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Aristotelian Hylomorphism embraces principles that relate to both instrumental reasoning and categorical reasoning: the latter being that form of reason which focuses upon the valuable ends of action. In Ancient Greece even interlocutors such as Glaucon(Plato’s brother) appreciated the very subtle distinction between something that was good in its consequences and something that was good-in-itself, and the seemingly impossible demand that both areté and diké ought to possess both of these characteristics. The term psuché was of course also important for Aristotle, because it tied the individual to his polis in an organic way via the demand for creating and sustaining the good spirited flourishing life which was both a consequence and an end of the actualisation of human rationality. In such a life-world, according to Aristotle, three different kinds of forms were transmitted down the chain of the generations of the polis, namely, the sexual reproduction of the next generation, the artifactual forms that are transmitted in the creation of all the accoutrements of civilisation and the epistemological/metaphysical transmission of the knowledge forms that are passed from teacher to student in the course of education.
“Modern” Philosophy begins with Descartes and Hobbes in an era in which hylomorphic Philosophy was waning in influence. Dualism, having once been neutralised by Aristotle, was on the rise again and found champions in Descartes and Hobbes. Hannah Arendt points to this phase and dubs it the beginning of the “modern era”: an era in which a number of “new men” mastered the art of political and economical instrumental action to such an extent that they thought that literally “everything was possible”, whilst for the masses of people the collapse of traditional authority meant the collapse of their world and for them who remain focused on the arena of categorical thought and action, nothing seemed possible any longer. These “new men” were “technological animals” who substituted techné for the waning values of epistemé, areté, diké, and arché, and who cared not for laws or the Enlightenment idea of Freedom.
This image of Arendt reminds one of the pathological conditions of manic-depression in which aggressive forces can be released in both phases of this mental disorder. Socrates in the Republic, in search of those things that were both good in themselves and good in their consequences, turned from the individual to the polis in order to more clearly see the form of justice. This bipolar condition may not have been diagnosed in the Ancient Greece of Socrates, but the combination of manic-depressive characteristics was perhaps becoming more noticeable by the time of Kant who described civic life as being “Melancholically haphazard”. The manic new men and the melancholic masses of the modern era were beginning to make their presence felt in spite of the institutionalisation of Philosophy in the Universities. Shortly after Kant’s death, Napoleon’s troops were standing by his grave, reading what for them must have been a puzzling inscription. These new colonisers of the world probably would not have been in awe and wonder at the starry sky above and certainly did not give a fig for the moral law within. This would not be the first nor the last attempt to “globalise” the world by military means. We know Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo but we also know that Kant’s Enlightenment Philosophy was overturned almost immediately by Hegel, who believed more in the “new men” and the March of Spirit than the continual slow progress of the journey toward a cosmopolitan kingdom of ends where rationality would reign over the affairs of men. Kantian Philosophy would have to be overturned if authority was to be disenfranchised and the masses manipulated by the “new men” who once again attempted to globalise the world with military might in the second world war. Ironically it would be the USA, Freud’s object of contempt, that would save the day and allow democracies to survive to fight another day. Unfortunately the USA needed the help of another totalitarian regime, namely the Soviet Union(the second object of Freud’s contempt), who, in their turn would threaten the democracies of Europe with ruin and destruction. Unfortunately, the USA was also tainted by the brush of populism and the worship of techné, and engaged in two of the most destructive acts of warfare in history when during the second world war, they dropped atomic bombs on civilian populations. The “new men” of techné played no small role in what Arendt called “this terrible century”. Freudian skepticism and foreboding in 1929(Civilisation and its Discontents), with respect to these two emerging super-powers was certainly justified, eve if at the time it must have seemed a strange position.
Hannah Arendt, in her work “The Origins of Totalitarianism” rang the bell of sanity in a largely manic depressive bipolar environment:
“Two world wars in one generation, separated by an uninterrupted chain of local wars. and revolution, followed by no peace treaty for the vanquished and no respite for the victor have ended in an anticipation of a third world war between the two remaining powers. This moment of anticipation is like the calm that settles after all hopes have died. We no longer hope for a potential restoration of the old world order with all its traditions or for the reintegration of the masses of five continents who have been thrown into chaos produced by the violence of wars and revolutions and the growing decay of all that has still been spared. Under the most diverse conditions and desperate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena—-homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth. Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self interest–forces that look like sheer insanity. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence(who thinks everything is possible if we know how to organise the masses for it), and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.”(Preface VII, New York, Harvest Books, 1951)
These are substantial criticisms of both the modern era and the modern world(which Arendt argued began with the dropping of the atomic bombs), which 70 + years after their utterance still ring true and seriously challenge the Enlightenment position of Kant in which one of the major issues of Philosophy was condensed into the question “What can we hope for?” Arendt is here using a description of the manic-depressive state of this modern era and modern world(what we have in an earlier work called “The Age of Discontentment”) that can be related to the Ancient Greek oracles prophecy concerning the ruin and destruction of mankind. The Ancient Greek oracles certainly did not believe that humans were suited to manage the powers unleashed by Eros and Thanatos in the Freudian arena of their battle. In this battle neither the laws of Nature nor the laws of History at first appeared to be on our side. The Ancient Greeks held an ideal legislator/philosopher up before their eyes’: the Phronomos(the great souled man). Such an ideal was not possible in the modern era because only hope could could bear the presence of the idea and the absence of its possibility. Manic human omnipotence had succeeded in removing the hope we once possessed that Eros would find a place for the human whilst engaging in battle with Thanatos. Arendt’s words are the words of an Ego expressing a reality principle- response to a psychotic pleasure-pain principle position in which the death instinct/drive has colonised a portion of the territory of Eros.
The behaviour of the “new men” in this “new world” they have created, requires a form of explanation that, given the paucity of our modern political science terminology, demands a reversal of the procedure adopted by Socrates in the Republic. Socrates, we know recommended moving away from reviewing justice in its role of harmonising the parts of the soul to the search for how justice is writ large in harmonising the activities of the parts of the polis. Totalitarianism, i.e., is connected to a number of descriptive terms such as authoritarianism, dictator, tyrant, which are value-laden terms suggestive of the moral dimension of political activity, but do not address this dimension directly. Returning to the theorising of Freud, therefore, may assist us in the attempt to explain our modern predicament.
