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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James. Critique of Campbells view of Mythology Season 16 Episode 9

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“the genesis of that great family of living things” (Page 79)

Kant, is here referring to the Gaia principle:

“He can suppose that the womb of mother earth as it first emerged, like a huge animal from its chaotic state, gave birth to a creature whose form displayed less finality, and that these again bore others which adapted themselves more perfectly to their native surroundings and their relation to each other, until this womb, becoming rigid and ossified, restricted its birth t definite species, incapable of further modification, and the multiplicity of forms was fixed as it stood when  the operation of that fruitful power had ceased.” (Page 79)

Kant then, in the context of this discussion, explores the hypothesis of generatio univocal, which:

“implies the generation of something organic from something else that is also organic, although within the class of organic beings, differing specifically from it. It would be as if we supposed that certain water animals transformed themselves by degrees into marsh animals, and from these after some generations into land animals. In the judgement of plain reason there is nothing a priori self-contradictory in this. But experience offers no example of it.” (Pages 79-80)

Kant then proceeds to discuss a possible assumption of genetic theory:

“where we find that the character thus altered is transmitted and taken up into the generative power, we can form no other possible estimate of it than that it is an occasional development of a purposive capacity originally present in the species with a view to the preservation of the race.”(Page 80)

Hume, the sceptical empiricist raises questions about teleological explanations, but the grounds of his objections are based on a belief in the power of perception and the activity of observation in investigations which are essentially explorative: investigations that are at the early stage of searching for basic terms and principles. It is not, however, clear that observations could ever leads us to the essential characteristics of organised beings. Kant believes, in the context of this discussion that one need not begin with a basic materialistic term such as “organic substance” but it would perhaps be more useful to begin by presupposing a “principle of primordial organisation” on earth, a formative impulse:

“standing, so to speak, under the higher guidance and direction of the above principle.” (Page 86)

Kant even includes the issue of the differentiation of the sexes in this discussion and rather than presupposing an androgynous whole which splits into two parts, proposes instead a holistic organising principle which is manifested in both sexes in all animals. This principle will be that which the sexes have in common and not that which differentiates them, e.g. related to the powers of discourse and rationality. Human psuché is a superior form for Kant because it alone can form a conception of its own ends with the aid of the powers of understanding and reason. Kant also points out, however, that man also possesses the power to bring about his own ruin and destruction, and this is to be seen in his individual acts of aggression and in his collective acts of war. Despite these problematic tendencies there is, Kant maintains, still hope for man who, is part of a “hidden plan” to bring about a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends through both instrumental and categorical imperatives grounded in the ideas of freedom and responsibility. These respective imperatives manifest themselves in two important tasks man has set himself to do, namely the instrumental task of building civilisations and the categorical task of building a Culture to further the purposes of the “hidden plan”. In the first of these tasks basic   biological and psychological desires and needs are met relating to safety and security and love and belongingness. In the second task higher psychological desires and needs such as self-esteem and aesthetic and cognitive needs and desires emerge and are fulfilled. The Latter task requires the existence of a Culture which amongst other things ensures:

“the liberation of the will from the despotism of desires whereby, in our attachment to certain natural things, we are rendered incapable of exercising a choice of our own.” (Page 95)

Both civilisation and Culture are teleologically directed creations that has a particular history in which the mass of the population works in order for a smaller part of the masses to pursue cultural ends valued by all. The hope is that in the process of transmission of these culturally valuable works the masses will at least liberate themselves from the despotism of the lower needs and desires and light upon the importance of the idea of freedom and human rights for everybody. The Aristotelian principle of the Golden Mean is involved in this process, and it creates a large enlightened middle class that embodies the virtues of the poor and the rich. Kant sees that the arts and the sciences will play an important role in this process:

“Fine art and the sciences, if they do not make man morally better, yet, by conveying a pleasure that admits of universal communication and by introducing polish and refinement into society make him civilised. Thus, they do much to overcome the tyrannical propensities of sense and so prepare man for a sovereignty in which reason alone shall have sway. Meanwhile the evils visited upon us, now by nature, now by the truculent egoism of man, evoke the energies of the soul, and give it strength and courage to submit to no such force, and at the same time quicken in us a sense that in the depths of our nature there is an aptitude for higher ends.” (Page 97)

These energies of the soul raise further questions about the ultimate value of life which Kant elaborates upon in the following manner:

“The value of life for us, measured simply by what we enjoy (by the natural end of the sum of all our inclinations, that is, by happiness) is easy to decide. It is less than nothing. For who would enter life afresh under the same conditions….There remains then, nothing but the worth which we ourselves assign to our life by what we not alone do, but do with a view to an end so independent of nature, that the very existence of nature itself can only be an end subject to the condition so imposed.”(Pages 97-8)

The value of life, then, according to Kant rests partly in acknowledging man as a noumenal being possessed of the rational idea of freedom and the responsibilities associated with such freedom. Mans conception of himself, then, must be that of a being who in order to appreciate happiness must deem himself to be worthy of such happiness. Happiness without any attachment to worthiness and dignity is Kant argues the principle of self-love in disguise and as such cannot be universalised because, what makes one individual happy makes another sad and what makes an individual happy in one phase of his life may not make him happy in another phase.

Joseph Campbell argues that an understanding of Mythology is a necessary feature of our understanding of the nature of our own “Being-in-the-world”, and Kant touches upon this theme by referring to the Ancients and their creation of a pantheon of Gods with limited powers and purposes over a limited realm. These supernatural Beings were then imagined interacting with the beings in our earthly world in ways resembling the ways of the human psyché. Kant sometimes writes as if this idealist introduction of final causes was an attempt to concretise some aspects of the noumenal world that lies beyond human understanding and reason.

The problem that arises in relation to these concrete physical teleological accounts is that it encourages theoretical theological accounts of a Supremely Intelligent Being with theoretical powers. The Ancient Greeks grappled with this problem and their thinking reached a zenith in the writings of Plato and Aristotle who preferred to theorise about Humanity rather than these theoretical supernatural beings, preferring, that is to reason about justice and the state and a Form of the Good which was not divine but a form that was both Good-in-itself and  Good-in-its-consequences. This humanistic approach meshes well with the following Kantian reflection:

“For all ends in the world are empirically conditioned and can contain nothing that is absolutely Good, but only what is good for this or that purpose regarded as contingent.” Page 106

It is in the light of this reflection that we ought to understand Kants objections to the so-called “happiness principle” which has been evoked by many Philosophers over millennia as an answer to the question of the final purposes of human psuché. The Good-in-itself for man is the actualising of his rational potential. He elaborates further upon this with the following argument:

“Without man, in other words, the whole of creation would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final end.” (Page 106)

It is interesting to note that one of the modernist visions of where man stands in relation to the task of bringing about the Kingdom of Ends is that of T S Eliots Waste-Land. This is what we have created thus far in our journey. In this waste land there is no positive eros lighting our way but only the darkness of the times symbolised by the warrior priests of the Northern Forests Campbell writes about.  Our human powers have not been adequate to the task of building both civilisations and cultures and our Gods have left us to our own devices (Deus absconditis). There is an obvious absence of meaning and the Enlightenment idea of the good will has faded. In Kantian Critical Philosophy the Supreme Being is only clearly apprehended clearly with the actualisation of the Kingdom of ends one hundred thousand years in the future. The risk is that the Supreme Being, will be man himself, if it is only his work that has brought about the Good Kingdom. Such a state of affairs may be partly due to the Kantian rejection of the theoretical arguments for the existence of God. The formula Kant proposes for a belief in God is a practical moral formula where all the work is to be done by man and any happiness that accrues eventuates only because it is proportionate to the work of a good will that respects the freedom and rights of others.

In a section entitled “Method of Applying the Teleological Judgement” Kant takes up the issues of the status of theoretical proofs for the existence of God and dismisses all of them including the famous ontological proof. This returns us back to the arena of practical reason in which analogy and symbolism play foundational roles not in relation to the relatively abstract practical issue of justice but in the more concrete contexts of the family and its love of family members and the realm of the sacred. Freud, we know questioned whether we could love our enemies who are not gentle creatures and the question that arises in the context of this discussion whether it is possible to love an abstract Being whose nature we must infer from other moral considerations such as our worthiness as human beings. Freud may well have had doubts about whether such love was possible.

Scepticism in relation to mythology, religion, metaphysics, and even art became in fact scepticism relating to various human powers such as understanding and reason in favour of other powers such as perception, consciousness and the imagination. Indeed, the question arises whether a Philosophical Psychology that can account for the repertoire of human phenomena is even possible if the repertoire of our human powers is truncated in the ways it has been. One can argue of course that this sceptical approach to the above realms or “meanings” of Being is itself a result of a critical spirit concerned to demythologise our relation to Being. But Analysis of phenomena such as the Will and Consciousness does not have to truncate either our powers nor our relation to the world if it follows several Aristotelian and Kantian guidelines, amongst others the Aristotelian whole-part principle we discussed earlier. Brian O Shaugnessy in his work on both the Will and Consciousness has indeed provided us with accounts that meet these guidelines in the spirit of “Analytical Philosophy” whilst simultaneously acknowledging the more modern work of Freud and Wittgenstein in the arena of Philosophical Psychology. In his work on “The Will: a Dual Aspect Theory” we encounter an interesting discussion of the differences between, on the one hand, a mechanical account of my moving my arm to pick an orange which refers to the contraction of muscles innervated by nerves etc.,  and on the other, the voluntary act which “I” perform. These are of course not logically incompatible, i.e. there can be two different accounts of this “movement” but not two different accounts of this “action”. There can however perhaps be two different accounts of the muscle contraction that is efficiently caused by a particular region of the brain. The claim that I picked the orange assumes that the teleological object-related aspect has priority over the mechanical antecedent “causes”. The claim indeed might be an answer to the question “Why did you move your arm toward the tree?”. The claim “I picked the orange”, is of course related to the intention I had in moving my arm and hand toward the orange which as Anscombe maintained is an answer to a certain sense of a why-question. Aristotle would of course have referred to a telos or final cause embedded in the world of human psuché a rational world where language users inform each other of their intentions. A world in which what intentions an agent had who committed a crime, can nevertheless be deduced after the process of a trial “beyond a reasonable doubt”. The world of psuché for the Ancient Greeks was a world in which, after Aristotle, a matrix of concepts and principles formed to create what many have called a “Golden Age”. No one would refer to our modern age in such terms. Indeed, Kants Enlightenment Philosophy was much closer to Classical Greece than our modern age is, but Kant nevertheless viewed the life of his times as “melancholically haphazard”, a time in which man did not dare to use his reason and a time in which unmotivated wars drained the resources of entire nations. Indeed, the best he could say about his situation was that there might be a “hidden plan” for a Kingdom of ends one hundred thousand years in the future. Just as Paul Ricoeur claimed that the “meeting point” of both Analytical (e.g.,Wittgenstein) and Phenomenological Philosophy, and Hermeneutics was that of Language, O Shaughnessy sees Action to be close to “the nerve of the age”. O Shaughnessy is an interesting dialectical partner for Ricoeur because he also analyses the concept of “consciousness”, one of the major themes for phenomenology: an analysis that relies partly on the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Both Ricoeur and O Shaughnessy however would agree that science has little of interest to say about both Language and Consciousness, but it is O Shaughnessy who most obviously embodies the concerns of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophical Psychology assisted by the work of the later Wittgenstein which prepared the philosophical landscape for the restoration of Ancient and Enlightenment concerns. The Kantian hidden plan of practical reason requires however that the burning issue of metaphysics (first Principles) be resolved to the satisfaction of theoretical reason at least insofar as providing us with the totality of conditions for the hidden plan is concerned. Kant outlines some of these conditions in the Prolegomena:

“In order that as a science metaphysics may be entitled to claim, not mere fallacious plausibility, but insight and conviction, a critique of reason must itself exhibit the whole stock of a priori concepts, their division according to their various sources(sensibility, understanding and reason), together with a complete table of them, the analysis of all these concepts, with all their consequences and especially the possibility of synthetic cognition a priori by means of the deduction of these concepts, the principles and bounds of their use, all in a complete system. Critique, therefore, and critique alone contains in itself the whole well-proved and well-tested plan, and even all the means required to establish metaphysics as a science; by other ways and means it is impossible.” Page 105)

 Kant elaborates upon this by the following claim:

“reason has the sources of its knowledge in itself, not in objects, and their observation, by which its stock of knowledge could be further increased…All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.”

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James. Critique of Campbells view of Mythology. Season 16 Episode 8

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Kant classifies Fine Art into three categories, namely, speech, the formative arts, and the play of the sensations. This division has its origins in Hylomorphism and Kantian Critical Philosophy: we can see distinctions between both the appetites and the understanding /reason and we also encounter sensations and speech animated by the power of the imagination. We can also see the operation of key distinctions between thought and intuition, form and matter, sensibility and understanding/judgement. Kant takes up the contribution symbolism makes to works of genius, claiming that it indirectly involves the presentation of a concept. Symbolic representation occurred for Freud in the dream work where the manifest sensible content of the images on the dream screen relate to something instinctual. The dream, in other words is a compromise formation, a vicissitude of an instinct, in which the imagination and the emotions play key roles.  The latent content, then, is the arché or principle guiding the production of the dream images. Symbolism as Paul Ricoeur points out occurs in three realms, the cosmic, the oneiric (dreams and myths) and the reflective in which “symbols are objects of interpretation because they are intended to refer to some underlying latent content which must be revealed (Aletheia). Kant is exploring this last realm in his discussion of sublime inscriptions on Temple statues but also in his discussion of the significance of Transcendental Analogy. This raises the possibility of the establishment of a school of hermeneutics based on Hylomorphic ad Critical Philosophy which acknowledges the roles of the emotions and the power of the imagination but also sees no dialectical opposition between these powers and the powers of understanding and reason. Such an approach would seek to reflect upon the sole of symbolic reasoning in myth and the arts in general but especially in relation to those ideas of reason for which there can be no sensible representation, e.g. The Supreme Being. Freud is an interesting figure in this debate because he has claimed that some aspects of religion are related to fantasy and “illusion”. The question that needs to be investigated here is whether this line of thinking applies to the Transcendental Analogy which sees a “symbolic” relation between the love of a father for his children and the love of God for humanity. For Freud our childish fears and wishes are fundamentally illusory, fundamentally pathological. We need that is to dare to use our rationality in relation to certain forms of anthropomorphising of the gods (a Kantian position).,

The Will, Kant argues, has formative power, a very different power to that of the motive mechanical power of machines. In the case of a circle drawn in the sand, this phenomenon is a consequence of the operation of the power of the will which we are unlikely to confuse with the forces of the wind or the water on a beach if we are confronted with such a circle. This circle is a product of human psuché, to be distinguished from a footprint of an animal in the sand. Kants Philosophical Psychology/Anthropology was largely rejected by the Psychologists of the 19th and 20th centuries, who sought to construct stimulus response theories related either to sensations or behaviour. Formative powers and processes presuppose teleological judgement which assumes a form of life-like causality analogous to the powers and processes operating in human action. The life flowing through the blade of grass or animal could never as such be observed but is rather in a sense assumed to exist in virtue of the category of living forms these living phenomena belong to. We are here in the territory of the discussion of the role of final causes in contexts of explanation/justification: one of the four causes forming Aristotle’s Theory of Change. Kant insists that the opposing assumption, namely that living phenomena be explained in terms of  blind mechanistic efficient causes may well allow us to conduct empirical investigations based on observations and simple experimentation alone, but  such investigations would not be able to provide us with the totality of conditions for these phenomena, would not, that is, provides us with the way in which the principle of the whole governs the parts of these phenomena. Nevertheless, Kant does not subscribe to the view that such a state of affairs proves the objective existence of the causality of final causes (Critique of Judgement Part II Page 41). We must, rather, Kant argues, use the idea of final cause subjectively presupposing both a life-principle and a first principle/idea of God (the intellectual cause of the world) conceived of in terms of  a being whose reality we infer within the bounds of reason. With these presuppositions we might then be able to acquire insight into the essence of a blade of grass and other more complex forms of psuché. Principles relate to the possibility of things when they are conceptual and are in accord with the categories.

Kant has the following to say concerning the faculty of human understanding:

“Human understanding cannot avoid the necessity of drawing a distinction between the possibility and the actuality of things. The reason for this lies in our own selves and the nature of our cognitive faculties. For were it not that two entirely heterogeneous factors, understanding for conceptions and sensuous intuitions for the corresponding objects, are required for the exercise of these faculties, there would be no such distinction between the possible and the actual. This means that if our understanding were intuitive, it would have no objects but such as are actual. Conceptions which are merely directed toward the possibility of an object, and sensuous intuitions, which give us something and do not yet thereby let us cognise it as an object, would both cease to exist. Now the whole distinction which we draw between the merely possible rests upon the fact that possibility signifies the position of the representation of a thing in its immediate self-existence apart from this conception. Accordingly, the distinction of possible from actual things is one that is merely valid subjectively for human understanding. It arises from the fact that even if something does not exist, we may yet always give it a place in our thoughts, or if there is something of which we have no conception we may nevertheless imagine it as given.” (Page 56 )

This passage is interesting from many different points of view. It is the ground for the explanations we have been given for a categorical distinction between is-statements and ought-statements. When, for example human actions are viewed conceptually in a moral context giving rise to moral judgements, the idea of freedom and the categorical imperative are importantly involved. Perhaps it is important to note in the context of this discussion that one of the primary functions of language is to speak or write about objects in their absence, e.g. action outcomes that are intended but have yet to actualise. The later work of Wittgenstein explored the multifarious functions of language-games embedded in a matrix of forms of life and instincts. Aristotle, we know, linked the actualisation process to judgements about possibilities or to use his term, potentialities.

Paul Ricoeur claimed that we human forms of psuche engage in a world in which our desires are not transparent, indeed may even be intentionally disguised. This fact together with the fact that the way in which we use language too, may be a consequence of being bewitched by this language, makes it obvious that our actions sometimes require interpretation if we are to fully understand them. Here too, we can see a relation of manifest content to latent content similar to that which we encounter in Freudian psychoanalytic interpretations. The inscription of the statue located at the Temple of Isis suggests that, if God is identified with Logos or language, the name of God can only hint at what is designated by this idea of reason. Kant, urges us, in the name of Critical Philosophy to refrain from giving the noumenal entity of this metaphysical being any concrete characteristics simply because we have no intuitional contact with this form of Being.

Joseph Campbell, too urges us in the context of his criticisms of the universal pretensions of mythology to refrain from universalising the concrete characterisations of local gods and deities. He points to the manifold historical conflicts that have arisen when one community claims that their divinity is the only true divinity. For Campbell, of course it is the power of the imagination that needs to generate the universal mythology he is in search of—a mythology for our time, as he calls it. But whilst he seriously considers the Cinematic production of Star Wars as an aesthetic candidate presenting a modernist mythology, it is clear that this production may not meet the rational criteria of a number of scientific or artistic disciplines.  Science fiction, of course can explore a number of human concerns meaningfully and the production “Star Wars” is about exploring the frontiers of Space, but this for the Enlightenment Philosopher Kant and the Ancient Greeks is not the final frontier. The final frontier for a human Being must be something requiring a number of self-reflective powers that are important for culture-creation. Our Philosophical   journey, then, is an inner journey which views inner phenomena as related to a latent substrate capable of causing awe and wonder in us. We do not need to construct an elaborate space vehicle for such a journey: techné is replaced by the epistemé used by rational animals capable of discourse searching, not for experiences, but the conditions of all experience. Space and Time as a priori conditions are a part of the totality of conditions of experience but in knowledge contexts it is the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason which play decisive roles in our various knowledge related activities.

In this realm of the sciences, we encounter various theories, which analyse and synthesise concepts, propositions and arguments into a whole with logical characteristics.  Philosophy of course is an important contributor to the Canon of the Sciences because of its critical view of materialistic and dualistic assumptions. Both Kant and Aristotle shared a concern for rejecting these types of assumptions which divide an object up into parts that cannot be reconciled and subsumed under first principles. Kant, we know, was particularly concerned to synthesise the respective positions of empiricism and rationalism in his Critical Philosophy which was inspired by both Hume and Rousseau. The Ancients view of Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics of Aristotle were also significant influences in Kants later Critical Philosophy.

Kant both sought to differentiate phenomena and principles from different regions of Being/Reality that Historically had been confused with one another or neglected for different reasons. He was more cautious about the status of Aristotle’s final causes in his explanatory references to cause and reason, believing, for example, that we cannot know for certain the reach of mechanical/efficient explanations because of the limitation of the scope of our faculties of understanding and reason. Kant was clear however that there was a place for teleological explanation in our, so long as we acknowledge the “Subjective” nature of tis kind of explanation/justification:

“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 good progress in such researches, but we can never get rid of the appeal to a completely different source 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 resembling ours, however much it may surpass it  in degree to hope to understand the generation of even a blade of grass from mere mechanical powers….it is absolutely impossible for us to obtain any explanation at the hand of nature itself to account for any synthesis displaying finality.” (Pages 66-67)

By “organised beings” Kant means psuché, forms of life, such as a blade of grass, animals and human forms of psuché which Aristotle defined in terms of “rational animal capable of discourse”, but he also continues to insist that the type of  judgement we employ as a consequence of our investigations into the essences of such organised beings is a reflective  type of judgement rather than the more typical kind of determinant judgement  which is typical in the arena of mechanical processes and causes. Reflective judgements contain a priori principles and must therefore fall into the domain of what Kant refers to as “The Method of Critical Investigations”. This method is particularly important in relation to explanations/justifications of psychological phenomena in the realm of the study of human psuché. One Aristotelian principle in this realm recommends that when we divide an organised being into its parts in order to understand the essence of the whole being, those parts must be conceived of in terms of the a priori principle of the whole. This might in fact also be an underlying principle of Kantian Critical Philosophy which tasks reason with perspicuously representing the totality of conditions for phenomena. Amongst the totality of conditions for explanations/justifications pertaining to the human form of psuché will undoubtedly be found reference to the system of organs, limbs and functional parts of the body such as fingers toes, joints etc.

Joseph Campbell, to some extent, embraces Aristotelian Hylomorphism when he claims that the imagination, emotions and perhaps even consciousness itself originate in the conflict of these organs with one another. Perhaps one might elaborate upon this and suggest that Consciousness and feelings such as the feeling of pleasure may also originate from the “harmony” of the organs (including, of course, the brain). Beginning from the apriori idea of the whole of human psuché, given, for example, by Aristotle’s essence specifying definition: rational animal capable of discourse, the method employed in contexts of explanation/justification is that of a judicial tribunal where phenomena are interrogated  by a theory composed of categorical judgements. Such an interrogation will take the form of questioning whether such phenomena can be subsumed under apriori laws or principles. Part of this context will contain large scale questions relating to:

“the genesis of that great family of living things” (Page 79)

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James. Critique of Campbells view of Mythology: Season 16 Episode 7

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The principle involved in Judgements of taste in relation to Art, on the other hand, is:

“The principle of nature’s formal finality for our cognitive faculties” (Kants Critique of Judgement, Trans Meredith, J.C., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, Page 35)

The Critique of Judgement is also, however, concerned with teleological judgement which aims to provide us with the principle of the finality of nature, and this is especially relevant when we are dealing with psyche or life forms. Here the transcendental analogy that is operating is that of the operation of the changes we observe in Nature (living and inorganic)and these are construed as analogous to the changes we bring about as human agents. This is certainly more relevant to the life form changes we observe, than it is for the purely physical changes we observe in a nature consisting of a multiplicity of inorganic causes which, it can be argued, do not possess any principle of self-causation (e.g. self-preservation,) as is the case with life forms such as animals or even a blade of grass.

Life too has a multiplicity of causes and for Aristotle (who envisaged four different kinds of causes bringing about change) psyché was the focus of a number of different sciences including biological and philosophical investigations (which ranged over a number of different theoretical practical and productive sciences). Broadly speaking, however Metaphysics divided into two Great divisions, the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals. The Critique of Aesthetic and Teleological Judgement formed a bridge between these realms of the concepts of nature and the concepts related to freedom. Aesthetic Judgement, for example, prepares the sensible mind for moral feelings and it is this relationship which Kant refers to when he speaks of Beauty being the “symbol of morality”.

This position also connects with the Platonic claim that the pleasure we feel in the name of the Form of the Good is the highest of all the forms of human pleasure. We know that the sensible power of the imagination is in intimate communion with the pleasure-pain principle and the understanding, and also know that this general characterisation does not refer to the Freudian pathological fantasy-laden cases Freud dealt with in his consulting rooms. In the case of the judgement of taste we are dealing with a power that discriminates and estimates in a contemplative mood disconnected with any practical interests we may have in the object that is being judged. In this case it is the meaning of the representation that is significant. Kant elaborates upon this power in the following manner:

“Here the representation is referred to the Subject, and what is more to its feeling of life—under the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure.”  (Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, Page 42).

The pleasure in The Good that Plato referred included objects connected to our interest (Page 46).

Joseph Campbell, one of the foremost commentators on the meaning of Mythological narratives and the meaning of life, has the following contribution to make about the meaning of our participation in the divine and our representations of the divine:

“The life of a mythology derives  from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply  the idea, but a sense of actual participation in a realisation of transcendence, infinity and abundance…..Indeed, the first  and most essential service of a mythology is this one,of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being. And the second service, then is cosmological: of representing the universe and the whole spectacle of nature, both as known to the mind and as beheld by the eye, as an epiphany of such kind that when lightning flashes, or a setting sun ignites the sky,  or a deer stands alerted, the exclamation”Ah!” may be uttered  as a recognition of divinity.” (Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Pages XX-XXI)

Campbell, of course, refers more to Carl Jungs work on archetypes than to Freuds more Kantian, analytical approach. Both of these Psychologists claim to be Kantian, but it appears as if the work of Freud is more closely aligned with the Philosophical Anthropology/Psychology we find in Kant’s work. The Unconscious is important for both theorists but Freuds account of instincts and their vicissitudes and the detailed characterisation we are given of some of these vicissitudes (including that of consciousness and that of sublimation) indicate a complex tie not just to Kantian Critical Psychology but also to Aristotelian Hylomorphism. This indicates that Freuds theories were more Philosophical than Jungs. Campbell does not see the complex relationship that exists between Philosophy and Mythology. Mythology is about our relation to God, and this is portrayed differently in Occidental and Oriental Mythology. In the latter there is, as Campbell puts it, a dialectical relation between the Supreme Being and our human form of being. One in which the relation is simultaneously immanent and transcendent (Occidental Mythology, London, Souvenir Press, 1964, Page 3):

“Prayers and chants, images, temples, Gods, sages, definitions and cosmologies are but ferries to a shore of experience beyond the categories of thought, to be abandoned on arrival; for as the Indian Kena Upanishad states :” To know is not to know, not to know is to know” and the Chinese Tao Te Ching: “Those  who know are still.”. “Thou art that”, declares the Vedic Sage.” (Page 3)

Occidental Mythology, on the other hand is concerned with articulating the relation between the Supreme Being and the human form of being, and there are two roads leading from early Occidental Mythology. One leading from a Religious perspective  typified in the Book of Job: a perspective of the renunciation of the significance of human judgement. The second road is that leading from Athens, from which the Philosophical spirit was born: a humanistic spirit in which man dares to confront his idea of Supreme Beings and question their character, i.e. subject the gods to a humanistic tribunal that demands areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time).

Campbell prefers to travel the religious route. The Trial of Socrates was a turning point for the Western World because we saw how a narrow-minded religion was capable of judging individuals whose concern was with opening our minds and widening our perspectives. This type of injustice would repeat itself in the persecution of Aristotle and murdering of heretics later in the process of the establishment of Christianity. The road from Athens was the road that valued the Law, Justice(dike), areté, episteme, Art,and Human Freedom above dogma.

Kants view of aesthetics and Art begins with the claim that aesthetic judgement, insofar as it is related to natural objects, is not conceptually mediated but is related to a type of estimation and discrimination that is important to prepare the mind for moral feeling. Kant refers here to a “formal finality” that is not related to the perfection sought by art which corresponds to what Kant called “dependent Beauty”: a form which seeks to unite taste and ideas of reason via artistic “intentions”, e.g. a beautiful building, a beautiful garden or a beautiful person. Mythology, however, is more concerned with the Sublime than Beauty because the former may be related to representations of what Kant called “limitlessness” whilst at the same time manifesting a reference to an indeterminate concept of reason. There are interesting differences between these two forms of experience:

“For the beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and is thus compatible with charms and a playful imagination. On the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only arises indirectly being brought about by the feeling of a momentary check to the vital forces followed at once by a discharge all the more powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no sport, but dead earnest in the affairs of the imagination.” (Page 91)

The Sublime is an experience intimately connected to awe and wonder, that feeling the Ancient Greeks and Kant related to the external heavens above and the moral law within. The objects of the experience of the sublime are formless, but they “quicken” in us an appreciation of our own moral power and agency.  This movement from sensible experience to a moral attitude of mind requires a cultural familiarity with moral ideas and the practical idea of freedom. Kant also refers to sublime inscriptions to be found on statues at the Temple of Isis and in the Old Testament, e.g.:

“Thou shallt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or on earth, or under the earth etc.” (Page 127)

Images of the kind referred to in the above Biblical quote are products of both the imagination and the emotions and they therefore do not meet the logical criteria of universal validity that we can find, for example, in aesthetic judgements or judgements of taste relating to art objects. Some religious scholars would claim that such images connected as they are to perception and emotion, cannot be related to Logos and responded to in the medium of speech and thought. This line of argumentation is reminiscent of that which one can encounter in Platonic writings where it is claimed that the Theory of Forms is the work of the understanding and reason. For Aristotle too, it is the case that the powers of rationality and wisdom are not located in the faculty of sensibility, but rather in the faculty of thought where we find the forms (arché): a faculty that is a higher faculty than that of the Spirit where our emotions and passions are located.

Kant continues his discussion of the nature of Art Objects:

“By right it is only production through freedom, i.e. through an act of will that places reason at the basis of its action that should be termed art.” (Page 163)

It is, we would maintain, the intentionality of art objects that is part of the essence specifying definition of artistic activity, e.g., art objects are made with the intention of being responded to in particular ways involving particular human powers including the power of judgement and its relation to a universally valid form of the feeling of pleasure. Art objects are also obviously cultural objects insofar as they are “symbols of morality”. The production of these objects obviously occurs in accordance with principles of productive science, but their creation requires a power of genius which involves an ability to intentionally marshal aesthetic ideas in a concrete work in a concrete medium. In such works we are not presented with concepts but rather:

“The form of a presentation of a concept.” (Page 174)

The genius possesses a unique ability to make this form adequate to the aesthetic ideas that the work is expressive of:

“by an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which induces much thought yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e.concept, being adequate to it, and which language consequently can never get quite on level terms with or render completely intelligible.” (Page 176)

In this process, it is argued, the power of the imagination remodels experiences partly for the purposes of entertainment, for the purposes of pleasure;

“Such representations of the imagination may be termed ideas. This is partly because they at least strain after something lying beyond the confines of experience and so seek to approximate to a presentation of rational concepts (i.e. intellectual ideas) thus giving to these concepts the semblance of an objective reality.” (Page 176)

This process is intuitive because no concept can be wholly adequate to the content of these intuitions. The artist-genius seeks that is seeks to express a sense of transcendence:

“The rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc., Or again, as to things of which examples occur in experience, e.g. death, envy, and all the vices as also love, fame and the like, transgressing the limits of experience he attempts with the aid of the imagination which emulates the display of reason in its attainment of the maximum…; and it is in fact precisely in the poetic arts that the faculty of aesthetic ideas can show itself to full advantage.”(Pages 176-7)

 Kant elaborates upon this with the thoughts that the imagination animates the mnd “with  the idea of the super sensible”(Page 178). In relation to the idea of the super sensible in the form of the Supreme Being, we can refer again to Kants reference to the Temple of Isis inscription:

“I am all that is , and that was, and that shall be and no mortal hath raised the veil before my face.” (Page 179)

This judgemental inscription is of course a work of genius: a power of the imagination animating the mind with an idea of the super sensible.

