resemblance to the kind of reflection we find in Aristotles Metaphysics). Wittgenstein we know voices personal frustration over the fact that his work resembles a Socratic “album of sketches” rather than a perspicuous representation of the kind we find in Aristotle’s works. Wittgenstein’s work was vitally important, however, in an era in which logical atomism and logical positivism dominated the scene of the Philosophy of the first half of the 20th century. Peters was continuing this important work, especially in the fields of the Philosophy of Action and Education, in which we can also find traces of Kantian Philosophical Psychology and Anthropology. Peters refers in a number of essays to the ontological distinction critical for psychological reflections, namely, that between what man does(action=what he does) and that which happens to man( =that which he suffers). In his early writings however there are uncomfortable references to Popper’s falsification theory: references that are located primarily in an inductive context of exploration which appears to place even truth conditions in the category of hypothetical judgements. We encountered this theory in Peters early work ,””Social Principles of Democracy”. Popper was regarded by the logical positivists (who had a more categorical relation to the truth conditions of judgements) as the “official opposition”, at least up until the time that Wittgenstein began to attack his own earlier work in the spirit of classical theories. Wittgenstein also, by the way, tried to “show” Popper the error of his ways in an ethical discussion by picking up a poker and hypothesising what he might do with it.

Bryan Magee claims that Popper solved the philosophical problem of induction which Hume had posed. Poppers formula “Problem1–trial solution—error elimination—problem2”, expressed well the mental orientation of the “new men” in their obsession with the context of exploration/discovery. For these new men, Popper included, scientific laws were simply generalisations from methodically determined observations and experiments. The results of these “investigations” formed a data base for the community of scientists : a data base that could be used to generate further observations and experiments in other regions of reality. The problem of induction was, however, a logical problem. From a logical point of view no number of observations and experiments could conclusively verify or guarantee the truth of a scientific law, because the assumption that induction was based on, was an experiential assumption that the future would remain the same as the past: that the world would not essentially change its “form” or behave in accordance with a different physical principle. The spectre of Aristotle haunted this discussion because the hylomorphic theory of change questioned the de re validity of the above assumption. Our theories, Aristotle argued, must both describe and explain change and one cannot therefore assume that the laws that explain and justify change assume that change will not occur. This aspect of Heraclitean theory must be accepted. We, as rational animals capable of discourse, desire, amongst other things, to understand the continually changing world, and therefore seek the “forms” or principles that will provide us with a norm for thinking: norms that are controlled by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason(Rational principles). Aristotle’s theory of change also describes how we come to conceptualise the infinite continuum of the the world we dwell in, as specks on a globe that is in itself a speck in the universe. We need, however Kantian theory, to clarify why we cannot regard the assumption that the future will be like the past as a logical principle. If the world is an infinite continuum that is changing continually, unless one is able to logically identify a “something” that is the bearer of change and remains the same throughout the change, we would be unable to either talk or think about this something: This, for Aristotle, is a metaphysical truth but for Kant this would be a proposition of transcendental logic: a condition of claiming something about something or thinking something about something. It may, then be a consequence of this truth that the future will be like the past until that day that the sun explodes or some other earth shattering event occurs in our region of the cosmos.

Involved in the above context of explanation/justification is the invocation of a transcendental realm of understanding that lies between sensibility and rationality, and it is clear that this realm transcends Aristotelian categories of existence by postulating categories of the understanding which in turn assist in creating the categorical judgements that form the foundation of our different forms of thinking about reality.(For Aristotle these different forms would be encapsulated in three sciences: theoretical science, practical science, and productive science). It is clear for both philosophers that inductive activities that are part of the context of exploration/discovery, help to “form” our sensible intuitions into unities that are “ready for conceptualisation”. The process of the formation of these unities is partly conditioned by the nature of the reality involved and partly by the activity of the “I think” that Kant believes is a transcendental act of apperception.

Bryan Magee argues in a postscript to his work on Popper (Philosophy of the Real World: An introduction to Karl Popper, La Salle, Illinois, Open Court, 1985), that Popper argued for dualism, and against materialism. The faculty of the mind involved in the transaction with reality was the imagination situated in an environment in which the expectations generated by ones current theory are deliberately frustrated by the scientific attempt to falsify current hypotheses. The schema for this process of evolution is instrumentally pragmatic, beginning with a problem for which a trial solution is found, continuing with a process of error elimination until a modified formulation of the problem is “discovered”, and the process begins anew. Aristotle of course lifts this activity to a higher level into a context of explanation/justification, by postulating a judgement in which something is claimed about something with truth functional intent. The modality of the judgement is hypothetical and therefore differs from the modality of an ethical judgment which on Kant’s theory is categorical( cf metaphysical judgments of nature such as every event has a cause). The nature of these categorical judgments, however, are different because events happen, and “deeds” are what man does to make something of himself. In this later case we encounter a moral understanding constituted by a moral reasoning process: in other words two faculties of mind which pragmatists, existentialists, phenomenologists and atomists alike question the validity of. It was of course the lack of this form of moral insight in the work of Popper that provoked the “poker” incident with Wittgenstein. It should be pointed out , however, that Peters does not in his reflections upon Psychology, Ethics or Education appeal to Popper’s critical theory, although in the case of his work,”Brett’s History of Psychology”, there is a distinctive anti-rationalist orientation. Popper’s falsification formula has its roots in evolution theory, even though for him the origin of life is a mystery and lies at the limits of an understanding that can have knowledge of developmental sequences of life forms. In the animal life form, it is survival that is the problem, and the trial solutions of the animal occur with the help of the sensory-motor systems of the animal concerned. These animal forms of life manifest two forms of communication, firstly, expression of internal states of the organism by means of the body, and secondly, a signalling function that may be related to extreme emotions provoked by dangers in the external physical world. Human Language, according to Popper builds upon these two purposes with two others, namely firstly, conceptual description of the objects and events of the world which in their turn, secondly, create the truth function of language in which truth is distinguished from falsity with the aid of rational argumentation. This human form of life, Popper argues relates, not to one unified world, but rather to three worlds: world 1 which is a world of physical material things including books and records, world 2 which is a world composed subjective minds, and thirdly, world 3 which is a so-called “objective” world of the cultural products of the minds of human beings. This third world is both autonomous and created by us, it is a world of ideas, art, science, language , ethics, and institutions.

The dualism of the above account is self evident and provoke mind-body discussions that do not naturally arise in relation to Aristotelian hylomorphic theory or Kantian Critical Theory. Popper claims in relation to ethics that man is thrown into a world he has not created, a changing world with no plot or spirit determining its direction. Most of the structures we encounter in this world were not planned or intended: it has an “accidental” character. Marx and Hegel are the intended targets of Popper’s critical theory but unfortunately the dualistic metaphysics results in collateral damage to the Aristotelian and Kantian structures. Popper’s critical theory is neither rationally nor ethically based. It is obsessed with the context of exploration/discovery and in spite of its focus on hypothetical theoretical judgements the theory does not operate at the level of the kind of context of explanation/justification we find in Aristotelian and Kantian theory.

On the above account Political Policies are hypothetical: they have the following structure, “If one does X, Y will follow”. This may be an acceptable account. Now whilst this may be an acceptable account of governmental policies connected to activities governed by the principle of distributive justice, ‘e.g. “If we increase spending in education the work force will become increasingly mobile”, the focus is on the means to the end (mobile work force) rather than the end in itself that is a good-in itself in both the Aristotelian and Kantian systems of thought. This judgment is clearly a predictive judgment in a context of exploration that is expected to either turn out true or false. Hypothetical judgments that are not aiming at the prediction of events but rather at a context of explanation/justification, e.g. “If one murder’s someone one is breaking the law” are not merely predictions (although it is at least that). In this latter case we are dealing with a categorical declarative that is justified by the moral law(So act that you will that the maxim of your action can become a universal law. So act that you treat yourself and others never merely as a means but also as an end). Policies of distributive justice are also connected to the ought system of concepts, and there will be a categorical aspect to these policies related to the kinds of good intended by the action of the policies of distributive justice: social mobility is of course a good of the external world, but education is architectonically, in the Kantian system, a higher good related to the goods of the soul. In judgements related to the categorical imperative, the focus is on a logical relation between intention and consequence that does not require a waiting to see if the effect expected follows from the cause. In such judgments the good will is the source of consequences that are good because of their source in a good will.

Poppers formula could not be used to analyse categorical judgments belonging in the context of explanation/justification, because it is an intellectual tool designed to discover mistakes. It is thus an instrumental imperative with negative intent. The formula demands that we re-describe the expression of an intention as an event, and change the context to one requiring an attitude more appropriate to the context of exploration/discovery. Popper uses this strategy to criticise Marxist theory. He focuses upon the planning of distributive policies and claims that they lack predictive value rather than focussing upon categorical factors such as the lack of respect for the law and the lack of respect for the freedom of the citizens of the society. His formula does not engage positively with ethical and religious questions such as “What ought we to do?” and “What can we hope for?” These questions, and the principles(e.g. categorical imperative) associated with them, ought to be a central feature of just rule, but the duty to become more an more ingenious in ones attempts to falsify these laws and principles is Popper’s idea of what makes a society rational. This is, as a matter of fact, the strategy that the new men pursued in relation to Aristotelian and Kantian categorical rationality. The power of rationality, for Popper, is tied to the power of his formula. Brian Magee in his work on Popper claims that this formula would be in the spirit of social democracy, and he characterises the instrumental imperative of such societies as “minimise avoidable suffering!”. This imperative has the advantage, Magee argues, of focussing concretely on what can be done, in contrast to what he regards as abstract utilitarian principles of the utilitarians such as “Maximising happiness” or abstract deontological principles relating to Freedom. Suffering, Magee argues, is a call to action in a way that is not the case with abstract principles. Revolution is a call to action and is in accord with Popper’s formula. Both the French Revolution and the Russian revolution were instrumentally in the name of distributive justice and the consequences that occurred certainly fell into the category of trial solutions and error elimination, but they included violence on a scale abhorrent to Aristotelians and Kantians. The Kantian response to the French revolution was to see in the intention not an instrumental imperative but a categorical imperative aiming for freedom from tyrannical rule–a good of the soul. This did not hinder Kant from deploring the violence from an abstract moral point of view, from the point of view of noncontradiction(the taking of life is a violation of the life principle itself which by definition is a life sustaining force) and the principle of sufficient reason(one cannot be free of tyranny through imposing another tyranny). Poppers formula invites us to evaluate the French Revolution instrumentally in terms of its consequences. He adds a second principle to “maximise freedom!”, but the formula by definition cannot eliminate tyranny because error elimination must generate another problem that it can be argued only quantitatively diminishes the scope of the problem. This formula, without any metaphysical or ethical infrastructure(Aristotelian or Kantian), cannot provide the universality and necessity required for a judgment relating to “What one ought(categorically) to do. The idea of freedom is viewed by Popper, consequentially, in the same light as suffering, and any appeal to a good will or good intentions belong in world 2, a subjective world that by definition is not “objective” in the way Kant postulates.

There is no doubt that Peters flirted with the above position in his earlier work on Politics. We see the beginnings of a movement away from confinement within Popper’s system of “Objective Knowledge” in the opening quote of his work “The Concept of Motivation”:

“Whether a given proposition is true or false, significant or meaningless, depends upon what questions it was meant to answer”(R G Collingwood)(Peters, R., S., The Concept of Motivation(London, Routledge, 1958)

In this work Peters distances himself from Popper by claiming that those Psychological theories striving to imitate scientific method were missing the central animus of Psychology, which he would later characterise in terms of “a judicious blend of Piagetian and Freudian Theory which, in my view, are complementary to each other”(Peters, R., S., Psychology and Ethical Development(London, Allen and Unwin, 1974, P. 16)

In “the Concept of Motivation” we can see the beginnings of Peters’ “turn” away from the paradigm of scientific method toward a more philosophically oriented theory. This can be seen, in particular, in his claim that Psychologists like Hull were more concerned with the description of human behaviour than its explanation(P.3). Peters, however, continues to theorise in the name of Science. Sometimes with occasional reference to Popper, but he does so in an Aristotelian spirit in that he founds his position on the Explanation of Action. There is also more than a hint of the influence of the work of the later Wittgenstein in the following claim:

“Man is a rule-following animal”(P.5)

Peters is clear in his teleological(Aristotelian) interpretation of the above claim, and he elaborates upon this theme by denying that rules mechanically(in accordance with material and efficient causation) regulate behaviour. They are, Peters claims, connected to the knowledge the agent has of the norms that determine following the rule correctly. These rules are embedded in mans character: a character formed by the knowledge he uses to engage with physical and social reality. In the context of this discussion, Peters points out in Aristotelian spirit, that the norms(disguised imperatives) are part of the definition of the end one is striving for. “Man”, argues Peters, “in society is like a chess player writ large”. The types of explanation we encounter in the domain of action are not to be found in the Scientific Psychology of his time. In fact he claims in this work that it is anthropology or sociology that are the basic sciences of human action. Reference is made, again in Aristotelian spirit, to the reason behind the action which, Peters also points out, the agent might not be conscious of. The reason being referred to here is not to be characterised in terms of material or efficient causation. The move Q to QB6 might be met with the question “Why?, and reference to the mechanical legality of the move, e.g. “This is how the Queen is allowed to move”, of course refers to a rule, but it does not fully explain or justify the move. The explanation/justification of the move may be as complex and comprehensive as the court transcript of a tribunal, and it would embrace causes in the chess case that would include the historical account of previous moves and the reasons for them: such an account might also include reference to mistakes etc. Areté will be the principle which is used to evaluate whether the respective moves of the game ought or ought not to have occurred. There is a clear reference to the Wittgensteinian concept of a language-game embedded in a form of life in Peters’ account. There is also evidence of the shift inspired by Wittgenstein’s later work from natural science and toward social science and the Humanities. Causal explanations are still very relevant in this context, especially if there is a need to explain deviations from what one ought to have done, on the grounds of principles that have been independently justified. Peters gives this interesting explanation:

“Or behaviour may go wrong by being deflected toward a peculiar goal as with a married man who suddenly makes an advance to a choir boy. In such cases it is as if man suffers something rather than dies something. It is because things seem to be happening to him that it is appropriate to ask what made. drove, or possessed him to do that. The appropriate answer in such cases may be in terms of causal theory.”(P.10)

Here there is clear reference to the ontological distinction we find in Kant’s Anthropology, namely, that between what happens to man and what man makes of himself(and his world). It is important to note here however, that the moral dimension involved in correctly blaming the married man for his behaviour remains a necessity given the fact that there was a sense in which the man(assuming normal mental health), ought not to have succumbed to the temptation to do what he did. We expected, namely, that the part of the mind that understands what ought, or ought not to be done, bear a significant relation to the part of the mind that strives to express sexual desire, thus preventing the operation of this sensible causal mechanism. We expect, that is, the mans character to dominate impulsive instinctive urges seeking expression. The causality referred to above, is, in Freudian theory, steered by the instincts/emotions but also by the history of the power of the sensible mind to form behavioural tendencies. Peters claims that these tendencies are also examples of purposive rule following. In what Popper called “The logic of the situation” there is clearly a kind of calculation of means to sexual ends involved in the above example, and little, if any, involvement of the deontological part of the mind responsible for understanding the duties of marriage or duties toward minors. These duties are categorical, they are ends-in-themselves that flow from the deliberative, contemplative higher faculties of categorical understanding and reason. Peters notably does not appeal to these notions or the Aristotelian/Kantian forms of rationalism that support these notions, but he does appeal to Freudian theory which we know was inspired by both of these forms of rationalism. Peters praises Freud’s commitment to psychogenesis(the role of the mind in the generation of symptoms and behaviour), but criticises Freud for not understanding that his proposed model of rule following behaviour applies to all behaviour whether we are confronted with rule following or behaviour that manifests deviation from a rule. This criticism does not do justice to the complexity of Freudian theory, in which it is clear that the married mans sexual advances toward the choir boy, may not be in accordance with the Reality Principle(what one ought or ought not to do) insofar as his duties are concerned but such behaviour is nevertheless in accordance with the pleasure-pain principle that governs Sensibility and the pleasures of the body. In this fantasy laden behaviour neither the goods of the external world nor the goods of the soul are involved.

