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Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach to Philosophy acknowledges a debt to Heidegger which, in turn, engages in a form of metaphysical and transcendental speculation about the power of the imagination that would have been rejected by both Aristotle and Kant. Kant is criticised by Heidegger for failing to recognise the scope of the power of the imagination, and this is linked to a “forgetfulness-of-Being”- thesis proposed by Heidegger, as one of the foundation stones of his phenomenological-existential approach to articulating the relation of Dasein(Being-there) to Being-in-the-world. Ricoeur believed that Heidegger’s philosophical results were essentially sound, but the route he took to arrive at them,were short-cuts, and therefore not ultimately satisfactory from a phenomenological/hermeneutic point of view. Ricoeur preferred the Cartesian inspired phenomenological route, outlined by Husserl, that proceeded via the description of objects of experience which relied on the use of a method that put the world in brackets(whatever that means). Language was also a focus of concern for Ricoeur, and he chose to focus on the idea of “meaning”, rather than “truth” which, he claimed, better articulated our relation to a life-world that , for him, seemed to require “interpretation” rather than articulation in terms of the principles of reasoning and the categories of the understanding. For Husserl, the “knowledge” that the sciences claimed to possess or discover, was “putative”, and largely a consequence of what he referred to as a “crisis” that manifested itself in the Western sciences in general.
Ricoeur discusses briefly the history of the term “plot” in the opening chapter of this work, and notes that, during the time of Aristotle, the focus of attention was upon tragedy, comedy, and the epic forms of narrative. He cites the relatively modern emergence of the novel, and characterises this phenomenon in terms of “convention-busting” (a laboratory for experimentation). In this experiment, he maintains, we may have witnessed the disappearance of the concept of “plot” from the “horizon of literature”(Page 7) In volume one, it was claimed that it was the disappearance of the plot paradigm that was the primary reason for the choice of the term “quasi-plot”, which was also accompanied by the curious term “quasi-character” in Historical forms of narrative. In all these forms of narrative, there is a clear and distinct retreat from the paradigms of argument, to the “forms” of “analogy” and “interpretation”.
The term “quasi-plot” was, of course, an attempt to generalise the concept of plot, so that the term could still be applied to, amongst other things, the modern novel. In this situation, the imagination was clearly conceived by Ricoeur to be the organising power in relation to the consciousness of the characters of the plot. For Aristotle, on the contrary, the plot was the “form” which organised the “matter” of the action and thoughts of the character, and Language was merely the “medium” for the messages of the work. Language, for Aristotle, as was the case for Kant, could be used irrationally to produce both false and meaningless statements as well as rationally ( to produce true and universally necessary statements). Insofar as language was being used intentionally by the author to create a narrative with a meaning that may largely be generated in the imperative mode, because it is being focussed on the Good rather than the True, there is no necessity to argue that because the statements are not strictly true, they do not possess a mode of objectivity. It would not be correct to say, that the statements the author produces, are false, because they are not aiming at what is the case, but rather at what ought to be the case.
There are, in fact, alternative explanations (to the one provided by Ricoeur) for the emergence of the modern novel that has, according to Ricoeur, loosened its ties to the notion of “plot”, and strengthened its ties to a modern notion of “character”. “Modern” representation of character, is often in accordance with modern personality theory, which in turn is the result of the “separation” of Psychology from Philosophy in the 1870’s( in the name of “Science”). The multi-faceted representation of a “person”, that we found in the writings of Aristotle and Kant, were largely jettisoned in the divorce between Psychology and Philosophy, with the exception of the work of Freud.
Practical understanding and reasoning, connected to the ethical dimension of character, were ruled out as “subjective”, in accordance with materialistic and dualistic theories that had earlier been neutralised by Aristotelian and Kantian arguments. “Raw behaviour” and sensation-like forms of consciousness became the “atoms” of a theoretical approach, that phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty criticised in his work “Phenomenology of Perception”. Yet even in this work we saw an attachment to Cartesianism, and a criticism of science which construed it as some form of second-order account of reality, in comparison with the first order description of our human activity in the life-world. Both the categories of the understanding, and the principles of reasoning, were marginalised in favour of more sensible aspects of the powers of our mind. This, together with a materialistic commitment on the part of science, resulted in methodologically committed observers, devoted to the manipulation and measurement of independent and dependent variables. Both Logical positivism and logical atomism, and their commitment to methodology, combined to promote observation and criticise introspection( as a method of producing data for manipulation and measurement). Many modern personality theories confined themselves to sensible and behavioural powers, and avoided what they regarded as “speculation” upon those higher cognitive powers and processes, so necessary for being a person in our complex cognitively constructed worlds. It is obvious that, from a hylomorphic and critical point of view, both understanding and reasoning have been parsed away in the processes of scientific and phenomenological reductions. An endless journey on the path of exploration/discovery is preferred, to sitting in the auditorium in which phenomena are submitted to the tribunal of explanation/justification.
With reference to the reflection above, we can maintain that there are at least two other explanations for the phenomenon of modern art in general, and the modern novel in particular. Firstly, one of the reasons the journey on the path of exploration is necessary, is because the task of the sojourner appears to be that of discovering something new and unique. What is often not taken into account, is that the medium, for example, of narrating the lives of characters embedded in their life-worlds, is a finite medium: i.e. at some point there will be nothing new to discover because the medium is exhausted. This may have happened in the eight-tone based classical music, whose disappearance gave rise to the twelve tone atonal modern music, and other modern art exhibitions such as Cage’s 4 minute 33 second silence. Whether modern novelists felt this way about their creations becomes, in the light of the above, an open question. This is one possible explanation for the phenomenon Ricoeur refers to. Another possible explanation is connected to Heidegger’s thesis of the “forgetfulness of Being”.
Now, we do not accept that preferring to focus on the sensible power of the imagination, (at the expense of the higher cognitive powers of understanding and reason), is “remembering” something that has been forgotten, because this, in our view ,is merely an extension of the modern rejection of the work of Aristotle by the “new men”(Descartes, Hobbes, Hume), which continued with the rejection of Kantian critical theory by Hegel, and a scientific movement, that eventually culminated in logical positivist and logical atomist theory where the world was “reduced” to a totality of facts. Our argument is that ,if we refuse to discard our powers of understanding and reason, narrative retains the possibility of being imperative-driven, and motivated by the Aristotelian “aim at The Good”, and its ought system of concepts. On this kind of account, the idea of “plot” too, is salvaged, as well as the claim that it is driven by principles that are teleological and essence-specifying. This kind of account also manifests a refusal to situate this discussion in a context of exploration and discovery, and an insistence to remain in the auditorium in which the tribunal of explanation/justification is taking place.
Hannah Arendt’s references to the role of the “new men”, for whom “everything was possible”,(including the colonisation of the planets for profit) and the rest of us for whom, as a consequence, “nothing was possible” anymore , gives this whole discussion a political dimension and suggests that the “phenomenon” of the modern had totalitarian aspects. Since the occurrence of two world wars and the dropping of two atomic bombs on civilian populations in what Arendt called the “terrible 20th century, in every age and every generation there is no absence of evidence that we are still in the grip of the “philosophy” of these “new men”.
Ricoeur summarises his position in relation to the modern novel in the following manner:
“It is within the realm of the modern novel that the pertinence of the concept of emplotment seems to have been contested the most. The modern novel, indeed, has, since its creation, presented itself as the protean genre par excellence. Called upon to respond to a new and rapidly changing social situation, it soon escaped the paralysing control of critics and censors. Indeed, it has constituted for at least three centuries now a prodigious workshop for experiments in the domains of composition and the expression of time.”(Page 8)
Ricoeur cites Virginia Woolf and what he describes as a stream-of-consciousness methodology, claiming that the primary issues for here were:
“the incompleteness of personality, the diversity of the levels of consciousness, the subconscious, the unconscious, the stirring of unformulated desires, the inchoative and evanescent character of feelings”( P.10)
The above description of Woolf’s work, however, appears to be sufficiently multifaceted to manifest the more classical concerns about narrative, which stretch well beyond the imagination, and our impulsive emotional life. Desire, for example, for Aristotle, included the desire men have to know. The unconscious, as described and explained by Freud, also was embedded in a system of principles(the energy regulation principle, the pleasure-pain principle, and the reality principle), that required both understanding and reason to comprehend. Freud’s principle-based personality theory, inspired by Kant, was a very different kind of theory to the “new” variable-based trait theories, searching for correlations instead of causality.
Ricoeur also discusses the modern attempts to create a “new” genre, in which exact correspondences between reality and the world of the literary work, was the aim—the kind of resemblance that memory had, to what it remembered, appeared to be the focus of attention in some attempts. Now, whilst the power of memory is related to many other powers(e.g. semantic memory), it is its relation to sensory circumstances that appear in these attempts to be most important for Ricoeur. The question also arises in relation to this venture: how complex is the reality that one is attempting to duplicate or imitate. If, for example it includes actions of magnitude which aim to restore order in a chaotic world, in accordance with ethical principles, e.g., the defeat of Richard III, then there does not seem to be much substance in Ricoeur’s criticism.
There is an awareness in the writings of Ricoeur, of the modern malaise, in the form of our modern discontentment that so often focuses upon our civilisations. It surfaces in the following:
“Today it is said that only a novel without plot or characters or any discernible temporal organisation is more genuinely faithful to experience, which is itself fragmented and inconsistent, than was the traditional novel of the 19th century”(P.13)
He poses the curious question of whether the modern style of narrating includes within itself the possibility of “dying out”(P.20), and he appears to think that an affirmative answer to this question is conceivable, pointing to the example of the deliberate choice of an author not to provide an ending to their work. If action, as a matter of fact, possessed merely an episodic character, this would suggest an attempt to imitate an action without any vision of its end, and perhaps also without any vision of the more distant goods it may bring about. Action, in reality, in contrast to the fragmented experience referred to by Ricoeur above, is embedded in an ought-structure, in which the imperative mood prevails. Heidegger draws attention to inauthentic forms of action connected to the failure by “They” to acknowledge the “good” associated with death(e.g. as manifested by Socrates in the face of his own imminent death.). Inauthentic forms of action are, of course, pathological and defensive, even if the imagination, fuelled by fear, is one of the sources for the denial of the meaning of death.
Ricouer makes an interesting detour in his account, and ventures into the realm of religious writings in the Bible, which contains both a mythic-historical account of Genesis, and a vision of an Apocalypse that necessitates the wish for salvation and a life after death. Ricoeur realises that this biblical representation is comprehensible, only under the condition that the narrative form has not died out:
“For we have no idea of what a culture would be where no one any longer knew what it meant to narrate things.”(P.28)
Historical narratives also require an understanding in terms of categories and principles and they too must aim at “The Good” in a context of explanation/justification.
Aristotle claimed that we are so constituted in terms of the power of our mind, that the question “What happened?”, is not merely asking for the facts of the matte, but immediately poses another question, namely, “Why did it happen?” The “Why? question is not a fact-seeking question, but rather a principle-seeking question, and these principles in turn can be related to a number of different kinds of explanations(aitia). Men desire to know, Aristotle argued, in his “Metaphysics”, and the invention of History is partly a response to this desire: a response which provides us with the answers to the questions “What happened?” and “Why did it happen?”. History, in a sense, is a tran-scientific discipline in which we are provided both with the facts, and also indirectly a practical knowledge of what ought or ought not to be done (areté).
The activities of man stretch over many domains, meeting both the concrete and abstract needs necessary to provide him with the life he believes he ought to lead: a good spirited, flourishing life (eudaimonia). We should recall here, the words of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, namely, that all activities of man aim at the Good. Wars(both foreign and internecine) disrupt the pattern of mans life at all levels, threatening the possibility of meeting both his concrete and abstract needs, and perhaps there is no greater need than the need to study a subject which documents the occurrence of wars, and the ways in which they are avoided and come to an end. This study has not, thus far, had much effect in the prevention of conflicts, in spite of the empirical evidence (facts) of the destruction they bring. Add to this evidence, the rational argument that wars are practical self-contradictions (massive loss of life to prevent massive loss of life), and one can indeed wonder whether the Delphic oracle’s prophecies relating to “Knowing thyself” and “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction” are not moral, but rather empirical warnings, relating to the importance of knowledge in all mans activities.
The question to raise, given our knowledge of History is, considering the thousands of years of wars man has experienced, whether knowledge of the facts, and knowledge of what we ought to do, is sufficient for man to begin living in the “perpetual peace” Kant imagined and hoped for, when mans rational powers mature and his activities become fully rational. Until this “telos”actualises itself, man must perhaps count himself among the Freudian discontents, insofar as his relation to our civilising activities are concerned. Both History and Philosophy, are obviously, two disciplined approaches to The Good, but their approaches differ, and the way in which they do may be instructive to explore in future writings. The History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History would seem, then, to be a necessary aspect of Sophia—the wisdom we need to answer the aporetic questions thrown up by the human powers of mind we possess.
The rationalism of both Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy insist that explanation/justification and theoretical and practical understanding are important moments involved in the contextualisation of facts, which are of course, spatio-temporal entities embedded in our experience. The question “What happened?”, implies the question “What happened, when, and where?” If, to take a historical example, the facts support the generalisation that the key sphere of influence upon the world has shifted from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic, one cannot avoid posing and attempting to answer the question “Why?” In the answer, we can expect to find references to knowledge (epistemé) justice (diké) well-judged activity(areté) and a grasp of fundamental principles of both theoretical and practical activity(arché), especially insofar as we encounter these elements in the contexts of power and influence.
Shifting spheres of influence are part of the Transcendental Aesthetic of History. Yet even here, the focus is on the quality of the civilisation-building activities that the Historian closely monitors in accordance with the Kantian question “What can we hope for?” This question, for Kant, is one of 4 questions which, for him, define the scope of Philosophy. Part of the answer Kant gives, is that we can hope for a global civilisation that not merely aims at the Good, but has actualised it in most of its institutional structures. On such a world-view, The Good consists in men treating each other as ends in themselves, and not instrumentally as means to serve other arbitrary ends.
Another aspect of the Transcendental Aesthetic is the Historians penchant for categorising and charting the course of events during long periods of time, e.g. The Middle Ages. The Transcendental Aesthetic also engages with a Transcendental Analytic, and both together constitute a context of explanation/justification. Aspects of the Transcendental Analytic include the importance of knowledge in civilisation-building, the importance of justice and good judgement, connected to wise action, and respect for others. Historical reasoning primarily moves in this arena that is constituted by the context of explanation/justification. Long term processes(e.g. the globalisation process) which take, according to Kant, hundreds of thousands of years, are subject to an underlying telos, e.g. Cosmopolitanism, operating in the Historians explanations and justifications.
Ricoeur discusses the removal of the explanatory element from the fabric of literary narratives, and to the extent that this means that the Historian emphasises the explanatory element, it is not at the expense of the description of the facts. In the example of the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean, there would appear to be no problem with admitting that the Historian is using the facts to narrate the course of events that brought this shift about. The narrative obviously has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and there is also the presence of an underlying possibility of the working of a complex “story” of globalisation as it unfolds and moves toward the end of Cosmopolitanism. It is difficult to fathom exactly what Ricoeur means by the above claim that the Historians explanations/justifications are not part of the “fabric” of the narrative. They are certainly part of the assumptions that are operating in the production of historical documents and texts.
A Phenomenological discussion of the “objectivity” of History follows, and there is no mention of explanatory or justificatory principles/laws. The focus is, instead, upon the consequences of the operation of principles/laws: consequences such as the linking of facts together, and the completeness of explanations/justifications. Ricoeur claims, that it is the aim of historians to make their explanations/justifications “autonomous” and independent of the “self-explanatory” intent of the narrative. Ricoeur also points out that History concentrates its attention upon a different type of object, compared to that of the narrative. One is, he argues, no longer concerned with the attribution of responsibility to individuals, as a consequence of their actions, but rather the concern is with “nations” “societies”, “civilisations”, social classes”(Page 177). The characters we encounter in narratives are replaced by more abstract entities(quasi-characters), and the assumption is made that the differences between characters, and these entities, are more important than their ethical identity. Socrates, for example, pointed out how all entities concerned with justice and the work of civilisation, ought to be considered in terms of the “soul writ large”, which would retain the identity of these entities with that of psuché. This would in turn indicate that agency, action, and the types of explanation/justification associated with them, are very relevant to both the description and explanation of these so-called more “abstract” entities. This, then, suggests that if the “covering law model” or the “covering principle model” applies to the narrative and plot involving characters, it ought also to apply to historical narratives. Ricoeur, as we have pointed out in previous essays, rejects this reasoning, and retreats to the vocabulary of “generalisations” and “warrants” of the kind that we find in the work of Gilbert Ryle in his work “The Concept of Mind”. “The term “plot” may, of course be the wrong term to apply to the teleological process of globalisation that leads to the end of Cosmopolitanism, suggesting as it does the negative ethical activity of “conspiracy”. We suggested the term “story” but “Telos” may, be a better technical term and also be more appropriate ethically.
Both fictional narrative and historical narrative, are capable of charting causation of different kinds and logically related explanations/justifications of different kinds. If this reflection is correct, then the application of the idea of a “story”, is common to both forms of narrative. The “story” of Globalisation, and its end Cosmopolitanism is, of course, a more abstract form of narrative, but it is considerably more than merely a “point of view” and can be regarded as an “account”.
The issue of historical intentionality is sketched in phenomenological terms that focus upon the “differences” between History and the other disciplines, rather than upon what these disciplines have in common. Husserl’s idea of a “life-world” has proven to be a useful concept in many contexts, and it has proven its value in combatting “analytical” views of action, which emphasise causality at the expense of the reason for action and its associated intention. The application of Husserl’s apparatus of phenomenology, and this technical term(“life-world”) becomes difficult in History because of Husserl’s Cartesian rejection of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Husserl’s pupil, Heidegger, however, has managed to provide us with an architectonic of concepts which are more applicable to the domain of historical activity. The concepts of Being-in-the-world , historicality, and Being-there(Dasein) can all be used to explain/justify what is going on in the world of History. Dasein, for example, understands itself in terms of its possibilities–its possible ways of Being-there. Living in perpetual peace in a Cosmopolitan world, is obviously something that is both ethically and politically desirable. Historicality is, to take another example, for Heidegger, an important aspect of the temporality of Dasein and this includes the “possibility” of making the past ones own, as Heidegger puts the matter. What he partly means by this, is that we have forgotten an important way of thinking about Being, in favour of a more inauthentic mode of thinking about our existence. This is certainly something Kant might have claimed in relation to our modern forgetfulness (beginning with Descartes and Hobbes) of the work of Aristotle, but Heidegger paradoxically, claims that both Aristotle and Kant are examples of Philosophers who have forgotten “the meaning of Being”. Both, on his view are rationalists, who have failed to appreciate the transcendental power of our imagination.
As far as Ricoeur is concerned, the plot of the narrative, is not the work of rationality and the faculty of reason, but rather the work of the faculty of Judgement operating in conjunction with the power of imagination, which somehow accounts for the connection of particular facts. There are, however, assumptions operating in the selection of the facts, characters, actions, and expressed thoughts of the narrative, and it is highly likely that not just judgements are involved, but also the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason. Ricoeur would deny this, and insist that it is the “point of view” of the narrator, that is determining the flow of the narrative. This “point of view” is composed of a number of elements which all combine to produce what Ricoeur calls an “explanatory effect”. He invokes Husserlian phenomenology, in connection with his judgement that the Sciences are all experiencing a crisis of legitimacy.
The suggestion of genetic phenomenology is that the type of explanation one finds in science, differs significantly from the kind of understanding demanded by the narrative produced by a narrator. It is then, paradoxically suggested, that causality is the nexus of all explanation in History.(Page 181) Ricoeur means here, that the type of causality we encounter, is dissociated from the teleological and formal forms of explanation discussed by Aristotle in his discussion of systems of knowledge and the logical structure that manifests itself in the essence-specifying attributes of universality and necessity. Neither Aristotle nor Kant would accept that a system of knowledge could be supported solely by the faculty of judgment, and a power of the imagination. Such a combination could not produce a system of knowledge that requires principles of logic as well as those principles we use to regulate our use of concepts, e.g. categories. On both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts, explanation and understanding are different aspects of the same knowledge-complex and not the bipolar opposites suggested by Ricoeur.
Ricoeur refuses to accept the validity of the essence-specifying attributes of universality and necessity, and prefers instead to talk in terms of structures, e.g. the structure of singular causal imputation. The sociological account of Weber is invoked to investigate the “logic” of singular causal imputation which:
“consists essentially of the constructing by our imagination of a different course of events, then of weighing the probable consequences of this unreal course of events, and finally in comparing these consequences with the real course of events.”(Page 183 in Ricoeur)
Ricoeur chooses to illustrate this with the example of Bismark, and his decision to declare war on Austria-Hungary in 1866. Weber asks us to consider the hypothetical question of “What would have happened if he did not make this decision?” This question transports us into an unreal hypothetical world, in which the context of explanation/justification is replaced by a context of exploration/discovery. In this “investigation” the categorical and logical reasoning of Bismark, relating to reasons for actions and decisions are banished from the discussion, in favour of a form of reasoning about imagined particulars and the degree of probability of their consequences, insofar as these are capable of determination by a “calculating mind”. There is, it must be pointed out, a contradiction in this reasoning, since according to Bayes’ theorem, the degree of probability of an event can only be calculated if one has complete information about the event concerned,.e.g. there are 50 white balls and 50 black balls in the sack we are withdrawing our ball from. Bismark of course, did not have all the information necessary for making the right prediction of what would happen as a result of his decision, because his situation was not a “closed system,” like that of the sack containing a definite number of white and black balls. The type of “calculation” involved in Bismarks decision, can not contain any explanations or justifications, but only hypotheticals, arrived at inductively in the practical context of statecraft. This, of course, puts Bismark into a “relativist position”, connected to the “psychology of discovering hypotheses”(Page 186). Neither Aristotle nor Kant would concede that what is going on in the Bismark case has anything to do with “knowledge”, i.e. justified true belief (best illustrated by the more modern terminology of a “nomological-deductive model”).
History was not a systematically organised discipline during the time of Aristotle who, as we know, saw no universality and necessity in a chain of singular judgements about past events. Insofar as there was no reference to formal and final aitia(causes, explanations), there could be no universal and necessary explanations/justifications. From a Kantian point of view, judgements receive their universality and necessity from both the categories that determine our judgements, and the principles of reasoning that serve to connect these judgements into nomological-deductive arguments.
Reasons can be given for the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic, and these will not be hypotheticals torn from the womb of imagining the unreal. Reasons can also be given for the conclusion that Bismark was either a good leader of Germany or not. All activities, Aristotle argued, aim at the Good. The possible exception in the Historical context is the decision to go to war ,which always brings ruin and destruction in its wake even if there are good instrumental reasons for the activity, e.g. stopping a tyrant from colonising a very large area of the world and, as a consequence, denying freedom to hundreds of millions of people. As a matter of fact, Bismarks decision can be evaluated from two different Kantian viewpoints: firstly from the instrumental civilisation-building perspective, where the outcome of the unification of Germany certainly provided Germany with considerable power and influence in the world well into the future. Secondly, in terms of his attachment to using war as a means to unify Germany, the failure to treat other states as ends in themselves is a contravention of the Kantian categorical imperative(second formulation). Aristotle too would have agreed that Bismark’s decisions were not for the sake of the principle of The Good. These two different judgements appear, at first sight, to be contradictory, but they are not so, because the principle of noncontradiction clearly qualifies itself with the words, “at the same time and in the same respect”. The positive judgement about Bismark is clearly a judgment that falls into the practical category of instrumental judgements and the negative judgement is a categorical ethical judgement.
Weber is again referred to in relation to the problem of causality and its consequence , determinism. The human decision can be situated in the context of causality or the context of freedom of choice. The idea of freedom is not completely detached from causality, because, on Kant’ theory, the free will causes itself to be active. Freedom, for Kant, is architectonic, i.e. an idea which orders the world in terms of ends, but it is also an idea that does not flow from experience. It is, rather, a principle which orders experience, by making our concepts, real or actual, in the world. According to Kant there is a detachment from the principle “Every event has a cause”, because this event of activity is self-causing. Also the relation of the act of will to an actual action, is not a causal one, where one can identify an independent cause and an independent effect. Bismarks decisions to go to war, can then be situated in a chain of causes situated in the “phenomenal world”(Kant), but they can also be situated in the noumenal world, in which, according to Kant, war may not be constitutional because it is not consistent with the ethical/political principle of bringing about the maximum freedom for everyone. This does not deny the fact that the eventual outcome for Germany was instrumentally useful in the future insofar as generating power and influence over its neighbours was concerned. The evaluation of Bismark’s legacy, which is the task of the Historian has, then, both instrumental and ethical components.
Weber’s claim that:
“causal analysis provides absolutely no value-judgement and a value judgement is absolutely not causal explanation.”(Page 189 in Ricoeur)
needs further elaboration. Surely insofar as the concepts of power and influence are concerned, Bismarks legacy was obvious, and just as surely, in the noumenal world, there does not have to be a first cause or beginning of things: time is infinite and the causal chain will stretch into the past ad infinitum. In such a world a chain of causes can be begun by an act of will willing to make something happen in the world, and whilst this does not preclude situating this act in a causal chain, extending back into the past, neither does it preclude viewing this act of will as a first beginning of that chain, and thereby holding the agent concerned responsible for the consequences or ends of their action. Indeed, on the contrary, this self-causing of the chain is a condition of applying the concepts of responsibility and the associated praise or blame.
Ricoeur’s reasoning rests upon viewing individual decisions as singular events that cannot be generalised except in terms of “exemplary” necessity and “exemplary”universality(Page 190). This reasoning confines us to charting the causal relation between, for example, the Protestant ethic and capitalism in terms of what Ricoeur calls” a singular causal chain”. Given the fact that ethical evaluations in their essence are universal, this approach eliminates them from the outset. Instead sociological generalisations are sought via the work of Weber, e.g. in terms of roles, attitudes and institutions which become the focus of attention(Page 191). It is the Protestant “view of the world” rather than their ethical adherence to duty, that becomes the major issue. Predestination is obviously a critically important doctrine that testifies to the absence of one of the foundation stones of ethical theory, namely freedom. Predestination, Ricoeur argues:
“divests the individual of ultimate responsibility”(Page 191)
Weber calls the rational ideas of God and freedom, “spiritual” ideas. Perhaps “responsibility” also falls into this category, which are set aside in Ricoeur’s account, in favour of what he calls a “probability calculus”. This move reminds one of the consequentialist “hedonic calculus”, which rests upon an idea of “happiness” that Kant described as “the principle of self-love in disguise”. Neither happiness, nor the application of probability, to the events under consideration, can be connected to the kind of universality and necessity we encounter in contexts of explanation/justification related to reasoning ethically. Ricoeurs solution to the problems that emerge in his reflections, is to turn toward the concept of “plot”, and apply it in accordance with a concept of “analogy”, to the singular causal chain. The idea of “plot” becomes a carpetbag that holds the heterogeneous elements of “circumstances, intentions, interactions,, adversity, good or bad fortune”, together. Ricoeur then almost immediately modifies the term of “plot” to “quasi-plot”, probably partly because of the difficulty of the possible connection of plot to ethical assumptions which do appeal to the characteristics of universality and necessity that are present in contexts of explanation/justification, and also present in Aristotle’s characterisation of tragic plots.
