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Chapter three.
Moving from the question of what the work of remembering is, to the question “Whose memory?” and to the answer “mine”, obviously is going to result in a solipsistic end to an otherwise interesting explorative journey. Ricoeur points to Charles Taylor’s expression, “a school of inwardness”, in the context of this discussion, and Augustine is evoked as one of the sources of this school of thinking, which Ricoeur claims reaches its apex with Husserl’s Phenomenology. We have argued in our 4 volume work, “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action”, that the analytical school of Philosophy as characterised by the Logical Atomism of both Russell and the early Wittgenstein, also represented ” a school of inwardness”, which fortunately was significantly questioned by the later work of Wittgenstein. This aspect of the school can also be traced back to John Locke. Wittgenstein’s criticism of of his own earlier solipsism was reminiscent of Heidegger’s criticism of Husserl’s phenomenological positions.
The task Ricoeur sets himself is, to restore the concept and power of memory in the architectonic of Reality, in such a fashion that it no longer became connected with solipsism and the resultant objective-subjective debate. Ricoeur points out that St Augustine rejects the Aristotelian explanations of the origin of time and the basis of cosmic changes, and he also highlights the dilemma involved in the dualistic problem of reconciling the time of the soul with the time of the world in the account Augustine provides us with. Ricoeur does not refer to the role of Descartes in the journey of thought from Augustine to Husserl, but it is clear that the dualistic reflections we encounter in Descartes’ Meditations and Reflections provided an excellent sceptical environment for the school of inwardness. Ricoeur does, however, discuss Descartes’ notion of “substance” and what he believes is the consequent triumph of a grammatical based form of certainty over sceptical doubt. In the context of this discussion Ricoeur surprisingly connects two claims:
- That Husserl is one of the philosophers of consciousness par excellence, and
- That it is Locke, rather than Decartes that is behind the idea of linking the ideas of self and consciousness.
Locke’s epistemological twist of the dualistic threads of two kinds of substance serves as a basis for identifying consciousness with memory. Locke also, paradoxically claims that one of the prime motivators of man is not the pleasure-pain “principle” but rather the raw “feelings” of pleasure and pain. These feelings are, of course, important elements of consciousness but, as we have pointed out in previous works, feelings are not ontologically the right kind of entity to become constitutive elements of the categorically-directed process of thinking. Thought is necessarily about reality and directed at Truth and the validating activities of explanation/justification in tribunals of reason.
Memory is of course intentional and about the past and it is, on hylomorphic theory, the material our higher faculties use to generate both experience and also the basic terms of the sciences in contexts of exploration/discovery. Memory is also intimately related to Language and the meaning of the terms we use in our judgements and propositions. In both of these cases, however, we are dealing with general(collective?) or universal memory and not the kind of memory(e-g. particular memories) Locke was referring to, when he was discussing and attempting to define the identity of an individual person. Kant had Locke and Hume in mind as well as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz when he engaged with the task of synthesising the respective positions of empiricism and rationalism. Kant, pointedly, in his remarks on Education, maintained that training the memory in isolation from other cognitive faculties such as judgement and reason was a meaningless exercise, and should not be one of the major goals of education. Kant, too, would have agreed with the argumentation that memory and the introspective stream of consciousness were necessary foundations for the “school of inwardness”.
Locke was a follower of the more empirically biased science of Boyle, the atomist, who concerned himself with mathematically calculating formulae for the phenomenon of the expansion of gases, rather than the Newtonian project of formulating the natural and “philosophical” laws of thermodynamics and motion. The “atoms” of Locke’s system are the “objects” of experience and the simple ideas, together with the “feelings of pleasure and pain which all obey so called “laws” of association. These laws, which included physical relational characteristics, were part of Locke’s general explanation of thought. These “mechanistic” laws would be later used by the behaviourists to “associate” stimuli and responses. Involved in this “school” of Psychology was, to begin with, an outright denial of the existence of consciousness and subsequently a denial of its relevance as a means of explaining experiential phenomena. Behaviourism, it is important to note, was a reaction to the “school of inwardness” founded by the thought of Augustine, Descartes, Locke, and, later by Hume, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein. The methodological “Golden Mean” Principle, that had earlier been used by Aristotle to avoid dualisms in all its forms was systematically involved in the “modern” movements between schools of inwardness and outwardness, was ignored.
“Modernism” has been characterised in many different ways throughout the ages but in this context perhaps the most relevant characterisation is that by the American Philosopher Stanley Cavell who claimed that the essential characteristic of the “modern” was its questionable relation to its own history. Descartes, Hobbes, etc , we know, made it an important part of their philosophical mission to deny the methods and theories of Aristotle without, it has to be said, demonstrating any systematic understanding of the thought of Aristotle.