Paul Ricoeur, in his work, “Freud and Philosophy: an Essay in Interpretation”, summarised this moral dimension very succinctly:
“How is it, Freud asks, that the superego manifests itself essentially as a sense of guilt and develops such extraordinary cruelty towards the ego to the extent of becoming “as cruel as only the id can be”? The case of melancholia leads us to think that the superego has taken possession of all the available sadism, that the destructive component has intrenched itself in the superego and turned against the ego: “What is now holding sway in the superego is, as it were, a pure culture of the death instinct…Caught between a murderous id and a tyrannical and punishing conscience, the ego appears to have no recourse other than self torment or the torturing of others by diverting its aggressiveness toward them.”( P.299)
Kant’s diagnosis of the everyday life of his times as “melancholically haphazard” describes the masses, who, by this time, were losing all hope for the future. The haphazard manic manipulation of the masses that followed was in the spirit narcissism: a solipsistic hope for an individually based happiness that results from an instrumental view of activity in the life-world of the polis (a view focussed solely on the “good-in-its-consequences”). The Kantian careful evaluation of the importance of forming categorically appropriate ends that takes into consideration both the good in its consequences and the good in itself, does not unfortunately resonate with these melancholically haphazard beings who have rejected the social traditions and political practices of the past.
Arendt, as part of her analysis of our contemporary condition, sketched three types of activity (vita activa), related to our life-worlds: the cyclical repetitive but organic activity of labour, the instrumental activity of work, and the political activity of action that is designed to create something new and original. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy characterises these forms of activity in the following way:
“Labour is judged by its ability to sustain life, to cater to our biological needs of consumption and reproduction, work is judged by its ability to build and maintain a world fit for human use, and action is judged by its ability to disclose the identity of the agent, to reaffirm the reality of the world, and to actualise our capacity for freedom (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/#AreThe Act
Action, for Arendt, then, brings about something new, something unique in this world. This, of course, is the result of the focus on action as something particular, rather than as the universal category Aristotle and Kant focussed upon: namely action as a universal steered by principles such as areté, diké, epistemé, etc, or the categorical imperative. The idea of freedom is also a universal idea of reason connected to logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason: an idea that relates directly to the will and its maxims. Consider the Kantian example of the shopkeeper who considers acting according to the maxim of overcharging children and strangers who make purchases in his shop. He considers this course of action because it will contribute significantly to the profitability of his business and thereby his particular individual happiness. Kant describes the principle appealed to here, the principle of self-love. What we are encountering here, is an unjustified narcissism in that favoured sphere of human activity of the “new men”, namely economics and business. This is obviously neither in accordance with areté, diké or epistemé. The one-sided focus upon good consequences for oneself is in strict conflict with the demand of Glaucon that diké provide us with both what is good in itself and good in its consequences. The principle the shopkeeper ought to embrace in the name of Glaucon’s demand is best characterised by the various formulations of the categorical imperative. He ought, that is, adopt the maxim of not overcharging anyone, and thereby treat everybody as ends in themselves(which is both good in itself and good in its consequences). In other words, according to Kant, the shopkeeper has a moral duty not to overcharge anyone, even if is in the short term interests of his business. Of course, he could do his duty for 10 years and then suddenly decide to do something new and overcharge his customers, and it is not clear whether this is what is meant by Arendt with her term “action”. Such a decision, however, abandons the good in itself aspect of moral action, and uses only an instrumental calculative form of reasoning designed for particular actions in particular circumstances. Here there is a very limited use of the principle of sufficient reason which assumes and indeed embraces the principle of self-love as the goal as well as the best means to achieve this goal (without any further evaluation of the goal, whether that is, it is in fact in the long term interests of the agent whose happiness is being considered). We ought also to point out in the context of this discussion, that the universality of the categorical imperative and its desire to treat everyone as ends in themselves is a law which applies to all communities everywhere: communities that are striving to sustain and maintain themselves in existence. The moral law also answers the Kantian questions “What ought I to do?” and “What can I hope for?” The answer to a third Kantian question, namely, “What can I know?”, is also implied. In the context of this discussion we should recall Socrates’ argument in the Republic that lawmakers cannot form the maxim to legislate only in their own interest simply because passing laws requires knowledge, and if these lawmakers did not have knowledge of justice and what is right they would not know how to pass laws that are only in their own interests. This would seem to imply that at least insofar as civic goods are concerned, epistemé or knowledge is a part of the necessary and sufficient conditions of bringing them about.
The image and ideal of the free man, for whom the practically rational idea of freedom is a key part of his humanity, is a manifestation of an answer to the 4th Kantian question posed in his work entitled “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”, namely “What is man?”. Man without hope is indeed at least as depressing an idea as the idea of man without freedom. With this in mind, if we return to Arendt´s existentialist characterisation of “the modern world” (to be distinguished from the “Modern era” which began with Descartes) which she claims began with the use of atomic bombs on civilian populations. The loss of hope that results from events such as these involves of course the loss of freedom to think about and choose possible courses of action. Such losses are, also, a recipe for a general feeling of melancholia or depression . Dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations even given that these “actions” occurred in the context of a war was a manic act if ever there was one, and these two considerations may suffice to characterise our modern world as “bipolar”.