Historical knowledge, as we have pointed out is presented in Husserlian rather than Heideggerian terms, e.g. “noetic intention” is a favoured technical concept with its origins in genetic phenomenology(Page 194). Ricoeur notes with approval Mandelbaum’s definition of society:
“individuals living in an organised community that controls a particular territory: the organisation of such a community is provided by institutions that serve to define the status occupied by different individuals, and ascribe to them the roles they are expected to play in perpetuating the continuing existence of the community.”(Page 195 in Ricoeur)
This, according to Ricoeur, is:
“the ultimate reference of history”(Page 195)
There is, also, reference once again to the singularity of societies–they are defined by their difference to one another, rather than in terms of their essential characteristics. It is, that is, the singular identity of a society , rather than the principles that constitute it, that become the primary issue for Ricoeur. The differences appealed to, are often empirical differences. Narratives, Ricoeur argues, allow us to portray singular individuals as characters, thereby conferring upon them a kind of exemplary universality that can be reconfigured into causes in historical accounts. The connection between cause and effect on this account is hypothetical:
“Causal necessity is therefore a conditional necessity: given the complex set of causal conditions that took place(and not others) it was necessary that the effect that was actually produced occur.”(Page 201)
Part of this process involves a transition from the descriptive nature of facts in the historical account which are an attempt to answer the question “What happened?”, to the question “Why did it happen?”. Ricoeur believes in what he calls the “autonomy” of the Why-question from the What-question, because he rejects the “natural connection” proposed by Aristotle. This is partly because he demands a particular type of answer to the Why-question in terms of:
“factors, phases and structures”(Page 202)
This type of “analytical” approach dissolves the unity of the phenomenon being investigated which of, course, at some point, has to be “reconstructed” into a “structural unity”(Page 202). Webers notion of ideal types is invoked in the ensuing discussion, which insists that the notion of a plot must have both singular characteristics and general typical characteristics. It must be acknowledged, that in certain types of historical explanation, e.g. the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean region to the North Atlantic region, the idea of a “plot” structuring what is happening, may be strained, and not be an effective means of referring to the material and efficient causes that are operating in such Historícal changes in the world. Material causes, according to Aristotle will include such elements as the territory and character of the peoples, and the efficient causes will include the decisions made by the important figures of the time. So-called “final” causes or explanations of this regional shift of power, may well include the idea of the freedom of the peoples of the region, and also perhaps an awareness of the role of the democratisation of society. This latter aspect was of course in no small part formed by ancient Greek ideas of Justice and knowledge as well as the importance of the understanding of rational principles connected to these ideas.
There does not seem to be any difficulty with using the term “narrative” to describe what is happening historically in the cases of either Bismarks decision or the regional power shift. The term “plot” may be more appropriate, however, in the Bismark case, but it must be pointed out that this literary term does not always best capture the kind of universality and necessity we encounter in historical explanations. When the “message” of the narrative account is ethical then the term becomes more appropriate.
Ricoeur again discusses the notion of event, and is keen once again to seek differences. The event, he claims:
“distinguishes the historians concept of structure from that of the sociologist or economist.”(Page 217)
The event, however, is not on this account, a universal concept, but rather a differentiating mechanism situated dissonantly in different time zones(Page 217). Structures too are, on this account, “transitional”, and can, as Ricoeur puts the matter, “die out”(Page 217) Human works, Ricoeur continues, are “fragile”(Page 217). Events are divisible, and become “quasi-events”, that occur in a quasi-plot. Ricoeur uses Von Wrights technical concept of a “system” and claims that a plot can be composed of “rival systems”(Page 220). The “revolution” for example, is one “system” or “model” that contrasts with the more powerful “model” or system of “evolution”.
Ricoeur ends this chapter with a dialectical account of the chronological component of the episodic event versus an a chronological component, which is configurational, and best suited for the portrayal of longer time spans. “Historical structures”, he argues paradoxically, can die out. He then qualifies this with the claim that whilst the Mediterranean region cannot die, Philip II can ,and does.
In his separate conclusion to volume one, Ricoeur maintains that his ideas of quasi-plot, quasi-event, and quasi-character, are intended to call into question our traditional and rational accounts of History, in favour of an idea of narrative that appeals not to our understanding and reason, but rather to a perspectival view of the world and its relation to the power of our imaginations.
At stake in many of Ricoeur’s discussions, is the question of how to correctly characterise the complex issue of Causality in a Historical context. We do, for example, understand that the question “What caused X?” is an important question for a historian to answer. Ricoeur, consistently refuses, however, to directly adopt the Aristotelian position which argues for 4 different kinds of cause(Aitia–a word which also means “explanation”) regulated by 3 principles in the context of 4 kinds of change, 3 media of change(space, time, matter) and three different types of science(theoretical, practical, productive). For Aristotle, the metaphysical issue which drives all scientific activity in general, is manifested in the claim “all men desire to know”. History, we claimed in an earlier essay, is trans-scientific(concerned with all three types of science), and insofar as practical science and the ethical content of History is concerned, historical reflection is in Aristotelian terms “aiming at the Good”. This is not to be construed as it has been in analytical Philosophy as subjective or psychological, but is very much regulated by the categories of the understanding and the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.
Ricoeur turns his attention to analytical Philosophy and refers to the “covering law” model of History, calling, upon the critical work of William Dray:”Laws and Explanation in History”:
“Three fronts are opened up….On the first front, a purely negative criticism is carried out that concludes by disconnecting the concept of explanation from that of law. On the second front he pleads for a type of causal analysis that cannot be reduced to subsumption under laws…Finally, Dray explores a type of “rational explanation” that cover only a part of the field emancipated by the criticism of explanation in terms of empirical laws.”(Page 122)
Ricoeur elaborates upon this theme by acknowledging that the explanations we encounter in our History books, are ” a logically miscellaneous lot”(Page 122). In the previous chapter Ricoeur pointed to “logical deficiencies” in the covering law model, but at issue in his discussion is a theoretical idea of law, and not the kind of laws we encounter in morality or a bona fide legal framework. We can certainly agree with Dray that the idea of “subsumption” is problematic, when used in the attempt to discuss the relation of the event to its explanation. For example, the event/action of failing to keep a promise not to pay money back to a creditor, is logically related to the “principle” “Promises ought to be kept”, and the use of the term subsumption in such circumstances is certainly problematic. Making the Judgement “Promises ought to be kept”, in relation to the event of non payment of debt, indicates a possible request for further explanation: “Why ought promises to be kept?”, and this in turn indicates that a reason can be given for the judgement in the form of the Categorical Imperative(“So act that you may will that the maxim of your action can be willed to become a universal law.”).
Subsumption is a term better used, not at the level of a complex subject-predicate is-ought claim, but rather in the case of the subsumption of the subject under the concept expressed by the predicate. In such cases it is the categories of the understanding that regulate whether the subsumption is legitimate or not, whereas in the case of the relation of the subject-predicate claims to each other we are in the realm of reason and the principles of logic. In the case of the relation of the categorical imperative to the principle and the relation of the principle to the event of the non payment of the debt, it needs to be recognised that the term “moral law”, used to designate the categorical imperative, is an appropriate use. The term “covering law”, however, does carry with it implications of the mechanism of subsumption.
The emphasis upon subsumption and the way in which a concept relates to an object( a particular object) is continued in Ricoeur’s discussion of the uniqueness of a particular event. He points to the role of explanation as that which differentiates one object/event from another:
“historians do not proceed from the classificatory term toward the general law but from the classificatory term toward the explanation of differences.”(Pages 124-5)
This is an account of explanation in an inductive context of exploration/discovery, but it is less likely to be found in a historians writings, and more likely to be found in an academic discussion about historical thinking. Classificatory terms, on a Kantian account, are, of course, related to the categories of the understanding/judgement, if we are dealing with the case of statements claiming to be true. The way in which a concept of a subject relate to other concepts, is part of both the sense and reference of the statement. A revolution, to take a central historical example, may or may not be in the name of freedom, and the Categorical imperative. A Historian, that is, may wish to categorise the intention of a revolution in terms of the law of freedom, but as the revolution develops over time the Historian may be increasingly reluctant to use positive moral judgements in those cases where violence is used, because of an attachment to democratic principles, which in turn favours the rule of law and non violent means of settling disputes in a nation. Kant, in fact, found himself in this ambiguous position in relation to the event of the French Revolution.
Ricoeur believes the categories of the understanding, and principles of reason to be irrelevant to his phenomenological/hermeneutic attempt to provide an account of historical explanation. The focus is turned upon judgement, and the procedural principles of justice that are used to decide whether a defendant is guilty or non-guilty. The weighing of evidence is necessary, Ricoeur argues, to arrive at the judgement of guilt or innocence. This, in the legal sphere, is activity that falls clearly in the context of exploration/discovery, and until the judgement is final, it is the “hypothesis” of the state that the defendant is guilty. As we shift from this context to the context of explanation/justification and ask, for example, why the defendant was found guilty, we may refer to both the evidence and the formulation of the law that was broken. The judge in this context is using his knowledge of the law to direct the proceedings of the court , hear the evidence, and move logically toward a correct judgement. Here we do not see induction alone deciding the proceedings , but rather see a deductive movement from the law to the evidence to the judgement. The principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason will be intimately involved in this context of justification. This nomological-deductive structure is not, then, only applicable to the activity of the natural scientist, but is also operating in the realm of ethics and the law, and there is no reason not to believe it is also operating in the realm of History. Ricoeur prefers to focus on the context of exploration/discovery and would regard appeals to the nomological-deductive structure in these contexts as dogmatic. He believes, that is, that:
“another explanation different from that by laws is referred to as a “warrant” which will be called causal explanation.”(Page 125)
Causal explanation, that is, becomes in Ricoeur’s eyes, an alternative to explanations in terms of the principles and laws outlined above. This of course requires accepting the following condition:
“if there are singular causal connections whose explanatory force does not depend on law.”(P.125)
The picture that is struggling to emerge in this discussion is that of Hume’s account in which one singular billiard ball strikes another singular billiard ball, and the mind moves from “one event occurring after another”, to “one event occurring because of another”. This account characterises causation as something “psychological”–a habit of mind. The description given here is clearly favouring a process of induction in a context of exploration/discovery: a process which hopes to arrive at some kind of particular terminus.
Ricoeur takes up a Historical example of what he calls an “alleged causal law”: “tyranny causes revolution”. He claims that this is not a law but rather a second-order generalisation based on an inductive gathering of particular facts. There is no doubt that in the minds of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant this was a law-like principled presupposition that had to be part of the political organisation of a well-ordered polis. Certainly, for Plato and Aristotle, this “alleged causal law” was a principle of justice(diké). For Kant too, this would have been an important categorical principle of his political philosophy, and intimately connected to the freedom of the people in a polis. Kant would certainly have used this principle as a premise in arguments explaining the occurrence of some revolutions . Ricoeur claims that there are causal laws integrated into the fabric of what he calls “narratives”, but unless he wishes to acknowledge a much wider meaning of the term “causal”, such as we encounter in hylomorphic and critical philosophy, the only way in which “cause” can be integrated into a plot is in terms of “one thing after another”. The plot of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is driven by a cause involving the usurpation of the power of a king, and the effect of the deterioration of the mind of the guilty party, and it is clear, because of the universal intent of this plot, that we can legitimately say “one thing occurred because of the other”. The universal intent of this plot is clearly connected to the ancient Greek project of “knowing thyself”, and this project in turn “aims” at The Good.
Ricoeur’s preference for the term “warrant” reminds us of Gilbert Ryle’s appeal in his work “The concept of mind”, in which he referred to dispositions as “law-like”, and whilst the word “warrant” may concretise the problem, it does not solve the aporetic problem of the universality and necessity of causal laws, or the problem of whether these can be found in History.
Ricoeur turns to the work of Dray and agrees surprisingly to the use of rational explanations in relation to the action of agents, but it is also clear that what this amounts to, is not a logical connection between action and its circumstances, but rather some kind of hypothetical means-ends calculation. Means-ends judgements are instrumental /hypothetical judgements which fall into a different category of judgement in comparison with judgements that are characterising “ends-in-themselves”. The former do not command the same level of universality and necessity as the latter. Ricoeur appeals in this discussion to Aristotle’s theory of deliberation, and claims that in order to establish what he calls the “logical equilibrium of this calculation” we must:
“inductively gather the evidence that allows us to evaluate the problem as the agent saw it.”(P.129)
Ricoeur also argues that Dray’s account of “calculation”, is related to “probability”, but there is a suggestion that if we proceed in the above fashion we might find ourselves defending a position of methodological individualism, and opening up an abyss between individual explanation and the explanation of large scale historical processes. Ricoeur leaves this discussion hanging in the air, and turns instead to a consideration of how causal explanations and teleological inferences may be related. Aristotle is paradoxically invoked as being dialectically opposed to a “unified scientific method” in the name of “methodological pluralism”, a term which Ricoeur has a tendency to interpret relativistically. Aristotle, we know, was not opposed to unifying all science under a universal and necessary “desire to know,” and he would also claim that all the three different types of science (theoretical, practical, productive) are concerned with the unifying themes of the media of change, causes of change, and the principles of change. Aristotle would also openly admit that the three different types of science differ in their methods and domain of application.
Von Wright is appealed to in relation to the Tractarian view of the world: a world composed of atomic states of affairs combined into a totality. Von Wright asks the obvious question of whether the world we live in satisfies the criteria laid out in Wittgensteins Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus and his answer is that this is a:
“deep and difficult metaphysical question, and I do not know how to answer it.”(P.133 in Ricoeur)
Reference is then made to “ontological building blocks” whose constitution is unknown to us. This deep and difficult metaphysical discussion, however, makes no reference to Aristotelian metaphysics in which “change”, rather than “states of the world” is the starting point of all philosophical reflection. Kant’s critical Philosophy would also appear to accept the above Aristotelian starting point, and perhaps claim that we live in both the phenomenal and the noumenal world. Kant’s position implies that the ontological claims of atomism are trying to say something that cannot be said. This reminds one of Wittgenstein’s long time reluctance to give an example of an atomic proposition. He too claimed that the propositions of the Tractatus were attempting to say what cannot be said, and should be used as ladders which must then be discarded after being used. Von Wright thinks it sufficient to add “tense-logic” to the Wittgensteinian world-view, in order to generate historical statements. He also adds the idea of a system defined as :
” a state-space, or initial state, a number of stages of development, and a set of alternative moves for each stage”(P.134)
Systems are subject to interventions by “free and responsible agents”(Page 134). On this account, states take the place of events and actions, and this appears at first sight to be problematic, given the static nature of states and the dynamic nature of events and actions. We know that Wittgenstein characterised states of affairs in terms of the concatenation of objects. We also know it would be difficult to fully analyse the Kantian event of a ship sailing downstream with this “model”. Artificially breaking the event up into a number of temporal atoms(nows), would seem not to capture this event as lived by an observing subject. On Von Wright’s account, it is possible to characterise the event of the ship sailing downstream as a “systematic state” that is “developing”. Action, on this account, becomes a problem that is solved by construing it as a “closed” system, and is characterised as “interfering” with the world. On this account it is difficult not to regard the subject as just another cause in a chain of causes transforming a closed system into a deterministic system(which of course has always been an ancient aim of atomism). Wittgenstein tried to avoid this problem by mystically situating the subject at the boundary of the world or outside the world. Von Wright calls upon the work of the analytical Philosopher Danto, and his work on basic actions to resolve the aporetic questions that arise in relation of the linking of Action to causality. Teleological explanation is invoked in order to neutralise the impression that there is only a causal bond between different phases of action. Von Wright claims that the tie between a reason and an action, is a “motivational mechanism”(Page 138) and he also makes an appeal to the concept of “intention”: behaviour is “intentionalistically understood”, it is argued, and this is necessary in order for it to be teleologically explained. History, Ricoeur argues in this context, is connected to a theory of Action and he refers to Von Wright’s claim that:
“the behaviours intentionality is its place in a story about the agent.”(P.139 in Ricoeur)
Narrative , Ricoeur argues, includes both the circumstances of any action plus its unintended consequences, and the action is likened unto the use of language which is characterised in Wittgensteinian terms as “:
” a gesture whereby I mean something”(Page 139 in Ricoeur)
Ricoeur continues with the claim that historical explanations are not fully teleological but are rather “quasi-causal”. This claim is then immediately mitigated by an acknowledgement that there are indeed many different kinds of explanation in historical texts. In addition to the internal relations between an intention and an action and its consequences, there are also external relations between two events, e.g. the assassination in Sarajevo and the outbreak of War.
Ricoeur regards Von Wrights account as incomplete and wishes to tie into one intelligible whole, “circumstances, goals, interactions, and intended results”, using the emplotment strategy of narrative. Ricoeur insists, in the context of this discussion, that causal explanation is preceded by narrative understanding. This, he insists paradoxically, requires the rejection of the “covering law” model which construes narrative as episodic and not as a configurational or transfigurational mechansm. Ricouer refers to Danto’s account of “narrative sentences”, in an attempt to link historical explanation and our understanding of narrative. He points out that Danto is an analytical Philosophy and also that analytical Philosophy is:
“in essence a theory of descriptions”(P.144)
Danto, like many analytical philosophers, holds up the idealism of Hegel as a position to avoid –not because of its controversial use of the dialectical method, but because of its pretension to understand the whole of history. Following upon this criticism, it is bluntly stated by Ricoeur, that it is not possible to make judgements about the future unless they are extrapolations from the past. Narratives, it is maintained, on the other hand, possess the power to re-describe past events in the light of events that occur subsequently, and it is this power that primarily interests Ricoeur, because, as he puts it:
“there is no history of the future”(P144)
Danto, on the other hand, claims that every narrative sentence written by a historian is subject to revision by a later historian, and that some historical explanations do not have a narrative structure. No reference is made in this discussion to the fact that Classical historians recommended waiting 30 years before writing about events, because some important chains of events take time to complete themselves. This enabled these historians to have a knowledge of the future of past events. On this classical view, it is maintained that a history of the present and the future are not possible until 30 years later. This “waiting period” was also important because it allowed for the appearance of important documents. Even if at present, documents are becoming available much quicker, there is the problem of completely and correctly describing events such as the 30 year war whilst it is still ongoing. There is of course more than a whiff of logical atomism and logical positivism in Danto’s account that Ricoeur does not comment upon. The description of an earlier event in terms of a subsequent one, of course, occurs on the logical level of particular events, and this leaves us with the problem of accounting for the abstract entities of principles and laws(e.g. the future will resemble the past), as they are presented in historical writing. Some forms of explanation rely heavily on these abstract entities.
Danto replaces the “covering law” model with a “covering descriptions” model that is essentially describing particulars. This is why Danto is forced to admit that descriptions in the end will have to “count” as explanations. Such descriptions will certainly allow us to characterise efficient causes in a Humean manner, but there will be problems in using Danto’s account to characterise the universality and necessity of formal and final causes.
Ricoeur criticises Danto’s account for its failure to distinguish between the narrative sentence, and a narrative text which connects particular events. He looks then to the work of W B Gaillie, “Philosophy and Historical Understanding”, to fill a hole left by Danto’s account of narrative sentences.(Page 149) Gaillie’s thesis is that historical explanations are intimately related to the narrative form in which they are embedded. Explanation, that is, is derived from the structure of narrative. Ricoeur argues that the following of a story to its conclusion is to be distinguished from following an argument to its conclusion, in that whilst the former has to be merely acceptable, the latter has to meet the criteria of universality and necessity, and provide us with some kind of prediction. Ricoeur then claims that the type of intelligence involved in these two cases is different.
Aristotle is accused by Ricoeur of being the source of what he refers to as the “subjective factor” or “subjective teleology” involved in the appreciation of a narrative. Expectations and attractions are, he argues a part of this “psychology of reception”(Page 151). This, needless to say is not consistent with Aristotles account of art, which he characterises as a productive knowledge-using practical science, in which the elements concerned are not subjective but rather present in the creation because of the artists conducting his creative activity in the spirit of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). All activities, we are also told by Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics, aim at The Good, and Art is no exception to this universal claim. The aim of art is also to help us with the task of knowing ourselves by understanding the role of what is subjective and what is objective, in this search for The Good in the form of the Beautiful.
Aristotle would have been bewildered if confronted by the account of the world we are given in the Tracatatus, namely, that the world is the totality of facts and not things. He would have pointed out that, given the complex structure of our powers of mind, we cannot be satisfied with a mere description of the facts, but would demand explanations in terms of the principles that explain the facts: we wish, that is, to understand both what is happening and why it is happening. Aristotles account of tragedy puts causality clearly on display, and the learning that occurs in this case is not subjectively connected with a modern “psychology of reception”, but is, rather, concerned with the message the artist is attempting to communicate with “universal intent”, or as Kant would put the matter, in a “universal voice”. If the narrative of a tragedy can incorporate causality—“one thing because of another”—there ought not to be any difficulty with History manifesting the different kinds of causation Aristotle spoke about. Transplanting Aristotle’s ideas into the modern subjective-objective philosophical jargon, and the modern context of a “psychology of reception”, does not appear to be helpful, if we are to understand the logical structure of narration. In Historical narrative, the idea of the Good is important, but in a different way to the way in which the idea of The Good forms part of our idea of the beautiful. There is no doubt, however, that in terms of the nomological-deductive structure of Aristotles productive science, narratives satisfy the desire to know, and laws and principles are operative in the form of presuppositions even if they are not always articulated in the text.
Historical narrative must therefore be structured to answer “Why?” questions and must, as a consequence, allow principles to be operating in the course of events that are the objects of the narrative. Ricoeur, as we have seen, dismisses the nomological-deductive structure in favour of the ability of an audience to “follow” the story. This is clearly a descriptive rather than explanatory activity. Remaining at this descriptive level allows Ricoeur to search for a pragmatic justification:
“the criterion of a good explanation is a pragmatic one”(P.155)
which of course takes us back to the idea of a mind calculating means to ends, rather than a mind understanding categories and principles. The activity of contemplating “The Good” does not, as Ricoeur claims, take us back to the realm of judgement about particulars related to other particulars, or the connection of episodic causes, but rather takes us into the realm of practical understanding and practical reasoning and the architectonic structure of concepts and principles.
Narratives are often produced by someone in order to describe a course of a chain of events for various purposes: e.g. to inform, to educate, to entertain. Responding to this form of description, demands acts of understanding and reasoning that involve different cognitive powers which are not involved in investigations which are situated in contexts of exploration/discovery, where the issue may be to arrive at the formulation of a principle, rather than proceeding from a principle, as is the case in investigations situated in contexts of explanation/justification. In this latter case, what we are witnessing, is a categorically driven conceptual investigation aiming, not primarily at description, but rather at larger concerns connected with second-order questions relating to “Why” things are as they are, i.e. concerns related to Truth/Knowledge and Justice/The Good.
In the case of the production and understanding of fictional narrative, we are more concerned with the dignity and worth of character, than with a historical account of the forces of ruin and destruction ravaging our civilisations. We know, for example, from the dramatic accounts of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, that the ruin and destruction supposedly caused by Duncan may well have been fictional, but that fact nevertheless does not detract from the value of the play, which centres around an account of the deterioration of the mental health of a tyrannical ruler(similar to the one given in the later books of the Republic as part of an account of “justice”). Much can be learned in the process of appreciating this work, which involves a therapeutical cathartic play of the emotions of pity and fear. Ethical principles are also involved in a process which is clearly aiming at self-knowledge, and knowledge of the world and how it actually operates, rather than how it ought ideally to operate. For example, the Kantian principle “Promises ought to be kept”, does not say that it is a fact that promises are kept, but rather, in the case that they are not kept, this principle is invoked in relation to the categorical imperative to make the judgement that promises ought to be kept.
The medium of fictional narrative centres around the key concept of mimesis, as understood by both Plato and Aristotle. For both philosophers, fictional narrative imitated the forms or ideas that formed the principles of understanding and reason, operating in the real world of the city, whether that be in the everyday milieu of the agora, or the more esoteric milieu of the offices and institutions of the modern city. The mimesis of these activities involves representing them for a purpose that is not real, but rather ideal, and related to the artists intentions and the ideas he has about his art. Here there is a hylomorphic structure to this activity, but it has different material, efficient, formal and final causes or conditions compared to those we find in the real world. As mentioned above ethical considerations, practical categories of understanding and principles of reason, are also important constitutive elements of the plot of the narrative of the tragic poet, and are an important part of his creative intentions. Techné and epistemé are important aspects of the productive and theoretical sciences involved in this creative process. Phronesis, diké and areté are also involved, but have their home in the practical sciences. Understanding therefore, must on such a complex account, be a complex power operating at several different levels regulated by both the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason(e.g. principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason). The context of this artistic operation must be primarily that of explanation/justification and the question “Why did X occur?”, if X is an action, demands a reason for the action, in contrast to the situation where X is an event in which case the “Why?” question might be asking for a cause or condition. The reason for an action is teleological and can either refer to the maxim for the action or the principle governing the action(e.g. the principle of happiness or self love or the principle of the categorical imperative).
Ricoeur wishes to relate the narrative structure of history to the above form of fictional narrative, and this is an important claim to make, given the inevitable relation of History to the beginnings, middles, and endings that are constitutive of the human life-process. Both forms of narrative also concentrate attention upon actions and events of magnitude. In the case of History, it is the spatial entity of the city or nation and the forces of ruin and destruction which threaten civilisation, which is in focus. In the case of fictional narrative we are concerned primarily with the fate of individuals, although the question of the flourishing life of the city or nation may also be the concern of the artist.
One problematic claim made by Ricoeur in this context, however, is that the narrative of History is derivative from the fictional form of narrative whilst at the same time being rooted in the temporal structures of action. Ricoeur argues that History “constructs” its own temporality which refers to reality “obliquely”(Page 92). The reality being referred to is that of actual events that have taken place in the past. Part of the intentionality of historical thought is connected to its epistemological commitment to knowledge about the past, and also connected, from a practical point of view, with the powers of understanding and reason. This latter commitment occurred in the spirit of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). In this field of praxis, History and Law share many of the same concerns. Historical laws have, of course, a different logical structure than the laws of theoretical science, which relate to reality in the mode of necessity. Historical laws are norm-constituting in the mode of the ought(of what ought to occur in reality), e.g. the future ought to resemble the past. This kind of law will also be integrated with ethical and political laws(relating to diké, justice). The idea of event will be less important in the case of the ethical laws that are justified by the categorical imperative, which may take different forms , e.g. treat everyone as ends in themselves but which all imply action(So act…). Ricoeur’s characterisation of an event moreover, that a historical event is a one time unique event in the temporal history of civilisations, abstracts from all non-temporal characteristics and adopts the Cartesian spatio-temporal coordinate system, which is essentially a mathematical system designed to measure motion and physical change. Such a view is, then, the result of a mathematical view of time that is connected to an obsession with scientific methodology by English and German positivists. Ricoeur in fact criticises this position, but nevertheless presents an account of “event” which many positivists would embrace:
“Whether it be a question of statistical frequency, causal connection, or functional relation, an event is what only happens once.”(Page 97)
In a discussion of the work of Aron and Weber, Ricoeur elaborates upon this position by quoting Aron:
“As for the probability born of the partial character of historical analyses and causal relations, it exists in our own minds, not in things.”(Page 98 in Ricoeur)
Ricoeur continues in his reasoning:
“In this respect historical appraisal of probability differs from the logic of the scientist and is closer to that of the judge.”(Page 98)
This reasoning is then confronted with Marrou’s claim, which rejects the proposition that historical understanding is subjective( as defined by the methodological individualism of many social scientists). Ricoeur’s discussion takes on an “atomistic” character, and a formula is sought to relate the “atoms” of the event and the individual. The “method” used is one of dialectical confrontation. The question “Is history the history of events or individuals?” is, of course, from the point of view of historical understanding, a poorly formulated question, which may well require abandoning the characterisations of event and the subjective-objective distinction referred to in this chapter.
Ricoeur then introduces Hempel into the discussion . Hempel’s is a scientific view which rejects all connections of the idea of an “event” with narrative transfigurations. The event is depicted in terms of a “universal-particular” relation in which historical events are no less mystically “subsumed” under a more general concept of event of a specific type, which, in turn, is logically related to antecedent conditions and so-called “regularities”. Clearly the kind of universality invoked here is theoretical, but may well also be related to the assumption that the future will resemble the past. This attempted detachment of the practical intention, practical understanding, and practical reasoning, from the historical conceptualisation of historical events removed History from ethics and the practical sciences and this was viewed with suspicion by many professional historians.
