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Ricoeur opens this chapter with a reflection upon the question of Being, and wishes to connect his hermeneutical approach(theory of interpretation), with the Aristotelian claim that Being can be said in any ways. One of the ways, insofar as Ricoeur was concerned, was the way of Nietzsche, who reduced Being to will to power, detaching it from the substantive and principle-regulation aspects of Being. Neglecting these latter aspects, makes the role of knowledge problematic, and marks a shift away from Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory in which the aporetic questions associated with the question of Being qua Being are situated fairly and squarely in the context of explanation/justification which in turn is regulated by principles and laws.
Ricoeur does not flinch, given the controversies circulating around Heidegger, from claiming that Heidegger’s work “Being and Time” was one of the best works of the 20th century. We know that he does not agree completely with the Heideggerian method, but it is otherwise clear that the two philosophers share much more than that which divides them. This is clarified in Part 7 of this review when their similar views on Nietzsche were articulated. It is nevertheless the case that Heidegger’s complex account of “Being-in-the-world”, in the context of the three ontological categories of presence-at-hand, ready-to-hand, and Dasein, is reminiscent of Ancient Greek ontological concerns. The invoking of Care as the essence- specifying characteristic of Dasein, was a Heideggerian strategy that Ricoeur, interestingly chooses to situate in a Kantian context of ends-in-themselves. The second formulation of the Categorical Imperative urges us to act in a way that treats each and every human being as an end-in-themselves, rather than as instrumental means-to-ends. One of the logical implications of this ethical law is the political implication for the polis, which the Greeks thought of as the soul writ large—namely that all citizens of the city must be treated by the state as ends-in-themselves(and reciprocally the state ought to be treated by the citizens as an end in itself). Heidegger might not, however, have agreed with this Kantian interpretation, but linking the ethics of the will with the ontological structure of the world, as Ricoeur suggested, does move Heidegger’s account closer to the rational positions of Aristotle and Kant.
The Heideggerian form of phenomenological existentialism also outlines a framework for adopting a critical stance toward analytical Philosophy and logical positivism, positions which have ambiguous relations to Aristotelian and Kantian rationalism. It is also true to say, that Heidegger’s reflections shrink from the forms of rationalism we find in Aristotle and Kant. Heidegger, in fact, very specifically holds Aristotle responsible for derailing the aporetic investigations into the question of “Being-qua-being”. As is the case with many phenomenological and existentialist accounts, the basic metaphysical investigation into first principles is reoriented into an anthropological investigation. In his famous “Kant-book”, Heidegger accuses Kant of failing to explore the role of the transcendental imagination in his metaphysical investigations into Being. For Heidegger, it is clear that the power of the imagination is a superior power to the power of rationality especially when it comes to exploring the question of Being. To be fair to Heidegger, his characterisation of the imagination, would not be restricted to situating it in the faculty of Sensibility, and charting its relations to the faculty of the understanding, which is the Kantian strategy. Heidegger characterises the power of the imagination as both historical and significantly involved in a work of expectation embedded in what he calls ” a moment of vision”. We are, Heidegger argues, thrown into the world, and this is the beginning of an existence, which is oriented as much toward the future as it is to the repetition of what “has been”:
“Only an entity which, in its being is essentially futural, so that it is free for its death and can let itself be thrown back upon its factical “there” by shattering itself against death–that is to say, only an entity which, as futural, is equiprimordially in the process of having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take over its thrownness and be in the moment of vision for “its time”. Only authentic temporality which is at the same time finite makes possible something like fate, that is to say, authentic historicality.”(Being and Time, P.437)
Being and Time was written in 1926, 6 years after Freud introduced the Death instinct in a work entitled “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. Ricoeur is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of Freudian texts, and his interpretation of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” refers hylomorphically to “the Reality Principle”(RP), which is a function of what Freud called the “secondary process” of mental functioning. The secondary process, on Freud’s account, regulates primary process functions such as pleasure and the pain of anxiety. In the Freudian context the imaginations role is as that part of the primary process that is involved in both wish-fulfillment and anxiety-related experiences. Both the Energy-regulation principle(ERP) whose telos is physiological homeostasis, and the pleasure-pain principle(PPP), whose significance is more “psychological”, are involved in primary process activity. Two “instincts”, Eros and Thanatos, are involved in constituting vicissitudes such as “Sublimation” and “Consciousness”, which in their turn can only be ultimately explained by “principles” in a context of explanation/justification. A complex vicissitude such as Consciousness contains, then, the history of the operation of instincts at both preconscious and unconscious levels, but more importantly such a vicissitude is regulated by all the Freudian principles, i.e. the energy regulation principle, the pleasure pain principle, and the reality principles are all “regulators”. For Kant, Consciousness is a complex operator that stretches over the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. Reason operates in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in a context of explanation/justification. Both historical and political judgements are embedded in different sensible domains, and operate therefore in different conceptual frameworks. For Kant, judgement in general performs the operation of subsuming the sensible particulars under the general concepts of the understanding in theoretical, practical, and aesthetic/technical contexts. Obviously the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason regulate the categorical laws of morality and the instrumental laws of techné. Political judgements rely on both moral laws/principles and instrumental principles(cf. the principle of prudence).