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The principle involved in Judgements of taste in relation to Art, on the other hand, is:

“The principle of nature’s formal finality for our cognitive faculties” (Kants Critique of Judgement, Trans Meredith, J.C., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, Page 35)

The Critique of Judgement is also, however, concerned with teleological judgement which aims to provide us with the principle of the finality of nature, and this is especially relevant when we are dealing with psyche or life forms. Here the transcendental analogy that is operating is that of the operation of the changes we observe in Nature (living and inorganic)and these are analogous to the changes we bring about as human agents. This is certainly more relevant to the life form changes we observe, than for the purely physical changes we observe in a nature consisting of a multiplicity of inorganic causes which, it can be argued, do not possess any principle of self-causation (e.g. self-preservation) as is the case with life forms such as animals or even a blade of grass.

Life too has a multiplicity of causes and for Aristotle (who envisaged four different kinds of causes bringing about change) psyché was the focus of a number of different sciences including biological and philosophical investigations (which ranged over a number of different theoretical practical and productive sciences). Broadly speaking, however Metaphysics divided into two Great divisions, the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals. The Critique of Aesthetic and Teleological Judgement formed a bridge between these realms of the concepts of nature and the concepts related to freedom. Aesthetic Judgement, for example, prepares the sensible mind for moral feelings and it is this relationship which Kant refers to when he speaks of Beauty being the “symbol of morality”.

This position also connects with the Platonic claim that the pleasure we feel in the name of the Form of the Good is the highest of all the forms of human pleasure. We know that the sensible power of the imagination is in intimate communion with the pleasure-pain principle and the understanding and also know that this general characterisation does not refer to the Freudian pathological fantasy-laden cases Freud dealt with in his consulting rooms. In the case of the judgement of taste we are dealing with a power that discriminates and estimates in a contemplative mood disconnected with any practical interests we may have in the object that is being judged. In this case it is the meaning of the representation that is significant. Kant elaborates upon this power in the following manner:

“Here the representation is referred to the Subject, and what is more to its feeling of life—under the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure.”  (Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, Page 42).

The pleasure in The Good that Plato referred included objects connected to our interest (Page 46).

Joseph Campbell, one of the foremost commentators on the meaning of Mythological narratives and the meaning of life, has the following contribution to make about the meaning of our participation in the divine and our representations of the divine:

“The life of a mythology derives  from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply  the idea, but a sense of actual participation in a realisation of transcendence, infinity and abundance…..Indeed, the first  and most essential service of a mythology is this one,of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being. And the second service, then is cosmological: of representing the universe and the whole spectacle of nature, both as known to the mind and as beheld by the eye, as an epiphany of such kind that when lightning flashes, or a setting sun ignites the sky,  or a deer stands alerted, the exclamation”Ah!” may be uttered  as a recognition of divinity.” (Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Pages XX-XXI)

Campbell, of course, refers more to Carl Jungs work on archetypes than to Freuds more Kantian, analytical approach. Both of these Psychologists claim to be Kantian, but it appears as if the work of Freud is more closely aligned with the Philosophical Anthropology/Psychology we find in Kant’s work. The Unconscious is important for both theorists but Freuds account of instincts and their vicissitudes and the detailed characterisation we are given of some of these vicissitudes (including that of consciousness and that of sublimation) indicate a complex tie not just to Kantian Critical Psychology but also to Aristotelian Hylomorphism. This indicates that Freuds theories were more Philosophical than Jungs. Campbell does not see the complex relationship that exists between Philosophy and Mythology. Mythology is about our relation to God, and this is portrayed differently in Occidental and Oriental Mythology. In the latter there is, as Campbell puts it, a dialectical relation between the Supreme Being and our human form of being. One in which the relation is simultaneously immanent and transcendent (Occidental Mythology, London, Souvenir Press, 1964, Page 3):

“Prayers and chants, images, temples, Gods, sages, definitions and cosmologies are but ferries to a shore of experience beyond the categories of thought, to be abandoned on arrival; for as the Indian Kena Upanishad states :” To know is not to know, not to know is to know” and the Chinese Tao Te Ching: “Those  who know are still.”. “Thou art that”, declares the Vedic Sage.” (Page 3)

Occidental Mythology, on the other hand is concerned with articulating the relation between the Supreme Being and the human form of being, and there are two roads leading from early Occidental Mythology. One leading from a Religious perspective  typified in the Book of Job: a perspective of the renunciation of the significance of human judgement. The second road is that leading from Athens, from which the Philosophical spirit was born: a humanistic spirit in which man dares to confront his idea of Supreme Beings and question their character, i.e. subject the gods to a humanistic tribunal that demands areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time).

Campbell prefers to travel the religious route. The Trial of Socrates was a turning point for the Western World because we saw how a narrow-minded religion was capable of judging individuals whose concern was with opening our minds and widening our perspectives. This type of injustice would repeat itself in the persecution of Aristotle and murdering of heretics later in the process of the establishment of Christianity. The road from Athens was the road that valued the Law, Justice(dike), areté, episteme, Art,and Human Freedom above dogma.

Kants view of aesthetics and Art begins with the claim that aesthetic judgement, insofar as it is related to natural objects, is not conceptually mediated but is related to a type of estimation and discrimination that is important to prepare the mind for moral feeling. Kant refers here to a “formal finality” that is not related to the perfection sought by art which corresponds to what Kant called “dependent Beauty”: a form which seeks to unite taste and ideas of reason via artistic “intentions”, e.g. a beautiful building, a beautiful garden or a beautiful person. Mythology, however, is more concerned with the Sublime than Beauty because the former may be related to representations of what Kant called “limitlessness” whilst at the same time manifesting a reference to an indeterminate concept of reason. There are interesting differences between these two forms of experience:

“For the beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and is thus compatible with charms and a playful imagination. On the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only arises indirectly being brought about by the feeling of a momentary check to the vital forces followed at once by a discharge all the more powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no sport, but dead earnest in the affairs of the imagination.” (Page 91)

The Sublime is an experience intimately connected to awe and wonder, that feeling the Ancient Greeks and Kant related to the external heavens above and the moral law within. The objects of the experience of the sublime are formless, but they “quicken” in us an appreciation of our own moral power and agency.  This movement from sensible experience to a moral attitude of mind requires a cultural familiarity with moral ideas and the practical idea of freedom. Kant also refers to sublime inscriptions to be found on statues at the Temple of Isis and in the Old Testament, e.g.:

“Thou shallt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or on earth, or under the earth etc.” (Page 127)

Images of the kind referred to in the above Biblical quote are products of both the imagination and the emotions and they therefore do not meet the logical criteria of universal validity that we can find, for example, in aesthetic judgements or judgements of taste relating to art objects. Some religious scholars would claim that such images connected as they are to perception and emotion, cannot be related to Logos and responded to in the medium of speech and thought. This line of argumentation is reminiscent of that which one can encounter in Platonic writings where it is claimed that the Theory of Forms is the work of the understanding and reason. For Aristotle too, it is the case that the powers of rationality and wisdom are not located in the faculty of sensibility, but rather in the faculty of thought where we find the forms (arché): a faculty that is a higher faculty than that of the Spirit where our emotions and passions are located.

Kant continues his discussion of the nature of Art Objects:

“By right it is only production through freedom, i.e. through an act of will that places reason at the basis of its action that should be termed art.” (Page 163)

It is, we would maintain, the intentionality of art objects that is part of the essence specifying definition of artistic activity, e.g., art objects are made with the intention of being responded to in particular ways involving particular human powers including the power of judgement and its relation to a universally valid form of the feeling of pleasure. Art objects are also obviously cultural objects insofar as they are “symbols of morality”. The production of these objects obviously occurs in accordance with principles of productive science, but their creation requires a power of genius which involves an ability to intentionally marshal aesthetic ideas in a concrete work in a concrete medium. In such works we are not presented with concepts but rather:

“The form of a presentation of a concept.” (Page 174)

The genius possesses a unique ability to make this form adequate to the aesthetic ideas that the work is expressive of:

“by an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which induces much thought yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e.concept, being adequate to it, and which language consequently can never get quite on level terms with or render completely intelligible.” (Page 176)

In this process, it is argued, the power of the imagination remodels experiences partly for the purposes of entertainment, for the purposes of pleasure;

“Such representations of the imagination may be termed ideas. This is partly because they at least strain after something lying beyond the confines of experience and so seek to approximate to a presentation of rational concepts (i.e. intellectual ideas) thus giving to these concepts the semblance of an objective reality.” (Page 176)

This process is intuitive because no concept can be wholly adequate to the content of these intuitions. The artist-genius seeks that is seeks to express a sense of transcendence:

“The rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc., Or again, as to things of which examples occur in experience, e.g. death, envy, and all the vices as also love, fame and the like, transgressing the limits of experience he attempts with the aid of the imagination which emulates the display of reason in its attainment of the maximum…; and it is in fact precisely in the poetic arts that the faculty of aesthetic ideas can show itself to full advantage.”(Pages 176-7)

 Kant elaborates upon this with the thoughts that the imagination animates the mnd “with  the idea of the super sensible”(Page 178). In relation to the idea of the super sensible in the form of the Supreme Being, we can refer again to Kants reference to the Temple of Isis inscription:

“I am all that is , and that was, and that shall be and no mortal hath raised the veil before my face.” (Page 179)

This judgemental inscription is of course a work of genius: a power of the imagination animating the mind with an idea of the super sensible.

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Mythology in many of its different forms may well have succumbed this illusion which involves the projection or imagination of supernatural form of life occurring after death. Mythology does not acknowledge the Kantian trinity of faculties which includes the categories of understanding/judgement and the ideas of reason, preferring instead to locate its “principles” in narratives produced by and for the imagination, simultaneously mobilising a repertoire of associated emotions. Dialectical reasoning is part of the constitution of such narratives in which we encounter heroes and villains, gods and devils in transactional relations to each other.

Joseph Campbell in his work embraces Kants Transcendental Analogy, claiming that this too is a product of imagination and can be used to embody aesthetic ideas related to God and his love for Humanity. Campbell also insists that Gods, monsters and devils are not objective external presences but are rather internal phantasms projected onto the external world. Considerable pathological “energy” lies behind such projections which may well be categorised by some psychologists as “psychotic”. Campbell proposes that Gods, monsters and devils are both out there in the external world and are also within us in his dialectical approach to mythological problems.

Campbell speaks of the hero’s journey which appears to be explorative, venturing out into an unfriendly hostile environment, and challenged by a number of  lethal threats. Ricoeur speaks in this context of “imaginative variations”, and this may be true in those cases the moral of the mythological tales relates to the nature of the world and the nature of man. Courage for the Ancient Greek Mythologies was a manifestation of one of the virtues, and Achilles was perhaps the archetypal hero embodying this moral quality. Campbell in his account of heroes, however, fails to acknowledge another type of hero that emerged during era of Ancient Greece, namely the intellectual hero who devotes and even sacrifices their life to accomplish a mission, e.g. Socrates who was put to death for attempting to introduce foreign Gods into Athens, i.e. Philosophy (which Socrates argued was one of the children of the Gods). In accomplishing his mission Socrates manifested in his life the embodiment of both intellectual and moral virtues. He was regarded as the wisest man in Athens because he knew what he did not know. He was a different type of hero to Achilles who excelled in Spirit but not in Reason and Understanding.

Kant in his complex account of the powers of man referred to 4 functions of judgement and 12 types of judgement and these contributed to our categorical understanding of external and internal phenomena. These together with the principles of reasoning governing the ideas of God, the soul, and the duration of the world and its complete conditions, enabled logical thinking to replace the kind of dialectical reasoning we find in mythology about human psuché and its Being-in-the-World. Mythological accounts for Kant, would be fundamentally incomplete because they do not seem to take account of the true origins of concepts and ideas. What we find in Critical Philosophy, then is a principle guided account:

“The solution of this question is as follows. Pure Reason does not, in its ideas, point to particular objects that lie beyond the field of experience, but only requires completeness of the use of understanding in the complex of experience. But this completeness can be a completeness of principles only, not of intuitions and of objects. In order, however, to represent the ideas, reason conceives them after the fashion of the cognition of an object. The cognition, as far as these rules are concerned, are completely determined; but the object is only an idea invented for the purpose of bringing the cognition of understanding as close as possible to the completeness indicated by the idea.” Page 73

Principles (arché) are also central to the Aristotelian Hylomorphic account as presented in Aristotle’s work “Metaphysics” in which “first principles” are presented as important conditions for operation of Reason. Practical Reason is also intimately related to the categorical use of the understanding based upon the practical idea of freedom which is assumed in the formulations of the categorical imperative. Practical Reason as distinct from Theoretical Reason differentiates itself significantly in that it relates to the “noumenal self” and its first principle of freedom (the disposition to cause oneself to do something) which in turn relates to the Aristotelian “Form of The Good”: a form that was both good-in-itself ad good-in-its-consequences. The categorical imperative, in other words, rests upon this pure noumenal self as an absolute subject. The understanding can know nothing about the noumenal world because it is:

 “the indication of the object of internal sense.” (Page 75)

The understanding functions via concepts which predicate something of a subject, but knowledge of an absolute subject is, in a sense empty of cognitive content. This is one of the critical arguments against the postulation of the immortal soul. Indeed, the proposition:’

“All men are mortal”

 Must, on this reasoning be, a synthetic apriori truth. Men insofar as they are guided by practical reasoning are guided by imperatives containing the term “ought”, e.g.

“Promises ought to be kept.”

Ought statements have a different logical form to is-statements, which are made on the condition of reference to events that have already occurred, e.g. The air has expanded in the heat. Ought statements can occur in practical syllogisms that use the principle of noncontradiction to arrive at conclusions which follow from the preceding premises. The conclusion recommends a particular action that has been previously designated: an action that rests on a synthetic apriori principle such as “Promises ought to be kept”. This in turn rests upon a first principle that freedom is a self-causing form of agency engaging with the world.

This does not, Kant argues, preclude providing a perspicuous representation of the activities of the phenomenal self, provided via concepts of the understanding which do not rest on reference to an absolute noumenal subject about which, nothing can be said (conceptually). Both kinds of justifications using principles of freedom (self-causation) and causation, then, are permissible and accord both with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The Prolegomena presents the complex relation between the phenomenal and noumenal accounts in the following way:

“We have in us a faculty which not only stands in connection with its subjective determining grounds that are the natural causes of its actions and is so far the faculty of a being that itself belongs to appearances, but is also related to objective grounds that are only ideas so far as they can determine this faculty; this connection is expressed  by ought . This faculty is called Reason, and, so far as we consider a being (man) entirely according to this objectively determinable reason, he cannot be considered a being of sense; but rather this property is that of a thing in itself, and we cannot comprehend the possibility of this property—I mean how the ought (which may never yet have taken place) should determine its activity and could become the cause of actions whose effect is an appearance in the sensible world….Now I may say without contradiction that all the actions of rational beings, so far as they are appearances (encountered in some experience), are subject to the necessity of nature; but the same actions, as regards merely the rational subject and its faculty of acting according to mere reason, are free. For what is required for the necessity of nature? Nothing more than the determinability of every event in the world of sense according to constant laws, i.e. a reference to cause in the appearance; in this process the thing in itself at its foundation and its causality remain unknown.”(Pages 85-6)

This would be the Kantian Justification for the claim that God is to be found both within the mind and without in the external world. Monsters and devils may on this account be found also both within and without, but the final explanation for their being may be different. Paul Ricoeurs discussion of the symbolism of Evil is informative in this context, because it appears to focus on the ultimate evil within the human psuché: an evil that must be confessed if it is not to destroy its owner. If, for example, I have murdered someone I may have become the monster or devil of mythological narratives. Christianity we know, postulated that men’s souls were flawed and prone to great evil and this state hinders his search for the love of God.

The Garden of Eden Myth presents us with a picture of man as a being that follows his desires blindly wherever they may lead and without considering his relation to God who alone knows the scope and limits of knowledge and life. Humankind was exiled from the Garden because man failed both to know and to love God above all else. Our exile has, however, it might be argued, not been completely fruitless, building as we have civilisations and institutions devoted to the Good such as the University, the Church, and the United Nations which we believe may help provide us with the good spirited flourishing life (eudaimonia). Freud points out that we are nevertheless discontent with our lives. Kant might have disputed this on the grounds that his “hidden plan” of a Kingdon of Ends coming in one hundred thousand years has not had time to evolve sufficiently.

Hannah Arendt called the 20th century “This terrible century”, and she was not alone in this judgement considering the events of two world wars, the dropping of two atomic bombs on civilian populations, and a cold war and its continuing consequences. Kant would not have been unduly concerned about the events of one century when the plan he refers to appears to be operating on a more cosmic time plan. Such is the philosophical account of man’s destiny which sometimes appears to correlate with the content and message of mythological narratives and sometimes not. Insisting, however, as Myth does that the Categories of the Understanding/Judgement and the Principles and ideas of Reason play no role in our future Being-in-the-world would be questioned by both Aristotle and Kant. On these kinds of Philosophical accounts, the roles of the transcendental imagination and associated emotions alone are not sufficient to provide the explanations and justifications we search for in the realms of theoretical and practical reason. Modern tendencies to deify science and reject Aristotelian and Kantian Metaphysics are not helpful Cultural tendencies given the complexity of our civilisations and the human powers required to build and sustain them.

Kant points to the importance of Transcendental Analogy in the process of increasing our awareness of ourselves and our relation to the “realm of the sacred”. Kant insists that analogy at issue is not that between two things but rather that between two relations, i.e. a is to b as c is to X:

“The promotion of the welfare of children (=a) is to the love of parents(=b), so the welfare of the human species (=c) is t that unknown in God (=X) which we call love.” Page 98)

The role of the family and the importance of the love of parents for their children are obviously things that are both good-in-themselves and good-in-their-consequences. Freud spent much of the time with his patients discussing family relations and clearly saw the terrible consequences when parental love was absence or was substituted with parental abuse of their children.  Freuds focus was clearly more “practical” than his theoretical colleagues who, in 1870, implemented the divorce between psychological and philosophical accounts of human psuché.

Kant produced another example of a Transcendental Analogy in a footnote on page 100:

“I may say that the causality of the Supreme Cause holds the same place with regard to the world that human reason does with regard to its works of art. Here the Nature of the Supreme Cause itself remains unknown to me; I only compare its effects (the order of the world), which I know,, and their conformity to reason to the effects of human reason, which I also know; and hence I term the former reason, without attributing to it on that account what I understand in man by this term, or attaching to it anything else known to me as its property.”(Page 100)

This is a significant reference to the role of the Work of Art in the conversion of civilisations into Cultures. Mythology has certainly played its role in the building of civilisations but perhaps it alone does not suffice to form Cultures which require a manifold of concentrated social forces, e.g. Religion within the bounds of Reason, Laws and legal institutions formed by great souled men (Phronima), Philosophy, Art, Universities and educational systems that prize epistemé and arché as goods-in-themselves. Aristotle’s Phronima interpret arché  dike, and episteme in terms of the principles of the Golden Mean, noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Kantian Philosophy and its hidden Cosmopolitan Plan proposes the creation of  International Organisations built by great souled men leading eventually to moral/legal Kingdom of Ends. The Kantian view of the Beautiful and the Sublime are, of course, also matters of importance to Mythology.

Art, for Kant, is classified as a technical practical activity (given the requirement for the skills within the various mediums) that relates to moral-practical activity because it is as Kant claims a “symbol of morality”. Aesthetic pleasure, Kant argues, is related to the feeling of pleasure that supervenes because of the harmony of the faculties of the understanding and the imagination (which strictly speaking is a power of the faculty of sensibility). This experience, Kant argues is not cognitive, but we nevertheless speak with a universal voice when we judge something to be beautiful (judgement of taste). Insofar as an aesthetic object is  capable of producing this special feeling of pleasure at  the harmony of the faculties, we attribute to the experience a “form” which in the case of the sublime can even emerge when objects are “formless”, e.g. terrible storms, the raging sea, powerful waterfalls, The feeling of  the power of nature, Kant argues “quickens” in us a psychological movement to  a feeling of pleasure at the thought of our own freedom and moral power, which is also something that inspires the experience of awe and wonder in us. This may be the cultural “power” par excellence.

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We intend in this work to begin our analysis with the Aristotelian notion of Muthos, which is a form of narrative with both transcendental religious and moral/political functions as conceived of in both Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy. Aristotelian enthymemes are practical arguments meeting practical/ethical criteria related to the Golden Mean Principle, the principle of sufficient reason and the principle of noncontradiction, and these can be encountered, for example, in tragic poetry. According to Ricoeur the discipline of rhetoric only collapsed into a theory of pure style (abandoning compositional and argumentative ends) in the 20th century, which means that Shakespeare’s Renaissance tragedies and Tragedies during the Enlightenment would have still exhibited these elements of practical reasoning.

Two of the central ideas behind many of the proclamations by the Ancient Greek oracles were

Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction, and

Know Thyself!

These ideas were embraced by Tragic works of the time and afterwards because although we were dealing with mimesis, or imitation of actions, thoughts etc, there were still moral/political/religious lessons to be learnt, and it was these that provided the pleasure we derived from such works. Technical imperatives obviously were also involved in the creation of such works, e.g. the beginning of the narrative will cause the middle of the narrative to take a particular form and this in turn will also determine the form of the end. There will be reversals of fortune for the characters of the narrative and the effect of this upon the audience will be cathartic, i.e. the audience will learn in a measured fashion to experience the emotions of pity and fear in the right way at the right time and in the right way (areté). It is, however, important to point out that the medium of mimetic narrative texts is a different medium to that which we find in Biblical texts which proclaim to have some historical basis. These latter texts also have grandiose intentions to record events from the beginning of time (itself a questionable assumption), e.g. the creation of the universe and the breathing of life into man. Mimetic texts strive instead to imitate reality and life via the actions thought (language) and emotions of the characters of the discourse. The form of finality of such aesthetic objects, to use Kantian language, is such that there can be religious/moral/political universal lessons to be learned in the course of the appreciation of such objects.

Biblical texts certainly strive via the symbolic use of metaphor and analogy to bring us closer to what Ricoeur called the “realm of the sacred”, but the presence of supernatural events, challenging sometimes the foundations of our belief systems contaminate such an intention. “Miracles” can, on the other hand, be interpreted to be metaphorical devices but they can also in the case of making the lame walk, draw attention to the complex lives of humans, lives in which hysterical paralysis can be alleviated by suggestion. Even raising the dead might be understood to reference phenomena we experience even today when people declared to be dead by the expertise of the day suddenly begin breathing again. Modern science however refuses to believe that those that find themselves alive were ever actually dead. The expertise concerned was simply mistaken: such is the character of the refusal to engage in the transcendental illusion that there is a life after death. Other “miracles” such as virgin births are more difficult to interpret and must be viewed as metaphorical/literary devices marking the place and time of an important event. The major message of the New Testament, however, is a testament to the relevance of the Kantian Transcendental Analogy which attempts to bear witness to the Love the Christian God has for mankind.

Joeph Campbell, the American Mythologist, also refers to Kants Transcendental analogy in the course of his mythological investigations. He also refers to the Kantian analogy of our human relation to a work of Art, and the divine relation to the order and design of the world. Kant also, in the context of discussion relating to the human experience of the sublime, refers to an inscription on a statue of Isis located at the Temple of Isis:

“I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and no mortal  has ever lifted my veil.”

There can of course be various mystical interpretations of this phenomenon: interpretations which deny the role of the reason and understanding and focus instead on the imagination and a repertoire of emotions, but these accounts more often than not fail to  explain and justify the broad range of phenomena associated with religion, morality, the sublime and the beautiful. Campbells mythological analyses are enlightening in this context. He raises the issue  Gnosticism and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas and echoes the sentiments of the above Isis inscription. He claims that the inscription defines the realm of the divine which is both present in the external world and within us. It is important to note however that our Western interpretation of such phenomena may bring us very close to the lifting of the veil from the face of the divine.

The Theoretical /Analytical idea of Existence in and over time, then, is a form if generalisation which  does not contain much information about the “realm of the Sacred”. This may have been the reason why Kant preferred to refer to our relation to this Being in practical terms of the good consequences that flow from leading a worthwhile (holy) life. This places the responsibility upon human psuché to use his practical understanding and rationality in relation to his “mechanical powers”. This evokes the Kantian categorical ideas of duty and freedom. The Kantian Transcendental Analogy refers to the duty of parents to love their children on the model of the love God has for the human species. Christian Religion is consistent in its messaging on this theme: it is the “worthy” humans that are saved from ruin and destruction.

It is true that Mythology is a kind of systematic attempt to deal  with the problems that burden human existence but it is also true to say that Modern Mythology does not share the concern with Metaphysics  and Logos that we find in our Western Philosophical Cannon. On the contrary, what we instead encounter is the denial of the relevance of these elements in favour of an idea of the transcendental imagination construed as an active faculty that relates to the pleasure-pain principle and an accompanying repertoire of emotions. The imagination and the emotions have  been a concern of  Modern Psychology(from ca 1870) but given the active separation of the discipline from Philosophy at this time in the name of positivistic science, there would on such accounts appear to be little space for the idea of a transcendental imagination. Consigning both the transcendental imagination and its accompanying emotions to the realm of subjectivity would therefore seem to entail consigning  mythology to a zone of academic irrelevance. An alternative approach to this issue would be to seek a perspicuous representation of Mythological themes with the assistance of Aristotelian Hylomorphsm, Kantian Critical Metaphysics, Freudian Psychoanalysis and Wittgensteins later grammatical investigations.

It ought to be recalled in the context of this discussion that Existentialist and Phenomenological Philosophers like Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, all criticise the Kantian project for failing to ground critical Philosophy  in the Transcendental Imagination—rejecting both the categories of the understanding/judgement and their relation to the principles, in favour of a realm of sensible powers.  Kant was, of course convinced that the role of sensibility in our knowledge and our moral/political lives played an important but not a dominating role in the way the above Philosophers suggested.

The Kantian view of natural science is not confined to the investigation of external objects but also extends to the internal functions and powers of sensibility including its  apriori conditions, e.g. space and time. Kants Critical investigations seek both to articulate and justify the laws and principes of natural science whether they be laws governing the behaviour and motion of external objects or the laws and principles governing our inner experiences. Kant points out in the context of this discussion that perceptions conjoined or associated in consciousness are subjectively related and their order, for example, is not regulated by consciousness or the “I” of the “I think”. If the judgements we make transcend such associated perceptions and are regulated by a pure concept of the understanding then the judgement is “universally valid” and deemed therefore to have an actual object that is subsumed under a concept, e.g.:

“For instance, air belongs under the concept of cause which determines our judgements about it with regard to its expansion as hypothetical. Thereby the expansion of air is represented, not  as merely belonging to the perception of  the air or my present state or in several states of mine, or in the state of perception of others, but as belonging to it necessarily. The judgement that air is elastic becomes universally valid and a judgement of experience only because certain judgements precede it which subsumes the intuition of air under the concepts of cause and effect; and they thereby determine the perceptions, not merely as regards one another in me, but as regards the form of judging in general (which is here hypothetical), and in this way they render the empirical judgements universally valid.” (Pages 44-5)

The major difference, then, between ideas of Reason such as God, and immortality of the soul and the categorical and conceptual powers of the understanding is that the former by Kants definition cannot be related directly to an object of experience, and the latter must relate to the immanent given of experience. This difference is important to bear in mind when considering that reason can be subject to illusion unless reason can itself, together with the understanding, determine the scope and limits of its own activity which aims necessarily at completeness, i.e. the totality of conditions of everything that is conditioned. Kant defines “Illusion” as follows:

  “Since all illusion in holding the subjective ground of our judgement to be objective, a self-knowledge of pure reason is its transcendent (hyperbolical) use is the only safeguard against the aberrations  into which reason falls when it mistakes its destination, and transcendentally refers to the object in itself that which only concerns reasons own subject and its guidance in all immanent use.” Page 70

It is, Kant argues, therefore essential that one understands the origins of different cognitions. Failing to do this, Kant points out, results in confusing the different elements originating from these faculties of understanding and reason with one another. Avoiding such a state of affairs requires an investigation into the origins of the different kinds of cognitions: an investigation that both the Delphic oracle and Aristotle regarded as extremely difficult, falling as it does under the heading of the Oracular challenge to Humanity to “Know thyself!” The example we are given of a dialectical illusion relates to the idea of the immortality of the soul when conceived of in terms of the actual survival of some kind of psychic entity or presence once the body of the individual concerned is dead. Perhaps at best it might be maintained that the body of the individual might be mortal but the soul not because it does not belong to the category of living organic things. Postulating some kind of psychic existence which once freed from the body engages in some form of “life” similar to that on earth involves “projecting” or imagining anthropomorphic forms disconnected from their real physical conditions. Aristotle, we ought to recall in this context claimed that the soul was the first actuality of the human body.

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Outer Reaches of Inner Space: Critique of Cambells View of Myth, The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Season 16 Episode 2

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James Ellington in his “Introduction” to Kants Prolegomena points out saliently that the above three Aristotelian domains of science accord well with the concerns of Kants Three Critiques (Pure Reason, Practical Reason, Judgement). The architectonic of Aristotelian sciences was also embedded in a network of basic terms such as arché (principle) Aletheia (unconcealment, truth), areté, episteme, dike, logos psuché, techné, phusis and eudaimonia. There is in Kantian Critical Philosophy as there was in Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy a special interest in, and concern for, the soul(psuché) which was a very different concern to that contained in more modern accounts of psychological personality and cognitive theories. Such modern accounts appear rather to be predicated upon a detachment or separation of the inner from the outer life of human psuché.

The Later work of Wittgenstein addressed this issue firstly by insisting that the human soul is best pictured by the human body which has, of course, been reflected in the work of many painters and sculptors throughout the ages dating from classical Greece through to the Renaissance. The Aristotelian logos of psuché begins with the interrelatedness of the organs of the body and continues with Spinoza’s elaboration upon this relation. Spinoza insists that the first idea of the mind is an idea of its body. Kant contributed to the logos of psuché by claiming in his Philosophical Psychology that this realm may well be trans-scientific, a position Freud elaborated upon in the name of   his medical response to mental illness. Freud largely ignored the contemporary obsession with the difference between inner and outer aspects, an obsession that prized the function of “Consciousness” above that of episteme and areté which are also trans-scientific concepts. Freud’s “mythology of the Instincts” culminated in several important vicissitudes of the Instincts that were developed in the name of ethics. His treatment of patients came to be identified with a humanistic moral approach to medicine which was certainly in the enlightened spirit of Humanism. This form of Psychology could certainly be viewed as one of the “logical consequences” of Aristotelian Hylomorphic and Kantian Critical Philosophy and was undoubtedly an important contribution to the  “Humanistic Sciences”. Freuds moral treatment evolved in relation to the medical treatment of psychological illness, which we should recall, occurred in a context of thousands of incarcerated women in mental institutions all over Europe. Freud challenged singlehandedly the medical paradigm of somatogenesis (which claimed all mental illness had its origin in physical organic causes) with a hypothesis of psychogenesis (i.e. there can be psychological causes of psychological illnesses). This approach was seen at the time to be revolutionary  but was in fact merely an elaboration of Aristotelian and Kantian theory in the field of medical treatment of mental illness. Positivistic science, which also had its home in Vienna, we know, was very critical of Freudian theory and the newly established “discipline” of psychoanalysis. It took another citizen of Vienna, Ludvig Wittgenstein, to first flirt with positivism and then finally reject it decisively in his later Philosophy. Wittgenstein at one point in this transitional process described himself as a follower of Freud (who described himself as a Kantian Psychologist). Wittgenstein produced a Philosophy in which language tied to both forms of life and instinct was used in a critical spirit to disperse “the bewitchment of the intellect by the use of language”. In these Philosophical Investigations the emerging landscape favoured a restoration of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy which was still ongoing in the Universities of Europe at that time. Wittgenstein’s Hylomorphic/Critical approach to Language and its opposition to the reductionist positivistic scientific view of Consciousness and , and the dualistic Cartesianism of the time, inspired by the dialectical Philosophy of Hegel, allowed  Aristotelian Hylomorphism and Kantian Critical Philosophy  to reemerge with their respective arguments against  the materialism and dualism  of the modern era.