Ricoeur criticises the above account by Hempel on the grounds that it is too prescriptive!. According to Ricoeur, History is not yet a fully developed science, and is therefore prone to idealistic characterisations. Both Ricoeur and Hempel agree that historical explanations are in some sense incomplete. Hempel-followers settled upon a compromise position that History may not possess laws, but rather law-like principles which provide us with explanation-sketches. This is not an action-focussed account of History, which would, in fact, require consideration of the prescriptive form of imperative and a narrative motivated by Reasons for Actions rather than the causes of events. The criticism of Hempel offered by Ricoeur, is that he fails to distinguish between a historical event and a physical event. Historical events, according to Ricoeur, are characterised in terms of singular statements that refer to the occurrence of unique events at very specific and unique times and places.
Such historical events cannot be the matter of narratives which clearly possess the logical characters of universality and necessity. This view of “event” does, however, allow Ricouer to artificially attach a value to the event, and assign the event a cause, which the hermeneutic method can then “Interpret” the meaning of. Here, what Ricoeur calls the “terminal consequences”(Page 119), are important, but he also insists that there may well occur a conflict of interpretations in the assigning of terminal consequences in a causal chain. Marx is mentioned in the context of this discussion and Ricoeur claims:
“Either interpretation can be objective and true with regard to the causal sequences upon which it is elaborated….there is a place for critical pluralism.”(Page 119)
It is, of course, not merely the dialectical materialism of Marx that is historically problematic, but also the fact that the ancient view of diké(justice) is marginalised as is the Enlightenment insistence upon the importance of the practical idea of freedom in important actions/events such as revolutions.
Phenomenology and Hermeneutics are the philosophical tools Ricoeur uses to articulate the relations between time, as opaquely lived, and time as transfigured through the process of mimesis, which in its turn results in the narrative that is organised by a plot. The field of application for the use of these tools is the field of meaning in which we find “the arc of operations”:
“by which practical experience provides itself with works, authors, and readers.”(P.53)
Ricoeur appears to believe that the foundation of our epistemological relation to reality rests upon the field of meaning, which is a significantly different entity from the Aristotelian field of the “many meanings of Being”, and a significantly different entity to the field of philosophy defined by the 4 Kantian questions:
“What can we know? What ought we to do? What can we hope for?What is man?”
Ricoeur’s declared intentions are, as we know, neither connected to Aristotelian hylomorphic or Kantian critical Philosophy, but sail closer to the winds of Heideggerian ontology and Hegelian dialectic as part of an investigation into the medium of language.
The poetic adventure begins with a pre-comprehension of the form of life which is centred upon the meaning of Action: its symbolic structure, motives, and goals as well as upon the practical kind of knowledge involved in techné. In this realm, the critical Philosophy of Kant regard the categories of Agent and Patient as critical elements which Kant expresses in terms of what the agent does, and what happens to the agent. Heideggerian instrumentalities embedded in an instrumental context of involvements, unfortunately, efface this ontological distinction in favour of a practical-theoretical distinction between what is ready-to-hand and what is at present-at-hand. Agency, and its relation to the will disappears in this account in favour of a discussion of the relation of objects to one another, and our relation to these objects. The desk is related to to the pen which in turn refers to the paper. This context must involve the motives and goals of the agent, but these are marginalised. This, of course, is part of the Heideggerian strategy to avoid what he calls the subjective-objective dialectic that threatens to envelop all action into the sphere of a relativistic sphere of subjectivity.
The motives of the agent engaged in the mimesis of the temporality of everyday life, which transforms the temporality of the kind of “poetic” narrative we find in a technical object such as a tragic play, involves a process of transfiguration of the temporality of everyday action. This process requires a philosophical investigation that involves the categories of the understanding, as well as the teleological reasoning required in the explanation/justification of actions, and the technical objects created by such action. Insofar as we are also dealing with the fate and destiny of characters as determined by the plot of the work, the plot itself must embody a telos that relates to the Kantian practical idea of freedom, and the exercise of reason that is involved in the agents desire and practical search for a flourishing life. This reference to Aristotelian hylomorphism or Kantian critical Philosophy would not be acceptable to either Ricoeur or Heidegger’s existential/phenomenological approach, which seeks as part of its mission to neutralise these forms of rationalism.
Ricoeur calls the transfiguration of Time that we encounter in mimetic narrative, “constructed time”(P.54). What may be a source of confusion in this discussion is a recognition of the difference between a theoretical account of Time(the measurement of motion in terms of before and after) and a practical account of time, the experience of which is both lived and regulated by the sensory powers we possess. Time, of course, can be conceived of in terms of “events” that “happen” in our lives, but it is also the case that our sensory powers play an active role in organising our life-world activities, especially in relation to that final “event” of our life-world—our death. We all owe nature a death and it is on the journey toward this ultimate terminus that we form our destinies and determine the quality of our lives. Heidegger’s contribution toward this discussion lies in his idea of what he calls the being-toward-death that characterises the practical active life of Dasein.
Narratives, Ricoeur argues, focus on both acting and suffering but the emphasis is on “description” rather than explanation/justification. It is “method” in a context of exploration/discovery that is important in phenomenological investigations :this methodical emphasis occurs at the expense of “principles” and their determining role in the understanding of phenomena. It is, to be more precise, the understanding of the principles of acting and suffering that determine the art of plot composition, and the art of plot interpretation. The “Implicit phenomenology” of “doing something” isolates itself deliberately from the organising principle of a will considering alternative avenues of action (from the rational perspective of universality and necessity). If the kind of action under consideration is self-evaluative, and related to the worth of the agent as measured by arché, areté and diké, then the choice is categorical, and the categorical imperative both explains and justifies any action or suffering on the part of an agent concerned with the task of “knowing thyself”. If, instead, we are concerned with imperatives justifying instrumental action, hypothetical imperatives will explain/justify the action concerned. These will not necessarily be a concern of the tragic narrative, where the issue is exactly that of determining the worth of the agent. Here we are not in the realm of “meaning” but rather in the domains of knowledge and ethics, and by implication, concerned with the metaphysically loaded questions, “What can we know?” and “What ought we to do?” The attempts to answer such questions cannot confine themselves to merely “describing phenomena”.
For Ricoeur, the notion of “symbol” is important in all activities concerned with the interpretation of the “meaning” of what is occurring. The role of the principle of “the Good” is however, obscure and not articulated in Ricoeur’s reflections on the interpretation of tragic narratives. Ricoeur, indeed, raises the possibility of an ethically neutral narrative, where the controlling idea is to establish what he calls an “ethical laboratory”(P.59), thereby clearly situating this particular phenomenological investigation in a context of exploration/discovery. The spirit of such enquiries is that best expressed by the question “What do we have here?”, rather than “Why did X do A?” The answer to this latter question must of necessity be a rational answer given that the question is obviously asking for a reason for an action that has been freely chosen.
Ricoeur contrasts Augustine’s emphasis upon the present-ness of Time with Heidegger’s commitment to the future expressed in the idea of being-towards-death. Heidegger rests this particular argument on Care, which he claims constitutes the unity of Dasein– that being for whom his being is a question. Care testifies to the commitment of Heidegger to an instrumental form of practical reasoning that Kant would characterise in terms of hypothetical imperatives. Heidegger also speaks of the past, and uses the term “historicality”. We are, Heidegger argues, thrown into the world and into a temporal structure that he characterises as “within-time”. We reckon with time in our life-world before we measure time, it is argued. This reckoning occurs in the context of “work” which occurs “within” the span or fundamental unit of a “day”. The term “work” obviously has essential connections to both acting and suffering. To the extent to which we measure the time of our work by referring to clocks and the time that it is “now”, we can divide our day theoretically into a string of “nows”, “before’s” and “after’s”. It is only if we detach this string of denominators from Care for the work, that we are able to create a theoretical linear chain of causality, in which the motion of one event “causes” the motion of another event in the spirit of the Humean analysis of causation. The actual understanding we have of the causes and reasons for acting and suffering, create no need for the construction of a mathematical spatio-temporal coordinate system, that is best used in order to give an account of the relation of material-physical objects and quantities of motion.
The “moments” or “nows” of a narrative, e.g. “Is this a dagger I see before me?”, are clearly connected in the plot to befores and afters, and the kind of question which naturally arises in relation to this moment is not merely “What is the cause of this experience?”, but also “What kind of future is this moment signalling?” (“What is the teleological reason for this moment?”). It is obvious that the artist cannot discover the meaning of this moment after he creates it, if he does not possess a prior idea of its telos. The momentum of the narrative is forward pointing, and it is the future of the narrative that motivates the continued interest of the reader/audience in the proceedings.
There are important differences between History and Poetic Tragedy(both of which are narratives of care even if the former is concerned with the befores and the latter with the afters in the temporal continuum of the respective narratives). Aristotle elaborates upon this difference, and favours poetic narrative over historical narrative because of its “universality”. The genre of historical writing was, however, only to establish its subject-identity later in the cultural development of the West, and when it did, it would not do so as merely a record of a totality of particular facts ordered on a spatio-temporal continuum, but must rather include judgements relating to our Care for a human form of being-in-the-world—-universal judgements embedded in a context of principles of explanation/justification. Historical understanding too, must connect to the future in this context. The Delphic prophecy, namely, that all things created by man is destined for ruin and destruction, of course, hover over the judgements of the Historian like Banquo’s ghost, as do the words from the Enlightenment “Sapere Audi”(Dare to use your reason!”). The words of the oracle may contain much truth but there was, for both Aristotle and Kant, a logical space for a meaningful answer to the question “What can we hope for?”. Kant’s philosophical answer to this question is that in the far distant future there is a state of the world in which ruin and destruction are a thing of the past.
The difference between the role of factual knowledge in the two different types of narrative, are nevertheless important. In the poetic tragedy of Macbeth, the hallucinatory experience of the dagger, is an important event, and whilst it is true that Macbeth is hallucinating, it is nevertheless not true that he is in the presence of a real dagger. In the historical account of Macbeth, there may be no trace of this experience or the presence of witches. Such an account will only contain verifiable facts which are founded upon documentary evidence. That is Macbeth may not have been an agent of ruin and destruction at all but merely a ruler attempting to rule in difficult circumstances.
The mimesis of Shakespeare’s tragedies are important from the point of view of providing the cultural community with insight into the mind of a tyrant. In this respect the tragedy of Macbeth is merely a dramatised account of the philosophical dialogue we find in the late books of the Republic. In Socrates´ narrative, the consequences of tyrannical rule are outlined in terms of the ruin and destruction it brings down upon the city, and also in terms of the inevitable violent death of the tyrant. This discussion is part of a response to Glaucon, in the earlier books of the Republic, demanding that Socrates prove that Justice is both good in itself, and good in its consequences. In both kinds of narrative the imagination obviously supplements the work of the powers of understanding and reason. The artistic genius of Shakespeare uses the cathartic formula of Aristotle in his presentation of the deterioration of a mind intent upon usurping the throne at all costs. That it is, in fact, probably not true of Macbeth is less important than the fact that it is important to focus aesthetically upon the forces of good and evil in order that audiences may learn how to avoid the ruin and destruction brought upon the city by agents that fail to understand how their own minds are functioning( the major focus is nevertheless on the future of the city). You will not find any attempt by Shakespeare to install an “experimental laboratory” in his theatre. The learning experience, for both Shakespeare and Aristotle, resides in the Platonic insight we are given into the human mind in general, and pathological minds in particular: an insight that is in accordance with another Delphic challenge, namely to “Know thyself!” In this process diké was presented by Socrates as something that was both good in itself and good in its consequences, and getting what one deserved was part of this concept of justice. If in the modern spirit of creating an experimental laboratory, elements of experience were all thrown randomly into the cauldron of the work, without any idea of the good or justice, and a narrative was produced in which a tyrant brought down ruin and destruction upon the city he ruled, but prospered and led a flourishing life. This would be anathema for the classical mind and the work would be experienced as a farce rather than a tragedy. In this witches cauldron of bits and pieces of experience, nothing significant could be learned about life, and it’s relation to justice. One philosophical hypothesis that has been produced in this “experimental” spirit is that our Western tradition is on its way to a ruinous end–an apocalypse– and there will be a period of “The last days of terror”. This hypothesis has played no small part in the installing of the fear of terrorism in our modern consciousness. A fear that left very little space for pity, except perhaps a form of narcissistic self-pity. There is, of course, a limit to how many times one can say that something is coming to and end without that end actually occurring. The hypothesis sooner or later will become otiose, but the danger is that in the process of “living this hypothesis” the mind loses interest in the classical matrix of arché, areté, diké, epistemé and phronesis. These ideas form the bedrock of our hopes and expectations, and without such a foundation there is a distinct danger that life and action lose their meaning, and our value system becomes inverted as part of this process of “forgetfulness”.
The History of suffering certainly calls for a human response, but perhaps not one in which terrorism features: a scenario in which our thought moves to vengeance and a vision of the last days of our civilisation. The ancient Greeks provided us with a matrix of ideas which they believed was a philosophical formula for leading a flourishing life. It is this matrix, rather than the modern experience of alienation and despair that best structures human expectation, and the hope for a better and brighter future. The learning experience that follows from the mimesis or imitation of actions, centres around characters that may die. If, however, they die in a value-vacuum without in some sense deserving to die because they brought down ruin and destruction upon themselves and everyone else, then we are in the realm of the meaningless: what we would be witnessing would be a form of existence that is possible but not desirable(a scenario constructed by an imagination that is functioning in a value-vacuum).
Ricoeur, in this chapter also embarks upon a reflection upon the role of language in a work of art. Appeal is made to the sense-reference distinction that Frege introduced in his “Theory of meaning”, and the claim is made that reference to reality is indeed important in the interpretation of the language of poetic works(P.80). The language of such works is, however, not descriptive, but “metaphorical”. This is all part of a hermeneutical account of literary symbols, and Ricoeur elaborates upon this position by claiming that in reconstructing the temporality of action and suffering, we are also dealing with “metaphorical” language. The fictional narrative, Ricoeur argues, is presented in the spirit of “as if”. The events in some sense do not exist and this is part of the hermeneutic attempt to escape a subject-object argument which would place much that is of human importance into a category of “the subjective”, and embrace positions which encourage experimental laboratories in which our human values are neutralised in favour of hypothetical world views. Heideggerian hermeneutics and its appeal to being-in-the-world, and being-towards death, is a form of reflection which has classical motivations and to that extent is less fixated upon the phenomenological attempt to describe, and more prepared to seek explanations and justifications for phenomena. It is in this spirit that Ricoeur claims that History is a guardian or night watchman ensuring the remembrance of the dead.
Ricoeur is one of the most significant writers in the realm of the relation of myth to Philosophy. The following is from his work “The Symbolism of Evil”:
“Myths will be here taken to mean what the history of religions now finds in it: not a false explanation by means of images and fables, but a traditional narration which relates to events that happened at the beginning of time and which has the purpose of providing grounds for the ritual actions of men today, and, in a general manner, establishing all the forms of action and thought by which man understands himself in his world. For us moderns a myth is only a myth because we no longer connect that time with the time of history as we write it, employing the critical method, nor can we connect mythical places with our geographical space. This is why myth can no longer be an explanation…But in losing its explanatory pretensions the myth reveals its exploratory significance and its contribution to understanding which we shall later call its symbolic function—-that is to say, its power of discovering and revealing the bond between man and what he considers sacred.”(Page 5)
The limitations of myth may well have given birth to Philosophy, when it came to providing explanations demanded by aporetic questions, and raising issues relating to the infinite media of change, namely space, time and matter. It no longer seemed efficacious to personify Time by the figure or image of Chronos, engaging in the curious activity of eating his own children and being attacked by one of the most powerful of his children. Such images just did not seem to respond appropriately to the awe and wonder of a newly awoken consciousness in the face of the sublimity of life in a world of such complexity. These images did not possess the required universality and necessity of the philosophical principle of sufficient reason.
Cassirer in his work “Language and Myth”(Trans by Langer, S., K., New York, Dover, 1946), opens his work by reflecting upon the master of Myth himself, namely Plato. In the Phaedrus Socrates shows his impatience with those that refer the god-like wind carrying someone away in order to account for their death. Reasoning in this way, he argues, risks allowing the imagination to run free which in turn merely raise the demand for explanations relating to the existence of monsters and gods. Such investigations, Socrates argued distracted one from the aporetic question par excellence of Philosophy, namely the Delphic task of knowing oneself.
Cassirer quotes Max Muller(The Philosophy of Mythology, London, 1973), and highlights his claim that myth arises from the illusions of language, making it some kind of pathological phenomenon. This conflicts with Ricoeur’s account above. Cassirer rejects Mullers account on Kantian grounds and argues instead, that the figures of myth:
“refer to some given reality by means of suggestion and allegorical renderings, but in the sense of forces each of which produces and posits a world of its own.”(P.8)
The question to raise here is whether Plato, the master of the mythical illustration we find in the later books of the Republic, would have found some truth in the above quote. His allegories of the cave, the divided line, and the sun are after all, not merely artistic embellishments, but are meant seriously to complement the rational argumentation in this work. The physical sun, for example, is an analogue of the good, and there is nothing pathological about seeing the resemblance between the sun and its relation to physical life, the good, and its relation to the ethical good-spirited, flourishing life. True, there is no obvious connection of such allegories to religion, but we also know that there have been religions in which worship of the sun played a significant role. For Aristotle, we know, Being had many meanings, and awe and wonder in the face of this Being, gave rise to the desire to understand these meanings. For Plato it was the “form of the good” which was the primary form, and this strategically suggested that for him practical rationality was more important than the more theoretical pursuit of knowledge and Truth. It is also important to point out that this priority is to be found in Kantian critical Philosophy too. Cassirer insists that the words we have for divine entities carries with it a suggestive power that ought not to be underestimated. Heraclitus, we also know, found what he thought to be a philosophical connection between what he termed “logos” and the divine. The two terms “logos” and muthos”, insofar as Ricoeur is concerned, form a coordinate system for discourse in the arena of religion. This borders on the territory of Poetry which Aristotle concerns himself with, but in Aristotle there is a clear distinction between the ethical focus of the Poetics and the kind of mythical speculation that attempts to say something about the beginning of time in a context of the infinite media of change.
The term “mimesis”, however, aligns us more closely with the Socratic rejection of myth in the search for self-knowledge. For Aristotle mimesis praxeos has very clear ethical and aesthetic implications. Aristotle’s Poetics gives us an account of the function of narrative that ties the beginning, middle and end of the attempt to represent or imitate action into a composite whole. This composition or plot refuses a reduction into episodic point-like events, because the creator is concerned to connect events/actions in a universal manner. The theme of this universality is more concerned with areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and diké, than the divine logos. The Spectator of the drama learns from what he witnesses, for example, the possibilities related to a tragic reversal of fortune from good to bad. Involved in this learning process is a recognition that we all get what we deserve, in the spirit of diké. The universals involved in this context are not theoretical but related to the logos of ethical and political action and thought. For Socrates the logos of these forms of the good were also related to his need to consult with his inner daimon, when elenchus appeared to fail to provide the wisdom(phronesis) he needed. This change of focus, from Homers Gods living on Olympus, to an inner voice, was also linked to the Socratic complaint about Homer and his depiction of the Gods as engaging in unethical actions. This shift in focus, for Socrates, was part of his search for the principles that communities need to reason their way to the telos of the good spirited flourishing life. Aristotle elaborated upon the examined life by including in his contemplative life, an account of the logos of Poetics, and the importance of plot, character, thought, language, melody, and spectacle. The plot of a tragedy, Ricoeur claims, is the “soul” or “telos” of tragedy, and he further claims that mimesis and muthos are equivalent ideas in this context. It is difficult to understand his point here, but its seems connected to his claim that the narrating of events, and the enacting of events in drama, are in some sense the “same”. The fictional enactment of events requires the temporal structure of a narrative in which the beginning necessarily “causes” the middle which in turn necessarily gives rise to an end. In this fictional process we take pleasure in the recognition of images for what they are: a recognition of the “universal intent” of the dramatist. Aristotle clearly differentiates historical narrative from poetic narratives in terms of the difference between the ordering of particular events and the universal intent of a drama in which there is a catharsis of emotions in relation to the reversal of fortune of the major character(s) Unhappiness is a key moment in this process that is evaluated in terms of diké( getting what one deserves). The catharsis of the Spectator involves the recognition of the role of The Good and the True in what has happened and the inevitability of what has happened is recognised in relation to a set of circumstances.
Ricoeur interprets Aristotle dialectically when he links the processes internal to the composed work to what he calls the “external” role of the spectator in the process of catharsis. Cognition, imagination and feeling are all “at play” here and perhaps the idea he presupposes of “recognition” is not a sufficient characterisation of the way in which knowledge(epistemé) and areté are constitutive of the complex composition we are presented with.
Augustine is famous for his sceptical rehearsal of various answers to the aporetic question “What is Time?” Ricoeur attempts to sum up what was achieved :
“Augustine’s inestimable discovery …reducing the extension of time to the distension of the soul.”(P.21)
This, to some extent, is reminiscent of the Kantian account of time which we know relates to activity of the faculty of Sensibility, but a more detailed look at Kant’s position here will reveal that there is no “dogmatic” reduction of the extension of time to the so-called distension of the soul . Instead we find in Kant, a nuanced account of the interplay of the role of movement or change in the external world and the measurement of such movement or change. Indeed there is much in the Kantian account to suggest that he was committed to the Aristotelian essence-specifying definition of time:
“The measurement of motion in terms of before and after.”.
An illustration of the Kantian position can be seen in his example of the boat moving downstream on a river:
“I see a ship move downstream. My perception of its lower position follows upon the perception of its position higher up in the stream, and it is impossible that in the apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived lower down in the stream and afterwards higher up.”(Immanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason, A 192)
The real motion of the ship is what is being measured, and that cannot be reduced to any “distension” of the soul, even if the unity of the representations of the soul is irrevocably an inner phenomenon. In the above example, the relation of the representations is in accordance with a rule necessarily connecting these representations. Kant further elaborates upon this by contrasting the above activity with that of the perceptual activity connected with a large house from a point of view where the whole house requires a number of representations in order to be perceived completely. In the case of the succession of representations of the house, this succession is an arbitrary one, and the reversibility of these representations is possible without the internal structure of the perception being threatened with collapse. Kant claims:
“In conforming with such a rule there must lie in that which precedes an event the condition of a rule according to which the event universally and necessarily follows…..The event, as the conditioned, thus affords reliable evidence of some condition and this condition is what determines the event.”(A 193-4)
The resemblance of the above form of reasoning, to that which we encounter in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory of principles and first principles, is striking. In the hylomorphic theory of change there is reference to a “totality of conditions”, which include the infinite nature of the media of change(space, time, matter), 4 kinds of change, 4 causes of change,3 principles of change and the powers or capacities of a soul involved in the experience of this change, e.g. Sensibility. Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic is a significant elaboration upon this already complex theory:
“In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes place only insofar as the object is given to us. This again is only possible, to man at least, insofar as the mind is affected in a certain way. The capacity(receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions, they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts. But all thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.”(A19)
The hylomorphic character of the above text becomes more evident in following remarks in this Transcendental Aesthetic section which refer to sensations as the matter and the rule which orders sensation as the form of appearances. This “form”, Kant argues:
“must lie ready for the sensations a priori in the mind, and so must be considered apart from all sensation.”(A20)
Furthermore, Kant adds, in Aristotelian spirit:
“The science of all principles of a priori sensibility, I call Transcendental Aesthetic.”(A21)
From Aristotle’s perspective this form of kowledge would fall into the category of Theoretical Science, e.g. Metaphysics. Aristotle begins his work “Metaphysics”, by claiming that it is the aim of this queen of all sciences, to provide the first principles of knowledge for us “rational animals capable of discourse”, who desire to know. The work continues with a review of a number of aporetic questions which are meant to be defining of the scope and limits of this Philosophy of “First Principles” (or “First Philosophy”). Kantian metaphysics is also focussed on conditions or principles, and this is demonstrated in the Transcendental Aesthetic where the metaphysical conception of Time is presented in 5 sections. Time, insists Kant initially, is not empirically derived concept but rather it is:
“Only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time(simultaneously) and at different times(successively)”(A.30)
Secondly:
“Appearances may one and all vanish, but time( or the universal condition of their possibility) cannot itself be removed.(A31)
Thirdly,
“Time has only one dimension; different times are not simultaneous but successive(just as different spaces are not successive but simultaneous but successive)”(A.31)
Fourthly,
“Different times are but parts of one and the same time: and the representation which can be given only through a single object is intuition.”(A.32)
And finally, fifthly,
“The infinitude of time signifies nothing more than that every determinate magnitude of time is possible only through limitations of one single time that underlies it. The original representation, time, must therefore be given as unlimited.”(A.31-2)
In a section entitled “The Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Time”, Kant further emphasises the fundamental role of time in all change, saying specifically that change and the concept of motion are conditional upon an a priori representation of time.
Time, then, is on Kant’s account, manifesting itself in our sensible attempts to measure change or motion, and it is, Kant insists, a form of inner intuition concerned with the intuition of ourselves and our inner state. Time is also a fundamental condition of the possibility of outer appearances. It is important to note that in the Transcendental Aesthetic our concern is not with objects thought of conceptually, but rather “objects of our senses”(A.34). It is only when objects are subject to the categories of the understanding and the power of thinking(“I think”), that knowledge can then be organised by both analytical principles and transcendental logic. It is only in the special and general uses of understanding that logical principles can regulate the totality of conditions necessary for scientific thinking. It s in this context of explanation/justification that Kant then focuses upon the role of “judgement” in scientific discourse:
“Judgement is therefore the mediate knowledge of an object, that is the representation of a representation of it. In every judgement there is a concept which holds of many representations, and among them, of a given representation that is immediately related to an object. Thus, in the judgement “all bodies are divisible”, the concept of divisible applies to various other concepts but is here applied in particular to the concept of body, and this concept again to certain appearances that present themselves to us. These objects, therefore, are mediately represented through the concept of divisibility.”(A68-9)
Judgements are also logically ordered(via the special use of logic) by the categories of the understanding: an order that results in 12 logical types of judgement. These “categories of judgement” are indeed a very complex elaboration upon the so-called “categories of existence”, Aristotle formulated. In this account, the matter and form of knowledge are clearly distinguished, the former obtained via the senses, and the sensible faculty, and the latter via universal concepts and the principles of pure understanding. Logic and the power of reasoning as manifested in the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason, are seamlessly integrated into both the categories of the understanding and this logical system of judgements. Yet it has to be insisted that it is general, special and transcendental logic rather than dialectical logic which are the constitutive and regulative elements of any science employing these judgements and categories.
Augustine’s sceptical rehearsal of the aporetic questions he formulates in his investigations of time, are not metaphysical, in either Kantian or Aristotelian terms. He, rather launches a two pronged attack upon the humanistic rationalism manifested in both Aristotle and Kant. The first prong is in the form of an epistemological/phenomenological account of our experience of time, and the second in the form of a Philosophical Psychology that would also fall into the field of phenomenological investigations. Augustine asks how we can have access to the past which is no longer and a future which is not yet here, and instead of biting the bullet and saying that we do as a matter of fact know the past and the future which are both in a sense real, he focuses upon negation and the absence of the past and the future in order to create a field of primacy for the present (a solipsistic commitment to what can be known here and now). He then argues that memory and expectation are what is measured, rather than past or future “extended objects”. The condition required for such quantification is that the mind or soul be spatially conceptualised into the “circumstance” of an inner theatre of the imagination and its contents, which are then referred to as being located “in” this inner theatre. Scenes wax and wane on this inner stage, and it is this “logical space” Augustine appeals to with his idea of the distension of the soul, an idea which stretches over the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future.