For Freud, moral consciousness is a vicissitude of those instincts that are mobilised by what Freud refers to as “the original helplessness of human beings”, and the path from this original human condition to the moral law runs via the help we receive from other people who help us to eventually help ourselves. What we are encountering in these reflections is the regulation of the primary process by the secondary process, in accordance with the Reality Principle. This understanding of the role of other people, relates crucially to understanding the medium of language, which for Freud was principally the medium for the expression of thought. Thought activity, however, can be split off from reality testing, and to the extent that this occurs, is the extent to which it is the expression of primary mental processes. The major logical characteristics of primary process thought, is its immunity to contradiction(no doubt or degrees of uncertainty), implying the absence of rationality. Hallucinatory thought is obviously an example of this type of primary process activity. The role of the Ego and the Superego are agencies that relate respectively to the external and internal world, and they are relatively “free” agencies operating in a body in which causality is operating in accordance with the ERP and PPP. These agencies are operating on an actualisation schedule in which pleasure centres, for example, begin at certain zones of the body and finally envelop the body as a whole. Parallel to this psycho-sexual development, in accordance with the law of causality, and the presence of primary processes, is a purely psychological development that probably begins at the beginning of the phallic phase, in which the pleasure ego is transformed into the reality ego, and object love begins. Once-cathected, objects become difficult to “abandon” on this path toward reality, which is strewn with “lost” objects” and “mourning processes”. This is clearly the historical aspect of our psychological development in which it is the happiness that has been lost, that is mourned. During this phase, we also witness the formation of the superego begin its journey toward maturity, via forbidden and refused objects. As far as the ego is concerned, phantasy-laden wishes are transposed by a utilitarian instrumental principle which reality-tests all content. In this process the mystery of desire is transformed into an authentic resoluteness that can depose the “false idols” of desire.
In human history it is religion that has played the role of demystifying desire, and deposing illusions. It has sometimes seemed as if the fate of the species is inscribed into the constitution of religious thought. Heidegger, inspired by Socrates, describes very well the religious and philosophical responses to the impossibility of conceiving of the end of the species. Socrates, we know, met his personal fate resolutely and authentically, even if his response was complicated by an unjust accusation and trumped-up charges. Socrates’ fate is obviously linked to the fate of Jesus who, it must be said, did not meet his fate as resolutely as Socrates, despairing toward the end of the process at the thought of being abandoned by his father. Socrates, then, remains the paradigmatic model of stoic resoluteness in the face of our thrown-ness into the world. Freud’s description of this thrownness, was in terms of an “original helplessness”, and it was his mission to discover the psychological problems that could occur as a result of not addressing the problem of our original helplessness adequately. Bronowski in his work “ascent of Man” followed up on this problem with the claim that part of the problem was the “long childhood ” of man.
The enrichment of Freud’s explanatory framework by the concept of narcissism was also an important milestone on the road to articulating the complexity of our inner life, and its unwillingness to “abandon” earlier libidinally cathected objects. The route out from the “wonderland” of sexual fixation upon sexual objects, runs via the vicissitude of Sublimation, essentially a defence mechanism that is a non sexual form of substitute satisfaction, which requires that the ego cathect objects in the external world. This defence mechanisms sensitises the human psuche to the truth: i.e. creates a form of Being-in-the-world in which the truth no longer “wounds” the ego. Sublimation may end in “The Prudence Principle”, which the ego learns to use, not just in relation to the external world, but also in harmony with the Id and the Superego. Here we encounter one of the obstacles to the actualising of “authentic resoluteness” which can be found in the Stoic form of life: in this drama of the agencies, the superego criticises or attacks man for his addiction to pleasure and one possible result is the return to the hubris of a narcissism in which man believes he is “superior” to those around him. The Ego’s task in such circumstances, is to assimilate the superego into itself and its view of enduring the necessities of life, in accordance with an attitude of authentic resoluteness—-a very advanced form of the Reality Principle.