Peters’ commitment to “Scientific Psychology” is still to some extent present as can be seen from the following claim:

“To give a causal explanation of an event involves at least showing that other conditions being presumed unchanged a change in one variable is a sufficient for a change in another. In the mechanical conception of “cause” it is also demanded that there should be spatial and temporal contiguity between the movements involved. Now the trouble about giving this sort of explanation of human actions is that we can never specify an action exhaustively in terms of movements of the body or within the body.”(P.12)

Peters is imagining here a context of exploration in which spatial and temporal contiguity is involved in the description of the movement concerned from a third person point of view: a view in which some event “is happening” to that body over there and now, .e.g. “He moved the Queen to QB6”, but it could never explain or justify the move because, as Peters claims, the move witnessed is an “intelligent” action, which he paradoxically characterises in terms of “achieving the same result by varying means”, e.g. some other move that could equally threaten the opponents King. Mere movements per se are not intelligent, Peters argues, but without the support of Aristotelian hylomorphic or Kantian Critical theory, Peters risks being regarded as a dualist in the same league as William James who makes the same kind of claims about “intelligent action”. Given the history of dualism we ought to be aware that when dualists like Descartes and James were pushed to “ground” their claims they resorted to materialistic explanations that refer to the brain. Peters seeks to escape such a consequence by referring to the Kantian ontological distinction between what happens to man and what man makes of himself.

Peters points out that humans have needs and these are expressed in normative judgements: e.g. “Man must eat to survive”. He does not however differentiate these needs in terms of goods for the body, goods for the external world and goods for the soul. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs does rank the relative importance of needs in accordance with Greek and Enlightenment criteria that distinguish between the goods of the body and the goods for the soul in a context of a hylomorphic actualisation process. Maslow regards his lower level needs, namely physiological needs, safety needs, and love and belongingness needs, as maintenance needs. Higher level needs such as self esteem needs and cognitive and aesthetic needs are regarded as higher level “growth” needs. Maslow also points out that needs emerge in the actualisation process only on condition that a lower level need has been sufficiently met. Cognitive and aesthetic needs include, for example, the needs we social/political animals have for obedience to the norms for action, such as keeping promises(marriage vows) and respect for the integrity of others as ends in themselves(the integrity of children). Here we are clearly in the territory of the combined goods of the external world and the soul. Maslow argues that the Cognitive and Aesthetic needs are characterised by the attempts on the part of the individual participating in the actualisation process to answer three basically philosophical questions: “What is truth?” “What is the Good?” and “What is Beauty?” These three aporetic questions reach back into the History of Ancient Greece and also into the history of Kantian Enlightenment critical theory, mirroring the concerns of the three Kantian Critiques. What is not clearly present in Maslow’s actualisation theory is firstly, the presence of the goods of the external world. Secondly there is an absence of reference to the role of “principles” in the actualisation process. Maslow’s model is therefore, largely a descriptive model, charting the properties of each level of development without referring to the principles of this development.

Principles obviously relate to action and performing actions well(areté). We can of course use Freudian and Aristotelian principles to assist in explaining the reasons for actions at different levels of the hierarchy of needs. Lower level needs are obviously regulated by the ERP and the PPP in an attempt to return the organism to a state of homeostasis after a period of dis-equilibrium, and the need to survive plays a decisive role in this regulative process. It is clear in this kind of context that dividing the respective needs up into initiating events and end-states in accordance with the resolution-composition methodology of scientific investigation, misses the complexity of the unity of these activities. It is this kind of dissolution(resolution) of activities into the atoms of events that subsequently prevents holistic explanation/justification. Here again we are dealing with different kinds of description and explanation/justification. Reference to the pleasure that supervenes as a consequence of certain types of egocentric activity is descriptive and not explanatory: descriptive of the goods for the body that Spinoza would describe as assertive or expressive of the state of the body in the mind, an assertion or expression that is fundamentally connected to how the organism is faring in life and not just in relation to the game of survival. In the light of these reflections it has to be admitted that Maslow may provide us with a theory of motivation, but he does so without giving us an account of what motivation is from a philosophical point of view. Peters, on the other hand, does attempt this task, claiming that motives are related to Reasons of a particular kind: reasons that are in their turn connected to an evaluative context in which there is the suggestion that there is something wrong with the action which is in question. Peters appeals here to moral and legal circumstances and the discourse which is embedded in such circumstances. Peters also refers to Wittgenstein’s insight that language has many more forms than its truth functional form. These forms include social forms of discourse: language-games, that is :

“may command, condemn, express states of mind, announce, provoke, exhort, and preform countless other social functions”(P.29)

Ought judgments are expressions of the imperative form and can command, guide, provoke, condemn or announce. In universal form, an ought judgement is a principle that both guides and announces our actions. Ought judgements can also occur in conclusions relating to particular actions. These conclusions in turn are related to a general major ought premise which legitimates the attitudes of commanding or condemning, especially in the legal institutional contexts that we encounter in tribunals. The superego is the agency of the mind which for Freud constitutes a form of inner tribunal that has “assimilated” the rules and principles of moral and social behaviour. Freud’s theoretical motive for the creation of this agency was the presence firstly, of unconscious motivation that is connected to a history of psychological defence against anxiety and , secondly, of manic fantasy activity. The “mood” of the activity of this agency was the imperative mood, and the language could, depending upon the context, guide, command, condemn or announce what ought or ought not to be done. The principles behind superego activity vary with the form of activity whether, for example the activity is life sustaining or destructively aggressive : Eros or Thanatos may dominate this agency depending upon previous psychological history. For Peters however, the general need we have for explanation and justification is connected negatively to action. Whether this connection is merely “seeing the action in a negative light” and therefore condemning it, must be questionable given the fact that forward looking motives, which Anscombe in her work “Intention” characterises as “intentions”, surely can refer to praiseworthy motives such as the need to achieve. If it refers to mental causation which “moves” a man to act, this too is problematic if one takes into consideration the essential role of non observational knowledge in the answering of the question “Why did you do that?”. We know that people generally know why they do what they do but we are not asking for a cause which “moved” them to act but rather a “reason” which will help us see the behaviour in the correct light.

For both Aristotle and Kant the fundamental positive attitude of of awe and wonder in the presence of the beauty and sublimity of the world is sufficient to generate the question “Why?”(why are things as they are?) In Kant’s reflections on “the sublime” the awe and wonder at the physical power and magnitude of a waterfall initially overwhelms the senses but subsequently “quickens” in us the operation of the understanding and reasoning in a complex act of appreciating the moral aspect of our minds. This is a positive event in the tribunal of explanation/justification. It is not clear, however whether Peters in his work “The Concept of Motivation” would claim this to be a form of rationality that defines man’s being-in-the-world. The evidence for this is:

“To asks for his motive, on the other hand, is only to ask for the end which explains his behaviour…The implication is that he is not sticking to standard moves. If one asks a mans motive for getting married we imply, that this is, for him, merely an efficient way of getting to some end, e.g. the girls money”(P.33-34)

Peters is clearly influenced by the methodology of ordinary language philosophy: however, by asking what we should say when, he is perhaps neglecting to pay attention to the origin of the word “motive”, which is to move. We are moved by desires and needs, and perhaps attitudes, and these are part of the reason why we do what we do. Kant’s example above focuses on mental activity, and the term “quickens” is deliberately chosen. so as to rule out any suggestion of material or efficient causation. Peters is correct to refer to the telos of the action here, but perhaps more attention ought to have been paid to the formal cause which also must be part of the explanation/justification we are searching for with our question “Why?”. Mental “causation” (in an Aristotelian sense) is omnipresent in Freudian theory and it allows the postulation of the superego as the agency of the mind that brings about a certain kind of action. The final justification for Freudian theory however resides in the complexity of hylomorphic theory with its three Sciences, 4 kinds of change, three principles, and 4 causes(kinds of explanation).

Elisabeth Anscombe in “Intention” argued that the concepts of motive and causation are not used clearly in philosophical discussions. Reflecting on the origin of the concept of “motive”(to move) in terms of a linear one dimensional concept of causation will not express the complexity of the concept of mind that we find in Aristotle and Kant, and will, according to Anscombe, merely lead to added confusion in the fields of Psychology and Philosophical Psychology. In the context of this discussion, Anscombe criticises Ryle’s account of motive, which claims that the statement “Jack boasted from vanity”, is in accordance with a law-like proposition that whenever he finds an opportunity for securing the admiration and envy of others he engages in that behaviour which will secure those ends. Anscombe criticises the assumption behind this position: and assumption that appears to involve a reduction of mans deeds to logical behaviourism which of course in turn depends upon observation and third party reporting for the content of motive-judgments. Anscombe points out, that such an assumption, would make describing the first time someone boasted from vanity impossible to describe and understand, especially if this were the only time in the agents life that this occurred. Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory and Kant’s Critical theory would support this criticism. Both Aristotle would also agree with and Anscombe’s recommendation to define motive in terms of “see the action in this light”(Intention, P.21). Anscombe also distinguishes those motives that are connected to moral praise and blame and those which are not. The Concept of Intention, she informs us, shares with the concept of motive the characteristic of being an explanation/justification given in discourse when the question “Why?” is asked. Intention differs from motive in being directed at the future. Intentions are forward looking motives.

We know how important these concepts of intention and motive are in the tribunals of the legal system where, for example, we seek to discover the motive for a murder via a context of exploration/discovery. There is a sense in which we are searching for a “mental cause” for the action, but all this means is that we wish to establish that the action in question is seen in the correct light which involves establishing that it was intentional and not “caused”(material and efficient causation), for example, by a paranoid “voice” in a continually fluctuating state of mind that cannot distinguish what is right from what is wrong. Anscombe discusses a case of an agent pumping poisoned water into a house. There are four possible descriptions of the physical movements being performed, each of which refers to a widening context of circumstances. The “final end” of “poisoning the inhabitants” is conceptually related to the means expressed by the other three descriptions, e.g. “moving his arm up and down with his fingers round the pump handle”, “operating the pump”, “replenishing the house with water”. With respect to this final description “poisoning the inhabitants of the house”, it is important to point out that if one is to separate theoretical reasoning about events from practical reasoning about actions, the kind of knowledge presupposed in the final description is non-observational. This suffices to dismiss all accounts that regard the intention as an “event” of “mental causation”. This is not to deny that the agent can also know on the basis of evidence by observation that his intention is being carried out, but in such circumstances this knowing will be the product of the calculating part of the mind(the part of the mind responsible for instrumental reasoning). Here Anscombe is claiming that observation in these circumstances is merely an aid, and not the central constituting activity, of the action. Anscombe is acutely aware of the confused state of modern Philosophy on this issue:

“Can it be that there is something that modern philosophy has blankly misunderstood, namely what ancient and medieval philosophers have meant by practical knowledge?Certainly in modern philosophy we have an incorrigibly contemplative conception of knowledge. Knowledge must be something that is judged as such by being in accordance with the facts. The facts, reality, are prior and dictate what is to be said, if it is knowledge. And this is the explanation of the utter darkness in which we find ourselves.”(Intention, P.57)

This is part of the message of Heidegger’s and Ricoeur’s work, We should also recall, however, Anscombe’s criticisms of Wittgenstein’s earlier work where she pointed out that the work failed to articulate the capacity of language to put things that are happening and things that are done in different lights. This Fregean idea of the sense of language being part of its meaning, was not of course registered in the Tractatus which claimed that it was reference that was primarily determining the meaning of language: the truth function of language was for Wittgenstein the general form of the proposition. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and its concepts of language-games embedded in forms of life and the seeing-as function of perception was not only a shift away from the claim that the only genuine propositions are those that occur in natural science: it was a shift towards the human sciences in which action replaces the event as the key ontological phenomenon requiring explanation and justification. The shift also involved viewing language as an activity rather than as a phenomenon or event lying (to use Heidegger’s terminology) present-at-hand. Involved in this shift is the viewing of language from the neglected first person perspective. This assisted in the analysis of emotion, which for Peters, was an aspect of the concept of Motivation. According to Peters motivation can be characterised as “an emotively charged reason”. This suggestion is actually captured in an OED definition:

“That which “moves” or induces a person to act in a certain way; a desire, fear, or other emotion, or a consideration of reason, which influences or tends to influence a persons volition: also often applied to a contemplated result or object the desire of which tends to influence volition.”(Peters Concept of Motivation, P.37)

The above definItion was taken from an OED in the 1950’s. A more recent dictionary(1999) defines motive in the following way:

“a factor inducing a person to act in a particular way: a motif:acting as a motive”

We can note that there is a dramatic reduction of content of the 1950’s definition and this may be a consequence of Peters’ work on motivation in which it is suggested that “The motive is the reason that is causally operative.” Peters points out also that:

“when we have a motive we always have a goal but are only sometimes in some kind of emotional state.”(P. 40)

There is also in Peters a defence of a philosophical reference to ordinary language usage:

“for ordinary language enshrines all sorts of distinctions, the fine shades of which often elude the clumsiness of a highly general theory.”(P.49)

Peters then admits that the analysis of the concept of motivation requires more than a phenomenological inquiry into the use of a word. In his chapter on Freud, Peters also illustrates how east it is to be clumsy in ones interpretation of a general theory when he says:

“Freud thought his explanations relevant only to phenomena which can hardly be called actions in that they seem either to have no point or conscious objective or to fall short of standards of correctness…. The implication of Freud’s criteria is surely that if a man exercises a skill correctly or performs a habitual routine, psycho-analytic explanation is out of place.”(P.54)

Ernest Jones has criticised this position and Peters appears, as a consequence, to retreat to a position that Freud would probably share, namely, that psychoanalytic explanation would not suffice to philosophically explain all kinds of reasoning about action. We should bear in kind here, however, that as the years rolled by in his 50 years of authorship, Freud turned his attention more and more to the rationalism of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. We should also recall that he was one of the cultural figures called upon by the League of Nations to testify to the evils of war, and give a Psychoanalytical explanation of the phenomenon. Freud’s writings on the Psychology of Groups and the Discontents of Civilisation are also testaments to the wider cultural intentions of his later writings. Indeed the Reality Principle embodied by the Ego in the very normal rule guided activities of loving and working is both Platonic and Aristotelian in its form. We ought to recall also that the Ego has the more primitive function of protecting the body, and such activity involves the ERP and PPP. For Freud, a strong Ego was the key to being a virtuous man, and this clearly involved the harmony of the three principles cited above. The differing distribution of these principles amongst the agencies of the Id, Ego, and Superego also serve to provide a differentiation of forms of explanation for a wide range of human phenomena.