Augustine steers away from real external examples such as ships sailing downstream, whereas it is this kind of example the scientist Kant uses to generate the account he needs in his architectonic of sciences. Instead, Augustine prefers to use private soliloquy in which a psalm is being inwardly recited in order to generate a dialectical manifestation of expectation, attention, and memory. One moment passes away, and another moment waxes into the thought space, as expectation is transformed into memory in a dialectical process that Ricoeur describes in terms of a “living metaphor”. We are never given a precise account of the scope and limits of these “powers” in the Philosophical Psychology of Augustine. His aim, rather, appears to be one of phenomenologically describing the appearance and disappearance of these powers on a solipsistic inner stage in a context of presence and absence that resembles the example Freud referred to in his essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. In Freud’s essay, a one and a half year-old boy missing his mother enacts out the scene with a cotton reel which he throws out of his cot uttering the word “Fort! and pulling it back in via its thread uttering the word “Da!”. This game of “gone!-here!” is a solipsistic exercise that might also be appreciated by many existentialist and phenomenological philosophers who appeal to the notion of “negation” in their accounts of mental mechanisms that regulate our thought processes. One important point to note in the above “presence-absence” game, is that nothing unifies the representations involved. Ricoeur points to how both metaphor and narrative have the task of unifying representations and might almost be considered as organising principles of the literary productive sciences.
The dialectical materialism of Hegel and Marx rest upon key moments of discordance, in which a thesis claiming the truth of something, is challenged by an antithesis claiming the truth of the negation of the thesis. The next stage in this process is a synthesis, in which certain elements of the thesis are integrated with certain elements of the antithesis. This looks a promising outcome, until we learn that this synthesis is merely a new thesis in disguise awaiting the arrival of another discordant antithesis. Scepticism has obviously won the day in this dialectical process, because, on this account, no theses can ever categorically possess the logical characteristics of universality and necessity. At best we are dealing with a judgment that falls into the category of the “hypothetical”. Kant and Kantians would, of course, reject both the scepticism and dogmatism of the Hegelian and Marxist positions on the grounds of the formulation of a critical rationalism which enables them to reject both the materialism and dualism of these times.
Augustine’s meditation on Time then takes a new turn when the idea of eternity is discussed again in terms of the present (that never ends). Our intellect, Augustine argues, contrasts our humanly lived time, with the idea of this never-ending present and a new dialectical argument begins to take shape. Eternity is linked to the eternity involved in words that express the Truth that never changes(Page 29), but this is again immediately neutralised by a moment of negation, in which the idea of eternity introduces nothingness rather than being into our idea of Time.
Fear, Ricoeur argues, has a determinate objective in contrast to the object of anguish which is contrastingly indeterminate. Furthermore Anguish threatens, not just a part of me, as may be the case with fear, but the self in its totality–the threat in this context is to the freedom of the self. Wittgenstein in his work “Philosophical Investigations” distinguishes between the cause and object of fear, and he appears here to conceive of “cause” in terms of a causal stimulus that prompts a response from the sympathetic nervous system. The cause is linked to an effect by the observational knowledge we have of their relation: whereas actions precipitated by anguish appear to be connected to reasons that we possess non-observational knowledge about.
Anguish is a phenomenon that occurs at various levels including at the vital level of life and death. Ricoeur argues that death is not implied by life but is rather related to some external cause which threatens: a cause which I witness empirically(observationally) in the death of others who are permanently absent from our common life-arenas. Ricoeur argues, somewhat mysteriously, that the form of knowledge we are concerned with in this case, is “abstract”, presumably because “reasoning is involved:
“All men die, therefore I, too”(Page 289)
The death of an acquaintance, friend, or family member is, he claims, “internalised”. I then anticipate my own absence in all my life arenas in a non-intellectual non-cognitive spirit of anguish. A Freudian analysis of the movement from the fear of my own death to the knowledge that I too must die involves the mechanism of sublimation which in turn is related to a substitute form of satisfaction that removes the anxiety or anguish from the resulting act of judgement. This process is no easy transition for the agent concerned, as psycho-analytical therapy clearly demonstrates. The more natural mechanism psychoanalytical patients engage in, is that of the repression of the awareness of ones own mortality. Heidegger characterised this phenomenon as fleeing away from the fate of ones death. Such repression or fleeing, prevents more authentic relations to ones death such as that which we encounter in the Socratic sublimation of death into something good, something free from anxiety and anguish but at the same time intimately connected to the holistic worth and dignity of man. In the case of Socrates, the fact that he was , as the Bible put the matter “full of years”(three score years and ten), obviously contributed to the acceptance of his own unjust fate.
Existentialism and Phenomenology, in their different, but related ways, question this classical account, and in the case of the former we are invited to characterise our relation to our deaths in terms of an ambiguity connected to the fundamental contingency of having been born. Such ambiguity incorporates:
“The non-necessity of having once been born, thus the anguish of death, the primal anguish that eats away at my being-in-the-world is not completely immanent to my existence…… when death is here, you are no longer: when you are here, it hasn’t yet arrived.”(Page 290)
Apparently my totality as a whole is threatened by anguish which is then transcended by “reasons for living”, which are also “reasons for dying”(Page 291) This reasoning is Hegelian, an exercise in dialogical logic in which consciousness is both contingent , fragile, and associated with the notion of negation, which Ricoeur characterises as the “nothingness of freedom”. This idea of freedom is anguished over abandonment, and also possessed of a will to live that manifests itself in an upsurge of projects directed at a future that could make history.
The will, so far as Kant is concerned, expresses itself in maxims for action which can both be the source of good and evil. For Kant, but not for Ricoeur, Hope is the organising idea for lives thrown into an arena where the choices of others and indeed ones own choices can bring misfortune upon oneself and others. Ricoeur embraces a notion of “dialectical hope” which does not surmount this chaos or reconcile one stoically to the misfortunes of life, but rather is offered as a “consolation”—being as it is associated with “anguish”, “until the last day”(Page 304).
The question of negation and the finitude of my being, which evidences itself in ones perceptual relation to the world and ones moods, are taken up in the final essay of this work:”Negativity and Primary Affirmation”. This finitude has powers that are expressed in potentialities in the form of “I can”, and these powers, Ricoeur argues, can be summarised in terms of the concept of “character”. This idea is linked to the “tragedies” of want and suffering, and can become the subject of an account in which these wants and sufferings can be evaluated by a character taking up a position, making a stand on the ground of his powers. Yet it is not a Greek analysis of character or the human psuche we will encounter in these reflections, but rather a phenomenological excursion into the realm of meaning in which negation and negativity appear to find a natural home.
Kant is evoked in this reflection on the nature of value which, it is argued implies the absence of what is valued. What is not acknowledged, however, is the role that reason and understanding plays in the Kantian account. Rather the emphasis is placed on the Hegelian idea of “recognition” of the perspective and value of “the other”. On this account discourse has a negative structure in which the dread of death is embedded, and the question arises over a differentiation between what is objective, and what can be “described” in existential and phenomenological analyses. The conclusion of this reflection on meaning, point of view, and the will to live, is that the negativity referred to above is :
“not an immediate negation, but rather a negation of negation.”(Page 318)
Sartre is invoked in the context of this discussion and a reference is made to an analysis of imagination in which it is claimed:
“The imagination which nihilates the whole of the real for the benefit of absence and the unreal.”
Freedom, on the Sartrean account, is not conceived of in Kantian terms, where freedom is characterised in terms of the power of a being to act to bring about what is real. Sartre’s account appeals rather to a notion of “nothingness”, that is discontinuous with the ontological comprehension of Being. Ricoeur appeals here to Anaximander who, it is claimed, maintained that being has a dialectical structure and linked to what Ricoeur terms a “primary affirmation”(Page 327), and this in turn is linked with the ambiguous structure of the negation of negation. This requires a Philosophy of Nothingness which is:
“The transition from things to being”(Page 328)
In this reflection the ancient Greek ideas of “form” and “arché” are discarded in favour of an act of existence connected more to anguish than to the eudaimonia of the Greeks or the eschatological hope of Kant. Mans questioning of the being of being, or the origin of origin entails, on Ricoeur’s argument, that we can negate the principle of Being not by claiming as Plato did that the form of the Truth flows from the form of the Good, but rather by insisting that knowledge does not have a categorical structure: by claiming, that is, that existence is particular , contingent, and ambiguous in its nature. On this account every question raised potentially leads to another question. This is undoubtedly a sceptical position that in its attempts to avoid rationalism and materialism ends with a dualistic account:
“Ontology….is the common root of being in the sense of the factual and of being in the sense of value.”(Page 326)
Aristotle’s conception of the philosophy of first principles is not directly reflected upon. The pre-Socratic Anaximander is the source of the view that being is “primordially dialectical”(Page 327). What this amounts too is not just a denial of reason and its justified conclusions but also a denial of the categories of understanding and by implication a rejection of General and Special Logic: a logic that claims, for example, that the principle “all men are mortal” cannot be meaningfully contradicted because of its categorical and conceptual nature.
History on the Kantian account is regulated by the concepts of Hope and the worth and dignity of man, and by extension, his civilisations and cultures(in which his soul is writ large). The roles of the Good and the True are manifested in our historical texts in a way similar to, but different from the way in which these roles are manifested in our aesthetic works, in which there is, of course, a greater role for the imagination, the psychological process of recognition and the logic of the dialectic.
Ricoeur begins his essay by defining the problem, as he sees it, of “modern universal civilisation”:
“The problem is this: mankind as a whole is on the brink of a single world civilisation, representing at once a gigantic progress for everyone and an overwhelming task of survival, and adapting our cultural heritage to this new setting. To some extent, and in varying ways, everyone experiences the tension between the necessity for the free access to progress and, on the other hand, the exigency of safeguarding our heritage. Let it be said at the outset that my thought does not result from any contempt for universal modern civilisation: there is a problem precisely because we are under the strain of two different necessities both of which are pressing.”(P.271)
This is a fascinating introduction raising a whole host of further questions relating, firstly, to the correct way in which to characterise this “single world civilisation””(as a zone of comfort and security made possible by technology, or as a Kantian Kingdom of ends or an Augustinian city of God?) Secondly , how does it go about safeguarding its heritage in the three very different case mentioned above. Thirdly, whether there is progress toward a kingdom of ends would be a very difficult matter for even the eagle-eyed study of history to establish, given Kant’s claim that the kingdom of ends lies at least one hundred thousand years in the future. Given that span of time there is space to accommodate what Arendt called a “terrible century”(the 20th century) without abandoning the Kantian philosophical conviction that progress is being made.
Ricoeur continues his reflection by intuitively focussing upon one of the major difficulties of conceiving perspicuously of our situation: the pretension of the spirit of science to endow civilisation with a universal character. Modern science appears to express itself best in terms of the consequences of its theory, namely technologically (in accordance with instrumental imperatives). This is not the case with Greek science in which the spirit of techné is connected to epistemé (explanation/justification), and areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). The use of epistemé in Greek science is also involved in the science of nature, but in a different way to the way in which it is in the ethical/practical context of explanation/justification of action. Ricoeur poses the question: “”is Science Greek in its origins and European, through Galileo, Descartes, Newton etc.” One immediate response to this question is to point out that Greek science had a more complex relation to Mathematics than modern science. It is common knowledge that both Plato and Aristotle, and presumably also Socrates, believed Mathematics to be a discipline whose basic “objects” are “images” and whose definitions are “explanations” of the nature of such images, e.g. a straight line is the shortest distance between two points”.
The epistemé of Plato and Aristotle was not constituted by mathematical operations but rather by principles(arché) regulating activities ranging over, not images, but rather concepts, objects, causes, and individual actions. The problem with the inclusion of Mathematics in the scope of Greek epistemé is that it relates only to the physical reality/substance that is most amenable to quantitative operations. This categorical assumption becomes, however problematic because quantifying actions for the purposes of forming images does not answer questions relating to actions that are not classificatory/descriptive, but rather require explanatory/justificatory identification. There appears to be a confusion of what-questions with why-questions in many attempts to introduce mathematics into domains of concern requiring other forms of explanation.
Machines, Ricoeur argues, are merely more sophisticated tools requiring more technical thought for their production and use. Universality, in the sphere of techné, means, he claims, that as soon as an invention appears in one place in the world it can be spread over the whole globe. This is one consequence of globalisation—an ethically-neutral form of cosmopolitanism. Technology, of course, creates forms of life that are different to the traditional forms. We support this process of globalisation in principle, insofar as possessing mobile phones is concerned, but not insofar as atomic weapons of mass destruction are concerned. Ricoeur, in the context of this discussion prefers to ignore Kantian Cosmopolitanism and he claims, somewhat controversially, that the first philosopher to reflect upon the universality of the state was a in fact Hegel. He claims:
“Hegel is the first to have shown that one of the aspects of more rationality, and at the same time, of his universality, is the growth of a state which institutes laws and develops the means for their enforcement in the form of an administration.”( Page 273)
Aristotle’s definition of practical rationality, and its fundamental connection to the creation and maintenance of laws in the city, is also being ignored in Ricoeur’s praise of Hegel. Ricoeur does, however, insightfully fixate upon the importance of the concept of power, and he claims that once a certain level of comfort and security is reached we see authoritarian power-structures transmute into democratic power-structures. There is a case to be argued, for the position that democratic power structures make the exercise of power more difficult and tenuous, and Ricoeur claims, again insightfully, that one possible response to such a state of affairs, is to attempt to personalise power. This fails to appreciate the Aristotelian position that the greater the number of people that there are involved in a discussion of an issue over which a decision has to be made, the better the quality of the decision.
Ricoeur, then, moves the discussion on to a consideration of what he calls somewhat paradoxically “the rationalisation of power”, which he believes is connected to the bureaucratic administration of a government function. This process of administration involves research and investigation into the possibility and consequences of particular issues related to potential government decisions. Such research and investigation takes place in a combined spirit of exploration/discovery, and explanation/justification. In the former context, we are dealing with hypothetical investigations and technological imperatives, and in the latter we are more concerned with the categorical relation of conditions to their unconditioned arché. Both processes aim to provide us with a global picture of the means to ends , the ends in themselves, and possible “good consequences”. In such governmental investigations, calculation of all forms takes place in the combined spirit of exploration/discovery and explanation/justification. The former context focuses upon instrumental and technological imperatives guiding decision and reasoning -processes. The latter context, on the other hand, tends to focus on ethical/political categorical imperatives claiming both universality and necessity, in tribunals that resemble processes of justice more than experimental discussion groups attempting to come to agreements based upon hypotheticals.
Investigations into economical problems involve the quantification of economic events and their consequences. There is, in our modern era, a danger that economic matters dominate the political landscape, and economic means to political ends become the favoured form of “rationalisation”, thus eclipsing the ethical and political substantive arguments required by rational political actors, for whom the term “rationalisation” carries negative connotations. Ricoeur refers to the categorical idea of a good-in-itself, and basically uses a Kantian Cosmopolitan view in his discussion of the “dangers” confronting mankind when major shifts of values occur:
“But the massive access of men to certain values of dignity and autonomy is an absolutely irreversible phenomenon, a good-in-itself. We are witnessing the advance onto the world scene of great human masses who were heretofore silent and down trodden…..a growing number of men have the awareness of making their history, of making history: in this sense we can say that these men are really joining the majority.”(P.276)
Hannah Arendt referred to the problem these masses caused in the rise of totalitarianism in her work “The Origins of Totalitarianism”. It was, she argued during the “terrible 20th century” when political parties failed to appeal to these “mass-interests”, that we witnessed the quick dissolution of old fragile democracies. This illustrates well what Ricouer goes on to say concerning the destruction of traditional values in the process of their “universalisation”. The destabilisation of nation states in this process of “universal” cosmopolitanism obviously brought with it hidden dangers for the whole world. Ricoeur suggests that even the creative nucleus of the great civilisations of the past may become a victim of such turbulent unstable change involving the political mobilisation of the masses. We have argued in our series of works entitled “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action”, that the ancient Aristotelian-Kantian “platform” of value remains submerged in the wake of the tsunami of change that swept the world in the 20th century. This tsunami had been building in size for some time since the first of the new men, namely Descartes and Hobbes, unleashed their “new ideas” upon the masses. They were then followed by Hume, Rousseau, Hegel and their followers who also rejected the nucleus of Aristotelian-Kantian philosophising. Two new structures were being constructed by these new men in a “new spirit”, based firstly, on an obsessive methodology of science, and secondly, the methodology of Phenomenology. Ricoeur does not embrace the “movement of events” inspired by the new ideas of these new men: indeed he calls the movement threatening:
“by the spreading before our eyes of a mediocre civilisation which is the absurd counterpart of what I was just calling elementary culture. Everywhere throughout the world one finds the same bad movie, the same slot machines, the same plastic or aluminium atrocities, the same twisting of language by propaganda etc. It seems as if mankind, by approaching en masse a basic consumer culture, were also stopped en masse at a subcultural level.(P.276)
Ricoeur is relying on an idea of levels of culture similar to that implied by the Kantian distinction between civilisation and culture. The idea of the “personality” of a nation rooted in its past is also invoked, but this is not a part of the Kantian reasoning. Scientific, technical, and political rationality, Ricoeur argues, requires a transcendence of both existing traditions and “personality”, in the name of this modern en masse movement. Modern political “rationalisation” is of course not rationally or ethically grounded, as was the case with Ancient Greek or Kantian Political Philosophy. Modern political thinking, rather, is a more instrumentally based, “pragmatic” affair, where much effort and time is spent on the calculation of consequences and focussing on what is sometimes arbitrarily designated as “good consequences”. Rationality and its concern with an absolute good-in-itself, would be regarded by Ricoeur as the European “illusion”, that such a good is “universal”. The consequence of such reasoning is that the rational universal grounds which we Europeans use to distinguish reality from illusion (which include both Logic and Metaphysics). is also dismissed and disqualified on the grounds of both lacking “universality” and “necessity”.
Ricoeur then raises three questions:
What constitutes the creative nucleus of a civilisation?
Under what conditions may this creativity be pursued?
How is an encounter with different cultures possible?
In attempting to answer question one, Ricoeur refers to an ethico-mythical nucleus of a culture, and warns us against rational definitions of the kind we find embedded in the metaphysical positions of Aristotle and Kant. This would on the face of it appear to disqualify the possibility of adopting a universally necessary attitude to other cultures, e.g. as Kantian ends-in-themselves whose freedom and dignity(personality) should be respected. The discovery of other cultures where more particularistic attitudes prevail, e.g militaristic cultures, does not actually threaten any Kantian categorical imperative that we might use to judge such war-like societies–(what is the case is not logically equivalent to what ought to be the case).
Ricoeur calls upon evidence of clashes between cultures and primitive civilisations such as those reported in the studies of Levi-Strauss, in which these primitive civilisations find it almost impossible to assimilate the kinds of tools a culture uses, because their conception of time, space, and human relations will not allow an imaginative conversion to a consumer-comfort based form of life. The conclusion of this debate contains a reference to levels or layers which have to be phenomenologically disentangled, rather than rationally defined. Any phenomenological analysis, Ricoeur argues, must cut through to a core of basic images and symbols, which it is argued, rather surprisingly, can also be psychoanalytically described. The argument leads to a cul-de-sac in which it is maintained that the fundamental factor to consider here is that of difference–man is different to man as is evidenced by the fragmentariness of the different languages he speaks. One consequence of this kind of argumentation is that different contexts of civilisation cannot be artificially united by the unifying impulse of rationalism.
Some civilisations, Ricoeur argues, will just not be able to assimilate the modern form of scientific rationality which requires a complex form of faith in which one can strive to lay nature bare to the scientific gaze whilst at the same time mysteriously embracing what is sacred to man(Page 282). For Ricoeur, however, insofar as the relation to others are concerned, it is not rational respect for a categorical imperative that guides our principle based relations, but rather psychological functions such as sympathy and imagination. Aesthetics and the Arts are evoked and we are encouraged to consider the parallel of a character in a novel or theatrical play, in order to concretise what for him otherwise appear to be abstract relations appealing to a principle that he does not believe can be justified. Only a culture that uses creativity in the above way, is, Ricoeur argues, capable of giving meaning to the encounter with other cultures. We ought also to bear in mind, Ricoeur points out that our Greek, Hebrew, and Christian origins are not shared by many Eastern civilisations and the confrontation between very different kinds or origins has only just begun. It is also insisted in this connection that we do not possess a philosophy of History which is able to “resolve the problems of coexistence”(Page 284) and this, we would maintain is because of the human totality, which Ricoeur refuses to acknowledge, may be a rationally constituted phenomenon.
This essay is about the problematic relation between power and responsibility. The relationship of History to Power is a latent problem that is only briefly touched upon, but it is claimed, that power has no history, and this pitches us immediately into the Kantian domain of Philosophical Psychology in which it is maintained that the human will causes itself to act–this is its primary power! But this is not the end of the story, because the will on Kantian theory is subject to, firstly, the categories of the understanding and in this respect is self-causing. Secondly, the will is also related to Reason and its freedom to choose. Furthermore, in his Groundwork, Kant claims that this will is universally and necessarily good insofar as its acts are determined by the categorical imperative, which explains not just what we as a matter of fact do, but also what we ought to do, what we must do, given certain ethical circumstances. We have, Kant argues, general duties and responsibilities to treat people as ends in themselves, and also particular duties such as “promises ought to be kept” and “Value the truth”. These two last ethical maxims are also political maxims in Kantian Political Philosophy which widens its scope of concern to generate universal human rights from the duties generated in the political arena. The government, Kant claims, has a duty to keep its promises and value the truth in the court of public opinion, but it also has economic duties to distribute benefits and burdens equally and ensure that the law protects land, possessions and work. A paradox can easily be set up by turning Kant upside down, as Hegel claimed to do in relation to the Critical Project. One can, for example, deny the truth of Kant’s idea of the good will insofar as government activity is concerned, and agree with Machiavelli that the way in which the Prince ought to rule is via the manipulation and deception of his subjects. Ricoeur has several times in previous essays suggested that there is inherent evil in the exercise of power by authorities, so, the choice to invoke Machiavelli in this discussion about the nature of power comes as no surprise.
In this essay Ricoeur compares capitalist and socialist forms of government in terms of an ideal democratic organisation that rules in the name of historical rationality which cannot, it is argued, be reduced to any form of economic argumentation. The paradox at issue for Ricoeur is:
“that the greatest evil adheres to the greatest rationality, that there is political alienation because polity is relatively autonomous.”(page 249)
Ricoeur also quotes the opening of Aristotle’s ” Politics”(P.249):
“Every state is a society of some kind, and every society, like all forms of association, is instituted with a view to some good; for mankind always acts for an end which is esteemed good.”(Book 1, 1-3 Trans Jowett, B.,)
Aristotle is one of the first systematic critical rationalists and would find the view that rationality is the greatest evil, paradoxical. For Aristotle mans rationality is an essential potentiality he possesses, a potentiality which actualises under certain complex conditions. Man aims at the good, and he aims to know, and rationality is involved in both of these “ends”. He is, according to Aristotles essence-specifying definition a “rational animal capable of discourse”, and it is the “form” of being a language-user that transforms his “form” of animality(psuche). This is part of the self- actualisation process that uses the “material” of being a language-user in the knowledge-acquisition process and in the practical process of becoming a political being. If man did not, for example, live in a polis and engage himself in the process of surviving in a state of nature he would, on Aristotle’s view, revert to a primitive existential state in which neither knowledge nor ethics/politics would be important in such a life. The goods aimed at in such a state would be those of the beast.
Kant would also question Ricoeur’s proposed identification of rationality with evil. On the Kantian account, authorities that are tyrannical are perversions of the good will(the unconditioned condition presupposed in Kantian ethics): sch authorities are pathological phenomena which are the consequence of the perversion of the idea of the good-in-itself. The autonomy of what Ricoeur calls the “polity” consists, for Kant, in a concern for “serving the community”: a concern grounded in the requirement of the categorical imperative that one act in such a manner as to treat people as ends-in-themselves. This is a form of action which requires the formation of maxims possessing the characteristics of universality and necessity. In other words, if we are evaluating the phenomenon of tyranny, we are dealing with a pathological consequence of the perversion of the good-in-itself. Classical scholars will recall in the context of such discussions Glaucon’s demand aimed at Socrates, in the early sections of the Republic, that any definition of justice must meet the requirements of both being good in its consequences and good-in-itself.
Ricoeur also refers to Rousseau in his attempt to further articulate the the concept of “polity”. The Social Contract, it is argued, is presupposed in the relation between political authority and those affected. The social contract is a virtual pact that occurs principally at the founding moments of Nations: moments which inevitably include elements of violence. With this idea, the focus is turned away from the duties and responsibilities of authority, and toward the “consent” of those affected. In this context the relation is viewed in the light of the consequences of historical events. The question that is then posed is, “Do the citizens of a nation accept that conditions of the contract have been fulfilled by their government?” Much, of course, depends upon the nature of the conditions of the contract— are they for example, fundamentally ethical, or are they merely economic conditions favouring one class over another or one group of people over another(believers over non-believers). In other words: Is there alienation of large groups or minorities as a consequence of the policies and laws proposed and enacted by the government in question?
Ricoeur claims paradoxically in the context of this discussion that Rousseau is Aristotle(Page 254). The argument for this strange identification of thinkers from very different “schools” of thought(classical v romantic) is that Rousseau’s terms “pact” and “general will” are in essence identical with Aristotle’s hylomorphic terms “nature” and “end” (telos). This “identification” depends on detaching teleological explanation/justification from material, efficient and formal explanations/justifications, which, on Aristotle’s account, ought not to occur if one is intent upon systematic explanations/justifications that meet the rational criteria of knowledge in general and political knowledge in particular. Rousseau’s appeal, for example, to “amour propre” was a denial of the importance of rationality in true Romantic tradition and an attempted celebration of the idea of man as a compassionate animal corrupted by his society. Man is born innocent and free, but enslaved by evil societies. For Rousseau it was Robinson Crusoe that best manifested mans original and innocent relation to nature and himself. Aristotle as a matter of fact was disliked by Rousseau, and Aristotle in his turn would have seen in Robinson Crusoe a being enslaved by Nature, a being waiting to be freed by the forces of civilisation. For Rousseau man is dominated by a sentiment which he calls “amour propre” from which flows, firstly, a tendency to favour himself over others and secondly, latent ideas of inequality which allow destructive activities performed under the banner of “honour”. Government, in the view of Rousseau, ought to be based on the general will of the people which the rulers have a duty to take into consideration in their governing activities. Unfortunately the “model” or “pattern” for this form of rule is, Rousseau claims, to be found in Rome or Sparta. In such societies we encounter a military spirit and “code of honour” which historically have had problematic relations to the ideas of justice and freedom. Rousseau, we ought to recall is a product of the “ancien regime”: a regime that did not sense the growing frustration of its citizens, did not, that is, concern itself with the “general will”. Aristotle’s view of the Spartan society was far less favourable than that of his pupil, Plato. Spartans were rumoured to have hated Philosophy and we know they admired and respected “honour-loving” heroes like Achilles and Hector. The suggestion by the Athenians that the times they were a changing and that Socrates and his love of Philosophy was the new ideal for heroism would have been ridiculed in Sparta.
The crucifixion of Jesus,( compare this event with the death of Socrates) was, of course an act of civil authorities and there are arguments to be made in both of these cases that power was being exercised outside the good intentions of the law, i.e. irrationally. These were not the violent acts of founding a new order, but rather acts designed to protect civic and religious authorities from powerful criticism. Ricoeur refers to Marx and the claim that the State is an instrument of class violence in the name of the controlling forces is put in relation to Stalins rule, which represented the dictatorship of the proletariat. History has testified to the destructive forces that were released during this period of Soviet History. Stalin rejected the “order” of “truth” and the “order” of “the law” in the process of the militarisation of the minds of the Soviet people.
Ricoeur claims that liberalism was born in the eighteenth century:
“The philosophers of the eighteenth century devised the term liberalism which no doubt goes beyond the destiny of the bourgeoisies…In its profound intention, liberal politics comprised an element of universality, for it was adjusted to the universal problematic of the State, beyond the form of the bourgeois state.”(P.267)
There is no place for any form of the militarisation of minds in the enlightenment liberalism we encounter in the Political Philosophy of Kant. On the contrary, War is the enemy of civilisation in general and education in particular, in Kantian thought. For Kant, man both understands from a purely rational point of view that war is an evil but as if this was not sufficient he has also experienced first hand the horrors and devastations of wars. For Kant, therefore, any declaration of war must be an abuse of power which ignores the knowledge we all have in relation to an activity that always has unintended consequences and even when it achieves its military aims only does so at huge cost.