The Kantian response to the Cartesian claim that we possess a power of rational intuition which helps to constitute  “the first and most certain knowledge”, is that this “feeling-based” certainty (located in the faculty of sensibility) is not to be equated with the kind of certainty that is constituted by “thought”, an active function of the faculties of understanding and reason. Certainty, it was argued, was a feature of thinking located in the conceptual world of understanding and reasoning, as a kind of “inference” (a spontaneous act of mind to be distinguished from a receptive event that occurs to a mind in a passive state).

Ellington in his Introduction to the Prolegomena refers in this context to the 6th Meditation of Descartes in which it is asserted that our experience of objects in the external world is an “inference” from:

“immediate inner experience” (Page IX)

Kants objections to this Cartesian position are manifold  and include the claim that the objects of immediate experience are given to us as immediate phenomena only, and that there therefore cannot be any “inference” to what was given in experience. Phenomena, Kant argues are not inferred but rather are immediately given and it is important to describe this state of affairs correctly:

“Inner experience is not immediate(as Descartes claimed) but is possible only mediately through the experience of actual things.”(Page X)

Kant elaborates upon his position be referring to the apriori intuitions of Space and Time, claiming that intuitions of objects are only possible through the apriori constitution of the mind, and Space and Time therefore function like constitutional principles of experience grounding our certainties rather than giving rise to some peculiar form of “inference”. This is part of the Kantian Rationalist position in which he aims to provide us with the totality of conditions grounding conditioned phenomena. Insofar as he succeeds in doing this, we are provided with insight into the cognitive relation we have to Being: one of the many meanings of Being Aristotle claimed could be said in many ways.

Kants Critical Philosophy was hailed as revolutionary but it is nevertheless an echo of  and an elaboration upon Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy, both of which sought after essence  specifying conditions for phenomena such as human psuché. Both positions give similar accounts of the phenomenon of life which began with the insight that the soul was the first actuality of the body and was related to the body in such a manner that when death of the body occurred, the function of the soul ceased. Ellington refers to Kants variation on the theme of the immortality of the soul:

“When  the concept of substance is applied to the soul in order to infer its permanence (immortality) the concept is employed transcendentally, and there results not objective knowledge but dialectical illusion.” (Page XIII)

Similarly, in his rejection of all the theoretical proofs for the existence of God, Kant, like Freud, consigns such exercises to the realm of transcendental illusions, given partly the obvious fact that God as defined by concrete experiential predicates cannot be grounded in sense experience. This reflection casts considerable doubt upon all those mythological narratives that claim some kind of experiential encounter with the divine. These can at best be regarded as metaphorical accounts—accounts which attempt to give “substance” to a Being Aristotle defined in terms of “Pure Form” and whose essence is “thinking”. Mythical metaphors therefore sometimes attempt  (when they abandon intuition), to characterise this being in terms of  “formal properties”, and sometimes perhaps via transcendental analogies which, it is claimed, bring us into some kind of thought-contact with the Supreme Being.

This brings us back to the discussion of muthos and its relation to logos and metaphysics. Muthos in Ancient Greece played a very different role to the role it plays in our societies today, and it is not sufficiently appreciated that muthos was the matrix out of which Philosophy, History and many other sciences were born. Muthos in its essence was intended to be an authoritative narrative designed to communicate religious, cultural and moral “wisdom”. Aristotle provides us with the first systematic account of muthos in the context of tragedy and the creative artistic mimesis of   life.

The Plot in fictional poetic narratives certainly relies on an underlying use of Kantian transcendental analogy and the use of “symbolic language”, when the author wishes to lead us into the realms of the beautiful, sublime or sacred. Kant characterises this use of symbolism as follows:

“But we stop at this boundary if we limit our judgement merely to the relation which the world may have to a being whose very concept lies beyond all the cognition which we can attain within the world. For we then do not attribute to the Supreme Being any of the properties in themselves by which we represent objects of experience, and thereby avoid dogmatic anthropomorphism: but we attribute them to his relation to the world and allow ourselves a symbolic anthropomorphism, which in at concerns language only and not the object itself.” (Page  97)

This is a significant admission which perhaps justifies labelling Kant as an idealist in relation to the notion of God being an idea in the mind of man constituted partly be his language. Ricoeur points out in his work on “Freud and Philosophy” that in the 20th century we have seen an emphasis upon the importance of Language, citing Wittgenstein amongst others. For the later work of Wittgenstein, Language is rooted in both forms of life and instinct, and it is noted that there are many different uses of Language which are characterised in terms of language-games. These “Investigations” clearly have hylomorphic aspects and serve to neutralise some of the Anti-Aristotelian and Kantian rhetoric that has succeeded in marginalising Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy.

Muthos is the home of not just supernatural beings but also supernatural events and heroes which symbolise aspects of the human soul. Souls which strive to extend the boundaries of human endurance and endeavour. Courage was the virtue that was valued above all until Philosophy began to follow the advice of the Delphic Oracle to “know thyself!” and explore many other human powers, e.g. knowledge and wisdom. Socrates was a key figure in this respect and he recommended that we locate our investigations in the Polis, where the entire repertoire of human virtues and actualised potentialities are on display, “writ large”. The paradigm of heroism changed with Plato’s account of the Life of Socrates and a wider repertoire of virtues manifested themselves, culminating in the Phronimos, the man for all seasons, discussed in Aristotle’s Hylomorphic Philosophy. The Phronimos uses a part of the mind Aristotle named noos in his transactions with everything and everybody in the Polis and the major concern appears to be that of Justice.

A trace of this concern is still to be found in a footnote to the Prolegomena:

“Thus there is an analogy between the judicial relations of human actions and the mechanical relations of moving forces. I can never do anything to another man without giving him the right to do the same to me on the same conditions; just as nobody can act with its moving force on another body without thereby causing the other to react equally against it. Here right and moving force are quite dissimilar things, but in their relation there is complete similarity. By means of such an analogy I can obtain a relational concept of things which are absolutely unknown to me. For instance, as the production of the welfare of children (=a) is to the love of parents (=b), so the welfare of the human species(=c) is to that unknown in God (=x)  which we call love; not as if it had the least similarity to any human inclination, but because we can posit its relation to the world to be similar to that which things of the world bear to one another. But the relational concept in this case is a mere category, viz, the concept of cause, which has nothing to do with sensibility.”(Page 98 footnote)

The analogy in question concerns also the relation of the constitution of the world to a Supreme Being conceived of under the relational category of Causation, which in turn will be a part of the idea of God as an element of Religion within the bounds of mere Reason. This transcendental analogy transports us to the boundary of the world of Experience. Kant, in the context of this discussion refuses to sanction the many theoretical arguments for the existence of God because, as he puts the matter:

“There is no Being whose nonexistence implies a contradiction.”(Page XIV)

We are, however, nevertheless left with the aporetic problem of determining the origin of this very important idea of God, an idea of theoretical reason. Aristotle’s account of the Supreme Being is also enigmatic, but it points in a similar direction with his claim that God is Primary Pure Form, the unmoved mover. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics we are given an account of what he calls “First Philosophy”, in which we are provided with an investigation into the first principles of Philosophy. In this account we are not confronted with God the creator of physical things but rather with a thinker whose thoughts give rise to the real universe in the activity of thinking about himself.

Kant’s Prolegomena is an investigation into the “possibility of Metaphysics” with the intention of destroying that form of metaphysics which attempts to establish Gods existence via theoretical arguments (e.g. that Gods nonexistence is a contradiction). Part of this investigation is also devoted to the theoretical arguments proposed for the immortality of the soul which Kant claims is also part of a transcendental illusion.

Kant, in relation to the categorical relation of Causation also refers to the writings of David Hume´s sceptical attacks upon Metaphysics which, Kant claims “awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers”. Indeed, Kant uses the Aristotelian Principle of the Golden Mean to define his position here, speaking of being forced to navigate between the rocks f dogmatism and the sandbanks of scepticism. Hume as, Kant argues, is correct in his argument that the  concept of cause could not be assumed apriori using the faculty of Reason. The origin of this transcendental analogy, rather was a category of the understanding/judgement. Indeed the central idea of Reason for Kant was the practical/ idea of freedom which was also used  to serve as the basis for  the practical argument that it was God who guaranteed a good spirited flourishing life, on the condition that  we were worthy of it: if, that is, we actualised the potential for acting with a good will.

Metaphysics is the discipline that houses all these arguments, and it therefore comes as no surprise that Kant wishes to explore its relation to Science. In this regard Kant asks whether Metaphysics possesses the “peculiar feature of a science”, namely:

“a simple difference of object, or the sources of cognition, or the kind of cognition or perhaps all three conjointly.” (Page 11)

Kant further argues in this context that the sources of cognition cannot be empirical, i.e. the principles associated with them cannot be derived from experience, whether it be internal or external:

“It is therefore a priori cognition, coming from pure understanding and pure reason.”(Page 11)

The Science of Mathematics shares with metaphysics the above sources of understanding and reason but mathematical judgments are synthetic because they need to rely on intuitions for  a complete philosophical account of mathematical activity. On Kants view, then the equation 7+5=12 is not an analytic judgement but relies on the intuitive activity of counting for a full explanation of its cognitive nature. Indeed, this focus on intuitions may be the reason Plato chose to place mathematical knowledge lower on the hierarchy of  the knowledge of the Forms..

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Outer Reaches of Inner Space Critique of Campbells view of Myth The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Season 16 Ep 1

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The Outer reaches of inner powers: Aristotelian and Kantian Critique of Mythology

Intro cut out from version 1

Mythology played an important role in Ancient Greece prior to the “Philosophical Revolution” (initiated by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), where its influence was perhaps at an all-time high. Philosophy introduced a methodical way of reflecting about the world and the soul: a method that saw mythology as manifesting one mental power(imagination) at the expense of many others. A Religious interlude between Ancient Greek Times and the Enlightenment saw a resurgence of mythical thinking coupled to religious belief underpinned by biblical writings.

Kant’s Enlightened Philosophical view of Religion restored the Ancient Greek scepticism in relation to  incomplete accounts of the repertoire of powers that human psuché possesses. Kants account of the roles of the faculties of sensibility, understanding/judgement and reason and the mental powers associated with them, was basically hylomorphic, but there was an innovative elaboration upon this position which was founded on Philosophical Psychology and the freedom of the will. The era of the Enlightenment was a “scientific era” in which Newton was a major figure whom Kant, as we know, defended in his correspondence. Kant, we also know found space for faith in his moral theology, a form of faith related to practical rationality based on a metaphysics of morals which he thought was perfectly compatible with   a theoretical rationality based on a metaphysics of Nature.

Kants science aimed to neutralise the sceptical Humean criticism of metaphysics which might have played some role in the success of Hegelian Phenomenology’s criticism of Kantian Critical Philosophy. This in turn may well have enabled the increased influence of materialistic science, which reduced the influence of  dualistic religions based on  various forms of spiritual metaphysics. Both Aristotle and Kant, we ought to recall in the context of this debate, formulated decisive arguments against materialism and dualism as well as the bipolar antinomies that arose in the attempts to navigate in such a chaotic environment. Insofar as Religion was concerned, the work of Kant in the arena of Religion left us with a theoretical idea of God which could not prove existence, and a practical idea of God which appeared to be merely an idea in man’s mind: an idea moreover, which was at best only subjectively valid (it was argued). It can also be argued that this was the first of the nails in Gods coffin. The second nail in his coffin was a result of the Darwins Theory of Evolution which definitely provided arguments against much of the creation argument in the Bible. The third argument came from Freud (the self-proclaimed Kantian Psychologist) who argued that the idea of God that we encounter in popular religion was a pathological idea based on various defence mechanisms designed to cope with desires and anxieties that have been displaced. Freud was probably referring to popular responses to religion and not the Kantian Philosophical Religion within the bounds of Reason.  

Freuds work “The Future of an Illusion” claims that wishes and fears are the sources of many religious ideas and that as the authority of science increases its hold, religious ideas will wane in influence. Whether or not Freud believed that Religion within the bounds of Reason would continue to be an important cultural idea is an open question. We know Nietzsche and his followers dramatized this situation with the slogan “God is dead”, but it ought to be pointed out that Julian Jaynes referred to early signs at the beginning of our Culture that the idea of God was diminishing in influence. He refers for example, to stone etchings where a King is approaching an empty throne, and he names this phenomenon “Deus Absconditis”. For Jaynes this etching was a response to the difficulty of “hearing” the voice of God because of the changing organisation of the brain, as language changed from being bilaterally represented in the brain to being located in the left hemisphere.  This hypothesis needs to be supported by brain research in the future, e.g. investigation into the function of the anterior commissure, the structure  that links  Wernickes area to what Jaynes referred to as a hallucinatory area on the right side of the brain.  Jaynes’ theory of the emergence of Consciousness from an earlier organisation of the brain that he terms “The Bicameral Brain”, builds upon a fascinating view of the essence of Language which he maintains was in origin metaphorical:

“The most fascinating property of language is its capacity for making metaphors. But what an understatement! For metaphor is not a mere extra trick of language….it is the very constitutive ground of language. I am using metaphor here in its most general sense: the use of a term for one thing to describe another because of some kind of similarity between them or between their relations to other things….This is the major way in which   the vocabulary of language is formed. The grand and vigorous function of metaphor is the generation of new language as it is needed, as human culture becomes more complex.” (The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”,  Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1976, 48-9)

Jaynes points out in the context of this discussion how the human body is the source of this creation of meaning, e.g. the arms and legs and feet of a chair. Our language, Jaynes argues is not a stable concrete structure but rather:

“ a rampant restless sea of metaphor” (Page 51)

Indeed Jaynes argues that the theories of science are merely extended metaphors in which “models” are like the experienced reality they are supposed to “explain”.

The most startling implication of this reasoning comes in the form of the claim that  the “function” of Consciousness is not a thing located in space but rather :

“an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all  metaphors or analogs of behaviour in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics…Like mathematics it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.”(Page 55)

 This is an interesting position suggestive of the importance of the Kantian idea of the will. Metaphors create what Jaynes call a “mind-space”. Consciousness is, Jaynes argues constituted by the work of these lexical metaphors/meanings.

One of the most important aspects of this aspect of metaphor is what Jaynes refers to as the Analog “I”, which is: “the metaphor we have of ourselves..which can “move about” vicariously in our “imagination”, “doing things that we are not actually doing”. This is connected also to a metaphorical “me” which is connected to, for example, the autoscopic images of myself swimming in a lake where it appears as if we are observing ourselves. These phenomena then have first and third person cases, as is the case with language. Jaynes further argues in the process of narrating, the central character may well be our imagined vicarial selves (our analogue “I”) and the narrative performs the function of building up a picture of myself and a “model” of my world. In this process the power of the imagination is central, and it is this power that is being used and appealed to in religious narratives. The idea of God can, as Kant pointed out, be an idea of theoretical reason and sensibility in the form of the imagination obviously plays some role in this process of attempting to articulate the meaning of this transcendental super sensible “idea”. As the significance of key Biblical narratives relating to this being diminish in importance, we experience the metaphorical “absence” of this idea and the analogical world of the future suggested in these narratives. Jaynes summarizes his view of Consciousness thus:

“Conscious mind is a spatial analogue of the world and mental acts are analogues of bodily acts” (Page 66)

The narratives of the Bible (The Old and the New Testaments), contain interpretations of the world tied to a kerygma or proclamation related to leading the life of eudaimonia (the good spirited flourishing life). They are, in the words of Paul Ricouer, “symbolic”, manifestations of what he calls “double meaning”, in which a manifest meaning “reveals” a latent meaning that comes from the “realm of the sacred”. The Bible is a complex text in which the New Testament builds upon a kerygma or proclamation from the Old Testament via a story about the life of the prophet Jesus, who it is claimed is the son of God,( perhaps in the same spirit as the Socratic claim at his trial that Philosophy was one of the children of the Gods).

Ricoeur’s “hermeneutical method” responds to the enigmatic nature of these texts with a view of Language which is like that we find in Julian Jaynes’ account. The New Testament is unique in that it contains several accounts of the life of Jesus given by witnesses to the events of his life and his teachings. Hermeneutics, Ricoeur argues, is partly a process of demythologisation which is a legacy of Ancient Greek Philosophy (Aletheia=unconcealment). In this process the world of angels and souls ascending and descending into different realms is clearly not literal in intent and would for Freud be an example of fantasy-laden wish-fulfilment, a pathological product of the imagination. We moderns do not believe in such miraculous “happenings” because we prize knowledge (episteme) and reason above the powers of the imagination coupled with emotion. For us, as was the case with Kant, our faith in the objects of religion must be within the bounds of our Reason and Understanding  insofar as both our knowledge of the world and ourselves are concerned. The demythologisation process does not merely provide us with the mythological picture of the world but also the mythological picture of ourselves as a creature of desire going forth in disguise armed with the power of imagination. Of course, one of the central messages of Moses was to cast aside false images in favour of faith in the God of the OT. The advantage we moderns have of course is that although we are not witnesses to the events of the NT we are not immersed in  the hysteria of the times and its cult-like fascination. The reverse side of this state of affairs is that the idea of God has absented itself from modern consciousness and requires a considerable work of restoration if we are to once again believe in a God within the bounds of Reason. Perhaps such a work of restoration is no longer possible given that perhaps the language of myth as well as the language of faith has been tainted as “metaphysical”.

Understanding of the way in which transcendental Analogy, as presented by Kant, works may assist any possible work of restoration, along with the metaphorical function of language we find in Jaynes’s account. Yet it is not out of the question that the absence of myth and faith are merely symptoms of a larger issue, namely what Heidegger referred to as the “forgetfulness of Being”. Ricoeur has less faith in Heideggers method, and prefers the longer hermeneutic route in which the cultural objects testifying to our works and desires are “interpreted” in the light of a view of language in which the saying of Being, its many meanings, and Being, are intimately related.

In this sense the religion of Being is more connected to logos or the “name” than to any concrete anthropomorphic “image”. Here we can invoke the identification of Logos with Deus and Yahweh’s claim that “I am who I am”. Kants reference to the Temple of Isis and the inscription which claims that no mortal has ever lifted the veil from the face of the divine testifies to this mystery of the divine supersensible “presence”.

Aristotles account of  metaphor categorises it as a linguistic expression but confines it to the domain of the name or the noun:

“Metaphor consists in giving the thing as name that belongs to something else; the transfer being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or on grounds of analogy.” (Poetics 1457 b 6-9)

Paul Ricoeur points out that logos must be a term that refers to both nouns and verbs (The Rule of Metaphor, London, Routledge, 1978) and the link to analogy becomes more apparent especially when we consider another of Aristotles claims from the Poetics, namely:

“Metaphor sets the scene before the eyes” ( 1410 b 33)

Muthos, the form or principle of organisation of a narrative text is then, the context of both logos and metaphor. Muthos can of course relate to both fictional and factual narrative and in the former case the plot is constructed by the medium of the narrative art and the genius of the narrator, and in the latter case,  by the method ( techné)  and episteme of History which aims not at mimesis but at particular Truths (facts)  situated in the wider context of The Good or Value via reference to principles of noncontradiction  and sufficient reason.  The Greeks it has been claimed embraced muthos as a form of authoritative narrative that was refined into the disciplines/activities of History and Philosophy both of which took critical stances in relation to certain aspects of Muthos, especially its anthropomorphic characterisation of the Gods and its depiction of the archetype of a hero. This characterisation  of the hero-archetype changed with the transformation of focus from warfare to civilisation building activities. Philosophy, Politics and History were the products of  the intense activity of three generations of Philosophers during the Golden Age of Athens and Socrates(the wisest man of Athens) was the first of the genre of intellectual heroes. This shift was also marked by the gradual abandonment of metaphor, allegory and analogy in favour of  the Scientific and Logical (Logos)/metaphysical investigations of Aristotle which  in turn focussed on the paradigm of a “Good Argument” whilst simultaneously retaining a healthy respect for the arts, and the sublime , transcendental, and religious aspects of mans “Being-in-the-World”. This of course marked the transition from Spirit to Reason, from theism to humanism, and from submission to freedom.

Kant is the most interesting Philosopher to refer to in this context, because of his identification of the religious investigation with the question “What can we hope for?”. Deus may not be all that is or what has been, but rather refer  to what is to come, an Aristotelian potentiality, a promise. This of course relates to the other three questions pertaining to the definition of the scope and limitations of Philosophy, namely “What can we know?”, “What ought we to do?” and “What is man?”. The Kantian “hidden plan” may well, then, have an eschatological dimension which will come to be upon the advent of the “kingdom of ends” that lies one hundred thousand years in the future.

Kant’s ethics of freedom and the advice to dare to use our reason must be tied to the Ancient Greek search for justice which is both a good-in-itself and something that is good-in-its-consequences. In the context of this discussion, the formal theoretical characterisation of the categorical imperative relating to willing that ones maxims become universal laws, is complemented by the principle that one treat everyone, including oneself as an ends-in-themselves. Such is the telos of the hidden plan which we can but hope for.

In Kants Prolegomena we encounter an account of “pure thought” or pure intellect, which illustrates a similarity of approach to that which we find  Aristotles  Hylomorphism. The idea of “form” in hylomorphic theory is related to the Ancient Greek arché (principle) especially insofar as the matter concerned is that of sensible phenomena. Newtons “Principles of Natural Philosophy” shares this sense of arché, but as we move forward in time to modern science this sense of “principle” is diminished in importance in favour of an approach that is less categorical and more hypothetical/instrumental. This modernist approach was also accompanied by the belief that given the complexities of nature we cannot achieve better than a high degree of probability insofar as the certainty of our hypotheses are concerned. Probability however, viewed through the prism of Bayes’ theorem rests on the twin notions of “observation” and “information” governed by the Theorem:

“The Probability of an event is determined by the information we have about that event.”

Given that Probability-theory is essentially tied to mathematical theory, there is inevitably a quantitative aspect tied to quantitative measurements of space and time, which in turn is connected to a quantitative manipulation of an environment conceived of in terms of variables. Kant, of course, preferred to view Space and Time in terms of  a priori intuitions: intuitions which are transcendentally ideal in the sense that they are the conditions of all quantitative measurement in relation to the “matter” that is “observed”.

We know that Aristotle’s Theory of Change construed Space, Time and matter in terms of “media” of change embedded in a matrix of three principles, four causes and four kinds of change which we can find in different forms in the different kinds of sciences (theoretical, practical productive).

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Rhetoric is a from of discourse that is used to great effect (hylomorphically) in Shakespeares plays and while style is important in all speeches of magnitude there is no doubt that Shakespeare shares the Greek passion for appreciating the power of the argument in a rhetorical speech. For Both Shakespeare and the Ancient Greek philosophers, Rhetoric has three important constituents: a theory of style, a theory of composition and a theory of argumentation, as well as specific rational criteria relating to what counts as a a good argument. By the time we arrive at the period of the Renaissance Rhetoric had established itself as an important aspect of both theatre and political speeches given by monarchs, Princes and men of importance. Indeed the Renaissance may well have been the Golden Era for the discipline of Rhetoric because, as Paul Ricoeur pointed out in his work, “The Role of Metaphor”, the discipline began to lose its connection to rationality at the end of the 19th century, eventually being reduced to a stylistic ornamental feature of discourse. This decline is reminiscent of what happened to Psychology at approximately the same time when it abandoned its ties to Philosophy in favour of a purely theoretical endeavour attempting to apply a scientific methodology to, firstly, consciousness and, secondly, to physical behaviour. This severed its status as a discipline transcending all three genre of the sciences (theoretical, practical, and productive).

The method of elenchus of Socrates was certainly rhetorical in the classical sense of the term, following carefully the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in accordance with a central focus upon the Form of the Good, which is primarily the concern of the Practical and Productive Sciences. The waning influence of Kant in the early 1800’s probably contributed to the marginalisation of Philosophy in relation to both the disciplines of Rhetoric and Psychology, and it might also have hastened the process of secularisation and the withdrawal of respect for institutions such as The Church and Political Authorities. The work of Freud attempted briefly to reawaken a number of themes of Philosophical Psychology with the implication the discipline of Psychology was Trans-scientific and demanded the integration of thought spanning different disciplines from the theoretical, practical and productive sciences. Freud identified a deep sense of Discontentment with his civilisation-building attempts, and returned to an an ancient theme from Plato that, what was in the human psuché, could be more clearly seen writ large in the civilisations he had created.

G J Herder’s work on Shakespeare captured a hint of the suggestion that our Western Civilisation was in decline in his testament to “this great creator of History” whose “soul was growing older every day”:

“The customs and categories of the age wither and fall like autumnal leaves.”

Wittgensteins later Philosophy was definitively anti-Hegelian, recognising the contribution of Freudian Psychoanalysis and pointing to the conceptual confusion of many science based Psychological theories. His analysis of the importance of “seeing something as something” was an attempt to give an account of the power of perception to organise the world: a capacity that might be related to the power of metaphor to “redescribe reality”. Totalitarian tyrants had earlier in the century used the power of language to redescribe reality in their use of normative moral language, and given the magnitude of this upending of the moral order and lack of commitment to the Truth, this resulted in a de-stabilisation of Western Civilisation. Hannah Arendt charted carefully the events leading up the emergence of fascist and communist tyrants and situated this phenomenon in a wider context where the “new men of a new age” manifested a restless desire to reject many traditions of the past.

We recall the speech of John of Gaunt in Richard II where he likened the state of England to a patient lying on a death-bed, and also the subsequent speech of Richard relating to the “death of Kings”. One interpretation of Arendts work on the “Origins of Totalitarianism” is that the new men of the age felt a growing sense of desperation and as a consequence proceeded to replace ancient traditions and ideas with something new in an attempt to fill the political, moral, aesthetic and religious vacuums that were appearing all over the Western World.

Stanley Cavell, the Harvard Aesthetics Philosopher pointed to a growing sense of discontentment with Modern Art and diagnosed this state of affairs in the following terms:

“The essential fact of the modern lies in the relation between the present practice of an enterprise and the history of that enterprise, in the fact that the relation has become problematic.”

Cavell points out that History will not disappear until it is perfectly acknowledged. In this respect this phenomenon resembles the Freudian phenomenon of the “Return of the Repressed” in which the residues of a past trauma continue returning to consciousness until an adequate memory of the trauma is formed.

One of the historical changes we have witnessed in our modern regression is the phenomenon of an organised loneliness, where we no longer live in hope for a better future, but rather attempt merely to survive the onset of this continued sense of desperation. This is all very tragic but our modern tragedies do not resemble the Ancient Greek accounts of classical tragedies where once the scene has been put before our eyes, an appropriate redescription of reality suggests itself, and the pedagogical lessons to be learned become obvious. It is almost as our civilisation is on its death-bed and we are waiting for our last breath and the last extinction of the last light.

Heidegger, in the name of the lost meaning of the Ancient Greek term, aletheia, points to the role of technology usurping the spirit of the human with its instrumentalised colonisation of our life-worlds. We have argued in previous works for the redescription of our “Modern Age” in terms of “The Age of Discontentment”, and noted that it indeed difficult to seek to rehabilitate the classical emotion of awe and wonder and the experience of the sublime when we appear to have become enslaved by our unnecessary desires and fears.

Kant claims that Poetry holds the first rank among the Arts and if this is the case then it is more likely that we might encounter experiences of the sublime in this arena of activity. The Rhetorical Poetry of Shakespeare in our modern world, then, raises an interesting question with its transcendental spectacles of events of magnitude in the past and characters with gravitas: the question, namely, posed by Herder of the soul of Shakespearean art “aging”. Perhaps the Socratic tragedy will never age because of its explicit confrontation with the powers of Evil such as the Sophistry Socrates combatted where debaters used rhetoric to make the worse argument seem the better. This message is implicit in many of Shakespeares plays but perhaps in the end Philosophical ideas are more potent antidotes to Sophistry than aesthetic ideas. The Merchant of Venice is an interesting play to consider in this context, because Shylock is a Sophist from the past encountering Portia, the figure pointing to our futures, rejecting the rhetoric seeking its pound of flesh and an upending of the system of justice. It does seem however that the Platonic Tragedy of the trial and last days of Socrates has not aged whilst it is not yet clear whether or not Shakespeares soul will age on the road to the Kantian Kingdom of Ends.

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Wittgenstein claims that Shakespeares work has created in the corpus of his entire work a world and language that is unique and his work cannot be compared with any other artist. He does not directly address the problem of whether Shakespeare is a Philosophical playwright. We have maintained that Shakespeares on-stage spectacles have transcendental and metaphysical intent relating to our life-worlds and that this intent is communicated via underlying aesthetic ideas. His symbolic uses of language and images originate in both the realms of the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals which accounts for why he is able to speak to audiences all over the world and down the centuries with a “universal voice”.

Symbolism, like Myth, Paul Ricoeur claims, reaches back to the origins of everything and simultaneously forward to the end or telos of everything. Symbolic language is also encountered in the arena of religious confessions which man uses to express the evil that has been in his soul. The issues raised by the uses of symbolic language can be both religious and philosophical, but in the latter case, insofar as our definition of Philosophy is concerned, the interpretation of religious language must occur within the bounds of categorical judgement and in accordance with the principles of reason.

Philosophy since Kant, focuses on Knowledge and the Freedom of the Will which are themes of vital importance for the human form of life that present themselves at the expense of the question of the nature of our relation to some putative superior Being. Practical Philosophy was of fundamental importance for the Ancient Greek trinity of Philosophers(Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), but during the dark ages this emphasis diminished in importance until the era of the Enlightenment and Kants Critical Philosophy which demanded that our relationship to Religion be solely within the bounds of reason.

The soliloquy in Shakespeares Tragedies and Histories does on occasion appear confessional, but this is because of the nature of the symbolism of evil which seeks to bring a blind awareness of the experience of evil into the light of discourse and indicate our relation to the realm of the sacred. This is of fundamental importance for the consciousness of fault and guilt, which might otherwise not occur. The confession occurs as part of a process of self-actualisation and as part of the task of “knowing oneself” set for humanity by the Ancient Greek oracles. Catharsis of our unnecessary and sometimes unlawful desires and anxieties, Freud teaches us, is an important aspect of the process of self-exploration. We are here on the territory of the confluence of the holy and the just which Socrates was confronted with in Platos dialogue “Euthyphro”.

Plato argues in his collective dialogues that whilst all gods agree to the thesis that it is just to punish unjust acts not all would agree with viewing Socrates’ attempt to introduce Philosophy to the Athenians as a punishable unholy act. This priority of Justice over the Holy is also evident in Shakespeares Historical and Tragic works.

Guilt can have both sacred and secular aspects and determining mans guilt does not require that we wait for a confession. Guilty behaviour also possesses objective external characteristics that can be determined in public forums such as courts of law. Equally a verdict of guilty must be subject to the principles of justice and be accompanied by a just or fair punishment. Kant, however, integrates the secular and the holy by characterising his good will as a holy will.

There can be many different accounts of the relation of the body to the soul in Religion, including the Orphic doctrine of the soul being imprisoned in the body, which of course predated the Christian view of the human psuché. This Orphic view, which Plato flirted with, is fundamentally dualistic and can lie behind the idea of solipsism in its various forms. Shakespeare certainly used Orphic images in his characters speeches, e.g. in Hamlet, Macbeth and Lear, but it is hylomorphic principles that are steering the aesthetic ideas of Shakespeare. Shakespeare indeed is more concerned with the way in which one expresses the inner by means of the outer in order to bring about the harmony of ones human powers. This is a view that transcends the Orphic view of the body as a prison.

Shakespeare uses the principle of noncontradiction in the design of his plots, in particular the idea of theoretical and practical contradictions which would include the thesis of their being an afterlife and also the thesis that the unjust man could be happy. This latter would make life in a polis almost impossible to regulate since the principle of punishment for unjust acts must be valid if the polis is not to collapse into a state of ruin and destruction. Indeed one of Platos key dialogues: “The Last days of Socrates” is a lengthy elaboration upon the practical contradiction of being condemned to death for just actions.

