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In the work entitled “Freud” Jonathan points to the fact that Freud listened to his patients with care and claims that this was the only significant source of psychoanalytical theory. In these consulting rooms, Lear claims, Freud’s patients were responding to the question”How ought we to live?” with curious transformations of the human psuche graded on a scale by Freud: a scale stretching from neuroses to psychoses. Lear also notes in his chronology over Freud’s works that Freud had confided with a Hungarian psychoanalyst concerning his reluctance to work with psychotic patients because their mode of transforming the human psuche aroused in him feelings of anger. Freud’s frustration was probably partly due to the fact that these patients were so difficult to treat given their compulsion to repeat and destructive tendencies–tendencies that had created havoc in their lives. These patients, it is clear, defined the limits of Freud’s form of rationalism.
Lear, however, rejects this rationalist interpretation of Freud’s work with the words:
“in my own attempt to figure out how to live something is going wrong” Lear, J. Freud, Routledge New York, 2005 ( P.10)
He continues:
“Freud was not well placed to hear this master complaint. He was a doer and he conceived of himself as engaged in scientific research though his image of science was by todays standards naive. Just as a doctor pushes for the hidden causes of physical diseases, So Freud took himself to be probing the unconscious for hidden meanings making the patient ill. With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that a certain clinical brutality flows from this self understanding. It also blinds him to the profound philosophical and ethical significance of his discoveries.”(P.10)
There is much to unpack here. Freud was obviously a practitioner, but also a thinker whose thoughts captured the attention of the world. Lear is ostensibly attempting to criticise the scientifically inspired sport of Freud bashing, but his form of criticism actually weakens Freud’s otherwise strong philosophical position, by misconstruing both Freud’s theoretical assumptions and what was being aimed at by Freudian therapy. Freud was the thinker that opened the eyes of the world to his discoveries in Psychology(which he claimed were Kantian), a feat he could hardly have been achieved if he was blind to the philosophical and ethical significance of his work. This claim by Lear is questionable given the fact that he had earlier written an influential work on the Philosophy of Aristotle. The above quote demonstrates many things, but it particularly ignores the role of hylomorphism in the theoretical assumptions of Freud. The description that Freud was searching for “hidden meanings” ignores the central focus of Freud on primary and secondary processes. This description of Lear’s is problematic, as is the claim that Freud’s essentially Kantian view of science was naive. Many scientists cannot of course see “science” in Freud’s account because of their atomistic, positivistic, naturalistic, or pragmatic views of metaphysics and Transcendental Psychology. The metaphysical and transcendental view of course includes the Kantian view of the normativity of freedom that Korsgaard (quoted by Lear) characterises in the following terms:
“And this sets us a problem no other animal has. For our capacity to turn our attention onto our own mental activities is also a capacity to distance, and to call them into question. I perceive and I find myself with a powerful impulse to believe. But I back up and bring that impulse into view, and then I have a certain distance. Now the impulse does not dominate me and now I have a problem. Shall I believe? Is this perception really a reason to believe? I desire and find myself with a powerful impulse to act. But I back up and bring this impulse into view and then I have a certain distance. Now the impulse does not dominate me and now I have a problem. Shall I act?Is this desire really a reason to act? The reflective mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason.(Korsgaard, C., The Sources of Normativity(Cambridge, CUP, 1996, P93)
Aristotle and Kant would endorse the overall rationalist intent of the above quote which Lear finds problematic because he believes, paradoxically, that in cases such as that of the Rat Man the doubts that this patient feels are an exercise of his freedom. Lear claims. again paradoxically, that in the grip of his compulsive feeling of doubt, the Rat Man is employing self conscious reflection of the kind referred to above. Lear argues that this case illustrates that the process of “stepping back” from ones experience is an illusion. Much hinges on whether Korsgaard imagines the above activity of “stepping back” to be a kind of introspection or a more theoretical account of the role of reason in believing and acting. In relation to the claim that the above reflective process is illusory, Lear maintains that Philosophical reflection per se, is a defensive form of activity that blocks rather than promotes self understanding. We pointed out in the previous essay on Lear’s work “Open Minded”, that he was missing the point of rationalism and attempting unsuccessfully to substitute for it a non-Freudian hermeneutical idea of “Interpretation”. The famous chapter 7 of Freud’s work “The Interpretation of Dreams” is clearly in the spirit of Kantian science(which includes regulative teleological explanations) and also in line with the Kantian division of the human psuche into the realms of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. This Kantian division also has interesting relations to the essentially Aristotelian principles of Energy Regulation Principle(ERP, Pleasure-Pain Principle(PPP) and the Reality Principle(RP). The ERP and the PPP are clearly operating in the realm of practical sensibility, and the RP is operating in the realm of the Categories of the Understanding and the Principles of Logic, namely the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory relates these three principles in the context of a hierarchy of capacities or powers: a hierarchy in which the lower powers are subsumed under, or enveloped by the higher powers. This approach to reality was evident in Freud’s early unpublished scientific “Project”. A document that was clearly influenced by the work of Hughlings Jackson’s research on aphasia. In this work Hughlings Jackson argued that the higher centres of the brain relate in complex ways to the lower centres, and the effect of lesions cause both negative symptoms that inhibit the lower centres and positive symptoms where the lower centres are released at the expense of(colonising the energy of the system) the higher centres. There are obvious hylomorphic aspects to Hughlings Jackson’s account which Freud, in accordance with Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics, elaborated upon. Freud was therefore not a dualist and he insisted in his writings at the end of his life, that his theory would be confirmed by future brain research. This is strong evidence of the influence of his hylomorphic approach to psychological phenomena. Freud would certainly have endorsed Hughlings jackson’s approach to case studies in which we must begin by studying firstly the damage to tissue, secondly the disease in the organs, and thirdly consequential disorders of function. Hughlngs Jacksons proposes three evolutionary levels of the nervous system. The Cambridge Journals Medical History has the following to say about Hughlings Jackson’s theory of the evolution and devolution of nervous system functions:
“He conceived of diseases of the nervous system as a process of de-evolution or dissolution. He came to believe that the nervous system is a hierarchy of three evolutionary levels that represent, re-represent, and re-re-represent movement and sensation of parts of the body. Higher levels suppress the function of lower levels. Negative symptoms result from the loss of function of higher levels, and positive symptoms result from the appearance of the function of previously inhibited lower levels.These emergent functions are inherently less organised, less definite and more general than the functions that are lost.”(Internet source:–nebi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2640105(2020))
Hughlings Jacksons model is a neurological model that influenced Freud’s theories significantly, especially at the beginning of his theorising. It is a model that supports the Aristotelian more psychologically oriented model of powers building upon and integrating with other powers. The model is also influencing the account of the psychical apparatus we are given in the famous Chapter 7 of Freud’s “interpretation of Dreams”, as well as the account of the 1895 Scientific “Project” which Paul Ricoeur characterises as ” a non-hermeneutic state of the system”(Ricoeur, P., Freud and Philosophy, Trans Savage, D.,(London, Yale University Press, 1970, P.69)
This early account of the apparatus Ricoeur continues to argue, functions principally in accordance with the ERP but also in accordance with the higher level principle of Pleasure-Pain. Ricoeur does not, however, see the connection of Aristotelian hylomorphism to the account of the psychic apparatus Freud provides us with in Chapter 7 of his “Interpretation of Dreams”. Ricoeur claims that in this later sketch of the psychic apparatus that there is no relation to the later theoretical account of the topography and he claims further that we are in such a context dealing with actions that need to be “interpreted”.
The early Scientific “Project” of 1895 defines psychical processes not in terms of actions but rather in terms of the material particles of the neurones of the brain. There are three systems and these systems are all innervated by a Quantity Q, of energy. According to a letter Freud wrote on this topic he appears to be characterising an early version of the primary and secondary processes:
“the main trend and the compromise trend of the nervous system, the two biological rules of attention and defense, the indications of quality, reality, and thought, the state of the psycho-sexual group, the sexual determination of repression, and finally, the factors determining consciousness as a perceptual function.”(Origins P.355).
There can be no way of connecting these ideas to the sphere of action and the activity of the human psuche except via a hylomorphic framework in which material, efficient, formal, and final causes(action explanations) are theoretically operating. The phrases “indications of quality, reality, and thought” and “factors determining consciousness” are clear traces of the influence of Hughlings Jackson and his concept of “levels of functioning” of the nervous system. There are both Philosophical and Scientific motivations operating in the Freudian account. The latter is evident in the opening words of the “Project” which refers to the “Scientific Aim” of the work. What we encounter in this early work, however, is not a science of observation and measurement. This is evidenced by the fact that the concept of Energy used is not a measurable entity, even though it is placed in a category of “Quantity”. In this account, Quantity refers to the property of the system to reduce tension in a system, returning the system to a state of homoestasis in which tensions remain at a low level . There must be some energy remaining in the system , Freud argues, to enable it to provide energy for “specific actions”. We shift upwards in the system when we move from quantity to quality–a shift that takes us to the level of Consciousness, which for Freud, is the home of indications of quality. This transformation forced Freud to postulate a third system of neurones, a system he designated with the letter W. The first set of neurones he called phi, and they discharged their quantities completely without retaining any trace of their discharge(e.g. in reflexive actions). The second system he called psi-neurones and these retained a trace of their discharge via chemical alteration. Ricouer in his work on Freud, claims that this whole system rests upon a purely scientific idea of “the material equivalences of the the sensation of rise in tension and unpleasure and the sensation of discharge with pleasure.” There is no obvious evidence for this interpretation if it is the case that Hylomorphism is an influential factor in Freud’s theories. For hylomorphic theory there are three kinds of pleasure-unpleasure and these kinds might be related to the three system of neurones and the three principles of the functioning of human psuche. Add to this the claim of Hughlings Jackson, that the whole system of neurones is controlled at the highest level by a system of neurones that will qualitatively represent and re-represent reality for the human psuche. It is this last level of functioning that allows us to speak of the understanding of the external world, e.g. food, and the sexual partner etc. This level of functioning will also generate the secondary learning processes that enable the human psuche to generate knowledge spontaneously through self reflection and reasoning processes that Lear believes are illusory. Freud, in the context of this discussion makes a very important distinction between the modes of functioning of primary processes versus the mode of functioning of secondary processes. In the former mode of functioning, fantasy produces an image that is a representation that bears some similarity to the memory trace of a perceptual quality. The difference in this mode of functioning resides in what motivates the fundamental theoretical distinction between the real and the imaginary, between, for example, activity aiming at conceptual and propositional understanding, and activity aiming at pleasure (or pain reduction). It is in this context that Freud begins to talk of an ego whose primary process function is the protection of ones body, and whose secondary process function is to reality-test ones thoughts. If the Hughlings Jackson account is correct, then we can postulate that another function of the ego would be to inhibit primary processes from disrupting the homeostasis of the system or from causing unpleasure.