Ricoeur claims that Stalinism was overthrown by justice and truth and presumably he means that these ideas were valued by the opponents of Stalin: opponents which included intellectuals, writers and artists. The end result of the successful removal of Stalin was not, as we know, the creation of a liberal democracy manifesting its general will in the creation of political parties, free elections and a professionally run parliamentary system uncorrupted by special interests. Ricoeur wonders whether the liberal democratic system is fundamentally liberal or whether it is a residue of bourgeois politics, merely a variation on an old corrupt and violent theme.. Arendt in her work on Totalitarianism noted the ease with which political parties were dissolved by mass popular movements in the twentieth century, and the question remains whether once this has happened to a nation, whether political parties can ever re-emerge in a democratic form. Ricoeur points out that liberal political parties must be “liberal” in a wider sense than bourgeois economic liberalism. They must, that is, reflect ongoing free discussions in a society. Ricoeur also acknowledges the importance of the Kantian idea of freedom which, he argues is the central “problem” of politics.
Action lies at the heart of work and perhaps also the origin of Language. The first insights into the origins of language come down to us from Protagoras who claimed that the 4 roots of language are:
commanding
questioning
answering
wishing or requesting
These are activities that are intimately related to the following grammatical moods of language:
imperative
interrogative
indicative
conditional
subjunctive
Grammarians claim that the above moods or modes reflect a speakers view of the ontological character of the event/activity that is being referred to. Actions of various kinds are also a part of the account we are given by Julian Jaynes who investigated the origins of language in the light of his brain research and familiarity with Greek Culture, as well as with the more modern study of Physical and Social Anthropology. His interest extended to the origins of consciousness, and he claimed that primitive man was not conscious in the way that we are. He possessed a relatively complex language which, during times of stress, when questions arose that could not be answered, (or difficult to solve problems arose in work contexts), a voice from the right hemisphere of the brain emerged in response to the activity in the left and provided an answer or a solution. Jaynes called this the bicameral mind(a brain in which language was located bilaterally in both hemispheres). With the emergence of Consciousness ca 1200 BC, Language became centred in the left and we became left-dominant insofar as language was concerned. Bicameral man, then, was grammatically steered by interrogatives and imperatives when there could be no recourse to the other “categories”(in situations of stress, for example).
The interrogative and indicative moods in combination with each other, when developed to a sufficient degree of complexity, are important to our epistemological concerns. Plato and Aristotle were not, of course, bicameral men but possessed a highly complex critical form of self-consciousness. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, pointed out the importance of mans desire for knowledge, and he also referred to the important distinction between “what” questions(indicative of facts) and “why” questions(providing explanatory and justificatory answers). The life of contemplation which Aristotle recommended is largely composed of all of the above grammatical modes. Our ethical concerns are related to the imperatives connected to “The good”, the account of which, provides the necessary context of ethcal explanation/justification so important to us. The optative mode is also important in this context because it provides us with answers to “what” questions relating to what we ought to do, or what ought to occur. These grammatical “cases” serve also as demonstrations of the categorical difference that exists between is-statements expressive of the fact of the matter(the truth of the matter), and ought-statements, that rely on ones own activity/actions and the activity/actions of others in the process of transforming the hope that something occur into its actualisation in reality. It was perhaps partly such grammatical considerations that helped to convince Plato and Aristotle to philosophically distinguish the “True”(Metaphysics) from “The Good”(Nichomachean Ethics/Politics). This issue arose again during 20th century Analytical Philosophy when debates over the logical relations between is-and ought statements resulted in objections to attempting to derive ought-statements from is-statements as well as attempts to reduce ought statements to is-statements. Both Aristotle and Kant would align themselves with these objections to naturalistic fallacies as part of their argumentation against positivism and all forms of naturalism and materialism.This categorical distinction, it ought to be pointed out, whilst expressive of the “many meanings of being” thesis, is not pluralistic in the anti-rational sense embraced by Ricoeur. Rational principles such as the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason prevail over all regions of discourse and are essential elements of our understanding and reason. Ought-arguments resulting in specific ought-conclusions follow the same logical principles of deduction as arguments cast in indicative modes.
Against the background of these considerations, simple technical work clearly situates itself both in the grammatical spheres of the imperative and optative/subjunctive cases. The more complex this work is, the more knowledge will be required to perform it, and this may in turn require, as part of the learning process, theoretical study of facts and the related explanations/justifications. The simpler the form of work, the more conceivable it is that the learning process can occur by imitating and doing alone.
Ricoeur appeals to the theory of Janet’s which claims that the first words of man, the finite being, can be characterised as a kind of “imperative cry” which detaches itself from action and assists in the initiation phase of activity. This cry, it is argued, emotionally connects the word to the work that awaits. Ricoeur characterises this linguistic expression as a “plan”(Page 200) once it has become part of what he terms “praxis”–indicating a Marxist view of both word and work:
“..the spoken word is, in a sense, and an authentic sense, an annex of the enterprises of transforming the human milieu by the human agent. This fundamental possibility justifies a Marxist interpretation of culture in which work is seen as the power which reorganises the full scope of the human.”(P.200)
The anti-rationalist tendency of modernism does not of course permit recourse to the rationalist works of Plato, Aristotle, or Kant, and this in turn reduces the alternatives available, but choosing to rest ones case on an unholy alliance of Marxism with Christian Theology, as Ricoeur does, is surely problematic. Both Marxism and Christianity mutually shun each other for good reason. The rationalistic response to this unholy alliance would be to see in it just one more attempt to resurrect materialistic, dualistic perspectives that had been demolished twice in the history of Philosophy first by Aristotle and then by Kant. Marxists characterise religion as “opium for the masses” who cannot afford to buy real opium , and this was an interesting statement to make by the Philosopher who hoped that the mass-movements (which he was helping to create) would rise in revolution against their imagined repressors and take control of the means of production: all in the name of praxis which took the form of economic materialism. Jesus may well have stated that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven(De Civitate dei), but the Marxist materialistic societies would have seemed to Jesus to resemble Babylon(De Civitate Terrana), an earthly “work” or faithless creation by men possessing “lost souls”—men who would not fare well when the Last Day or Day of Judgement came. This dualistic view of the body and soul and the above tale of two cities would fall into the realm of mythology for both hylomorphic and critical Philosophers : a mythology which failed to recognise the role of rationality in our Cultures, a role responsible for our just laws and the freedom of our citizens.
Embedding Logos in such materialistic or dualistic contexts where language is either human praxis or the word of God, fails to understand its relation to Consciousness, thought, or truth functional normative rationality. For Kant, man is engaged in a normative project which is directed by the categorical imperative, which in turn has faith in principles that connect ones human “work” with a free flourishing life. Work, for Kant, is also driven by the hypothetical imperatives that focus on the means to ones ends, rather than on the ends-in-themselves. This civilisation-building work proceeds largely in accordance with “conditional” judgements such as “If you wish to live comfortably then you ought to find work”. In this context causality reigns, and the principles connecting the conditions with what is conditioned are causal. Culture-constituting categorical imperatives, on the other hand, focus on the unconditional grounds that possess rational connections to that which they make possible. We can see from this comparison that categorical unconditional judgments differ from hypothetical conditional judgements in a number of ways but perhaps the major distinguishing feature between the two forms of judgement relates to the faculty of origin for these judgements. Categorical judgments originate in the faculty of Reason and employ General Logic whereas hypothetical judgments originate in the faculty of the understanding which employs “special” logic. The latter insofar as it employs causal principles is calculating the most appropriate means to a given end. The former explains and justifies ends-in-themselves in terms of reasons and the deductive form of argumentation.
Language, according to Freud, was a means of bringing preconscious and unconscious “material” into the domain of consciousness, which Freud characterised as a vicissitude of Instinct. The way in which language is used will partly be determined by grammatical rules which will differ for each of the 5 cases referred to above(imperative, interrogative, indicative, conditional, subjunctive) which in their turn are related to the Protagorean activities of commanding, questioning, answering, wishing or requesting.
The use of language in religious activity will of course, differ, depending upon whether we are considering the Word of God using imperative and indicative language in the scriptures, or rather considering the parishioner praying(wishing- requesting) for guidance or salvation. This relation between God and the parishioner is reminiscent of the relation between an authority ruling unconditionally over its subjects, and those subjects which to some extent may be neither free nor autonomous, and may therefore be suffering the effects of an unjust undemocratic society (in the hope of a better form of existence upon the advent of Judgment Day). If the suffering continues with no end in sight it is just a matter of time before a Reformation or a more serious secular revolution dissolves the tenuous relation between God and the faithful. This, it needs to be pointed out, is not the relation either Aristotle or Kant possessed in relation to their religions. For both these philosophers, God was an idea, an arché or principle, explaining or justifying certain truths and norms.
The most interesting use of religious language Ricoeur points to in his work “The Symbolism of Evil”(Trans Buchanan, E., Boston, Beacon Press, 1963) is the confession made by a “guilty consciousness” of his sins. This is of interest to Ricoeur because it is an utterance of man about himself. The source of the utterance, Ricoeur claims, is the sympathetic imagination. The language involved in this activity is a mix of grammatical cases which express an emotional matrix of suffering, fear, anguish and the experienced unworthiness because the sacred bond between man and his God has been ruptured. This kind of “alienation” is a far more complex matter than that which concerns Marx, involving as it does, something more than economic “exploitation” in the external world but rather the peril of the soul in a sacred sublime form of life.
In the confession there is, of course, a possible wish or request to be put on the right path(the path of righteousness) and there are also indicative statements relating to the power of God in such matters. The secular view of prayer struggles to understand the meaning or point of the activity, and this might even place this view at odds with those philosophers who relate to their God as some form of principle. The relation of Aristotle and Kant to their Gods would appear to reject “worshipping” the sacred in any “confessional” form but there is nevertheless respect for what Wittgenstein would have called the religious “form of life”, which he sympathised with. Prayer can of course also be either an expression of suffering (similar to a cry of frustration) or even a reflective voice of consciousness that has the consequence of urging itself toward “The Good” in a life filled with problems. This latter form of prayer might take a philosophically reflective form and calmly, in an interrogative mood, pose questions about the meaning of life and expecting answers from the preconscious system of the mind–thus combining the indicative and interrogative modes of language at the expense of the wishing/requesting mode.
Ricoeur maintains that it is the imperative function of language that is the closest to the activity of work. According to him this function remains aloof from the process of living. He points out that imperatives initiate a “specific action” which is not aiming at the “production” of anything, but aims rather at influencing an outcome via the actualisation of an intention(thus making the thought involved with the intention true). Ricoeur refuses this last Kantian appeal to Truth and Knowledge and prefers to remain in his reflection at the level of “influence” in relation to the “meaning” of language. If we are to believe Frege, language is constituted of both sense and reference: applying this to the imperative form of language suggests that when we understand an imperative, part of that understanding transcends the sense of the words, and takes us to their reference. It might be that it is this dimension of reference and truth that differentiates an imperative from the wish/request mode, i.e. the wish/request form may involve removing the “natural” human authority that Aristotle pointed out in his ethics is related to the idea of “The Good”. Insofar as these words in imperative form make reference to Principles(e.g. Promises ought to be kept) they then become self-explanatory or self-justifying. Imperatives of this form thus range over what-questions and why-questions. There is, as Ricoeur emphasised, no technological or merely causal relation relation between words of this form and the result produced because, as Anscombe pointed out, an intention is specifically related to the why-question and a reason for acting rather than any cause. This form cannot be justified by the principles of the productive sciences, but rather require an appeal to the principles of the theoretical and the practical sciences. The spectre of Wittgenstein’s essence-specifying grammatical definitions arises in the context of this discussion, and we should recall his final justification at the end of the chain of what and why-questions, e.g. “This is what we do!”. Wittgensteins investigations into the uses of language and grammatical justifications are not empirical investigations but resemble more the kind of investigation we find in the Critical philosophy of Kant which Wittgenstein specifically acknowledged as an appropriate “method”. There is also an interesting similarity of the Wittgensteinian investigations, (into the concept of “forms of life”), to Aristotelian hylomorphic investigations into psuche.
Ricoeur mysteriously claims that it is the optative mode of language which is related to what he terms the fundamental act of evaluation. This view contrasts of course with the Kantian claim that it is the imperative “category” that constitutes evaluation in the ethical sphere of value. Our free lives pose many ethical problems for us, which Kant claims are best resolved by duty-steered imperatives that may constrain those “wishes which tempt us to favour our desires over the needs of others. Ricoeur links self-questioning and the interrogative mode with the optative mode, and there is a suggestion of the influence of Heidegger and his definition of Dasein( a being for whom its very being is in question). Ricoeur claims that the question at issue is answered partly in the dialectic of the word of man in the realm of meaning, and partly in the work of man in the larger realm of Culture. In his earlier works, Ricoeur defined human existence in terms of the effort to exist and the desire to be. In this essay, “Work and the Word” Ricoeur returns to his Marxist analysis of work in terms of “alienation” and “objectification” thus stripping work of its cultural significance. Ricoeur claims that it is the task of Philosophy in Culture to offset “objectification” by a reflective questioning process.(Page 213). This needs to be done if the discussion is to be lifted above the base-level of the “economics” of work, which is largely a reductive exercise in which the use of money, for example is regarded as a “fetish”. Ricoeur praises utilitarianism and technical education, and also the more disinterested role of the University in Culture, and concludes his investigation with the banal claim that both word and work are needed for the purposes of civilisation. For Kant, as we have noted above, it is the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason(general and special logic) and the categories of the understanding which include the categorical imperative that constitute Culture which Kant regarded as higher form of communal life than “civilisation”. The latter is, in Kant’s view driven by hypothetical imperatives which strive for homeostasis and happiness(which for Kant was the principle of self-love in disguise). The hypothetical imperatives of civilisation are of course important for the meeting of our needs for safety and security but only categorical imperatives and the principles related to them can sufficiently answer the aporetic questions raised in relation to the being of our humanity or explain the inner awe and wonder we feel when we think about the moral law within us.
For Aristotle, the attachment to a dogma such as Marxism, would constitute a very limited realm of value that concerned itself only with the external world and ones basic desires. The values of the body and the soul, and their intimate relation, is bypassed in Marxist theory where men become mechanical parts in a materialistic system aiming at “production”, This, on a hylomorphic view, would constitute a very limited conception of “The Good” mentioned in the Nichomachean Ethics. Marxist theory, from the point of view of Hylomorphic political theory, appears to have omitted consideration of the most important synthesis of the thesis of oligarchic values and the antithesis of democratic values. Aristotle called this synthesis constitutional politics, and attributed it to the value-system of the middle class: a value system embracing the contexts of exploration and explanation/justification that we find in the cultural activities of the theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. Amongst such values we are likely to find the idea of freedom, the idea of justice, and the idea of the importance of knowledge which for both Aristotle and Kant could be defined in terms of justified true belief. These ideas constitute our Culture which certainly sees the word to be a part of the “work” of meaning and part of the “work” of investigating the many meanings of being.
The Renaissance, Ricoeur argues, was the moment in History when the pluri-vocal nature of truth revealed itself. He overlooked the work of Aristotle in this judgemen, in particular Aristotles claim that “Being has many meanings”.. The period of the Renaissance can of course be conceived of narrowly, or more widely, either as the era between the medieval period and the modern period that can be dated with the fall of Rome in 1527, or the work of Descartes over a century later(1637). Adrian Stokes, a psychoanalytically inspired art critic, wrote about Renaissance Art from the perspective of a genre he named “QuattroCento Art”: a genre he characterised in terms of forms that emanated from the building and walls of the Mother of the Arts, namely,Architecture, which could also “encase” sculptures and paintings. For Stokes, a key term for the effect of art was “emblematic”, a concept which captured the essence of a process that converted the subjective into something objective. In this process an expression resulted in an external material object produced with the intention of being responded to and in the spirit of a humanistic telos manifesting humanistic ideas.
Renaissance art therefore did strive for a unity of the human world via its intentions and technically produced objects, and it did this as part of a wider project of restoring the classical values of Ancient Greece that had been temporarily occluded by the engineering/military spirit of the Roman World. For Stokes there was a kinship between the mass-effect of stone, the “blossoming” of wall emblems, the sublimated depressive anxiety of the naked Michelangelo figures guarding the Medici tomb, and the look of alerted resignation on the face of the Michelangelo Delphic oracle in the Sistine chapel. This is the kinship of ideas but it is also expressive of the objective humanism that we can find in the hurly burly of the Cosmopolitan Shakespeare plays.
This “spirit” was repressed by Descartes’ essentially private meditations and discourses in front of a Northern fireside in a study far from the madding Shakespearean crowds: a study that was home to the mathematicians paper and pencil. In the work of Descartes, technical solutions to technical problems such as designing weapons for the battlefield displaced the concerns of epistemé, diké , arché (and the concerns of the great-souled men of Ancient Greece). In the Cartesian coordinate system life-forms moved mechanically in space and time, but consciousness lived a life of its own in the Cartesian account of the Cogito: a life embedded in the mechanical brain. This “modern” variation on Platonic dualism has deliberately distanced itself from Aristotelian hylomorphism and its thesis of the continuity of human life-forms with animal forms of life: a continuity regulated by the principles of psuche. Descartes led the Renaissance revival of the classical spirit right back into the dark labyrinth of the dark ages, resting his final case on theology and the argument that only God can guarantee that our life is not a dream we will soon awaken from.
It is not clear what Ricoeur means with the phase “pluralistic nature of truth” but the resemblances of his phenomenological position to that of Descartes are clear. This together with a clearly articulated anti-rationalist sentiment, which rejects the first principles of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy, leads one to the judgement that we are dealing with a “modern” theory of man that also rests its final arguments on theological grounds. According to Ricoeur, all attempts to search for the unity of Being is a temptation and an evil that ought to be avoided. This may be a reference to a view that medieval clerics and scholars have held, namely “God is one”, and this judgement often occurs in relation to a discussion of the holy trinity of God the father, God the son, and God the holy ghost. If this is the case then the judgement that this kind of attempt to unify different aspects of the divine must be something to avoid, but it is not clear why.
The Kantian view of God is not essentially an epistemological or ontological view similar to the Cartesian view in which the ideaof God theoretically guarantees that our experiences are real and not the figment of a dream. Rather, it is the practical/politically/ethically-rational idea of freedom that Kant focuses upon in order to support the hypothetical judgement “If you lead a worthy life then the life one leads will be a flourishing life.” Ricoeur would counter such reflections with the claim that rationality is only present in mans life in the form of a “wish for reason”, and he would further claim that this is both a fact and a flawed response to the fundamental ambiguity of existence. This wish for reason is furthermore characterised as a lie, but Ricoeur never engages directly with the arguments of Kant and prefers to keep a respectable distance to Critical Philosophy insofar as the concepts of freedom and responsibility(and their connection) are concerned.
Kant’s view of Truth in his First Critique is essentially a formal account and insists upon acknowledging the impossibility of a general definition of Truth. He agrees that there must be a formal agreement of knowledge and its object but points out that objects concretely differ from one another and that consequently any definition will lack this important “material” component. This position also testifies to the hylomorphic character of Kantian reflections which demands a relation between form and matter that will be in accordance with the principles of explanation/justification (which one will find are implied by the definition of knowledge that both Kant and Aristotle accept, namely “Justified True Belief”). The two principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason together constitute the “arché of Kantian metaphysical reasoning. Insofar as we do concern ourselves with the content of our knowledge claims(its objects) the categories of the understanding would indeed appear to be pluralistic and partly constitutive of the ontological structure of the different objects we confront in reality. Here too, we find Kant using hylomorphic reasoning and designating the content of knowledge as its matter, which on hylomorphic theory, is organised by “forms” (justifying principles, laws). Truth therefore also has a “form” which relates to the principle of noncontradiction that Kant claims must be regarded as a negative criterion for Truth. The matter of knowledge, on the other hand, is firmly situated in a context of discovery/exploration whose purpose it is to acquire information. Logic, on this account, teaches us nothing about the content of knowledge. Rather it is the faculty of Sensibility, combining apriori and empirical intuitions, that constitutes the “material” awaiting possible conceptualisation in terms of the categories of the understanding. Kant, we know, insisted that intuitions without concepts are blind and concepts without intuitions are “empty”, thereby drawing attention to the importance of both these elements of experience. General logic cannot be used at this level without the risk of falling into what Kant called “dialectical illusion”(Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Trans Kemp Smith, N.,London, Macmillan, 1963, P.99). The categories of the understanding on the other hand, do concern themselves with what Kant termed “special logic” and the special principle of sufficient reason which is connected to the ontological structure of the categories. Kant also refers to the logic associated with this aspect of knowledge as “transcendental logic” which is specifically concerned with confining judgement within the scope and limits of experience. Here too, Kant warns us against generalising or using the categories outside these limits for fear of falling into illusion.
Whether or not one can regard the above Kantian view as a philosophical development of the Renaissance revelation of the pluralistic nature of truth remains an open question. One possible answer to this question consists in acknowledging the hylomorphic or Aristotelian influence in Kant’s work which carries with it a commitment both to the definition of knowledge as “justified true belief”(Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with the statement that we all desire to know) as well as a metaphysical commitment to the many meanings of being. In the light of this answer, it could be argued that if Kant is a hylomorphic philosopher this would in its turn constitute an elaboration upon the Renaissance aim of restoring the classical humanistic spirit of Ancient Greece. The special innovation of Kant was to consolidate the “home” for philosophy as a subject , namely in a university system that was at the same time operating on a principle of specialisation(probably on the model of the guild system). One important point to make in this context is that in the works of Aristotle and Kant, Reason is not merely a “wish” but rather a faculty which together with the faculty of understanding performs a regulative function with respect to the desire in general and wishing in particular. Desire and wish in the case of both Aristotle and Kant interact with the imagination. Another important question to ask is related to the extent to which one philosophically conceives of the abiding influence of Ancient Greece in our Culture(with special reference to Plato and Aristotle). Aristotle we know had great respect for his teacher and this respect was probably to a large extent mutual. Historically, however, probably because of the role of the Church, and its preference for the body-soul dualism of Plato, it was Plato that dominated the religious discussion up to that point when Philosophy became established in universities during the period extending from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment philosophy of Kant. It should also be recalled that both Aristotle and Kant provided powerful arguments against the dualism and materialism of their times. Both philosophers were rationalists that rejected “dialectic” in its various forms. Neo-Kantians would for example recommend against falling into the temptation of the dialectic approaches firstly, of Hegel that led later to modern “Cartesian”phenomenology, and secondly, to the political philosophy of Marx. The Aristotelian and Kantian forms of rationalism both distinguish carefully between, firstly the metaphysics of ethics which concerned itself with action and its relation to “The Good”, and secondly, the metaphysics of nature, which principally concerns itself with material change and the events bringing about such change. The being of the actor and his actions belonged namely in a different universe of discourse to the material being of changing substances which retain their ontological identity throughout change.
Ricoeur surprisingly claims in his essay entitled “Truth and falsehood”(Page 167) that the best known truth-activity is to be found in the domain of empirical science: a realm in which mathematics plays a decisive role in the objectivising of our perceptual experience. It was truth activity in this realm, Ricoeur argues, that brought about the dissolution of what he calls the “philosophico-theological synthesis”. The method of verification and its relation to the facts is what was regarded as significant for theory building in this realm of truth activity. The laboratory and its instruments, for example,(e.g. the Wilson cloud chamber) become in this activity, “cultural objects”, with a particular cultural “meaning”. Ricoeur invokes the idea of unity again in this discussion and claims that different sciences will specialise in different regions of being, and any attempt to find unity in a universal conception of “Science” is problematic. Nevertheless, it is science, and not reason and the understanding, which for Ricoeur, is the “touchstone of truth”(P.170). This “modern” conception of science, argues Ricoeur, calls into question the Greek conception of epistemé, and the discovery of atomic energy is mentioned in the context of this discussion. Science recategorises man in this “conquest” and man becomes just another “substance” in a category of “things”. This view returns us to those eras in our history when dualistic and materialistic presuppositions reemerge in the philosophical landscape: a view which will eventually lead to Hannah Arendt’s conception of humanity as being partly constituted by the “new men” for whom “everything is possible”. Scientific truth, for Ricoeur, has a “dialectical” character and is related to a “circle” of perceiving, knowing and acting(Page 172).
Somehow, in some obscure fashion, on this account, ethical choices begin to form in relation to the historical choices we have made over time as part of an endless questioning of the grounds of our ethical commitments and subsequent action. Part of this questioning occurs in aesthetic contexts when the artist uses “imagination” to both create something new, and to criticise life and perhaps the world as a whole. Ricoeur claims that if the artist is searching for unity, this unity is a lie and merely a wished-for entity that uses the authority of the artist “violently”. In true dialectical fashion, Ricoeur then also admits that the unity of Reason and Life, is a possibility as long as one does not attempt to tie them together too soon(Page 176): this is a variation of a criticism Ricoeur makes of the ontological phenomenology of Heidegger, a philosopher he admires.
Ricoeur provides us with his own solution to the problem of unity by reference to those theological truths that are revelatory of a Person. This person is characterised in the truths of the scriptures and it is these truths that preachers attempt to communicate in their sermons. Of course we are reminded that the authority of theology is also “violent” in its essence. The above concentration on the particular(the particular life of a particular person) opposes the program of Philosophy whose view of unity is in terms of universal understanding. Ricoeur does insist, however, that the word of God is a “good” authority. What Ricoeur calls the “pathos” of authority does not however integrate easily with what he calls the “pathos” of freedom (which insofar as the theologian is concerned , it is claimed, is tinged with an anti-authoritative arrogance). Insofar as Kant’s critical philosophy aims at an “integral humanism”, it falls into the realm of the illusory. Yet we find here no mention of Kant’s Political Philosophy which Kant presents as a discipline with ethical foundations (which as a matter of fact he regards as a more encompassing discipline than theoretical theology insofar as our life is concerned). Ethics, for Kant, is founded upon capacities for judgement and choice that are based on a liberal conception of freedom, which amongst other things, is a freedom from the influence of a violent subjugating authority, and a freedom which in Enlightenment spirit “dares to use reason”.
Ricoeur prefers to discuss Marxism, one of the sources of 20th century totalitarianism. He praises Marxism for being the philosophy of History par excellence, presumably because it embodied a rejection of the authority of a master class, the bourgeoisie, and also because it incorporated a defence of the subjugated class, the proletariat. Marx’s mapping of this historical relation between these two classes in terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis ignored the political philosophy of Kant, which in fact inherited the Aristotelian vision of the importance of a “middle class” that embraces the most important values of the oligarchs and democrats who were dividing the city with their disputes and conflicts during the times of Plato and Aristotle. Marxism we know arbitrarily sided with the proletariat class on predominantly economic grounds that did not take into consideration the idea of justice as conceived of by Aristotle or the idea of freedom as conceived of by Kant. Ricoeur then claims startlingly, on Page 185, that only Marxism can provide us with what he terms a “rational politics”.
Unity for Ricoeur clearly has a theological eschatological character that does not have the resources to adequately conceptualise the middle ground of Aristotelian politics: a middle ground which embodies the abiding values of oligarchy and democracy and rejects the injustices, inequalities and failures of these classes to respect the categorical law of respecting and treating everyone as ends-in-themselves. One would have expected any eschatological hope for an “integrated history” to, at the very least, incorporate these class-transcendent values. Instead we are invited to interpret this eschatological hope in terms of a Judgement Day or Last Day which presumably will bring History to a close with a day of truth in the person of Jesus Christ. This account describes De civitate dei as a very different city to De civitate terrana, perhaps because it is Babylon rather than Athens that serves as the model of the earthly city. St Augustine’s tale is indeed a tale of the two cities of Babylon and Jerusalem, but perhaps the more interesting tale would be that which examines the relations between Athens and Jerusalem: between the many meanings of Being and the monotheistic total authority of God who presumably gave us the freedom to build our cities rather than while away our time in a Garden of Eden.