In the light of the above misunderstandings of the work of Freud it is rather surprising to find Peters saying in a later work that he subscribes to a Psychological theory that would incorporate the insights of Freud and Piaget. Peters does not refer to Freud’s famous chapter seven from his work “The Interpretation of Dreams”, where the theoretical model of a psychical apparatus is presented as having no physical location. The apparatus clearly, however, contains reference to several of the powers espoused by Aristotelian theory. These powers are situated in the context of the actualisation of the state of mental health. They occur in the context of four functions of mind which are firstly, to function as a capacity, secondly, to function in terms of the occurrence of feeling, thirdly, to function as states of mind that can be unstable emotional capacities that transitorily experience pleasure and pain, and fourthly stable states of mind that have been formed from capacities into virtuous dispositions in the spirit of areté resulting in the telos of eudaimonia (a flourishing life). There is obvious reference to an actualisation process in the account of these functions: an actualisation process that strives after rational solutions to theoretical and practical problems. In Freud’s terms the principle regulating this actualisation process is the Reality Principle striving for a flourishing life. The psychic apparatus of chapter 7 of the Interpretation of Dreams leaves a conceptual space for two kinds of mental process associated with the sensory-motor terminus of the apparatus: a primary process functioning in accordance with the ERP and PPP: and a secondary process that functions in close proximity to the language effect of “becoming conscious” in accordance with the Reality Principle. The technical relation of the ERP and PPP is described by Freud and quoted by Peters on page 21 of “The Concept of Motivation”:

“In the theory of psychoanalysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say, that the course of these events is invariably set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and that it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension–that is, with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure.”

It is clear from this quote that the ERP is related to what Ricoeur refers to in his work as the desire to be and effort to exist which the mind registers in terms of the way in which the body expresses itself to the mind. The Freudian Life and Death Instincts, and their vicissitudes, obviously have links to the powers of the body rather than its feeling-states. Anxiety is a feeling based process of the mind that is shut off from the motor terminus of the psychical apparatus and cannot therefore result in an external flight reaction. Anxiety, therefore obviously poses an accommodation problem for the mind. Wishing is also a power of the mind, related initially to tension in the psychical apparatus. Wishing is not willing in which there is a reason which sufficiently explains/justifies striving for the object or state of affairs imagined by the subject. If, for various reasons, action cannot occur and the tension or unpleasure persists, then the memory system of the psychic apparatus that has formed mnemonic traces of previous satisfactions, contributes to a temporary lowering of tensions. This is what Freud called a hallucinatory wish-fulfillment–a common feature of dreams and mental illness. This hallucinatory activity occurs because the secondary process of the mind connected to motor and linguistic activity, for some reason, is not engaged in processing the material of the wish or anxiety-process. The discharge of tension normally occurs via the use of the motor apparatus but the explanation of such activity is no longer in terms of the rationality of action(the explanation is in terms of material and efficient causation). The Rat Man’s verbal attack on Freud, for example, is an emotional attack whose explanation will require a knowledge of the operation of the primary process where substitute satisfactions or tension reduction takes the place of real pleasures and achievements. Freud’s therapy generated anxiety in the Rat Man, and the subsequent aggression(a vicissitude of the death instinct) lies behind the impulsive response that substitutes in fantasy Freud for his cruel father on the ground of a particular resemblance of particular peripheral characteristics. This substitution is not an activity of the understanding in which both figures are subsumed under a concept, e.g. of authority. Rather, the mechanism involved in these emotional equivalences is an associative mechanism: Freud through this process of association symbolises the Rat Man’s cruel father.

Peters acknowledges the presence of the Reality Principle(RP) but fails to appreciate the role of Plato, Aristotle and Kant in the formation of this principle. For Peters, Freud is, of course, preferable to what he calls the “rat men” of psychology(who study rats) but it is nevertheless clear that Peters does not do Freud justice in his commentary. Kantian theory in Peters is conspicuous by its absence in this discussion, despite Freud’s claim that his Psychology is Kantian. Aristotle would no doubt have agreed with Peters on the “rat men” of Psychology, on the grounds of the significant differences between the life forms of rats and the life forms of rational animals capable of discourse. These significant differences are acknowledged by Peters and they are connected to the complex activities associated with living in a society and speaking a language: activities not to be found in rat collectives.

Wittgenstein, in his later work, “Philosophical Investigations”, claimed that one can imagine dogs to be frightened, unhappy, happy, and startled, but not hopeful. He asks the question whether only those life forms that have mastered a language possess the power of hoping, thus aligning his thought with that of Aristotle and Kant. Peters elaborates upon this thought by claiming that even though men are a part of nature they nevertheless understand some of the laws operative in nature, and alter their behaviour accordingly. Rats, Peters argues, do not create and maintain complex institutions because they do not have the cognitive powers to understand normative laws or History.

Observation and experimentation with animals into how they learn was certainly done with the intention of applying the results to human beings and human contexts of learning. Peters argues that this form of Psychological investigation is confused, especially when it indiscriminately applies its results to higher forms of life. This problem forced Gestalt Psychologists like Wolfgang Köhler, to conduct experiments with more advanced forms of lives, namely apes. He, too, however, experienced difficulties in correctly describing the behaviour of these apes. Clinical longitudinal studies in which Psychologists attempted to teach apes language, also resulted in nothing more than the installation of advanced signalling systems. The use of language presupposes the power of knowing the meanings of words. Peters illustrates this point by referring to psychological terms such as “want”:

“Properly speaking the term “want” implies that a person knows what he wants.”(The Concept of Motivation,P.98)

Peters suggests that at best applying this term to animals requires assuming knowledge animals may not have. It is not clear, then, that (with respect to the behaviour of apes solving a problem to retrieve bananas located outside of their cages)this behaviour can be correctly described as “wanting the bananas”. Wittgenstein would also have argued that we cannot attribute the term “hopeful” to these apes because this requires a mastery or knowledge of language they do not possess. We can also add from a Kantian perspective that both hope and want require a memory system organised by understanding, language and judgement.

Peters, however, does not fully embrace the consequences of claiming that acting requires the power of knowing what it is that we want, or want to do, or indeed knowing what is right to do in a particular set of circumstances. He uses the ideas of purpose and rule-following in order to introduce teleological elements into the act. There is however, a question as to whether Peters means to suggest that the knowledge of the act is composed of events that need to be observed and are associated with each other in a quasi-causal fashion. This kind of view destroys the conceptual unity of action, a unity provided partly by the relation of the “I think” to the concepts and rules of the understanding, and it’s relation to the reason and judgement. It is in the system of Kant that we can see the kind of complex interrelation of sensible and intellectual powers that we find traces of, in the theories of Freud and Piaget. Peters claims to hold the theories of Freud and Piaget in high esteem yet in his later work we encounter misjudgements about the animus of Freudian theory in, for example, the following remarks:

“It is quite obvious, for instance, that Freud was little influenced by observationalism. His interests were technological rather than methodological, and technological pressure means that he had to think up hypotheses to explain and cure his patients(Psychology and Ethical Development, (P.43)

Peters’ view of Freud was obviously coloured by the admiration he had for Popper’s work. This can be seen in the insistence upon the putative ambiguity of some of Freud’s judgements, when viewed from the perspective of what Peters calls operationalism, where discourse must ultimately refer to discriminatory and differential reactions. The view here is that experience must be reduced to behaviour in a way that enables one to speak in terms of manipulating and measuring variables in a closed universe of discourse in which one knows that a change in the value of one variable will necessarily lead to a change in the value of another variable: a universe in which there are causal relations between events. Peters claims not to subscribe to reducing experience to reactions, but we can note that he systematically avoids the metaphysical and ethical implications of what he calls the Freudian Copernican revolution in Psychology. His response here is influenced by his prejudice in favour of the creative power of formulating hypotheses.

Peters, views Aristotelian science via a lens of modern science and classifies Aristotle as the first behaviourist. This is a peculiar characterisation of a philosopher who is investigating the logos of the psuche. Peters’ motivation is contained in the following:

“.. for the distinction between the private world of the individual’s own conscience and the public world which all could observe was alien to the Greeks. Indeed there is a sense in which the Greeks had no concept of Consciousness in that they did not link together phenomena such as pain, dreams, remembering, action and reasoning as exemplifying different modes of individual consciousness. The concept of Consciousness was largely a product of individualism, of the various movements such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Christianity which supplied conceptual schemes that were different from those which were appropriate to the shared life of the city-states. The coordinating concept of individual consciousness was not made explicit until it found expression in the system of St Augustine and Descartes. The use of introspection as a technique for investigating consciousness went along with such systems of thought. Behaviourism could only be understood as a reaction against such a technique.”(Psychology and Ethical Development, P.48)

From an Aristotelian point of view individualism would have been regarded as a figment of an overactive imagination that had detached itself from an understanding of principles and reasoning in terms of these principles. Hylomorphism argues clearly, that he who lives outside of a society is either an animal or a God. It is true that the Greeks would have spent less time in linking phenomena to sensible experience, being more inclined toward seeking explanations and justifications for phenomena in terms of the view of reality as an infinite continuum. In this search, the mind attempts to understand and reason about the aporetic questions that arise from attempts to comprehend this complex world and ourselves. Peters’ diagnosis, however, of the origins of individualism would largely have been shared by Aristotle whose work was transformed and distorted by a series of scholastic interpreters under the auspices of, firstly. the Church and then, subsequently the Universities. Aristotle, therefore, would probably have agreed with Freud’s claim that Consciousness was a surface phenomenon, a vicissitude of something deeper, namely the Instincts. Human Instincts we should recall here have the complexity of an advanced form of life, possessing a source in the body, an aim, and variable objects. Pursuing his curious claim of Aristotle being the first behaviourist, Peters compares Aristotle with the 20th century Psychologist William McDougall who studied behaviour in terms of instincts and purposiveness. Peters’ criticism of McDougall’s greatest mistake:

“from a philosophical point of view, was to translate a conceptual insight into genetic terms(Peters, Brett’s History of psychology, P 707)

McDougall, in other words did not conceive of behaviour in terms of its matter and principles(form), but rather began with the assumption that all behaviour was a function of a finite number of innate(genetically determined) purposive patterns. This, of course, is a materialist account that Aristotle would have dismissed on the grounds of the lack of a constitutive principle. The fact that McDougall complements his account with an account of emotion which we access via introspection adds a dualistic aspect to his account that also would have been questioned by Aristotle. In conclusion, McDougall’s Psychology can only be linked to Aristotle on the most tenuous of grounds, principally because Aristotle’s notion of “purpose” was not by any stretch of the imagination a behaviourist notion, but rather a power of our thought that was self originating.

Peters criticises Behaviourism for the vagueness of the concepts of stimuli, response, etc but the main thrust of his criticism is individualistic, and he appeals not to the level of principles, but rather in terms of the absence of the sensible idea of Consciousness. Only I can know what I am immediately conscious of in a visual field or in the realm of emotion, it is argued. This is the Neo-Cartesian heritage of the concept of Consciousness, a heritage that is criticised by Analytic Philosophers like O Shaughnessy who situates Consciousness in an ontological hierarchy, whose framework appears to correlate with hylomorphic theory: beginning at the foundational level of forms of life and culminating in the Mentality of a being that is rational and capable of discourse. O Shaughnessy also postulates an ontological hierarchy of Reality that begins in a non-vital inorganic realm, continues into a vital realm , which in turn continues into a “Psychological” realm and terminates in the final realm of mentality. Consciousness, O Shaughnessy argues, has emerged with the help of laws of nature from the vital realm of the “psychological”(psuche). It manifests itself entirely internally in the organism but this does not entail that it is totally self contained phenomenon like a light in a black box. Consciousness is, in spite of this characterisation, world oriented and directed outwards. It makes contact with the world through the phenomenon of psychological awareness. This awareness is also involved in intentional actions that are life sustaining and life provoking. Such awareness also has the reflective property of self-awareness. The nature of this awareness is, according to O Shaughnessy, truth relational and takes a particular form of awareness of the rules and principles of the individuation of objects, and also a more general form connected to the kinds of explanation we generate at the mental level of our existence. These explanations are expressive of the truth orientation of consciousness. O Shaughnessy regards this truth functional characteristic of Consciousness as prior to its final motor orientation in intentional action.

This kind of account has hylomorphic elements and this can be seen in its naturalistic and physicalist account of the physical substrate of a matter that is defined in functional terms. It is this matter that ensures the possible continuity of consciousness as well as its interruptions in sleep, and in various forms of unconsciousness. This matter is formed in an organ system that constitutes the human life form, and it’s possible forms of life. The truth orientation of the function of Consciousness is part of the constitution of an advanced form of life that requires the actualisation and manifestation of many potential and latent powers including perception, memory, imagination, understanding, judgement, and reason. Failure of the actualisation process also accounts for pathological forms of consciousness. We clearly see here, the cognitive relation of Consciousness to reality that prevents us from regarding it as an internal private individual phenomenon.

Perceptual attention is one of the functions of consciousness, that, for many different reasons, is concerned with the “reading” of what is occurring in Reality. Notwithstanding this “reading”, what we are in contact with is not sense-data but rather “phenomena”–things that announce themselves. There is, however, a layered response to this Reality, consisting of the visual recognition of the phenomenon, the subsequent awareness of the existence of the phenomenon, and the consequent awareness of the existence of the phenomenon expressed by the judgement “I saw that…” The extended form of this judgement would be “The lightning struck the tree” and this, of course, is grounded upon perception embedded in a learning experience that is retained in memory. For Freud, the hylomorphic critical Psychologist, there is agreement that the physical substrate of the brain is the material foundation of consciousness. In the context of this discussion, Freud referred to a subset of neurones in the brain which he called “Phi” neurones that are not altered by what is consciously perceived. Another subset of neurones of the brain(termed “Psy” neurones) are altered by discharge and are related to learning and the formation of memory traces. A third subset Freud terms omega neurones and these are related to qualities of consciousness and reality testing of these qualities. The details of the contribution of neurone systems to the phenomenon of consciousness are obscure. Recognition of the lightning striking the tree will obviously involve memory, and given that we are capable of discourse, the event might unleash a subconscious thought of saying “The Lightning struck the tree”. The further truth function of Consciousness will obviously require other powers that O Shaughnessy relies upon, but does not mention, e.g. powers of conceptualisation(individuation), categories of judgement, categories of understanding and the powers and principles of reason(noncontradiction, sufficient reason). These arguments support the view that there are degrees of Consciousness and that we become conscious in the sense outlined by O Shaughnessy over the course of time in a complex process of actualisation. The recognition of lightning, however, is only one form of consciousness. Another form of consciousness is that involved in thought about the phenomenon.

Perception, for O Shaughnessy, Aristotle, and Kant is of real extended objects, events, places, and people in the external world. This act requires an occurrent “event”(state) of consciousness. Involved in this operation of consciousness is the transformation of what is external, into an internal psychological representation of what is external. This in, O Shaughnessy’s view, is the process he describes in terms of the opening of the doors of the mind in order to allow the entrance of the external world. O Shaughnessy argues also comparatively(in Aristotelian manner) and points out that animal forms of life probably find their objects via routes other than thought, e.g. complex combinations of different avenues of perception(smell, sight, touch, and sound), but this is done at the expense of a form of being-in-the-world which is tied to the world in a way that does not permit the animal to psychically distance itself from its environment. Animal experience is a form of consciousness that cannot distance itself from itself and become reflectively conscious of itself. Such forms of consciousness, O Shaughnessy argues, are not capable, at the perceptual level of consciousness, of seeing something as something, a necessary requirement for categorising or classifying something, situating it, that is, in a system of concepts. O Shaughnessy tethers the ship of our mind to the dock of reality, and does not allow flights of Consciousness up into the stratosphere where one can imagine reality does not exist or one’s body does not exist. In the harbour of our being-in-the-world, the forming of concepts and the connection of concepts to each other, obviously differ from each other and both operations differ from the raw presentation of the manifold of representations to Perception. Perception encounters individuated particulars of various kinds in the world and there are causal mechanisms linking these things to the final result in the perceptual form of consciousness: causal processes that involve matter, light, surfaces, organs, neuronal systems of the brain and their interaction, etc. Many of these mechanisms would fall under the material and efficient forms of explanation/justification we encounter in Hylomorphic theory. For O Shaughnessy there is a role for sense data in the above causal exchange. Sense data obviously have some connection to Kantian noumenal reality but have the following phenomenal characteristics:

“an array of mere coloured point values in an ordered two dimensional sensory continuum”(Consciousness and the World, P.30)

The Kantian a priori intuitions of Space and Time are also conditions of perceptual forms of consciousness although O Shaughnessy admits to being uncertain about the a priori intuition of Space. The process of Perception begins, then, in a change in the world that attracts our power of attention, and continues until a phenomenon announces itself to consciousness as a clearly situated existence, in a three dimensional spatial-temporal setting. Involved in this processing of two dimensional sense-data is a transition to three dimensional reality that obviously involves a priori elements including a practical knowledge tied to the potential circumambulation of objects and phenomena. O Shaughnessy shares with Peters a negative opinion on the contribution of Behaviourism to the discipline of Psychology.