Lear in the beginning of his work on Freud points to Agamemnon and his explanation for his action of stealing the mistress of Achilles. Agamemnon blamed Zeus. Lear paradoxically characterises what is happening here in terms of the influence of “another mind”. The account of Julian Jaynes referred to earlier in this work carries more of a Freudian stamp. Jaynes maintains that there was an executive part of the human psuche located in the right hemisphere that has since disappeared with the appearance of the integrating function of Consciousness. Julian Jaynes, that is, contradicts the “another mind” thesis with a more plausible account of “another kind of mind”. Jaynes supports his thesis with extensive reference to both literary and archeological evidence. It may be this account in terms of “another mind” and its highly questionable logic that is causing the problem of understanding what Korsgaard is referring to in her account of rational self-reflection.
According to Freud a defining characteristic of the ego is its ability to choose not to cathect motor ideas or images of objects that are desired. This raises, of course the question of whether these ideas or images generate unconscious or preconscious memories, whether, that is, the psi system of neurones is related to the phi system. One can also wonder whether defence mechanisms are operating in such processes. It is clear that perceptual discrimination requires the use of psi-neurones, a necessary activity if a memory is to be formed: something which is in turn necessary for the recognition of a previously encountered object. This might be the beginning of the process that Freud characterises as indication of thought or reality. Freud’s suggestion here is that if one wishes to ascend up the neuronal hierarchy to the function of a perceptual judgement, a wishful cathexis must be attributed to the recognised object, and further, it is this interaction of perception and wish that gives rise to what he calls a “belief”(a cathexis of psi-neurones). In the above process the function of attention would also be involved. In such a context the ego has learned to hypercathect processes of perception. On the Kantian view what has been described does not yet take us to the level of the the interaction of concepts that form truth making judgments. We remain at the level of Sensibility.
This suggests that on the Freudian account the next shift of level up to the level of understanding occurs when we turn from perceptual indications of reality to indications of speech which are indications of thought reality. Perceptual functions are located on that part of the cortex of the brain situated in the occipital and parietal lobes. The areas of the brain that principally differentiate us from the higher mammals of the animal kingdom are firstly, the language centres(Wernicke’s area located in the temporal lobe and Broca’s area located in the left frontal lobe and associated with the motor use of language) and secondly the frontal lobes generally associated with the planning and organisation of action. Hughlings Jackson in one of his early publications recognised the existence and importance of Broca’s area and we might conclude from these reflections that both the language centres of the brain are involved in the higher mental functions of understanding and reason: functions which differentiate themselves from the sensible functions of perception and imagination. Language, for Freud, belongs clearly in the domain of the secondary process and is a higher function of thought. This is the so called second level of reality that constitutes a higher level of function than that of biological and perceptual functions. It is at this level that reality testing in accordance with the RP occurs. At this secondary level, energy is bound in chemically transformed psi neurones and this diminishes the quantity of energy flow in the system. From this point of view it appears that the electrical potential of neurones have been diminished by this chemical transformation. The brain is, of course, an electro-chemical system, something that seems to escape those commentators, including Lear, who wish to talk in terms of the “lighting up” of neurones.
The interesting observation that Freud makes in relation to “thought indication” is that it is not related to biological unpleasure. This presumably means that the kind of pleasure that is related to thought is not connected to the mere absence of pain(relief from pain), as is the case with lower biological and perceptual forms of pleasure. In this context it appears that the presence of thought about reality is intimately connected to the presence of reality. On this account certain thought functions are not related to brain states of the perceptual kind but rather connected to the somato-sensory area of the brain which in turn is connected to motor and language activity. This may create the interrogative space of the self-reflective process Lear claims is an illusion.
Ricoeur treats this advance in levels from what he calls the energetics to the understanding as a discontinuous process. In a sense there is a physical discontinuity between the lower perceptual and higher thought functions of the brain, but it is nevertheless the case that the brain is one organ even if the central sulcus partly defines the division between these areas. Hughlings Jackson and hylomorphism postulates a continuity of function whereby the higher functions have continuous relations with the lower, e.g. sexuality and anxiety are functions possessing both biological and psychological aspects. Freud notes that sexual tension can be anxiety provoking. This anxiety is then transformed into psychological emotional affects perhaps involving sexual memories.
Ricoeur points to the different applications of Freudian theory in the experimental laboratory and the clinical setting of his consulting rooms, suggesting tension where there is none. The Freudian concept of Science is hylomorphic and the essence specifying definition of rational animal capable of discourse is obviously a multi-level definition of the human psuche. The various diagnoses of the neuroses and the focus upon the dream work(a work of the imagination) and the work of mourning(a work of the Ego), require an account in which the agencies of the id, ego, superego work together to complement logically the topography of the systems of consciousness, preconsciousness, and the unconsciousness. Embedded in this structure is the assumption of a logical differentiation between levels of consciousness and differentiation between agencies. This account obviously arises both from the clinical setting of the work of psychoanalysis with its methods of dream interpretation, free association, the handling of the transference neurosis, and the interpretation of everyday behaviour. The method partly aims at recovering ideas and images(psychical representations from the unconscious system). These are by definition not items of knowledge that could be accessed by normal interrogative methods. The point of retrieving this difficult to access material is to install indications of thought reality in place of these essentially sensible images and ideas. These indications of thought reality(concepts judgements) are necessary for installing an attitude toward the world and reality that better answers the normative question of life, namely “How ought we to live?”
Korsgaards work “Sources of normativity” will give us a Kantian perspective of the above question. This question is clearly a normative question for Korsgaard, and, we might add, this is also the case for all ought-judgments including those civilisation-building obligation judgements such as “Promises ought to be kept” and “laws ought to be obeyed”. Korsgaard has the following to contribute to this discussion:
“It is the most striking fact about human life that we have values. We think of ways that things could be better, more perfect, and so, of course, different than they are, and of ways that we ourselves could be better, more perfect, and so, of course, different than we are. Why should this be so? Where do we get ideas that outstrip the world we experience and seem to call it into question, to render judgements on it, to say that it does not measure up, that it is not what it ought to be? Clearly we do not get them from experience at least not by any simple route…The fact of value is a mystery and philosophers have been trying to solve it ever since. But it is important to see that during the transition from the ancients to the modern world, a revolution has taken place..The world has been turned upside down and inside out, and the problem has become the reverse of what it was before.”(P.2)
Korsgaard goes on to explain why both Plato and Aristotle spoke of forms in relation to values and how for them:
“being guided by value is a matter of being guided by the way things ultimately are.”(P.2)
She adds, in Delphic spirit:
“Being guided by the way things really are is, in this case, being guided by the way you really are. The form of a things is its perfection but it is also what enables the thing to be what it is.”(P.3)
We are, as Kant argued, ” the crooked timber of humanity” and our human matter is not easily “formed” by rationality. Aristotle too, shares this view. The “matter” of the animal is not easily “humanised” in accordance with the Greek ideas of areté, epistemé, arché. diké, phronesis, all of which are value laden terms. In Aristotle’s view, the actualising process “aims at the good” but for him it is not only the “matter” of our animal nature that needs to be “formed” but also a recalcitrant environment or reality needs to be understood as well as “formed” by motor activity. The principles ERP, PPP, and RP are obviously also involved in the actualisation processes connected to the above. The telos of a thing is metaphysically what various philosophers have referred to as the perfection of a thing. The revolution Korsgaard referred to above depicts either a failure of humanity to actualise its potential, or alternatively, a regression back to the dominance of the mind by symptoms of the sensible part of the mind. Korsgaard refers to Plato, and an event of a “fall” because of an illusion that the sensible form of the world is what it is independently of how we conceive or understand it to be.
Language is the means by which children are introduced into the world of concepts and the medium which is used for self-reflection, an activity conducted in an interrogative mood.It is interesting to note in this context that for the Greeks who believed in arché, areté, diké, epistemé, thinking was construed as talking to oneself. Compare this with the Freudian “talking cure” and it becomes apparent that transforming sensory images and motor ideas into indications of thought reality is an important part of both the communication process and the therapeutic process. Conceptualising what is happening occurs partly in the interrogative mood in a context of exploration/discovery because the very long work of psychoanalysis–the mere occurrence of the “material” in Consciousness, is ,of course a necessary condition but obviously not a sufficient condition for the manifold of sensible representations to be conceptually organised. The act of apperception, the “I think”, obviously will play a major role in this activity. The more practically oriented Freudian triangle of “Desire-Refusal-Wounded Desire” will also play an important role in strengthening the Ego of the patient. This will ensure that many wishes will be transformed into lost-cathected objects.
Korsgaard contributes to this discussion relating to the recalcitrant matter of reality and the struggle to achieve “The Good”:
“Im not sure about Plato. But at least in ethics, Aristotle doesn’t seem to have made much of this problem. A well brought up person would not need to have excellence forced upon him–he would move naturally towards the achievement of his perfect form.. In Greek thought becoming excellent is as natural as growing up. We need to learn virtue, but it is as we learn language, because we are human and that is our nature.”(P.3)
There is no “fall” or “fault” in human nature for Aristotle, Kant or Freud. The normal response of modern philosophers(especially in the US) is to regard Aristotelian and Kantian ethics as opposing systems of ethics, with the former emphasising teleology and excellence and the latter focussing upon deontological duty and obligation. Korsgaard does not fall into this category, because she openly admits that for Aristotle there is a commitment to the role of law in the activity of striving to lead the flourishing life: in other words a commitment to duty and obligation. Korsgaard does, however, problematically characterise obligation as compulsive, thereby creating tension with what she calls the “attraction” of excellence(areté). In a sense, looked at from the point of view of a narcissist who cannot understand the rationality of the law, following the law to avoid punishment(in the spirit of Glaucon) could be described by this kind of patient as a compulsive act. Obeying the law in such circumstances for a narcissist is a matter of the good consequences for themselves. For these narcissists avoiding unpleasure or punishment amounts to avoiding the consequences of breaking the law and thereby avoiding a wounded ego. Consequentialists operating on the above form of instrumental reasoning are, however, just as likely to regard the wounded ego as the worst of all evils and prefer to break the law rather than experience the compulsion of following the law which wounds their ego. This is a game regulated by the PPP and can be regularly seen in the obsessive behaviour of Freud’s patients, especially the Rat Man for whom the psychical distance between his reason and his action is not traversed by knowing the good(knowing what ought to be done) but is rather traversed by doubts about what ought to be done and the anxiety associated with this doubt. For Freud, acting according to the RP involves learning to subject ones appetites to a form of reflective self control in which unrealistic desires are not acted upon. This is a different kind of game altogether.