In a short essay aiming at clarifying the issue of “unity” (Page 192) Ricoeur claims that our relation to unity is also related to wish fulfilment and that the Truth cannot both be one and plural at the same time. The Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction claims that “the same time” must be qualified by “and in the same respect”, which leaves the door open for the idea of the Truth having different aspects. Ricoeur further claims that there cannot be any “intuition” of this unity because our relation to the world is a relation to that which is the most concrete horizon of our existence and toward which we can have a multitude of different “attitudes”(Pages 192-3) It is the power of perception which explains the necessity for remaining at the concrete level of the experienced life-world which is the source of all my acts, attitudes, cultural expectations and commitments. This life-world is then transformed into the Word(Logos) which cannot grasp the elusiveness of a unity that is the horizon for everything experienced. The unity of the life world, according to Ricouer, is “too prior to be possessed and too lived to be known”(Page 194). In living all his attitudes, man is forced to “suffer” the plurality of all his objects”(Page 194). The preferred form of unity for Ricoeur, is what he calls “eschatological unity”. This unity for the Christian is, of course, tied up with his lived faith. In this unity the charity of Christ, which is the hidden meaning of all human experience, will reveal itself on the Last Judgement Day and the Truth will be revealed.
Ricoeur refers to the biblical message “love thy neighbour” in his discussion of the modern world’s relation to this message from the Gospels. He claims that this message, emphasising the importance of the neighbour as it does, has disappeared and become abstracted into social institutions of various kinds (factories, military camps, prisons, concentration camps, etc( Page 102). The idea of a neighbour as a consequence becomes marginalised, becoming a dream that we can awaken from once this world of ours falls into the state of ruin and destruction predicted by the Delphic Oracle. Ricoeur also uses the dramatic analogy of “committing suicide” in this discussion. It is interesting to note, however, that central constitutive cultural institutions such as schools, universities, and law-making governments, are regarded as repressive of positive social relations insofar as they trade in the traditional currency of Rationality rather than the crypto-currency of the power of the imagination. The image of society we are invited to form is that of a flawed creation heading for ruin and destruction.
Ricoeur calls “social man, “socius”, and connects him to the man of history, a man for whom the “love thy neighbour” message has been marginalised and who consequently does not cohabit well with his neighbour. This historical social being is a man of regret, dream, and myth, living in a state of chaos and needing the understanding of a friend, given the absence of Oracles and perhaps even God. Suffering is a natural consequence of chaos and the neighbour is witness to this suffering. The neighbour stands outside the work context and is therefore untouched by Marxism and its conception of the “specialised” work process. The question to ask is whether “charity” is an abstraction in such a context, seemingly belonging to the private space of dwelling.
For Ricoeur, Evil resides in the objectification of social institutions and their divisiveness. It is further maintained that all forms of “progressivism” fail to understand such evil. Institutions of justice, in particular, Ricoeur argues, manifest:
” a foreign and cancerous passion, the passion of an abstract administration”(P.106)
This kind of description of institutions of justice is to say the very least, contentious, and implies that there is a “heart of corruption” present in our organic commuities. Ricouer is here relying on the fact that periodic observations of such institutions may reveal such corruption, and that this then suffices for their universal condemnation. Institutions of Justice, however, are best defined by their telos or purpose which is to make just judgments and deliver just processes in a democratic environment of transparence and accountability. Individual instances of corruption ought not to to permit universal generalisations relating to the state of the whole institution, its history and future.
Power relations, whether they be technocratic, ecclesiastic, political or military, are oligarchic rather than democratic. Such relations do not, Ricoeur argues, manifest those virtuous intentions which strive for the good of the individual and the community. Kant would, of course, argue that this is their purpose or telos, and what they ought to do, but Ricoeur does not, as we have seen, accept this form of ethical reasoning in the mode of the prescriptive. The categorical imperative of treating people as ends in themselves via the law: “So act that you can will that the maxim of your action become a universal law” is a problematic abstraction for Ricoeur. This form of reasoning is, of course, one of the foundation stones of democracy and requires considerable philosophical argumentation to defend: argumentation which must invoke the practical rational ideas of freedom, justice, and equality in the justification of duties and human rights. Periodic observations of the activities of our institutions can, of course, be the ground for making negative judgements about these activities, especially if these observations concern the corruption of the purpose or telos of these institutions, but the only way to measure the moral quality of these activities is via the above practical rational ideas which are situated logically and conceptually in the prescriptive ought-system of judgements.
The relation of man to his institutions, on the Kantian view, is “organic”, and this contrasts with the accusation of Ricoeur that our social forms of existence are “artificial”. This is not to deny that negative judgements can periodically be true especially when the focus is reversed from treating people as ends-in-themselves(phronesis), to treating them as a means to some bureaucratic institutional end(techné).
Ricoeurs solution to the problem of the alienated subjugated citizen in a chaotic society, is the initiation of charitable activity in relation to ones neighbour which as a matter of fact ought to be our natural instinctive response to the difficult task of living in a difficult sometimes dangerous world. Ricoeur’s reduction of the abstract “ethical” aspect of social activity to the more concrete descriptive level indicated in the message “love thy neighbour!”, fails to acknowledge the need for abstract judgments such as “promises ought to be kept” as families grow organically into villages, which in their turn organically grow into cities. Periodic observations record the disappointing facts that promises are made at institutional levels and then not, for different reasons actualised.If the reason for the failure to keep ones promise is related to dishonesty and promises were made solely for the purpose of acquiring power then this is clearly a case of treating people as means to an end, and the only rational response to such a state of affairs is not to abandon the imperative that promises ought to be kept, or indeed the goal of treating people as ends in themselves. The goal in such circumstances , rather, ought to be to judge this corruption in the light of the categorical imperative. Charitable acts towards ones neighbour and the keeping of promises are both categorical imperatives which actualise the intention of treating people as ends in themselves. Both imperatives may be regarded as “objectifications” but regarding objectifications as evil merely on account of their abstraction requires further argumentation which Ricoeur does not provide in this work.
Ricoeur notes the failure of the Greek city-states to survive as independent political entities, and the subsequent political need for larger entities such as nation-states. This organic development itself resulted in a need for international regulation of the kind envisaged by Kant(a United Nations regulating human rights). In such transformations, institutions are created which in turn need regulation by their communities if lapses from the central purpose(injustices) is not to lead such communities down the path toward ruin and destruction. In such circumstances it may be true to say, as Ricoeur does, that charity may be nothing more than an “alibi for justice”(P.108). This sets up a dialectical opposition between “socius”(the historical man) and the neighbour which, of course, is a part of the argumentation that is supposed to establish the truth of the claim that existence is fundamentally ambiguous. In this realm of ambiguity it is the power of the imagination, and not reason, or categorical understanding, that reigns. In such a realm, discourse fixates upon images, and one effect of this can be seen in the essay entitled “The image of God and the Epic of Man”(Page 110). Ricoeur is, of course, aware of the limitations of conceptualising the image as an “imprint” and attempts to add an active dimension to this power by claiming that the image of God, for example, can be interpreted as the power of human creativity—thereby transferring the debate into the arena of the will and the power of thought. This creativity, Ricoeur argues, occurs in the midst of the chaos of evil which challenges our faith in the grace of God to “save” us. On the Christian account, Ricoeur points out, Jesus Christ is the rebirth of creation and the image of God is thereby given human form which enables a more concrete link to be made to the epical life of man.
“Our humanity is broken”, Ricoeur insists on page 113. This is the case because of the fundamental conflict between the private zones of the workings of individual consciousness when engaged in charitable acts towards ones neighbour, and the public zones of activity in economic, political and social life. Both zones are “mad”, Ricoeur claims, when related to the sane forms of moderation of our lives by meditation upon the image of God. In his further reflections upon this issue, Ricoeur turns to a consideration of the role of Language and invokes the biblical meaning of “logos”, which it is claimed is the name for God the creator. Creation is thus bound up somehow with language but it is not clear exactly how(Page 113). Instead ,Ricoeur moves on to attempt to navigate a philosophical course between what he calls the dichotomy of the personal and the anonymous. Surprisingly, he turns to Kants work on Anthropology for an account of the “spheres of influence” that affect the reality and history of man.These spheres of possession, power and value, are situated respectively in the economic, political and cultural arenas of the activities of man.
Ricoeur does not make this point, but we should recall in the context of this discussion, that Kant makes a clear distinction between that which assists in the processes of the civilising of man(possession, power) and that which constitutes his cultural being(e.g. that which makes him a worthy man and citizen of his society). Naturally there is a complex relation between these arenas of activity but, on the Kantian view, it is the activity in the Cultural arena that ought to regulate activity in the economic and political arenas. Ethical reasoning becomes the primary regulator of all significant human activity. This is similar to the Aristotelian account of ethical virtue in which areté and arché play important roles in all spheres of influence, e.g. doing the right thing in the right way at the the singular right time in accordance with appropriate prescriptive principles. Ricoeur argues that these “spheres of influence” help to avoid the dialectical confrontation that would otherwise occur between the private and public zones of activity referred to above. Ricoeur, given his opposition to Kantian abstract ethics, wishes instead to chart the “epic of the image of God” and ask how this focus can illuminate the significance of our three spheres of influence. Evil threatens the downfall of these three spheres especially via the uses of language for lying, gossiping, flattering, and tempting. These abuses together with the misunderstandings arising because of the scattering of various languages suffices for Ricoeur to maintain his sceptical stance toward the one singular message of Kant’s Anthropology, namely, that all is well in these spheres so long as ethical principles and laws regulate activity in them.
Ricoeur praises Marx for not being a moralist(Page 115) and also praises Marx’s concept of “alienation”. Capital, Ricoeur claims, in agreement with Marx, “entails a certain destruction of humanity”(Page 115), dehumanising man and turning him into a possession, a slave. In a world dominated by Capital, it is argued, speech and thought become fetishes.
Power, Ricoeur argues, is hierarchical in its essence and promotes inequality between men, and it is this phenomenon that History most concerns itself with. In the Bible, Ricoeur points out, we encounter the complaints of the prophets made against the mighty and powerful kings. Many of these kings were tyrants who had in various ways enslaved their people and turned them into cowards. This passion for power, Historians have noted, so often ends in madness and death. Ricoeur wishes to use theological anthropology to pick up the scattered pieces of man whether it be those that have been alienated or violently subjugated. Hegel is invoked via the idea of the struggle for recognition of the slave against his master, and situated in a culture that provides images of man via works, monuments and objects. For Hegel this process was fundamentally historical but for Ricoeur it is theological anthropology, and the striving after the grace of God that will help save man from himself and the evil that surrounds him. Such a vision assumes an authority that is created by God and it is admitted that:
“In spite of their violent nature, empires have been influential in advancing law, knowledge, culture, the well-being of man, and the arts. Mankind has not only survived, it has grown, it has survived and become more mature, more adult.”(P.121)
This of course, is roughly the vision of Kant but there is in Kant’s Anthropology less of an appeal to the image of God, and more of an appeal to mans nature as expressed in the formula “rational animal capable of discourse”. Kantian man believes in God as a guarantor of the summum bonum of a good-spirited flourishing life. Kantian man is also to a greater extent a political being, paying more attention to the practically rational idea of freedom than the theoretically rational idea of God. For Kant, Evil is wrought by the unsocial sociability of man, which so often results in antagonism toward his fellows and it is the failure to regulate this antagonism that generates evil. Regulatory mechanisms include discourse and the rational ideas of freedom, justice and equality that permeates the declared intentions of our institutions. On Page 125, Ricoeur partially acknowledges the gravitas of the Kantian account by acknowledging the importance of the construction of the City that will function in his account as a sign of the Kingdom of the imago dei. This acknowledgment apart, there is very little similarity in these two accounts given the central place of the power of the imagination in Ricoeurs anthropology. For Ricoeur, it is redemption and salvation that is the theological telos of the Kingdoms of the future. The role of sound judgement and sound reasoning in this vision is not clear. Neither is it clear how freedom and responsibility could possibly be justified in terms of a power of the imagination.
Ricoeur is clearly influenced by the linguistic structuralist position in his characterisation of subjectivity in terms of consciousness expressing the powers of perception and imagination in the arena of singularity and event -causation. He characterises such expression in terms of “meaning”. This issue is discussed in his essay “Objectivity and Subjectivity”, and Ricoeur admits that History involves knowledge of the traces of the past but simultaneously and curiously wishes to use the term “observation” in relation to the activity of the processing of historical documents. He also uses, in this context, the naturalistic term “working hypothesis”(P.23).Applied to the human and social sciences this involves the ordering of singular phenomena and the search for the “same” function in other similar events(P.24). “Types” of phenomena emerge in such a process, e.g. economic, political, cultural. The historical aspect of such a process involves the establishing of historical facts that Ricoeur characterises as the “integral past”(P.24).
Kant is mentioned in relation to this “regulative idea” of the “integral past”, but Kantian rationalism is on the whole rejected on the grounds of unnecessary abstraction and sometimes the kind of concretisation of the discourse appears to be in favour of the kind of discourse one encounters in modern physics. In many respects this kind of commitment to “the science of human society” provides the strategy for historical understanding of historical facts. We know that trial and error and “working hypotheses” are common to both structural analyses of texts and the inductive work of physicists engaged in their work of exploration/discovery. Ricoeur refers in this discussion to the understanding of “wholes” organically, via the use of the imagination but not, however, connected to understanding and reason as we encounter them in the sciences of space, matter, and life.
History is conceived of, then, as an integral history of the actions of magnitude of past men as well as the values of “humanity” we share with all men as defined by the parameters of “sympathy”(P.30) Ricoeur separates understanding from judgement, by associating the former with “feeling and imagination” which, for him, constitutes what he calls a “good subjectivity”: a sign of a shift from “the logical” and towards the “ethical”(P.32). He associates what he calls the “history of self-consciousness” with this so called “ethical” perspective, and Husserl is invoked as a pivotal influence. We are invited then to replace the question “What is X?” with the question “What is the meaning of X?” Justification of the meaning of a phenomenon thus replaces justification via the objective cause of, or reason for, or conditions of, a phenomenon. The kind of meaning Ricoeur is in search of is that which can be attached to individual persons and singular works(P.36). History thus becomes the development of meaning irradiating from what he calls “irradiating centres”(P.39). Reference is also made here to the sudden appearance of centres of consciousness as events and structural forces are invoked, e.g. economic, social, political, and cultural. The reflective activity of the historian is thus subtly transformed into a subjective factor and connected with the curious claim:
“The object of history is the human subject itself”(P.40)
Clearly Ricoeur is not referring to the human subject in general, or human powers such as rationality and discourse in general, but prefers rather to refer to individual centres of consciousness engaged in involvement with singular works expressing economic, social, political or cultural “meanings”. Truth on this account is the personal task of individuals situated in contexts of exploration/discovery of the many meanings of Being( hoping ontologically to arrive at a terminus of true knowledge). Considerable ambiguity is implied in such a “subjective” account but, Ricoeur argues, this is merely the expression of “the ambiguous state of mankind”(P.56).
In an essay entitled “Note on the History of Philosophy and the Sociology of Knowledge”, Ricoeur maintains that there is a significant difference between a “Genuine History of Philosophy” and a “Scientific Sociology of Knowledge”. Such a science, he argues, has the purpose of investigating the economic, social and cultural conditions of thought, in the spirit of theoretical hypothesis-formation. The History of social existence plays an important role in such a venture, and Marx is mentioned in the context of describing the working form of social existence that has essential connections to the economic realities constituting such an existence. In such theoretical excursions, both functional and meaningful relationships are described. The end result of such investigations is the ontological hope that empirical laws will emerge which govern the relation between dependent and independent variables. “Common types” such as the concept of “class” are appealed to, and this in turn appears to require an account of the relation between the singular social existence of an individual and the conceptualisation of an essence which goes beyond the category of “Quantity”. Ricoeur, in the context of this discussion, appeals to the idea of “logos” and the power of discourse, which, he claims, transcends the “realities” of “work”. Such an account:
“form the story of the thinker with respect to his own social motivation”(P.61)
The Hegelian concept of “irony” is referred to but the reflection appears to be unfinished, leaving the relation between logos and functional, meaningful relations we encounter in relation to social existence and the History of Philosophy, hanging in the air. It is unclear, that is, whether the spirit of Hegel is haunting these reflections or whether some more critical spirit is involved. In a later chapter entitled “The History of Philosophy and Historicity” Hegelian Philosophy is referred to as entailing a “systematic approach to the systematic method of the Historian”. Ricoeur explores the theme of understanding via Hegel’s account of Spinoza (who separated the philosophy of substance from “subjectivity”) and the paradoxical conclusion is drawn that it is this “separation” which explains the ethical aspect of Philosophy. Whilst this may be a correct interpretation of Spinoza’s Philosophy, it certainly overlooks the history of the term “substance” in Aristotle’s thought. Aristotle moved away from characterising “substance ” as a materialistic regulative idea toward a more abstract hylomorphic idea of substance as “form” or “principle”: this hylomorphic idea entailed no alienation of the “ethical” from the objectivity-constituting principles governing our understanding of social reality. The characterisation of this important realm of our existence in terms of “irony” is problematic in that it collapses and conflates a large number of distinctions recognised by both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of the understanding and Social Existence.
Ricoeur accuses the Historian of not penetrating to the core of singular or individual existence because of an obsession with what he calls “typology”, e.g. class. The problem of providing an account of historical understanding is thus made more difficult because of the presence of the polarisation of the field of discourse by a false pair of alternatives, namely, Hegelian “systematic” philosophy, and Spinoza’s account of singular individual essence. As a consequence of the operation of these two dialectical opposites, Reason becomes a vicissitude of self-conscious reflection, and for all intents and purposes is “psychologically reduced” to the logos or meaning of consciousness. Focussing upon meaning enables Ricoeur to finally reject Hegelian Absolutism and side with the idea of self-consciousness as presented in the Philosophy of Spinoza. This, it turns out, requires a form of “projection” of oneself into another( in the process of forming contact with another) which assimilates the idea of a singular existence into the idea of a solipsistic form of conscious existence similar to that found in Spinoza’s reflections. In the context of such an account we would do well to recall that “projection” for Freud was a vicissitude of consciousness involving the imagination of a paranoidal form of consciousness that defensively protects itself by the falsification of reality.
Ricoeur obviously takes seriously the concept of “class” in History and Philosophy, claiming that the Cartesian form of rationalism emerged as a consequence of some kind of need of the French bourgeoisie. This form of sociological explanation relies upon a deterministic view of social and political reality that would be, by implication, rejected by Kantian ideas of freedom and creativity: ideas that invoke a form of self-consciousness requiring an agency that can uniquely cause itself to do things independently. In this context, Ricoeur acknowledges that reflective philosophical questioning of the many meanings of Being expresses a philosophical intention that is opposed to the kind of deterministic social causation referred to above. Ricoeur also claims that reference to “typologies” merely raise otiose questions. This may well be true insofar as the concept of “class” is concerned, but this point cannot be generalised to all ideas of “types” some of which are well embedded in the conceptual networks of our understanding and judgement. In defence of the concept of “class”, however, it ought to be pointed out that this concept has important implications for the description of a small range of social phenomena. Focussing on singular forms of existence also determines the kind of linear causality that may be appealed to in any explanation of changes in the forms of such existence. This form of material/efficient causality is , according to Aristotle’s hylomorphic account, a very limited form of explanation.
Ricoeur introduces the idea of “false-consciousness” in his account of the way in which written works are embedded in their “situation”. in some mysterious fashion the “work” in transcending its “situation” thereby “dissimulates”. It is not clear why Ricoeur wishes to maintain such a position, but there is also reference to “irony” and also reference to Sartre’s aesthetic account of the relation of the artist to his work. The idea of “structural types” is also invoked in connection with Ricoeur’s claim that there are two aspects of historical understanding. He calls these “aspects” “models of the truth” and Pascal is called upon to testify to the “hypothesis” that the singular whole of one humanity is presupposed ante-predicatively by the historian and his understanding of his field of study. On the other hand, Ricoeur argues, man is plural and history must also be about the plurality of men and events. It is this dualism that is implied in different philosophical works and which motivates Ricouer’s ambiguous position which in turn results in the claim that Hegelian Phenomenology suppresses history in favour of the “forms of Spirit” that are nullified by Logic.(P.75)
“Lived History” is, then, on Ricoeur’s account, characterised in terms of “virtual structure” and “virtual event”. It is the interaction of this “thesis” and “antithesis” that then constitutes the synthesis of “The ambiguity of History”, a paradoxical conclusion given the fact that neither Truth in general, nor Historical knowledge in general can be “spiritually ambiguous”. On Ricoeurs account, both the “false consciousness” of Marx and the displaced consciousness of Hegel generate paradoxes which working Historians do not “live” or “experience”. In a chapter entitled “Christianity and the Meaning of History”, Ricoeur claims that a “false problem” confronts the philosopher, namely that concerning the opposition between secular materialistic views of “progress” and the Christian eschatological “mystery” of the world and life(with its implied “hope” for the “salvation of man”).
Ricoeur further argues that, in the realm of the works and tasks of man, and in the realm of knowledge, there are distinct possibilities of accumulation and progression. The history of techné and the history of moral reflection both accumulate and “progress” in their very different respective ways. The History of Socrates, for example, is the history of his decisions and acts as well as the events involving him. The historical account of the life of Socrates, however, is also a dramatic narrative that attributes an abstract value to the events of his life, his acts, and his decisions. Reversals of fortune in both directions are important in life narratives, e.g. the tragic reversal from good to bad fortune as a result of an act of magnitude that unleashes a chain of harmful events which end in impacting ones own life. Christian life-narratives highlight “reversals” of a more positive kind, e.g. the narrative of the reborn Christian who has been “saved” and who feels “safe” even in the face of harmful events threatening to impact ones life catastrophically.. Both of these alternatives differ significantly from the kind of incremental instrumental changes we encounter in the world of techné. Where does knowledge belong in this reflection: in the dramatic sphere of change or the less dramatic slower instrumental incremental sphere of techné? Technical knowledge obviously belongs in the latter sphere. Theoretical Knowledge is a “form” the Greeks designated by the term epistemé, and this involves the understanding of principles that, once understood in the appropriate way, enable one to see the world in a new light– a dramatic change of historical significance for man. This kind of epistemological “event” obviously also involves a transformation of the personality of man– a rebirth involving seeing the world in a different way. This phenomenon, when it occurs in the moral context of action, transforms man into a different almost “holy” being and this can be, as it was in Kant’s reflections, connected with the Christian eschatological hope for the man who is “saved”. Such a man, it is assumed, can transcend his narcissistic desires and “sublimate” them by developing a desire to be worthy of the good-spirited, flourishing life.
Ricoeur conflates theoretical and practical knowledge (epistemé, diké) with technical knowledge and the form of incremental change associated with techné, and therefore misses an important dimension of mans personality. He speaks in this context of value and admits that it is difficult to show in detail how incremental technical progress could alone fulfil the destiny of man(P.85). He points to Adam’s flawed decision to break the vital bond with divine power, and this does not fit comfortably with the Enlightenment interpretation that Adam might be exercising his freedom to use “knowledge” to determine his future destiny. In the beginning of the Biblical narrative, the “reversal” for Adam gives rise to a connected “reversal” for Cain and Abel, when the former kills the latter, his brother. Ricoeur notes the lack of interest for epistemé in the Bible which chooses instead to focus on a future Dei civitate dei, in which man will dwell in this “perfect city”, loving his neighbours and his enemies– a city in which human relations and humanity(needs of the soul) are far more important than the instruments and equipment we need to meet the needs of the external world and the body which partly constitute our “civilisation”. Civilisations rise and fall, Ricoeur points out, but he is convinced man will endure cyclically, remaining one throughout a series of crises. It is this factor, Ricoeur argues, which enables History to study multiple civilisations. Yet it needs to be pointed out that History is not concerning itself specifically with narrating the dramatic reversals of events over time. History’s concern, rather, is to create a seemly “historical distance” in relation to these events and view them objectively through the lens of knowledge and “principles”. This kind of historical abstraction is overlooked by Ricoeur who refuses to see that the concrete can have an abstract aspect. He prefers instead to relate to those narratives that come as close as possible to “living” the events being reported.
There is, in Historical texts, a preference for the political term “citizen” in contrast to the more social term “class”, probably because the former is more categorical and universal: the term “citizen”, that is, relates to laws that cover all classes whether they are oligarchic or democratic. This more formal term also suffices to discuss the Aristotelian ideal of the “middle class” who follow laws respectfully in the interests of the unity of the city. “Class” is, of course, a more concrete phenomenon, as was claimed by Marx and his followers.
History is an epistemological project of man and therefore an important part of his education–especially from the perspective of the Delphic Oracle who predicted that everything created by man was destined for ruin and destruction. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle responded to this divine prophecy with the creation of the discipline of Philosophy: a discipline that strives to understand life from a timeless perspective, through the lens of a wisdom that uses knowledge in order to avoid the ruin and destruction of humanity. Epistemé is complemented with areté, diké, arche, and phronesis in the historical research process which formulates aporetic questions and provides answers which go well beyond “working hypotheses”. Ricoeur regards the above reflection as otiose because, in his view, it does not acknowledge sufficiently the importance of the singular existence of men and their works.
Ricoeur analyses the Christian faith in terms of the hope for salvation in a context of “mystery”, rather than knowledge. It is “mystery” Ricouer argues, that allows the Christian to transcend the essential ambiguity of life, men and their works. The Christian “lives” the ambiguity of secular history by interpreting and diagnosing it in terms of his faith in the sacred history or the significance of the “mystery” that has revealed itself to him/her. In a sense, therefore, the Christian lives in both of St Augustines cities(Dei civitate dei and Dei civitate terrana)
Ambiguity, Ricoeur argues,(P.94) is the last word for the Existentialist, but probably only the second last word for the Christian. The final word for the Christian is salvation, and it is this that separates the cities of Jerusalem and Athens(for whom wisdom or philosophical knowledge is the last word). Kant united these two cities in his resurrection of the ancient Greek commitments to episteme, arché, diké, areté, and phronesis and also united a possible commitment to the unity of faith and knowledge in the context of freedom and rationality that politically demanded a full understanding of the Delphic prophesy that man “know himself”. This theme was restored with Kantian Critical Philosophy, but for him there was nothing mysterious about the hope for a better world in the future, and that hope could well include the moral messages of Christianity.
The “hope” of Marxists influenced by the dialectical method of Hegel focussed upon techné and the expectations and demands of the proletariat for a richer materialistic future. This would be viewed by Christians and Kantians alike as the logical consequence of the denial of the importance of the spiritual and rational dimensions of mans life. Such a denial was only made possible by the assertion that the phenomena of man, his works, and his life are systematically ambiguous, and attempts to explain and justify these phenomena illusory.
The Translator’s(Kelbley, C., A.,) Introduction to this work notes the role of Gabriel Marcel’s thought in relation to Ricouer’s reflections:
“Gabriel Marcel stated that we live in a world which seems founded on the refusal to reflect. On several occasions he insisted that the fate of Philosophy and civilisation are intimately related, implying that the philosopher does not have the privilege of abstaining from participation in the crises of his epoch. Surely, there is no need to underscore the role of existentialism and of phenomenology in the “persistent unyielding struggle against the spirit of abstraction”(Les Hommes contre l’humain(Paris, La Colombe, 1951)
Both of these movements, phenomenology and existentialism, are motivated by a desire to return to things themselves or existence itself. Such a desire appears to arise from the belief that abstract thought has no signifiant philosophical content and allows anything and everything to be thought in abstraction from what is actually happening in the world. The constraints of the the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason do not appear to suffice for the phenomenologists and existentialists to create the “special meaning” they seek in their reflections upon our “being-in-the-world”: whether it be the world we represent or the world we aim to change via our voluntary acts of will. Kant, in the name of the Enlightenment, felt the need to tear down the medieval metaphysical towers of reflection clouding the philosophical landscape and further urged that we, in our philosophical reasoning return to the Aristotelian notion of the metaphysics of “first principles”.