The Categorical Imperative or moral law inherited the value system of Platonic and Aristotelian Philosophy in which the form of the Good which is both good in itself and good in its consequences, occupied a central position. Freud, we know, refrained from directly referring to the idea of “The Good”. Melanie Klein (one of Freud’s followers), however, in her modification of Freudian theory, in which identification with the mother occurred much earlier than in Freudian theory, refers to the internalisation of “The Good Mother” and “The Bad Mother” (as a part of what she referred to as the paranoid-schizoid position). In this position, the mothers breast is obviously a part object( the good breast, the bad breast) which is being related to in the first year(s) of life. Freud, we know, prefers more technical language to make fundamentally the same points as many of his followers and we need to point out in the context of the above discussion, that he was not overly concerned to form a detailed clinical picture (based on observations) of early childhood. This task was left to his daughter Anna Freud and Melanie Klein who both engaged in these studies against the background of different theoretical models which incidentally was a source of rivalry between them. Anna Freud’s theories differed from Klein’s in that the latter was concerned to chart the irruption of id impulses in the life of infants and children. Anna Freud, in contrast, was more concerned to chart the defence mechanisms of the Ego and felt that children, being dependent upon their parents, could not develop a transference reaction with their therapist. Observational studies of children played an important role in both Anna Freud ‘s and Melanie Klein’s theories. It ought to be pointed out here that the attempted application of psychoanalytical theory to children had the potential to fundamentally demolish Freud’s theory, but that of course did not happen, and instead such application served to confirm the validity of the theory. Even British observers such as Ernest Jones at the time of the rivalry between Anna Freud and Klein realised that what was at issue here was a difference in degree, rather than a difference in kind, between the two theories, even if the two parties at times may have had another view of the matter.
Melanie Klein’s contribution to psychoanalysis involved the postulation of “positions” in which certain types of phenomena occur in accordance with principles (arché). The paranoid-shizoid position and the depressive position were “categories” that were used to organise both observations and diagnoses. The former position designates a more primitive form of mental development and capacity than the latter. Relations to objects in the paranoid-schizoid position are not characteristically strong ego-positions. The resolution of the depressive position which is engaged in a process of mourning for the lost good object is a passive state which is coupled to an active state in which there is a search for the good object .
Adrian Stokes, a Kleinian art commentator, in an essay entitled “Michelangelo” reflects upon one vicissitude of the instincts, namely sublimation, and he notes that, involved in the operation of this defence mechanism, is a striving after the creation of good external objects. This is to be contrasted with someone occupying the depressive position where the mourning process can degenerate into a destructive state of melancholia.
Freud’s account of the death instinct in infants is an account that does not believe the ego to be sufficiently mature to mobilise complex defence mechanisms. Klein disagrees with this. Her account regards the death instinct as a psychological and not merely a biological force. Her evidence for this is the power of the infant to relate to part objects such as the good and the bad breast. The Ego, on this theory, is split or schizoid, and projects both the death and life instincts outwards. In such a position there is a tendency to idealise objects excessively. Failure to find a good object and form a relation to it results in persecution anxiety and a fear of annihilation. If an ideal object is formed it is identified with and becomes integrated into the core of the ego and the superego. One of the key contributions of Kleins theory to psychoanalysis, in relation to the core of the personality, is the charting of a distinction between the jealousy we encounter in the Oedipal complex (which Klein associates with her “depressive position”) and the more primitive condition of envy, that is paradigmatically connected to the earlier paranoid-shizoid position. Envy, Klein argues, unlike jealousy, is associated with the destruction of the object that is the focus of the envy. In envy, persecutory anxiety forms the nucleus of a schizoid personality. Narcissism is also an important element of the paranoid-schizoid position: persecutory anxiety is also associated with persecutory guilt, and an intense sense of hopelessness. A relation to a good object becomes highly unlikely, principally because a destructive relation to a bad part object exists. Narcissistic rage is also an element of this position.
Balancing the above pessimistic evaluation of the role of the death instinct in personality development, is a Greek concern for Eros, the major libidinal force driving man forward in his endeavours. Melanie Klein’s clinical analysis is, to a significant extent, determined by her view of the later theorising of Freud. Her object-relations theory was initially met with skepticism, especially since they did not seem immediately to correlate with the results of other clinical experiments Piaget’s results in which object relations appeared to develop later than Klein maintained. Subsequent research, however, vindicated Klein’s position. Hanna Segal in her work entitled “Klein”, wrote:
“Most consistently she has been charged with attributing far too much complexity and activity to the mental life of the infant in his first two years. It was averred that this was out of keeping with the findings of neuro-physiology and with such academic psychological work as that of Piaget. This criticism seems to be less well founded today when new research suggests that the infants perception and object relatedness is far greater than had been suspected.”(London , Konak books,1989, P.169)
Segal also notes, in a footnote, a number of supporting works relating to sociability, parent-infant interaction and neonate imitation. A number of object permanence/object constancy experiments have since then, been conducted suggesting that the power is exercised much earlier than Piaget suspected.(Baillargeon & DeVos, 1986)
Anna Freud’s modification of her father’s theory did not stop at the emphasis upon the ego and its defence mechanisms. She also emphasised (in the spirit of hylomorphic theory) what she called “lines of development”. Her observational studies with children had revealed the fact that increasing numbers of children could not be placed in the classical categories of “normal” or “neurotic”. Anna Freud suggested in response to this finding that the classification category of “developmental disorder” be created. In 1962 she warned against using only one aspect of analysis to view the child. Her intention was to criticise those contributions which focussed solely on object relatedness, social adaptation, and Piaget’s schema of intellectual achievements. Anna Freud, like her father, was very careful about using the term “Good” in her writings, but the term developmental disorder nevertheless had distinctly hylomorphic connotations. This together with a commitment to her fathers “mythology of the instincts”( eros, thanatos, ananke) actually presupposes the formal and final “cause” of the Good articulated by Aristotelian theory.