Korsgaard points correctly to the complication in the development of our concept of the human psuche caused by the concept we are provided with by Christian metaphysics. Christianity diminished the space of the metaphysics of action in favour of a more passive relation to God, the law maker, and man the fallen soul, who is being punished for an act of freedom motivated by a desire for knowledge in the Garden of Eden. This interpretation regards the act of eating the apple of knowledge : an act motivated by a desire to know rather than by appetite for a transient foodstuff. Such a scenario for the Greek Philosophers and Kant is a celebration of the importance of knowledge and freedom rather than an opportunity to mourn over offending ones God.
For Kant the idea of freedom is the central idea of practical reason governing our active lives. The theoretical idea of God is also an idea of reason but regulates the belief system rather than the action system. The Christian imagination provides us with an image of God the lawmaker, and man the lost soul in need of guidance. This imaginary account leaves us with the impression that it is only through this belief system that we can strive effectively for “The Good”. For believers, the idea of God being dead might indeed suffice for the collapse of the idea of the Good, and perhaps as a result a collapse of even the idea of the good of the law. Korsgaard claims interestingly, that when the idea of God retreated(deus absconditis) the response of returning to a belief in Greek metaphysics was no longer possible because God had replaced the idea of “Form”. When God retreated we were left with a world of matter without form: a world in which our sensible relations to matter dominated our lives. This we can call the materialists revolution. The Ancient Greek response to this revolution would have been to point to the importance of knowledge and associated concepts of arché, areté, epistemé, diké and phronesis insofar as defining our human form of life as “rational animal capable of discourse is concerned. The phenomenon of Kantian critical Philosophy would for them have been testimony to the fact that the outcome of the revolution is still hanging in the balance. These ancient Greeks would have also been mildly amused at sceptically feeling the world to be inside out and dogmatically viewing the world upside down. They would of course have objected to the viewing of the world in exclusively perceptual terms at all. For them ,thinking about the world and acting in a world in accordance with our knowledge of The Good is not just an indication of thought reality but also an indication of our sanity.
Kantian Critical Philosophy whilst being a destroyer of traditional non Aristotelian Metaphysics does not reject the view that God may be the theoretical source of our principles and laws. Kant does, however, reject all claims connected to the imaginative idea of God. For him God is an idea of reason and a possible source of normativity: a source of the forms we impose on the matter of the world and our belief system. Reason, can, of course present itself to us as an order to do our duty as in the Kantian cases of the tax man demanding his taxes or the military man demanding obedience, but for both Kant and the Greeks there need to be good reasons to pay tax and obey: unless, that is, these demands were subjected to a critical tribunal where reason and argument would determine whether the reason was good or not: in which case these imperatives were empty commands without any authority. This critical attitude is the mark of the free man and after this tribunal, the interrogative attitude gives way an imperative attitude in which if there is a question remaining it is immediately resolved with judgments from the tribunal of explanation /justification. For the man possessed of reason and its form of ethical thinking and understanding, the normative is an end in itself, without further need of questioning or justification. In other words the moral law is what it is and it also is justified true belief, i.e. knowledge(of the good).
For Korsgaard the effect of the revolution, which in the name of modern science removed teleological explanation from the tribunal of explanation/justification (or what she refers to in a material mode), was that of removing the purpose of the world. A further effect is that the search is on for the sources of normativity(in an interrogative mood–the mood of an explorer looking for the truth). This is a regression from the Greek and Kantian position where principles and laws and their truth is no longer an issue. Science has succeeded in fighting the battle over normativity on the continually shifting ground of its choosing. Another interpretation of the cause of this revolution is the one we have presented, namely the rejection of Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics. The reasons for this state of affairs is manifold and deserves investigation.
For Kant, the hylomorphic Philosopher, the form of a moral judgement is related to the way in which an act and its purpose are related. Plato, another rationalist, established the importance of reasoning in his consideration of three maxims:
- I will keep my weapon because I want it for myself
- I will refuse to return your weapon because I want it for myself
- I will refuse to return your weapon because you have gone mad and may hurt someone.
Plato uses both the ideas of the Good and the True to classify these maxims: maxims 1 and 3 are good and 2 is bad. There is also a short tribunal of explanation/justification. The maxims are not true in virtue of the actions being in essence good or bad because maxims 2 and 3 mention the same actions(refusing to return the weapon). Neither is it the case that the maxims are true in virtue of sharing the same telos or purpose because maxims 1 and 2 have the same purpose(keeping the weapon for myself). This establishes that the form of the Good is constituted by the relation between the action and its purpose. It is this complex form of reasoning that constitutes the idea of the good and justifies willing the maxim to become a universal law. Involved in this reasoning is the logical consequence of treating everyone(including myself) as ends in themselves(second formulation of the categorical imperative) as well as in the more distant telos of a relation to the law that is such that I could be both the legislator and the citizen-recipient that obeys the law because it is rational.Notice how my own desires and interests have been universalised into everyones. Note also how logic supports this structure with syllogistic forms of reasoning that move from a concrete action expression of the moral law in the imperative:
Promises ought to be kept
to an action
“Jack promised Jill he would do A”.
This in turn leads to the necessarily true conclusion that Jack ought to do A(which he might not do if he gets hit by a truck). Of course an Aristotelian attack of akrasia or a Freudian attack of anxiety might prevent the premises from being “activated”(in the higher centres of the mind of the agent). The lower centres might , that is, be narcissistically activated and neutralise the activity of the higher centres(Hughlings Jackson). If this happens the accusation of akrasia(weakness of the will), of failing to do the right thing, becomes justified. In Aristotelian terms the agent is “drunk” with desire or anxiety.
Obsessive compulsives have more serious anxiety problems and it is somewhat puzzling that given the above analyses there is a conflation of the obsessive’s condition with the condition of the agent following the moral law freely, (thus possessing a feeling of self worth, and leading a possible flourishing life as a consequence). On the other hand the man who is not freely following the moral law but feels compelled to do so(against his desire to do something else), is being compelled by the consequences, is being in a sense “caused” to act rather than freely acting for the right reason(Areté)
Lear claims, somewhat controversially, that Freud was not a Philosopher(P.20) This is a mystifying claim, a revolutionary’s perspective of a man who could translate Sophocles, had studied Aristotle and Brentano at University and subsequently studied the works of Kant, Plato, Anaxogoras, Empedocles, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. It is undoubtedly true that he did not situate his work in relation to the Philosophers of his time who were participating in the revolution against Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics. It is also true that Freud complained about the logicians of his time and their resistance to the theory of psychoanalysis but that resistance, we are sure, he diagnosed, was a consequence of the Cartesian view of Consciousness: a view that claimed to be a rationalist view but in essence flirted with dualism and materialism in a way that would have been anathema to both Aristotelians and Kantians. For these philosophers/logicians knowledge was necessarily related to Consciousness: the unconscious on this account could not be known and moreover, the very concept, in their view was contradictory.
Descartes was a mathematician and regarded analysis of a problem as the reverse of the process of a Euclidean synthesis in which elements and operations such as points, space, straight lines, triangles, squares etc., are constituted. Analysis from this point of view was merely the reverse of the process of synthesis. The role of definitions in this process is a matter of moving from the more simple definition of a point to the more complicated definitions of a straight line, triangle etc. These simple definitions begin with a definition of an intuition, e.g. a point is a place in space with no magnitude. Even if there is an imaginative operation in the construction of a straight line between two points, we are nevertheless dealing with intuitions which are designed to be measured quantitatively and form figurative relations. Both Kant and Aristotle, as we know, would have objected to construing analytical reasoning and synthetic reasoning in mathematical terms. Arbitrarily fixating upon intuitions as distinct from concepts, and attempting to characterise them in terms of only two Aristotelian Categories, namely Quantity and Relation would have been problematic for both Aristotle and Kant. To the extent that Freud was influenced by Plato, Aristotle and Kant, this form of reasoning would have been problematic for Freud too. Plato we ought to recall would have placed Mathematics lower on the scale of reasoning than many of Freud’s contemporary logicians.
Imagination for Freud, however, is not to be regarded as purely related to theoretical intuition and intuitive representations, where the manifold of representations is organised by mathematical(quantitative and relational) considerations. There is, in Freud’s writings several interesting descriptions of the practical relation of the imagination to biological (ERP)and psychological activity(PPP).
In the interpretation of Dreams Freud, in a chapter entitled “Wish Fulfillment”, outlined how a sensation/stimulus of hunger produces in the infant, the reflexive activity of kicking and crying: an activity not useful for bringing about a cessation of the stimulus or sensation. It is outside help that brings about this cessation by providing the infant with food. A mnemonic image of this experience of satisfaction of this need is associated with the sensation/stimulus of hunger. On the next occasion of the appearance of this stimulus/sensation two alternative responses are now made available, namely reflexively kicking and crying, and the appearance of the hallucinatory mnemonic image of the experience of satisfaction. This latter is a primary process manifestation of wish fulfillment. Freud connects dreams to primary process activity and argues convincingly that the hallucinatory appearance is connected to the immobilisation of the motor system during sleep–thoughts about specific actions to meet specific stimuli/sensations are also in a state of suspended animation. In such a physical state a wish can only be fulfilled in a hallucination. Obviously upon waking the motor and sensory systems begin to function and the secondary processes emerge as the ERP and PPP are subsumed under the workings of the RP. The RP demands specific actions in relation to the demands of sensation/stimuli. The secondary process and the focus on thought indications of reality mean that the contexts of explanation/justification become more important than the occurrence of perceptions and emotions in the contents of exploration/discovery. Ideas of the Truth and the Good in relation in to the categories of the understanding, concepts, and reasoning(principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason) are the aims of a human psuche striving to lead a flourishing life.