Hegel, in the course of “turning Kantian Philosophy on its head” rejected the above principles approach in favour of a dialectical method that regarded any principle as just another “thesis” waiting to be countered by an anthesis and thereby become part of a synthesis which as part of an ever growing circle would become a new and equally provisional thesis waiting for rejection, and the beginning of another dialectical process. The effect of this Hegelian discussion was to refocus philosophical reflection on “Meanings” and “Interpretations of meanings” as well as the idea of “Spirit”. This latter idea referred to a succession of spiritual ideas which have the effect of expanding the “field of self-consciousness”. Spirit is divided by Hegel into the realms of Objective Spirit, which covers the domains of economic, social, moral, political and historical aspects of being, and Absolute Spirit, which covered the domains of art, philosophy, and religion. This account separates the arenas of the moral from the philosophical and this requires special explanation as does separating the political concern for justice from the “absolute” concern of Philosophy.
We argued in an earlier work : “James, M.R.,D., A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and action”( Lambert Academic Press, Mauritius, 2019-2022) that History is intimately related to the principles of truth and knowledge in a way that will not be overturned by a dialectical spirit of teleological meanings forging into the future. This relation to principles acknowledges the past above the future and also involves a moral metaphysical import that will be related to the journey of the ages toward a Kantian cosmopolitan “kingdom of ends” in which both freedom and rationality will play important founding roles. These ideas will, for Kant, be important founding ideas of the political/religious telos of our “Being-in-the-world”: a telos Kant equates with a “hidden plan” of progress. Both Art and Religion, in Hegel’s view merely symbolise the “Absolute”, whereas Philosophy is the final spiritual outcome of what Ricoeur calls the “work of civilisation”. It is of course difficult to fathom how philosophical reflection could be unrelated to the political and moral dimensions of our existence, in the sense of presenting us with the “first principles” of justice and freedom, and also in the sense of how these “principles ” could be unrelated to the “principles” of History, truth, and knowledge. The Aristotelian/Kantian methodology of approaching phenomena from the perspective of what explains/justifies them is rejected by both Hegel and Ricoeur in the name of “unmotivated rationalism”.
The Aristotelian/Kantian conception of the law/principle is an organic conception that applies not just to the phenomena associated with psuche, but also to phenomena such as the transformation of villages into cities. For Hegel this kind of teleological transformation is an “abstract” process that will only reveal its true nature at the end of this process of “actualisation”. In such circumstances when the “end” cannot be used to explain “why” one did what one did, the focus shifts to the means to the end, which literally, on Hegel’s account of the march of spirit, could lead anywhere and everywhere. For Hegel, the only “principles” that can be abstracted from such a theoretical account of agency and action are those that Arendt focussed upon as the means or concern of the “new men” of the modern age, namely “everything was possible”(for a few) and “nothing was possible”(for the masses). It was these “maxims” that enabled those in power to mobilise the masses in favour of the “Obsessions” of those in power with “violent” solutions to problems requiring more abstract and rational/contemplative solutions. The “alienation” of the masses allowed the philosophy of the “will to power” to emerge as the motivating factor for “popular” governments. Knowledge and rationality as characterised by ancient Greek and Kantian thinkers were marginalised in favour of “phenomenological description”. In particular, the Kantian metaphysics of morals and its associated political character was reduced to dualistic or materialistic accounts of phenomena requiring action-related explanation or justification rather than event-related explanation or justification. Hegel speaks in terms of world-historical individuals and world-historical events embodying world-spirit, rather than in terms of the action related ends-in-themselves we find in the Kantian idea of the kingdom of ends.
The major theoretical tools of Aristotle and Kant are of course the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and these contrast starkly with the major theoretical tool of Hegelian dialectical logic which is Negation. For Aristotle, for example, it is not clear how the “organic” transformations from family-life to village-life to polis-life can be meaningfully conceptualised as movements of “negation”. Certainly a city is not a village and a village is not a family but this truth is limited in its meaning because a village is a collection of families and a city is a collection of villages and the relation of the family to the village and the village to the city is both an “organic” and a “practical” relation: a collection of families is a necessary condition of forming a village and a collection of villages is a necessary condition for the forming of a city. The fully formed entities of the village and the city are constituted of both necessary and sufficient conditions that are presented as part of the principle of sufficient reason. On page 156 of the work “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action”, Vol 2, the following claim is made:
“There is no doubt, for example, that, for Aristotle, Normative life is naturally and rationally tied to the successive actualisation of powers and capacities of the “rational animal capable of discourse” and also along this continuum of actualisation there will be biological, social, and political manifestations of animality, discourse and rationality.”
The powers involved are potentialities of “psuche”(defined in terms of the “rational animal capable of discourse”) and have little in common with either the theoretical power of negating a thesis in order to expand ones field of self-consciousness or the “recognition” of ones self as a consequence of the synthesis involved in a dialectical process of negation.
This of course is a position that has little in common with the individual understanding we have of individual objects that is so important for the account that Ricoeur favours. Abstraction in the form of universal reasoning, Ricoeur argues, removes us from this sphere of the understanding of individual existence. The life of an individual is always singular and cannot be captured in the general formulae of rationality and this is why the primary category of investigation is “meaning” and why the context of exploration/discovery always takes precedence over the context of explanation/justification.
Ricoeur poses the question, “How can the events of History be meaningful if one is to maintain an understanding of their singularity and unrepeatability because of the unique position they occupy in the continuum of events that follow one another in a linear sequence in which successive events provide the “meaning” for the events that have occurred previously.” For Ricoeur, there can be no “objective history” without subjectivity, no universality without singularity. Singular existence can occur without being conceptualised but this power presupposes that several or many individual things possess something in common that can be represented on more than one occasion. This power of understanding conceptually, however, is one of the primary powers of thinking that prepares the sensible powers of perception and imagination for the act of representation in concepts that in turn categorise intuitions with a view to synthesising these elements into truth-conditional representations/judgments. Ricoeur criticises this Kantian picture of understanding by claiming that the task of truth is connected to nothing more than an ontological hope which cannot possibly “know”that the end one arrives at is truly explanatory or justificatory. What is further needed, Ricoeur argues, to explain the singularity involved in existential experience, is ” an active participation in the mystery of my body”. This position connects to that presented by Merleau-Ponty, in his work “The Phenomenology of Perception” where it is clear that the body is locked into a perspective or point of view that cannot be transcended in signifying acts. Man, on this view, is a “flawed creature”. Meaning is achieved by a so-called, “creative interpretation” of this “broken unity” of man. In true Hegelian fashion Ricoeur regards the meaning of History as ambiguous, resting on a “feeling” of a hope which cannot be founded upon what he describes as the “violent” synthesis of the truth..
The above reflections do not amount to a critique of civilisation, a theme that appears to have disappeared from a Phenomenological radar system that has been designed to detect “singularities”. The reduction of self-consciousness to a singularity possessing singular powers waiting for the “end” of action to “dawn” belies the Aristotelian-Kantian “abstract” accounts in which a transcendent self-in-general is endowed with abstract rights and responsibilities. We will not turn to mytological or religious narratives for an account of such a transcendental self but rather to the kind of tribunal that we find in contexts of explanation/justification. In such contexts we encounter complex accounts of phenomena relating to individual powers embedded in three media of change(space, time, matter) four causes of change, and four kinds of change, all of which relate to three principles of change which in their turn rely on the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The kind of narrative that informs us of the dialectic of the master and the slave, ending in a moment of “recognition” in a context of conflict, is certainly a phenomenological exercise articulating a life-space concretely. The response of the later Wittgenstein to such a “phenomenological reduction” was to insist that the philosophical challenge was to provide an account that concerns itself with what he called “the possibilities of phenomena” rather than an account that concerns itself with their actuality or existence as brute facts. We can of course in concrete narratives “interpret” the intentions of actions but in so doing we should be careful to note that we are not finding linear causal connections between two concrete events, but rather we are giving a conceptual account of the relation between an intention and an action.
Ricoeurs conception of the self of self-consciousness shares some of the Hegelian animus but it does begin at an existential level and reduces the complex repertoire of mans powers to the effort to exist and the desire to be as manifested in the works of man. Ricoeur regards society as flawed and this fact manifests itself in the exploitation of work(in the Marxist sense) by society. In the preface to the first edition of “History and Truth”, Ricouer characterises his position as follows:
“I believe in the efficacy of reflection because I believe that mans greatness lies in the dialectic of work and the spoken word. Saying and doing, signifying and making are intermingled to such an extent that it is impossible to set up a lasting and deep opposition between “theoria” and “praxis”. The word is my kingdom and I am not ashamed of it. To be more precise, I am ashamed of it to the extent that my speaking shares in the guilt of an unjust society which exploits work..I believe in the efficacy of instructive speech: in teaching the history of Philosophy….As a listener to the Christian message, I believe that words may change the heart.”(P.5)
Ricoeur, too, like Hegel, raises the question of the objectivity of History and warns us of the danger of “global interpretation” of History. He also resembles Spinoza in his focus on the understanding of individual singular objects. There is an unmistakeable antipathy toward Reason and what Ricoeur calls its “presumed and pretended unity”(P.10) The conflation between theoria and praxis we encounter in the above quote fails to recognise the ontological distinction (recognised by both Aristotle and Kant) between The Good (in the arena of action) and The True (in the arena of events and their linear causation). The Phenomenological Reduction thereby brackets the world (that we categorically understand and reason about) and limits discourse to being about “things themselves” rather than the doing involved in the action of “making things true” and “making things better.”
One of the key questions posed in the final chapter of Ricoeur’s work is connected to the problem of the difficulty of the conceiving of the concept of forgiveness. In the previous chapter, we pointed to the fact that Arendt and the Aristotelian hylomorphic and Kantian Critical perspectives would have no problem accepting the psychoanalytically-oriented proposal of relating the concept of forgiveness to the concept of trauma, and the tendency of the compulsion to repeat connected with trauma. An international catastrophe such as the holocaust obviously left large numbers of dead in its wake, but it also left witnesses traumatised, and every public recollection of the event, is not always related to the “work of remembering” engaged in by Historians. Trauma, psychoanalytically conceived, is a compulsion to “act out” in response to the anxiety generated in the memory system by the traumatic event.
One public response to an international trauma is the reluctance to recall the event, but this act of forgetting is not always met with understanding by those that have been affected by the trauma, either directly or indirectly(being witnesses). In such circumstances, the desire not to recollect, may well be met with the war-cry–“Never Forget!”. War-cries, however, more often than not, are cries of pain for both relatives of victims and witnesses who view the act of forgetting with suspicion, believing that forgetting will result in a repetition of the causes of the trauma of the past. The concept of “forgiveness” is a complex concept, implying paradoxically, a “duty not to recollect”, and the motivation for this duty is exactly to avoid compulsively repeating the trauma in question. In such circumstances it is important to recognise the difference between the perpetration of a great crime, and the experiencing or witnessing of a great crime. The duty not to recollect cannot of course be directed at the Historian, who always has a duty to engage in the “work of remembering”, which includes the recording of the great crimes of History. The best concrete example of the response of a Historian to an international trauma involving a war-crime against humanity was the historical coverage of the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. The implication of this coverage was that we could never “forgive” Eichmann the individual, but nevertheless in her work of remembering and recording of the event of this trial, it remained essential that the record be correct. Her judgment of Eichmann was that he was someone who “could not think” about what he was dong, could not think reflectively about the rights and wrongs of his actions. This abstract “philosophical” characterisation of Eichmann, caused a storm of controversy amongst those who thought that Eichmann was a “monster”. These objectors probably did not consider the weight of this criticism by someone who believed that thinking was essential to being human. Arendt also argued for the death sentence for Eichmann thereby also alienating those who believed that Eichmann could be “forgiven” for his part in a war in which it was dangerous not to obey orders. The conclusion that can be drawn from Arendt’s involvement in this affair is partly that the singular action of a singular individual is not part of the extension of the concept of “forgiveness”, which actually is a maxim/principle of public/national action. The individual stands accused in the court, and all those witnesses who failed to intervene perhaps became traumatised by their failure to act: but the guilt that is felt in this latter case is more moral than legal and it is no less real for being so.
The psychoanalytical problem of being continually confronted by an aggressor from whom there is no escape, is the problem of being then forced to identify with the aggressor and the consequent refusal to recognise the evil of ones own actions. The slave of such an experience inevitably wishes to be the master of other slaves. “Forgiveness” in such circumstances may then merely consist in a refusal to allow this process of identification to take place, which in turn, might include the refusal to hate the aggressor and become traumatised in the process.
Some crimes, Ricoeur correctly suggests are so terrible that it is difficult to even conceive of an appropriate punishment and they may constitute :
” a de facto instance of the unforgivable”(Page 473)
The legal presumption of innocent until proven guilty for individuals guilty of such terrible crimes stretches the understanding to breaking point. The Bible of course challenges us to love our enemies, a piece of advice Freud thought was dangerous. Our enemies seem neither to demand this love nor understand it, but the point is that one should live without expecting any return on our investment. Such a capacity, Ricoeur argues, is an extraordinary gift.
The Great trials for the war criminals of the 20th century were, of course important for the victims and their relatives and provided for them, if not closure, at least a cathartic moment of resolution. Hannah Arendt in a later work entitled “The Human Condition”(Chicago, Chicago University Press,1958, 237) relates the concept of forgiveness to the concept of promising even if the latter seems to suggest power and political treaties rather than religious belief and rituals. For Kant, promising has an important ethical function that is conditional upon the Truth in that it brought with it the expectation that the state of affairs promised would be actualised.
Ricouer claims in the context of this discussion that Arendt foresaw that “there is no politics of forgiveness”(Page 488) but this judgment is questionable, especially in the light of her response to the Eichmann trial. Arendt’s reflections on the Eichmann case surely implied that the historical work of remembering be transformed into a rational judgment that was reliant on a rational understanding of ethics and the law. But this implication would not have been welcomed by Arendt, who was not by any stretch of the imagination a rationalist, explicitly rejecting Kantian rationalism in a work on Kant’s Political Philosophy.
In a discussion of Agency, Ricoeur draws a distinction between the “Who?” of agency and the “What?” of the action”. This distinction of course marginalises the “Why?” of the action, which is normally revealed in the reason for the action which, in terms of Kantian critical practical philosophy, is the major ontological identifier for the action. The agent is of course in some sense the “cause” of the action but that discussion limits us, insofar as the Kantian account is concerned, to the categories of the understanding of the action, and is consequently more related to the “What?” of action(a question that is posed theoretically rather than practically).
Kant’s critical Philosophy, as we know, demands that we turn to practical reasoning for an account of promising and its universal and necessary characteristics. Ricoeur criticises Arendt for situating forgiveness in the framework of acting and its consequences, rather than the theoretical relation between the agent and the action. On such a theoretical account, guilt becomes internalised in the inner world of the agent, and the theoretical possibility of forgiveness then requires the separation of the agent from the act. The concept of power that emerges from such a theoretical discussion then brings with it the further consequence that, if the agent can be disconnected from his action theoretically, then there is also the possibility of not holding him/her responsible for what was done. Yet we clearly saw Arendt, the Historian, holding Eichmann responsible for his actions, and refusing to accept Eichmanns defence, where he attempted to disconnect himself from his responsibility. For Arendt, in this work, the agent, Eichmann was connected to his action by the potentiality for thinking which he failed to exercise.
It almost feels that we are back in the Garden of Eden with our frustrated creator who rejects the exercise of our power of freedom to choose the power of knowledge to organise our futures. If we are flawed, our freedom is part of that flaw, and our creator must bear some responsibility for such a state of affairs, if we are to continue to use the language of the myth. The Kantian interpretation of this myth involves celebrating this act of freedom, and this choice of knowledge, whilst rejecting the accusation of being flawed. For Kant there is no shadow of radical evil darkening the light of our existence. Ricoeur, in fact, surprisingly cites Kant in this discussion only to reject his “vocabulary” because it is too “theoretical”(Page 493). Knowledge of the Good, for Kant, implied the unconditional absolute of a “good will”, and evil was thus conditional upon this unconditional. This “vocabulary” however, was “paradoxical” for Ricoeur, simply because the potentiality for rationality involved , for him, an unacceptable metaphysical commitment. Kant would not have accepted any theoretical attempt to detach this good will from the agent, simply because of the practical claim that the good will was an unconditional assumption, and the connection between this will and the action was conceptual/logical. Kant’s rationalism, moreover, embraced the ancient Greek idea of arché or principle as central to the context of explanation/justification that we find in our knowledge of the Good.
Ricoeur discusses the “Garden of Eden” myth using the vocabulary associated with “The Fall”-from innocence, which Kant by implication rejects in his remarks on “Religion within the bounds of mere Reason”, as well as in his remarks on Religion in his three Critiques. Ricoeur attempts to close the gap between the Fall and Judgement Day with the idea of the “grace” of God that is bestowed upon the faithful. This network of ideas makes it difficult to uphold the ideas of Humanism and Freedom espoused in Kantian Philosophy. Kant’s idea of faith lies beyond knowledge and is related to the categorical imperative which regulates the activity of the will in circumstances of responsibility and duty. The ought-system of concepts (regulating both instrumental and categorical forms of action) in the imperative mood (expressing in the latter form of action, a moral necessity), is not reducible to the preferred grammatical category of the optative mood (expressing a subjective wish) touted in Ricouer’s criticism of Kant(Page 491).
Faith is, of course, related for to the question “What can we hope for?” Kantian hope, however, is not the same as wishing but rather related to the territory of responsibility and duty expressed by the categorical imperative as part of the answer to the question “What ought we to do?” We hope to be happy but we do what will make us worthy of happiness. Whether we will, in fact , become happy (lead a good spirited flourishing life) is a contingent matter, which can only be hoped for. Hope and faith are related, and faith in this case is not faith in the Freudian God, the father, but rather faith in the divine architect of the universe whose work we can only glimpse through a glass darkly via the theoretical and practical principles which we know. This idea of happiness is, for Kant, the “summum bonom” of knowledge, duty, and faith. For Ricoeur, who, throughout this work has been engaged in the tasks of phenomenology and hermeneutics, memories are “faithfully” related to the past and the language we use to express them(in the optative mood):
“Faithfulness to the past, is not a given, but a wish. Like all wishes it can be disappointed, even betrayed.”(Page 494)
What is it that we wish for, then, on Ricoeur’s account? A happy memory is his answer. This of course raises the awkward question about the relation of a happy memory to the truth of History. Presumably a memory produced by the “work of remembering” in relation to the holocaust, is a happy memory, but there is an air of paradox hanging over this conceptualisation of the work of remembering related to the holocaust. This position, however, is qualified by the claim that it is:
“up to the recipients of the historical text to determine for themselves, and on the plane of public discussion, the balance between history and memory.”(Page 499)
So, the responsibility for telling the truth about the dead of the past is, to some extent, placed on the reader, and not on the writer of the text, who, after all was the agent who had access to the archives. Wishes are figments of the imagination, so it is not surprising that Ricoeur turns to a description of a painting by Klee(Angelus Novus) to illustrate a view of history he finds interesting:
“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he fixedly is contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of History.. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling up wreckage upon wreckage and hurling it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise: it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”(Benjamin, W., “theses in the Philosophy of History”. Illuminations, Trans. Zohn H., New York, schooner Books, 1969, 253-64)
Perusal of the actual painting, however, reveals that the above is a Rorscharchian interpretation, and requires much projection to arrive at the above description. Elisabeth Anscombe in her comments on Wittgensteins Tractatus, and its Picture Theory of meaning, remarked how a stick-man picture of a fencer does not have an unambiguous meaning. The diagram can both depict how one ought not to stand (in a defensive position) and how one ought to stand(in an attacking position). Pictures on such accounts are like Kantian intuitions and can be compounded into many different conceptual representations. The above is, of course, the reflective result of a certain form of anti-rationalism that wishes to emphasise an important role for the imagination in History.
Ricoeur then moves on to an attempted characterisation of the concept of a “happy forgetting”, the paradigm for which is “an amnesty”, which he claims is typical in those historical circumstances such as the founding of a society or community where violence is involved, e.g. the founding violence that occurred at the establishment of Athens. In such circumstances, Ricoeur argues, one cannot “be continually angry with oneself”(Page 501) and the only reasonable solution appears to be an amnesty which legitimates forgetting and “sublimates” the anger. This is what Ricoeur calls a “happy forgetting”. He leaves any further evaluation of this “solution” open and claims that both the happy memory and the happy forgetting are best categorised grammatically in the optative mood, which of course is an anti-rationalist consequence of an anti-rationalist perspective.
Is memory to be defined as the struggle against forgetfulness? If this is true then such a claim would take us into the Kantian moral territory defined by the judgement “It is a duty to remember”. The “dispersion” of events discussed in part 8 of this review raises the possibilities of restoration and preservation of these events, thus enabling them to “endure” over time. If such preservation did not occur both individuals and institutional actors would be condemned to an unending cycle of repetition, compelling them to repeat the mistakes of the past, placing such agents in a similar position to the obsessive-compulsive patients that frequent the premises of analysts because of their tendency to, time and again call down upon their heads misfortune after misfortune. Such individuals must be trained to “gather” the dispersed events of their lives in the spirit of areté.
William James in his account of Memory, asked how it is that the aged brain not only “forgets”, but does so systematically, beginning with certain kinds of concrete memory content. James wishes to lift the “cause” of the brain into the centre of the discussion. This tendency is still with us, and we continue to witness attempts to reduce memory to the facilitation of neuronal pathways that have previously been innervated in the course of experience. Much of this kind of discussion, however, removes us from our everyday understanding of memory and how it relates to experience.
Phenomenology, Ricoeur argues, regards the knowledge we have of what is happening in the brain, as irrelevant to the explanation of conscious experience, or the explanation of psychological states and processes in general. Pathological behaviour, can however, often be ascribed to brain dysfunction, and such forms of explanation may well reveal the material and efficient causation involved in the structures of psychological functions such as colour perception. In such pathological conditions, the gradual loss of colour-saturation in ones visual field, reveals that colours are not stored in neural pathways as individual entities. Ricoeur also points out in the context of this discussion that neuroscience as such makes little contribution to the tasks of describing or explaining the phenomena of life(psuche). From a hylomorphic perspective, the knowledge we have of neural networks whose major characteristic is that they are either firing or not, will not be associated with the knowledge we have of the intentionality of memory, namely that it is “about the past”.
We can, Ricoeur insists, be curious about the causal relation of these neural-traces to memory functioning, e.g. especially short-term memory and long-term memory, which appears to be located in different regions of the brain. This receives some support from Freudian early theorising about systems of neurones, which either were modified in the process of facilitation(psi-neurones), or remained unmodified as a result of activity(Phi neurones). This “activity”, for Freud, was regulated by the Energy Regulation Principle(ERP), whose task it was to regulate and conserve the energy necessary for what Freud called “special actions”. The phenomenology of Heidegger, however, regards the neural “trace” as a present-at-hand entity whose explanation does not come from the arenas of ready-to-hand entities or Dasein(Being-there).
Ricoeur cooperated with a neuroscientist, Jean-Pierre Changeaux and attempted to insert the above neural present-at-hand entity into a larger dialectic of presence-absence:
“A trace must therefore be conceived at once as a present effect and as the sign of its absent cause. Now, in the trace, there is no otherness, no absence. Everything is positivity and presence.”(What Makes Us Think?Trans DeVevouse, M., B., Princetown, Princetown University Press, 2000, 150)
The authors continue this reflection by suggesting that the neural trace is related to different forms or principles of organisation. Hylomorphism would, however, agree with the claim that a complete explanation of any phenomenon must include both its material and efficient cause ,and that, therefore, the physical conditions of memory and forgetting have a necessary place in a theoretical account.
Freud once remarked that if we have fully experienced something, we may never really “forget” this experience, i.e. it will always possess the potential for re-occurence in a contemporary conscious experience. On the material cause-level this means that the psi neurones obviously play a large role in forgetting. It appears, on this account, as if the phi neurone system play little or no role in either remembering or forgetting. Ricoeur’s account may place the trace in some kind of organisational structure but it does not appear to characterise this structure as related to the Principles of brain and mental functioning, namely the ERP, PPP, and RP. The epistemological principles involved in the dialectic of presence and absence cannot possibly explain the multi-layered phenomena of remembering and forgetting. The spectre of dualism haunts Ricoeur’s discussion, especially when he discusses the difference between the neural/cortical trace, and what he calls the “psychic” trace. Forgetting, it is admitted, can depend upon cortical damage, if that damage, for example, impacts organisational structure. The two kinds of traces are connected, it is claimed, to different heterogenous kinds of knowledge. This form of dualism was, of course, the target of both Aristotelian hylomorphism and Kantian critical philosophy, which somewhat surprisingly has succumbed to neo-materialist and neo-dualistic arguments that took no account of the arguments presented by either Aristotle or Kant.
Recognition is postulated as some kind of unifying general term linking presence and absence, and the imagination is called upon as the unifier of representations and also as a key element of recognition. Hegel’s account of the master-slave dialectic is not discussed, but obviously lies lurking in the background of this reflection. We recall that the dominating power of the master is tempered, during the course of the relation with the slave, and ends with the master recognising the value of the slave. Whether this results in the slaves freedom is not clear, however, on the account of many of those espousing the will-to-power solution to the problem of human relations. The moral/political question of the legitimacy of the masters power over the slave is also in doubt. The Ancient Aristotelian ideas of diké and areté might question the legitimacy of the power of the master over the slave, as would the Kantian idea of people being free and ends-in-themselves. Indeed Hegel’s master-slave dialectic is probably the precursor to Nietzsche’s reflections on will to power and both are essentially the result of phenomenological assmptions and investigations.
Ricoeur then appeals to Bergson’s distinction between habit-memory and recollection- memory and the claim is made that the former kind of memory is related to “acting out”: a voluntary non-conscious exercise of the motor system that is connected to recognition only when something does not go in accordance with the plan or the goal of the exercise. This distinction raises the issue of the distinction between conscious remembering, and the preconscious form of memory that is operating in any performance of instrumental habitual action. (There is a form of knowledge, namely techné, that is involved in this kind of activity). Ricoeur then discusses Bergson’s claim that the brain is not a “representing organ”, but rather an organ of action.(Page 431).This discussion is then connected to recognition, and it is suggested that “recognition” is connected to what he calls a “mixture” of the two types of memory suggested by Bergson.Bergson also proposes an imaginative illustration of an inverted cone in which the base of the cone represents the totality of memories in our memory system, and the point of the cone represents the point of action where the lived body interacts with the world. The memories in the system, in some sense, are enduring entities that stand ready as a potential to be realised in appropriate circumstances.
The dualism of the world as will and the world as representation continues, however, to dog Ricoeurs reflections and many question marks hang in the air over the claims relating to “mixed memories”. Ricoeur’s interesting solution to the problem of the relation of memory to forgetting, is to suggest that Remembering is only possible on the condition of forgetting and not vice versa. He points to a reflection by Heidegger on the topic of forgetting where it was claimed that forgetting is related to repetition. Freud is also invoked:
“We recall Freud’s remark…the patient repeats instead of remembering….forgetting is itself termed a work to the extent that it is the work of a compulsion to repeat, which presents the traumatic event from becoming conscious. Here the first lesson of psychoanalysis is that the trauma remains even though it is inaccessible, unavailable. In its place arise phenomena of substitution, symptoms which mask the return of the repressed under various guises…”(Page 445)
This Freudian reflection brings us back into the domain of Aristotelian Hylomorphic and Kantian Critical Philosophy and simultaneously jettisons the pointless reflective oscillations between dualistic and materialistic poles of discourse. The preconscious/unconscious memories in our memory system are now placed in a dynamic psychic context in which the primary expression of energy is via the motor system. According to this model of explanation the world of images is a secondary world, supervening when the motor system for various reasons remains unactivated or deactivated(as in dreaming).