Peters points out in the context of this discussion that the same physical behaviour(from the point of view of observation) can be very different ontological entities, e.g. an identical wave of the hand may be, either consciously signalling to a friend, or instinctively waving away a mosquito. Both are psychological acts, but are situated at very different levels of what O Shaughnessy calls “rationality of state”. The former requires the activation of cognitive powers not required by the latter. Behaviourism, we know oscillated in its opinion about consciousness, between denying its existence completely, to denying its relevance in explaining behaviour. Peters appeals to Aristotle in his criticism:

“When, however, we pass to Skinners operants, to things done as instrumental to an end, we are entering the sphere of action proper. Such actions, at the human level at any rate, cannot either be described or explained as mere movements exhibited at the reflex level. For an action is not simply a series of bodily movements, such movements as are necessary to it are done for the sake of something, as Aristotle pointed out in his criticism of the mechanists of the ancient world.”(Ethical Behaviour, P.75)

Peters goes on to argue that insofar as Perception is concerned, the presence of consciousness is inescapable in accounting for the meaning of what is occurring. Gestalt Psychology is invoked to support the claim that humans see what they perceive as meaning something. This is the reason, Peters argues, that the behaviourist account of the emotions in terms of behaviour and circumstances to the exclusion of any psychological or mental constituents, is misleading, because the component of seeing something as something or seeing something in a certain light does not have any role in the account. Peters believes that the major problem with behaviourist accounts is that there is excessive reliance upon a biological methodology that cannot be applied to psychological phenomena at the level of human beings. Involved in this criticism is the fact that the internal nature of consciousness requires verbal reports of what one is experiencing and these reports are not, then, on the behaviourist account, related intentionally to the experience, but rather regarded as a logically separate event, distinct from the ” event” of the experience. Verbal reports are not understood observationally, but only in terms of their intentionality. This kind of understanding is an interpretative exercise in the cognitive sphere of meaning. Peters notes in the context of this discussion, that we are confronted with one of the central issues of the “new discipline” (1870) of Psychology, namely “What is a Psychological question?”. This of course brings us back to the fourth question of Kantian Critical Philosophy, namely “What is man?”

For Aristotle the posing of a psychological question does not require the institution of a new and special discipline, but rather the conceptual schemes of common sense and the various philosophical methodologies that were developed by Socrates, Plato and himself. Forms of life, and the language we use in relation to these forms of life, are, of course, in need of description and explanation. Regarding man, as Peters does, as a “rule-following animal”, without the cognitive apparatus we are provided with in hylomorphic and Kantian Critical theory, risks giving a one dimensional answer to the multidimensional question “What is man?”. It also risks a one dimensional interpretation of Aristotle’s answer to this question, namely. rational animal capable of discourse. Scientists influenced by Poppers one dimensional problem solving formula, can be regarded as rule following animals unaware of the scope of their freedom and responsibility. Stanley Millgram’s experiment in this field clearly investigates the philosophical implications of the thesis that man is a rule following animal. The ethical implications are clearly both descriptively manifested, and cry out for an interpretation that appears to lie beyond the scope of Psychology and Modern Science. Interpretation of the meaning of this experiment requires, of course, seeing it in a certain light. This in turn is not an invitation to a tribunal of conflicting interpretations, but rather an invitation to see something real in the light of an ethical judgement. Peters’ insistence that we understand our own cultural lives because we have been initiated into its form of life via imitation of rules and purposes, omits the role of choice and freedom and the grasp of principles which enable us to understand and criticise rules and purposes such as the “final solution” for the Jews or the “final solution” for the Japanese. The focus on rules and purposes, distantiated from ethical tribunals invites us to ignore central components of our theoretical and practical rationality, the freedom of discourse, and the ability of consciousness to adopt a sceptical attitude to the “new men” in white coats or “the men in uniform” or “the men in political office” . Peters follows Popper down the garden path:

“We assume too, certain postulates about rule following..We assume as I have argued before, that man is a purposive rule following animal, who acts in the light of what Popper has called “the logic of the situation”( Psychology and Ethical Development, P.97)

The logic of the ethical situation, of course, requires a more complex account than that given by either Popper or Peters. It requires a Philosophical Psychology of the calibre of that we find in hylomorphic Philosophy or Kant’s Critical Philosophy: a Philosophical Psychology that focuses not on rules, but on the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason, when attempting to answer the question “What is man?”.

Peters account of the emotions, on the other hand, contains many Aristotelian insights. He claims that there is a fundamental connection between emotion terms and “appraisals”(praise and blame). Here, the Wittgensteinian notion of seeing something as something plays an important role in the identification of an emotional form of consciousness. Both the lower level pleasure-pain principle and the higher level reality principle are involved in our emotional judgments in the context of explanation/justification. Intuitively also we realise that there is a kind of selection of the objects of emotion that suggest the above cognitive component. The sensible aspect of the mind is able to individuate objects non-conceptually, and must be involved in the selection of, for example, objects of anger. In the state of consciousness we call anger, we witness a form of consciousness which, even if it is extremely egotistical, and not under the control of the principles of understanding or judgement, is nevertheless obeying what Popper would refer to as “The logic of the situation”.

Peters correctly points out that under the influence of behaviouristic Psychology there has been a tendency among psychologists to regard fear and anger as the paradigmatic cases of emotion. These emotions can, of course, be clearly identified in the animal population. Generalisation from animals to humans is seen to be unproblematic in spite of the obvious significant difference between these forms of life : differences that manifests themselves in the human capacity to, for example fear objects, and be angry at objects, in a way that would not be possible for animals( e.g. fearing the end of the world, being angry at God). Peters points to sorrow and pride(P.118) as being specific to human forms of consciousness because they require a complex conceptual matrix in order to occur.

Peters also refers to the fact that many terms used for the naming of emotions are also used to name motives. Both emotions and motives involve appraisals, Peters argues, but emotions appear to happen to us, whereas motives appear to be more active and connected with our intentions and intentionally directed action. Peters points to the presence of the operation of the autonomic nervous system in relation to the experience of emotions, which he claims, confirms that we have a more passive relation to these states of consciousness, which would be regarded ontologically as “inactive” by O Shaughnessy. In the work entitled “The Will: A dual aspect theory”(volume 1, P.16 it is claimed that anger is not something that is done, but rather something that overwhelms us in much the same way as sensations do: sensations “Happen to us “. Perhaps the sensations that are just happening have their source in the autonomic nervous system as William James suggests. These sensible components of emotional states may not be capable of enabling active conceptual thought. This might have the consequence that we are caused to be angry in a way in which we are not caused to think or intentionally act. Similarly with grief. One is overwhelmed by the sensations of grief which operate in a theatre of sensibility best described by Freudian theory. Here, too, the autonomic system disturbs our breathing and releases a stream of physiological responses that might include tears. Aristotle in his discussions of the phenomenon of akrasia referred to the overwhelming of our normal responses to phenomena by grief and anger and he described this state of affairs in terms of sensations, namely he claimed that we can fail to do what we know to be right if we are “drunk” with emotion.

Sartre, we recall from volume two characterised the world through the eyes of the emotionally afflicted as ” a difficult place”. In this state of consciousness Sartre argued the agent adopts “magical” solutions to the problems the world poses. These “solutions”, e.g. fainting in the face of an attack by a ferocious beast, are not action-solutions, they are rather the solutions of a sensible mind operating independently of our understanding, judgement, and reason. In this strange sensible world daggers appear to hang in the air and dead people appear at feasts: one can lose ones sight and regain it as miraculously again, one can lose ones voice and regain it again and one can even lose the use of ones legs and walk again—all without physical cause–the sensible world is indeed a magical world. Ghosts of the dead can appear to those overwhelmed by sorrow, and I can also be caused to become like someone who has traumatised and beat me in angry fits of temper. All of this, in spite of the apparent absence of rationality, can be characterised in discourse, and explained in philosophical and psychological theory.

Freud the explorer charted the domain of the psuche from the level of the most primitive form of being human to the level of the psychological and further to the level of the higher mental process involved in civilisation where the “agents” of Eros, Thanatos, and Ananke are involved in the distribution of primary and secondary processes in accordance with the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Involved in these processes are the psychological principles of the energy regulation principle(ERP), the pleasure-pain principle(PPP) and the reality principle(RP). Peters remains agnostic in relation to many of these Aristotelian/Kantian/Freudian reflections and, at least insofar as embracing rationalism is concerned, is prepared to go only so far as Piaget was willing to go.

Piaget, Peter’s argues, articulates his idea of rationality in terms of the description of intelligent judgment and its operation. If, for example, a novel form of change occurs in our environment, we assimilate it on the condition that we are in possession of a belief system containing the relevant concepts to allay our curiosity. If not, and our curiosity or awe and wonder persists, we actively change our belief system by forming new concepts or alternatively altering existing concepts with the consequence that truths not acknowledged previously are now acknowledged. These truths, in turn, can become the subject matter of judgements that will, in the future, enable the thinker to assimilate relevant aspects of reality under the judgement.

It is these belief systems that enable us to see something as something, and furthermore to act in a way that involves intending or desiring something under some description provided by the belief system. Rationality will obviously be involved in these complex operations of assimilation and accommodation. The process of accommodation, though, is not necessarily some private operation occurring in the private space of ones mind. It can, for example, take place in the course of a conversation(discourse), occurring in the agora with Socrates. In the process of accommodation the capacity(disposition)of judgement is required, a capacity that involves categorically judging that S is P, an operation where the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason are obviously operative. If we are dealing with judgements that are expressive of knowledge at a higher level, then these may require higher levels of explanation/justification contained in, for example, various bodies of Science, including the science of metaphysics as conceived by Aristotle and Kant. We can include in this the Aristotelian metaphysical principles of change, namely, that which the change is from, that which change is toward, and that which endures throughout the change(.e.g. the enduring self that remains constant throughout processes of assimilation and accommodation). In action contexts this will be the case whether we are dealing with world building instrumental action or world preserving categorical action.

Peters, in reference to Piaget’s relation to rationality says the following:

“Reason is the end product of the process of development”(Psychology and Ethical Development, P.128)

Freud would agree with this judgement. In Freudian terms, Reason is a vicissitude of the vicissitude of Consciousness: a precipitate of the extensive division of the ontological character of the Psychological as charted by Freudian theory. For Piaget, and for Freud, a human in the first years, possesses a form of consciousness that is more sensible than intellectual. Accommodation, is therefore the dominating cognitive operation in a rapidly developing belief system. In this context of exploration, the affective principles of ERP and PPP are critical. These are egocentric principles and for Piaget, centre around the seeking of rewards and avoiding of punishment. For Freud, Wish and Anxiety during these formative years largely determine the way in which the world is encountered. Both Psychologists would agree that the enduring self referred to earlier, is in the process of construction. Trauma and high levels of anxiety can, of course, disturb the development of this self. The enduring entity that is changing in this phase of development is dominated by the primary process of mental functioning. Prevalence of this phase of mental functioning in later years can, for example, result in pathological forms of consciousness such as hallucinating that one is Napoleon or a form of consciousness that believes ones body is being dispersed among all the celestial bodies and space of the universe. This latter pathological form is a perfect picture of the lack of integration of the powers of the body that constitute the ontological realm of the psychological. The first stage of development is characterised by Piaget as the sensory motor stage in partial recognition of the fact that stable thought processes play a minimal role in the actualisation process. The next stage of the actualisation process is the so called pre-operational stage, and extends from 2 to 7 years old. One of the key landmarks of this stage is the acquisition of language and its subsequent effect upon consciousness. This occurs partly through the process of accommodation. Both Freud and Piaget share the view that consciousness is intimately linked to language function. Peters believes that it is the rules of language that are “internalised” in this acquisition process. Piaget claims that the child at this stage cannot psychically distance themselves from their environment and adopt the viewpoint of someone else, and to this extent he is regarded as egocentric. Piaget presents evidence for this thesis in the form of phenomenological descriptions of child discourse which, Piaget claims, is largely in monologue form: a form that is designed to assist them in the performance of tasks in the process of accommodation. The child at this stage develops a positive feeling for those of his peers that share his interests, and further, is largely respectful towards older people. This form of respect is, however, affective–a combination of affection and fear. It is on this basis that accommodation of the belief system occurs until that point at which there is a Copernican revolution in which the world can now be seen from other points of view. This stands at the gateway to the next stage which is the stage of Concrete Operations. This operation is called “de-centring” by Piaget, and it provides the child with an important condition for cooperating with others. Moral rules are no longer blindly accepted but rather seriously discussed against the background of a growing awareness of the importance of intentions that express desires, and are necessary to understand if one is to understand different descriptions of one and the same movement or piece of behaviour. With this realisation, the will is born and a form of mental organisation is actualised that transcends the concerns of the particular moment, thereby strengthening the role of future expectations in the mind of the subject. The final stage from 12 years old onward is the abstract operations stage. Logical operations that were formerly tied to concrete reality can now be applied to more abstract representations of this reality. In practical terms the subject begins to form a personality with a life-plan and attempts are made to answer aporetic questions such as “Who am I?” and “Where am I going?” This is a stage on the way to developing a personality that is free and autonomous.

Autonomy and heteronomy are Kantian terms, and the difference between them turns upon the reasons why an individual forms the maxims of their actions. In cases of heteronomy, there is a mixture of awe and fear in the face of authority, and a reaction of “obedience”. In such circumstances, we can indeed speak of rule following behaviour that gives the rule the quality of a prohibition which demands emotional rather than intellectual responses. Peters criticises Piaget for not specifically charting the cultural influence in the maturational development of the individual. Peters also points to the influence of Kant on Piaget’s thought. He does not, however, as we have pointed out earlier, appreciate the extent to which Kant can be regarded as a hylomorphic Philosopher who probably believes that powers can only be actualised by appropriate environmental stimuli. Certain powers, e.g. sensory motor powers, and powers of language, are powers we are born with. Here, material explanations are necessary, but not sufficient, for the complete explanation of our cognitive, pragmatic, and aesthetic activities.

The sequence of the stages of moral and intellectual development are, Piaget argues, invariant and this provides a clue to which kinds of powers are biological functions of the organ systems that we possess. The question which Piaget does not address is whether consciousness is an innate power or rather a vicissitude of other powers. Such a question is difficult to answer until we have a viable philosophical account of consciousness. Perhaps the institution of Education(where the powers of the soul are writ large) can assist us in providing the knowledge we need in order to understand the actualisation process of lower and higher mental powers. Such an account will need to utilise concepts and principles from all three Aristotelian sciences, namely Theoretical Science, Practical Science, and Productive Science.What needs to emerge in this process is a clear picture of the scope and limits of Consciousness.

A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume Three( R S Peters, Piaget, Authority and Ethics)Volume Three.