Sexual sensations and stimuli, owing to our long childhood and the prohibitions of society, have difficulty finding appropriate avenues of expression and therefore become the playground of the primary process, forming fantasies and experiencing anxieties. Freud’s early biological account claimed that the biological condition for both the operation of the primary and the secondary processes is the delay in the transmission of the sensory impulse to the motor region. It is in this delay that both primary process and secondary process activity occur(in different regions of the brain). The problem with primary process activity is that one of its primary goals is the restoration of homeostasis via the ERP. The relief of the tension involved(absence of pain) is experienced as a primitive form of pleasure. This pleasure is from the point of view of less transient forms of pleasure connected to the operation of the RP, a substitute satisfaction. This is well illustrated by the example of the infant hallucinating the breast and perhaps temporarily suspending the motor activity of kicking and screaming. The problem that is present in this state of affairs is that there is a crisis in energy regulation of the concerned organism, due to lack of nourishment, and this will, in spite of the response of the primary process hallucination, reassert itself probably in the form of kicking and screaming until external help arrives on the scene and restores the state of homeostasis. In the course of such activity an erotogenic zone around the mouth is being installed in the body: pleasure and pain is centred around the experiences of the mouth. At this point what we are dealing with is a non sexual form or eros. According to Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual stages, sexual erotogenic zones will only be established around three years of age during the phallic stage, long after the child’s view of the world is transformed by the use of the egocentric grammatical “I”.
Shakespeares seven ages of man is a literary view of our long childhood, maturity and decline, moving from a stage of helplessness where we whine about our condition, learn to live with love and its issues, fight about our condition, judge our condition, muse about our condition, and then finally with a whimper return to a state of helplessness. The message of Shakespeare is clear: “All men are mortal”. Shakespeare sees in these phases of life before we shuffle off this mortal coil, Eros present in the form of an actor strutting on a stage playing various roles all of which fade into insignificance at the fact that Thanatos presents us with, namely “All men are mortal”. Life is bracketed by helplessness at birth and death and the overarching judgement is that life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. If Plato was the spokesperson for Eros, Shakespeare is the spokesperson for Thanatos and Freud synthesises these positions insofar as he attempted also to synthesise Philosophy, Literature, Aristotelian and Kantian science into one great account of the human psuche. Sexuality plays an important role in the work of both Freud and Shakespeare. The phallic stage for Freud is a reenactment of the tragedy of Oedipus who, in desiring his mother and wishing his father dead, calls upon himself the Erinyes(the fury of fate, Ananke). This drama is actualised in the context of the Freudian triangle of Desire-Refusal-Wounded Desire. It ends relatively peacefully in terms of a successful identification with both parents and marks the beginning of a phase in which insight into the idea of the good(what is right, what is wrong) is actualised. This is the psycho-sexual stage in which we begin to decentre, to delay gratification, and accept with a greater resignation the march of events through ones life, responding to them less impulsively and more thoughtfully. This history is of course strewn with lost cathected objets and tragedies lurk in the shadows as one learns to love(Shakespeare’s lover). This stage marks the beginning of the subjects entrance into one of the major institutions of society, the educational system. The Freudian triangle will now be activated in the context of a desire for understanding and the striving for the acquisition of knowledge as a preparation for the next major challenge for the ego, namely work. Freud’s eagle eye discerned in this process a hylomorphic transformation of the Instincts. He saw in this actualisation process the presence of Thanatos seeking to return everything back to an earlier mysterious state of matter–the matter of a corpse awaiting the final dissolution into its elements. He also paradoxically, for many, saw Thanatos in the compulsion to repeat of the obsessive compulsive. Similarly, Freud sees more in sexuality than meets the eye: he sees the presence of the life force, Eros– a force which seeks not just transient satisfaction but satisfaction in the search for the totality of conditions of both life and knowledge. This Eros is undoubtedly the eros of Plato seeking to love the beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul as well as the beauty of the laws of the city. This requires work, and this work is not simple because civilisation has its discontents who believe that the work demanded by civilisation may not be worth the effort. This work may even require sacrifice of the kind we saw in the cases of Socrates and Jesus. Life may do more than merely wound ones ego. Tales of the active comprehension of death as a good which was more clearly the case with Socrates than Jesus(“Father why has thou abandoned me”) are no longer tales told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. These tales testify to a strong ego and a new type of hero. In such tales we are presented with the presence of phronesis and sophia.
Freud is famous for his acknowledgement of the complexity of sexuality(a vicissitude of the life instinct). He is also famous for his acknowledgement of the role of dreams in helping us to understand mental illness. Dreams as dreamed are locked up in the casket of sleep until we awake and consciously remember what we dreamed. We do not remember all our dreams, only those that were experienced immediately prior to awakening. Dreams are fragments of an imagination operating in a strange spatio-temporal landscape. They are only strangely real and it takes the genius of Freud to trace them back to their sources in the biological wish to sleep, hallucinatory wishes and anxieties: sources which appear isolated from the normal operation of our sensory-motor and cognitive systems. Wishes and anxieties play a major role in mental illness and Freud regarded them as symptoms of the absence of the operation of secondary thought processes. Wishes and anxieties work out their hidden “logic” in a causal environment that we are not fully aware of. Freud insisted, as Lear rightly claims, that dreams have a meaning and that meaning is not completely displayed in the so called manifest content of the dream: the content that is reported via the patient’s narrative of the dream. Ricoeur refers to this structure of the dream as a symbolic structure. Aristotle we shall recall claimed that:
“a dream is a thinking that persists in a state of sleep.”
In sleep our sensory systems are deactivated by shutting the eyes. Whatever has affected the system persists in its activity as heat does in an object that has been heated or as motion persists in an object that has been set into motion. When, for example, in the dream a figure is approaching, Aristotle claims that this is an assertion in the dream state. Perceiving in such a dream context might even be complex enough and assert properties of the object(Bearing a white shirt). There are clearly presentations going on in the dream and these appear to have a similar character to the after images we see in special sensory circumstances. If the dreamer is in a state of anxiety when he goes to sleep, the figure in the white shirt that is approaching may be seen as a foe. If the sleeper falls asleep in an amorous state the figure approaching in the white shirt may be seen as a figure of the lover and arouse sexual desire. This implies that the RP is operating in the dream and the question then arises as to how we regard what is going on here. Aristotle claims in his essay on dreams that:
“the faculty by which, in waking hours, we are subject to illusion, when affected by disease is identical with that which produces illusory effects in sleep”(Part 1)
The illusion in both the dream and the hallucination is that what we perceive to be an X or a property of X may not be what we perceive it to be: nevertheless we see something that is real in the dream, hence there is a semblance of the operation of the RP here:there is, however, no summation of confirmatory stimuli, nor reality testing of other kinds(investigating causes etc). In perceiving a tree in reality there is a sensory form that is transmitted from the presentation to the perceiving psuche. Summation of stimuli(an object, according to Merleau-Ponty is an intersensory-motor unity) and testing of causes is occurring concurrently. This is not the case with the dream. The material, the mnemonic images that are mobilised by the imagination, refer to something real, as real as the elements of the wings and the horse in the image of Pegasus. Here too, the possible causal relation of wings and horses(lifting a horse into the air) are somehow posited or opined , but nevertheless illusory. If the illusions of mental illness resemble this example–positing causal relations where there are none, then this might be a consequence of the fact that the consciousness/attention systems of the mentally ill are not as active as they are in the case of normal perception and thinking. The presentations of the imagination that occur in mental illness and perhaps also dreams use a sensory system that might not be active but still contains traces of previous activity. In dream activity Freud referred to this phenomenon as “residues of the day”. These “residues” are not in any straightforward way susceptible of being at the time of experiencing them, processed by the categories and rules of conceptual understanding. Interpreting the dream, of course, is a way of processing these experiences via language, the categories and also using rationality to reason about the different causes involved. In this category of mentally ill patients there are patients who are motivated by the primary process to return to an earlier state of things(pre-conceptualisation): to Freud’s frustration these patients were very reluctant to engage with the therapist, instead feeling a compulsion to repeat traumatic experiences and fantasies, e.g. the Rat Man. These patients may in fact be situated in a hinterland beyond the scope of a psychoanalytical treatment, in spite of the fact that they may even have some kind of theoretical understanding of their illness.
The dream work, on Freud’s theory is a work akin to the work of symptom formation in a neurosis. Dreams appear then, for both Aristotle and Freud, to be a particular way of thinking about something. The material of the dream is obviously rooted in the real but it is also the case, Freud argues, that the dreamer is in a way responsible for the dream work. The dream work is not straightforwardly an action chosen consciously for a Reason. Yet neither is it something that just happens to an organism like the onset of a heart attack. On this account the dream is part of the dreamers wish not just to sleep but to lead a good life. Yet learning can be said to occur in relation to the dream only to the extent that the dream is consciously remembered and processed conceptually. The former is the condition of the latter. The dream is regarded as a regression in three respects: from conceptual representation to pictorial representation, from maturity to childhood, and from the motor pole of the psychic apparatus to the perceptual/hallucinatory pole.
In the dream of the father of a dead child who has recently died and whose body is still in the home, the dreamer dreams the words “Father father, cant you see that I am burning!”. The words partly refer to an idea of the body being burned by fallen candles(subliminally perceived). This subliminal experience is in turn transformed into the sensory experience of the utterance of the above word. In the dream work there is also the presence of the indestructible wish or desire that the child be alive again. This desire is given a temporary hallucinatory gratification in the child’s complaint about the fever that killed him. The hallucinatory pole is the shortest path to fulfillment, and it should come as no surprise that this is the chosen path of the primary process. The secondary process requires a longer journey in accordance with the Freudian triangle, via a mourning process and a subsequent strengthening of the ego in which the death of the child is finally accepted. This is not a process regulated by the ERP but rather a process regulated by concepts, understanding and reason–the RP. If this process is impossible, for whatever reason, there is always the possible response of a weakened ego in repressing the experience. The experience concerned does not then form a normal memory image but rather a traumatic image connected with anxiety. The moral of this response is that the patient or agent that has engaged in repression is responsible to some extent for his primary process response in the same way in which one can be held responsible for ones dreams. For Freud this was ultimately a question of freedom and this places a question over the accusation of determinism in Freud’s account. The patient, upon hearing of the attribution of responsibility may of course throw up their hands in despair and declare “I could do no other”. If the patient were correct in this claim there would of course be little point in a therapy such as Freud’s. In the view of Freud and Kant, the “I” can always think, can always choose what ought to be done, namely to subsume the primary process under the secondary process, and choose the hard work of mourning : the road of sorrow leading not to a different “I” but to an I that knows more about itself. This potential route is also possible.