Augustine, of course, is interestingly included as an important influence upon the development of these “modern” movements and he too, like Descartes, was a dualist in many different respects. We can, indeed clearly recognise the presence of Augustine in the early theory of meaning presented in Wittgensteins Tractatus. This is also confirmed by Wittgenstein himself in his later work “Philosophical Investigations”, in which he specifically admitted to being held hostage by a picture of the functioning of language which he attributed to Augustine.The importance of Wittgenstein’s later work in the context of this debate, is that it was very concerned to redraw the boundaries between the “inner” and the “outer”. In doing this he also played an important part in creating the logical space for the reemergence of Kantian critical theory, and Aristotelian Hylomorphic theory. In his later work he completely abandoned logical atomism in favour of a view of language rooted in the Greek concept of psuche(form of life).
Locke, unlike Hume, was convinced that morality was an objective matter, whose validity could be rationally demonstrated, and this undoubtedly influenced Kant who, we know, elevated practical reasoning to Platonic and Aristotelian heights. All three thinkers were significant political theorists. Locke is also considered a significant political theorist. His social contract, however, is grounded upon an idea the other three theorists would not share, namely that the social contract ought to create the conditions necessary for citizens to engage in “the pursuit of happiness”. This pursuit, for Locke, was related to what he termed “commodious living” and the regulation of our rights in relation to owning property: ideas which later Marxists found so odious. The Greeks regarded the art(techné) of earning money ,as a secondary concern for areté, because it ought to be restricted to the domain of the household and its local instrumental imperatives. Aristotle’s conception of the primary categorical imperatives, on the other hand, associated with areté, involved prioritising epistemé and ethical and political values in their relation to eudaimonia(the good-spirited flourishing life)
According to Ricoeur, Locke “invented” consciousness. We are not sure exactly what Ricoeur means by this remark, but it needs to be pointed out that Locke’s “consciousness” is an integral part of a network of atomistic and reductionistic assumptions. If we bear this fact in mind, there are aspects to Locke’s thought which, it can be argued, reflect hylomorphic concerns, e.g. that something(e.g. a self) is what endures over a process of change, e.g. Socrates becomes musical or tanned. Locke prefers the terminology of “person” and thereby evokes the Latin idea of “persona”, which, as we know makes reference to a mask whose actual function it is to conceal ones identity: thus making identity the key issue in the attempt to specify, via a definition, the essence of being human. This is an epistemological shift that attempts to avoid the metaphysical implications of the aporetic question “What is a human being?”Locke thus manages to convert important characteristics of being human into something “hidden”, e.g. in ones memories. The image of a private inner theatre staging the events of a stream of consciousness which involve memories which I “possess” thus is an important supporting image for the school of inwardness. In such a context the important task of delineating the scope and limits of consciousness as a mental power or principle becomes marginalised.
Ricoeur quotes Locke in an attempt to complement the account which equates memory with consciousness:
“concern for happiness is the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness”(Locke, J., Second Treatise of Government, Chicago, Henry Reginery, 1955, 26)
It might be the case that there is a tighter relation than “concomitance” between the pursuit of happiness and consciousness, especially if we construe “happiness”, not as a feeling in a stream of consciousness occurring on a private stage, but instead take happiness to be eudaimonia (the pursuit of a good spirited flourishing life). In this excursion into the outer realms of the technical world of the instrumental imperative, it is also clear that we need , if we wish to engage with the problem of power and the abuse of power in the activity of war, to move away from talk of consciousness and toward talk of persons. It should also, however be reiterated that in such a context the idea of the identity of the self is also problematic, i.e. Napoleon being Napoleon in virtue of the fact that he possesses Napoleon’s memories, says very little about the character of Napoleon or the ethical significance of his use/abuse of power ,which resulted in a trail of devastation across Europe. Here it would seem we need rather to raise the issue of his character in a context of a tribunal of practical reasoning.
Ricoeur then compares Husserl and Augustine in relation to the attempted transfiguration of consciousness into the prejudicial “realm ” of intersubjectivity. For Husserl, the consciousness of time is, of course, “internal”. The phenomenological reduction was used to “bracket” “world-time” which Husserl argues, common sense mistakenly sees as something “external”. Experienced time is thus conceived of as independent of that time Newton conceived of as “absolute” and “flowing”, externally in relation to us, (as manifested by the cosmic events of the movements of the heavenly bodies). If such an absolute objective idea of time is inconceivable, its polar opposite, the idea of an “absolute subjectivity”(P.111) makes perfect sense for Ricoeur in phenomenloogical accounts of consciousness which once again raise the problems of negation, absence, etc. We are also faced once again with the problem of explaining the presence and importance of other persons who, on the view of the school of inwardness, may “possess” a completely unique “stream of consciousness” “flowing” across the “Internal” theatre of their minds. Wittgenstein’s “solution” to the problem of moving from his earlier postulated solipsistic “I” to a more communal “We” was to move closer to critical and hylomorphic approaches to these problems.
In conclusion, phenomenological theories do not seem to possess the necessary resources to describe and explain the relation of the “Who?” question to the “What?” question. Truth is obviously the major issue in the latter case. This is not to deny that there is a “Who” involved in thinking something about something, as well as the “that” or “what” component of the thought. The “person” obviously does not “possess” these thoughts in the same way in which he might be said to possess his memories. It is clear, however, that in the context of this discussion the major question is not “Who is maintaining this claim?” but rather “Why is this claim being made?”