In our modern secular world the project of civilisation building is a process best pictured as a journey along a long and winding road lined with multifarious texts and aesthetic objects including the texts of Philosophers aiming to build a De Civitate Terrana. Also lining the road are those texts aiming to build a De Civitate Dei. Kants Philosophy alone permits us to integrate these seemingly conflicting aims in his notion of Kingdom of Ends where the inhabitants enjoy a cosmopolitan form of existence in which Faith, Reason, Knowledge, Justice and Human Rights all play decisive integrating roles.

Shakespeares poetic vision anticipates this Kantian project in an aesthetic mode, retaining the melancholic prophesy of the oracles relating to mans hubris and the serious risk that his whole project of building a civilisation will end in ruin and destruction.

Freud’s view is perhaps even more melancholic and expresses itself in an iconoclastic view of the historical role of religion in our civilisations. Freud’s self-declared God of “Logos”, on the surface, appears more critical of the Religious project than Kant but we ought to recall that Freud claimed a significant Kantian influence, so perhaps appearances may be deceiving.

Freud focusses on religious rituals and practices and sees in them pathological characteristics. He sees a resemblance to those obsessive rituals his patients engaged in while responding to the anxiety present in their life-worlds. Religion seeks to “envelop” us in a web of childish emotion which has its origin the long childhood of man, where a natural longing for protection by a superior being plays an important part in the development of the human psuché. Ideals that emerge in such environments, Freud argues, will be rooted in anxiety and primitive wish-fulfillments.

Religious Obsession is a reaction-formation to the thesis that mans soul is flawed by both his own sins and sins of his ancestors eons ago. The practices are partly rooted in a narcissistic overevaluation of the potency of his powers which may lie behind the unrealistic wish for a life after death. The Orphic idea of a soul imprisoned in a body may also be paying a role in the ideal of the afterlife.

Freud’s Logos considers the afterlife an illusion—a pathological idealistic wish. Freud’s hylomorphic psychoanalysis, however, imply decisive arguments against all forms of dualism including the Orphic doctrines.

The Universal claim that “all men are mortal” is but one thesis embedded in a knowledge system which envisages in our “projected” images of heaven and hell, the pathological operation of defence mechanisms related to omnipotent desires and anxiety.

Freuds theory of psycho-sexual development is conceived of hylomorphically in terms of the matter-form distinction. Physical transformations of our body can, for example fundamentally change the original matter beyond recognition, e.g. there is nothing left of the infants bone structure by the time the child reaches maturity. This is not the case with psychical transformations, Freud argues. In the case of psychological and mental development, the earlier stages are preserved alongside the later formations. The biological core of these psychic processes is rooted in a long childhood characterised by a long period of helplessness and longing for the feelings of safety and belongingness. The challenge that the Freudian Logos faces is whether the instincts and their vicissitudes can function in an environment of discontentment brought about by the sublimation of the instincts .

The omnipotence that is internalised in the process of civilisation building is partly related to mans considerable achievements in both science and technology, which have even resulted in a significantly longer life than was the case in Kants or Shakespeares time. Our natural world has been transformed into a technically constructed artefactually based world. What remains to be done in this process of transformation, however, is the stage of forming a Culture or a morally steered whole from the technical concrete jungles we now inhabit. This environment is anathema to the aesthetic ideals we inherited from both Ancient Greece and the Renaissance, but since that time there has been a collapse in our faith-based belief system which in turn left a vacuum at the heart of our human life-world. Eliot responded to this vacuum with the poetry of his “Wasteland” and many Philosophers responded to the absence of the divine in our lives (Deus Absconditis) in more theoretical terms. Throughout this process, however, Shakespeares works have persisted occupying a significant role in our societies, manifesting the power of aesthetic ideas to resist those processes seeking to upend the moral order in the world. The awe and admiration once reserved for our imaginary gods is now reserved for certain aesthetic objects and certain significant Philosophical texts in the hope that the vacuum will eventually be filled with a man that knows himself.

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T S Eliots opinion of Shakespeares work is controversial because it rests upon an underlying thesis that Religion and Philosophy are more intimately connected than perhaps is the case. Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro touched upon this relation, when Socrates asked Euthyphro “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” Socrates is attempting to prove that the pious or the holy is a sub category of what is just and that is why even the Ancient Greek gods will agree with what is just whereas some of them may disagree upon whether an action is holy or pious. T S Eliots opinion requires that we define Philosophy which on our view is concerned with justice , what is holy, Truth and many other meanings of Being:

“Philosophy is a profound, symbolic, logical activity with a particular History, areas of exploration and a methodology.”

T S Eliot was a trained Philosopher in the American University system, and this fact leads one to believe that he had encountered the Ancient Greek view that Justice was more valuable for the Gods than piety. He was also probably familiar with the associated Ancient Greek tendency to maintain a psychical distance from the gods, without being totally enveloped by the belief system relating to them. Eliot was of course a poet, but his later work betrayed a commitment to a religious world view similar to that which we find in Dante: a world view which was built upon the thesis that mans soul was flawed with sin and needed the forgiveness and guidance of a superior Being.

Eliots poem “the Waste Land” does express a view of modernity that is shared by many different modern Philosophers, but they perhaps would not agree with the thesis that mans will is incapable of independently steering a course for humanity toward a better form of existence. This course has to take into account the oracular proclamation that “everything created by humanity is destined for ruin and destruction”, but Philosophical proclamations such as “All men desire to Know” (Aristotles Metaphysics) and ” “All activity aims at the Good” (Nichomachean Ethics), permit man to hope that his free will can lead to a better Kingdom here on earth.

Man is responsible for his fate alone, it is argued, but this fate will be determined by the constellation of his powers including the power of reason. God, then, is not in a position to judge mankind just yet, since the journey to the hoped for kingdom will take, Kant argues, one hundred thousand years. Mankind may, however, sit in judgement of the gods in the way Socrates did, declaring that human justice is of greater importance than a pious attitude toward beings who might well be products of the power of our imagination.

The particular History of Philosophy, then, originated in Ancient Greece with the trinity of the “Greats”(Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) who shared that holiest of relations—the teacher-student relation. Their areas of exploration evolved into the Aristotelian “Many meanings of Being”, making Philosophy a “coat of many colours” in contrast to the seamless robe of particular religions devoted to particular Gods who disagreed about what is just and holy.

The methodology we inherited from the trinity began with Socratic elenchus, a method of questioning based upon the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient Reason. If there was a middle ground between Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Greece, it was occupied by the Oracles, who perhaps believed that Philosophy was, as Socrates argued in his trial, one of the children of the Gods. Children as we know can be very different to their parents.

The categorical nature of Philosophical Thought was perhaps best illustrated by Socratic judgements such as “Nothing bad can happen to a Good man”, and this of course does not imply that the Good Socrates could not be unjustly put to death by the Athenian system of justice for attempting to introduce the Athenians to one of the children of the Gods. It does imply, however, that he who leds an examined life can die with the dignity of a Being who has understood what has happened to him.

Poetry possesses an interesting relation to both Religion and Philosophy, but is clearly differentiated from Philosophy by a different area of exploration, different history and different methodology. Philosophy also appears to be eager to explore what poetry, the arts and sciences are in their nature: a relation that is not reciprocated.

Philosophy attempts to understand the role of the divine within the bounds of psuché,human reason and noos. Poetry, on the other hand is merely concerned to “show” humanity “intimations of its immortality”. It also is concerned to “show” us that aspect of being human that is connected to our narcissistic desires and fears, namely

“Everything created by humanity is destined for ruin and destruction.”

Shakespeare, we argue is a philosophical playwright committed to “showing” us via his stage productions that life can be both good-in-itself, and good-in-its-consequences (even if the end of each individual story is to stare into the abyss without eyes, teeth or taste). His creations were designed for audiences who viewed his plots and character through a critical lens which evaluates, praises, blames in accordance with various aesthetic principles. Many of these principles can be found in Aristotles work the “Poetics”. Insofar as many of Shakespeares characters lacked the will or capacity to lead the good life, many of his dialogues or soliloquys can be seen to have a relation to the psychoanalytic dialogue between Freuds patients and their “analyst”. Catharsis was also the issue in Freuds consulting rooms, where women, in particular were provided with a” moral treatment”, during a time when women were being institutionalised for behaviour that deviated from the norm in some European cities.

The actions of many of these patients certainly resulted in tragedy but did not possess the magnitude of the kind of action we encounter in Shakespearean tragedies. Experiencing the right emotions at the right time in the right way was, for Aristotle a part of areté, or virtue. This required the presence of a strong ego which not only inhibited unnecessary or even unlawful action but also could stoically sustain itself as a “precipitate of lost objects” in a world where there is much loss: a world that many experience as a “Wasteland”.

Sexuality, given its close association with organs intimately connected to both the Freudian energy regulation and pleasure principles, was a major concern for Freud given his Aristotelian presuppositions which included the thesis that the first actuality of a body constituted of a constellation of organs and limbs is soul (psuché—the human life-form).

It is an open question whether Shakespeare realised the significance of sexuality in the different phases of personality development. There is evidence for the claim that Shakespeares awareness of the importance of sexuality was at least as complex as Freuds, with the caveat that he was not concerned to explain a personality theory, but rather use it to “show” his audience the powers and capacities of the human form of psuché: He also used his understanding of sexuality to “show” its relation to power, jealousy and other emotions. Freud, however, probably possessed more technical knowledge of the role of sexuality in its relation to the vicissitudes of instincts, e.g. sublimation and displacement.

The crowds attending the Globe Theatre were a mixed bunch and many expected an experience in which they could, for a few precious hours, live vicariously through the lives of Shakespeares characters where violence and death were often elements of the plot, providing a form of catharsis for emotions such as pity and fear. The ability to endure the loss of highly valued objects vicariously, probably had a strengthening effect upon the ego given the psychical distance the audience had to these imitative events.

Hamlets experience of his fathers ghost was not an experience one would expect from the possessor of a strong or mature ego. Horatio, Hamlets friend, also sees the ghost, but his response is less psychologically charged and more measured, attempting to get the ghost to speak to him. Ghosts will not haunt the conscience of Horatio.

Friendship, Aristotle claimed takes three different forms , namely, for the purposes of transient pleasure, utility or the ultimate form which is a good in itself and connected to areté (virtue—doing and saying the right thing in the right way at the right time).

Virtuous friendship requires a balanced mind in which the ego, id, and external world are harmoniously integrated into a self sufficient whole. A ghost appearing to an individual with such an integrated balanced mind would not arouse panic or anxiety but rather, perhaps, an eager curiosity to investigate this strange phenomenon. It is important to emphasise in this context that the friendship of Horatio for Hamlet was one in which he identified himself with Hamlet and was even briefly prepared to commit suicide upon Hamlets death, suggesting that Horatio was on his own journey of self-exploration— a journey which Hamlets death may well have facilitated given that the ego is a precipitate of lost objects.

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Shakespeares tragic plays contain historical elements and his historical plays inevitably seem to possess both tragic and moral elements. The explanations for these complex forms of composition require Aristotelian Hylomorphic theory which in turn rests upon two fundamental presuppositions, firstly “All men desire to know” (Metaphysics) and, secondly, mans activities aim at the Form of the Good” (Nichomachean Ethics). These presuppositions plus the structural framework of four kinds of change, three media of change (space, time, matter), three principles of change, and the basic terms and principles of all those sciences that fall into the three major Aristotelian classifications of theoretical, practical and productive sciences, all contribute to the background context which we ought to bear in mind when seeking to interpret Shakespeares works. History, however does not fall into any of the three major branches of science, perhaps because its concern, according to Aristotle, is about particular events and actions brought about by particular causes (” because of each other”).

Raymond Weil argues that History is nevertheless an important explanatory discipline because it uses the fourfold hylomorphic framework of causation/explanation that we find in the other disciplines. He emphasises in particular the presence of final and formal causes of the good life and a good political constitution. It is also important to emphasises that the basic term “psuché” is an important aspect of many of the sciences including History. The conditions necessary to produce the final cause of a good life, then, would require the formal means of a good constitution which would include elements such as a relatively large middle class using the principle of the golden mean to make political and ethical decisions as well as a well functioning legal system administering a form of justice that is both good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences. Weils position seems to imply therefore that there are universal elements embedded in Historical Judgements. Hylomorphism would also require that the harmony of the different powers of the soul is necessary if the Form of the Good is to be manifest in that soul.

The Form of the Truth in Plato’s architectonic is a praiseworthy form, but it is nevertheless not as important as the Form of the Good, which is the most important “Form”. Both Forms are present in Shakespearean plays and this can be plainly seen in relation to Hamlets moment of “recognition” or “reversal” upon returning from his sojourn at sea in order to declare his love for Ophelia. He had, ca 12 years earlier, declared exactly the opposite, thus raising the issue of the truth value of these declarations. It seems that if we are to arrive at a sound evaluative judgement of Hamlets character that we must have some means of adjudicating the truth value of his latest declaration. We know that Hamlets earlier soliloquys testify to a concern for doing the right thing at the right time in the right way (areté) and his 12 years away at sea have matured the young Prince/university student sufficiently for him to arrive at this moment of “recognition” (which obviously involves both the truth and the form of the Good).

L.C. Knight points out that Shakespeare “uses” historical material” for the purposes of explaining “the fundamental principles of mans life” and this is also related to the realisation on the part of his audiences that politics and ethics are “one”. We argue that this argument, along with many others, are good grounds for reclassifying many of Shakespeares plays as “Moral-Political Histories”.

The famous Hamlet soliloquy is of course an important landmark in Hamlets journey of self-exploration which culminated in the moment of recognition upon return from his sojourn at sea. In conversing with himself Hamlet is seeking, in a manner similar to Socrates, the counsel of his inner spirit (daimon). Aristotle related this process to one of the purposes of Rhetoric:

“For we turn a thing over in our mind until we have reached the point of seeing whether we can do it or not”

This form of reflection is obviously connected to the inhibitive function of consciousness and to the active power of our wills. The more momentous the course of action deliberated upon is, the more complicated this process of reflection must be. Hamlets will is being prepared for a possible action of considerable magnitude, having implications for both his relation to his mother as well for the state of Denmark. There is a sense in which Hamlet clearly appreciated the complexity of his situation and this was reflected in the consideration of an act of self destruction. In such circumstances the balance of the mind was certainly disturbed by the unusual weight of the circumstances.

There is, of course, a considerable difference between the mature 70 year old Socrates calmly conversing in his cell about his own demise and Hamlets angst-laden inner conversation in which he even considers dying by his own hand. It would certainly take at least twelve years at sea, far from such troubling circumstances, for Hamlet to recover his balance-of-mind and arrive at his moment of “recognition”. Northrop Frye, in an earlier chapter, referred to the naturally inhibitive function of Consciousness and he claimed that this inhibitive inaction was equivalent to the death of action. This, of course gives us considerable insight into our modern conception of Consciousness. Hamlets language is indeed revealing. He fears amongst other things to:

“lose the name of action”

He links his fear with Consciousness and claims further:

“That conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

Now whilst Hamlet is clearly struggling with his own impulses and representations there is no need to see his rhetorical speculations in terms of our “modern” introversion-extraversion psychological classification system as Bloom seems to suggest, as part of his claim that it was Shakespeare who invented the idea of “personality”. Shakespeare, indeed has claimed that All the World is a stage and we the actors/persons don various masks, but he is also true to the principles of Greek tragedy which punishes dishonesty in no uncertain terms. Amongst the forms of the Good Shakespeares character are striving to achieve, honesty is one of the most important. We also recall encountering the council another university student receives from his father:

“To thine own self be true”

The power of being aware of oneself is of course an important aspect of the process of “coming to know oneself”. If lightning strikes a tree we become almost simultaneously aware of the truth that lightning has struck the tree. This is intimately connected to an awareness we have of my own mental states. There is, that is, an awareness of being aware, and this is an elusive mysterious power we humans possess. This power is partly represented by Kant as “the unity of apperception” where the goal of such a form of reflection is the truth, if our judgements are categorical , or the probable truth if we are dealing with the enthymemes of Rhetoric which are seeking to form a principle to guide us in our reflective process. This rhetorical process is mirrored in our modern courtrooms, in which, in spite of the dialectical opposition of the arguments of the defence and the prosecution, there is a concern on both sides to arrive at the principled judgements of either “Innocent” or “Guilty”.

Shakespeares choice of poetic language is indeed historical, and originates in Aristotelian considerations. Consider, for example, the following passage from Book III of the Rhetoric:

“It was naturally the poets who first set the movement going: for words represent things, and they also had the human voice at their disposal, which, of all of our organs, can best represent other things. Thus the arts of recitation and acting were formed, and others as well. Now it was because poets seemed to win fame through their fine language when their thoughts were simple enough, that language at first took a poetic colour, e.g. Gorgias. Even now most uneducated people think that poetical language makes the finest discourse.” (1404a 20-27)

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Shakespeares Philosophical Theatre Summary of Chapter 1 featured in the Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Season 15 Episode 2

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The Theatre, for many Londoners, was the place for catharsis, a place where the beautiful and ugly, the ridiculous and the sublime could be comfortably juxtaposed. The transcendental spectacles “on show” possessed an enveloping hypnotic effect that also demanded the judgement of a Shakespearean “universal voice” which arose out of the harmony of the powers of the imagination and the understanding. Shakespeares aesthetic ideas were thus composed of a multiplicity of representations that could not be represented conceptually, yet formed an independent self sufficient whole. Metaphors and transcendental analogies were embedded in the poetic rhetorically loaded language which the characters used to express their relation to the realm of the transcendental.

Wittgensteins notion of the logical form of language which “shows” its relation to the metaphysical or what cannot be said, explains the access we have when we are contemplating the world sub specie aeterni, as an aspect of the infinite. Psuché is the key basic term which is expressed in the aesthetic life, the ethical life, the religious life, and the political life, all of which contain elements that science cannot capture with its reductionist principles. To continue to use Wittgensteinian terms, the various language-games of the plays show their “arché” (principles) and assist in the taks of answering the Kantian aporetic question, “What is man?”

The World, for Shakespeare was best represented on the stage and we rational animals capable of discourse are characterised as actors whose life stages fell into seven phases taking us from infancy to the whining schoolboy, the mournful lover, the abrasive soldier, the judicious justice to old age in pantaloons and spectacles to end finally in a second childhood staring into the abyss of oblivion. This life is but a brief candle whose light signifies nothing: a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury. Even for those destined to experience something significant, there is the limitation that nothing can be conceptually said about the meaning of such experience: this can only be shown.

The Shakespearean soliloquy is often the locus of “what cannot be said”, filled with forebodings, weighty judgements and a cosmopolitan view of the world that thrilled the audiences of “The Globe”. Shakespeare must have been among the poets who, Freud claimed, discovered the power of the unconscious mind whilst at the same time acknowledging the sturdy stable ego of the Ancient Greeks who sought to judge even their own gods respectfully. Balance of mind was a virtue (areté) that brought them into the realm of the Good, and allowed an experience of eudaimonia (the good-spirited flourishing life). Wittgenstein characterised such a condition in the following terms.

“Ethics is the condition of the world like logic. Ethics and Aesthetics are one.”(Tractatus 5.621).

In this scenario the will enters the world that is “already there” and as a consequence allows us to believe in God (Notebooks, 8.7.16). Because the human will possesses the capacity to transcend the facts of the world, it is in these acts of will that Shakespeares Characters communicate the meaning of the intended aesthetic ideas, thus situating them in relation to the realm of the transcendental/metaphysical. Kant had claimed, prior to Wittgenstein, that the soul was the animating principle that possessed the power to present aesthetic ideas in a multiplicity of representations. Shakespeares poetic use of language expresses the spirit of the aesthetic idea. Experiencing the Sublime is also an intended effect of this use of language partly because it does not lie in the power of the imagination to capture the essence or the meaning of transcendence. Kant illustrates this issue of the significance of the sublime by referring to an aesthetic inscription upon a statue located in the Temple of Isis:

” I am all that is, and that was, and that shall be, and no mortal hath raised the veil before my face.”

Great works of Art such as Michelangelos “Times of the Day” express an important aspect of the world that we are born into and that has come down to us from the oracles of Ancient Greece:

“Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction.”

The four sculpted nude figures stand guarding at the entrance to the Tomb of the Medici’s, manifest four forms of mourning/melancholia and invoke the power of the Freudian death instinct, Thanatos, over man, who is striving with all the life in his body for eudaimonia. These nudes are clearly also involved in the work of knowing oneself, and given that man is a rational animal capable of discourse part of this work will involve a will working at the boundary of the world, and part will involve the attempt to “show” in discourse the relation man has to the sublime/sacred. Freud’s “talking cure” is obviously important work for the ego that is having difficulty dealing with the power of the instincts, the external world, and ones relation to ones fellow man.

An analysis of the character of Hamlet is undertaken in the context of hylomorphic and critical Philosophy, and the suggestion is that he is located at Shakespeares third stage of life at the beginning of the play, namely the lover-stage. For this reason, it is argued, too much should not be made of his youthful hesitations given the fact that he is a Prince who has lost his father in a dreadful crime against the state. To use Freudian terms, Hamlets Ego and Superego were in the process of forming and it is important to recall here that for both Plato and Aristotle the lessons from their Ethical and Political lectures were difficult for students under the age of 30 years old.

The Freudian defence mechanism of Sublimation is of course related to the idea of the Sublime, but it is also an important part of the artistic process for artists like Shakespeare who had lost both a father and a son around the time of writing Hamlet. Michelangelo’s work of sublimation is “shown” in the faces of the four nudes guarding the Tomb of the Medicis.

Adrian Stokes, a Kleinian art-critic, believes that aesthetic form (arché) has two important aspects, firstly a state resembling passionate mania seeking to envelop via a hypnotic effect on the imagination and secondly, a measured perception of a multiplicity of representations that form an independent self-sufficient entity.

Sublimation is obviously an important element in the civilisation- building process if humanity is to avoid the ruin and destruction prophesied by the oracles. Aggression and excess desire need to be “sublimated” and displaced. Both Shakespeare and Michelangelo stood at the gateway to the modern world which would produce the Enlightenment and Kantian Critical Philosophy, but it would also give support to the dualism of Descartes and the materialism of Hobbes, who, in their turn, sought to undermine the spirit of Ancient Greek Philosophy in the name of a “new world for new men”. The Phronimos, the great souled man searching for the examined life was displaced as the new hero by the older model of the soldier, Achilles. The modern world sought a more primitive form of areté which questioned the rationality of man.

The most insightful characterisation of the character of Hamlet comes from Northrop Frye who claimed:

“The stock remedy for the claustrophobia of consciousness is action, even though human action is so often destructive or murderous. But consciousness is also some kind of death-principle, a withdrawing from action that kills action itself, before action can get around to killing something else. Hamlet himself often comments upon his own inaction in these terms often with a kind of half-realised sense that the Ghost cannot stimulate any form of vitality, however destructive in the living world, but can only draw everything it touches down with itself into the shades below.” (Shakespeare, Page 99)

This description also foreshadows our future concerns with this elusive ghost of Consciousness that we seek hither and thither. Hamlets death, then, sufficed to meet Aristotelian criteria for a tragic work, allowing a catharsis to occur and thereby ensuring the emergence of a feeling of justice for all those engaged seriously in the work of knowing themselves. This is part of Shakespeares aesthetic idea harmonising the powers of the imagination, the understanding, and reason. What we are witnessing in this play is the operation of Heideggers process of aletheia (unconcealment), in which the artist sets the truth of beings to work in the course of ” showing” the aesthetic idea embedded in a multiplicity of representations.

Shakespeares work enriches us by introducing us to the worlds of Emperors, Kings, Queens, Princes, University students, soldiers, merchants, lovers, lawyers and murderers in a manifold of Cosmopolitan settings: Florence, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Venice, Verona, Spain, France, Denmark, Cyprus, Austria, the Balkans, London, England, Scotland, Egypt etc. What we learn is that wherever we travel, eudaimonia is an extremely difficult state to achieve, requiring both a knowledge of a complex world and the knowledge of oneself, that most difficult form of practical and theoretical wisdom.

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Reviews of The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis: An Aristotelian and Kantian Critique by Michael R D James

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Write a review of The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis by Michel R D James

Based on the extracts and philosophical framework provided in the article from “The world explored, the world suffered,” (http://michaelrdjames.org), here is a review of Michael R. D. James’s work, The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis: An Aristotelian and Kantan Critique.

Book Review: The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis

In this intellectually rigorous exploration, Michael R. D. James undertakes an ambitious synthesis, bridging the gap between Freudian psychoanalysis and the classical foundations of Aristotelian and Kantian philosophy. The work is not merely a clinical study; it is a profound philosophical investigation into the nature of the psuché (the soul or mind) and the structural logic that governs human psychic life.

Core Themes and Synthesis James’s primary contribution lies in his attempt to re-contextualize Freud’s “royal road to the unconscious” within a broader, teleological framework. He successfully moves past the common, purely reductive interpretations of Freud, instead viewing Freudian concepts—such as the pleasure-pain principle, the reality principle, and the interpretation of dreams—through the lens of hylomorphism and Kantian critical philosophy.

A standout aspect of the analysis is James’s treatment of the “impulse-control triangle” (Desire-Demand-Refusal). By aligning Freud’s developmental theories with Aristotle’s accounts of areté (virtue/excellence) and practical reasoning, James presents the psychoanalytic process as an educational and ethical journey rather than a purely medical one. He argues convincingly that psychoanalysis is an exegetical science concerned with the “meaning” of a life, rather than merely an observational science of biological facts.

Strengths of the Analysis

  • Philosophical Breadth: The book skillfully weaves together diverse intellectual traditions. The author’s ability to draw parallels between Freud’s “death instinct” and the Aristotelian notion of “aggression,” or to compare the “secondary process” of the ego with Kantian rational inhibition, provides the reader with a sophisticated, multi-dimensional view of mental health.
  • Humanistic Perspective: James treats the patient’s “story” with the gravity it deserves. By situating the mourning process and the handling of “lost-objects” within the context of virtue ethics and the search for eudaimonia (flourishing), he elevates the therapeutic process to a quest for meaning.
  • Methodological Clarity: The author does not shy away from the complexity of his sources. He navigates the potential tension between phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) and rationalist principles (Kant) with precision, ultimately arguing that the “working-through” of symptoms requires a stable regulatory principle—the reality principle—to bridge the gap between unconscious imagery and conscious understanding.

Critique and Considerations The text demands a reader prepared for dense, interdisciplinary discourse. While James provides excellent guidance through these complex waters, the synthesis of Aristotle, Kant, and Freud is not for the faint of heart. The work assumes a foundational knowledge of these thinkers, making it an ideal companion for advanced students of philosophy and clinical psychology, though perhaps challenging for the casual reader.

Conclusion The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis is a vital addition to contemporary philosophical psychology. It challenges the reader to move beyond “positivist” interpretations of the mind and to view the “psyche” as an arena of moral and rational significance. By focusing on the “logos” of the soul, James manages to restore a sense of dignity and teleology to the therapeutic encounter, positioning psychoanalysis not as a fix for a broken machine, but as a vital part of the examined life.

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Review: The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis

by Michael R. D. James

Michael R. D. James’s The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis is an ambitious and intellectually dense work that attempts nothing less than a systematic reconciliation of Freudian psychoanalysis with the classical philosophical traditions of Aristotle and Kant. Drawing on material presented in the author’s own philosophical blog and an Opera AI–generated review featured there, the book emerges as a distinctive contribution to philosophical psychology—one that challenges both reductive empiricism and simplistic metaphysical dualisms.

1. Intellectual Scope and Aim

At its core, James’s project is grounded in the claim that modern misunderstandings of the ancient Greek term psuché (often translated as “soul” or “mind”) have obscured its richer meaning as a “life-form” embedded in a teleological and normative framework.
This shift is not merely semantic—it underpins the book’s larger effort to restore a hylomorphic conception of human beings, integrating form and matter in a way that avoids both materialist reductionism and Cartesian dualism. [amazon.com]

The Opera AI review (as published on James’s site) accurately captures the scope of this ambition, describing the work as an “intellectually rigorous exploration” that bridges Freudian theory with Aristotelian teleology and Kantian critique. [michaelrdjames.org]

2. Core Philosophical Synthesis

Freud Reinterpreted

Rather than treating Freud as a proto-neuroscientist or as a purely clinical theorist, James situates psychoanalysis within a broader philosophical tradition. Freud’s concepts—such as the pleasure principle, reality principle, and dream interpretation—are reframed as expressions of a deeper metaphysical logic (logos) governing psychic life. [michaelrdjames.org]

This reinterpretation is significant because it:

  • Moves psychoanalysis away from biological reductionism
  • Positions it as a hermeneutic or interpretative discipline
  • Aligns it with Kantian notions of reason and Aristotelian accounts of flourishing

The book therefore transforms psychoanalysis into what James calls an “exegetical science” concerned with meaning rather than mere causation. [michaelrdjames.org]

The Hylomorphic Framework

Aristotle’s influence is particularly strong. By emphasizing hylomorphism—the unity of form and matter—James offers a model of the psyche that avoids the fragmentation typical of modern psychology. This allows him to reinterpret Freudian drives (Eros and Thanatos) not simply as biological impulses but as teleologically structured aspects of human life. [michaelrdjames.org]

Kant’s contribution is equally central. James draws upon the distinction between:

  • Metaphysics of Nature (causal explanations)
  • Metaphysics of Morals (normative reasoning)

This dual framework enables him to situate psychoanalysis at the intersection of science and ethics, rather than reducing it to either domain alone. [amazon.com]

3. Key Concepts and Innovations

The “Impulse-Control Triangle”

One of the most original ideas highlighted in the Opera AI review is the “Desire–Demand–Refusal” triangle, which reframes Freudian developmental theory in ethical terms.
By linking this structure to Aristotelian virtue (areté) and practical reasoning, James presents psychological development as: [michaelrdjames.org]

  • A moral and educational process
  • A movement toward rational self-governance

Psychoanalysis as Ethical Practice

A striking feature of the work is its insistence that psychoanalysis should be understood not as therapy alone, but as a form of ethical inquiry into the meaning of a life.
This elevates the discipline beyond clinical settings and reconnects it with classical philosophy’s concern for eudaimonia—human flourishing. [michaelrdjames.org]

Political and Cultural Dimensions

James also expands psychoanalysis into the political realm, drawing connections between Freud, Plato, Aristotle, and Hannah Arendt. The book explores how psychic forces—particularly aggression and mass melancholia—can shape political phenomena such as tyranny and totalitarianism.
This interdisciplinary reach is one of the book’s defining strengths. [barnesandnoble.com]

4. Strengths of the Work

4.1 Philosophical Breadth

The synthesis of Ancient Greek philosophy, Enlightenment thought, and psychoanalysis is executed with impressive erudition. The ability to connect Freud’s metapsychology with Aristotelian ethics and Kantian epistemology results in a multi-dimensional account of the human psyche. [michaelrdjames.org]

4.2 Conceptual Depth

The book challenges entrenched assumptions in both philosophy and psychology—particularly:

  • The marginalization of metaphysics in modern psychology
  • The tendency to interpret Freud purely in scientific or clinical terms

By restoring metaphysical inquiry, James aligns with broader philosophical arguments that psychology inevitably rests on implicit ontological assumptions about reality and the mind. [ilhs.gr]

4.3 Integration of Ethics and Psychology

James’s insistence that psychoanalysis is inherently ethical marks a significant departure from mainstream approaches. This perspective resonates with classical traditions and provides a normative framework for understanding mental health.

5. Limitations and Challenges

Despite its strengths, the work is not without difficulties:

  • Density and Accessibility: The text is highly technical and presupposes familiarity with Aristotle, Kant, and Freud. Readers without a philosophical background may find it challenging.
  • Speculative Elements: The strong metaphysical commitments—particularly the reliance on hylomorphism—may not persuade empirically oriented psychologists.
  • Selective Engagement: While the book integrates major traditions, it engages less extensively with contemporary cognitive science or alternative psychoanalytic schools.