Lear claimed that Freud was not a philosopher but fails to note that Freud specifically claimed that he was a Kantian Psychologist. The above reflection on the responsibility the agent must take for his dream work and the operation of the primary process in his waking experiences is conclusive evidence for Freud’s claim. The dynamic agency of the superego will use this standard of freedom to judge all the actions of the ego including its involvement in the dream work and all primary process functioning. The ego, we are told by Freud, submits to the tribunal of the superego that demands responsibility from the ego. If, as a result of identification with a very aggressive parent the superego becomes a “cruel captain”,the resultant guilt may even result in self destruction. Such a tribunal may “wound” the ego. How the ego responds to this will eventually determine the autonomy of the ego. In this higher level process the ego may then transform the id processes driving the critical judgements of the cruel captain and this may be part of the process of the transformation of the superego into the strong ego that incorporates this ethical tribunal into its own reasoning about what it ought to do. It is this transformation Freud was pointing to when he proclaimed “Where id was there ego shall be”. If however, the ego is too weak and to return to the case of the father with the dead child, the chid is identified with–the words “Father, father cant you see that I am burning”, might in the end censure the life of a guilt laden father.
If the dream has an ethical dimension as Lear claims then it is important to point out that the responsibility is not attributed to the dreamer but rather to the human psuche that dreams and who lives in the world that provides the dreamer with the material of desire for the dream. The reality of the assertions of the dream e.g. “A foe approaches!” constitutes the reality of the dream even if the approaching figure in the white shirt is composed in a similar way to the way in which Pegasus is composed of a horse and some wings. It is true that the combination of the lover approaching and the white shirt may be a more natural(organic) combination to that which we encounter in the case of the winged horse, Pegasus (which expresses the hypothetical sentiment(wish) “If horses could fly”). This wish is of course embedded in the context of a mythical plot that it can be argued, is more structured than the sequence of events we experience in dreams. The fact of the matter is, that, even if a dream contains reality, it may not be as “meaningful” as Lear in his work on Freud suggests.
Brian O Shaughnessy in his work “Consciousness and the World” echoes the hylomorphic(anti-phenomenological) view of dreams in the following words:
“However there is a further dissimilarity between waking and dreaming streams of consciousness–and it is this which leads me into the topic of the present chapter. It concerns the phenomenon of meaning. Dreams differ from waking experience in lacking meaning in a quite central sense of that protean term. One might say of dreams that each element is linked to its successor merely by an “and”, that no further significance accrues to these elements as they come together, that the content of the dream is what it is and nothing in addition. In short the dream seems to be a mere “piece of Nature”. When we turn to experience in the conscious, matters prove to be very different. While the conscious mind is a natural phenomenon, it introduces into the stream of experience novel elements which are closely linked to sense and interpretation. Thus wherever we look in a conscious experience we encounter wide encompassing projects and the destinations imported by intentions, totalities which confer meaning upon their constituents, and running through the whole some form of pervasive unity of which the subject is aware.”(P.235)
The above suggests that there is a lack of temporal structure in the dream. It is almost as if this “piece of nature” is not the human nature of activity but rather constituted of that which happens to man as a passive agent. The present of the dream does not link to the past and the future in the way that occurs in a conscious stream of experience . There is no telos related to any of the elements, no expectation of what is to come next. We do not, for example, perhaps as a consequence, know that we are dreaming. This lack of structure has serious consequences for enduring entities through time, and this explains how I can suddenly without traversing any distance, be in a different place. There is no cognitive attitude to any of the dimensions of the present or the future: each element is what it is and has not become what it is nor will it become anything in the future. It might be the case that it is this lack of structure that is the only sense that resides in Freud’s claim that the unconscious is timeless and can contain contradictions. The next instant in the dream has strictly no logical relation except the conjunctive relation, to the previous instant. We are in the land of the Primary Process. Transformations of one entity into another such as the transformation of a horse into a flying horse needs no support from a conception of what is causally possible. Connections are then, not temporal, causal, or logical but are instead “associational”. These associations are not however random and unregulated. There are two different principles that explain what is happening in the zone of the primary process. Indeed it may be possible to insist that these principles give all events in this zone their meaning and while regulation may be timeless, logic must apply to the application of these principles. What Freud conceded in terms of these principles in terms of temporality and satisfaction, hallucination and dream wish fulfillment, are not forms of pleasure that endure through time. It is rather the cognitive attitudes of everyday life, categorical understanding, and the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason that produce more long lasting states of contentment. This contentment is the result of a long journey along the road of the RP that leads to the flourishing life(eudaimonia).
The RP transforms the pleasures and pains of the PPP and the energy of the ERP into the tools the human psuche uses to achieve its telos: a telos involving arché, areté, epistemé,´diké, phronesis etc. The reflections above point clearly to the important distinction between the theoretical and practical aspect of the RP. This latter aspect relates to the autonomy and freedom of the subject.
Lear discusses the hierarchical structure of the principles that form relations to each other in the hylomorphic actualisation process in which there is a shift from primary process activity to secondary process thinking. On the hylomorphic account the latter process develops out of the former activity as a potential that lies latently inherent in the organism: it is the long road to satisfaction of the RP and the Freudian triangle that makes secondary processes more stable.Lear however, confusingly presents this state of affairs in the following terms:
“Taken literally the developmental account makes no sense. How could a mind operating according to the pleasure principle make a (realistic) decision to operate in a different way? At the very least we need an account of how realistic mental functioning comes to be selected on the basis of infantile experience. But it is worth noting that one could tell a very different story of the origin of the mind–one that moves in the opposite direction.. On this story it is the pleasure principle which develops out of the reality principle.”(P.146-7)
A Hylomorphic Philosopher or Psychologist would, of course, have no problem with a developmental account of a human psuche characterised in terms of matter and form, potentiality and actuality. The conditions for the actualisation of the potentiality of rationality are part of the human psuche and some of these are tied to the material and efficient causes that in turn are related to the configuration of the organs of the body and the nature of these organs, limbs, bones, tissues etc. In response to Lear perhaps we can say that it is no more difficult to see the conceptual and propositional powers of rationality emerging from a being that is capable of discourse and thinking, than it is to see the emergence of the sensible form of an oak tree from an acorn. Lear is pointing to a lacuna in the account of form where it is sometimes characterised by neo-Aristotelians in terms of substance. In the mature work of Aristotle form is essentially connected to principle. It is Aristotle’s mature work of the “Metaphysics”, rather than the earlier work of “Categories” that should be used as a reference point for this discussion(see Politis, V.,and Shields, C.)
Infantile experience evolves into childhood experience, a process in which the use and understanding of language play a formative role in the actualisation of the different powers of the human psuche. The long childhood is then spent in the care of institutions of learning such as schools and universities : the child is also surrounded by institutions of information propagation such as the media and social discourse. The knowledge of the sciences and the Good become what Habermas in his theory of communicative action characterises as “steering mechanisms” of the cultural system. Lear’s claim that the pleasure principle(that essentially governs the formation of fantasies and dreams and neurotic symptoms), develops out of the reality principle, ignores the Freudian account of the psychic apparatus to be found in chapter 7 of the “Interpretation of Dreams”. It also ignores the later works where it is clear that hallucinatory activity, for example, is closer to the perceptual pole of the apparatus(at the opposite end to the motor system). It is clear on Freud’s account that hallucinatory response is a substitute form of response for motor activity, when, for whatever reason, the passing of the wave of energy from sensory reception to motor activity is closed off.
Many brain researchers, influenced by both Hughlings Jackson and Freud, including Julian Jaynes give evolutionary accounts of how one vicissitude of the Instincts, namely Consciousness, evolved into being through cultural events such as the invention of writing and catastrophic environmental events such as huge volcanic eruptions. Psychologists such as Luria and Vygotsky believe that the sources of social behaviour and consciousness are very much tied to the biological function of speech. Naturally occurring experiments such as the discovery of feral children abandoned in the woods testify to the disruption of actualisation processes connected to language. The absence of human care and the failure to learn a language during infancy and childhood lead to remarkable developmental problems. The lack of human care and attention obviously disrupts the normal functioning of the ERP and the PPP. The failure to learn language, a key developmental function, also makes the development of the cognitive attitudes associated with this function difficult if not impossible.
Lear’s claim that the developmental process might move in the opposite direction is difficult to take seriously(could the oak seriously transform into the acorn and not just produce acorns?) Of course it is theoretically possible that someone produce a diagram of a psychic apparatus where the primary movement of the wave of energy is from motor activity to perceptual /hallucinatory activity but for whom and by whom would such a diagram be used.
Lear also ignores the theoretical background to Freud’s theorising and claims that everything valuable in his account is extracted from Freud’s clinical experience. Kantian Philosophy claims of course that all knowledge begins with experience but it does not all arise out of experience and this seems to apply to Freud’s theorising as well, which is composed equally of those elements of experience that are organised and those categories and principles organising the experience. The evidence is that many of Freud’s judgements were theory laden, laden , that is, with biological, psychological and philosophical theory.