Teleology thus reemerges as an important theoretical consideration, and it is important to re-iterate the Kantian approach to this issue, which, incidentally, is in perfect accord with hylomorphic theory. For Kant, it is the faculty of the understanding that categorises and conceptualises change in nature in terms of causality. This means that the idea of a physical end in nature gets transformed ideally into a teleological regulative principle. Kant claims the following:
“The difference turns, therefore, on a peculiarity of our (human) understanding relative to our power of judgement in reflecting on tings in nature.”(Kant’s Critique of Judgement, P.61)
For a divine form of understanding such judgement/reflection would be constitutive in virtue of being in contact with the noumenal world of things-in-themselves via a divine power. Our human understanding/judgement, however, is via conceptual possibilities rather than real actualities. In divine forms of understanding there is no movement from the analytic/universal to the particular, but instead there is an intimate relation between the synthetic whole and the parts that constitute the synthesis. Our human view of the whole, then, is an idealisation–a teleological idealisation that regulates our reasoning process. This reasoning process is intimately involved in our conception of life (psuché) as a living holistic organism whose whole has a necessary (living) connection to its parts. Perhaps this kind of reasoning is also necessary for reflection upon space, that synthetic a priori intuition:
“But space is not a real ground of the generation of things. It is only their formal condition–although from the fact that no part in it can be determined except in relation to the whole (the representation of which, therefore underlies the possibility of the parts) it has some resemblance to the real ground of which we are in search. But then it is at least possible to regard the material world as a mere phenomenon, and to think something which is not a phenomenon, namely, a thing-in-itself as its substrate”(P.66)
So, neither in Kantian Critical Theory nor in Aristotelian Hylomorphic Theory is there a contradiction in supposing two different modes of explanation of phenomena, namely mechanical and teleological. These modes, both Philosophers insist, are not just consistent with each other but necessarily require each other in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.
Kant continues his reasoning:
“We may apply to a thing which we have to estimate as a physical end, that is, to an organised being, all the laws of mechanical generation known or yet to be discovered, we may even hope to make progress in such researches, but we can never get rid of the appeal to a completely different sort of generation for the possibility of a product of this kind, namely that of a causality by ends. It is utterly impossible for human reason, or for any finite reason qualitatively resembling ours, however much it may surpass it in degree, to hope to understand the generation even of a blade of grass from mere mechanical causes.”(P.66)
The form of finality involved in aesthetic judgement is also an example of the teleological synthesis referred to above. The principle of teleology, therefore, becomes a heuristic principle that enables us to conceive of laws of nature as necessary and sufficient explanations of phenomena, as long as it does not exclude the mechanical laws of nature which also demand reference to a common super-sensible substrate which is the arché of both modes of explanation.
Teleology, then, for Kant, is not a branch of natural science nor a logical principle but it is a hylomorphic principle of final/formal causes for Aristotle: a principle that forms a significant part of the practical and productive sciences. Kant places teleological reasoning in the domain of the critique of judgement. For Aristotle the 4 elements of the natural world, earth, air, water and fire, are part of a synthetic whole of physical nature, in the same way in which the elements of life (psuché) are tissues, organs, limbs, are part of the varying forms of life of the animals. In synthetic totalities each part is intimately related to all other parts, e.g. in contexts of instrumentalities, the pen is “for” the paper and the paper is “for” the assignment that is written in the library which, when finished, is “for” the lecturer to mark which in turn is “for” the final qualification and the students education.
In relation to the issue of the Will and its relation to Consciousness via the “Body-image” postulated by O Shaughnessy, we need to understand the way in which the Will manifests a Heideggerian “circumspective” form of awareness when we are engaged in the performance of tasks that are constituted of a series of “actions”. This circumspective form of concern was characterised insightfully by Elisabeth Anscombe in her work on “Intention”(Oxford, Blackwell, 1972) as a non-observational form of awareness. William James in his “Principles of Psychology”, points to this form of awareness being preconscious or beneath the levels of consciousness, and if this is correct it appears as if intentional projects fluctuate between being directed consciously(at the beginning and end of the task, and if some problem occurs in the course of the task) and being directed pre-consciously (the term used by Freud). That the agent is aware of what they are dong non-observationally, and that this is true, can be ascertained by interrupting this pre-consciously driven activity with the question “What are you doing?” or “Why are you doing that?”. The agent must respond consciously and perhaps was even engaged in conscious thought whilst performing the activity in question. Our question interrupts both the conscious thought and the preconscious performance of the task at hand, e.g. the agent may have been playing the piano and thinking about the war.
In a chapter entitled “Observation and the Will” in volume 2 of O Shaughnessy’s (OS) work, “the Will: a Dual Aspect Theory” we encounter the following:
“The astonishing thing about action is that it is possible at all. Thus if man is making a chair, you will find a physical causal explanation of the movement of each piece of wood from its initial to its final setting: everything that happens is in accordance with physical law: but you will look throughout this world or universe forever in vain for an analogous physical explanation of their coming together in the form that they did, a form that mirrors human need and the human body” (Cambridge, CUP, 1980, P.1)
The point OS is making above is that the “form” of the chair requires the activity of the understanding and its categories to conceptualise such an activity as well as the teleological function of the faculty of judgement. For Aristotle, all 4 “causes” of his theory of change would be required to explain the coming into being of the synthetic whole of the chair, though the material and efficient causes would be equally as important as the final cause in this context of involvements.. The idea of a synthetic whole, that is, applies to space, artifactual relations, and to psuché, and its practical ethical and theological relations.
The chair, OS argues, is a kind of creation, a gift to the universe bestowed upon it by psuché or the creator. This source of the gift also possesses the gift of non-observational awareness a power that enables a task to be completed whilst freeing conscious for the activity of thought. My body, OS further argues, is merely the vehicle of intention, purpose, reason, characteristics of life that are located in a non physical realm, a realm we would call mental and the Greeks called psuché. The Greeks did not possess a term that could easily be translated in all circumstances into our term “consciousness”. Charles H. Kahn claims in an essay entitled “Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotelian Psychology”, that Aristotle’s idea of “sensory soul”(one of the simpler powers of psuché) is largely receptive of stimuli emanating from the external world: when active this simple power is usually used to attend to stimuli and perhaps also for the perceiving of something as something, e.g. material as a chair. In psychological terms the sensory function of consciousness is the bipolar opposite of the motor function of psuché which is critically involved in action that, depending upon the circumstances, requires either an observational form of awareness( in learning the action, correcting a mistake, beginning and ending an action) or a non- observational form of awareness.