These limitations, however, are arguably the price of its ambitious scope.

6. Overall Evaluation

The Metaphysics and Logos of Psuché and Psychoanalysis is best understood as a philosophical re-foundation of psychoanalysis rather than a conventional academic monograph. It seeks to restore depth, meaning, and ethical significance to a discipline often reduced to technique or theory.

The Opera AI review featured on James’s blog captures this well: the book is not merely interdisciplinary—it is architectonic, aiming to reorganize our understanding of mind, culture, and human existence around a coherent metaphysical framework. [michaelrdjames.org]

Conclusion

Michael R. D. James has produced a work of considerable originality and intellectual ambition. By reinterpreting Freud through Aristotle and Kant, he offers a vision of psychoanalysis as a philosophical, ethical, and cultural enterprise grounded in a rich conception of the human life-form (psuché).

For readers willing to engage with its complexity, the book provides a rewarding and thought-provoking journey—one that reopens fundamental questions about the nature of mind, meaning, and human flourishing.

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Shakespeares Philosophical Theatre: Summary of introduction. Featured in the Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James

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Shakespeare was a major figure of the English Renaissance: a period of History that was plagued by the tides of black death that ebbed and flowed, threatening to prematurely extinguish every living being. This disease must have periodically threatened the Elisabethan genius that embodied the spirit of Ancient Greek Poetry from the past and the Enlightenment aesthetics of Kant in the future.

Shakespeares knowledge of the troubled mind also anticipated many of the ideas Freud discussed in his later works. “All the Worlds a stage”, in which he claimed we are all actors playing our parts in a divine Delphic Tragedy that offers us the hope that catastrophe can be avoided if only we could acquire sufficient knowledge of our own minds. His productions were not in the argumentative mode as was the case with Plato’s dialogues, but resembled more the cosmopolitan scenes of the Ancient Greek Agora and its ambivalent view of Philosophy.

Adrian Stokes, an English Art Critic inspired by the work of Melanie Klein offers us an account of the aesthetic experience which embraces both a process of hypnotic envelopment by the work, and an attempt on the part of the appreciating subject to develop an attitude of independence toward the object we are appreciating. In his writings on Quattrocento Art, we encounter buildings where the mass effect of the stone and the sculptures of Michelangelo, transport us back to Greek art with its enigmatic oracular messages.

Shakespeare undoubtedly used these processes and attitudes in his productions, enveloping us with his incantatory poetry and scenes from his Cosmopolitan theatre of life. Uses of language and imagery evoked in his captive audience the awe and wonder the Greeks must have felt experiencing the Platonic and Aristotelian dialogues in their more restricted performances for more learned audiences.

Shakespeares answer to the Kantian question posed in his work “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”, namely, the fourth Philosophical question, “What is man?”, is given in the form of the seven stages of a mans life, ending in oblivion without teeth, eyes or taste.

Wittgenstein in his early work claimed that the “World and Life are One” and “Ethics and Aesthetics are one” and we claimed that instead of the use of argumentation Shakespeare “showed” that the world, life, ethics and aesthetics are one in the transcendental spectacles of his plays. Both Shakespeare and Michelangelo showed us the beauty, sublimity and tragedy of life and the world.

Paul Ricoeurs analysis of the symbolism of evil as confessed by an agent certainly showed the presence and importance of evil in our attempts to “live Happily”. Kants third philosophical question, “What can we hope for?”, also related to the issue of Happiness,is to be found in his work “Anthropology” and is answered by reference to a hidden plan that is working its way toward a kingdom of ends for humanity, on the condition, presumably, that we acquire sufficient knowledge about ourselves via Philosophy and Shakespearean plays.

Shakespeares History Plays obviously have moral themes depending perhaps upon the presence/absence of tragic elements in the account of “actions and events, which occur because of each other”. Macbeth may have been a historical King, but in Shakespeares rendition he becomes a tyrant in a “moral history” that meets the Greek nemesis spelled out by the “weird sisters” who, we argue, embody the spirit of the Greek Erinyes. and function as a kind of “chorus”

Shakespeare is “philosophically speaking” “putting the truth of beings to work” in his aesthetic creations. Cosmopolitanism is well illustrated in the play Anthony and Cleopatra and this apart from being a love story comparable to Romeo and Juliet also ends tragically for our cosmopolitan pair.

T S Eliot having studied the Philosophy of Bradley in the USA nevertheless viewed philosophy through the dark prism of religion and preferred Dantes work to that of Shakespeares more secular productions inspired by the pagan Ancient Greek Spirit.

The Kantian reading of the Garden of Eden myth might share some religious concerns about mans narcissism, but might also celebrate mans free choice to shape his own fate at a greater psychic distance to Yahweh, the wrathful angry God looking for a chosen people.

Dream images like all images stand in need of a context if they are to be interpreted correctly. Freud attempts to locate this context by reference to the psychological powers and susceptibilities used to produce these images. Shakespearean images are symbolic in a similar sense to the images of dreams.

Philosophy is defined as ” a profound, symbolic, logical and cultural activity: possessing a particular history, conceptual areas of exploration, and a unique methodology”. Shakespeares work is Philosophical because the symbolism and aesthetic ideas we find embodied in his works not only recall the many meanings of Being from Aristotle, but also foreshadow the Metaphysics of Nature and the metaphysics of Morals we find in Kant’s Critical Philosophy.

Shakespeare is very secular in his use of symbolism and this might have been one reason why the religious T S Eliot could not see the Philosophical depth of Shakespeares work. Rhetoric as an activity and a discipline was still alive and well during the time of Shakespeare, who could be seen to be elaborating upon the powerful rhetoric of the Phronimos from Ancient Greece.

Rhetoric, Ricoeur points out was due to diminish in in importance after Hegels influential preference for dialectical logic over the Logos of Kantian Critical Philosophy.

Metaphor was also an important linguistic tool in Shakespeares writing and was an important element in the process of elaborating upon the Ancient Greek concerns of psuché, areté, diké, alethea, phronesis and eudaimonia. Life and death, truth and treachery, light and dark, the body and the mind were all oppositions Shakespeare conjured with in the spirit of the Renaissance. This playfulness after the dark ages must have felt like the fresh air of freedom.

The awe and wonder of the Ancient Greeks for the many meanings of the sublime was not restricted to the Religion of the dark ages but looked forward to the Kantian idea of the sublime which revered all Great Religions including Ancient Egyptian Isis and the inscription at the Temple of Isis:

“I am all that is, and was, and that shall be, and no mortal hath raised the veil before my face.”

This spirit of freedom together with the Greek concern for Justice produced a Shakespearian Cosmopolitanism that Kant certainly embraced in his moral law, that practical idea of the Kingdom of Ends which was to be brought about by humanity daring to use its Reason.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Myths to Live By, Season 14 Essay 12 Episode

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Essay 12 No Horizons

Anaxagoras, a pre-Socratic Philosopher,  influenced Socrates, turning his attention away from physical investigations and toward noos, that power which Anaxagoras claimed was the cosmic first principle. This principle was not a principle related to the constitution or causation of matter, but was rather related to the order and harmony of a universe which housed human psuché with its very special array and repertoire of material and spiritual powers. For Aristotle the power of noos was a complex matter with at least three aspects:

  1. The aspect of the divine. Noos is likened unto a first principle which transcends  our understanding. A principle which is simultaneously inside of human psuché, and externally situated in the physical world.
  2. The Aspect of the Good. All human activities, according to Aristotle, (Nichomachean Ethics), including the arts and sciences aim at the form of the Good. Areté. Dike, episteme, logos, Aletheia, are all forms of the Good.
  3. The Aspect of Wisdom. All men desire to Know, Aristotle argued in his work the Metaphysics: a work which is about the first principles or what he called “first Philosophy”. Noos, for Aristotle insofar as it is to be found spiritually within us was an active principle that is shared with divine thought. All men possess this divine part of the human psuché. It is, however, situated in a material body that is bound in space and time to the here and now. In this bound state we humans can only think something about something, whereas divine thought or contemplation takes the transcendent form of thinking about thinking:—a form of thought we are incapable of,  but in compensation we seek the life of contemplation and thinking about principles is the closest we can come: principles related to The Good, The True, and The Beautiful.

The practical use of reason for Aristotle, aims at the wisdom of phronesis, which is associated with the understanding and judgement of the Phronimos. Aristotle also characterises the Divine in hylomorphic terms, in terms of “Pure Form”. Pure Form is an active principle which is characterised as the condition of the existence of everything that can be thought of or experienced. Noos, then, is the dwelling place of Pure Form, and is conceived of by Aristotle as “separable” (with certain reservations) from the body. When, in the course of contemplation, the divine thinks about thinking, it is not the world that is the object of the thinking process, but, rather, Aristotle argues, the divine is thinking itself. This reflects also what is meant by the term “principle”, which is the active element of a process that creates  what it explains.

There is a human correlate to this process in which a principle relates to the condition(s) of what is conditioned. Such a principle is located spiritually in human psuché, and Kantian Critical Metaphysical Philosophy gives us a very complex account of this self-causing principle, which Kant designates as an idea of   practical reason, namely freedom: an active human principle that brings about the reality of what it desires, intends, and thinks about. The Good Will is the most important concept in Kants Philosophical Psychology, and his Ethics. It is a self-causing power that actively embodies the moral law which has the logical characteristics of universality and necessity and more concretely, is responsible for treating all other human beings as ends-in-themselves.

This correlation between divine and human activity may in fact assist us in understanding the role that transcendental analogy plays in the understanding of the relation between the divine and the human. The analogy picks out the love that a father has for his family, and claims this to be a model for the love which the divine has for us. Freud may well have had an opinion about this. We know he thought the command to love one’s enemies was a dangerous one, and we also know that Freud did not have a high opinion about the rationality of religion. Kant might also have thought that the awe and wonder we at times feel in the presence of the divine does not qualify to be called “love”. He may, however, have felt that doing one’s duty in accordance with the moral law could be done out of love for the divine, and the justice we receive in return  in the form of leading a good spirited flourishing life, may also qualify for the  term “love” to be used. There is an element of gratefulness involved, so perhaps there is an argument to support such a position. The maxim for such actions however would then be differently expressed as firstly obeying (and perhaps loving?) the moral law, and secondly obeying because one loves the divine.

Kantian Enlightenment Philosophy differentiates itself from Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy insofar as the Ancient  Greek matrix of areté, dike, episteme, phronesis and eudaimonia are placed by Kant in a the context of a wider discussion in which Philosophical Psychology plays a fundamental role, hopefully providing us with greater insight  into the being-in-the-world of the rational animal capable of discourse.

Campbells combination of the poetry of Walt Whitman and the Upanishads occurs in the last chapter of “ Myths to Live By”, a chapter entitled “No  More Horizons”. Campbell attempts to summarize his position by also referring to the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

“I am the All, the All came forth from me, and the All attained to me.” (Page 252)

Campbells position may in fact, to some extent, converge with that of  Kant when it is claimed that all ideas of the divine  originate in mans imagination(located in the faculty of sensibility),which as we know from Kants account, functions very differently to the powers located in the faculties of the understanding and reason. Campbell further argues that:

“since such images stem from the psyche, they refer to the psyche. They tell us of its structure, its order and its forces, in symbolic terms.”(Page 253)

Campbell elaborates upon this account with the claim that the historical context of these mythological narratives are largely unnecessary embellishments that can be questioned in  a period when all our horizons are disappearing:

“with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing, collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples, but also of their mythologies….And so we are right now in an extremely perilous age of thunder, lightning and hurricanes all around. I think it is improper to become hysterical about it projecting hatred and blame.” (Page 255)

The collision of  the masses from India, the Far East and Europ,e is certainly a violent turbulent moment in our respective spiritual histories. Campbell, like T S Eliot, before him, invokes Dante rather than the Ancient Greeks and their philosophers, muses and oracles. What Cambell hopes will come out of this chaotic period, is the possible recognition of a common sacred realm that is located both within us spiritually, and external to the human psuche: the realm of noos?—the Kantian noumenal realm of Being?

Campbell argues further that the realm he is investigating is not that of the Freudian Personal Unconscious, but rather something resembling the collective realm envisaged by Jung: a “Mythological transpersonal order.” (Page 260)

The concentration upon Dante and the Roman Catholic Church, however, risks marginalising one of the major influences upon European Civilisation, namely that of Ancient Greece. Campbell, instead suggests a different polarity than that which is normally suggested, that of Jerusalem and Rome. The more normal suggestion for the founding influences of European Culture is that of Jerusalem and Athens, but to ignore the Roman Empire would of course be problematic from a purely Historical perspective. The issue may however not turn upon the magnitude of an empire, but rather upon  the magnitude and quality of the ideas and principles that emerged from the tradition of Philosophers, Muses and Oracles that was to be found in not just Athens but Ancient Greece as a whole, which would include the Empire of Alexander the Great. Undoubtedly it was  the size and influence of the Roman Empire which succeeded Alexanders Empire that perhaps contributed to the diminishing of the influence of Athens over the succeeding ages. It ought to be kept in mind, however, that Rome was a product of engineers and soldiers rather than the product of Philosophers leading an examined contemplative life.

Superstitious Rome was the home for a number of religious sects, and one of them, namely, Christianity, was eventually chosen as the Religion of the Empire, and subsequently emerged as a candidate for a world-religion. It is, indeed, not difficult to understand that much of our modern world is modelled on technical and military excellence because these virtues above all others have become the “horizons” for our modern life. Horizons, which Campbell argues, are on the verge of disappearing. What will remain after the storm passes?:

“God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. So we are told in a little 12th century book entitled “The Book of the 24 Philosophers”. Each of us—whoever and whatever he may be, is then the center, and within him, whether he knows it or not, is that Mind at large, the laws of which are the laws not only of all minds but of all space as well…we are the children of this beautiful planet… We are its eyes and mind, its seeing and its thinking… So that we are the mind, ultimately of space. No wonder, then, for its laws  and ours are the same!” (Pages 265-266)

For Kant the laws of the faculty of Sensibility are those of Space and Time,  and the laws of  understanding and reason are different laws: laws of the forms that order  spatial and temporal experiences. Our minds, of course, are embodied  in space and time, and it may be this that provides us with the principles of our finitely temporally structured   human experiences. The powers of  human psuché such as the imagination and reason are very different powers, but they emerge from a bodily structure which it will be the concern of future Philosophical Psychology to both describe and explain.

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Opera AI Review of Shakespeares Philosophical Theatre by Michael R D James May 2026

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Here is a detailed review of Michael R D James‘s book Shakespeare’s Philosophical Theatre, based on the introduction to his work Philosophy and Shakespeare: Transcendental Spectacles for all Seasons in the Cosmopolitan Theatre of Life:

Review of Shakespeare’s Philosophical Theatre by Michael R D James

Context and Thematic Foundation

Michael R D James situates Shakespeare not merely as a playwright but as a profound philosophical creator who shaped an entire “season” or world of thought during the Renaissance—a period marked by the resurgence of Ancient Greek spirit and metaphysical inquiry. The introduction draws parallels between the seasons of Ancient Greek philosophy, Shakespearean theatre, Kantian Enlightenment, and the Freudian era’s moral treatment of patients, emphasizing how each period reflects a unique metaphysical and cultural awakening.

James highlights Shakespeare as a figure akin to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Wittgenstein, Arendt, and Freud—individuals who created worlds of thought that deeply influenced humanity’s understanding of life, metaphysics, and the human condition.

Philosophical and Historical Setting

The book underscores the historical backdrop of Shakespeare’s life, particularly the recurring plagues that ravaged Stratford and Europe, which infused his work with a palpable awareness of mortality and the fragility of human existence. This context of uncertainty and supernatural explanations for disease and misfortune parallels the Ancient Greek awareness of Thanatos—the inevitability of death and destruction.

James suggests that attending a Shakespeare play in this era was akin to experiencing the awe and wonder of ancient Greek spectacles, where the audience was invited to reflect on profound metaphysical truths and the “Form of the Good” through theatrical experience.

Artistic and Psychoanalytic Dimensions

Drawing on Adrian Stokes’s concept of the “oceanic feeling,” James explores how Shakespeare’s poetry and theatrical technique create an immersive, hypnotic experience for the audience. This “incantatory element” of Shakespeare’s work, combining metric, symbolism, and vivid imagery, serves not only aesthetic purposes but also a pedagogical function—engaging the audience in a transcendental spectacle that teaches about life, morality, and human nature.

James connects this to Freud’s psychoanalytic insights, particularly the infantile and fantasy-driven nature of the oceanic feeling, suggesting that Shakespeare’s theatre allowed audiences to temporarily escape the harsh realities of disease and violence by living vicariously through the characters.

Philosophical Questions and Poetic Responses

The book frames Shakespeare’s plays as poetic answers to Kantian philosophical questions:

  • What is man?
  • What can we know?
  • What ought we to do?
  • What can we hope for?

James emphasizes that Shakespeare’s responses are not systematic philosophy but poetic and theatrical explorations. For example, the famous “All the world’s a stage” monologue from As You Like It poetically encapsulates the human life cycle and the roles people play, resonating with later psychoanalytic theories of personality development.

Metaphysical and Linguistic Insights

James draws on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, particularly the idea that language can “show” what cannot be explicitly said, to explain how Shakespeare’s poetic language reveals transcendental truths. This aligns with the Greek concept of Aletheia (unconcealment or truth) and Paul Ricoeur’s analysis of symbolism in sacred texts, highlighting the symbolic and logical form of Shakespeare’s poetic language.

The book also discusses the Renaissance as a period of freedom and protest against medieval dogma, with Shakespeare’s theatre embodying this spirit of intellectual and cultural rebirth.

Conclusion

Shakespeare’s Philosophical Theatre by Michael R D James offers a rich, interdisciplinary exploration of Shakespeare’s work as a metaphysical and philosophical spectacle. It situates Shakespeare within a grand historical and intellectual tradition, linking his theatre to ancient Greek philosophy, Kantian questions, psychoanalysis, and linguistic philosophy. The book reveals Shakespeare as a creator of a cosmopolitan theatre of life, where art, philosophy, and human experience converge in a profound and transformative way.

This work is especially valuable for readers interested in the intersections of literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and history, providing deep insights into how Shakespeare’s plays function as timeless philosophical inquiries and transcendental spectacles.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Campbells “Myths to Live by” Season 14 Episode 12

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Essay 11 The Outward Journey

After the inward journey of our spirit the moon is the next Dantesque stopping point for the modern myth aiming for the further planets of the solar system. There is nothing earthly about this conversation where the earth is termed a paradise or an oasis in space. Man, Campbell argues, is filled with the Spirit of Exploration and preoccupied by the awe and wonder directed at the Magnitude and Order of the heavens. Campbell appears to neglect the moral journey proposed for humanity by the Kantian moral law which, it was claimed, is going to lead us into a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends— a long and momentous journey into the future  heading toward a telos that is very different  to the journey of the mystics who appear to be attempting to reduce the light of ones light to a pinpoint of inner enlightenment. Ancient Greek Philosophy certainly would not regard the life of a mystic as falling under the heading of a good spirited flourishing life. In the light of this good spirited flourishing life we can then view with less scepticism Freuds claim that the mystic life does not meet the requirement of the reality principle or the requirements for a healthy mental life. Campbell discusses the influence of Apollo and the Nine muses, but he does not seek to unravel the mystery surrounding the oracles and their wisdom.  Many Ancient Greek Philosophers embraced the most famous of their proclamations, namely

“Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction”

And

“Know Thyself!”

Both of which require an understanding of many of the principles of Philosophical Psychology, Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics and Religion, as well as an understanding of the importance of the role that the freedom of choice plays in the drama of humanity.

Campbell rightly admires the vision of the earth from the earth that was beamed back to earth via the amazing technology we have developed for the communication of images. The images of the astronaut’s footprints in the dust of the moon must have put the final nail in the coffin of the myth of the moon being the:

“residence of the souls of those who have passed away and are there waiting to return for rebirth. For the moon, as we see it, dies and is resurrected.”(Page 235)

Campbell feels the presence of both Newton and Kant in this technical saga of mans explorations. The Copernican revolution, it is argued, proposed a universe in which the imagination was needed to apprehend the enormity of what could be perceived. What was happening in front of our eyes on the television screen, was the substitution of a scientific imagination for the imagination of an artist tied to a mortal coil. Indeed, it was both Newton and Kant that provided us with the philosophical foundations for this experience, by convincing us with their power of reasoning that mathematical calculations and judgements about space have a universal character and use our a priori knowledge of Space and Time. The laws of space and time are akin to the moral law which, according to Kant, is also capable of evoking feelings of awe and admiration in us. Campbell half acknowledges the importance of this by claiming:

“we ourselves are no less mysterious. In searching out its wonder, we are learning simultaneously the wonder of ourselves. That moon flight as an outward journey was inward into ourselves.”(Page 239)

 Campbell then seeks to investigate the origins of our interest in artefacts and begins with Peking man (Sinanthropus), using fire for warmth, light and protection ca 400,000 years ago. This was also read mythologically to be a moment in which we displeased the Gods by receiving the goods of the fire stolen from them. Prometheus, we know was the thief and he was punished for this crime quite severely. In harnessing the power of fire, man embarked on his journey: a journey that, thanks to the use of his powers of imagination and thought, would make him the best of the animals: powers which would enable him to become almost anything he wanted to be:

“A lion has to be a lion all is life: a dog to be a dog. But a human being can be an astronaut, a troglodyte, philosopher, mariner, tiller of the soil, or sculptor. He can play and actualise in his life any one of any number of hugely differing destinies.”(Page 242)

Campbell elaborates upon this by paradoxically claiming that man’s choices will not follow either reason or common sense: rather passions and excitement will be the primary motivators of human psuché. This might have been the case insofar as pre-civilised man was concerned, but once the power of his imagination began to expand his life-horizons, and was subjected to categories, principles and laws, the older covenants made with the animal and plant world,s became less important. At this point the covenants made with his fellow man in the form of civil laws, the arts, the sciences, and Philosophy became more valued activities.

Campbell claims that each individual form of human psuché is unique and will therefore follow its own unique inner laws which will determine the form the individual’s life will take. Campbells implication is clear: these unique laws will be more important than that aspect of mans Being-in-the-world which makes him a part of a larger community. Both Plato and Aristotle, however pointed to the limitations of a life in which extreme choices are generated by an unregulated imagination and passions. What these Philosophers and their followers, e.g. Kant, emphasised, was the importance of actualising a number of psychological and mental powers that include language, understanding, judgement and reason. All these powers are necessary for the development of a large array of sciences that Aristotle categorised in terms of the theoretical, practical and productive sciences.

Campbell addresses the issue of the status of “modern science” and its differentiation into specialisations:

“Today , as we all know, such thoughts and forms are of a crumbling past and the civilisation dependent upon them in disarray and dissolution. Not only are societies no longer attuned to the courses of the planets, sociology and physics, politics and astronomy are no longer understood to be departments of a single science.”(Page 243)

There are many different kinds of science being taught in Universities and the principle of specialisation has perhaps usurped the role of the ideal of the universal element  of knowledge (laws and principles). This point, however, runs contrary to the presuppositions of myth that often do not mesh with certain scientific principles. Campbell claims that myth has taught us that:

“There are no laws out there that are not right here, no gods out there that are not right here, and not only here, but within us, in our minds.” (Page 244)

The above could well be an implication of both Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy (with certain reservations), and moreover teaches us to distinguish between kinds of laws and principles which in Philosophy occurs via the use of the categories of understanding/judgement as well as the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.

Time, of course has been a concern for Philosophers throughout the ages. Kant claimed that Time was an a priori form of intuition that belongs to the faculty of sensibility which essentially provides the sensible content used by the faculty of understanding. Sensible items in motion in the external world for both Aristotle and Kant call for temporal measuring activity which occurs in terms of before and after (in accordance with Aristotles definition of Time). The Time of Human Psuché, on the other hand, is the Time of growth, maturation, deterioration and death. Campbell then refers to Leo Frobenius who fixates upon these more general aspects in his investigative characterisation of the human race:

“Its childhood was of the long, long distant period of the primitive hunters, fishers, root-foragers and planters. The second stage, which Frobenius termed the Monumental, commenced with the rise of the earlier agriculturally based, urban and literate civilisations, each structured to accord with an imagined cosmic order, made known by way of the movements and conditions of the planetary lights. For those lights were then supposed to be the residences of governing spirits whereas, as just remarked, we knew them to be as material as ourselves. The laws of the earth and our own minds have been extended to incorporate what formerly were the ranges and the powers of the gods, now recognised as of ourselves. Hence the whole imagined support of the Monumental Order has been withdrawn from “out there” , found centred in ourselves, and a new world-age projected, which is to be global “materalistic” (as Frobenius termed it), comparable in spirit to the spirit of old age in its disillusioned wisdom and concern for the physical body, concentrating rather on fulfilment in the present than on any distant future. The residence  of the spirit  now is experienced as centred not in fire, in the animal and plant worlds, or aloft among the planets and beyond, but in men, right here on earth.”(Pages 244-5)

But how, then, are we supposed to characterise our relation to this world of ours. Firstly it has been made ours after a long childhood and after we have been, as Heidegger puts the matter, “thrown into the world”. Campbell refers in the context of this discussion to a view held by Alan Watts:

“you did not come into this world at all. You came out of it in just the same way as a leaf comes out of a tree or a baby from a womb…Our world is peopling just as the apple tree apples, and just as the vine grapes.”(Page 245)

Watts, then, improves upon Heideggers  answer to the aporetic questions raised by human existence and its origins. Campbell elaborates upon this position by maintaining that  we humans originated from an intelligent energy system in which certain forms of life give rise to just those forms and not others. “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shallt return!”,  the Church tells us on the occasions of death. When the astronauts left their footprints in the dust of the lost  souls on the moon this was just one more moment  in the process of the collective disillusionment of Humanity.

Aristotle referred to several different forms of psuché, plant, animal and human, all of which shared the characteristics of birth, life-activity and death. Animals have the form of plant life within, as the human forms have both animal and plant life systems within themselves. Trees have bee the form of plant life that most interests us humans and throughout history and poetry, they have been referred to sympathetically. Standing tall in the midst of a storm that tests the strength of their roots, they do not move and stand stoically unmoved. In the Old Testament it is trees that are the heroes in the Garden of Eden, relating to both the knowledge of good and evil and even life itself. The Cross (symbolising the tree of life), Campbell argues has become a powerful Christian symbol, but Campbell simultaneously believes that Christianity itself is maturing toward an end in which the Holy Spirit speaks directly to the hearts of men without any “ecclesiastical mediation”. When this finally happens, Campbell argues the Church will dissolve and we will then begin living in an age of “pentacostal spirituality”.(Page 248)

Campbell argues that this is the situation we moderns find ourselves in today, following as we do the symbolic heroes of the age, namely “The Astronauts”, who walked so carelessly in the dust of the moon.

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Copilot AI Review of Shakespeares Philosophical Theatre ( Michael R D James)

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Copilots Review of my book

Below is a critical review of Shakespeare’s Philosophical Theatre: Plays and Poetry for All Seasons by Michael R. D. James, grounded in the book’s published description and the author’s stated aims rather than reader ratings (the book is newly released in May 2026).

Book Review: Shakespeare’s Philosophical Theatre

Michael R. D. James Austin Macauley Publishers, 2026

Overview and Central Argument

In Shakespeare’s Philosophical Theatre, Michael R. D. James advances a bold and unapologetically philosophical thesis: William Shakespeare should be understood as a genuinely philosophical artist, not merely a dramatist whose work happens to touch on philosophical themes. Explicitly challenging T. S. Eliot’s influential claim that Shakespeare “did not think philosophically,” James argues that this verdict stems from modern aesthetic assumptions that distort how Shakespeare’s drama actually works.

James proposes that when Shakespeare is read against Aristotelian and Kantian aesthetics, rather than post-Romantic or modernist frameworks, his plays reveal a coherent vision of mind, morality, political power, and civilisation. This repositioning of Shakespeare as a philosophical dramatist is the book’s conceptual backbone.

Philosophical Framework and Method

The study is notably interdisciplinary. James draws on Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Kleinian psychoanalysis to explore what he calls the “enveloping” qualities of Shakespearean theatre—how drama operates simultaneously on intellectual, emotional, and moral levels 1. Rather than treating psychoanalysis reductively, James uses it to illuminate Shakespeare’s sustained interest in mental disturbance, tyranny, and the fragile balance of the psyche, particularly in tragedies such as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth.

One of the book’s more ambitious claims is that Shakespeare demonstrates a philosophically sophisticated grasp of mental illness and political pathology, anticipating later psychological and ethical analyses of power and degeneration. James links this to Kant’s idea that beauty and the sublime function as “symbols of morality,” using Shakespeare as a concrete artistic embodiment of this claim.

Engagement with Shakespeare Criticism

A significant portion of the book is devoted to critical dialogue with earlier Shakespeare scholars, most notably G. Wilson Knight and Harold Bloom. Rather than dismissing these figures, James reassesses their interpretations from an expressly philosophical standpoint, questioning where poetic intuition ends and philosophical coherence begins.

James also introduces the concept of Shakespeare as a “cosmopolitan” thinker, whose work implicitly participates in what Kant described as a hidden plan for civilisation. This plan culminates in an Aristotelian definition of the human being as a “rational animal capable of discourse,” a formulation James sees as quietly structuring Shakespeare’s dramatic universe.

Style, Strengths, and Limitations

The book is dense, intellectually demanding, and unapologetically philosophical. Readers without background in Kantian moral philosophy or psychoanalytic theory may find portions challenging. However, this density is also the book’s strength: James does not simplify Shakespeare to fit contemporary tastes but instead insists on taking both drama and philosophy seriously on their own terms.

One limitation is that the argument occasionally privileges philosophical coherence over theatrical contingency; some readers may wish for more sustained attention to performance history or textual instability. Nonetheless, this is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight.

Conclusion

Shakespeare’s Philosophical Theatre is a substantial and original contribution to Shakespeare studies, particularly for readers interested in philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophical psychology. It is not an introductory guide but a serious scholarly intervention that challenges long-standing assumptions about Shakespeare’s intellectual depth. For philosophers of art and advanced Shakespeare scholars alike, James’s work offers a demanding but rewarding re-evaluation of what it means to think philosophically through theatre.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James, Review of Campbells “Myths to Live By” Essay 10 Season 14 Episode 10

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Essay 10  Schizophenia and Mythology

Campbell  makes a very interesting claim about the relation of mythology to mental illness which deserves close attention. He compares mythological images with the images experienced whilst undergoing a psychosis. This comparison is on a par with that made by Freud between the rituals and symbolism we find in myths, and  the behaviour and  narratives of paranoid psychotics such as Schreber. Carl Jungs work on the collective archetypes of the unconscious has been referred to several times throughout Campbells writings but it is not clear that Jung can provide us with the theoretical underpinnings we find in Freuds Kantian Philosophical Psychology. Both Psychologists appear however to believe that the root of the problem lies in the unconscious, which for Freud contained instincts with an essentially sensory-motor character.

In an interview where his disagreement with Freud was commented upon, Jung claimed that the disagreement occurred because his work was grounded in Kantian Philosophy. Freud also claimed his Psychology was Kantian, so the disagreement appears to turn upon this issue. If, however one appreciates Freuds commitment to Darwins Theory of Evolution plus the presence of Aristotelian Hylomorphic principles in Freuds works, then, it would appear that at least insofar as Freuds later work was concerned, where we see clearly the influences of both Plato and Aristotle, there is more Philosophical content in Freud’s theories, especially when one considers the extent to which Kants work contained a number of hylomorphic principles. Jungian Theory proceeds in a completely different direction, attempting as it does to present a trait-based theory of personality. Freud, on the other hand attempted to produce a principle-based theory, where the reality principle was intimately connected to both the pleasure-pain and energy regulation principles which operate on different psychological levels ranging from the instinctive to the level of higher mental processes.