Lear also questions the Freudian judgment that “neurotics turn away from reality because they find it unbearable”. On one interpretation this might be a reasonable application of the Freudian triangle of Desire-Refusal-Wounded Desire: a triangle that is in accordance with Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical psychology. Human psuche can respond to a history of wounded desire by developing a mental illness. This was already recognised during Greek times when Plato and Aristotle were urging that sufferers requiring care and attention from their surroundings ought to be treated differently to those who respond to wounded desire with courage and many other forms of activity connected with areté, epistemé, diké, phronesis. Activities that on the Freudian theory, assist in the formation of a strong ego on the basis of lost cathected objects. Kantian theory of mental illness is characterised in terms of derangements or disruptions of the faculties of understanding, imagination, judgement, and reason. Kant reiterates Aristotelian reflections upon akrasia in which the human psuche’s pleasure pain principle overwhelms a number of powers connected to the ability to reflect upon and engage with reality, e.g. understand reality, form judgements about reality, reason about reality. Kant discusses desire in his work “Anthropology”:
“On the other hand, the feeling of a pleasure as displeasure in the subjects present state that does not let him rise to reflection(the representation by means of reason as to whether he should give himself up to it or refuse it) is affect. To be subject to affects and passions is probably always an illness of the mind, because both affect and passion shut out the sovereignty of reason.”(P.149)
Insofar as Reason, Understanding, Judgement, and Imagination bring us into contact with reality then, Kantian theory would also describe mentally ill patients as in a metaphorical sense “turning away from reality”. Kant was not a psychoanalyst dealing with mentally ill patients but that is no reason to deny that Freud’s theorising was embedded in theorising of the kind we find in Kant. Kant would have found it incoherent to maintain the reversal between the pleasure-pain principle and the reality principle that Lear suggested. Kant would have objected to such a position on many grounds. One ground would be Kant’s account of child development in his Anthropology, whereby he claimed that the child begins by feeling himself to be an individual: only when the child begins to use the word”I”(is capable of thinking himself) does a cognitive reflective relation to himself begin to form. It is at this moment in time, Kant argues, that he becomes a person. Kant also argues that it is this moment in the developmental process that is the condition for what he calls the “voluntary consciousness of ones representations” and he describes this state of affairs in the following manner:
“To be able to abstract from a representation, even when the senses force it on a person, is a far greater faculty than that of paying attention to a representation because it demonstrates a freedom of the faculty of thought and the authority of the mind in having the object of ones representations under ones control(animus sui compos)”(Kant, I, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Trans Louden R., B., Cambridge, CUP, 2006, P.20)
This is a direct refutation of Lear’s earlier claim that, what he called “self reflection”, is an illusion. Perhaps Lear was imagining the process of reflection to be more like an act of observation of the self than it actually is, but it is clear that Korsgaard’s account is referring to the Kantian description and it is this that provides us with the conviction that we are compos mentis rather than non compos mentis. The claim by Lear that the PPP and the RP are essentially ethical in nature omits the above cognitive characterisation and its role in our mental health.
Lear appears to wish to deny this last point when he says:
“The reality principle is treated as though it were a straightforward perception of the empirical world. But the basis of Freud’s theorising is his observation of of neurotic patients within a psychoanalytic setting.(and his own self analysis)(P.153)
Firstly, Freud does not characterise the RP in exactly the way Lear describes. It is true that clinical observations were necessary as the minor premise in an essentially rationalist argument, seeking to draw a particular conclusion about a particular class or group of patients. Without theoretical assumptions forming part of the major premises of the argument, there can be no deduction to the conclusion Freud draws in the name of the RP. We need to recall that the later characterisations of the RP by Freud, become less metaphysically epistemological and more metaphysically ethical. The figure of Ananke signifies the effect of reality on desire that has arisen as a consequence of an understanding of, and a judgement about, reality: such desire has been short circuited by the long route of thinking conceptually about what one is experiencing.
According to Ricoeur, the Reality Principle is:
” expresses an aim or task to be achieved”(Freud and Philosophy, P.267)
Whilst the Pleasure Pain Principle:
“represents an actual mode of functioning”(P.267)
Suggesting that it is not the case that the RP matures biologically out of the PPP but rather that the RP may be the consequences of the learning that occurs as a result of the pain related to wounded desire, is to say the very least, problematic. Freud, reminded us even in his very early work that pain is the great educator of mankind. Observing his patients without any of the theoretically formed assumptions embodied in the triangle of desire-refusal-wounded desire, would not have produced Freudian Psychoanalysis. The response of Freud’s patients to wounded desire is not to learn or become educated but rather to turn away from these activities via various defence mechanisms. Whether we ought to describe this as Freud did in terms of turning away from reality is questionable. There does not seem, however, to be any problem with the judgement, if we take it to be a metaphorical expression of the above state of affairs. It deserves reiterating, however, that replacing the deductive supporting theory with an inductive structure will not support the philosophical and theoretical structure of Freudian theory.
Ricoeur confirms this objection by claiming that even in the early “Project”(P.265) it was clear to Freud that Energy discharge in the form of hallucination, and the kicking and screaming of the infant, brings about an understanding with his care givers that specific action is needed to alleviate the infants “suffering”. This locates very well the source of all moral motives, namely the helplessness of the infant and the imperative of helping someone in need. Ricoeur also points to the natural evolution of a perceptual function whereby the person concerned discriminates between a hallucination and a perception perhaps by the summation of several perceptual stimuli from different perceptual and motor sources. Perhaps engaging in discourse could have produced the same result, e.g. using the Macbeth example, “Do you see that dagger in the air”. This latter reality testing mode of discourse functions both at the level of Sensibility and at the level of the understanding and its categories: perhaps reasoning too may become involved in the exchange of views in the discourse.
Ricoeur points to the systemic phase of theorising and the involvement of the Ucs(unconscious-system) Pcs(Preconscious system) and Cs(Conscious system) in explaining the regressive shift to hallucination, a shift that abolishes reality testing and conscious thought about the image and its discharge of pleasure. In this shift reality testing is intimately linked to the process of becoming conscious. Reality testing makes it clear that the system of Consciousness is not merely a state of mind but a system that includes processes. Contact with reality can obviously occur in different ways via both perception and conception, with the imagination playing an intermediate role between Sensibility and the Understanding. The participation of changes in reality as a result of specific action occurring in the context of the thought of what ought to happen also plays an important role in the Consciousness of Reality. Freud characterises reality testing in the following way:
“We shall place reality testing among the major institutions of the ego alongside the censorships which we come to recognise between the psychical systems”(GW 10, 424; SE 14,233)
It is in connection with the relationship between these systems that Freud uses the expression “turning away from reality”(not in virtue of observations in the clinical setting). Ricouer also points to yet another domain in which we witness the :
“supersession of the pleasure principle by the reality principle”(quote from Freud)(Ricoeur Freud and Philosophy(P.272)
The theory of the libidinal stages concerns desire and object choice. The shifting of erotogenic zones in this development process is a shifting of where pleasure is located. This changes when we arrive at the genital stage, when pleasure as a result of the influence of the reality of object love, relates to the needs of the species rather than narcissistic solipsistic desire connected to autoeroticism. The erotic objects, cathected and then abandoned in this process, are in fact difficult to abandon. It is, for example characteristic of desire in the phallic stage that it wishes for impossible objects(wishing to have a child with the opposite sex parent, wishing for the removal of the same sex parent). The wounding of the desire in this situation was inevitable given the prevalence of our long childhood and family norms in the society.
Freud talks about the pleasure ego and the reality ego and he talks about wishful fantasy as being central to the former. The protection of the body and a commitment to and care about the useful(the territory of the instrumental imperative in Kant’s Philosophy) is central to the latter. Given this characterisation and the description of the Oedipal Complex as part of the process of identification (and the formation of the superego), the reality ego appears to be a function of the calculative part of the mind: the part that calculates means to ends. Yet implicit in the account of the superego as being the defender of the norms of the society there must be a reality super-ego that has a categorical nature and operates more contemplatively in accordance with the categorical imperative. This part of the mind is obviously more concerned with ends rather than the means to achieve those ends.
Science of course is committed to and cares for the useful(techné) and this fact links theoretical science to productive science and the instrumental form of practical reasoning. This is clearly also what Freud believes to be part of the RP. Freud claims that in the developmental process of building a strong ego, the superego will become integrated into the ego and presumably the consequence of this will be that the censorship activity between the Ucs and Cs will be used less, and obey the physiological/psychological rule:–“What you do not use you lose”. Perhaps it is also the case that in a strong ego the calculative instrumental reasoning part of the mind will coexist more harmoniously with the categorical contemplative part that reasons categorically about ends in themselves. If this happens there will be less of a hypothetical material spirit in the activities of the ego. Less of “if you make a lot of money you will be happy” and more of a categorical spirit, “Keeping promises makes you worthy of a flourishing life”. It has to emphasised however that this work of integrating the superego with other agencies is no easy task.
Lear discusses Freud’s essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”: an essay inspired partly by the experience of patients in a clinical setting who returned from the Great War with shell shock or what we today would call PTSD. The Freudian revision of the wish fulfillment explanation of dreams in favour of an account which admits the possible influence of the death instinct in which there is a striving(or wish) to return to an earlier state of things is also characterised in terms of a compulsion to repeat. Lear notes that patients are continually woken up by a repetition of the past trauma and agrees that this raises a question about the reign of the sovereign master of the pleasure principle in our lives. This phenomenon was puzzling because ever since the early “Project” Freud claimed that unpleasure or pain is our greatest educator. At this point in time many empirical theorists were claiming that it ought to be the case that one of the sovereign masters of our life is the PPP, the pleasure-pain principle(given the importance of the Freudian triangle). Freud’s discussion of this confusing issue made reference to the case of the child and his compulsive activity with the cotton reel. Here there is clearly a wish to master anxiety, a wish to master the pain, and surely this is an important aspect of education. The continuous re-presentation of traumatic events, then, may be a continuous attempt to conceptualise them, transform them into normal mnemic images or memories that fade with the passing of time. Freud saw variations of this phenomenon occurring in the therapeutic situation. Patients compulsively and repetitively brought repressed material in its anxiety laden form into the therapy sessions. This was indeed the stuff of tragedy since this also happened in the everyday life of the patients, calling misfortunes down upon them again and again. This suggested to Freud a role for the operation of aggression against oneself, a primordial masochism, occurring in a psychological forum suggesting a wish for a return to an earlier state of things preceding the mysterious complexities of consciousness and life. The active desire to understand sponsored by the life instinct may in the case of these patients be complemented by a more passive response of “being punished” by the continuous experience of misfortune. On the psychological plane, the description of “taking pleasure in pain”, a partial definition of masochism) does not violate the principle of noncontradiction. The potential pleasure at the possible understanding of ones condition outweighs in most cases the pain of the punishment caused by misfortune after misfortune. Even in such tragic circumstances it appears as if the end-in-itself takes precedence over the unfortunate consequences of ones condition: it appears as if the concern for reality is primary and the consequences of pleasure-pain less significant. This suggests that even the death instinct can be sublimated. If this was not possible the ultimate loss of the ultimate value(of ones life) could never have been calmly accepted as a good by the true heroes of humanity, e.g. Socrates. This kind of sublimation is not however a substitute satisfaction in the normal sense of the term. Lear suggests that we abandon the idea that the compulsion to repeat is the aim of compulsion and does not take up the possible interpretation that the aim of this compulsion may be connected to a further aim of sublimation: of education through the pain of the PPP. Lear claims in the first of two interpretations that the compulsion to repeat might merely be an epiphenomenal manifestation of the minds failure to master the problematic event: a state of affairs that involves the decoupling of the event from all forms of teleological explanation, leaving us with a bare description of the event in question. Freud would certainly have rejected such a description. Secondly Lear suggests paradoxically(considering his earlier rejection of the two-mind thesis) that the mind in its repetitious activity is seeking to disrupt itself. It has to be admitted that the hypotheses formulated in the essay “Beyond the Pleasure principle” were hypotheses Freud himself remained uncertain about. Lear claims categorically that these hypotheses failed because they did not understand the deeper workings of aggression in the human psuche(P.163). The alternatives presented however are materialistic and dualistic and these forms of explanation , independent of their content would have been rejected on both Aristotelian and Kantian grounds by Freud.
