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Philip Cousineau in his Introduction to Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” claims that Campbell’s search was for the Logos of the phenomena he investigated. The concern, that is, was what these phenomena had in common rather than what differentiated them from each other. The method used was described as comparative historical elucidation and it can be contrasted with the method of Wittgenstein, which sought essentially to differentiate between different phenomena. Cousineau reminds us of the proclamation we encounter in the Vedas, namely:
“Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names”
In this regard reference is often made to the collective archetypes of Jung, which are used to justify the denotation of many sacred narratives Campbell calls these sacred narratives or myths the “Masks of god” which partly constitute the “morphogenetic field” which we presume is identified with “The Truth” mentioned in relation to the Vedas above. The role of the hero is, we have agued in previous reviews of Campbell’s work, an ambiguous reference, which appears to exclude the quiet contemplative rational transformation Philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle appear to have undergone in their essentially intellectual journeys. These are the “modern” “pathfinders” in the modern morphogenetic field. We do find Socrates engaged in inner communication with his daemon in life-crisis situations, but Psychoanalysis would have no difficulty in explaining this communication as one between the ego and the superego, in a situation where a choice of life-defining alternative actions are being considered. The life defining experiences of saints, prophets and shamans are of course a much more dramatic affair.
Cousineau claimed that Campbell’s method involved the use of the hermeneutical method. Paul Ricoeur, the Philosopher, articulates well the concern of hermeneutics for “symbols”, claiming that symbols possess the semantic property of “double meaning”. Expressions with a so-called manifest meaning provoke thought to move to another deeper meaning in what Ricoeur calls the “realm of the sacred”, which we mortals seem able to comprehend only through a glass darkly. Kant speaks in his Third Critique of Judgment of a statue of Isis and an inscription that says “no mortal has ever lifted my veil”.
Aristotle refers to this realm in terms of the realm of Being and he further claims that “Being has many meanings” . This concerns not merely our relation to God, but also our relation to life (psuché), death and the mysteries of the external world. Campbell uses the word “metaphor” in its Ancient Greek meaning of “carrying beyond”: a meaning that transcends the more modern interpretation in terms of a shift from one semantic region to another. Reference is also made to the archetypes of the soul in the spirit of aletheia (unconcealment or revelation). We encounter this spirit in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas which articulates a framework for the “many meanings of Being”, by claiming that the Kingdom of God is both within us and out there in the world, here and now. Eastern Religion also articulates this transcendental feature of our experience in terms of “Thou art that!”.
Ambiguous references to the archetype of the hero and his journey do not, as we have claimed earlier, acknowledge the possibility that this appears to run contrary to his stated view that we ought to be wary of unnecessarily universalising particular perspectival narratives which express local ethnographic concerns. It is true that prior to the introduction of Philosophical Reasoning and its Categorical concern with Being and Principles (such as noncontradiction and sufficient Reason), the heros narrative was steered by an imaginative idea of the heros journey. But even if our physiology has stayed the same for 40,000 years as Campbell claimed, the organisation of the brain due to the introduction of writing and reading may well be responsible, as Julian Jaynes suggests, for the kind of self-consciousness that has evolved as a human vicissitude of the instincts. We can see clearly in Plato’s writings, the change of emphasis from the virtue of courage to the virtue of wisdom, and the increasing importance of various forms of knowledge insofar as leading the good spirited flourishing life (eudaimonia) was concerned. Achilles excelled in battle, but his courageous life, otherwise did not meet Socratic or Aristotelian criteria. It was Socrates and the mythical Philosophers, returning to the cave from which they originated, that became the new “ideal”, representing wisdom. Whether we can regard these figures as “heros” is not clear. With the advent of philosophers there is an important shift from the individual perspective to the perspective of the polis which, for Socrates, was the soul (psuché) writ large. Socrates was searching for the definition of justice but it was Aristotle who presented us with an essence specifying definition of Man, namely rational animal capable of discourse which transcended the old ideal of the courageous warrior, and perhaps the so called archetype of the hero dissipated with Aristotelian Rationalism and the telos of the contemplative life.
Socrates’ life was, however, in the old sense “heroic” because it ended the way it did for the reasons that it did, but it was not the battlefield but the agora which was the scene of his activities. Challenging those who thought they knew and who were trying to make the worse argument seem the better, of course, took both courage and wisdom. Socrates, like Jesus, knew the risks he was taking in attempting to persuade people to “know thyself!”. What happened to Socrates proved that the Athenian system was not quite equipped to handle appeals to “the child of the Gods”, namely Philosophy. Aristotle too, became persona non grata and was forced to flee from Athens. There is an argument for the position that the polis as a constitutional entity was not equipped to meet the demands for the “new ideals” the Philosophers were arguing for, namely justice, knowledge, and freedom. An interesting footnote to this discussion is the attempt of Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s pupil, to establish a Greek Empire, thereby helping to destabilise the existing system of polis/states. In the spirit of the Aristotelian principle of the Golden Mean, it is worth pointing out that during Kant’s time, neither cities nor empires, but nations became the entities with constitutions.