Both the chair and the action originate from a creative agent. Action, however, for OS belongs both to the physical realm and the realm of the psychological. With regard to the chair OS situates the chair in the world and the thought involved in bringing about the existence of the chair in its final form he situates in “my world”:
“What do I mean by saying of my here-and-now actions that they are “situated” in my world? I mean that along with beliefs, desires, intentions, etc, they stand to me and to me alone in the bedrock relation of being known immediately for what they are and of depending upon me for their entire being and of being intelligible and internally linked to an entire system of psychological items.”( P.2)
OS also rejects the appeal to the sensory process of observation in this situation:
“I mean that I do not stand to my actions in the relation of observer, just as I do not adopt an observational standpoint in knowing that I am puzzled, amused, and so forth…..for when I notice a purposive act from which I have been momentarily distracted, say driving a car as I am conversing, I do so non observationally and immediately I return to myself.”(P.3)
OS admits that insofar as the actions of others are concerned we are in the relation of “observer”, observing an agent who acts. Many senses are involved in action and typically involved are the senses of sight, hearing, and touch but it is seeing that is most critically connected to observing the deeds of others, even if touch has in some circumstances a critical function in all action. In order to obey the request to “turn up the volume”, I must touch the knob of the wireless with my fingers and turn it in the appropriate direction just sufficiently to comply with the request. OS claims that visual/tactile sensations without action are incomprehensible and actions without visual/tactile sensations are meaningless(P.7).
Similarly, if our sensations were only visual, which OS argues are essentially two-dimensional, we would not have the idea of the three dimensional world we actually live in. It is because we can move into the 3-d field of a landscape and act in this arena that it appears to our visual system as three-dimensional. An a priori sense of 3-d space seems certainly to be a necessary condition of our animal existence. It is against the background of such reflections that OS discusses the postulate of a body-image of controllable body-parts situated in space. Insert desire, intention, and purpose into this lived-space and we possess the elements necessary to account for the agents wish to bring about a reality that is different to the one that is currently experienced. The human organ and limb system (including hands and opposable thumbs) has the potential for not just life-preserving instinctive reactions but also consciousness, understanding, judgement and rationality. This species of form of life was defined by Aristotle in an essence-specifying-definition as, “rational animal capable of discourse”. Animality is the genus we belong to and the “form” is constituted by the potentialities for discourse and rationality amongst other powers. Animality in its turn belongs to the genus of life which includes plant life-forms. The powers that primarily constitute these forms of life are the nutritive and reproductive, the perceptive and locomotive, and finally rationality (of action and discourse). Each of these powers would change its scope and limits if incorporated into a whole incorporating other higher powers which have a transformative relation to the lower powers.
The power of an artifact such as an axe is not a power of life, but the power of use by a higher form of life, e.g. a woodchopper. In other words the genus of an artifact is categorically different from the genus of living forms. The power of an artifact whether it be an axe, a chair, or a computer, requires an external living designer. In the case of the computer there would probably need to be a great number of designers each possessing their own specialist knowledge. The life form in its turn is a different kind of genus to that of the mineral genus( as characterised naturally by Aristotle—earth, air, water or fire and associated processes of hot/cold, wet/dry—and the more technical chemical periodic table of elements). The mineral “kingdom” is inorganic in its very nature , the origin of whose parts have no relation to any human or animal designer. The natural elements are more like totalities with the possible exception of fire which appears to differ in its nature from the other elements belonging to the Aristotelian category of processes. Gerald Edelman in his work “Bright Air Brilliant Fire” hints at the importance of classical elements in its title, but in his characterisation of the key living organ of the brain he refers to the chemical composition of the brain, claiming that it is constituted completely of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur phosphate and a few trace metals. He then goes on to argue that the key to understanding the function of the brain resides in understanding how these elements are “organised”:
“It is not suprising that people have treated the mind itself as a special thing or a special form of stuff. After all, it seems so different from ordinary matter that its possessor may find it difficult to conclude by introspection alone that it could arise from the interactions of nonintentional matter. But as William James pointed out mind is a process not a stuff. Modern scientific study indicates that extraordinary processes can arise from matter, indeed matter itself may be regarded as arising from processes of energy exchange. In modern science matter has been re-conceived in terms of processes: mind has not been re-conceived as a special form of matter. That mind is a special kind of process depending upon special arrangements of matter is the fundamental position I have taken in this book.”(London, Penguin Press, 1992, P 6-7)
This is not incompatible with an Aristotelian hylomorphic position even if there are ambiguous characterisations of mind in terms of processes which need further characterisation, if mental processes are to be sufficiently distinguished from physical processes. Edelman dedicates his work to both Darwin and Freud. Darwin, we know, was a pioneer of the physical process of the evolution of the species, and Freud was a pioneer that mapped the mental processes connected to healthy and unhealthy mental functioning. Edelman refers to William James, who, we know regarded Consciousness as a Function, a form of thought which has the function of knowing (epistemé):
“Consciousness is supposed necessary to explain the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known.”(James W., Essays on Radical Empiricism, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1996, P.6)
There is an intimate connection of Consciousness to Language postulated here and this position echo’s Freud’s theoretical view of the functions of Consciousness and Language as well as Freud’s practical view of psychoanalysis as a “talking cure”. In the process of “reporting”, what occurs in his realm of thought, the patient, in this psychoanalytical process, brings “material” from the unconscious realms of the mind into Consciousness, thereby fulfilling one of the goals of therapy, namely, a “catharsis” which aims to lower the anxiety-levels affecting the “work” of the Ego.