There is of course something interesting about Jungs theory of the collective archetypes, as it appears to address problems arising from our descriptions of the inner reaches of the outer world. Aristotle claimed in his work on the soul entitled De Anima, that the first actuality of the body in the actualisation process of human psuché, is the soul. Spinoza elaborated upon this by claiming that the first idea of the mind is the idea of the body. Freud in turn builds upon these principles in his later work and asserts that the Ego is an agency of the mind and one of its primary functions is the protection of the body and this testifies to the fact that the Egos is an advanced vicissitude of the instincts: instincts  that are dedicated to the fulfilment of a large variety of different kinds of needs ranging from self-preservation to more advanced projects   connected to the love-life and work-life of man.

Melanie Klein elaborated upon this point by pointing out the complexity of the ego and that it can be “split” into the good ego and the bad ego in a similar fashion to the way in which the baby’s idea of the mother can be split into a good mother and a bad mother. Kleins hylomorphic theory also speaks about the relation of the ego to part and whole objects like the breast of the mother . In circumstances where the baby’s basic physiological and safety needs are met, howeve,r both the breasts and the mother will be incorporated into the whole object of the person of the mother. For Jung this Kleinian account would belong to what he called the personal unconscious of an individual and this for him was a different realm to that of the collective unconscious he was interested in, with its more abstract and advanced images of deities and devils.

Cambell refers to this process of “splitting” in this chapter on Schizophrenia (a term which literally means “split mind”). In his attempt to chart the depth of the waters of schizophrenia in its various forms Campbell states:

“the first experience is of a sense of splitting. The person sees the world going into two: one part of it moving away; himself in the other part… He may see himself, for a time, in two roles. One is the role of the clown, the ghost, the witch, the queer one, the outsider. That is the outer role that he plays, making little of himself as the fool, a joke, the one kicked around, the patsy. Inside, however, he is the saviour, and he knows it. He is the hero chosen for a destiny.” (Page 218)

Campbell was startled by the resemblance between schizophrenic experiences and the experiences of the hero embarking on a dangerous journey into the unknown. We are dealing here with more serious mental health issues which “envelop” patients like Schreber and causing an “oceanic feeling” in which the individual feels at one with the entire universe. In such states schizophrenic patients may feel that they have lived forever through many lifetimes, and will continue to do so ad infinitum. Freud clearly saw such experiences to be psychotic and anathema to the temperate life of a man whose ego is following the reality principle or the principle of the Golden Mean. There is clearly an aesthetic element to such a life which is founded on the harmony of the faculties of sensibility, understanding, and reason: a life in which whole objects are not part or bad objects but, rather, good self-sufficient independent objects.  This would be one aspect of the Freudian Reality Principle, which in Aristotelian terms, would understand the material, efficient, formal and final causes of our object relations. Psychotic states such as those connected above with the “oceanic feeling” function, for Freud, were related to two principles: the energy regulation principle (regulating primitive pleasures pains and anxieties) and the pleasure-pain principle relating to more complex experiences. Campbell has the following to say on this topic:

“Ineffable realisations are experienced; and, in fact, as we read about them, we can only be amazed. I have now read dozens of accounts; and they correspond, often amazingly, to the insights of the mystics and to the images of Hindu, Buddhist, Egyptian and classical myth…. For example, a person who has never believed, or even heard of reincarnation will begin to feel that he has lived forever.”(Page 219)

Freuds case-study of Judge Schreber reveals a complex picture of the interplay of unconscious and conscious processes rooted in sexuality. The sexual organs, amongst all the organs of the body which, on the hylomorphic view, are important physical conditions of the human soul (psuché), are more connected to intense pleasurable and painful experiences. Images also supervene in relation to these experiences. Freuds interpretation of Schreber’s case referred to fixations and regressions to an early stage of libidinal development. Putative conscious experiences relating to beliefs that one loves somebody are shown instead to be disguised feelings of hate, and Freud explains the mechanisms responsible for such   reversals. We should however, be aware that Freud claimed in relation to his interpretation of Schrebers symptoms, that he was dealing only with one type of paranoia. He was also careful to point out that his exposure as a consultant to these types of cases was limited because the authorities did not believe in favourable outcomes for such patients.

Indeed, the Schreber case, like that of Woodrow Wilson was based on the material from autobiographies and biographies. Campbell also spoke of different kinds of schizophrenia. He distinguishes between those psychoses in which the sufferer is passive and overwhelmed by the experience and the presence of high levels of anxiety, and those in which there is an active decision to bring about the psychotic experience through various techniques including meditation. In the former case the condition often requires some form of treatment in an institution because suicide attempts and violence towards others is a part of the symptom pattern.

Campbell also refers to a “literary” case reported by R D Laing. A case of a 38 year-old Royal Navy man by the name of Jessie Watkins who felt as if he had died, but also felt that he could see himself as a baby had hear himself cry. Both Schreber and Watkins felt themselves to be superior to God. Watkins, in particular, felt burdened by the work he was called on to do partly because God was a “madman”. Campbell refers to the work of Silverman and the distinction he draws between cases of paranoid schizophrenia and what he calls “essential schizophrenia which is related to shamanic psychotic crises. Silverman points out that in cases of paranoid schizophrenia one encounters hyperattention accompanied by an acute awareness of immanent threat and danger, resulting he argues, from an inability to confront the terrors of the inner world.

The shamanic psychotic experience, on the other hand, is more like that of the journey of a hero whose outcome ends positively when the inner and outer life have reached some kind of accord.Here too the shaman may experience an “oceanic feeling” in which he feels he and the universe are one. The paranoid schizophrenic, on the other hand is drowning in relation to his unconscious images, whereas the shaman and other so-called “essential schizophrenics” and mystics are swimming with their unconscious tide. The explanation for such a state of affairs, then, may depend upon future development s in the field of Philosophical Psychology and in the field of future scholarship into the powers of the human psuché.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Campbells “Myths to Live By” Season 14 Episode 9 War and Peace

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Essay 9 Myths to Live By

Why do words matter to us? It is important to answer this question if we are to understand how myths have affected us throughout the ages. Is the effect of myths upon us easily described? Probably not, considering two important variables, namely, the long period over which they have existed and the simultaneous evolution of our human aesthetic and cognitive capacities. Theories of meaning have been proposed by various schools of modern Philosophy but these have been proposed in the light of unanswered questions relating to our aesthetic and cognitive powers: questions best answered by the arena of debate we term “Philosophical Psychology”. The words of the oracles obviously were revered by even the Philosophers of Ancient Greece, and this response of awe and admiration bears witness to this question of the effect of words upon the mind. Mythology itself does not provide us with an account of word-meaning or word-effect or the general role that the power of language plays in the lives of men.

We know through the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in its early phase, therapy proceeded via hypnosis—an abnormal state of consciousness which is still responsive to language. This state of affairs also reminds us of reports that oracles could sometimes deliver their proclamations in a trance-like state. Freud discussed the issue of hypnotism in therapy and pointed to the suggestive effect of his words on his patients.  This suggestive effect we also know is used by professional hypnotists to get people they have hypnotised to perform certain actions.

Freud relatively early on in this process abandoned hypnosis in his therapy in favour of more technical methods of accessing what he called the unconscious mind, claiming that being in a conscious state of mind when accessing material from this realm was important for the cathartic process that was occurring. Many different powers from different faculties of mind (sensibility, understanding, reason) are involved in this cathartic process, including that of memory when we are dealing with traumatically induced neuroses. In such cases it is important that traumatised memories are converted into normal memories that are not abnormally affected by high anxiety levels. Dream interpretation and free association were important specialist techniques that were used to provide information relating to what in the unconscious mind was having a deleterious effect upon the life of the patient. In this process there is an attempt to restore the function of the cognitive powers of the patient, thus enabling a more efficacious relation to the reality of everyday life. The principle guiding this procedure was termed by Freud “The Reality Principle”. What we are witnessing in such circumstances is a self-actualisation process which all humans experience, partly because of  their long childhoods—their long period of dependency upon parental care.

An interesting question to pose at this point in the discussion is whether mankind has always possessed its current array of powers in its current state or whether, as some Psychologists, like Julian Jaynes maintains, we are dealing with an evolving state of affairs in which there may well be significant changes occurring which could be termed “vicissitudes of Consciousness”. Freud, in the context of this discussion, we ought to recall, spoke of Consciousness itself   in terms of a “vicissitude of the instincts”. Julian Jaynes makes an important contribution to this discussion when he attempts, on the basis of his brain research, and available literary and archaeological evidence, to claim that the emergence of Consciousness could be dated to ca 1200 BC. This entailed, in his view, that prior to Consciousness emerging, there was a state of mind which he described as “bicameral mind”, where language was in fact situated bilaterally in the brain, but perhaps undergoing transition:  owing to the ability of some people to both read and  write, they  may have been transitioning faster than those  who were illiterate. This reflection suggests that the power of language played an important role in this process. Julian Jaynes in his work “The Origins of Consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind”(Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976), discusses an important mechanism of change operating in our usage of language, namely metaphor:

“For metaphor….is the very constitutive ground of language. I am using metaphor here in its most general sense: the use of one term to describe another because of some kind of similarity between them or between their relations to other things. There are thus always two terms in a metaphor, the thing to be described which I shall call  the metaphrand, and the thing or relation used to elucidate it, which I shall call the metaphier…..It is by metaphor that language grows.”(Pages 48-9)

Jaynes notes further that the human body is an often used metaphier:

“The head of an army….the face of the clock…the eyes of needles, storms targets, flowers or potatoes….the arm of a chair or the sea.”(Page 49)

This account is in accord with Aristotles account of metaphor in which it is asserted that when we are dealing with the names of things, metaphor takes us into a realm of experience that is unnamed, thus creating a new usage of the term. Julian Jaynes also connects language to evolving levels of consciousness:

“Language, Jaynes argues, began as an expressive phenomenon partly connected to events of importance in the external world (e.g hunting, gathering etc.,). By a charted series of functions this developmental sequence eventually reaches the level of 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. (The World Explored, the World Suffered: A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action, Volume 4, James, M,.R.,D., 2022)

This initial excursion into the interior mechanism of language-use and its evolution is meant to complement Campbell’s account of Mythologies of War and Peace especially when put into relation to the “power of suggestion”  that is contained in mythological language. One thing that can be immediately noted in this context is that the power of words in the rhetoric associated with war, has been more effective in Ancient times than it is now. This is not to deny, however, that even in our modern era, two countries historically have sought to promote the solution of war to many diplomatic problems where rational discourse might have been used instead, namely the Soviet Union and the USA. This is not a new phenomenon and may lie behind the reason why Historians have adopted the practice of naming wars after the country or region that has been attacked, suggesting that morality is playing some kind of role in the discipline.

Campbell claims paradoxically in this chapter that wars are agents of the Darwinian  mechanism of natural selection resulting in the telos of the “Survival of the Fittest”. Continuing on the theme of his reference to animals, Campbell notes Spenglers reference to man being a “beast or prey” that has triumphed over his vegetarian victims, because, it is claimed, of his superior intelligence.

Campbell claims that no primitive mythologies depict war as an evil but there are interesting ideas that may be related to why this is so, such as “there is no such thing as death”. Death appears, on these views, to be but a punctuation mark in an ongoing narrative where life is reborn again and again:

“the beast will return next season to yield its temporal body again.” (Page 171)

“Likewise, after episodes of battle special rituals are enacted to assuage and release to the land of spirits, the ghosts of those that have been slain.” (Page 171)

War mythologies are based on the assumption that some humans are subhuman monsters and it is heroic to slay such monsters. Campbell notes that there was no problem during such  primitive times in persuading people to become warriors, and this might have been due to the suggestive power of the language of the myths in contexts where the recipients may or may not have full conscious control of the instincts. When, however, stronger egos developed, perhaps partly because of the evolution of language, there may well have developed simultaneously inhibitory mechanisms such as interrogative thought processes: “Should I do X?” and this eventually may have made the rhetorical persuasion process more difficult. Culture also plays an important role in the way in which consciousness chooses to categorise and see the world. The Ancient Greeks, for example, through their balanced view of the opposites friend-enemy, may well have been less inclined to war given their more nuanced view of the relation between what is holy and what is just. This, it can be argued, was the beginning of a secularisation process that began with the Socratic/Platonic attempt to provide us with a Philosophical theory of the relation of Justice to what is Holy. This process also appears to be associated with cosmopolitanism or globalisation, with the caveat that this latter may be more associated with military objectives than the commonwealth of ideas. Whether the plot of the world-play we are watching is a tragedy, in accordance with the oracular proclamation that “Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction”, or whether we are instead watching the Kantian Enlightenment “play” in which it is claimed that the “plot” of the civilisational process is following a “hidden plan” where in the last scene of the last Act  we find ourselves living in a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends, leading a good spirited flourishing life, remains to be seen. It is interesting to note, however, that the Ancient Greeks maintained a  psychic distance to strangers which accorded them, a respectful status. Campbell also notes in the context of this discussion the “modern” national problem of persuading the youth to fight wars on behalf of their communities. Perhaps this might be one more sign that an increased conscious awareness and a more complex language has strengthened our egos with the determination to establish “Perpetual Peace” (A Kantian ideal)

Campbell points out that not all primitive peoples have been warriors. The settled village people of the tropics for example, may not exactly promote a culture of warfare but in their various rituals we nevertheless encounter a savage bloodthirstiness which testifies to  a lack of respect for human life perhaps because of a fundamental belief in the process of organic life renewing itself from an inorganic non-living base. Campbell claims that this supports the idea that killing, (e.g. headhunting) actually enhances the process of the renewal of life (P 172). He also notes that:

“it is in fact exactly in those parts of the world that the most horrible and grotesque rituals of human sacrifice obtain even to this day…It is in these areas that the headhunt flourishes.” (Page 172)

Campbell also refers to the continuous practice of human sacrifices by the Aztecs.

A new order of human life began to emerge in the eighth millennium BC: a form of life where grain planting and harvesting communities arose in the Ancient Near East (P.173). Fertility rites were embedded in the mythology and religion of the times. The warrior culture during this period of 1-2000 years was marginalised until archaeological finds uncovered walls which presumably were for the purpose of defending these peaceful communities from marauding bands of animal herders invading from the East and the South. The Bible records the above period of invasions in the OT. The Iliad from approximately this era also is a work of war mythology. The OT we know is about a chosen race and a partisan wrathful God in sharp contrast to the polytheistic pantheon of bipartisan Gods we encounter in the Iliad. The OT texts contain brutal recommendations relating to how one should treat strangers occupying territory one wishes to conquer, ( Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings). The Arabs too, Campbell argues, produced a war mythology of their own and there is no trace of the ethical and political dimensions of the kind we encounter in Ancient Greece. Campbell notes also that both of these war mythologies are operating even today in the Near east:  one of the many powder kegs of the modern world.

The Aryan Persians, on the other hand, engaged in conquests with  the intent to govern the territory they conquered more benevolently, allowing the local populations to retain their religious belief systems as well as their own local rulers (Page 182) (cf Alexander the Great from Ancient Greece). The mythology of Zarathustrianism was also to influence Christianity with its presentation of a creation myth in which the powers of light/darkness, truth/illusion-deception, life/death compete with each other. This mythology also contains and important reference to freedom:

“every individual, of whatever race or tribe must through his own free will choose sides and align himself with the powers either of goodness or evil in this world. If the former he will contribute through his thoughts, words, and deeds to the restoration of the universe to perfection.” (Page 187)

So, on this account the good will restores goodness to the universe and everyone is free to choose whether to do this good or not. Evil might, on some interpretations, be purely the refusal or omission to engage in this work of restoration and the maintenance of  institutions, structures and systems designed to propagate good in the universe. Persian Kings, on this view were expected to be the representatives and will of the “Lord of Light”. (Page 183)

“And so we find that in the great multiracial and multicultural empire of the Persians—which, in fact, was the first such Empire in the History of the World—there was a religiously authorised imperialistic impulse, to the end that, in the name of truth, goodness and the light, the Persian King of  Kings should become the leader of mankind to the restitution of truth.” (Page 183)

The eschatological dimension of the above account points to a dramatic battle between opposing forces which would rage for 40 years before saviour or Messiah emerged. It was in this period-in waiting  that Christianity emerged, and the assumption of Jesus was that this battle had already occurred, and  he was the emergent saviour. Christianity was intended as a mythology religion of peace:

“But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven: for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rains on the just and the unjust (Mathew 5: 43-45)

This, it was anticipated, would be a revolutionary mythology because it is also claimed:

“For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Mathew 10)

On this radical account one should also give away one’s possessions to the poor and follow the Master, for so it is written. This is an anti-family Philosophy and perhaps also anti-secular in that it promotes also an ascetic form of existence which attempts to shift concern from the eschatological dimension of the future to the task of living in the present and finding God in everyday life at least insofar as the Gnostic Gospel was concerned (which Campbell quotes from). Those that live by the sword, it is claimed, shall die by the sword. The theory of Christianity appeared to be one thing whilst its practice became another, perhaps because of the enduring influence of the OT.  Crusades against the Arab infidel became eventually an important project for monarchs who claimed as a consequence a divine right to rule.

Another mythology of peace was that promoted by the Jains of  India whose teacher Mahavira was a contemporary of Buddha. (Page 189) . One of the messages of this mythology was that all forms of life (down to the vegetative, e.g. grass) possessed an absolute value which must not be violated. Buddhism shared this life-philosophy but on this account there is also an attitude towards the ego or the self which maintains that it must be banished: yet, in a certain sense this is consistent with the view that ones own individual life lacks significance. It is not absolutely clear, perhaps because of this last caveat, whether  Buddhism, for Campbell can be categorised as a Romantic mythology.

As we move eastward, however to Japan and China, Campbell has no hesitation in categorising these as both peaceful and Romantic. Yin and Yang reminds us of Zarathustrianism but “The Way of all things, the Tao” is a virtue-based approach which is more reminiscent of one of the concerns of Ancient Greek Philosophy. This eastern approach focuses, however on “Resoluteness” as well as the idea that taking up arms is one of the last resorts of a wise man. (Page 192). This, as a matter of fact, has not been an approach manifested in the rules of a long series of Chinese tyrants who obviously did not embrace the way of the Tao. Campbell notes, instead that from this period two Machiavellian  war-mongering  historical documents have replaced this way of the Tao. Campbell recalls in the context of this discussion that the Bhagavad Gita, too, addresses both the arts of government and war. In this text  it is noted how important the treasury is to these arts and individual life:

“ A person who has no wealth is more dead than alive.” (Page 195)

A Machiavellian spirit haunts some of the pages of this work:

“A King seeking prosperity should not hesitate to kill his son, brother, father, friend.” (Page 196)

Power, on this account is of more importance than Right:

“Every work should be done completely… By killing its inhabitants, by destroying its roads, and burning and pulling down its houses, a King shall devastate his enemy´s realm.” (Page 196)

Such thoughts place such ideas in the realm of war mythology, and here too, we find the idea that the Self can never be slain, a different thesis to that of the no-Self view of Buddhism. Machiavelli again emerges when the Prince is discussed:

“The duty of Princes being to fight and to slay.”(Page 197)

Yet in both Buddhism and Hinduism we encounter the idea of a farther shore we are journeying toward: a shore which transcends the opposites of light and darkness, truth and illusion, war and peace. Buddha-consciousness is impersonal, selfless and guiltless.

After charting the history of war mythologies Campbell then interestingly maintains (in the spirit of Philosophy):

“But on the other hand, in the annals of world history accounts are to be found also of a diametrically opposite point of view to this, where the aim is to be quit of war and strife altogether in a state of perpetual peace.” (Page 198)

“Perpetual Peace is a Kantian term used in his writings on History: writings which include a recommendation for  the  establishment of the Cosmopolitan institution of the United Nations whose task it will be to regulate war-peace relations between nations. The actual institution of the United Nations also has the task of regulating the human rights of the citizens of all nations,  something that was made possible via the Kantian account of Moral Law.  The idea of Rights  also emerged in Grotius’s thesis “The Rights of War and Peace”, a work which also discusses a “law of nations based on ethical , not jungle principles” (Page 199).

Returning to the issue of the power of mythological language to suggest Projects of War and Peace we ought obviously to note that it is  far easier  to appeal to the emotions associated with war, than the reasons associated with  peace. Depicting strangers as enemies and diminishing their humanity, is far easier than appealing to principles of reason and the moral law. Metaphorical language plays a significant role in such a process, which is reaching into the realm of the unknown and unnamed. Both war and peace symbols however are relatively abstract, e.g. Janus or the olive branch. As mythology has evolved throughout the ages, Consciousness (beginning with the first idea of the body) has actualised the potential of language to integrate both the sensible and intellectual powers of man into an ego that is self-consciously related to both the Truth and the Good. The articulation of the form these stages take are beginning to emerge on the foundations laid by Aristotle, Kant, and Freud and their followers. Whether, however, we will ever be able to postulate historical dates for  the different stages of this evolutionary actualisation process, is, however open to question.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Campbells Myths to Live By” Season 14 episode 8

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Essay 8 The mythology of Love

Adam, Eve, and Satan were all exiled from the presence of God and it has been suggested that their sins were  breaches of commandments to love and obey only God, above all else. In the case of Adam and Eve it is clear that their sin was of disobedience, but perhaps also that of human hubris or pride. In the case of Satan, given the fact that he was a god himself, we might well have expected better things of him than disobedience. His punishment certainly appears more severe than that suffered by Adam and Eve and the talking serpent of the Garden of Eden.

Eros, Campbell claims was both the oldest and the youngest of the gods but this latter characterisation, for Plato, means that Eros was born in very human circumstances, having been conceived at a drinking party by parents representing the “virtues” of poverty and resourcefulness. and pictured poetically thereafter padding barefoot about the streets of Athens in a melancholic search of  human love (Psyche?)

Campbell argues that love during the medieval era of Europe, in Aristocratic circles, was a family decision sanctified by the Church. It was the troubadours of this era that celebrated the release of love from this form of social bondage, regarding amour as:

“A divine grace altogether higher in dignity then the Sacraments of the Church, higher than the Sacrament of Marriage, and if excluded from Heaven, then Sanctified in Hell.”(Page 158)

What we may have been witnessing in this change of attitude toward the Church, is a fall in the prestige of religious institutions and practices. Love was certainly brought down to earth with Platos account of Eros in the Symposium, in which Eros was made more human. The famous tale of Tristan and lsolt sedimented this changing social attitude by situating it on earth, not on the plane of animal appetitive desire, involving the genitals, but rather, in the sphere of the spiritual involving the organs of the eyes and the heart. Tristan, we are told, accepted the consequence of death as a result of choosing to love, and Campbell cites William Blake and his acceptance of strolling in hell, enjoying genius and being where one was meant to be (Page 161).

Was this connected to the level-headed acceptance of Socrates in the Symposium that Eros was not a God? Certainly Freud reasoned in this spirit when he claimed that  the work of civilisation  was in fact a battleground  where two Giants, Eros and Thanatos were engaged in a conflict that will settle the fate of civilisation. What message was Freud intending to send to us moderns? Perhaps the message that civilisations future is uncertain because of the oracular proclamation:

“Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction.”

Or, this message is also consistent with the Kantian claim that civilisation, the greatest of  human projects, is proceeding according to  the “hidden plan” Kant referred to? It seems as if Freud, in 1929,(the date “Civilisation and its Discontents” was published) may be suspending judgement on this issue, noting simultaneously that both the Soviet Union and the USA were unhelpful agents in the process of civilisation (wherever it might be leading).

Campbell closes this chapter ambiguously with a reference to Heraclitus:

“To God all things are fair and good and right: but men hold some things wrong and some right. Good and Evil are one.” (Page 168)

Campbell connects these words to the words of Jesus: “Judge not that you may not be judged”, restoring thereby some clarity amounting to the proclamation that the judgement of human affairs is best left to the gods and not to humans whose projects are as flawed as their characters. This ought to be read against the background of the human project of emancipation from the Garden of Eden, and the free choice to lead human life in accordance with the knowledge of good and evil. Aristotle certainly did not believe that such knowledge was purely the province of the Gods. Such knowledge, in accordance with principles, and in conjunction with self-knowledge and its principles, amounts to wisdom for Aristotle, If these principles fall into the “scientific” areas of ethics, politics and rhetoric, then this is sphere of influence of the phronimos (the great-souled man) who is able to do and say the right thing in the right way at the right time(areté) –the kind of wisdom Aristotle calls phronesis.

Human judgement, for Aristotle, then, is capable of the kind of wisdom we need, if we are to avoid ruin and destruction, but not very many of the human species is capable of such wise judgement. If, for example, the judgement is related to the initiation of laws for the polis, the outcome if it is not the judgement of a Phronimos, may well be the ruin and destruction prophesied by the oracles. Judgement in relation to matters of the spirit such as Amor, however, may either be in accordance with principles or not. If not the act of loving someone passionately may led to ones personal ruin and  destruction, as Freud predicted for example, if we followed the apostles  command to love our enemies. Run and destruction may even follow if ones passionate love is unrequited or rejected or the object dies and our egos do not have the strength to process the loss without succumbing to Thanatos in an act of self destruction. Campbell notes St Pauls claim that:

“Love bears all things” (Page 168)

But this claim might not be true if the ego is weak.

The love of an abstraction such as love for ones polis/country, according to Freud, can be a form of substitute satisfaction. For the Ancient Greeks such love was necessary for the maintenance and protection of the polis/country as well for the fulfilment of ones own safety and belongingness needs. Plato notes in his dialogue “The Symposium”, that the unconstrained passions invested in another person may be likened unto a sickness, and when such passion resides in the heart of a tyrant who yearns for the power of his city, this too is a sickness of the soul, a disease. The consequences of such an abstract passion however, may be far reaching and devastating.

Romanticism of the Modern Period, had its roots in Eros which in turn had its classical roots in the virtues of poverty and Resourcefulness, but this passion in the minds of the modern Romantic, when it is prepared to tolerate eternal death or damnation to experience it, is certainly a sickness of the soul where Thanatos has  defeated Eros in the battle for that soul. In the soul where Eros has triumphed, with the assistance of the Principle of the Golden mean, the natural telos of such passion may be a thriving polis if one is a Phronimos, or a thriving life if one possesses the virtue of areté (doing and saying the right thing in the right way at the right time). For Plato, and perhaps for Aristotle too, the telos of the spirited part of the human psuché, lodged in the eyes and the heart, must harmonise with both the appetitive and rational parts of the soul. The account does become somewhat more complex in Aristotle’s Hylomorphic account of eudaimonia (the good spirited flourishing life), partly because there are many cognitive and aesthetic powers associated with both the spiritual and rational parts of the soul, and all of these must be integrated with each other in accordance with principles if the good spirited flourishing life is to be actualised. The hylomorphic Theory of Change views the relation between the three parts of the soul as complex, but the result must be that the spirited passions and the appetites must be satisfied in the right way and at the right time.

Love (Amor)—according to some modern Romantic poets is Hell, but as we saw in the case of Tristan and William Blake Hell is not that bad, and Amor may be in the mind of the lover such a good-in-itself, that it is worth the terrible consequences even if  one describes them in terms of an eternal death in eternity.

The Hell of the Poets and the picture we have of Satan as an anthropomorphised animal-devil is provided for us by the power of our imaginations, in spite of the fact that, in reality a half human half horned animal is not a biological possibility, and the “burn in hell forever” description, could only be a real punishment if, in some curious fashion, our bodies as well as our souls  had another life after this, and in that life in hell  the Spiritual nerves of the body experienced  sensations and pain in an analogous way to that which happened in a physical body affected by the  heat, as depicted in some Romantic tales. But souls, surely, do not have anything like physical nerves carrying spiritual signals to a purely conscious human being. This would be very similar to the Religious use of analogy where the physical is spiritualised as part of a religious/moral lesson. We recall that Kant used analogy of the fathers love for his family to explain Gods love for humanity. More abstractly, for Kant, this analogy does not cover the love that God expects from us on pain of either being banished from the Garden of Eden, or even, as was the case with Satan being banished to Hell or Hades.

In the Garden of Eden it looked as if the choice to exercise our free will to choose to lead our lives in accordance with the knowledge we now possessed of good and evil, sufficed for our exile, and also sufficed to convince God that our characters were flawed by Sin. For many moderns such divine justice sufficed for us in turn, to develop an independent attitude of mind, an attitude we pictured with the aid of the power of our imaginations: in terms of an image of Deus Absconditis.

In such a modern frame of mind we may no longer believe either in a religion within the bounds of reason or a “Philosophical” Hidden plan. Insofar as the test of our love for God was concerned we certainly failed that test, and insofar as Gods love for us was concerned, that may well depend on whether there is a Kantian hidden plan operating to transport humanity to eudaimonia—the good spirited flourishing life.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Campbells “Myths to Live By” Season 14 Episode 7

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Essay 7 Zen

Eastern Buddhism incorporates seemingly opposing views of life that in Modern Western Secular Society pose a practical contradiction, namely, “power from without” versus “power from within” (Page 126). This latter view certainly involves the practice of  meditation but not prayer (a practice invoking an external deity). In order to explain what he means by the idea of a power, Campbell once again uses in this essay the analogy of the multitude of  light bulbs illuminating the lecture hall he is using for his talk:

“Each bulb is separate  from the others, and we may think of them accordingly, as separate from each other. Regarded that way, they are so many empirical facts: and the whole universe seen that way is called in Japanese, ji Hokkai, “the universe of things”…. Each of these separate bulbs is a vehicle of light and the light is not many, but one. The one light, that is to say, is being displayed through all these bulbs; and we may think, therefore, either of the many bulbs or of the one light. Moreover, if this or that bulb went out, it would be replaced with another, and we should again have the same light. The light,which is one, appears thus through many bulbs…so each of us below is a vehicle of consciousness. But the important thing about a bulb is the quality of its light.. Likewise the important thing about each of us is the quality of his consciousness. And although each may identify himself mainly  with his separate body and its frailties, it is also possible to regard ones body as a mere vehicle of consciousness, and to think then of consciousness as the one presence here made manifest through us all.There are but two ways of interpreting and experiencing the same set of present facts. One way is not truer that another.” (Page 128)

Campbell, in the context of this discussion, invokes the Indian proclamation “Thou art That”, arguing that, “That” designates all consciousness, all bliss, all Being:

It is not easy, however, to shift the accent of ones sense of Being from the body to its consciousness, and from this consciousness, then, to consciousness altogether.” (Page 129)

The important reference in the above passage is to “ones sense of being”, which Heidegger captured so aptly in his formulation “Being-in-the-world”: a formulation which seeks to transcend the opposites of within and without. In Modern Western Philosophy, from Aristotle to Freud, and further to O Shaughnessy, Consciousness is seen as a vicissitude of human psuché, of human life, and this “sense of life” is incorporated  into the larger “sense of consciousness”, which in turn has its vicissitudes, all charted very  precisely by Aristotelian hylomorphic theory(The Many Meanings of Being), and Kantian Critical Theory( in the distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal).

The Modern idea of the Will (inherited from Kantian Philosophy), designates both the impulsive urge to act and the more complex striving toward leading the life of eudaimonia. This technical term is connected for Kant to the “Idea of the Good” and the “Good Will” then becomes the absolute of the Kantian Ethical system. This account of ethics was an elaboration upon Aristotelian Ethics which  could be applied in the modern political realm in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, in turn, could be administered by   Kantian inspired international  institutions, namely, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Kants duty based ethics situates the ethical agent in the realm of Being, a realm Kant designated as the noumenal realm which we can think about,  but we can have no knowledge about, since the sensible power of intuition has no direct or indirect contact with such a realm.

Kants aesthetic form of Consciousness was the issue raised in the previous essay and was there characterised as a “feeling of life” that is one important aspect of the universal form of Consciousness Cambell refers to. The ethical form of Consciousness is another important aspect, and it involves the powers of perception, imagination and judgement, but both perception and the imagination have different roles to that which they have in aesthetic contexts, owing to the primary importance of the powers of understanding and practical reasoning. The Religious form of Consciousness is yet another aspect with connections to both aesthetic and ethical forms, but for Kant, this form has importance only within the bounds of reason: this aspect requires forms of thought that are not primarily related to the imagination and its connection to imagining  the occurrence of supernatural events.