Campbell in the Preface to his 1949 edition of “The Hero with a thousand faces” refers to a Freudian critique of religion and mythology:
“The Truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognise them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-born babies are brought by the stork. Here too, we are telling the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird signifies. But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels he has been deceived: and we know how often his distrust of the grown-ups, and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression. We nave become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell the children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level.” (Pages 44-45)
Freud’s point was, according to Campbell, that the ancient muses knew what they were talking about and which metaphors to use to carry their message further. We moderns, however, need to learn again the “grammar of the symbols”. Campbell adds:
“as a key to this mystery I know of no better modern tool than psychoanalysis.”(The Hero with a thousand faces” (Page xii)
Psychoanalysis, however, has a complex history with roots both in Aristotelian Hylomorphism and Kantian Critical Philosophy, but it is perhaps the latter that is especially relevant to this discussion, given the Freudian declaration that he was a “Kantian Psychologist”. Alongside these relevant facts, however, there is also the deliberate Freudian choice of terminology drawn from Platonic Philosophy, e.g. Eros, Thanatos, Ananke, logos, which clearly transcend the technical language Freud uses to characterise the treatment of his patients. The Freudian theory of the “psychic-apparatus” and its possession of psychological powers in relation to the external world, also manifests elements of Greek thinking that presupposed the Greek view of psuché embedded in a categorical framework of areté, dike, arché, epistemé, aletheia and eudaimonia. In this Philosophical/technical framework there is no clear role for narratives of heros and their quests. The heros quest for self- transformation often contains the occurrence of supernatural events in which tremendous forces are overcome by a superhuman will and determination, communicating perhaps the narcissistic message that “anything is “possible” for such men. The Aristotelian process of self- actualisation is not embedded in a narrative or a story, but is rather part of a philosophical account of the cultural development of a number of powers of human psuché, including the powers of discourse and rationality which are integrated with a number of other psychological/mental powers or functions that in turn have important relations to the external world.
It was Plato that initiated this transition from the form of the narrative to a more enlightened philosophical form of “Philosophical dialogues” featuring the “ very real character” of Socrates, whose mode of being was one of self-efacement rather than self-proclamation. His power of persuasion was considerable, because it was founded upon areté, arché, episteme dike, aletheia, logos, and eudaimonia. One can, if one so desires, read the episodes of the dialogues in terms of the adventures of Socrates, but that would be to miss the pedagogical point of the dialogues, which was to herald in the new era of the new ideals of principles and rationality, emphasising simultaneously the rejection of heros and the rejection of the strategy of making the worse argument seem the better.
The heroic narrative is at best an exercise of the imagination and emotion in the name of the good spirited flourishing life of the individual which, in an aesthetic context, carries the subjective message of exemplary universality and necessity articulated in Kant’s Third Critique. It is true that the trilogy of dialogues, Euthyphro, Apology and Phaedo, seemingly promote a narrative of the Socratic journey to his final destination in a death-cell. The message of these dialogues, however, is more complex. A man who has dedicated his life to justice is convicted for attempting to make citizens aware of the essence of Justice. Socrates at no point proclaimed himself to be a hero or a saviour, and he did not proclaim directly that Philosophy could save us from the Delphic prophecy of ruin and destruction. He nevertheless, over time, became a symbol for the necessity and transcendence of Philosophy.
Athens was the home of three of the greatest Philosophers in history, in relatively rapid succession, and their bond of connection was a sacred one: that of teacher-pupil. Plato incorporated the spirit of Socrates into his dialogues, and Aristotle incorporated the spirits of both Socrates and Plato into his writings. Campbells account of the heros journey has a very different structure, which it can be argued, was promoted into a cult of the hero by Thomas Carlysle, which in turn was transformed into the Hegelian idea of world historical individuals such as Napoleon . This underwent a further transformation into Nietzsches “Will to power”. Associated ideas of “Domination” and Colonisation” were political ideals that have been embraced by a number of modern tyrants since Napoleon. The Greek political heritage, however, probably lies closer to Schopenhauers “will to live” and Kant’s “good will”. Its epistemological heritage encourages a belief in “scientific” explanation/justification. Its artistic heritage includes a belief in the importance of Art and its associated ideals of the beautiful and sublime.