James claims that Experience is the “ultimate stuff of which everything is made” and this is a key element of his empirical and pragmatic Philosophy. In Volume 1 of his “Principles of Psychology”, we find both an account of knowing and an account of thought as :
“a synonym for consciousness at large.”(Index of Vol 2 Under the heading of “thought”)
James elaborates upon this idea in his chapter on the mind and its relation to other things by giving us his account of knowing:
“There are two kinds of knowledge broadly and practically distinguishable: we may call them respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge about. Most languages express this distinction…..I am acquainted with many people and things which I know very little about, except their presence in the place where I have met them. I know the colour blue when I see it and the flavour of the pear when I taste it: I know an inch when I move my finger through it: a second of time when I felt it pass: an effort of attention when I make it: a difference between two things when I notice it; but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes them what they are, I can say nothing at all. I cannot import acquaintance with them to anyone who has not already made it himself….At most I can say to my friend. Go to certain places and act in certain ways and these objects will probably come…In minds able to speak at all there is, it is true, some knowledge about everything. Things can at least be classed, and the times of their appearance told. But, in general, the less we analyse a thing and the fewer of its relations we perceive, the less we know about it, and the more the familiarity is of the acquaintance type.(P.221)
James elaborates upon this by claiming that acquaintance is related to our sensations and feelings, but it is through thought that knowledge is generated about what we have become acquainted with. This is a similar account to the Kantian account of the sensible and intellectual faculties of the mind: this account points to an intuitive relation via which we are in immediate relation to the object or event we are witnessing, and a conceptual relation functioning according to a rule which mediates our relation to the object or event.
James also points to the role of language in our transactions with the external world and the different faculties of our mind:
“The grammatical sentence expresses this . Its subject stands for an object of acquaintance which, by the addition of the predicate is to get something known about it”(P.222 Vol 1)
James also claims that most languages have such a structure, and even though we recall that Strawson claimed in his work “individuals” that a language without any particulars was logically possible it would seem from James’ point of view that any language without an immediate relation to the objects and events of the external world would not possess the necessary structure and function of a language.(How for example would one be able to teach anyone such a language?) Similarly, a language composed only of images of particulars could at most meet the criteria of a signalling system and would also fail to meet the criteria for being a language.
James, in his work entitled “Essays on Radical Empiricism”, criticises Kant for being a dualist and also criticises him for collapsing the subject-object distinction via the postulation of a transcendental ego, but James fails to notice that Kant’s position is compatible with, and is indeed, an elaboration upon Aristotelian Hylomorphism. Both of these positions, it must be insisted, contained decisive arguments against both the materialism and dualism of their times. James, appears here to share the mistaken view that Kant was an idealist in spite of Kant’s famous criticisms of idealism and his assertion that he was both an empirical realist and a critical idealist. Indeed it is Kant we appeal to when we criticise James’s more materialistic and dualistic tendencies.
So, for James, the stream of consciousness is a stream of thought containing both feelings and concepts. His key idea of experience has a benign dualistic structure where reference is made to both consciousness and the things consciousness is conscious of. Feelings give rise to movement, and James provides us with a schema of Action which is very similar to the position outlined by Freud in his “Interpretation of Dreams”:
“Every impression which impinges on the incoming nerves produces some discharge down the outgoing ones, whether we are aware of it or not… every possible feeling produces a movement, and that movement is a movement of the entire organism, and of all its parts.”(P.372)
The sensory system, Freud is arguing discharges into the motor system (and probably into other organs and systems as well). This phenomenon in particular occurs with respect to intense pleasures and pains and it is thus the knowledge we have of this universal mechanism which permits the obvious inference from behaviour to state of mind. James continues his reasoning:
“But there are cases of arrest of peripheral activity which depend, not on central inhibition but on stimulation of centres which discharge outgoing currents of an inhibitory sort.”(P.373)
This passage recalls the Freudian characterisation of the ego as an inhibitor of affective impulses. James reports how, in the case of being startled, the very beating of the heart is stopped momentarily in order to provide for the emergency measure of raising blood circulation in the body as part of the response to the threat. There are also effects upon the respiratory system which manifest themselves as the “catching ones breath” in the case of fright, and breathing more intensely in the case of anger. James supports his claims very thoroughly by reference to experiments which demonstrate his various theses.
The most important effect, however, is the necessary pairing of sensorial stimuli with general innervation of the muscles. This type of phenomenon was also noted by Merleau-Ponty in his work “Phenomenology of Perception” where colours are necessarily associated with active-passive motor-values:
“Here the experience of colours confirms and elucidates the correlations established by inductive psychology.Green is commonly regarded as a restful colour “It encloses me within myself and bring a peaceful state”, says one patient. It “makes” no demands on us and does not enjoin us to do anything, says Kandinsky. Blue seems to “yield to the gaze”, says Goethe….We can reveal the soporific and motor basis of qualities, or their vital significance, by employing stimuli which are either weak or f short duration. In this, colour, before being seen, gives itself away through the experience of a certain attitude, appropriate only to that colour and precisely indicative of it.”(Trans Smith, C., London, Routledge, 1962, P244)
The body is innervated by the most sensory of sensibles, namely colour, and this is a life-transaction which is also in accord with the Freudian account of the psychical apparatus given in his work “The “interpretation of Dreams”. This, then, justifies the position of rejecting atomistic tendencies in Psychology, which either reduce the whole experience to pure sensations or pure behaviour. Certain physiological functions connected to the key organ of the heart may affect consciousness (especially if the heart stops for a longer period of time), and may not be able to function at a level to sustain consciousness. Being unable to breathe will definitely affect the reticular formation of the brain and result in unconsciousness. In such circumstances all sectors of the brain will be effected, including those situated in the somato-sensory region of the cortex: as a consequence the body-image will not be functioning. Indeed all sensory-motor activity will cease until a state of homeostasis is achieved in the body. None of this directly concerns Psychology which it has to be pointed out, has moved away from James’s definition: the Science of mental life, its phenomena and conditions.
Modern science is essentially inductive and adheres to the methodological matrix of the formation of hypotheses and the manipulation and measurement of variables. Teleology and the testing of entire theories via critical experiments has been discarded for less holistic concerns.
Comparing the theories of James and Freud is, on the other hand, a holistic project. James is not a behaviourist but he does pace much emphasis upon different kinds of movement, e.g.