Lear attempts to argue that both Socrates and Plato are the first psychoanalysts and there is something of interest in this claim. He begins with the argument for the tripartite nature of the soul(established by the principle of noncontradiction). Socrates argued that I can both wish to drink some water(because I am thirsty) and wish not to drink the same water(because I believe it is contaminated). These are distinct wishes that could be true of one and the same psuche at one and the same time concerning one and the same object. This could only be the case, Socrates argues, if there are parts of the psuche, e.g appetite and reason. Socrates then develops this line of reasoning further and claims there is also a spirited part of the psuche which he illustrates with the tale of Leontes and his desire to view dead bodies– a desire which he claims was curbed not by the rational part of the mind but by a spirited part that functions not rationally but rather passionately(the emotion of shame). Aristotle does not share this position and claims instead that the facts speak for two parts to the human psuche, that part ruled by rationality(RP) and that part ruled by irrational principles(ERP and PPP). The Platonic idea of Spirit is for the Greeks an idea that incorporates at its best the positive passion/virtue of courage and at its worst, not only cowardice and shame but also narcissism. Courage is probably then, what it is because of the presence of a decentering operation that must have a component expressed by the term areté(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way).
The problem with the idea of Platonic parts versus Aristotelian stages of the actualisation of powers of the psuche is that the parts, if they are not to be sources of dualism or divisiveness must contain traces of the principle of the wholeness of the organism: principles that enable us to integrate the parts into the whole seamlessly. Stages of the actualisation process proceed hylomorphically, that is, through the shaping effect of the form or principle that is driving the change involved in the development of the organism towards its telos. This telos for Aristotle is rationality, a characteristic that also requires the development of a number of other psychological powers. In the light of this argumentation what is the status of Socrates’ argument for the existence of the “parts” of the psuche, namely that the logical principle of noncontradiction demands that one and the same person at the same time and in the same respect cannot both want to drink and not want to drink the same water? Surely, however, it is possible for one and the same agent to want to drink the water because they are thirsty at time T1 and at time T2 not to want to drink the water (even though they are still thirsty) because he/she believes there is reason to believe that the water is contaminated. All that is required to sustain this account is the concept of free choice. Both actions can be weighed in thought and one alternative chosen at the expense of the other. Thinking that this water before me is contaminated(having a good reason for ones belief)is probably sufficient for the desire to drink the water to disappear. I may remain thirsty, but this object before me now is no longer a possible object or source of satisfaction. I know this, and rationality has therefore triumphed over appetite. Aristotle’s logic only allows him to conclude that it is a contradiction to both, want to drink the water, and not drink the water at the same time: hence he is prepared to cede to the claim that there are two parts of the human psuche–the rational and the irrational. Freud’s two non-rational principles(ERP and PPP) and one rational principle(RP) is therefore more Aristotelian than Platonic, especially considering the fact that his idea of form is more akin to a principle than to an idea.
Freud’s commitment to hylomorphism is philosophical and whether this makes him a philosopher or not should at least be a matter for discussion, especially given Freud’s knowledge of the work of a large number of philosophers, e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Brentano etc. This is, however, not open to debate for Lear. Freud is not a Philosopher and that is the end of the matter. This claim is repeated more than once throughout Lear’s work. The claim appears for example in a section devoted to an evaluation of Freud’s reflections upon religion and morality. In connection with this evaluation it is asserted that Freud’s work on the meaning of Western Civilisation is the least valuable aspect of his work!
Lear and Ricoeur are clearly not in agreement on this issue. Ricoeur asserts the following on the role of the death instinct and its relation to Civilisation:
“The death instinct, however, involves a reinterpretation of culture itself. Cultural development like the growth of the individual from infancy to childhood, is the fruit of Eros and Ananke, of love and work, we must even say, of love more than work.. But the paradox soon appears: as an organised struggle against nature, culture gives man the power that was one conferred upon the gods. And so the question arises again. Why does man fail to be happy?”(Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, P.303)
Ricoeur gives us Feud’s answer to this question:
“The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved…they are, on the contrary, creatures amongst whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.”(GW 14,470-471:SE 21, 111)
It is, that is, the death instinct and its manifestation in aggression that disturbs mans relation to man and is thereby dubbed by Freud as the “anti-cultural instinct”. The solution that culture has to the problems caused by this destructive instinct, is the ingenious one of using institutions endowed with a power to respond to this violence with an institutional right to a regulated but coercive response–thus confronting aggression with itself. The guilt of having to use this last resort when all rational solutions have failed produces a feeling of discontentment with our civilisation, thus provoking the furious question whether all the work put into the civilisation is worth the effort.
This negation of work which creates discontentment is further analysed in a paper entitled “Negation”. In this paper the negative judgement is linked to the death instinct. We saw the operation of this tendency to negate in the infants play sequence with the cotton reel, the disappearance of which represented an attempt to master the anxiety connected with the absence of the infants mother. This game may lie at the origins of the process of learning to use the negative judgement. It certainly appears to be an attempt to use language to lessen the anxiety connected with the absence of the mother. The learning process involved in this compulsion to repeat may be a rehearsal on life’s stage for the more intellectual use of the negative judgement. This “play” may be a “work” of language. The Aristotelian pleasure involved in the learning process, insofar as painful experiences are concerned, may then be connected by the judgement that both expresses the core of the judgement(Mother) and the negation(Mother gone). The mastery involved in this play incident may be similar to that of the patient who learns to talk about his illness–thereby in a sense negating it.
Ricoeur has the following to say on this issue:
“Desire qua insatiable demand, gives rise to speech. The semantics of desire which we are focussing upon here, is bound up with his postponement of satisfaction, with this endless mediating of pleasure.”(P.322)
Aristotle would have no issue relating to anything said above. If, then Negation in speech is not just related to death and a compulsion to repeat, but also creates the psychical space for man to face Ananke(the harshness of life) with resignation, then this too might be to the satisfaction of Socrates. This incidentally is also the message of the Kantian deontological ethics of duty. Freud and Kant clearly agree on some important aspects of the world view generated by an ethical perspective. Kant is more optimistic about the human condition than Freud in his reference to a Kingdom of ends but this is an optimism tempered with realism considering the prognosis that this end lays one hundred thousand years in the future. The difference between the two Philosophers may of course relate to the time of writing “Civilisation and its Discontents”, namely 1929(a time of recovery from the Great War and standing on the threshold of a second war anticipated by many intellectuals). The desperation of the times was very clearly registered in this great work of Freud’s. The space for considering the possible value of religion also disappeared with the times. We find the Kantian respect for the idea of God is demoted in the hierarchy of ideas in favour of the idea of freedom which was being threatened politically. The Freudian response was to claim that religion is an illusion. Lear characterises this state of affairs in the following way:
“Freud argued that religious belief is an illusion. And he meant this in a precise sense: a belief is an illusion if it is detached from human wishes. Illusions are by their very nature misleading.”(P.203-4)
Lear admits, however, that Freud did not comment upon the truth or falsity about religious beliefs. The issue, for Lear, is couched in terms of an infantile wish or longing for a father and an experience of helplessness. This interpretation is motivated by Freud’s own comments upon Religion being the universal neurosis of mankind and also by reference to the private religion of the neurotic. Freud is specifically in this comparison referring to the rituals of religion in which the original meaning of the ritual has been forgotten. Ricoeur asks the following interesting question:
“And how does the forgetfulness of meaning in religious observances pertain to the essence of religion? Does it pertain to a still more fundamental dialectic, the dialectic of religion and faith. These questions necessarily remain as background, even though Freud does not raise them himself.”(P.233)
There is, however, a more important relation between ethics and religion that may explain the Freudian position in terms of the Kantian relation to religion, which though largely positive, is also intent upon placing Morality at the centre of concern for man. Kant, too, we should recall, focuses upon the good will and eschews the meaningless rituals of religion that absolve man from striving to make himself worthy of what Kant calls the state of Grace. Indeed, the only time Kant uses the qualifier “holy” is in the context of the good will striving to make itself worthy of a flourishing life. One should not, however overemphasise (as far as Kant is concerned) the focus on the practical idea of freedom at the expense of the theoretical idea of God.Even at the end of his ideas when he was engaged on the project that was to be published posthumously as “Opus postumum”, Kant was insisting that there is a practical idea of God that has rights but no duties(P.203 Opus postumum). In these writings Kant also claims:
“There is a God in the soul of man. The question is whether he is also in nature.”(P.203)
God is for Kant, theoretically One, a pure intelligence. This is a very similar view to that of Aristotle’s view of God thinking himself. God the creator, a demiurge, is not a categorically important being for Aristotle. Such an idea turns God into a technical being, manipulating the elements to bring about an end, situating thereby the acts of God in time, and introducing the imperfection of wanting to bring about a Good that does not yet exist: a state of affairs more perfect than that which presently exists. The characterisation of an acting God would, for Kant, be in accordance with technical practical reasoning(Hypothetical imperatives) rather than a being related to the categorical reasoning of the categorical imperative. Kant also claims in the context of this discussion:
“The cause of the world regarded as a person is the author of the world. Not as a demiurge of matter which is passive.”(P.213)
Kant goes on to characterise God as a transcendental ideal that emerges from transcendental Philosophy. This is a being that cannot be claimed to exist outside our idea of him/her. Kant refers to Spinoza’s dictum that we see ourselves in God which of course raises the burning question “In what sense?”. It is clear rom this that God too is the object of an idea of reason and also a noumenal existence. The evidence for the latter characterisation is contained in the following quote:
“The concept of God is the concept of an obligating subject outside myself.”(P.222)
Kant’s conclusion is that if God is transcendentally ideal there can be no question of whether such an object exists. God is an apriori concept and transcends experience. The origin of the idea of the Good becomes somewhat problematic in this sequence of reasoning but Kant reflects upon this:
“Whether God could also give man a good will?No, rather, that requires freedom”(P.237)
And yet it is clear in these remarks that God exists as some kind of power over man to follow the moral law. Nothing can be said, however, about this power, coming as it does from the noumenal realm. Reason can therefore not know God but can only think the concept in an idea of:
“A being who knows everything, is capable of everything, and wills what is good. The highest wisdom.”(P.241)
Kant combines religion and politics in this chain of reasoning, arguing that Man in the Kingdom of Ends is a world citizen possessing rights and duties. It is this idea of rights following from the categorical imperative and moral law that forms the basis of the idea of Universal Human Rights regulated by the international institution suggested by Kant(The UN).