Death, for Freud, was not a purely destructive instinctive but also manifested itself in the maladies of the most difficult-to-treat group of patients, namely the obsessive-compulsives. These patients manifested the symptom of the compulsion to repeat reported in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. The instinctive response to high levels of anxiety was to restore an earlier state of things, i.e. retreat to an earlier phase of development in which pleasure was secured from the serendipitous flux of life-activities. One of the key discoveries of Freud that helped him to postulate the idea of the death instinct occurred in relation to the experience of the compulsion of many of his patients to repeat repressed material in therapy sessions. This material emerged not in the form of memories but rather in the form of “reliving the traumas of the past”. This was of course distressing for the patients, as was their seemingly unique capacity to repeat behaviour which again and again called misfortune down upon themselves.
Heidegger too, emphasises the importance of death in his articulation of his primary concept “Being-in-the-world”. Being free for-ones-own-death was the key characterisation of this form of human “being-there”(Dasein). Obsessive-compulsives were, then not able to exercise this freedom, which curiously acknowledged that the aim of life was death. For Freud, the creation of a new framework of concepts enabled him to explain the otherwise puzzling behaviour and symptoms of obsessive-compulsives. In this new framework the libido was replaced by a broader conception of the life instinct(Eros) which aimed at binding men together in larger and larger groups.
Shortly after “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” Freud writes “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” and in this work he juxtaposes Eros and Thanatos, not just in a social context but in a wider cultural context. The aggression of authority figures is analysed as part of the analysis of the bonding processes in larger groups such as the church and the army. These bonding processes are of course merely the bonding processes in a family writ large. Identification with the aggressor and the wish to be like the aggressive agent are part of these processes. The narcissism that led to the narcissistic behaviour is also incorporated into the identification-process and this is partly why Freud claims that the superego has connections with both Eros and Thanatos: the latter connection obviously accounts for the weakness of the Ego, that then tends to reproduce trauma not in the mode of memory but rather in the form of reliving it timelessly. In the work on Group Psychology, the otherwise silent death instinct is making itself heard in social-cultural contexts which would later manifest themselves on the world stage in Germany and Austria. The “masses” recovering from national trauma were seemingly hypnotised by a leader intent upon reliving rather than sublimating the trauma in question. The sadism and cruelty of a superego-figure that refused the control of normal values, was a sign of the times, and can be said to have been predicted by Freudian theory. This phenomenon would occur not just in Germany but also in Russia. What we were witnessing in the development of Freudian theory was a psychological explanation of the political phenomena that were taking shape before our eyes. Freud was responding to the challenge of the Delphic Oracle to “Know thyself!” and also providing us with the tools necessary to strengthen our egos with the knowledge required to defeat dictators and tyrants.
The question that ought to be raised here is : “How should such knowledge be incorporated into our historical awareness?” Those International leaders who deal with dictators and tyrants, and possess this knowledge, have strong egos. Stable states need such leaders. The course of the political journey toward a stable state was a practical journey in which it becomes clear that everyone is equal and free to live to face their own death amongst other things. Life is a difficult business, full of misfortune which befalls everyone; it requires character and virtue(areté) if the ideal end of a good spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia) is to be achieved. The life conceived of by the Ancient Greeks was a life free of debilitating trauma and guilt, experiences which weaken the ego to such an extent that lost libidinally cathected objects become masochistically projected upon the ego. The resultant melancholia manifests itself in self-destructive behaviour and hate of various kinds. A strong ego with strong healthy ties to the external world, stoically engages in love and work, which are the building blocks of our civilisations and cultures. It is, as we have claimed, Eros which seeks to unite us into larger and larger cohesive groups but it is primarily through work that we achieve this task: the kind of work that takes place in political and educational contexts.