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The symbolic tale of the thread of Ariadne and its journey through the labyrinth was evoked in volume two for the purpose of picturing a metaphysical and epistemological postulated continuity linking the Philosophical attitude of the Greeks of the past with the Minotaur(of modernism?) of the present and finally with the future Kantian Kingdom of Ends. This future is of course predicated upon the slaying of the Minotaur and the successful exit from the labyrinth. This picture of slaying a Minotaur may be a figure of ridicule for the species that has constructed the atomic bomb but insofar as the Labyrinth is concerned the words of Stanley Cavell seem more than appropriate: “In the dark is where we ought to know we are”.

Socrates tempted the furies of the fates by attempting to expose the false convictions of “those who claim to know” in his society. He did this by using a method relying on principles of reasoning(the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of sufficient reason) to partly restore confidence in the prophecies of the oracles. The scope and limits of knowledge was not yet on the agenda of Philosophy but was soon to be in the form of his pupil Plato’s attempted synthesis of prophesy and Philosophy via theory and allegory. Plato’s and Aristotle’s works created the epistemological and metaphysical space needed to know what it is that we do not know and Aristotle began the tradition of exploring this space systematically in the spirit of philosophical and scientific investigation. As a result of such exploration we also became aware of what cannot be known by exploration alone. Socrates ceased his explorations of the physical world upon reading in Anaxagoras that “All is mind”. Aristotle broadened this investigation by systematically investigating all forms of life. In this way Plato and Aristotle continued laying down the thread of all forms of reasoning in an attempt to establish the direction of travel of the thread. This direction of travel, was, however, to be questioned first by Religion, and then by Science in the succeeding centuries. Religion, for example questioned the idea of man being by nature Good, and claimed to have discovered a fundamental flaw in human psuche: a flaw that could only be healed if man could achieve a vision of De Civitate Dei, a city of God in which man becomes whole with the aid of divine assistance. Post Aristotelian Philosophy and Philosophers standing at the gateway of the “Modern” tradition of Philosophy also challenged the direction of travel of the thread of continuity and divided it, taking their half in a new direction (Descartes and Hobbes). The thread leading from Ancient Greek Philosophy continued on its journey with the Critical Philosophy of Kant that criticised dogmatic rationalism in all its forms(including mathematical rationalism), religious rationalism, and sceptical empiricism in all its forms( solipsism, scientific skepticism, experience based aestheticism). Kant did this very clearly in the name of arché, areté, epistemé, diké, phronesis and in the name of reunifying the thread. It has to be admitted that Kant’s project did not meet with even short-term success. Hegel’s spiritually inspired philosophy once again emphasised the division of the thread and headed off in a new and different direction to that of Descartes, Hobbes, and Hume. This state of affairs persisted until Wittgenstein appeared on the Philosophical stage in England. At first Wittgenstein followed the direction of the thread laid down by the “new men” but eventually retraced his steps and began to question the direction of Philosophy in general and Culture in particular. This questioning had the effect of reviving interest in Greek and Kantian philosophy currently hibernating in the University system of Europe. Wittgenstein himself felt that in his later work he could not contribute more than an album of sketches to this ongoing project and this fact prevents him from falling squarely into the schools of either hylomorphic or critical philosophy. His focus was primarily on language as a medium or tool for the clarification of philosophical problems. His work, however, together with that of Ryle and Austin inspired philosophers such as R S Peters to address the more obvious conceptual confusions that as a consequence of the theorising of the “new men” existed in the realms of Psychology and Education. Peters’ reflections were sometimes expressions of the disease of thinking he was attempting to mitigate but they were mostly in the spirit of Socrates using a combination of the methods of elenchus and ordinary language normative usage. Peters investigations in the domains of Psychology and the Philosophy of Education were the reflections of a philosopher aware of the unhappy metaphysical/epistemological implications of the modern variations of the assumptions of dualism and materialism. Sometimes, however this concentration on the methods of ordinary language Philosophy in the realm of his political and ethical investigations led away from Greek and Kantian contexts of explanation/justification and generated its own kind of blindness to this tradition of philosophical reflection. In illustration of this point, we find, for example, in Peters´ early writings on Social and Political Philosophy a curious discussion of what the term “society” means and what it means to say that man is a political being. Peters writes:

“Man, said Aristotle, is a political animal. He lives in society and is thereby able to survive, to talk, and to develop a culture.”(Benn, S., I., and Peters, R., S., Social Principles and the Democratic State (London, Allen and Unwin, 1959, P. 13)

Peters and Benn go on to suggest in a sceptical spirit that we might not be clear about what we mean when we say that man lives in a society because there is, “no such thing as society”(P.13) in the sense of it being something extended with recognisable boundaries. They go on to analyse what we mean with this problematic expression:

“when we speak of societies we are using language to pick out types of order which make an intelligible pattern of the activities which people share with each other.”(P.13)

The authors go on to suggest that we need in social contexts to learn or be initiated into social and political forms of life because, presumably, there is a large element of what the authors call “construction” involved in terms that are not given to us in simple sensori-motor contexts. We should note that the above work is entitled “Social principles” and from the point of view of the assumptions of this work we could be forgiven for expecting either a hylomorphic or a Kantian/critical notion of “principles” to appear somewhere. The engineering term “construction” poses the question as to what kind of construction the authors are referring to. Are we speaking here of a formal mathematical construction in accordance with mathematical-like principles, e.g. the definition of a straight line as the shortest distance between two points. Mathematical constructions retain some connection to reality because both geometry and arithmetic have schematic relations to space and time as well as intellectual relations with hypothetical propositions, e.g. if X then Y. Such propositions also share a cause-effect structure with instrumental and hypothetical imperatives. Mathematics is no doubt an excellent tool that we use in the quantification of processes and it is also useful to describe and explain relations between elements within these processes. End states of processes that participate as beginning states of new processes, however, are both difficult to quantify and characterise in pure mathematical terms. Such states are of course typical elements in growth and development processes. In organisms such as frogs the matter of the frog is is changed in its form in accordance with principles that actualise the state of the frog so that other principles become responsible for the next stage of the growth and development process. Both of these principles are subordinate to the psuche principle(life principle/instinct) that seeks the best end for the organism given its circumstances. In this sense an organism is teleological in its very essence. What this means in Aristotelian terms, is that when we are observing processes of change in living organisms, the psuche principle is of prime importance and is decisive in defining the essence of the living organism. This essence has primarily a categorical status in the sense that, as Spinoza put the matter, every organism must strive to maintain itself in existence. It also has secondarily a hypothetical character expressed in the hypothetical propositions, “If you want to continue living then you must drink, eat, stay healthy, not expose yourself excessively to danger etc.

Alternatively the sense of “construction” Benn and Peters are referring to, could be the same as that which is involved in the construction of a house by a builder. Here, the builder builds the house in accordance with the principles of building. Everything that we see the builder doing is determined by the end product of the house which in its turn is determined by the qualitative form of life humans expect to lead whilst dwelling in the safe comfortable house. Aristotle in his hylomorphic theory commented upon the forms or principles that a builder uses, by pointing out that the builder builds “organically”. Aristotle means here that were nature to engage in the process of “forming” houses in the natural cycle of its activities the same principles of construction would be used and we would find the heavier materials used for the foundations and the lighter for the walls and the roof. For Aristotle, then, both the “constructive” activity of nature and the “constructive” activity of the human builder are teleologically determined. This means that material and efficient causes will be determined by final or teleological causes. Concentration, therefore, upon only the material and efficient causes of change will result in explanations that are only partially complete: result, that is, in necessary but not sufficient conditions of that which one is attempting to explain. Isolating material and efficient causes often occurs in an archeological form of explanation that is commonly found in contexts of exploration/discovery. The principle of sufficient reason demands, however, that all four forms of Aristotelian explanation is required if one seeks to define the essence of the phenomenon that one is investigating. This principle requires a tribunal of explanation/justification situated in a context of philosophical investigation.

Sartre’s account of “construction” would probably be given in relation to his postulated “hodological map” of the world contained in a thought system that enables us to see objects and events in the world in terms of what they are “for”. Perceiving a road on this kind of account contains no general idea but rather particularities such as “This is the road leading to the Professors house”. In this account there does not appear to be any space for the Heraclitean striving to understand the “Logos” of the road in terms of the road up and the road down being the same road. There is however, a clear reference to a means-end structure in this hodological map even if it is particularised in terms of “You need to take this road if you want to visit the Professors house”. Heidegger’s account of the role of instrumental activity located in a matrix of a context of involvements is also relevant in this discussion. In this account there is space for generalisations: the road is for travelling up and down, for journeys to and from the village, and for cars, buses , lorries, agricultural vehicles horses and donkeys to use. We can not, however, encounter any Aristotelian or Kantian principles in either Sartre’s hodological map or Heidegger’s instrumental context of involvements.

Benn and Peters attempt to emphasise the differences between natural processes such as storms at sea and social activities such as the building of houses and the passing of laws. Aristotle, we have pointed out earlier in this work, saw a city state to have a natural telos of an ultimate context of involvements that passed through several stages of growth and development very much in the same way in which a tadpole becomes a mature frog. Peters and Benn, refuse however to see any form of universality or application of universal principles involved in the building of houses or the passing of laws. The principles involved in these latter phenomena, it is argued by Benn and Peters, are not universal, because they are not objective and they are not objective because they are conditional upon human desire and human decision. Universality and objectivity is best exemplified in “the constitution of a crystal or a sponge, the rotation of the earth around the sun, the way in which lead melts at a certain temperature”(P.15)

The underlying implication of the above reasoning is both anti-Aristotelian and anti-Kantian and the assumption lying behind the above account is that only physical laws governing physical events can give rise to a world that is a totality of facts regulated by physical laws (which are the only truly “universal” principles). It is clear that the Kantian moral law is not a fact, if by that is meant that Promises are never in fact broken. Whether it follows from this fact that Promises are therefore not principles of action is a questionable inference. Ordinary language Philosophy is called to the tribunal to testify for the position that moral judgments are prescriptive, prescribing what ought to be done. It is argued that the use of language is normative, but there is no concession to the Aristotelian position that the major ought premise of action-prescribing judgments is a universal judgment of principle. Neither is there any concession to the Kantian major ought premise involved in the formulation of the moral law that prescribes how one categorically ought to act in particular situations. The specific argument presented by Benn and Peters is that whilst laws may prescribe what we ought to do it is still up to the individual, in fact, to decide what to do. This for both Aristotle and Kant would be an example of a category mistake, a misunderstanding of the function of the moral judgment which is to prescribe what we ought to do. For Aristotle people are praised for being virtuous and blamed for disregarding the principles of virtue. Aristotle would not abandon this position because of the fact that people in fact disregard what they ought to do and neither would Kant abandon his position in the face of such argumentation. This form of modernistic argumentation is in fact an example of the use of the neutral gear of science when it comes to choosing between good and evil. For the scientists the argumentation that man is essentially sinful(Christianity) or essentially good(Aristotle, Kant) is equally valuable and there is no reason to choose the primacy of one form of argumentation over the other. The world is the totality of facts is the Procrustean bed all argumentation must submit to in the neutral context of exploration/discovery. This, of course was the position of the early Wittgenstein that was abandoned in favour of a world composed of a plurality of forms of life manifesting essences that can be discovered by grammatical/conceptual investigations. What we say and what we do, as a community determines the normative character of forms of life and language-games. In this change of position we encounter a move away from the context of exploration/discovery aiming to discover the essences of crystals and sponges and toward a context of explanation/justification that manifests the normatively determined activities of a social language learner and user. The focus is less on the scientific method and more on the constructive activity of mastering a technique(techné). The unresolved question that lies behind the Wittgensteinian “turn” is, “What is the relation of Wittgenstein’s later work to the Philosophy of Aristotle and Wittgenstein?” In answering this question we should bear in mind that the later work occurred in England during a period of the 20th century in which there was an academic anti-theoretical movement directed at all Hegel’s form of idealism, but this attitude, mysteriously, was also directed at the transcendental Philosophy of Kant. We ought to remind ourselves in the context of this discussion that Hegel expressly stated that his intention was to turn Kant”s Critical Philosophy on its head. This modernist approach was repeated again in the work of Marx where the intention was to turn Hegel’s work on its head and move from purely theoretical arguments to putative practical concrete facts such as that the ruling class control the means of production and further that the class that controls the means of production of a society controls that society. This for Marx was an observation based fact that also served to define his category of social class. The Proletariat on this account was the class that sold their labour to the master class. Marxism was anti-theoretical in its mood and therefore rejected the Neo-Aristotelian legacy of defining class in terms of occupation and education: two social institutions determined in their constitution by the theoretical sciences, the practical sciences and the productive sciences.

Benn and Peters respond to this discussion by using an ordinary language objection to the effect that the terms “nation-state” or “class” have no determinate meaning or definition. It is claimed, for example, that “Words are only tools for communities” and further that there may not be one use of the above terms that is correct from a universal point of view. It is highly doubtful that the later Wittgenstein would ever have suggested such a relativistic position considering his insistence that the laws of logic must apply to all activities including our use of language. In this respect Wittgenstein clearly displayed an Aristotelian concern with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Language connected to all activities must have necessary and sufficient conditions for its use. Wittgenstein clearly outlined a view in which breaching these conditions that constitute normative usage would result in facing a tribunal of explanation/justification questioning the reasons for the suggested new way of using the word. Wittgenstein also points out that what one person does in a particular situation at a particular time is not sufficient to create a new norm. The new suggested usage would need to face many tribunals of explanation/justification.

Benn and Peters in the context of the above discussion claim that:

“Every system of social order grows up on a foundation of human nature”(P.16)

But this they argue is something that needs to be discovered in a context of exploration/discovery:

“The problem is to discover which properties of human nature are universal and unalterable”.(P.16)

The context of exploration/discovery, that is, presumably must search for generalisations in accordance with the old fashioned Baconian “Book of Nature” view that maintains our theories must contain only facts and strictly derivable generalisations. When adopted by sociologists this activity ends with the presentation of laws that are largely descriptive of the phenomena and conditions they are related to. On the “unity of science” view these laws will be very similar to the natural laws discovered by the natural scientists. Presumably these laws will also describe how people use language. As a kind of footnote to this discussion, Benn and Peters maintain that when it comes to the actions of human beings these must be defined by man made standards, meaning that they are related to subjective decisions and desires. Actions, it is argued , can be performed more or less intelligently(William James, “Principles of Psychology”), more or less correctly(areté). Areté is obviously a principle of both action and judgment about action. The discussion in Benn and Peters, however, veers off in a sociological direction and the concept of “authority” is examined. A social system is defined in terms of the normative structure that remains after the members of the society over generations and centuries have passed away. Max Weber is invoked in order to testify to the different kinds of social regulation that include both moral guidance and political power. This latter form of regulation requires an authoritative figurehead and the former kind of regulation(like science) requires no such figurehead. Lurking behind such remarks is the presence of the Philosophy of Karl Popper. Popper was of the opinion that the objectivity of an everyday judgment such as “The chair in the living room” would require the institution of a language-use contract amongst a large number of language users. This is the correlative in the world of common sense to his claim that a new recommended usage of a scientific terms required the meeting of minds of a number of scientists that agree with the reform. This background assumption was combined with an empirical view of social control that had developed from the view that custom was the major regulating mechanism of social norms. This mechanism was however being eroded by the rise of internationalism and printing in the 14th and 15th centuries. Individualism was both identified and embraced by Thomas Hobbes, an individualism characterised by a spirit of Protest that in Religion manifested itself in the mass-movement of Protestantism. Nations states subsequently arose and statute law began to replace common law as a mechanism of social control. The tribunals of explanation and justification were changing their character as the centuries rolled by. The Hobbesian Leviathan replaced the Machiavellian Prince. Hobbes was one of the first in a generation of “new men” that based their theoretical programs on an unvarnished rejection of Aristotelian Philosophy in general and Aristotelian Philosophical Psychology, Political Philosophy, and Ethics in particular.