Clearly the transcendental  notion of the “I think” is of crucial importance for the Kantian account that, although is hylomorphic in intent is however, less concerned with the instinctive aspect of our nature and more concerned with those human higher mental processes that we find in the faculties of the understanding and reason.

Instinctive rituals such as prayer are of less significance for human Being-in-the-world than are the  cognitive and aesthetic processes relating to the Aristotelian proclamation “the Many Meanings of Being”, and the Kantian proclamation “Dare to use your Reason!”. Using ones reason of course entails using the principles of noncontradiction  and sufficient reason. Understanding and Reason are higher vicissitudes of Consciousness and as such are regulated by different principles that in turn explain for us the nature of these vicissitudes.

Campbell cites the Keni Upanishad:

“There the eye goes not, speech goes not, nor the mind. Other it is than the known. And moreover above the unknown. For on coming back between two thoughts one would find that all words, which of course can only be of thoughts and things, names and forms, only mislead.”(Page 129)

Now Being itself cannot be known in either Aristotelian or Kantian Metaphysics. It is rather a condition of knowing, yet it does appear on both accounts as if we can “think” about the realm of Being. Kant’s “I think” is a transcendental power lying beyond the phenomenal realm of objects and their relationships (The Chinese/Japanese realm of ten thousand things). The faculty of Reason, insofar as Kantian Critical Philosophy is concerned, aims to provide us with the totality of conditions  involved in the experiencing of phenomena of various kinds, and given this  holistic aim, is a higher vicissitude of Consciousness. Campbell himself would perhaps not sanction this form of argumentation in spite of himself appealing to Kant’s Transcendental account of Analogy , which  provided us with some thought content insofar as the idea of God was concerned. Indeed Campbells argument in the context of this discussion relies on experience rather than any of the higher aesthetic or cognitive processes. He claims, further, that unless one has had the experience one is attempting to communicate, the attempt at communication will fail  and the interlocutor will not be able to understand what is being said. Campbell elaborates upon this with the claim:

“thoughts and definitions may annul ones experiences even before they are taken in.” (Page 129)

This point is developed further and reference is made to “the net of our concepts”which, it is argued, fails to capture the meanings of Being.. This, it ought to be emphasised, was not Aristole’s position : a position that sought for arché (principles, laws) that is itself an important necessary condition for understanding the “network” of  Ancient Greek concepts, e.g. areté, episteme, dike, psuché, phronesis, eudaimonia, etc. One of Aristotle’s lasting achievements, indeed, was his essence specifying definition of humna psuché, namely rational animalcapable of discourse.

Campbell argues that the net of concepts must be broken in the name of Zen which calls for the abandonment of the ego that attempts to capture the meanings of Being  via the use of names, categories, meanings that cannot, according to his position reach the realm of Being Zen has attained. Buddha, Campbell claims, aimed to break the net and succeeded in doing so, thus finding the mid-point of the universe that Eliot described in his work “Four Quartets, as “the still point of theturning world”. The Tree of Enlightenment that Buddha rested  beneath, was at this still point. Whilst meditating beneath this tree, the myth claims, the god whose name is both Desire and Death, tempted Buddha with his three beautiful daughters. Buddha, it was claimed, was unmoved. The god then transformed itself into Death, and unleashed a  terrible army whose purpose it was to destroy Buddha, but again he sat unmoved. In a final attempt to “move” Buddha the god transformed itself into the Lord of Dharma (Duty), appealing to Buddhas sense of responsibility toward his  own people, also without effect. This is an interesting Kantian moment in the myth which certainly raises questions relating to why Buddha remained unmoved by such an appeal to the rights of Buddhas people. It is a familiar argument in the realm of political philosophy that a human right does not exist unless there is someone in authority to recognise  such a right. Surely, it can be argued, that Buddhas people had a right to their ruler treating them as “ends-in-themselves”, in accordance with the categorical imperative of the moral law?

The myth continues wth Buddha experiencing a terrible storm and being protected by a serpent from Mother Earth. He then arrives at another surprising judgement touching upn the fate of all mankind, namely, that “Enlightenment cannot be taught” (Page 132)

Yet in spite of this proclamation Buddha continues his teaching by referring to a fundamental truth which the Greeks and many philosophers after them understood all too well, namely that “all life is sorrowful”. His teaching continues with the assertion that there is a release from this sorrowful condition, namely the experience of Nirvana or what Campbell calls Bliss. With this transcendental experience, the ego, it is argued, is extiniguished. It is also claimed that neither the life of the monk nor the life of the Prince are preferential forms of life if one aims to extinguish the desires of the ego without shrinking the light of life to a mere pinpoint. Rather many different forms of life, e.g. merchants monks, princes and even insects can adopt the role of a merciful teacher immediately prior to the extinguishing moment of enlightenment.

Campbell also refers to a vision of the universe from the Orient  which, it can be argued, resembles to some extent the view some Philosopher had in Ancient Greece:

“The universe is a great spread out net with at every joint, a gem, and ech gem not only reflecting all the others but itself reflected in all…a great number of things round about, on every side, are causing what is happening now. Everything all the time, is causing everything else.” (Page 144)

This resembles a concrete image that could represent the spirit of Aristotles more abstract Theory of Change in which Aristotle attempts to capture the elusive “many Meanings of Being” via three principles of change, 4 kinds of change, three media of change(space,time, matter) and 4 causes of change, all present in the multitude of sciences  Aristotle categorised into the theoretical sciences, the practical sciences, and the productive sciences.

“All men desire to Know”,(Aristotle, Metaphysics) is the aim of all the sciences but the modes of knowledge involved is different in the different sciences because the principles differ. The question “why?” is thus connected to the facts in the different sciences and the answer to this question provides us with explanations which are in accordance with the principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason. The appeals to arché, aletheia, logos and epistemé are involved in the contexts of explanation/justification that can be found in the theoretical sciences. The overall aim of the Theoretical Sciences is to provide us with the Truth and this contrasts with the overall aim in the practical sciences which is to provide us with an idea of “The Good” in various practical contexts.

The Buddhist doctrine that “all life is sorrowful”, echoes the Ancient Greek oracular proclamation that: “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”, which in itself is a sorrowful state of affairs that in turn throws considerable light upon the Freudian Ego, defined as “ a precipitate of lost objects”. Freud, we know, proclaimed that suffering was the greatest educator in life and this correlates too with the Kantian characterisation of the social life of his period in terms of the “melancholically haphazard.”.

Campbell also fixates upon the emphasis upon contemplation by Buddha and this recalls the Aristotelian recommendation that we lead a life of contemplation if we wish to experience the good spirited flourishing life (eudaimonia).

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Campbells Myths to Live By Season 14 Episode 6

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Essay 6 The Inspiration of Oriental Art

The Western/Occidental concern with matter and form in our aesthetics may be present in some way in Oriental Art. Campbell claims that 4 types of subject matter are involved:

“Abstract qualities such as goodness, truth, beauty, and the like; next types of action and mood (the slaying of monsters, the winning of a lover, moods of melancholy, bliss, and so on): third, human types (Brahmins, mendicants, holy or wicked princes, merchants, servants, lovers, outcastes, criminals, etc) and, finally deities—all of which we know are abstract.”( Page 105)

Campbell claims further that there is no interest in the individual, or in unique unprecedented events in Oriental life and Oriental Art, but we do nevertheless see reference to types (forms?) of action and human beings in the above quote. This concern, however, does not amount to a theoretical or practical interest in human psuché and its psychological and mental vicissitudes, which include an interest in arete (doing the right thing at the right time in the right way) dike (justice), epistemé (knowledge) and arché (principles, laws).

The Ancient Greek concern for the importance of knowledge and Aristotle’s specific categorisation of knowledge into the theoretical, practical, and productive sciences may to some limited extent be mirrored in the Oriental sciences of Medicine, Astronomy, Mathematics etc. Ancient Greek science, however, thanks to the work of Aristotle is definitively more systematic, and also involves more complex links to the complex repertoire of powers and capacities of the human mind. Another important difference between Oriental and Western knowledge systems is the presence in the latter and the absence in the former of attention to forms of explanation related to principles such as noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Ancient Greek Philosophers reflected generally upon the status of  all explanations relating to rules, principles and laws and these reflections have been documented as epistemological issues as well as issues within the spheres of Metaphysics and Philosophical Psychology. All these reflections occurred within the context of a basic term, namely, psuché which was a term covering all forms of life from that of a simple plant up to and including human psuché, which Aristotle defined in terms of a “rational animal capable of discourse”. All these life-forms were observed in the light of a categorical framework that was implemented in experimental/clinical contexts designed to chart the structure and function of both these organisms as a whole but also their parts, thus effectively founding the disciplines of Biology, Anatomy, and perhaps also Physiology. There is, however, no evidence that Aristotle ever dissected a human discourse for a number of possible reasons. Firstly, due to the pressure of religious belief which regarded the body as sacred and secondly owing to the belief that its form ought to remain intact for the burial when acts of remembrance would take place and the transition to a possible afterlife would begin (Aristotle may have remained sceptical to accounts of the afterlife for logical reasons).

The conceptual diversity and density of Aristotelian explanations (aitia) which we find represented in a multitude of sciences falling into three different categories (theoretical, practical, productive) make possible a nuanced perception of our environment as well as an account of the complex nature of our thoughts about the world and ourselves, and the complex relation between these two domains of reflection. Diagnosis in the case of the trans-scientific discipline of Occidental medicine is a systematic activity, relating as it does to hylomorphic explanations embedded in a complex matrix of episteme, areté, arché, logos, psuché, Aletheia, dunamis, and eudaimonia. Concepts are the tools of our faculties of understanding and reason, especially when combined into meaningful propositions. The subject matter of Medicine is constituted by both animal and human forms of life (psuché) and diagnosis attempts to assume proper or normal function of the forms as a whole and the proper or normal function of their parts (including organ systems).

Aesthetics falls into the category of the productive sciences which in turn relates to the ideas or basic terms of the beautiful and sublime as revealed by the powers of perception and imagination (faculty of sensibility), and to some extent involve the understanding and reason, especially if the objects of perception are works of art.

Campbell takes up the interesting fact that the praxis of portraiture has never been important in Oriental Art. He claims that the reason for this is that our Occidental Mythological Culture has placed an importance upon the individual that is considered dysfunctional in Oriental Mythological Culture. This issue highlights a significant Metaphysical problem. Is Campbells description of this East- West conflict the correct one? Buddhism certainly claims what is often referred to as a no-self doctrine which means that there is no substantial existential entity lying behind our references to an “I”. Kant has claimed that the “I think” is a transcendental condition of the experience of, for example, objects, and that one can think about the phenomenal self of experience and make empirical judgements about this empirical self, but it is not this empirical self that is the transcendental condition of our experience. The Buddhist doctrine of the no-self, however, seems to entail that there is no permanent self behind our experiences, since it is in a state of constant change. Aristotle pointed out that change in the world can only be explained if we assume a constant bearer of change that remains the same throughout the process. This was an assumption Kant embraced. For Both Aristotle and Kant there are a multitude of powers from different faculties that have helped to constitute this unity of apperception which is in turn a condition of apriori intuitions of space and time, and the categories of the understanding. The physical substrate of this “I” is according to Aristotle Human Psuché which is constituted by a complex organ system including the brain that has been described by brain researchers as the most complex object in the universe. The brain is also connected to other organs and a constellation of limbs, hands etc. An upright posture is also an important element of  the  Aristotelian essence specifying definition of human psuché, namely rational animal capable of discourse. Such a complex entity obviously requires a multitude of sciences to explain its Being-in-the-world.

Psychoanalysis, Freud claimed was a Kantian Psychology and it was certainly trans-scientific in its attempt to explain the clinical phenomenon of mental dysfunction, mental disease. Historically, attempts by one particular science to discredit the scientific credentials of this Freudian discipline seem, in the light of these considerations to be otiose.

Criticism of Western philosophical explanations of the “I”  by  Eastern Mythology may, then also be otiose. Criticism of the East by the Philosophical tradition  that lies behind our system of Sciences has included horror at the practice of certain rituals such as that of widows casting themselves onto their husband’s funeral pyres: a horror which is expressed at the wasteful unnecessary loss of human life. This is not a judgement from an individual about another individual, but rather a general universal judgement about the value of a praxis in relation to human psuché as such which we also may extend to our preferred animals as well. We, Westerners believe generally, that it is irresponsible to throw the gift of life away in such tragic circumstances, especially if there are children who will now be asked to mourn not one, but both, beloved parents. We too, believe in obedience but not blind obedience to a deity blind to the value of human life. In this respect we owe our heritage to those Ancient Greek oracles who did not believe in casting the transcendental self aside even if “Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction”, suggesting rather that human psuché engage systematically in the task of “Knowing thyself”, and knowing the world which is the setting of our lives.

We can see, given the above considerations that Occidental Aesthetics is differently grounded in a repertoire of human powers such as perception, imagination, understanding/judgement, and reason. Oriental Art seems to appeal to a more limited repertoire with  imagination taking precedence. Perception, understanding and reason appear not to be constitutive of the Oriental experience which appeals to a world of hallucinations and dreams.

The Western portrait is a celebration of  the importance of the idea of the human form of Being in a complex world much of which was his own making. Western artists know that the portrait for many appreciators is a learning experience teaching us the relation of a particular human form to a particular life the characterisation of which is going to have some universal and necessary  characteristics. Kant, in his reflections upon Art in his Third Critique, claimed that the form of the human body was an ideal of our Western Art, and this belief was undoubtedly shared by the artists of Ancient Greece who believed in a healthy body-mind relationship.

Artistically designed buildings (architecture), Adrian Stokes argues,  is the mother of all Art, and he takes up the example of Quattrocento Art in which the mass-effect of the stone is part of the total impression aimed at by the Architect. This very general characteristic of the material the artist uses, is abstracted from the purpose of the building which could be a Temple, a Tomb, a School, or a Palace. The form these buildings take is in accordance with a rational, very general idea of the Good. For Adrian Stokes, the Kleinian art critic, the idea of the good,  whole object is a key concern of the artist. This idea of wholeness is Aristotelian and defines how we view the parts f the whole. The “whole person” for Aristotle was undoubtedly conceived of in terms of possessing both a healthy body and a healthy mind, and this in turn must be interpreted in the light of the Aristotelian dictum that the mind or the soul is the first actuality of the body composed of organs, limbs, hands, upright posture etc. The soul, then, becomes the home of a repertoire of psychological and mental powers which include perception, imagination, understanding, judgement, and reasoning. The multitude of sciences  and arts falling into three categories are, then, the products of the human repertoire of powers.

Campbell points to the portrait productions of Titian and Rembrandt but he argues that it is the uniqueness of the individual that is the point of the portrait. This is not the whole story behind this genre of painting, which requires a much more complex form of explanation. We pointed earlier to the fact that the artist is providing  an object  which is intended to be the stimulus for an aesthetic lesson. Human character in relation to the ethical idea of The Good is certainly a part of the story and the lesson which will also include reference to the concepts of areté (doing the right thing in te right way at the right time, dike (justice)episteme, phronesis and eudaimonia: all in the name of the Form of the Good, an idea surpassing that of particular existents or particular individuals. Campbell, however, elaborates upon his simple characterisation of Occidental Art, claiming that in Oriental Life:

“the individual is expected not to innovate or invent, but to perfect himself in the knowledge and rendition of norms.” (Page 106)

This identification of the Western individual with the Ego is questionable. What is partly at stake here is what Campbell means by the terms “knowledge” and “norms” in the above quote. Oriental ideas of knowledge and norms are undoubtedly at odds with our Western  beliefs in the importance of the ideas of human psuché and the Forms of The Good (norms?) This Western idea of human psuché is also connected to the Judgement “All men are mortal”  and the principle lying behind it that life ends with death: on this position there is not another life after this, in other words the idea of an afterlife is a contradiction given the current state of our knowledge (which is considerable if we are reasoning against the background of the Western Canon of Philosophy and the Sciences). When the body gives up its life, the ghost of consciousness also ceases to exist. The afterlife on this account is a dreamlike hallucinatory idea which Campbell also insightfully extends to Oriental Buildings and Cities:

“I wonder if that may not be the reason why, in certain Oriental cities, one can feel, even today, that one is moving in a dream: the city is dreamlike because in its inception it was actually suggested by a dream, which then was rendered in stone.” (Page 107)

Adrian Stokes in his critical reflections upon Quattrocento Art, notes how the mass-effect of the stone appeals to our Western idea of a self sufficient independent object of perception which invites the imagination of the perceiver to live in the spirit of the Object, using not just the dreamlike function of the imagination, but also the powers of understanding and reason. Oriental art-objects have a completely different structure and tend to invite different responses tied to more instinctively grounded powers and their vicissitudes.

There follows a long exposition on the Art of Yoga and its discipline of awakening inner instinctive powers, which confirm the above remarks: it seems that we are dealing here with the powers of the body that produce dreamlike and hallucinatory experiences. Campbell in the context  of this discussion begins to draw attention to a major disruption of the body-image which is connected to the transcendental experience of a “third eye”:

“Indian Art, that is to say, is an art concerned with the transcendence of our normal two-eyed experiences of life, meant to open this third eye, in the middle of the forehead, of the lotus of command, and to reveal to us thus, even while we are awake, a dream-like vision of Heaven and Hell become stone.” (Page 115)

Consciousness is a vicissitude of Instinct, according to Freud, and it is a power that is prominent in our Western Canon of Knowledge systems, but it is a very different vicissitude to that of the hallucination. Perhaps it is this third eye that is the source of hallucinations and dreams, but its mode of operation is not that of a normal eye whose function it is to organise the forms of space into a figure background structure that  contains self-sufficient independent objects that can be explored using the motor system of the body. These objects in our environment can produce  a variety of responses ranging from beautiful objects of nature, beauties of intentionally produced art objects and also instrumentally constituted objects that are useful as a means to other ends.

Campbell also refers to Japanese and Chinese Art which characterises the vastness of the universe in terms of:

“The world of ten thousand things” (Page 115)

The way in which the divine dwells in such a universe is indeed paradoxical, however:

“For even in a single hair”, as I have heard, there are a thousand golden lions.” (Page 115)

Campbell elaborates upon his account claiming that landscape painting is crafted in the spirit of Tao:

“And this way of Nature is the way in which all things come into being out of darkness into light, then pass out of light back into darkness, the two principles—light and dark—being in perpetual interaction and, in variously modulated combinations, constituting this whole world of ten thousand things.” (Page 116)

This Yin/Yang Principle is more related to the powers of perception and consciousness than is the case in Indian Art. Campbell uses this principle in his account of  the Chinese Artistic process:

“So the artist with his brush, is manipulating tinctures of the very principles that underlie all nature. The artwork, thus brings forth and makes known the essence of the world itself, that essence being an interplay f these two, the yang and the yin, through no end of modulation.” (Page 117)

So, transposing this into the object world of Quattrocento Art, it appears as if the visual aspects of light/dark are more important in Chinese visual Art than the visual/tactile aspects of the mass-effects of the stone so important in Quattrocento architecture. Stone is an intersensory object with protective functions which transcend the purely visual phenomena of light/dark. Touch is a phenomenon that is intimately related to motor function and together with visual information is part of the intersensory unity of an object: it is part of what makes an object a self-sufficient independent object. Of course the Quattrocento architect will have considered the way in which the  sunlight illuminates the building as well as the effect of darkness upon its interior but this will have been just one consideration among many.

Campbell continues his account by invoking 6 considerations the Chinese artist takes into account, beginning with the idea of rhythm. The artist upon painting bamboo it is argued will attempt to identify its rhythm, organic form, trueness to nature, colour, placement in a field, and style. If, it is argued, one paints without forcing the painting of the field, the bamboo will reveal itself in its nature.

Cambell attempts a comparison of Indian and Chinese art, claiming that the former uses the “soaring power” of the imagination and he contrasts this with the Chinese world we live in, the world of ten thousand things:

“artists of the Tao prefer to remain with nature, in harmony with its wonder.” (Page 121)

The basic attitude f the Japanese/Chinese artist is one of play:

“his approach to life is not of work but of play” (Page 123)

Adrian Stokes wrote an essay entitled “Life is a game that must be lost”, arguing that the restoration of lost objects of value is a key aspect  of the artists activity. Perhaps this was in fact a response to the Chinese view of life as a game. Campbell concludes this essay with a Buddhist story where the appreciator of a painting magically finds himself participating in the painting, interacting with a pretty girl until he was whisked back into life and reality, noticing that his presence had changed the content of the painting. Testifying to what? The fact that life is magical? That both art and life are games? This tale would not have impressed the Ancient Greek artists who would see the continuity of life and art, but also see the implausibility of a tale that did not appreciate just how Art imitated life, and the importance of the production of a self-sufficient independent object that cannot be changed by magic. The issue of the integrity of the object is obviously manifest in portraits of nobles and royalty, and in such objects the Aristotelian poetic idea of character is clearly on display. What is less obvious, however, is the subtle role of the power of the imagination which not only provides us with images but also with a magical enveloping function which seeks to “identify or “make one” the work and the response to it.

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Essay 5 East West Confrontation

Campbell juxtaposes two influential accounts of the telos of cultural evolution which can in a sense be seen to question Philosophical accounts such as that provided by Kant, where reference is made to a “hidden plan” which can be used to explain the major changes that occur irregularly in the World. The first account, that of Spengler’s, as contained in his work “The Decline of the West”, can be seen as a variation upon the Shakespearean “Seven Ages of man”. Spengler refers to three ages, namely youth, “culmination” and “decrepitude” which are based on a relatively abstract characterisation of a human life cycle which in turn is inserted into a cyclical view of Cultures emerging, thriving and then dying. This is more in line with the Oriental view of the Universe than the Ancient Greek oracular tragic vision of the role of fate in man’s attempts to civilise himself.

We are at present, Campbell argues, at the point in our cultural evolution when a loss of “cultural forms” is causing a regression from being a Culture to the previous stage of being a Civilisation: (a distinction Kant thought important). Campbell exemplifies his point by reference to The fall of Carthage and Rome.

Frobenius’s account of the “dawning of a golden age”, appears at first sight to be more similar to the Kantian invocation of a distant “Kingdom of Ends”, but for Frobenius, it is not Philosophical ideas and theories that are the driving force of  Change in the world, but rather  it is  “Science and the machine” that is taking us into a positive but unforeseeable future. Campbell concludes this discussion with:

“What we all today surely recognise is that we are entering—one way or another—a new age requiring a new wisdom: such wisdom furthermore, as belongs rather to experienced old age than to poetically fantasising youth, and which every one of us, whether young or old, has now somehow to assimilate. Moreover, when we turn our thoughts to religion, the first and most obvious fact is that every one of the great traditions is today in profound disorder. What we have been taught as their basic truths seems no longer to hold.” (Page 86)

Campbell elaborates upon the above by pointing to the fact that “Chinese oracle books are outselling our own philosophers” (Page 87). He also claims that these so-called oracle books are not however outselling Psychology books, but it is not clear what his point is with this example or whether he is referring to popular of academic psychology books.

 We are, it is claimed in an analogous position to the North American Indians  at the end of the 19th century when the Buffalo they were hunting were disappearing, being exterminated in order to make way for the railroad or to deny the Indians their food supply. As a consequence of these  changes their life on the reservation lost all its meaning. Their form of life radically changed from riding and hunting to praying and chanting and experiencing visions after eating peyote. In these transitional stages it appears as if all symbols lose affective value and we g in search of new forms and new symbols. Campbell describes this phase as one of disorientation and dissociation.

Campbelll turns to the science of psychiatry for a psychological characterisation of the symbols of mythology, and cites the view of J.W. Perry, that symbols are “affect images”. Campbell then claims that the symbols of the Bible do not “work” anymore, and that this state of affairs is not the consequences of a conflict between science and religion, but rather  a conflict beteen the science of today and the science of 4000 BC . The science of today with its acknowledgement of the immense magnitude of the space-time of the universe, it is argued, is in fact closer to the view of some religions whose calendars span millions of years: This is in contrast to the document of the Bible, which spans thousands of years: a document which portrays the divine  in terms of a wrathful partisan father. The ten commandments of the Bible, furthermore are not relevant to a modern world in which the laws are made by human beings and for human beings.  Campbell notes that the role of the clergy has been taken over by  scientific psychiatrists, and it is further claimed that todays clergy contact these psychiatrists to allay anxiety and seek´meaning.

It is noted that an Oriental God that transcends human thought language and feeling is a more abstract entity compared to our Biblical wrathful father who needs our love so much. In these Oriental religions we are dealing not with a separation of  the entities of God , Nature, and Man, but rather with a metaphysical realm beyond names and forms. Campbell does not refer to this fact, but Kantian Metaphysics  also postulates a realm  beyond names and forms, claiming  that we can know nothing about such a realm of the noumenal things-in-themselves. Kants account is therefore surprisingly receptive to both Christian  and Oriental accounts, but demanding that both can only be embraced insofar as their judgements and proclamation’s are within the bounds of Reason. Kant would, for example object to the anthropomorphised account of God that we find in the Bible, and he would also have objected to the view of the human being demanded by Oriental religions.

Campbell discusses also the Buddhist view of Being and he focuses on consciousness and attempts to transcend the powers of the body. He points to the Sanskrit meaning of the term “budh” which it is claimed means :

“to fathom a depth, to penetrate to the bottom….to perceive, to know, to come to ones senses, to wake” (Page 95)

Campbell uses the analogy of a light bulb which is merely the vehicle of the light that fills the room when it is switched on. Similarly, it is argued, the body is the vehicle of consciousness and its vicissitudes. One lives for and in the light, Campbell claims and not for the light bulb.

Perhaps the source of the difference between the Oriental and the  Occidental Religions lies in the conception of the human body. For the Orient it is merely the vehicle. For us, however, consciousness emerges from the powers of the body that together combine and integrate to form both consciousness and all its vicissitudes which include our higher mental powers. These vicissitudes constitute both our higher mental and moral powers.

The will, is located at the levels of instinct, consciousness and the higher mental powers, ranging as it does from an instinctive  urge to act, to a striving to achieve higher cognitive and aesthetic aims, which include moral attitudes(acceptance and resignation) toward ones own death. The idea of the will Kant proposed was an idea of a free self-causing power that had sufficient awareness of its own powers to take responsibility for its own freely chosen actions. This is done against the background of occupying a position in the noumenal realm of Being where the relation to other human beings was conceptualised in terms of equality, and where the relation to oneself and others was conceived of  in terms of respect. God also occupies this realm of Being or the  sacred, not in the form of any concrete image but rather in the form of a being that has the power to guarantee that a life devoted to doing ones duty will be rewarded with a good-spirited flourishing life. Given, however, our phenomenal relationship to our own bodies, which, according to Aristotle is the ground of the actuality of the psychological  idea of the soul, we do not encounter any idea of the afterlife of the kind we find in Ancient Mythologies. When a sufficient number of the key  functions of the body cease their function, the light of the soul disappears and the body returns its matter to the domain of the material mineral world.

Religion does not disappear from either the Aristotelian or Kantian accounts and we find no trace of the idea of the afterlife  or wrathful father figure. What we are instead provided with, is  an activity that takes place within the bounds of reason, an activity referring to significant symbols such as that of the cross, Gregorian chants, incense etc., which Campbell claims all have significant “affect value”. Indeed he describes the affect value of these Christian symbols as “magical”. A more psychological characterisation of these symbols may describe this affect value as “hypnotic”, helping to create a form of consciousness in which the normal powers of the will are suspended. Such a state would not be considered in any way “transcendent”, but rather as a truncated form of consciousness similar to the states one encounters in the ecstatic ritual  dances of primitive tribes.

Campbell claims  that the most important text of the Hindu religion is the Bhagavad Gita, which incidentally was the source of  the famous response by Rober Oppenheimer in the face of the “successful” atomic explosion  of the first atomic bomb:

“I am death, the destroyer of worlds.”

We also find in the Bhagavad Gita an account of the 4 yogas. In one of these we find the following reference to the relation between myself and my body:

“I, therefore, am not my body” (Page 98)

A further elaboration upon this remark claims:

“I know my thoughts; Iam not my thoughts…I know my feelings, I am not my feelings.”

Further, in the yoga of action the text refers to karma, the importance of doing ones duty even when faced with the likely prospect of death:

“Cast away all desire and fear for the fruits and perform your duty.” (Page 100)

Campbell points out in this essay that doing ones duty is to be done without question and this is not our Western way in which the examined life is a priority:

“Duty here, therefore does not mean at all what it means throughout the Orient. It does not mean accepting like a child what has been authoritatively taught. It means thinking, evaluating and developing an ego: a faculty , that is to say, of independent observation and rational criticism, capable of interpreting its environment as well as of estimating its own power in relation to circumstances: and of initiating courses of action, then, that will be relevant not to the ideals of the past , but to the possibilities of the present. But exactly that in the East is the one forbidden thing.”  (Page 101)

Cambell does not elaborate any further upon this point, but it ought to have been pointed out that it was exactly doing this one forbidden thing that caused Adam and Eve to be  both expelled from Paradise and separated from the wrathful Yahweh. Eastern religions including Buddhism  do not see any theological content in our Bible, seeing no need to put their faith into words. As one Japanese gentleman put the matter, “We dance”. Perhaps this dance occurs ritually around the ever burning fire referred to by Buddha. “All life is sorrowful”, Buddha maintains and we also find the following non Western sentiment expressed:

“All societies are evil, sorrowful, inequitable, and so they will always be.” (Page 104)

A sentiment also expressed by the Ancient Greek oracles and embraced with caution by the Ancient Greek Philosophers. Western Philosophers influenced by the Ancient Greeks can definitively say  that a new age was unleashed  by Western Humanism and this of course in its turn modified our Religious heritage into a Theology within the bounds of Reason.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Campbells “Myths to live By” Season 14 Episode 4

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Essay 4 East v West

This is an interesting account of a burning issue that arises in relation to problems connected to changes in the world: problems connected to global travel, global communication, and International Education. The aim of these globalisation processes varies from a desire to learn more about distant regions of the world, to a political will to further international cooperation and the burning issue that arises here, is related to the Philosophical issue of whether the telos of a Cosmopolitan world at peace is a realistic proposition to believe/have faith in. Kant proposed that this telos was part of a “hidden plan” and this was not idealistic speculation about some fantasy-laden utopia, but was rather the conclusion of long argument containing moral premises. This argument was an elaboration upon hylomorphic arguments which claimed that human psuché could be defined by the essence specifying definition: “rational animal capable of discourse”: a claim that did not mean “all men are rational” but rather that man was capable of being both the best of the animals and the worst of animals. At his best he is attempting to realise this rational potential and all his activities “aim at the good” or “the desire to know”.

Kant´s reasoning was somewhat more complex, given his more nuanced view of mans psychological and mental powers which belong to the three faculties of sensibility, understanding and reason. His reasoning attempts to both destroy illusory metaphysics whilst at the same time leaving a space for critical metaphysics of both Nature and Morals. The Political and Ethical aspects of his reasoning propose that the hidden plan referred to is concerned with an actualisation process which is increasing our power of rationality to shape the world we live in. This actualisation process is also concerned with the Ancient Greek proclamation to “Know thyself!”. Philosophy, it can be argued, responded to the Delphic oracles proclamations which included :

“Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction.”

Fully actualising the potential of human psuché to the extent that rationality is not just a telos, but an actuality, must have been a part of the programs of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The program of hylomorphism was then left for a number of centuries to slumber until Kant was awoken from his own dogmatic slumbers by Hume, Rousseau et al. The argument, then, is that both hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy advance the causes of the “hidden plan” significantly. But as we know, dialectical Hegelian Philosophy stopped Kantian Critical Philosophy in its tracks, and a form of dialectical scepticism branded Kantian Critical Philosophy as “dogmatic”, thus allowing scientific discussions to dominate cultural debates. The kind of sceptical questioning, for example ,of synthetic apriori propositions, allowed scientific method to become defining for science, thus questioning, for instance principle based Newtonian Natural Science. Hegelian Dialectical Philosophy itself became branded as “idealistic” by the sceptical scientists and fell into disrepute.