- Instinctive or Impulsive performances
- Expressions of Emotion
- Voluntary deeds (P.382 Vol 2)
James Defines Instinct as:
“The faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.”(P.383, vol. 2)
Animals (the genus we humans belong to) engage in mostly instinctive behaviour and this may be a limitation of the limited repertoire of cognitive powers animals possess. They possess a form of consciousness that can learn and as a consequence know what has been learned, but without the educational power of language, the awareness they have of their world is confined to the present and the arena of present stimuli. On the face of it, James’ view of Instinct seems much broader than Freud’s, especially given his claim that instinct belongs to the general category of reflex action. We should, in the context of this discussion, also recall that Freud claimed that his concern was with only a handful of instincts and that his investigations were not exhaustive of the field. Recall too, that for Freud the aim of the instinct was the most important psychological aspect of his investigations and partially explained the variagated objects of that instinct. Both Teleology and the holistic aspect of these investigations was obviously more important to Freud than it was for James, and this is proved not just by his concentration upon the aims of instincts but also via Freud’s focus on the importance of the sexual instincts and the life and death instincts. In those animals who possess the power of memory and thought (consciousness) instincts are no longer merely blind reflexes but rather drives which are endowed with a cognizance of “ends”. The greater the complexity of the animal(in terms of their repertoire of cognitive and emotional powers), the greater the so-called “intelligence” of the animal. In the case of animals with a considerable repertoire of powers and humans, the concern with life and death exclusively gives way to a concern for the quality of life. James points out that most instincts are transitory( the life and death instincts excepted) and habits take their place. Such habits are the consequence of the operation of consciousness and the preconscious and are more amenable to change through inhibition via other elements of experience.
James’ theory of the emotions was a groundbreaking theory for his time. In discussing fear, he claimed that fear :
“is a reaction cause by the same objects that arouse ferocity.. We both fear and wish to kill anything that may kill us, and the question which of the two impulses we follow is usually decided by some one of those collateral circumstances of the particular case, to be moved by which is the mark of superior mental powers…The progress from brute to man is characterise by nothing so much as by the decrease in frequency of proper occasions for fear.”(P.415)
This is manifested in the extent to which we have become less fearful of ghosts and the supposed presence of supernatural spirits. Knowledge of the sources of such phantasms in either special sensory circumstances(lighting, reflections etc), or special psychic circumstances (the relatively recent loss of someone close), has functioned as a rational inhibitor of such fearful reactions. Similarly, inhibition may also be involved in the decoupling of the fear of something and the wish to kill or destroy that object, especially if the object is another human being or treasured animal. According to James, the absence of fear is also a measure of civilisation:
“In civilised life, it has become possible for larger numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear.”(P.415)
If only civilisation had been as successful in decoupling the reaction of angrily destroying the enemies we fear, from the fearful stimulus of that threat. This is merely a variation of the point Freud was making about the battle of the giants of Eros and Thanatos, in which the death instinct prevails and plunges countries and civilisations into destructive wars which bring about the ruin and destruction prophesied by the Greek oracles.
James insightfully elaborates upon his position above by saying:
“Many of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word”(fear)(P.416)
We need to recall here that the date of the publication of James’ “Principles of Psychology”,namely 1890, was more than a decade before the publication of Freud’s seminal work “The Interpretation of Dreams”. This latter work, it ought to be recalled was an earlier work of Freud’s, and did not incorporate any theoretical reflections upon the death instinct. Indeed Freud’s first major publication, “On Aphasia” was in 1891 and it would only be much later in his writings that the attack of mental disease had a complex history, which very often involved defence mechanisms that in turn were vicissitudes of the instincts. It is not until the 1920’s with the publication of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”, that we can fully comprehend the functioning of the Ego, especially the idea of it being connected with mourning and loss (the precipitate of lost objects). It may, that is, be a failure of the functioning of the Ego which lies behind the “seeing” of phantasms connected with the recent loss of family and close friends. The wish/desire that those close to us remain in existence may be, in certain circumstances, so strong, that they “appear” in hallucinations..
Freud pointed out in His work on Group Psychology the way in which “strange men” who seem very different to us, can often seem threatening, exactly because of the fact that their perceived differences overrides our knowledge that they are human beings, like us who must lead lives similar to ours. In this work Freud discusses the defence mechanism of identifying with an aggressive leader who wills the destruction of his enemies and “strangers” who are not members of the Group. This publication was a significant contribution to understanding the politics of Freud’s time, which Hannah Arendt characterised in terms of a shift away from traditional authoritarian values and towards group leaders who knew how to manipulate mass opinion and override traditional ethical concerns. Such concerns included a desire to respect all human beings, even if they were strangers. Freud, we know, complained in his work “Civilisation and its Discontents”, about the abuse of the term “love” in Christian theological dogma. The proposal of this dogma was that we ought to love our neighbours and even our enemies. Freud contested this claim, but given that he himself maintained that his Psychology was Kantian, we ought not to assume that he did not mean that we ought to respect our neighbours and enemies. He appears here to rightly be challenging the idea of whether love could be universalised in the way the Christian suggested. Many Christians, however, have suggested that the term “love” is metaphorical and means “respect”.
James speaks of the fear of infants upon waking up and discovering that no-one is present and they are alone. This could be the source of the anxiety behind the compulsion to repeat of the small boy featured in Freud’s work “beyond the Pleasure Principle”. This one and a half year old boy is attempting in language to symbolise the absence and presence of his mother, in an effort to control his fear of being alone. He does this by throwing a cotton reel attached to some cotton out of his crib whilst uttering the word “Gone!” and reeling it back again and uttering the word “Here!”. One assumes that if this experience becomes a regularity, defence mechanisms might be mobilised in order to reduce the ensuing anxiety levels thus compromising the normal functioning of the memory and compelling defensive repetitive symbolic performances on the basis of imagined fears that magnify the proportion of the danger to be expected in such circumstances. The employment of defence mechanisms so early on in the cycle of the development of the psycho-sexual stages, will undoubtedly compromise the strength of the ego and perhaps also its later powers to love and to work.