Benn and Peters interestingly claim that the focus on individualism arose during the Renaissance period. This is a complex claim, difficult to evaluate, because of the complexity of the Renaissance period which according to the Art Critic, Adrian Stokes, was characterised by being a period of intensification of all forms of activity including QuattroCento Art that had the ambition of establishing architecture as the mother of all Art. QuattroCento artists were renowned for exploring the materials of their art in search of the form or principle of the medium: a search that included a search for the essential properties of the medium. True, the stone used in a building producing mass-effect and the stone used for a wall producing a flowering effect are different effects, but both areté and epistemé were involved in this search and this was the reason why for many the Renaissance period was the period of the rebirth of the Greek spirit, or as Stokes put it, in his psychoanalytical terminology, the rebirth of the Greek Ego.

In a discussion relating to Natural law, Benn and Peters take up the work of Aquinas and the Stoics. The underlying assumption of this discussion that includes the Roman idea of the Law of Nations, Stoic and Christian Cosmopolitanism, is a negative view of human nature that runs contrary to the Aristotelian and Kantian more positive view. Indeed, it would be left to Kant to detach the theoretical notion of Natural Law Theory from the practical ideas of a Good Will and Freedom. In Kant’s account the negative characteristics of evil, guilt, and fault would be attributed to a failure of an actualisation process that involved the development and integration of a number of life-giving and sustaining powers. Evil on such an account is not a transcendental characteristic of mans being bur rather merely an empirical reality. Benn and Peters write:

“The heyday of natural law, however, was the post-Renaissance growth of individualism. The Renaissance, as has often been said, focussed interest on man as an individual. The law of Nature was thought to be rooted in man as an individual rather than derivative from his ecclesiastical or civic status…..The law of Nature was also a godsend to those ageing representatives of the middle class who feared the absolutist ambitions of the rulers of the developing nation- states, for the law of Nature provided a system of universal principles binding on king or subject alike to which appeal could be made in calling in question the justice of laws. It was in this kind of context that moral philosophy grew and flourished.”(P.28)

The above quote contains both an insightful description of the evolving status of law, morality, religion, and politics. It also, however, contains and anti-Aristotelian and anti-Kantian interpretation of the meaning of the historical events referred to: an interpretation that is in the spirit of “modern Philosophy”. We need, therefore, to submit the above quote to a tribunal of investigation. Firstly, as we claimed above it is too simplistic to claim that individualism was a central theme of Renaissance Culture. Adrian Stokes writes about the work of two of the major Artists of this period, namely Michelangelo, and Giorgione with the suggestion that these artists aimed at transcending individualism via an invitation to integrate vastly variegated and differentiated emotions and attitudes in one created unity. This period, Stokes argued is characterised by both a quantitative intensification of all forms of cultural activity and a substantial and qualitative integration of varying and diverse emotions. This focus upon the whole object rather than what Stokes called the part-objects of Culture, does not atomise into the relativism of individualism but rather universalises the individual in a matrix of arché, areté, techné, epistemé, and phronesis. Giorgione characterises this spirit of Eros in painting and Michelangelo in both painting and stone. The Kantian eye (uno sola ochiata) browsing amongst the objects of the Renaissance would undoubtedly pause in encountering the work of Giorgione and Michelangelo and appreciate the way in which the imagination and the understanding express aesthetic ideas. Authoritative sources of custom, law, and government do not obviously appear in the works of these artists but rather like the figure of Eros lingers ambiguously in the background. Michelangelo’s loves of stone is there for all to see in his work “Times of the Day”, standing guard over the de Medici family tomb. One will not find here grandiose Roman scenic ambition or Northern preoccupations with rhythm. Custom and law do not hang in the air like daggers for these classical men but are integrated seamlessly and silently into their lives as a whole. In fact individualism and the spirit of Protest lay further North, in men who manically loved the method of technological activity that was focussed upon, often in isolation from the understanding of its teleological aspects. The New Men came from the North: Luther, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. The view of psuche as a whole was passed down to us via the words of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but this thread was constituted by a thread of continuity which later was divided. Part of the thread led to Kant and his Critical Philosophy, but part led to the birth of the new men. The Renaissance was not named for these new men, but rather for the rebirth of the classical spirit which these new men rejected for their different reasons and agendas. The mark of the classical is a focus on the universal and speaking with a universal voice about spatial and temporal particulars such as art-objects. This is clearly an example of the transcendence of the individualism, dogmatism, materialism and skepticism in general that presents itself as so many forms of false images.

According to Benn and Peters, the role of Christianity in this historical process is ambivalent. On the one hand, it brought into the Renaissance a sense of the brotherhood of man and the suggestion a spirit of the Cosmopolitanism we find philosophically expressed in the secularly inspired Humanistic Philosophy of Kant. On the other hand, Christianity manifested itself in a father-child matrix of safety and obedience. The institution of the Church played an authoritative role in a life that had more than a suggestion of the tragic surrounding it, owing to the Christian assumption of the flawed being of a Man that was subject to a fleshless superior being possessing an ambiguous form of existence(as conceived by the “new men”). Hylomorphic Philosophy and Kantian Philosophy had clear ideas of the role of religion and the theoretical idea of God in the life of man conceived of in humanistic terms. God for both of these Philosophers was a pure form or principle that explained and justified certain aporetic aspects of mans life. The Renaissance period was a period in which this attitude was restored in Art and perhaps also in the spread of Aristotelian Philosophy in academic contexts such as the newly formed Universities (especially the English and Italian Universities).

The suggestion of the new men that the laws of Society and the laws of Nature are fundamentally different is, in a sense correct, if interpreted correctly, that is in the spirit of the context of explanation/justification rather than the spirit of the context of exploration/discovery. As laws constituting our understanding and judgment about different realms of phenomena, there is no essential difference between their constitutive function but with respect to the domain of application of these laws, these domains are ontologically different: with one set of laws relating to events that happen and another set of laws relating to what has been created. The Renaissance period obviously celebrated the freedom of the artists creativity: a creativity that spoke with a universal voice, in its great works of art, thus competing with the theoretical universal voice the scientists were striving to acquire.

The notion of law, conceived of instrumentally, in the sphere of human normative activity has the form of an instrumental imperative. The categorical operation of freedom in action contexts, for example, means that with respect to such action, agents can choose to do those actions that have categorical characteristics manifested in the categorical nature of the reasons they give for such action. These agents are of course free not to do what they categorically ought to do but in such cases authorities may exercise coercive power on the grounds of tribunals of explanation/justification. To the extent that such coercive force is used arbitrarily is the extent to which we are dealing with the Hobbesian Leviathan that will eventually be consumed by its own power because it does not understand the requirement of the universality criterion insofar as its own prescriptions are concerned. Government , like individuals, may be acting in accordance with instrumental imperatives that focus on the means to bring about ends which need a separate tribunal of justification than that which seeks to justify means to ends in a way reminiscent of theoretical justifications of causes to bring about specifically desired effects. This latter form of rationality is formed by the calculating part of the mind which, for Aristotle, was a different part in comparison with that part which concerns itself with deliberation or contemplation.

The critical spirit of the Renaissance included a questioning of the assumptions of religion, a Sceptical spirit that would have left Aristotle bewildered and also prompted Kant in his critical philosophy to find a golden mean position between the dogmatism of authority and the scepticism of the new men. Neither Aristotle nor Kant would have shared the view of Benn and Peters that religious prescriptions are not related to reasons in the same way in which ethical prescriptions are. Indeed, for Kant, the questions “What ought I to do?” and “What can I hope for?” are intimately integrated in his critical Philosophy. The ideal of the Kingdom of Ends, for instance is the final purpose or end for both religious and ethical contexts of explanation/justification. Both questions relate the logical relation of an end to the ought-system of concepts and premises that constitute reasoning in these contexts. Neither in Kant nor in Aristotle will one find in their religious reasoning any reference to the will of God. There is also no trace of sympathy for the idea that religious authority operates in a matrix consisting of father-child relations and safety-obedience expectations. There is, however, in the work of Benn and Peters a clear recognition of the role of parental authority in the transmission of values to children. In a section entitled “Morality and Rational Justification”, Benn and Peters refer to Piaget’s transcendental stage of child development in which there is no questioning of what they call the “rules” of morality. Young children, it is argued are generally obedient (but sometimes not) and do not challenge the rules. It is only at the ages of 7-8 that children come to understand that moral rules have a “point” and are the result of mutual accord and agreement. It is difficult to know exactly how to conceive of this agreement , whether in theoretical terms or whether in terms of practical tribunals of justification that are immersed in social and communal forms of life, but this is the stage in the child’s development at which ideas of justice emerge and when comprehension of the consequences and implications of action become more apparent(e.g. in lying). Submission and obedience is replaced by a new form of organisation of morality which will later be connected to speaking with a universal voice in ones discourse about ethical action. Respect for ones peers also emerges at this stage. It is at this stage that the child’s emotions are organised and the will as a mental phenomenon emerges as a regulator of mental equilibrium. The will presides over potentialities and tendencies and is called into operation when there is a conflict of tendencies between , for example egocentric pleasures and socio-centric duties. Here it takes the form of a tribunal that uses practical rationality rather than emotional motivation or causation to decide possible conflict. The autonomy of the will referred to in Kantian Philosophy begins at this concrete operations stage of development. A heteronomous will steered by emotions existed prior to this emergence at the pre-operational stage.

It appears that Benn and Peters accept Piaget’s Psychological account of Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action and this may be one source of the concept of subjective individualism we encounter in their work. This concept of subjective individualism is undoubtedly behind the differentiation between laws of Nature and Laws of Society that also finds itself on either side of the subjective-objective divide. The concrete operations stage is one stage in the actualisation process(a process that is sometimes referred to by sociologists as “socialisation”) and one of the key operations is the operation of seeing or imagining something from a point of view other than ones own. This is a moment in which a form of understanding critical for ethical judgment dawns. The “I think” is no longer egocentric once this dawning moment occurs and this is probably one of the major conditions necessary for the operation of a good will.

Prior to the concrete operations stage, during the pre-operational stage, the play of the child is symbolic or imaginative involving a form of thought that engages with reality in terms of what one desires rather than in terms of what is real. Involved in this use of what Freud would have called the “Reality Principle”, is the mechanism of “assimilation”: a form of thought that assimilates the activity of phenomena into schemas of action. The imagination operates differently in these two situations. In the pre-operational stage the imagination is engaging in the activity of projecting egocentric desires onto the world as if it were an artifact, thus magically transforming it with the aid of emotional schemas we possess in accordance with what Freud and Aristotle would have called the Pleasure-Pain principle. This imaginative activity is part of the transcendental stage of obedience in which morality is largely a matter of customary forms of activity in this matrix of safety-obedience. In this stage there is no distinction between theoretical and practical necessity insofar as the power of rationality and understanding are concerned, and there is no power of the will operating autonomously to regulate egotistical pleasure-pain tendencies. The power of memory reigns in the pre-operational stage in the form of transcendental solipsism, anxious about safety and obedience and magically wishing that everything is possible. It is the concrete operational stage that brings the desire for the understanding of truth and the operation of reason to bear on the world and on the agents actions in the world. It is at this stage of the actualisation process that the activity of thought seeks to transcend the transcendental stage by operating in the context of explanation/justification in which the ideas of the Truth and the Good are in the process of actualising. The “I think is organising the memory into a higher form of consciousness replacing “affection” with understanding. In this process, assertions and judgments are transformed from hypotheticals (If only this broomstick was able to fly) into categoricals (brooms lack the power to fly). These categorical judgments being true, form arguments, which in their turn also form logical relations with each other with the aid of reason. It is these transformations that enable the tribunals of explanation/justifications to operate and begin thinking in terms of the categories of judgment and the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The telos of the concrete operations stage, namely, the abstract operations stage, might be somewhat differently conceived by philosophers influenced by Kant and Aristotle. The difference between Piaget’s Psychological account and the philosophical account is best represented by the difference between the two contexts of exploration/discovery and explanation/justification. In the former the search is on for assembling the totality of conditions for a phenomenon, but in the latter case there is no longer any hypothetical inquiry but rather a categorical starting point from unconditioned categorical premises that enable one to arrive at necessary truths about particular events and objects in the phenomenal world. Piaget refers in this context to theoretical mechanisms such as firstly, interiorisation(this has ben questioned as a mechanism on the grounds of the spatial form of the characterisation of a process that may require the notions of temporality and principles to define), and secondly reversibility of operations. Both of these mechanisms play a significant role in the characterisation of abstract operations. Nevertheless Piaget can be regarded as a Hylomorphic Psychologist, partly because he focuses on real transactions with reality in which powers of mind are continuously and successively structured into more complex and abstract structures. Even the primitive powers of, firstly, thinking that an object continues to exist even though it is not presently perceived, and secondly, the power of the child reenacting something witnessed yesterday, both play their parts in later stages of development. Powers of assimilation and accommodation over long periods of this developmental process complement the initial sensory-motor powers of the early years. The accommodative power is a transcendental function tied to stimuli of the environment whose purpose it is to decentre the child from an action-reaction schema. The power of the imagination, on the other hand, is a sensory-motor schema for Piaget, the image being a symbol of the eye movement involved in the perception of the aspect of reality that is perceived.

Language is also a symbolic system, with each word also being a more complex sensory-motor schema symbolising the use of the word either in an occurrent speech-act or in thought. Events and objects in the external world that are assimilated in the context of language-involvements, are transformed into objects of knowing and become, according to Wittgenstein, part of the linguistic system. The schema used in this knowing thus represents known events but one ought not to substantiate this representative function because it is always someone with the appropriate powers(sensory-motor schemata) that are the real source of the representative power. Detaching the symbols from the use of language, as Wittgenstein did in his earlier work, is only one of many problematic attempts to characterise a principle as something tangible and external. Such attempts abstract from the operation(which by definition for Piaget is a reversible action) and the Aristotelian powers the operation is an expression of. In this case, the act of knowing derives from the active structures. In Wittgenstein’s later work we encounter the active relation of knower to representations but not the transcendental linguistic solipsistic soul of the earlier work. Powers are active Aristotelian structures and not passively conceived properties of a solipsist. In the later work there is no underlying reference to a context of exploration/discovery in which observation is used to discover causal associative relations of things(and their relations) to symbols. There is rather, an active, constructive relation of knower and symbol. This constructive activity, moreover, is motivated by the Aristotelian desire to understand (epistemé) as well as a desire to justify ones existence in terms of areté. Piaget prefers in his psychological account the terminology of “intrinsic” motivation. Of course involved in this “constructive” activity there is considerable “accommodation” to the real properties of the external reality that is the subject matter of assimilation. Indeed, one can categorically say that the older the child, the greater the occurrence of accommodation in his transactions with reality. At the pre-operational level of development(between the ages of 2-7) there is a limited understanding of cause-effect relations, and law like generalisations. This understanding, however, is largely behavioural and tied to external happenings in the here and now. The knowledge involved is firmly anchored in the perspective of the child and has yet to achieve what Piaget calls symbolic decentration. Language is involved here in that its telos is to symbolise action schemas that are more complex than the signalling systems animals use to communicate. In such signalling systems it is sound that functions as an activating stimulus, designed to cause a response which is essentially emotional. There is, in such systems, no element of the learning and mastering of a technique in a system of schematic involvements. The symbols involved here are “sedimented” (to use Merleau-Ponty’s language) in a culture where one of the tasks is the transmission of knowledge.