For Freud, it appears as if it is the love and work involved in civilisation and culture building that takes precedence over the love and work we put into religion, and it is somewhat of a surprise to learn that, according to Freud, these creative efforts bring only discontentment. Freud claims his Psychology is Kantian, but there are significant differences between their respective positions. Kant, claims, for example, that happiness supervenes if one does ones duty and possesses a good will. Freud claims, in contrast, that the sacrifices civilisation expects in the realm of sexuality are too great to bear, and this leaves man with a sense of discontentment. Kant acknowledges mans narcissism and his aggressive tendencies, but believes that Cultural activity of various forms can assist in the process of sublimating both mans narcissism and his aggressive tendencies. The consequence of this process of sublimation is what he refers to as the “summum bonum” of happiness. Socrates demonstrated his good will by doing his duty with respect to his death sentence, in spite of being convicted unjustly. He met his fate stoically believing that death was a “Good”. Aristotle also believed that death was a good but, not being an Athenian, and not having had the benefit of living under Athenain law when he grew up, he refused to accept the unjust accusations and sentence of death that was the consequence of an anti-Macedonian indictment. He was not prepared to allow Athens to ” sin a second time against Philosophy”.
The superego is an agency whose existence is only possible in the context of a civilisation or culture in which there is deliberate intent to curb the aggression that is connected to the death instinct. The solution to the problem is twofold. Firstly there is the ego response of the formulating and obeying of laws in the name of external justice: these laws regulate the behaviour of the inhabitants of the polis. Secondly, there is the more important response of the setting up of an internal agency in the psyche which regulates all activity in the spirit of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Initially the work of installation of such an agency is part of the work of the family but educational institutions and social pressures also assist in the process. Freud claims that the institution of this watchful “garrison” is only the first stage of a process initially guided by the “principle of prudence”. The final stage of this process involves regarding doing what is right as an end-in-itself(not merely a means to happiness) and this is the mark of a strong healthy well integrated ego. Freud does not specifically claim that rationality plays an essential part in this process but the implication is clearly involved in his claim that his Psychology is Kantian.
According to Heidegger, anticipatory resoluteness is not an everyday phenomenon and requires a work of remembering and a work of expectation that is “connected” and not “dispersed” as is the case with the everyday understanding of ones birth and ones death. For the most part, Heidegger argues,(Being and Time, P.439) Dasein understands itself in terms of its circumspective concerns, and “what” it is concerned with in its environment. The “Why?” which relates to the reasons for the totality of connected facts in a life, is not necessarily “Understood” in circumspective concern, and is more a matter for the demands that “Care” introduce. Incorporating what is present-at-hand and what is ready-to-hand into the “moment of vision” that is constitutive of true historical understanding is a part of the prospect of self-knowledge and transforms the entities we encounter in the world into world-historical entities. Wittgenstein, for example, in his lectures on Culture, asked what would happen to a culture in which one no longer recognised the origin of ones dining table. A fundamental interest in the origins and the ends of things falls into the domain of Care and is obviously an important aspect of any serious philosophical view of History. Losing oneself in the “dispersion” that results in not connecting the “whats” with the “whys”, is, of course a, if not the, everyday occurrence. Being born at a particular point in time is one fact, ones death in the future is another, and these facts are “dispersed” and not “connected” in the everyday understanding of the “They”. Time in such a life is not something flowing like a river, but rather a multiplicity of “nows” that are present-at-hand. Even instrumental work, where one uses clocks and calendars, may not be relating to time authentically, and might even be a means of fleeing from ones death–a looking away from the telos of Being-in-the-world.