We must concede that Freud is attempting to cast doubt upon all of the above. He does not see the intimate connection between religion and reality in positive terms, preferring instead to see the helplessness of man undergoing a long childhood as the cause of what Kant calls the transcendental concept–a transcendental ideal. Kant’s rationalism, in this respect appears more efficacious, without denying the original helplessness of man, but, like the Ancient greeks, seeing the power of reason to transcend his animal condition, believing in ones dignity and the telos of the human race. Kant’s view is that we can rely on the Grace of God only if we do all that we can to be worthy of his Grace. We are not helpless beings wallowing in our discontentment is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from Kant’s account. Yet, as Ricoeur points out, it is not clear that the dialectic of faith is negated on the Freudian account. It is, that is, not clear whether the Freudian concept of Ananke carries much of the weight of the transaction between religion and morality. Lear acknowledges this when he claims that accepting Freud’s diagnosis of Religion as both illusory and neurotic does not give us a reason to abandon the importance of religious belief(P.206). Yet neither is it the case that this Freudian account necessarily leaves space for the interaction between the mythical figures and powers of Eros, Thanatos, and Ananke, and a transcendent concept of God connected to a super-sensible principle. Lear does, however, produces a quote from Freud that might be construed as an argument not for a popular idea of God but rather for a philosophical concept of God:
“Our God(logos) will fulfil whichever of these wishes nature outside us allows, but he will do it very gradually, only in the unforeseeable future, and for a new generation of men. He promises no compensation for us, who suffer grievously from life. On the way to this distant goal your religious divinities will need to be discarded, no matter whether the first attempts fail, or whether the first substitutes prove to be untenable. You know why: in the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable. Even purified religious ideas cannot escape this fate , so long as they try to preserve anything from the consolation of religion.”(Freud:The Future of an Illusion, SE XXI:54)
The above words could well have been written by Kant who also criticised the falsehoods of religion and some questionable rituals, without feeling the need for diagnosing the patient of religion. These falsehoods and rituals without reason have been criticised throughout the ages by philosophers , and given the fact that these criticisms continue it is clear also that they will disappear as we progress on that long road(one hundred thousand years) toward world citizenship and the Kingdom of Ends where all lead dignified and worthy lives. Lear responds to this quote with the following words:
“Obviously there is no reason to go along with this fantasy about the significance of human history(P.212)
Both Aristotle and Kant would have endorsed the view of an actualisation process in history that is a process of development using both reason and experience. Lear, on the other hand asks what Freud takes reason and experience to be and he also asks whether “Our God logos” is an ironic comment. He cites the Christian view of logos but forgets the origin of this term “logos” in Greek thought. Lear, in contrast to Aristotelian and Kantian endorsement claims that Freud’s words provide us with an illusion of the future.
Lear also claims that Freud’s account of the band of brothers (acting rationally in the name of instituting a law to ensure a more peaceful form of coexistence in the community) is an illusion of the past. He claims in the context of this discussion that Freud’s hypothesis of the murder of Moses was an extraordinary claim based on no evidence. Freud in his article claimed that the murder of Moses was probable. Probability theory in the form of Bayes’ theorem claims that the probability of an event is related to the information about that event. With closed systems such as a sack with 50 white balls and 50 black balls one has complete information about this system–the number of balls stay constant and they will not change colour. The events surrounding Moses comes down to us from ancient texts written in ancient languages and what we know is by no definition complete “information” about what happened. Indeed complete information may never be possible. Given the information, however, and the knowledge Freud possessed of the human psuche, and his grasp of how to reason about the experiences of man, Freuds claim that his hypothesis is probably true: a fair claim about what is obviously an open system of information. Lear’s sceptical hermeneutical approach focuses upon the possibility that because we do not have sufficient information to be certain about what happened to Moses, we can never know if he was murdered or not. It is true that we could never, on the basis of the information, make a particular historical judgment to that effect. Is whether the particular event did or did not occur to the satisfaction of historians the most important issue on Freud’s mind when he wrote his article? Or was his reasoning seeking for something more universal, something about human nature? We saw that for Freud both experience and reason were important in the determination of the essences of events and things. Given our knowledge of what happened to Socrates and Jesus, given our knowledge of the dynamism of love, hate and aggression toward agents of fundamental change, what reason can there be for believing that the fate of Moses was not caused by the same dynamic? “Evidence” can be experiential or it can be conceptual and logical. The reason there is no evidence, Freud suggests, may have to do with the fact that it was not in the interests of the authorities of the time for the truth of the fate of Moses to be revealed. This suppressive behaviour may not necessarily have been connected to malign intent. The claim by Lear that the motivation of Freud’s claim was primarily “Oedipal fantasies from the psychoanalytic situation.”(P.215) once again ignores the philosophical reasoning relating to the dynamic of politically threatening figures in ancient civilisations. Lear then concludes by arguing paradoxically that in maintaining that Moses was murdered, Freud is “attacking his own life work”(P.215). Given the Aristotelian and Kantian aspects of Freud’s work it is not clear that Lear’s argument is coherent.
Freud, according to Lear, has claimed that it was not possible to transmit Religion throughout the ages via the use of only cultural and psychological processes. Much of the substance of this criticism hangs upon what Freud meant by the term “cultural”. Is, for example, learning a language a part of the cultural process? Being capable of discourse is obviously an important necessary condition of becoming rational. Feral children and Helen Keller are testaments to the importance of the role of the learning of language in the capacity for discourse. The only evidence there is for the putative murder of Moses is in ancient texts. Individual texts could have been lost in the historical process but if we ceased to learn language we would probably lose the capacity to reason about such possibilities. Freud in speaking about the “cultural” is certainly referring to the reality-ego and its utilitarian essence. Without discourse and the general utilitarian and cultural activity of learning language, the reasoning necessary for explaining and justifying moral action would not be possible. There is also a connection between religion and the categorical imperative that might evade explanation. Aristotle pointed out the necessity of instrumental reasoning in the forming of habits–of doing something not because it is an end in itself but for some utilitarian purpose or consequence connected to ones self interest or happiness(the principle of self love in disguise). Unless however a reconceptualisation of the reason for doing what one is doing in the habitual behaviour occurs, there will be no categorical understanding of ones action: instrumental reasoning is necessary but not sufficient for transmitting the categorical elements involved in the understanding of religious metaphysics(of the Kantian kind). Pure imitation of others beliefs and actions could never for Aristotle constitute the areté and epistemé associated with the intellectual and moral virtues.
In the introduction to Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of mere reason written by R M Adams the following is asserted:
“Kant speaks of a “righteousness that is not our own”, being that of an “ideal of humankind” which we know by reason, whether or not it was manifested historically in Jesus of Nazareth…but he acknowledges that “rendering this appropriation comprehensible to us is still fraught with great difficulties”(Trans by Wood A,(Cambridge, CUP, 1998, PXXIII)
This righteousness is a decree of Grace “fully in accord with eternal justice”(Religion AK 6:66). The mystery of Grace is connected both to the mystery of the future and to the 3rd Philosophical question of Kant’s, namely “What can we hope for?” The answer Kant gives to this is, of course “Grace” which for Kant is also intimately connected to the 2nd of his Philosophical questions: “What ought we to do?”. The answer to this question is: “Act with a good will and make oneself worthy of God’s Grace”. There is nothing hypothetical about Kant’s reasoning which is clearly categorical, unconditional, and not dependent upon empirical evidence or chance happenings of good fortune. The central keystone of this entire edifice is the only absolute in the moral system, namely the Good Will(Groundwork). Hope is therefore also hope for the perfection of ones goodwill.
The connection between Religion and the State has ben discussed earlier but Adams elaborates upon the relation in the following way:
“Kant is sharply, in places, even bitterly, critical of much organised religion, but he is not opposed to organised religion as such. On the contrary, he thinks that a church, as an ethical community is required for a flourishing moral life(Religion AK 6:93-102). The ethical purpose of a church, for Kant, is to provide a social structure in which people instruct, encourage and support each other in virtue, instead of providing each other with temptation to vice. Church and state are parallel but distinct institutions equally rooted in practical principles. The state rightly embraces laws of justice or right, whereas the church is to inculcate voluntary compliance with laws of virtue which cannot properly be enforced by any human institution because they extend to motivation and govern the inner life. A good will must effectually embrace the laws of virtue as well as those of virtue.”(P XXVIII)
It is not clear what Freud would object to in the above quote given the fact that the Jewish faith has traditionally been an institution that takes its role as instructor and supporter of its members very seriously. It is probably true, however, that Freud would have shared with Kant an aversion to certain forms of prayer and incantation, in which praise may be lavished upon God or alternatively God is asked to perform specific actions in relation to ones life. Given the psychoanalytical value of the confessional mode of discourse, it is not clear that Freud would reject confessional prayer. Kant, too, would see such confessional activity in a positive light(especially if thinking is talking to oneself).
In his conclusion Lear asks the question, “How can a conversation change the structure of the human soul?” The question is tied irrevocably to the ethical question “How shall I live?”. He argues that the neurotic person speaks with different voices none of which speak for the genuine “I” of the self.It is not clear what Lear means here. If I am neurotic and giving a speech about my life am I not speaking about myself? What would I say if someone came up to me afterwards and said “I can tell you are not speaking for yourself”. Freud is surely not committed to such an extreme position: the reality ego can surely remember facts about itself. Of course, if I am neurotic I do not “know myself” in the sense of knowing transparently the reasons for all my actions and all my beliefs. Regions of my life might have ben censored but surely we can imagine the neurotic making confessions in the psychoanalytic situation.
Can you elaborate a bit on the second topic you mentioned?
Hi, sorry for the delay. Do you mean Morality? Jonathan Lear’s work is more Aristotelian than Kantian but Freud’s social and moral theorising is actually more Kantian. Freud was of course more interested in the psychological conditions necessary for the formation of the superego and the conditions necessary for integrating the superego into the ego–thereby making it stronger–more able to cope with the force of the instincts. Hope this answers your question.Regards
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