Wittgenstein, wrote his first work, Tractatus Logico Phliosophicus was written in a climate in which both Kantian and Hegelian Philosophy were regarded as “Continental” and “idealistic”. His work, “logical atomism” began with the propositions that “The World is all that is the case”. The World is the totality of facts not of things”. A more scientific rejection of the role of Aristotelian/Kantian principle in science and Philosophy would be difficult to find. Ethical, Religious and Metaphysical statements did not on this view have normal meaning, needing to “show” their significance.

The “picture” theory of meaning” presented in this work lacked empirical support because Wittgenstein could not present any examples of “atomic sentences”. He eventually abandoned this position for a number of reasons, moving, in Socratic fashion, away from scientific domain of investigation and toward a humanistic domain based on the Aristotelian idea of forms of life which ground the usage of language. Language , that in turn was conceived of in terms of a number of different language-games.

Wittgenstein thought of his later method as being in the spirit of Kant and as a matter of fact it did serve to bring many Aristotelian and Kantian issues into the arena of debate again (via his followers).

At approximately the same time as this was happening Campbell was theorising about Mythology. This essay was published in 1961, ten years after Wittgensteins death. Campbell points to a significant obstacle in the way of the actualisation of the “hidden plan”, namely, all accounts of man containing miraculous or supernatural events such as , virgin births, resurrections, ascensions to heaven, reincarnations etc. Christianity, for example, contains at least three of the above four illusory ideas as well as many other “miraculous” ideas reported in the Bible.

The cradle of civilisation, it is claimed, lay in the Near East and the first Mesopotamian cities, but with the emergence of Cosmopolitan Athens in Ancient Greece, a different more nuanced view of human psuché and the gods emerged in the open society that allowed a large number of non-Athenians to live in the city with limited rights. Three of the Greatest minds in the History of Philosophy were bound together in a teacher-pupil relation which resulted in not just the love of wisdom but a proliferation of intellectual disciplines founded on an array of methods, principles and sciences of different kinds designed to answer a large number of aporetic questions about our Being-in-the world and Being qua Being. The discipline of Philosophy emerged from their systematic attempts to lead examined and contemplative lives, and it carved out a view of the world built upon intellectually based methods and a number of integrated cognitive powers whose creations dwarfed that of the pure imagination and its creations, namely, mythic narratives of the gods and war-like heroes, and art-works.

Campbell points out that these creations of the imagination produced very different narratives embodying very different assumptions about the human psuché and the gods. These creations cannot, be easily integrated into a peaceful unity, into what Campbell calls a world-myth which, it is argued may be necessary for unifying a globalised ideologically fragmented world. The fact of the matter is that principles and conceptual truths are more easily universalizable than particular concrete images which in fact can be ambiguous in their meaning and therefore subject to different interpretations.

Campbell begins thus essay with the following remarks:

“It is not easy for Westerners to realise that the ideas recently developed in the West of the individual and his self-hood, his rights and his freedom, have no meaning whatsoever in the Orient. They would have meant nothing to the peoples of the early Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese, or Indian Civilisations. They are in fact repugnant to the ideals, the aims and orders of life, of most of the peoples of this earth.”(Page 61)

Campbell also refers to Ancient Greek Humanism where attention was turned away from the starry heaven and towards our earthly concerns with the Good, Justice, and Truth: matters of concern for “everything created by man”. The starry heavens are as they are, in virtue of physical principles that have no obvious relation to the idea of the Good and its principles, which were major concerns for both Aristotle and Kant. We are perfectly capable of viewing both the starry heavens and the moral law within, in states of awe and wonder, and we are further, capable of seeking to understand fully the principles of both realms: the metaphysics of nature and the metaphysics of morals. Campbell, unfortunately, calls this humanistic viewpoint the “innovation” of the West. This term is regrettable because it does not capture the significance of the achievements of the Philosophical tradition from both Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment. He refers in the context of this discussion to the Tower of Babel myth and the building of the secular city that is interrupted because of the “confusion of tongues”(Page 62). The project was abandoned and the inhabitants were scattered “abroad over the face of all the earth”.

Campbell reiterates that in the East, life is not centred upon the individual who, as a matter of fact, is dominated by parents and the roles that are rigidly defined by the society in which they live. This is why Hindu wives could so easily accept immolation on their deceased husbands funeral pyre. It is also the reason why the US at the end of the second world war felt “forced” to drop atomic bombs on the civilian populations of two Japanese cities. The Americans did not understand that the Emperor of Japan had a sacred standing, being a direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. The Emperors role was rigidly defined and perhaps in his mind a God could never be defeated by mere mortals with earthly weapons. The belief in the afterlife for both the Hindu-wife and the Emperor also helps to explain what appears to the western eye to be irrational superstitious behaviour.

The Eastern mind thinks in spans of time incomprehensible to us who, firstly see a lifetime to be the primary standard by which to measure the Good, and secondly we also see more clearly the separation of the domains of Nature and Morals. For the Eastern mind when measured over hundreds of thousands of years, a human life is a mere blink of the eye and of little significance compared with the magnitude of the time of the universe and the cosmic events that are occurring in such a context. Such overwhelming spans of time transcend human thought, judgement and reason. Even the span of the gods lives in this larger context are as nothing.

Campbell claims that this concern for the individual first appeared circa 2000 BC in Mesopotamia:

“where a distinction is beginning to be made between the king as a mere human being and the god who he is now to serve.” (Page 74)

In the myths of this period, man and God were different kinds of Being, where man was the servant of God. Indeed, Campbells interpretation of the Garden of Eden Myth views mans free will as the precipitating cause of his exile from Gods Garden. God is also given a will and becomes anthropomorphised to such an extent that God can will something but later change his mind. Campbell points out that this amounts to giving God a “personality” (Page 77). Campbell also in this context, refers to an Indian Myth from 8th century BC in which we are told in the narrative that in the beginning there is only a “Self” in the form of a man. This so-called Self refers to itself in terms of “I” and becomes afraid, but reasons that because nothing else exists, there is therefore nothing to be afraid of, and the fear then dissipates. This Self then swells and splits into a male part and a female part, from which all humans and animals then originate as the narrative develops.

Plato’s dialogue The Symposium includes a narrative that is a variation on the above theme in the name of Eros: a narrative which depicts human beings living with humans and becoming wary of their strength and as a precautionary measure splitting the human being into a male and a female part and then scattering the parts so that the male and female elements land far apart from each other. The Symposium claims that Eros was not as Hesiod claims, a God, but is pictured as a barefooted figure padding about the streets of Athens searching for something (Psyche?) This pictures eros as a man in a completely human setting.

As we move closer in time to the Ancient Greek Philosophers we encounter Aeschylus portraying the immortal Titan Prometheus at war with Zeus and we find Prometheus calling Zeus a monster and claiming that he plays no significant role in his life. This is indeed prophetic and is perhaps an omen of what was to come in the future when the Philosophers begin to evaluate the role of the ideas of the Gods in our lives and emphasise rather the powers and capacities of human psuché that are used in the human mission to avoid the ruin and destruction prophesied by the oracles. Perhaps one can also claim that this moment portends our modern secular relation to Mythology and Religion within the bounds of Reason.

The Modern Tragedy, however, is that the power of Philosophy has itself become marginalised in our post-modern world: a world in which God appears to be either absent (Deus Absconditis), or dead. If this is the case and we see the disappearance of those traditions and institutions that have been inspired by Philosophy we will be left with a mere shell of humanity which, in accounting for the human psuché and its powers, will be in a constant state of conceptual confusion.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James Review of Myths to Live By Essay 3 The importance of Rituals, S 14 E 3

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Ritual is an important activity of the human “form of life”, an expression used by Wittgenstein in grounding his “Philosophical Investigations”. Aristotle does not use this specific expression, but it is nevertheless implied in the term “psuché”, the hylmorphic account of which would contain the idea of “form” as “principle”. For Campbell it is clear that the higher the form of life the more complex the “structure” of the organism will be. He opens this essay as follows:

“The function of ritual as I understand it is to give form to human life, not in the way of a mere surface arrangement, but in depth. In ancient times every social occasion was ritually structured and the sense of depth was rendered through the maintenance of a religious tone. Today, on the other hand, the religious tone is reserved for exceptional, very special “sacred” occasions. And yet even in the patterns of our secular life, ritual survives. It can be recognized, for example ,in the decorum of courts and regulations of military life, but also in the manners of people sitting down to table together. All life is structure. In the biosphere, the more elaborate the structure, the higher the life form.” (Page 44)

This is a hylomorphic account of ritual that probably would have been accepted by Kant, but university life is not mentioned in spite of its largely secular adherence to ceremonious rituals and its very influential role in the shaping of civilisation and culture in the Western World. Many university rituals have remained the same for centuries even if the influence f Universities has been in decline since the beginning of the 20th century. These rituals include examinations, the awarding of proof of achievement in graduation ceremonies reflecting the different structural levels of knowledge, and academic staff installations, e.g. Professorial “chairs”.

Campbell then proceeds to provide an account of the instincts, beginning at the base-level manifesting itself in simple forms of lif,e and simple behaviours such as nest-buidling, beehives, anthills etc., and moving up to human psuché where , it is argued stereotypical reflexes are no longer produced by innate releasing mechanisms. In human psuché, behaviour is converted into Action via the operation of multiple psychological and mental powers which give rise, firstly, to the vicissitude of the instincts we call consciousness and secondly, to those higher vicissitudes manifested in the higher mental powers such as understanding/judgement, and reasoning. The operation of Thinking in such higher organisms attempts to achieve not just a harmony of the faculties of sensibility, understanding and reason, but also the efficient use of the multiple powers we encounter in human psuché. Campbell then makes a very interesting claim relating to the long childhood of human psuché, which, it is argued, causes our instincts to mature more slowly, a process which allows the mechanism of “imprinting” to take place in relation to a complex environment/world possessing multifarious sources of influence:

“It acquires its human character, upright stature, ability to speak, and the vocabulary of its thinking under the influence of a specific culture, the features of which are engraved, as it were, upon its nerves; so that the constitutional patternings which in the biological world are biologically inherited are, in the human species matched largely by socially transmitted forms, imprinted during what have been long known as the “impressionable years”, and rituals have been everywhere the recognised means of such imprinting. Myths are the mental supports of rites; rites the physical enactments of myths.” (Page 45)

Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory has long been a source of the idea that society maintains its structure and innovates via the generation of firstly, the forms of reproduction, secondly, forms related to tools and implements, and thirdly, forms related to ideas communicated in educational processes involving teachers and pupils.

Much of the time spent in childhood and adolescence occurs in the context of a family, living in a home, and this together with the time spent in educational institutions are the major bearers of the development of mental capacities that function in accordance with what Freud and Campbell refer to as the reality principle or reality function: a function involving the inhibition or overriding of most instinctive affective and spiritual impulses. Campbell claims that this in turn is dependent upon the individual becoming a creative innovative “centre of the life process”( Page 47). He further claims that “Modern Occidental civilisations” have been the major source of innovation in the world but he points to 1914 suggesting that things may have changed at this point in History: a point in time when man begins to question and even reject much of what mythology and Religion had to offer mankind. He interestingly cites Rousseau as the source of this attitude that led to a general discontentment with our civilisations.

Rousseau, we ought to recall was a Counter-Enlightenment figure, a modern version of Diogenes sensing a discontentment in the darkest regions of Europe. Rousseau believed that men are born free, but everywhere in chains because they are enslaved by the authorities and institutions of a corrupt social order. He did not, however, personally believe in the power of family life to moderate the sexual impulse, placing 5 of his illegitimate children in an orphanage, effectively abandoning them. It is somewhat surprising to learn that the Enlightenment Philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was influenced by Rousseaus claim that man in his natural state was a noble creature, and it is even rumoured that Kant. a creature of habit, allowed his daily walk to be disrupted because he was reading the Work “Emile”. Kant, however, would certainly have questioned the prohibition relating to Emile reading the Bible. He might also have questioned Rousseaus contention that the tears of the baby teach the infant to manipulate others in the course of getting what was wanted.

Kant may have agreed, however, that with the crying of the baby we may be witnessing the first appearance of acts of the will. Manipulative tears, Rousseau argued, was one of the first signs of an attitude he termed “amour propre”, a fundamentally negative attitude that will assist in the corrupt enslavement of man. On the political front, Rousseau sees in the middle class, not the Aristotelian enlightened class, but rather a class that has embraced the corrupt values of the upper class. Plato and Aristotle both viewed oligarchy as a deficient form of government, embracing many of the excesses of the appetitive and spiritual parts of a persons character. Such an uncontrolled proliferation of desires would have been attributed to a passionate imagination which was unmoderated by reason.

Rousseau was the father of Romanticism, furthering the myth of the “noble-savage” whose passions, Kant argued, symbolised an illness of the mind, impermeable to mediating influences. For Plato, Aristotle and Kant it is mans unbridled passions that enslaves men in the chains of self-love. Freud’s accounts of the narcissistic personality is especially relevant here, and would invoke the impulsiveness of a personality functioning in accordance with the pleasure-pain principle rather than the reality principle.

Freudian Psychoanalysis in its later form was of course based on the Socratic principle that the polis or society is the human psuché writ large. Freud was convinced that the categories used to describe ad explain the activities and power of human psuché, could be used in the description and explanation /justification of the powers of the State. This was the reason he could write meaningfully about the History and State of the Society he was a part of. The myth of the “band of brothers” was a Freudian constructed conjectural narrative of the origins of society before the time of civilisation and its institutions. The narrative begins with the tyranny of a ruler-father who suppresses his sons and uses the available women to meet his narcissistic sexual needs. The sons band together and kill the father in order to escape his aggression, and gain access to the females of the group/tribe, but they almost immediately regret the act realising that whoever rules will in all likelihood be subjected to the same fate. They eventually reach an agreement on a law/taboo of murder, incest and cannibalism. This, for Freud is the moment in History when the light of Reason dawns, and a significant connection is made between what has happened in the past and the future of the tribe. This is also the triumph of Eros over Thanatos and the birth of a hope for a better future. The principle behind the taboo/law is the principle of equality: the beginning of the operation of the Kantian “hidden plan” in accordance with the operation of a “good will”.It is not clear where Freud stood on this issue of the hidden plan. He did claim to be a Kantian Psychologist and Vienna was a Cosmopolitan city, but he did not like Vienna, given the fact that he was a Jew in anti-Semitic times. Rousseau, however would not have endorsed Cosmopolitanism because for him when men come together corruption increases.

Campbell claims that the long period of dependency creates a large problem for the civilisational process because it is not easy to transcend this state and move to a state of independence:

“And with the extension of the period of dependency in our own civilisation into the middle or even late twenties, the challenge today is more threatening than ever, and our failures are increasingly apparent.”(Page 46)

Campbell likens this failure to a neurosis and warns of a “substitute dependency” upon the state and the social order, which has become the source of meeting the needs of human psuché for safety and belongingness. Such is the difficulty and pain of this process that it is referred to as a “second birth”, which results in a life led in accordance with the Reality Principle:

“We ask and are expecting, rather, that he should develop what Sigmund Freud called his “reality function” that faculty of the independently observant free thinking individual who can evaluate without preconception the possibilities of his environment and of himself within it, criticising and creating, not simply reproducing inherited patterns of thought and action, but becoming himself an innovating centre, an active, creative center of the life process.” (Page 47)

There is no mention of any qualification of this position related to the conservation of the knowledge and institutions we have established: no mention of the importance of History in this so-called civilising process. 1914, however is an interesting choice for the beginning of the decline of civilisation which Campbell characterises thus:

“life, freedom and force have not ben gained but lost.” (Page 49)

Campbell connects the loss of “form” in the arts to this moment in time, and claims that form was acknowledged in the smaller community of Athens but was already disappearing in the larger community of Rome. This process of the loss of form continues in large cities like New York, London and Paris where Campbell claims artists, instead of spending their time learning about their mediums and refining their work with continuous production, attend cocktail parties to promote themselves. What the Ancient Greeks may have claimed upon being confronted with “modern art”, is that a matrix of values have been lost in the search for “innovation”, values embodied in the terms, arché, areté, diké, epistemé, aletheia ,logos, phronesis, dunamis, and eudaimonia. The so-called “ready-mades” of modern art clearly rejected the history of working in a chosen medium, preferring instead to “innovate” by rejecting classical forms and creating instead a repertoire of emotions associated with the shock, surprise and indignation that their work generated. Campbell, in the context of this discussion complains, probably correctly, that James Joyce never received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Campbell cites Spenglers work “The Decline of the West” in relation to the decline of the influence of the hylomorphic notion of “form” (an important force in the shaping-process of our civilisations/cultures and individual characters). He notes that in spite of the goal of being great innovators we send a large proportion of our lives imitating what is occurring all around us. In the beginning of this process as primitive men, we imitated and were influenced by animals, the vegetative world, and finally the heavens above became the models for our communities. Worshipping the sun and the moon, for example, were a part of this civilising process. Myths and rituals played important roles in such a “forming process”, but these have largely been abandoned in modern times, except perhaps in the secular cases of the institutions of The Law and Universities. Part of this civilising process involved the demythologizing of the animal and vegetative worlds and the model of the heavens for the structure of our cities.(Frobenius). This resulted in man himself being placed at the centre of the universe. Unfortunately it was not the man described and justified by the ideas of Ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, but rather the romantically inspired hero, troubadour and explorer who proclaims “I am who I am”: the face that Freud removed the veil from with his hylomorphic and critical theories.

Campbell appeals to the work of Joyce entitled “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” as part of this unveiling process, and we find Stephen Dedalus accusing Aristotle of failing to define the key emotions of pity and terror and providing us with the following definitions:

“Pity is the feeling that arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites us with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling that arrests the mind in the presence of whatever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.” (Page 59)

This secret cause, Campbell argues is related to our mortality, the death of which we are so certain. The fading influence of Art, of course, has led us further down the path of discontentment, the path where History and Tradition have been rejected for the romantic spirit of exploration. One could also mention here, as Arendt did, the failure of the Political forces to preserve the “forms” for posterity, or the failing influence of Education.

The rituals of Universities may have continued unchanged for centuries but they occur in a context of a theory of specialisation that has compromised the universality of knowledge and wisdom that is implied by their very names. The only institutions whose integrity has largely remained intact is that of the Law, but given the fact that the most militarily powerful country in the world, the USA, has historically refused to participate meaningfully in the process of the International Court of Justice and that the current President is an uneducated convicted felon, we may well be witnessing the death of that Ancient Greek institution which has carried us so far in the civilising process. If this is true then the words of the Oracle that:

Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”

may be poignantly prophetic.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James, Review of “Myths to Live By”, Season 14, Episode 2

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Campbells Myths to Live by: Essay 2 The Emergence of Mankind

Campbell begins by maintaining that mythology and its various themes have played an important shaping role insofar as man’s Being-in-the-world is concerned. He elaborates upon this point by claiming that physical anthropology concerns itself with physical traits, tools, weapons and the art of man, noting that posture, brain size, teeth etc are important areas of research. Archaeology, a related science, devotes itself to excavations of ancient dwelling sites and buildings, and perhaps also carvings and inscriptions, attempting to draw conclusions as to how man succeeds in organising his life economically, socially and perhaps in terms of religion if these inscriptions or carvings appear to refer to deities. These sciences (perhaps also including social anthropology) are all concerned with the hylomorphic basic term “forms of life”, which Wittgenstein referred to in his later work, “Philosophical Investigations”. These investigations acknowledged both the scope and limitation of psychological reflections by claiming, for example that the discipline of Psychology, suffers from “conceptual confusion”. This was a complex criticism.

In the work “Articles on Aristotle 4: Psychology and Aesthetics” (Ed Barnes, J, et al.,London, Duckworth, 2003, Page VII) it is stated in the Preface that insofar as the scope and limitations of the concept of Psuché (Psychology) are concerned, the scope of the term firstly, applies to the general biological account of Psuché, secondly, the term is also located in the domain of Theoretical reasoning and metaphysics, thirdly, the term has application in the domain of practical reasoning as manifested in the disciplines of ethics and politics, fourthly, psuché is also the theme of the productive sciences, particularly the arts and Rhetoric. The discipline of Psychology, on this account is clearly trans-scientific (spanning several different categories of science), and this may be the reason why we encounter the phenomenon of conceptual confusion especially considering its a priori transcendental significance. This creates a significant problem: Has Psychology been mistakenly characterised as a discipline given the broad domains it ranges over?

This problem came into sharp focus in 1870 when an attempt was made to create a discipline resting on the definition,  “The Science of Consciousness”, and a reductionist method aimed at replacing a categorical attitude with hypotheticals. On this view, theories became less related to categorical truth and more related to a “modelling” process based upon dialectical reasoning in which a thesis arrived at is confronted with an antithesis and both must be submitted to a synthesis. This dialectical process, for Hegel, had an end in “the absolute” but it is not, however, clear that the scientist envisages such an end.  Dialectical reasoning is a kind of hypothetical reasoning that, in spite of its hypothetical character, appeals to the truth at the stage of a synthesis, but it does not define this assumption categorically. This, for Kant, would have been a prime example of a category mistake and it may be an example of the conceptual confusion referred to by Wittgenstein.

Psychology up to 1870 largely acknowledged its trans-scientific character remaining as it did principally in the context of Philosophy. Wundt and the Structuralists attempted as part of its reductionist policy, to reduce the whole enterprise to an investigation of sensations and feelings in experimental contexts. Later this would be questioned on the basis that consciousness could not as such be observed, and the focus would turn to a truncated idea of behaviour. William James also questioned the idea of consciousness insofar as it was conceived of as a kind of substance or entity. His work “Principles of Psychology” defined Psychology as “The Science of Mental Life: its phenomena and conditions” which at first sight appears compatible with both hylomorphic and Kantian Critical accounts of psuché but upon closer examination reveals itself to be an antirational empirical/pragmatic account. James admits in this work that there is an important distinction between what he refers to as the “judging subject” that thinks, and the empirical me, but in the context of this discussion he denies any status of transcendence for the Kantian “I think”. James also claims that there is not one unified self but rather a manifold of selves. He claims further that:

“The central part of the me is the feeling of the body and of the adjustments in the head; and in the feeling of the body should be included that of the general emotional tones and tendencies for at bottom these are but the habits in which organic activities and sensibilities run.” (Principles, Page 371)

James further claims that the relation between the “I think” and the empirical me is a “loosely construed thing”. This claim, of course questions not only Kantian Metaphysics but also the assumptions of Aristotelian hylomorphism which argues that the “what” of the experiences of the empirical me (its sensations, feelings, images, emotions, etc) relates conceptually to the “I” of the thinking soul which in turn relates essentially to the external world in forms different to those forms of sensation and feeling.

Freud’s first major publication “Studies in Hysteria”, which contained a number of separate studies, occurred circa three to five years after the publication of James’s Principles of Psychology. This is of course a landmark that establishes clinical studies as an important method of the new school of psychoanalysis. These essays also focus more on the unconscious mind than consciousness, the concern of many contemporary theoreticians.

James actually met Freud on his visit to the USA, and it is recorded that whilst he had a respect for Freuds work, he felt that it was too dogmatic given his own pluralistic approach to Psychological issues. In “Studies in Hysteria, we see clearly that Freud is beginning to distance himself from all forms of materialistic/empirical approaches by arguing for the thesis of psychogenesis (the cause of mental illness originates in the mind), which was already beginning to form after his visit to Charcot in Paris. Charcot, we know was a spokesperson for the thesis of somatogenesis (the cause of mental illness resides in the body and brain).

Freud relates hysteria to psychological trauma that has not had the possibility of everyday “abreaction” (conscious “working through” of the trauma), turning affected representations  into normal memories). We must recall here that Freudian theory was not primarily a theoretical account, but rather was embedded in the productive science of medicine in which the primary aim was that of an instrumental “cure” or “treatment”. The practical science of ethics was also a secondary concern given the fact that psychoanalysis was hailed as a “moral” form of treatment to be seen as an alternative to the mass incarceration of hysterical women in mental institutions that was occurring in most major European countries.

In contrast to this approach James’s focus was more theoretical and his “method” therefore was more eclectic, embracing empirical research from all over Europe. This empiricism would very quickly transform itself into a form of pragmatism, defining truth instrumentally, and situating it in the realm of a practical reason which viewed ethical matters instrumentally. In fact, although Freuds focus was mainly on treatment based on a respect for the dignity of his patients, there were of course theoretical aspects to his theorising which he addressed more specifically in his later work when the relation of psychoanalysis to Philosophy became more apparent. On the Philosophical view of Freud’s work, it must be characterised as “trans-scientific”, and if this is the case then it is best judged on philosophical criteria provided by both Aristotle and Kant.

Campbell also, in this essay, refers to demographical facts such as the dispersion of peoples in primitive times. He claims that there was a “centrifugal movement of peoples” away from centres of population. This, on Campbells view accounted for the differences between the mythologies of the world,  but this state of affairs is now changing with the globalisation processes of travel and communication which, he argues, creates a need to transcend differences between mythologies and religions by focussing on what he terms “common themes”.(Page 24).In the context of this discussion Campbell notes  that until relatively recently there was almost universal support for social order and its institutions, but what we are now witnessing is a changing attitude which he claims is related to a concern for the safety and the development of the individual as “ an end and entity  in himself.” It is not entirely clear what Campbell means with this expression because there is both a popular and a philosophical interpretation of his claim.

The popular interpretation points to the fact that man’s inherent selfishness and narcissism which, having been subject to control up to modern times, has suddenly in recent times  been unleashed in our modern civilisations. Campbells position here might be that the diminishing effect of the influence of mythology and religion has caused a loss of control, entailing perhaps that it was mythology and religion that had been responsible for this social control. This, of course,  is a position that puts into question the Ancient Greek philosophical proclamations that reason must take control of the appetitive and spiritual parts of the soul. Campbells position also runs counter to the Enlightenment proclamation: “dare to use your reason!”

The Philosophical idea of man as an end-in itself  for Kant, of course, relates to the categorical imperative and the practical idea of freedom which urges us to treat everybody as ends-in-themselves, because of their dignity as human beings, which in turn  is attributed to the species exactly because man is able in accordance with areté (doing and saying the right thing in the right way at the right time) to subject his feelings, emotions, affects to the moral law and the principle of the Golden Mean. For Kant, Religion within the bounds of Reason was the optimum stabiliser of activity in the arena of the social, but Kant also understood the importance of existing institutions such as The Law, Universities, as well as those which he proposed himself, namely, The International Court of Justice and the United Nations. These latter two institutions were the result of the globalisation process Campbell referred to earlier : a process which Kant insists is proceeding in accordance with a “hidden plan”. This “hidden plan” is motivated primarily by man recognising that he is a free and responsible agent with the duty to strive for the Good in accordance with the dictates of his understanding and reason.

Doing one’s duty, Kant insists, will lead to eudaimonia(a good spirited flourishing life and also to a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends. This is an interesting moment in History, in which a leading Enlightenment Philosopher proposes the ideas that man is a dignified end-in -itself, and also that the practical idea of freedom is just as important for the future of humanity as the theoretical ideas of God and soul. This is the Philosophical explanation/justification for the shift in man’s attitude toward authority Campbell spoke about. It is a shift from away from the Metaphysics of Nature and its forms of reasoning about  Psuché and towards the Metaphysics of Morals and its form of reasoning about mans “Being-in-the-world. Freud elaborates upon this theme of man’s relation to authority by pointing out that there are aspects of authority that cause man’s discontentment with his civilisation, and that our allegiance to religion has justifiably diminished over time given many of its pathological features.

The above philosophical accounts of our relation to authority take for granted that human psuché possesses a repertoire of powers of which the emotions and passions are but two powers of sensibility, which is subject to control by the powers of understanding/judgement/reason. The powers of sensibility are of course easily moved by certain kinds of narratives which we can find in Mythological texts, and Campbell claims in relation to the “common themes” which different mythologies manifes,t that God, the trees of knowledge of good and evil, the serpent, the flood, virgin births, the resurrection etc are  “common images”. Cambell points out that these are not historical images but rather “themes of the imagination” (Page 26):

“these holy tales and their images are messages to the conscious mind from quarters of the spirt unknown to normal daylight consciousness.”(Page 26)

Adam, we are told, “sinned” when he chose the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil over the fruits from the tree of life and immortality. Kant would have described this state of affairs in more positive terms and rejected the judgement that we were witnessing the “fall” of man, preferring instead to speak of the positive exercise of freedom to choose in future to live one’s life in accordance with the knowledge of good and evil. This choice was not something that ought to have been punished but rather celebrated. In these mythological narratives we often encounter symbolism and Campbell addresses this theme by referring to the Christian image of Christ, “the crucified redeemer”(Page 29), claiming that this image is a symbol of immortality partly in virtue of the fact that the Cross is made of wood which in its turn symbolises the tree of life, which, of course, is a much older  and more obscure symbol whose full meaning has yet to be interpreted.

Campbells explanation of the Fall and the distance created between man and God is an interesting consequence in that it appeals to the pair of opposites, good and evil, which Campbell argues we need to “pass between” (Page 29). He elaborates upon this point by referring to the gender differences between Adam and Eve, as well as the differences between man the sinner who as fallen from Grace and a wrathful God whose anger can be terrifying. On both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts, the idea of “the Good” is not an extreme to “pass between” as part of the synthesising process which embodies the truth between two inappropriate extremes. The idea of the Good is rather an ideal principle arrived at via Philosophical reflection, and a reflective process involving the principle of the Golden Mean. It is this principle that we use to define evil, not a mere negation of evil. This form of reasoning applies also to the idea of God which refers to a creator which leaves a trace of himself via his breath of life into man. God is the transcendent, he who is who he is:

“I am all that is, has been and will be and no mortal has ever lifted the veil from my face.”

Kants Critique of Judgement

On one Philosophical account of modern man, reason has ceased to play the part in man’s life that it once played but there is nevertheless a “hidden plan” which allows him to strive for “The Good” via a good will and faith in God and Religion within the bounds of mere reason.

Campbell explores the relationship between different religions further and compares Buddhism and Christianity and claims:

“The symbolic images of the two traditions are thus fully equivalent” Page 30)

The above claim belies the fact that there is no God for the Buddhists.

Campbell engages with physical anthropology and its portrayal of Neanderthal man. Discoveries of burial sites indicate perhaps a belief in the afterlife since artefacts have been found alongside the bones of the Neanderthals. There is also evidence that Campbell does not evoke, of the Neanderthals coming into contact with a superior being whose fate it will be to inherit the earth. Palaeolithic paintings and Venus-carvings are testaments to the superiority of the race of modern man. Campbell makes an interesting remark concerning the role of women for these relatively modern ancestors of ours. Women he claims symbolised the earth which in its turn was termed “Mother Nature” (the giver of life). The father in this communal constellation symbolised the authority in society (Page 37), initiating children into the social order—an order in which the bond between man is a mystical one—an image-related bond strengthened by mystical song and dance.

Campbell ends this essay by pointing out that where geographical conditions vary greatly, such as jungle scenarios, where the horizon is seldom seen, the psychology of these jungle dwellers is very different to those inhabitants of more temperate climate zones. In jungle communities the primary source of nourishment was cultivation, an activity which the women managed very efficiently. In such an environment of rotting vegetation the idea of death was more related to the mother as a giver of life and in such communities both animal and human sacrifice was a common practice. Here we encounter a state of nature which could be described in terms of being “nasty, brutish, and short” unless of course one occupies a privileged position in society. Frazer’s work “The Golden Bough” also manifest some of this brutality in relation to the environment of Northern Forests where a Priest-King reigns waiting to be murdered by his successor— a mythology and psychology which is very different to that which we encounter in the mythology of Ancient Greece.