Piaget´s theory embodies the Greek idea of psuche embedded in a matter/form matrix in which powers have both a motivational and a learning/cognitive aspect. Knowledge arises as a consequence of both of these aspects and involves desires and beliefs. Learning that London is the capital of England is, however, a different matter to knowing that tomorrow what is called today will be called yesterday. In such cases we are not dealing with the learning of the meaning of words via a process of imitation. Kant would point to the a priori intuition of time in order to explain what is occurring in the above example of knowing. In the early work of Wittgenstein, the atoms of the Tractatus system were so-called logical names that were combined to represent atomic states of affairs and the model used for the learning of language was St Augustine’s theory in which ostensive definition of the names was the condition of knowing the meanings of these names. Piaget, on the other hand, offers us a less mechanical, more Aristotelian, picture of the process of learning a language. Hans G Firth, in his work on Piaget argues that action and the actualisation of inherent potential is a key element in the kind of knowledge that is fundamental to Piaget’s account of learning:

“Piaget distinguishes action derived knowledge from environmentally derived knowledge. He sees in action-derived knowledge the essence of biological intelligence which is the basis to any knowing. However, it is quite obvious that environmentally derived knowledge presupposes the framework of some previous action-knowledge. Thus a three year old child can learn the name of a capital because he had already reached the intellectual stage that makes him capable of learning names. In every learning situation, according to Piaget one can theoretically distinguish an operative action aspect and a figurative learning aspect….The adult’s knowledge of the general concepts country and capital imply a large component of operative understanding of which the three year old just is not capable.”

The three year old can learn words and concepts and think figuratively with the assistance of the imagination, but is not yet capable of explaining or justifying what has been learned. This power of understanding and reason will develop much later as his explorative capacities and moral powers are increasingly structured by the demands of explanation and justification. In Freudian terms what we are witnessing in the transition from Piaget’s pre-operational stage of thinking, to the Concrete Operational stage, is a shift from thinking being determined by the pleasure-pain principle to determination by the reality principle: this latter principle will include reference to categories of judgement, and principles of reasoning(noncontradiction, sufficient reason).

Piaget’s hylomorphism clearly has Kantian characteristics and combines a philosophical view of science with a philosophical view of social science that Benn and Peters are attempting to apply in their political reflections. It is worthwhile recalling in this context the interesting meeting at Princetown between Einstein and Piaget: a meeting that clearly illustrates Piaget’s Aristotelian/Kantian rejection of the modernistic separation of these two areas of Science. Piaget was giving a lecture on Child Psychology attended by Einstein. It is reported that Einstein commented publicly that “This stuff is really difficult!” After this amusing intervention Piaget was asked to comment upon Einstein’s theories of space and time and suggested that there may be a contradiction present. The Psychology of the Time also artificially separated the factor of the maturation of physiological systems from the development of psychological/social structures. Piaget’s explanation/justification of how these very different kinds of system are related are clearly reminiscent of the type of explanation/justification we find in the philosophies of Aristotle and Kant.

The Wittgesteinian “turn” from natural science toward the social sciences was also part of a “wave of change” that was part of Wittgenstein’s reaction to modernism and its obsession with a form of techné far narrower than that we encounter in Ancient Greece. Logical atomism and logical positivism both played significant roles in determining the form modernism took in the 20th century. Wittgenstein’s “turn” away from these forms of natural philosophy actually brought us closer to a restoration of Aristotelian/Kantian thought.

The philosophical role of learning in a social environment was a part of Wittgenstein’s account and it was also a part of Piaget’s project of the widening of the scope of Psychological theory:

“In sum, far from being a source of fully elaborated “innate ideas”, the maturation of the nervous system can do no more than determine the totality of possibilities and impossibilities at a given stage. A particular social environment remains indispensable for the realisation of these possibilities. It follows that their realisation can be accelerated or retarded as a function of cultural and educational conditions. This is why the growth of formal thinking as well as the age at which the individual starts to assume adult roles–remain dependent upon social as much as and more than on neurological factors.” (Inhelder, B., Piaget, J., The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence( USA, Basic Books, 1958, P 337)

The above reference to social conditions in the context of conditions that relate to stages of development is Aristotelian. The above is also ambiguous, however, insofar as the role of determinism is concerned. The primacy of physical Humean billiard-ball causation could lead one to believe in either physiological or social determinism. For both Aristotle and Piaget, each stage operates on principles that are subsequently transcended by complex interactions between maturational and motivational factors. Inhelder and Piaget speak in the context of this discussion of formal structures and “laws of equilibrium”(P.338). Concrete operational thinking begins preparing the ground for the structuring of logical systems of thought that use the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in a context of explanation/justification. Included in this process of change are the psychological “mechanisms” of interiorisation, reversibility, assimilation and accommodation. For Piaget the desire to understand the world, and the activity of theorising about it, is an important part of the development of the adolescent. His/her theorising is, it is argued, both idealistic and unrealistic. The authors refer to this, anachronistically as “the metaphysical age” and this categorisation betrays a not so obvious commitment to naturalism and pragmatism under the influence of the positivism and atomism of their time. It is, for example, a pragmatic criticism of logic, that it cannot be “isolated from life”(P.342) This is mitigated somewhat by Piaget’s developmental view of logical operations embodied in comments such as that logic “is no more than the expression of operational coordinations essential to action”(P.342). Logic, however, according to Kant was also a regulator of thought, a condition of thinking which Kant would not have claimed was something that was “interiorised” in some metaphorical “thinking space”. Logical principles are not “located” anywhere.

Simple observation of actions in the context of exploration/discovery will not of course reveal the interior concerns of adolescents. For this we need to consult the traces of their their actions (essays written in school, personal diaries etc) in the context of explanation/justification. What we will discover is undoubtedly a form of idealism that ought to be admired and not criticised: a form of idealism that begins with the conviction that the world can be transformed by the right ideas. Kant’s critical philosophy was partly aimed at the problem of what he called “heteronomous” justification: a form of justification that placed reliance on external authorities in the “transcendental” spirit of the pre-operational stage of thinking. For the emotional attitudes connected to the desire for safety and obedience to dominate an adult intellect was for Kant a form of enslavement of the intellect. A heteronomous reliance, for example, on the axioms of mathematics connected to a Cartesian form of rationalism where all the sensory-motor properties of wax could disappear without the disappearance of its mathematical properties was an object of criticism for Kant’s critical theory. The Cartesian claim that one could be certain that one was thinking because no Good God would deceive us into falsely believing something to be true when in fact it was not, was also a heteronomous justification that does not stand intact in the Kantian tribunal of Critical Philosophy. The Autonomy of Reason, of course, has the consequence that individuals thinking rationally, believe the principles of logic to be self evident, but it is not this consequence that is the ultimate justification of these principles that rather justify themselves in a total context of the relation of conditions to the unconditioned.

Benn and Peters prefer to speak pragmatically and empirically about rules and the following of rules but it is important to point out as Stanley Cavell did in his essay “Must We Mean What We Say?” that there is a world of difference between a rule that tells one what to do and a principle which is concerned with areté, with doing something well. Here the principle carries with it the rational justification for the rule. Rules are descriptive. Principles are normative and therefore function as a standard by which to measure the efficacy of a rule. Following a rule can be done heteronomously and instrumentally but following a principle is done categorically and autonomously. The choice of acting autonomously involves a form of action that is constitutive of doing what ought necessarily to be done.

The questioning of Cartesian rationalism was balanced in Kant by a questioning of Empiricism in general and Hume in particular. Hume was one of the heroes of the positivist and atomist movements because he questioned the rationalist interpretation of metaphysics. In this process a ground had to be found for Ethics, and Hume settled for the position in which morality is reduced to sentiments expressed by moral agents. In expressing moral sentiments an agent is also simultaneously intending to command or condemn particular actions. Now whilst there is something to this in the light of the fact that Aristotle claimed that moral judgments are related to what it is that the community wishes to praise or to blame, there is also much more to Aristotle’s account than can be found in Hume. Aristotle we know also claims the existence of principles that explain or justify these judgments by the community.

Benn and Peters wish to give a utilitarian account of Hume’s position which reminds us of the logical positivist position adopted by Charles Stevenson in his work “Ethics and Language”. In this work we are invited to believe that ethical judgments are, according to the first pattern of analysis composed of the “atoms” of, firstly, expression of sentiment, and secondly, an imperative directed at others. The second pattern of analysis appeals to the utilitarian “principle” of happiness. Kant, many centuries ago pointed out the problem with this happiness principle, namely that it is the principle of self-love in disguise, an egocentric principle that would not have been accepted by Piaget.

There is in the theorising of Piaget a clear systematic integration of values in an intellectual cognitive grouping regulated by a rational will. This grouping is organised into an autonomous system that contains both rules and principles which constitute some kind of life-plan that is of course dependent upon the moral cooperation of others who on the affective level speak with a “universal voice” in relation to these rules and principles. Reversibility which implies causation of the linear kind will not be an essential element of this autonomous system which will be best referred to in the context of explanation/justification where an essential aspect will be the totality of conditions and the unconditioned that will include the teleological “justification” of a Kingdom of Ends”. This teleological reference is not a self-centred principle but rather a universal principle that refers to the unconditional good that founds the whole autonomous system. Happiness of course relates to the principle of pleasure and pain, that, according to Bentham are the two sovereign masters of human behaviour, and Utilitarians like Mill fail to meet the Aristotelian objection that agents cannot be blamed or praised for their feelings(desires for happiness). Implied in this Aristotelian objection is the Kantian requirement that moral agents be blamed or praised only for the worth of actions guided by a good will desiring a kingdom of ends.

Unfortunately Social Science has never been confronted with a choice between the modernist position(Positivism, Pragmatism and Utilitarianism) and the more classical Aristotelian and Kantian positions. Hegel and Marx and their “modern” followers have largely determined the theoretical agenda of Social Science.

The moral law binds us to it in a way that compels thought to formulate judgements in relation to actions that we ought to do in non-utilitarian terms. The consequentialist descriptions of such actions fulfil a different function to the judgments we encounter in the context of the explanation/justification of these actions. These descriptions, of course, have a conceptual and logical relationship to the principles that explain and justify the phenomena referred to in these descriptions. These latter principles do not in their turn invite a demand for further justification. If every explanation/justification demanded a further explanation/justification, there would be no such thing as explanation/justification. It was in response to this aporetic question that Wittgenstein claimed that one’s spade is turned at this point and the final justification is to appeal to what a community does. It is not clear whether Aristotle or Kant would have accepted this as the final resolution to the problem of the infinite regress of explanation/justification, but it is clear that they would appreciate the “spirit” of Wittgenstein’s attempted resolution of an essentially aporetic philosophical problem.

Parallel to the positivistic view of ethics and morality there is a positivistic view of the law offered by Sir Ernest Barker(in his work “Principles of Social and Political Theory”(1951). In this work we encounter an appeal to “common conviction” as part of the foundation of justice in a community. Benn and Peters approve of this appeal and argue that this perspective is the result of an “experimental search for the external conditions for a good life and the fulfilment of personality”(P.60). This appeal to the happiness principle and personality is obviously rooted in the Psychology and Philosophy of the times. It is clear in this reference to rules and personality, that we are in the descriptive context of exploration/discovery, and have left the context of explanation/justification where the concern is with how principles relate to reality. For Benn and Peters the academic issue here is to formulate and verify hypotheses about what has happened, even though it is obvious that we need here to appeal philosophically to assumptions that inevitably embody principles. The question that needs to be answered is not a what question but a related Why? question. When, in this context of exploration/discovery scientists deny the truth and universality of those “hypotheses” that are in fact “principles” and claim the status of “models” for their theories we are witnessing “context confusion”. The context of theory formation and the context in which we use the principles of theory to explain phenomena are clearly different kinds of context.

We should also bear in mind that there are different senses of the question “Why?”, one of which requires reference to causation. Benn and Peters claim that the question “Why do men generally obey the law?” is a sociological question requiring reference to the category of causation whereas the question “Why ought people to obey the law?” requires reference to the power of Reasoning and metaphysical assumptions relating to the good will and the telos of the Kingdom of Ends. If, for example, one obeys the law because an authority demands it, this is a causal explanation of why we do what we do. This kind of explanation cannot be a moral justification. Reference to “Natural Law” is also a form of causal explanation that appeals to the “theorems” of natural law which in turn are “theoretically” related to an axiom of human nature. Such a theorem might be related to the Aristotelian definition of “human nature”, namely, “rational animal capable of discourse”, but the explanations and the justifications of this definition reside in the matrix of hylomorphic theory and its four kinds of change, three Areas of Science, three principles and four explanations/justifications of every kind of change. This definition would also be defended by Kantian Critical theory and its matrix of powers of judgment, understanding and reasoning that seeks for the totality of conditions and the unconditioned arché of every phenomenon. In both accounts the focus is on the powers of the intellect and the telos of such powers from the point of view of a tribunal that represents the interests and principles of a community dealing with processes of change. In Kant’s case, the emphasis of the account would be on the good will, action, and the moral law that is the arché of all forms of justice. Natural Law theory is not necessarily running contrary to the theorising we find in Aristotle and Kant, with one qualification. Natural Law theory cannot be predicated upon man being a rational animal capable of discourse, rather it must be related to man becoming fully rational and fully capable of discourse(meaning what he says). Natural Law theory must, that is, be practically rational and not theoretically rational. Theoretically rational accounts inevitably require causal explanation and justification.

Human Rights is a concept that has been connected to natural law. Human Rights can be regarded as “natural” if by that is meant that rights are universally valid and ought to be universally respected. These rights moreover, determine how we naturally ought to behave toward one another in situations where they are at issue. It is not clear, however, what relation hylomorphic theory has to the concept of Human Rights given the fact that the central concept required to defend human rights, namely freedom, is not thematically present in Aristotle’s practical reflections, even if it is operatively present in much that he has to say. There is, that is, nothing in Aristotle that speaks against freedom as an idea of reason. It is also the case that we know the Greeks as a people valued the freedom of their nation in comparison with other nations, e.g. the Persians.

Realists prefer to regard rights in terms of expectations and actualities rather than in terms of powers and potentialities. For the Realist the normative judgment rests on the fact rather than the condition of this fact or the unconditioned ground of the fact. This reaches into the realm of the Aristotelian concept of justice which to some commentators suggest that every citizen in pluralistically constituted societies have political rights and there is therefore no reason to treat any citizen differently to any other. Given the modern concern with the distribution of economic benefits, it is worth qualifying this modern practice by drawing attention to the one logical consequence of living in a pluralistic society, namely, that there can be reasons for treating different people differently especially insofar as economic benefits are concerned. If Jill in fact can carry more buckets of water up the hill than Jack and they are engaged upon an economic project that provided them with economic benefits for their work, Jill, on Aristotle’s theory deserves a greater economic benefit. For Aristotle the gender difference between Jack and Jill would not be relevant in this situation. It is considerations such as these that perhaps lie behind the theory of Rawls and its claim that governmental distributive responsibility in the sphere of economics is limited to the distribution of economic opportunities rather than actual benefits: equality that is relates qualitatively to opportunity rather than quantitatively to concrete reward. This conceivable differentiation between opportunities and actual benefits relates to the Socratic/Platonic principle of specialisation and the sub-principle that everyone is expected to contribute to the economic activity of the state in accordance with their ability or power to do so. The application of these principles demands that each individual is entitled to reward for their activity in proportion to what their activity is worth to the society. Part of what is involved in this scale of worthiness is given by the three categories of philosophical good: the goods of the external world, the goods of the body, and the goods of the soul. Also involved in this scale is the transmission of three major kinds of forms or principles relating to firstly the reproduction of the species, secondly, the reproduction of the utilities of the society, and thirdly the reproduction of ideas in educational contexts, all of which are obviously important to the maintenance and improvement of society. The goods of the soul and the reproduction of ideas in educational contexts are perhaps the most worthy of our praise in the Aristotelian terms. Focus upon the goods of the body and the goods of the external world at the expense of the goods of the soul from the Greek perspective is regulated by the concern that such focus might lead to the ruin and destruction of the society. Aristotle, like many other Greek thinkers believed that oikonomous or striving after economic benefits is a secondary art in relation to primary arts related to the goods of the soul and the importance of education.