Campbell was undoubtedly a significant explorer of the breadth and depth of psuché via the linking of distant mythologies such as that of the Navaho and Hinduism. His arguments are sometimes hylomorphic and sometimes Kantian but they lack an important philosophical dimension which we have attempted to articulate. It is true as Campbell maintains that mans physiology has not altered for 40000 years but mans most important organ is his brain and the organisation of the functions of that organ may have changed during this period. Language, Julian Jaynes has argued was originally a bilateral function like all the other physiological functions of the brain. The science of physiology teaches us that an organ can lose one function and acquire another. In the case of the origins and history of the function of language, Jaynes has interesting theories to contribute:
“Language, Jaynes argues, began as an expressive phenomenon partly connected to events of importance in the external world /e.g. hunting, and gathering). By a charted series of functions, this developmental sequence eventually reaches the level or representative thought in which we find the names for animals developing into a more complex stage in which names are given to individual people. At this stage it would be fair to say that we are definitely thinking something. As group life evolved we then find language evolving into more complex forms via the use of sentences with subject-predicate structures which illustrate the fully mental power of thinking something about something which Heidegger called the veritative (truth-making) synthesis. This, however is not the final level of the Mental which is achieved only when the principles of Logic and Truth tables begin to constitute and regulate the field of sound argumentation—the field of rationality. These higher mental operations are undoubtedly inhabitants of the realm of the mental being essentially connected to the telos of self-conscious thought.” (James, M.R.,D., The World Explored, the World suffered: A Philosophical istory of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume four, Page 194)
This is a hylomorphic account of the development and integration of human psychological powers that are implied by the essence specifying definition of human psuché, namely rational animal capable of discourse. Whilst different languages spoken by different races of man with different histories compel us to attend to these differences, biological reflection focuses upon what we, who are different in certain respects, have in common. In simple primitive environments consciousness may not have possessed the same level of complexity, but mythical narratives certainly appealed to the powers of the imagination and sensibility, quickening in those who had the requisite capacities, an experience of transcendence. Primitive man certainly used myths to orient himself in his environment as well as to begin the attempt to know himself. Campbell claims in this context:
“The symbols of mythology are not manufactured: they cannot be ordered, invented or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche, and each bears within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source.” (The Hero with a thousand faces, Page 2)
Many scientific disciplines contribute to our understanding of primitive man and his primitive form of life and Campbell invokes psychoanalysis amongst these. He refers to the long childhood of man, and the subsequent long period of dependence upon our care-givers. As the repertoire of human psychological and mental powers develop much can go awry to disturb this development, and identification of the causes of psychological or mental health problems are not always straightforward matters. One image which the Ancient Greeks use to provide us with an understanding of the human self actualisation process is that of the labyrinth, and psychoanalysis certainly provides us with one of the threads leading out of the cave and into the sunlight. Myth and Religion too provides us with such a thread as does Philosophy.
In an interview entitled “The Road of Trials” Campbell refers to James Joyce and the Arts as responsible for awakening in them the realisation of the universal meaning of the symbols we find in our Myths. In this context he also refers to Hinduism which already in the 9th century BC acknowledged that:
“all the deities are projections of psychological power, and they are within you and not out there. They’re out there also, in a certain way, in a mysterious way but the real place for them is in here (points to the heart).” (Pages 36-37)
James Joyce helped Campbell understand the Eastern texts and laid the foundation for the next phase of his journey, in which he discovered Freud, Jung, and Thomas Mann whilst studying Sanskrit. Yet it was another German Psychologist whom he met in 1981 who would play a large part in helping him to synthesise ideas from Myth, Art, Psychology and Literature, and relate these ideas to the fundamental problem of life, which is:
“to become transparent to transcendence: so that you realise that you are yourself a manifestation of this” (Campbells The Hero’s Journey, Page 51).
Campbell spent one hour with Karlfried Graf Durckheim from Freiburg and emerged from this meeting with a definition of myth as:
“a metaphor transparent to transcendence” (Page 51)
The Ancient Greek spirit of aletheia hovers over all these reflections because it is clear that we are in a world of symbolic language which carries us beyond the normal concerns of speech into the “realm of the sacred”, which is the realm of psuché (life) in which we feel at one with the Universe and especially with all forms of life. Schopenhauer, following Kant, highlighted this aspect of metaphysics when he pointed to the phenomenon of humans sacrificing their lives to save the lives of others, thereby transcending Spinoza’s principle of self preservation in which it is claimed all things strive to preserve themselves in existence.