Ricoeur explicitly criticises the above account because it appears, on his view, firstly, to not sufficiently include phenomenological accounts of the role of the body, or secondly, relate to the being of act and power(P.345). This, Ricoeur argues, is in turn related to the Hegelian concept of Time as presented in his “Logic”. Ricoeur refers to Aristotle’s essence specifying characteristic of memory, namely that “memory is of the past” and he suggests a phenomenological strategic move that “brackets” the future: protention is not involved in the retention process it is claimed. Ricoeur does , however, point out that this account becomes problematic when one needs to consider the Historians relation to the future of the city. One solution he provides is to realise that the men being written about in History, lived before the Historian writes about them, and this fact might be an argument for abstracting from the future or “moment of vision” component, that Heidegger speaks about in terms of “being-toward-death. Given the fact that we are, by definition, dealing with actions and events of magnitude, there is both angst and projection of ends that are rationally conceived. Ricoeur however, rejects the above Heideggerian account, and sides with Adornos judgment that Heidegger uses the “jargon of authenticity” in a very technical theory. Ricoeur suggests that we , instead, reduce the experience of the past to the experience of a lived body(memories, traumatic “reminiscences”) and treat death “abstractly”as a “fact”(P.350). The “factual” approach to time may well result in a vulgar interpretation of the Aristotelian definition of time(the measurement of motion in terms of before and after), namely, that time is a discrete series of “nows” or “moments”. “Motion” of course is purely a physical phenomenon and whilst the motion of an event might be a coherent idea, the motion of an action is not. The conception of a “Moment of vision” is not easily attached to an event, but the action of understanding something or reasoning about something, seems more appropriately connected to this “moment of vision”. “Action” is also more appropriately conceived in terms of the idea of “work” in both the “work of remembering” and the “work of expectation”. It is the latter that is less likely to see death as an “event” and more likely to formulate the idea of death in a “Moment of vision”( or an attitude that Heidegger terms “authentic resoluteness”).We have argued that both the “work of remembering” and the “work of expectation” is involved in the resolute recollection of events we find in the texts of the Historian. It is the synthesis or connectedness of these “moments” that resists the phenomenon of “dispersion”. “Care” is obviously involved in this authentic recollection, which aims at the rational knowledge of the past demanded by the discipline of History in contexts of explanation/justification. Care, for Heidegger is concern for the possibilities of Being he calls Dasein(Being-there) When, in the moment of vision, we consider the possibility of the death of Dasein, the care we encounter in the Being-towards death, is the possibility of Being-a-whole or what Kant would have called an “end-in-itself”. The possibility referred to above implies a triumph over the dispersion of events in time. The response of “fleeing” from dispersion, or ones future death, is an inauthentic irrational response. We know from another work on Kant that Heidegger is not a rationalist, and it is the transcendental imagination that “explains” the activity being referred to above. Ricoeur fixates upon this aspect of Heideggers account and attempts to “reduce” the above possibility to some kind of biological death inscription in the lived body. In answer to the question “How is death inscribed in the body?”, one possibility is via the loss of a loved one. A mourning process obviously leaves its mark upon the body.
“Being and Time”, Ricoeur, maintains, ignores the problems of memory and forgetting(P.364) and he further claims that in the debate between the Philosopher and the Historian, reference ought to be made to the epistemological and dialectical relation of presence and absence. History, Ricoeur argues, is concerned with absence in the form of the dead of other times(P.364). This move, once again, invites the invocation of the notions of representations and mentalities into the arena of discussion connected with memory and forgetting. Death, then, is conceived of as the absent in History, and the past is then represented as the kingdom of the dead—the tomb of the dead. There is also a sense in which History, in the context of this kind of discussion, becomes the “missing present”. The narrative is of the lives of the dead and death becomes the “black sun” of such texts.
The Human sciences, as conceived of by Dilthey, are concerned with the interval between birth and death: an interval in which we encounter forms of life(P.370). Dilthey argues that the Psychology of his time did not have the conceptual resources to describe/explain the fullness of this life(e.g. Ebbinghaus). Heidegger is clearly influenced by the work of Dilthey, but according to Ricoeur, Heidegger does not confront the problem of the role of the Historian in the historical process, but prefers instead to focus upon the theoretical/scientific account of the problem of History(P.375). Heidegger does, however, succeed in opening up a space of “expectation” within the space of the work of remembering, thus enabling the dead people of the past to come to life—-become present in spite of their absence. Here there is clearly a place for the power of the imagination(in relation to memory).
The importance of live testimony is again an issue addressed by Ricoeur in terms of the “crisis of memory”. This issue became very important in relation to holocaust deniers in the 20th century, but it is interesting to note that the Jewish relation to their ancient texts was one of almost complete trust in spite of the absence of “live testimony”. There have been sceptical challenges to this trust, when the Gnostic Gospels were discovered, and as a consequence, doubts have arisen about the completeness of the accounts given in our traditional biblical texts, raising, in turn, questions about the completeness of the “work of remembering” that took place in the process of assembling our Bible. Many philosophers, including Spinoza and Kant recommended that we focus instead upon the work of expectation connected with the moral content of these ancient texts. This amounts to a deliberate choice to concern oneself with authentic resoluteness of the world as will, rather than with the world as representation. This means that the presence-absence dialectic and the fact that the characters such as Moses and Jesus are dead, is largely irrelevant. Whether Moses did all the things attributed to him becomes of peripheral concern, but the work he did in casting aside false idols and focussing upon a journey to the promised land is one of the timeless messages of the Bible, which, of course, is not purely historical. This is not a voice from the tomb but rather a mature voice from the wilderness we all find ourselves a part of. This is the voice of expectation.