Kant’s concept of justice builds upon this hylomorphic position by pointing to the importance of the instrumental-technological imperatives versus the categorical imperative, both of which obey different principles. Involved in the differentiation of these two different kinds of imperative are different kinds of rationality. Instrumental imperatives use what Aristotle and Kant would refer to as the calculating part of the mind: the part of the mind that calculates means to ends or causes of effects. Categorical imperatives, on the other hand require rationality of a different more contemplative kind where the focus of the soul is on ends-in-themselves.

The motivational theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is undoubtedly inspired by the Aristotelian hylomorphic matrix. The instrumental importance of meeting ones physiological and safety needs requires of course, given the fact that we dwell in societies, the presence of economic means that govern the goods of the body and the goods of the external world. The goods of the soul are more relevant to the higher growth and development needs of the individual striving to become a rational being capable of discourse, striving that is not merely to exist, but to experience the complex goods available in society. Involved in this striving process is the development and integration of a number of intellectual powers. Maslow’s needs of love and belongingness fall on the boundary between growth and maintenance needs. From one point of view therefore these needs are instrumentally necessary for achieving minimum levels of realising the potential of human nature. Conditional love, for example may not be sufficient for the actualisation of the next level of needs namely esteem and mutual respect and it may not be sufficient to facilitate the meeting of cognitive and aesthetic needs. The highest need to self actualise is of course the universal individual goal which all strive to achieve. It is the categorical necessary condition for leading a flourishing life. It appears to follow from this model of one need building upon another, that the responsibility of governments of society is to provide economic opportunity as well as political freedoms connected to human rights. The former factor of economic responsibility is also obviously connected more to the Greek Socratic/Plato principle of specialisation than it is to the Principle of utility of the pragmatic utilitarians. The Principle of specialisation as we pointed out above is pluralistic and this can be expressed by the phrase “each according to their ability”. This is a major significant or relevant difference between citizens and is in accordance with the Aristotelian claim that everyone ought to be treated equally unless there are significant or relevant differences to motivate a different treatment. This of course does not apply to the categorical realm of political freedoms and rights where there can be no relevant or significant differences between beings in full possession of their powers of rationality. Someone who is in danger of harming themselves or others because the balance of their mind has been disturbed obviously can be deprived of their freedom and housed forcibly in an institution.

Maslow’s theory of needs are also important because needs are obviously connected to rights. Property rights, for example, are obviously connected to the hierarchy of needs related to the goods of the external world. Intellectual property rights are obviously an extension of the concept of property to the realm of ideas and this might be a confusing extension insofar as the goods of the soul are concerned. Property such as a safe comfortable dwelling-place is obviously of instrumental importance to higher level needs being satisfied. Frustrating another persons needs in this respect(by stealing their property) is obviously disruptive of the actualising process. Here we are dealing with the goods of the external world which do not of themselves constitute a flourishing life but are at the very least a necessary condition for such a life. Laws are obviously important in this context for the purpose of binding man(in various ways) to dong what he morally ought to do. The law of society is undoubtedly an idea or ideal but it is not on this ground “subjective” or “merely conventional”. The moral law, too, is in the realm of ideas and ideals. It cannot like a physical law determine the shape, form or structure of a physical entity like a crystal or an electron simply because there is a conceptual gap between an idea and what that idea is an idea of. The pragmatic Hume’s attitude toward moral ideas is that these are in actuality feelings or sentiments. The feeling most commonly associated by Psychologists to morality is the feeling of guilt. The concept of guilt also plays a significant role in legal contexts. For Kant, it can be argued that the feeling of guilt is connected(consequentially) to the feeling of unworthiness that necessarily results from not respecting another human form of life or another end-in-itself.

The law, therefore is connected to virtues, which are ideals involving ideas or knowledge(epistemé) of what is right or wrong. This form of knowledge is related to understanding of what we ought to do, and this in turn relates to principles we can find in both the practical and productive sciences. Aristotle would claim that the theft of property is unjust, and he would point to two negatives to support his position. Firstly there is a failure on the part of the criminal to exercise their responsibility or the virtue of temperance or self control. Secondly there is the failure of the criminal to exercise their choice to do what is good by regulating other emotionally grounded attitudes by their rationality. It is this early linkage between freedom and rationality that prompted Kant to speak of freedom as an idea of practical Reason. The role of theoretical science in this fundamentally practical context is ambiguous. For theoretical science, predicting events in the future, is a major criterion of achievement. Given a causal law and a specification of initial conditions of the environment, it is argued an event can be accurately predicted. A causal law presupposes the metaphysical claim that every event has a cause and this in turn implies that an event cannot cause itself. A rational animal capable of discourse can, however, either cause himself to break a promise or keep a promise and it is this condition that prevents the reign of determinism in the affairs of men. That men ought to keep their promises is a moral universal. That Jack continually breaks his promises to Jill is largely irrelevant to the nature of this universality. Jack will be blamed for breaking his promises and his dignity or worth as a moral agent will be called into question. Claiming that practical science is subjective, as many positivists do, because we cannot predict Jack’s actions is misunderstanding the role of both metaphysics and practical rationality in the life of man. The explanation of why Jack does not keep his promises is probably a causal explanation requiring discovery, and the explanation/justification of the action of keeping a promise is not a causal type of explanation but rather a rational type of justification common to the tribunal of explanation/justification. For Kant both types of explanation are possible: the keeping of a promise, for example, may also have its cause in the act of making the promise.

In this case we are motivated in dividing the logical unit of promising into two , (in a sense ) logically independent events, on the grounds that these events are theoretically separably identifiable in separate acts of observation. The institution of promising, however, is categorically one process of change for the tribunal of explanation/justification. The “deed” of promising is the subject of the praise or blame that will determine the judgment relating to Jack’s worth or dignity. In this case we understand the deed or the action not because we understand the cause but rather because we understand the principle or reason for the deed or action. The praise or blame is directly related to the principle or the reason. Man, on this account, appears to live in “two worlds”, the phenomenal world of causes and effects, and the noumenal world revealed by principles or reasons. Common sense and hylomorphic philosophy appears to be committed to only one lifeworld. Nevertheless the above Kantian arguments that we are at the very least dealing with two distinct universes of discourse.

Promising is obviously an important social activity because it reveals the complexity of the relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds, the relation between the law of causation and the moral law. Promising also plays an important role in the political life of man. Authority is as important for the political life of a society as is the role of education. We find in Plato, for example, the idea and the ideal of an enlightened class of rulers whose knowledge of the good is the basis for the natural authority that flows from these great-souled men.

Benn and Peters draw an interesting distinction between de jure authority and de facto authority. The former is exercised by those who find themselves in positions of authority because they were active in systems whose rules determined who should occupy various roles in these systems. These roles demand of them that they determine the activity, as well as the quality of the activity, associated with the domain of their influence. De facto authority on the other hand is interestingly illustrated in the example of someone who stands up in a cinema and directs people to safety in the course of a fire. This “natural authority” is not questioned and inspires in those affected by it the appropriate activity. In such activity there is, of course no sanctions that can be applied to those who might question and disregard the orders issued. Sanctions, however, are part of the situation in which de jure authority is exercised, and this is testament to the fact that we are dealing with institutional power. The reasons why we obey authorities exercising their power and authority figures exercising natural authority in the name of the common good, are in fact very different. In the realm of rationality it can be reasonably claimed that the ideal situation is one in which we “ought” to obey authorities willingly, whilst retaining the freedom to question the validity of the orders issued and the power used. Indeed questioning the validity of the orders is tantamount to questioning the legitimacy of the power, partly because occupying positions of power usually occurs in the context of promises made. This context can then be characterised either in causal terms where one expects the effect of the kept promise, or, alternatively, in terms of the moral law. In this latter case we especially blame those authority figures who make promises without any intention of keeping them. Authority figures in power are also expected to respect procedural rules of justice that are tied to both contexts of exploration/ discovery and contexts of explanation/justification. Part of the ideal situation referred to above also includes the Platonic assumption that authority ought to be obeyed naturally, in the same way in which we see how orders are obeyed in the case of the fire in the cinema: the common good, that is, ought to be evident in all authority and exercising of power.

Benn and Peters would reject the above Kantian claim that when authority figures systematically do the right thing at the right time in the right way, including keeping promises, this is a manifestation of the metaphysical moral aspect of authority: a happy combination of de facto and de jure authority. Such an ideal authority structure does not exist at this stage of our cultural development but according to Kant lies one hundred thousand years in the future. The problem many commentators experienced with Kantian reasoning in this domain is that it was seen to be an uncomfortable continuation of earlier religious claims for the legitimacy of authority that appealed to divine right, rather than moral and human law. Kant’s humanistic secularisation of divine right was not sufficiently appreciated by these commentators who rather interpreted Kantian metaphysics as an argument for individualism at the expense of the common good: these views obviously ignored the second and third formulations of the categorical imperative.

This distorted focus on individualism was later to result in the hubristic cult of the authoritative personality which would devastate Europe some centuries later. This together with the Hegelian claim that there is an entity called the state that possesses ultimate authority over the activities of man, contributed to the chaos and catastrophes of the “terrible 20th century”(Arendt). It is important however to put the above in its correct historical context. The process of the losing of faith in natural authority probably began with the skeptics and dogmatics questioning the work of Aristotle, a work which was arguing for the natural authority of understanding and reason. Both religion and science participated significantly in this process. This skeptical/dogmatic matrix then allowed the emergence of what Weber called charismatic leaders who mobilised the masses with “popular” messages and promises.

We now know that the influence of Science on the 20th century was total and decisive. In the three volumes of this work we have illustrated our arguments with two images that are allegorical of the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of the Philosophical history of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action. Firstly, the image of Janus with one profile surveying the past and perhaps focussing upon events of significant magnitude and the second profile looking into the future toward the Kingdom of Ends where presumably de jure and de facto authority is integrated in the ways specified by hylomorphic and Kantian Critical Philosophy.

Secondly there is the Greek image of the continuity of Ariadnes thread leading from the darkness of the cave to the light of the sun, which in Plato’s allegory symbolised the knowledge of the Good that surpassed even the knowledge of the True and the Beautiful. Science, on the other hand throughout the ages rejected this knowledge on dubious grounds, and thereby discarded the authority of the tribunals of explanation/justification. The Context of exploration/discovery of the external physical world became the primary focus of intellectual activity. Investigations began, not with knowledge of the law, but rather with the experience of particular events, and thinking was directed at the formulation of generalisations that did not go beyond the data given, thereby tying us like animals to the awareness of the present that is here and now. One can argue that this activity is essentially conceptual, that is, the point of the activity is to formulate a concept, but given the focus on the quantitative and relational aspects of a physical reality that was conceived of by the Greeks in terms of an infinite continuum, we are left with the residual question of whether the scientific method is the best determiner of how to divide this continuum up. Science itself is unsure of its own methodical rather than categorical approach, and therefore rests its case on a theory containing hypothetical judgments. In other words it remains in the cave of doxa(opinion), too frightened to venture out into the sun where the truth, the good and the beautiful are the subjects of the discourse in the Academies and the Lyceums.

Karl Popper was one of the most influential figures of twentieth century Science. He was openly critical of all attempts to discuss the good and the true without reference to the method of science and its grounding in quantitative and relational reality. All other attempts to conceptualise reality were termed metaphysical, and this attitude spread throughout the scientific world until all ethical and psychological judgments were deemed to fall into the category of metaphysical judgments and all those who defended such judgments were spirit seers. Poppers view, in other words, became authoritative and infected even our view of History. Popper insisted that Historians who searched for the laws of History were ignoring the complexity of the context of exploration/discovery and the complexity of reality. His eyes, like the eyes of Janus, were of course fixated upon the works of Hegel and Marx who were attempting via the method of dialectic logic to discover the laws of History. In such a context, Popper’s views are perhaps more comprehensible. Confrontations with non dialectical contexts of explanation/justification resulted in comical exchanges such as that with Wittgenstein over Ethics where apparently a poker was used to illustrate what we ought not to do.

Poppers claim, that the aim of Historians was to discover these laws of History, is the result of a flawed conception of “law” and the sidelining of the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The descriptive content of historical activity obviously relates to particular events of significant magnitude(in the Aristotelian sense). What is at issue here, however, is not these hypothetical judgments, but rather those explanatory/justificatory judgments that are answers to aporetic “Why?” questions. The Scientific bottom-up approach that focuses upon the isolation of particulars, abstracting from their differences and concentrating upon what they have in common is a description of one method of constructing concepts. Such a procedure is not yet at the more complex level of relating concepts to each other in judgments in which something is said about something in judgments with a subject-predicate structure. It is this latter “synthesis” of concepts which in Heidegger’s view “constructs” the truth.

Benn and Peters comment upon the search for laws in the following way:

“But these laws state only functional relationships between variables and must always state the limiting conditions within which alone they would be true. Unlike prophecies therefore which are unconditional forecasts of particular events, predictions based on such laws could always be upset if factors emerged which were not covered by the limiting conditions.”(P 305)

The above limiting conditions are obviously characterised in terms of hypothetical judgments:If X then Y. What this suggests paradoxically, is that if in answer to a question an oracle declares “that laws ought to be obeyed”, the subsequent discovery of people not obeying the laws is sufficient to question the prophecy. This, of course, is not the case. The whole point of the prophecy is to suggest what ought to be done. Not doing what ought to be done, namely following the laws, could result as per the “prophecies” of the Republic, in the establishment of a tyranny.

Benn and Peters further claim(P.305) that what they call sociological and economical generalisation/conceptualisation ought to be compared with the metaphysical claims of religion, e.g. that there is such a thing as Divine Right. This tactic is in line with the scientifically oriented anti-metaphysical view and activities of the Vienna Circle during the times when masses were being mobilised by charismatic leaders of the greatest powers on earth. One of the charismatic leaders of the Academic world during these times was Ludvig Wittgenstein. His work “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, in the spirit of the times, was intended to be the “final solution” for all the problems of Philosophy. The sole redeeming feature of this work that claimed “The world is all that is the case” is that it adopted the strange position of maintaining that ethical and religious truths were important but could not be stated(they could only be shown to be true). Wittgenstein was forced to abandon this earlier position in the eyes of many commentators, and in his later work his view of the importance of a truth-functional language changed to include the importance of its imperative and psychological functions. In this context logic continued to lay an important role but the Aristotelian sounding idea of “forms of life” was also introduced as part of his context of explanation/justification. These forms of life lie at the root of another novel concept he constructed, namely “language-games”. What we witnessed here was a “turn” away from natural science and toward the social sciences and the humanities which in turn enabled Philosophy to return to its mission of providing forms of explanation/justification in the social/human sciences. This also enabled Philosophers of Education to once again refer to the work of Ancient Greek and Enlightenment Philosophers. R S Peters was one of the leading figures in this return to the thread of tradition leading from Socrates, via Plato, Aristotle and to Kant and beyond. Part of this return involved a renewed attention to the field of Education and the debt it owed to Aristotelian Metaphysical and Scientific Philosophy. Our next essay will focus on this aspect of Peters’ work.

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