James charts animal fear-behaviour and fixates upon the two alternatives of running away from a threat, and remaining motionless on the spot in a semi-paralysed state. The latter alternative, he characterises problematically, as death-shamming behaviour, but then rejects this description in favour of the more neutral description of “terror paralysis”, which it turns out is especially useful in those contexts where the threatening animal is less likely to identify or notice a motionless object. James interestingly then connects this behaviour to that of a melancholic who crouches motionless in a state of absolute fear. This too, however, it could be argued ought to be described as “terror-paralysis”. We recall the extreme inhibitory avoidance behaviour of the agarophobic which to some extent resembles the inhibitory behaviour of animals who travel from A to B under cover or close to cover. Is this “death-avoidance” behaviour? Behaviour directed to the end of avoiding death? Given, in the case of animals, we are not dealing with language users there seems to be no means to definitely determine the correct end-description. This seemed to be the view of Darwin who explained this phenomenon in terms of the facts of survival and successful adaptive behaviour. We should also bear in mind his theorising occurred before the advent of genetic explanations of behaviour.
Much of what james reflects upon in his two volumes is the description of phenomena that Freud would have shown interest in, and sought to explain via his theorising. James also attempts to give an account of acquisitive behaviour and here his discussion reminds us of Kantian and Freudian strategies which investigate the history of the development of desires from early childhood. Young children, James argues, want those objects that please them, and when someone appropriates that object, reactions can range from passive jealousy to the more active attitude of envy coupled with aggressive attacking behaviour. James notes that it is the task of civilisation to inhibit such behaviour. If such regulation fails to work with any particular individual who repeats previous “successful” patterns compulsively, we may have to concede that this individuals personality profile is dominated by narcissistic desires and the manifestation of the death instinct in aggressive reactions. Freud, we know, connected this compulsion to repeat to his anal stage of personality development where parental control of motor responses may have been problematic, and James points to one of the more harmless manifestations of this fixation in the tendency to hoard objects to excess. Freud’s explanations of such phenomena are of course more satisfying and systematic than James’ phenomenological/pragmatic descriptions.
In relation to the idea of love, James has some interesting comments to contribute which at first glance may appear to be in conflict with the position of Freud. He maintains, in Kantian spirit, that man has an instinct toward isolating himself from his fellow man and in particular from the “strangers” he encounters. This instinct competes, according to both James and Kant, with other more “social instincts”. For Kant, however, this tendency toward isolating oneself may be a more mature form of narcissism in which man believes that his life will be more comfortable if he makes all his life-decisions himself. Kant calls this tendency, in his political writings, the social unsociability of man. The Kantian position, however, also contains the account of a possible use of rationality in which the maxim of mans actions can occur in terms of the conditions of the various formulations of the categorical imperative. In this process of universalisation emphasis is shifted from “my happiness” (my world) to the flourishing life in “the world”. In this shift there is also a shift from a calculative form of reasoning in which we calculate means to our personal ends(the ends of “my world”) to a categorical form of reasoning which is both teleological and holistic–taking into account the interest of everyone.
James also claims that it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between instincts and emotions:
“Every object that excites an instinct excites an emotion as well.”(Vol 2 P.442)
For James, however, the emotional reaction terminates not in a deed but in the experiencers body. He also maintains further that these emotional reactions are caused by objects which we have no practical relation with. James uses the term “object” technically to refer to a physically present object as well as an object that is imagined, thought, or remembered. Returning to his earlier description of fearful behaviour he adds a description of the physiological symptoms that accompany the behaviour. The change in the condition of the skin, the heart, breathing, plus dryness of the mouth, change in tone of voice, tremors, and the tenseness of the tone of the muscles of the body, are all discussed. James then points out that merely describing the emotions is a tiresome business and that there is a need to probe the topic more deeply in search of “principles”. It is in this connection that he formulates his famous theory of the emotions:
“My theory…is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur, is the emotion.”(P.449)
and
“We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.”(P.450)
The whole organism reverberates in response to the exciting fact. Certain physiological responses are felt intensely and others more obscurely. James also distinguishes between the coarser and the more refined emotions such as the feeling of beauty which, according to Kant, is a feeling produced by the harmonious function of the sensible and intellectual faculties of our minds. James uses his theory to distinguish between pathological and normal functioning claiming that in the latter emotion is related to an object and in the latter there is no object:
“In every asylum we find examples of absolutely unmotivated fear, rage, melancholy or conceit; and other of an equally unmotivated apathy which persists in spite of the best of outward reasons why it should give way” (P.459)
James also touches upon the Freudian territory of the vicissitudes of the instincts, namely the defence mechanisms. If, he argues, tears or anger are suppressed but the objects continue to excite their responses:
“the current which would have invaded the normal channels turns into others, for it must find some outlet of escape. It may then work different and worse effects later on. Thus vengeful brooding may replace a burst of indignation.”(P.466)
The above talk of currents and channels is suggestive of a biological energy regulation principle of homeostasis which Freud used, particularly in his earlier theorising, prior to the production of his “Project for a Scientific Psychology”. We also ought to recall that Freud later destroyed this work, hoping it would not remain in circulation and represent his more materialistic reflections. He very soon realised that the Psychology of Instincts and Emotions must situate itself at the level of the psychical representatives of these drives and not on the materialistic substrate of types of neurones in the brain and their different kinds of function. Freud, at the time of destroying his own work probably did not realise that his publications would stretch over a period of almost 50 years (over 100 publications) and that this one publication would pale into insignificance against the background of the entire canon of his work. This long journey we know ends at the beginning of reflection upon life, namely with the ideas and concepts of Greek Philosophy. Kant, too, played an important part in his later theories. This is not to insist that there is no role for an energy regulation principle in theorising about the instincts and emotions. It is rather to insist that this principle has to do with the functioning of the material substrate of psychic activity.
The Freudian Pleasure-Pain Principle and Reality Principle regulates the topography of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious structures of the mind via the dynamic agencies of the ego, id, and superego. These reflections were of course not available to James in 1890, the date of the publication of his “Principles of Psychology”. There is nevertheless much in James’ reflections that significantly contributes to the search for “principles”, especially when one considers what James says about the Will in Chapter 26 of volume two. There is much in this section of James’ work that will illuminate many of Freud’s reflections.