The reason why the work of mourning at the loss of a loved object is so painful is related to the indestructibility of memory. The Reality Principle(RP), however , over time, in the work of mourning, does not destroy our memories, but rather converts traumatic presentations into representations of the past: in this process the images connected with the lost object will be defused of both wishful and anxious affections. The result of this defusion process, is a memory of an experience which becomes more accessible to consciousness, and this, in turn, means that these experiences can then be incorporated in a narrative which gives a realistic account of oneself and ones life. The past is no longer presented in compulsive repetitions which disguise the content of the experience, but is rather represented in a process of remembering which is authentically resolute.
The work of mourning, we have already noted can be a polis- phenomenon, a national response to a national traumatic experience, as was the case with the holocaust, which was just as traumatic for those Germans who were not in favour of either the Nazi party or their wars of choice they began, as it was for the victims of the Nazis. The trauma of the past causes repetitions again and again, until the work of mourning is done, and the less obsessive work of remembering can take its place and genuine memories formed. Applying Psychoanalytic thinking to History and its Actors/Agents which has Kantian aspects is a form of the Socratic methodology of seeking Justice in “the soul writ large”. Such an approach also manifests Aristotelian hylomorphic principles such as the Principle of the Golden Mean.
Ricoeur recalls the amnesty granted to the Thirty tyrants from Ancient Greece. The aim of the amnesty was reconciliation in the spirit of forgiveness, and to this end the past was not to be recalled: recollection was forbidden, presumably out of respect for all who were traumatised. This spirit of forgiveness is one of the key ideas of Christianity, and perhaps of Religion generally (e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism, etc). The poles of the work of remembering, and the work of forgiveness, appear at first sight to be a humanistic interpretation of the religiously inspired polarity of the works of sin and the work of forgiveness. The Myth of the Garden of Eden contains revelations of the religious view of man and his flawed existence: his hubris in the face of God or Being. The myth, however, would have been better formulated perhaps, if it did not emphasise the attraction of knowledge as the problematic component or sinful milestone on the journey toward Judgement day. It may well be true, as Heidegger suggests, that we have been forgetful of Being qua Being, but this could still be the case, and the Garden of Eden myth could be interpreted in the light of this interpretation, as instead celebrating the importance of knowledge in achieving the potential of the rational animal capable of discourse. Judgement day, on this view, would be the success or failure of man to create a kingdom of ends here on earth: a kingdom based on the knowledge of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Instead in the religious form of the above myth, man stands accused of refusing to obey the commands of God, the father, who then paradoxically, becomes angry and frustrated with the hubris of his creation . Had the myth not referred to the fruit of the tree of knowledge(epistemé), but rather to the fruit of the tree of “techné”, the moral of the myth may have been more palatable for followers of Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger.
There is an ethical dualism in the Myth between the forces of Good and Evil, but not an epistemic dualism: i.e. the mere act of representing the eating of the apple is not as such sanctioned. In the garden, it is the act that is the problem, and not the representation or the desire. The myth, then, is an ethical myth about what it is right or wrong to do. The Knowledge of the Good as presented in Plato and Aristotle integrates areté and epistemé in an unproblematic way, which allows easy application to the political and religious arenas of discourse. For Kant, it is clear that his three fundamental philosophical questions: “What can we know?” “What ought we to do?” and “What can we hope for?”, are also seamlessly integrated with the domains of political and religious reflection. In this unity it is not the relation of representation to action that is the cause for concern, but rather the broader question of the knowledge of the truth. It is, for example, the belief in false idols (illusory divinities?) related to active worship that will be the ruin of the hopes and desires of mankind.
Ricoeur suggests in an essay entitled “The Demythization of Accusation(Conflict of Interpretations, Trans Ihde, D., Evanston, Northern University Press, 1974), that as long as religion is characterised in terms of the accusation of man for being flawed, the idea of evil will remain problematic. Demystifying the idea of evil cannot be done, Ricoeur argues, “by means of the resources of Psychology”(P.348). For Kant, evil is an ethical issue demanding reflection on the will insofar as it is engaged in the project of bringing about the worthiness associated with the kingdom of ends. For Kant, myths and judgement days, and accusations belong in the sphere of the imagination of origins rather than reasoning about ends.
Ricoeur points out, for example, that insofar as judging consciousness is concerned there is a hidden power of resentment(anger, frustration) that is eventually revealed, and such an image tests to the limit, faith in an agency believed to be universally good. This raises the issue of forgiveness in catastrophic scenarios such as the holocaust . The trial of Eichmann, covered by Hannah Arendt, raised this issue globally and demanded a global “working through” or attempted sublimation of the trauma. The consequence of Arendt’s philosophical reflections on Evil, and Eichmanns deeds, was a furious controversy that raged over her claim that the “fault” of Eichmann amounted to an “inability to think”(which of course for her was a major criticism). For many of those who had been traumatised by this mans actions, the imagination had created a non-human monster, and Arendt’s abstract portrayal seemed not just an inaccurate understatement, but deeply offensive. There are, of course, crimes of magnitude which appear to the victims to be impossible to forgive, and the holocaust certainly fell into this category of historical event. Forgiveness, however, from psychoanalytical, hylomorphic, and critical perspectives is directed at the phenomenon of trauma and the compulsion to repeat unless the trauma is sublimated by knowledge of the truth which is not the same as an endless obsessive repetition. Perhaps Arendt’s cool criticism was an attempt to provide such a philosophical-historical account.
Eichmann was sentenced to death and Arendt agreed with this sentence, as would have Kant(and Jesus for that matter). For these Philosophers and prophets, it is simply the case that some crimes are so terrible that the perpetrators ought to have a stone placed around their necks and cast into the depths of the sea. The act. for example, of keeping Eichmann in prison would merely have activated repetitions of the trauma over and over again, it might be argued. This paradoxically is not an argument in favour of the death sentence for a particular category of crime because we all know how inadequate and ultimately irrational some legal processes can be. Knowing this and sentencing innocent humans to death is itself a great crime, and should be avoided. It is important to understand that we rational animals capable of discourse have not yet been able to create institutions that can do divine work.
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, Page 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 assistance 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 and Austria 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 Athenian 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, Page 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(Page 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(Page 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(Page .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(Page 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(Page 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, are 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.
A curious reference to Nietzsche, opens Ricoeur’s reflections on the relation between epistemology and ontology in History. The Philosophy of Nietzsche was characterised by Heidegger as the “Philosophy of life”, whose aim it was to combat the influence of abstract thought, especially insofar as areté(virtue) was concerned(Nietzsche, Heidegger, M, Trans. Krell D. F. San Francisco, Harper and Row, Vol 1 The Will to Power as Art, 1979, Page 5). For Nietzsche, the target of his remarks, is his view of historical culture: an aesthetic view of life that focuses specifically upon fluctuating processes, rather than the substantive epistemological and ontological aspects of memory.
Ricoeur(in sympathy with Nietzsche) wishes to highlight in his reflections, what he calls “the excess of history” that is “harmful to life”. Nietzsche uses his perspective to criticise modernity, and the role of the modern human being in modern life. He points to the harmful characteristics of History, when it is conceived of scientifically. The past, Nietzsche claims ought not to have power over the present. He means by this evocative statement that, for those who possess the will to build the future, it is only those who presently are in power that have the right to sit in judgement upon the past. This sounds initially like a variation of the argument of Thrasymachus against Socrates in book 1 of the Republic, in which an attempt was made to justify the actions of those in power by the argument–“What people in power do, by definition is right”. Socrates’ counterargument, was that without knowledge of what one is doing, one would never know whether what one was doing was in ones interest or not. Nietzsche, however, wishes to use Thrasymachus’s argument to give a licence to those in power to forget the past. This is the “pharmakon”(remedy, poison) that will prevent historical culture from suffocating life.
The question to raise here, is whether Plato and Socrates are representatives of the scientific historical culture which, according to Nietzsche, is “suffocating life”. Ricoeur sides to some extent with Nietzsche, against those who claim the important role of knowledge in organising life, on the grounds of an objection to what he sees to be an “absolutist” view of epistemology and rationalism. He claims that there is a dogmatic refusal to embrace any sceptical objection to the position described by scientific history. Ricoeur claims, that we need the assistance of critical hermeneutics to navigate a middle course between the rocks of dogmatism and shallows of scepticism. This middle course, however is a non-Aristotelian course founded on a rejection of rationalism.
It is not clear, however, how Ricour’s account (with its anti-rationalistic commitments), relates to Heidegger’s view, that the “will to power” is connected to “eternal recurrence”. This connection, for Heidegger, is the key to understanding Nietzsche’s Philosophy. Nietzsche claims that Western History is the history of nihilism, and presumably the claim rests on the “observation” that the laws and principles inherited from Ancient Greece and Christianity, have lost their hold on the lives of modern men. Nihilism is, Nietzsche continues, a naked force of History, which may lead to the destruction of man. This “observation” is then further supported with a form of dialectical reasoning in which it is claimed that “truth is error and error is truth:—a form of argumentation that Heidegger characterises as a “reversal”. In this “reversal” Nietzsche argues, a new order of values will emerge, based on the “will to power”.
Dialectical reason aims at identifying and using polarities, and one such “polarity” that Ricoeur “constructs”, is related to the difference between historical and judicial judgements. He invokes the idea of singularity in general, and the singularity of the great war crimes of the 20th century, in particular. Ricoeur locates this reflection in a concept of History which:
“includes, in addition to its renewed temporal meaning, a new anthropological meaning: history is the history of humanity, and in this worldwide sense, the world history of peoples: Humanity becomes both the total object and the unique subject of history, at the same time as history becomes a collective singular.”(Page 300)
Ricoeur goes on to link this chain of ideas to to the idea of “human plurality” suggested by Hannah Arendt, which, Ricoeur claims, raises the question of whether it is even possible for history to be written from a cosmopolitan point of view. The Aristotelian idea of “significant difference” suggests itself here. Surely we can conceptually reflect upon whether the idea of a cosmopolitan kingdom of ends requires that the “significant differences” between people can be reduced or neutralised?
We have, both in earlier parts of this review, and in other earlier publications( A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action, Vols 1-4, Lambert Academic Press), argued in favour of a rational Cosmopolitan perspective. Such a perspective would sceptically doubt Nietzsche’s “observation” and dialectical reasoning(truth is error, error truth), and claim that this position risks violating the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The Cosmopolitan perspective would, moreover, maintain that these principles hold in relation to all forms of discourse related to our lives, especially insofar as willed actions are concerned. Testimony, and the passing and implementation of laws must obey these laws/principles, and it is not clear how Ricoeur sees the relevance of Nietsche’s “observation” and reasoning in relation to these key legal activities.
Moreover, he sees that in spite of Nietzsche’s complaints about the shortcomings of “modernity”, he might well fall into the category of “new men” proposed by Arendt in her work “Origins of Totalitarianism”( New York, Harvest Book, 1968). For these “new men” Arendt argued, “everything is possible”, including presumably violating the principles/laws of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Arendt might, given her later work on “the Human Condition”, view Nietsche’s claim that nihilism is a naked force in history, favourably and, to some limited extent ,agree with this position. Her emphasis upon what she terms “vita activa” (to be distinguished from vita contemplativa) is an emphasis upon a “force” which may well resemble in certain respects the will to power that Nietzsche wishes to promote. Both of these ideas certainly emphasise “flux”and “becoming”, rather than the stability of laws and principles, in contexts of explanation/justification. Cosmopolitanism in the eyes of such anti-rationalists would be regarded as a utopian pipe-dream. Rationalism, of the forms envisaged by Aristotle and Kant, and anti-rationalism in its various forms, both refer to the will, but in the former case the reference is to a part of our psuche which is regulated both by our discourse and our reason whereas in the latter case reference is to a naked force in the stream of becoming. Nietzsche wishes to relate both will and being to power, and Heidegger to a limited extent in his work on Nietzsche agrees with this from a more ontological and metaphysical point of view. Typically, Nietzsche modifies his account of the will in his work Zarathustra, where he bluntly claims that there is no such thing as will, and that will is only a word(XII, 267).
Ricoeur, in his discussion of the ideas of progress and cosmopolitanism, refers to what he calls “an apriori superiority of the future”(Page 302), and in so doing opposes the two processes of historicisation and relativisation. The former is clearly connected to the Hegelian “idea”, rather than the Kantian “kingdom of ends”. This latter idea is also associated with the Christian eschatological “topos” of “salvation history”: a “topos” that relies on a schema of “Promise” and its “realisation”. Ricoeur then concedes that Nietzschean relativity risks self-destructing on the principle of “self-reference”, but he also insists that the “grand narratives” of, for example, Christianity have also lost credibility(Page 313). Alongside of these grand narratives, there are also sceptical doubts voiced over History itself and The Law.
Indeed a crucial test of the position Ricoeur is attempting to outline, is the intelligibility of a discussion he undertakes on the relation between the roles of the Historian and the Judge.(Page 314).
Ricoeur’s discussion begins with a contentious characterisation that the aim of the Historian is to produce truth, and this is to be contrasted with the role of the Judge whose concern is with Justice(as if these were mutually exclusive alternatives).There are many problems with the formulation of such a position, but the first is the presence of the most obvious uncomfortable fact, namely, that the legal process requires that testimony be true, and this fact is just as important for the judgement of the judge as it is for the judgement of the Historian. There is also the equally obvious fact that there is a logical relation of the law to the judgement running through the middle premises relating to the evidence in the trial. Such a logical relation requires the truth of the premises including the truth of the major premise that expresses the law in relation to the charge brought by the prosecution against the defendant. Ricoeur wishes to characterise this judgement-complex in terms of the grammatical category of the third person, and he wishes to use grammatical distinctions in his attempt to sharply distinguish between the Legal and the Historical contexts of explanation/justification. This impartial third person or third party “point of view”, is then also accused of being “perspectival”(Page 314). There is, Ricoeur argues, a “structural difference” between a court tribunal and the historiographical critique emanating from the “framework of the archives”(Page 316). Testimony is characterised as a “linguistic structure”, and the dubious example of witchcraft trials is used to cast doubt upon respect for the law and legal institutions, which every polis/nations demands of its citizens. Here Ricoeur also cites the less dubious examples of modern “treason” and “terrorism” trials, which are better used to illustrate what happens to a justice system when the political and legal systems are not independent of one another. This failure to ensure independence is hardly the fault of the judges in the legal system.
Ricoeur acknowledges the historical aspect of the trial in which events are reconstructed via testimony and documents, and adds that whereas judges are compelled to come to a judgement in every particular case, this is not the case for the Historian. Nevertheless one recalls the great war crimes trials of the 20th century, where there is a clear integration of the interests of Law and History. One interesting question to pose in relation to this reflection is whether a Historian can question a judgement in a great war crimes trial without invoking judicial forms of argumentation. One can also wonder whether a Legal judgment could raise a question about the historical authenticity of what happened in a particular place at a particular time. The two kinds of judgement appear to mesh in a way that is not explained by Ricoeur’s account. We should also point out that any verdict, recorded in any trial, would inevitably become a part of the archives a Historian must consult in his/her research. It would seem that there is no reason to doubt that there is a similar relation between the major premises of the Historian and his concluding judgements as there is between the Charge and the judgment in a legal trial. Both processes rely on the principles/laws of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Ricoeur asks whether historical argumentation could be used to assist in the formulation of the sentences of great war criminals. This problem cannot find a resolution in Ricoeur’s account because:
“the historical reality, because it is human, is ambiguous and inexhaustible.”(P.334)
This argumentation, however appears to rest upon an unwarranted conflation of the fictional narrative with the historical narrative. We know that the fictional narrative does not aim at appropriating the past in the name of the truth. Even if it did perform such a function, it is difficult to see how, on Ricouer’s account, that aim could find its target, given the underlying claims that life is in flux, and subject to dialectical forces attempting to make sense of “an incoherent world”(Page 335). The art of interpreting documents is similarly dogged with uncertainty because, it must allow the interventions of a free subjectivity which cannot be captured in the ambiguous narrative that attempts to report such events.
When the archive meets the living testimony of living witnesses, this, argues Ricoeur, brings the present into tension with the past. He discusses the problem in terms of the distinction between what he calls the self of research and the self of pathos. He attempts to circumvent the problems associated with the idea of subjectivity, by referring to what he calls a “good subjectivity, but it is not clear that this term is coherent unless one accepts the questionable bipolarity of the subjectivity-objectivity distinction, especially when inserted in a grammatical context of first-person/third-person. Understanding, on Ricoeur’s view, then, is a matter of interpretation of a complex of language acts(Page 337), and this characterisation ensures the relevance of the role of hermeneutics in any philosophical investigation of these matters. Such a strategy also marginalises the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason which, in turn, shifts the focus from the self of research, to a linguistic soul of the solipsistic kind that we encountered in the early work of Wittgenstein(who claimed that the limits of ones language is the limit of ones world).
Ricoeur’s grammatical investigations, however, are very different to those we find in the later philosophical investigations of Wittgenstein. Wittgensteins war cry “Dont ask for the meaning, ask for the use!” initially looked like a demand that one confine oneself to describing the use of any aporetic term, but the issue is in fact more complex involving appeals to “forms of life”, “instinct” and principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.
Ricoeur, in his discussion of the content of historical archives, talks in terms of chaos, citing Collingwood, “Everything in the world is potential evidence for any subject whatever”(Page 337), and also takes up the issue of “discordant” testimony that might be placed in the archives(Page 338), thereby raising the issue of trust, not just in the documents, but also in institutions that provide these documents. Historians, of course have been trained to distinguish between the documents provided by the mass media, and documents provided by legal and political institutions. No historian, for example, would place more trust in the newspaper reporting of a trial, than in the official records from the court, unless there were special reasons to doubt the motives/competence of the Judge/jury. In such circumstances we are dealing with the motivations of subjects rather than the objective characteristics of events.
Ricoeur invokes the polysemy of words and the poetic interpretations of texts, as part of his attempt to conflate historical text with other forms of text such as poetry. In this latter kind of text it is part of the skill of the poet to deliberately use the ambiguity of words to create intended effects. What we see occurring in such texts is clearly part of the purpose of the text.
In a discussion of naming, the death of Philip II as an event is discussed, and the suggestion is that this raises the issue of historical representation. Again “poetics” is invoked in what, on the face of it, seems to be incontestably a political matter. The de-legitimation of the institution of the monarchy is , on Riceour’s view, both a poetic and a political matter. The “interpretation” of the event is thus tied to the idea of a “surplus of meaning” of the words used to report events this point also relies on the conflation of different uses of language. Words, Ricoeur argues, are more than “tools of classification”(Page 342). Here he refers to what he calls “founding narratives” and an anti-mimetic substitute discourse that appeals to the masses.(Page 342.) Of course, prior to the criticism of poetic characterisations of the Gods that the ancient greeks complained about, there probably was a problem with the separation of the poetic from other forms of discourse, but this has changed over the course of 3000 years, and what we have now might not be language-games but certainly different uses of language which find articulate expression in the different regions of the sciences:–be they theoretical, practical, or productive.
The world of action and testimony are the conditions for the production of transcribed documents that find their way into our archives, as part of the “work of remembering”. Ricoeur delineates three phases of this process, culminating in the representative function of the Historical text. The created text is, then, subjected to peer-criticism and comment and must be defended on many levels, including that of the sources reaching back beyond archives, i.e. to the world of action and testimony. The historians representation is the result of the “work of remembering”, that is part of our human being-in-the-world or our human existence, which Ricoeur defines in terms of our effort to exist and desire to be. For Ricoeur, then, this representation is situated in a context of interpretation, but it is not clear whether this context is dialectical, i.e. subject to the conflict of interpretations. There is an attempt to link the term of “representation” to rhetoric and its intent to “persuade” rather than the more obvious strategy of connecting the historical narrative to the evidence of action and testimony.
The historical narrative is constituted by very different principles to those which constitute fictional narratives. The “work of remembering” is not the major task of fictional narratives. The latter form of narrative is rather constituted by a work of imagination, in a context of emotion and feelings of pleasure and pain. Ricoeur, in the context of this discussion refers to the “image of absence” as a common denominator linking the historical to the fictional narrative, at the same time acknowledging the aporetic problem of “entanglement”(Page 238), but he does not subscribe to the above “rational” appeal to “faculties” or “powers” of the mind. Hylomorphic accounts would regard such faculties and powers in terms of material/efficient conditions.
Ricoeur discusses the work of Braudel and the Annales School of History and makes the following claim:
“To be sure, no one ignores the fact that before becoming an object of historical knowledge, the event is the object of some narrative.”(Page 239)
There are strong arguments for this position, but it can disguise the importance of focussing upon action and testimony that are important components of the events being written about by Historians. Traditionally, action-oriented historical narratives can be associated with “individual-based”, “psychological” “descriptions”. In such descriptions the “work of remembering” focuses upon the singularity of the event, rather than its “conceptualisation” in universal terms. Such a move away from, in particular, the ethical universality of actions and testimony, move the context of discourse from a context of explanation/justification, toward a context of exploration/discovery, where observational knowledge plays a more important role in the discussion of “causation”. The move away from singularity, and towards conceptual universality, is a move that is in line with the political dimension of History: a dimension that is related more to rational ethical concerns, than the emotional rhetorical concerns connected with fictional narratives. Neither the Aristotelian hylomorphic matrix, nor the Kantian Critical matrix, are referenced in Ricoeur’s discussion. Inserting the fundamentals of action/testimony/event into the above ethically and metaphysically oriented matrices would not, for example necessitate regarding events as singular, unrepeateable and individual entities, but rather conceptualise such entities in practical imperative-related discourse where we attempt to answer the question, “Ought this event to have occurred(whether the event concerned be a peace treaty or a war). By no stretch of the imagination can this form of rational-conceptual history be characterised as “serial-history” (in which the narrative designates a series of “point-like” events). Events, of course, follow upon each other in time, but their relations are more complex, and cannot be captured in a simple matrix of space-time-causation. Narrating, that is, in relation to a field of episodic events, is a very different matter to narrating over a field of forms of life “living” in a complex environment like a “world”, in which action, testimony, understanding, judgement, and reason play decisive roles in determining what is happening. Historical narratives are also restricted to a “work of remembering” in contrast to the “working through”(catharsis) that occurs in a fictional “work of imagination”.
Ricoeur points out that we do encounter historical narratives that might seem to be conflicting with each other. The scope of this “field of possibilities” includes clearly false narratives “constructed” by agents, with a specific anti-democratic agendas in powerful institutional positions, as well as narratives that are basically the same, but are “nuanced”, emphasising one aspect of the past at the expense of others. Narratives generally possess a temporal structure with a beginning, a middle, and an end, but it is nevertheless the significant actions/testimony/events which determine how these events are to be conceptualised. Ricoeur refers to what he calls “period-designators” such as “The Renaissance”, and agrees that these cannot be “reduced” to events. This is partly because this designator is a telos of earlier beginnings that relate to the birth of Western Civilisation. This rebirth also refers to the the end of an earlier beginning.
Hylomorphic theory favours regarding the relation between a Principle, and that which it regulates, as the key explanatory/justificatory elements of any deliberation upon the relation of “The Renaissance”, and events such as the intensification of scientific, artistic and political activity. We have previously argued that events “happen” whereas actions seem to belong to a different ontological category of “something that is done for a reason”. One “interpretation” of the concept of “that which happens” is the substantive interpretation that can end in an ontological dualism presented by Sartre in terms of “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself”. Heidegger’s metaphysical response to such a substantive interpretation (which builds upon an operation of negation) was the formation of the existential principle “Being-in-the-world”, which, if interpreted in terms of Kantian ontology, ranges over both events that happen, events that happen to me, and events or states of affairs that I bring about via my actions. Events that happen when viewed through the perspective of History, or the “work of remembering”, are states of affairs that are best conceptualised in terms of the aim at “facts” or “The Truth”. So, events that happen are remembered not as isolated facts or even as a totality of facts, but rather as states of affairs regulated by maxims, principles, and laws: states of affairs that ought to have happened or ought not to have happened. Clearly the types of maxims, principles and laws take the form of imperatives that are embraced in the spirit of areté(agents doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Ricouer for obvious reasons would not be happy about either the Heideggerian or Greek positions for the following reasons:
“Shall we say it is life, presumed to have the form of a history that confers the force of truth on this narrative? But life is not a history and only wears this form insofar as we confer it upon it. How, then, can we still claim that we found this form in life, our own life, and, by extension those of others, of institutions, groups, societies, nations?…The result is that it is no longer possible to take refuge in the idea of “universal history as lived”(Page 242)
We can see how this way of thinking discourages appeals to Kantian ideas of universal history, and its appeal to a free will and a nature that has endowed man with Reason to regulate that will. The teleological aspect of this account is unmistakeable as is its grounding in the powers man both possesses and uses in the course of a life. For Kant, this teleological account aligns perfectly with Aristotle and is expressed well in his 8th Proposition from “ideas of a Universal History”(Kant’s Political Writings, Ed., Reiss, H, Cambridge, CUP, 1970,):
“The history of the human race as a whole can be regarded as the realisation of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally–and for this purpose also externally– perfect political constitution as the only possible state with which all natural capacities of mankind can be developed completely.”(Page 50)
In the above quote, Kant is clearly arguing for an important connection of the “work of remembering” with bringing about future states of affairs, i.e. with a “work of expectation” in relation to both the telos of human nature and the resultant political kingdom of ends in which citizens are all treated as ends in themselves. This dimension of teleological argument has largely been lost in modern Philosophies of History. This teleological aspect was, of course, clearly represented in Ancient Greek ideas such as areté and eudaimonia(the good spirited flourishing life). For Kant ,”good-spirited” means “ethical” which, in turn, is very technically defined in terms of a good will regulated by universal law and practical reason. This kind of account is clearly not merely a history of events and states of affairs, but rather a history of agents living in a world of actions and testimony structured by expectations of what ought and what ought not to occur. This, to be clear, is not in accordance with the perspective Ricouer is inviting us to consider, namely a perspective which wishes to situate historical texts in a work of remembering confined by narrow epistemological concerns requiring some form of dialectical “interpretation”. Rational “absolutes” are rejected in favour of the power of the imagination that tie threads of narratives together in some kind of emplotment. In one sense, the focus upon the plot of the narrative, requires a focus, not just on events that happen in the sphere of influence of a “character”, but rather in a matrix of actions and testimony performed in a spirit of areté. Events are located in a spatio-temporal framework that must admit of explanations/justifications in terms of cause-effect and must also be subject to a process of investigation in contexts of exploration /discovery in order to determine material/efficient causality. The switch, however, to the context of explanation/justification requires focus upon actions and testimonies of magnitude issuing from characters, institutions, cities, and nations of significance. Practical metaphysics becomes, then, more important than theoretical metaphysics and its tendency to focus upon God and souls. The idea of representation has to be situated in this practical matrix: such a matrix is not defined by the rules of rhetoric but rather by the principles of politics and the laws of ethics.
Ricoeur leads us through the debate that led to narratives being analysed by structuralist theorists, and points to the importance of distinguishing historical from fictional narratives. “Events”, and not actions, become the fundamental unit lying at the core of the metaphysical heart of History. If we succumb to the temptation of paring away the ethical content of historical statements and judgements, we may well find ourselves speechless in the face of events of magnitude such as Auschwitz etc. Such events will then become opaque, and testimony will disappear as part of the effect of consigning to silence judgments relating to these events. This, of course, is not a typically human response to such events which appear to cry out for ethical and legal judgements, not to mention everyday rhetorical outrage at the lack of respect for humanity and human rights. What such reflections reveal is, firstly, that there are two different meanings of the phrase “work of remembering: one in which the historian “makes history” by the structuring of historical texts in contexts of discovery. Secondly, when the text created is then subject to review and criticism this is also a part of the work of remembering that situates itself squarely in contexts of explanation/justification.
Ricoeur takes up the interesting relation that exists between the representation of power and the power of representation. Power can be animated by an image of the absolute which, for example, attached to monarchs who were deemed to embody some form of “divine right”. This, argues, Ricoeur, is reminiscent of the eucharistic imaginative exercise connected to the presence-absence of Christ’s body that is somehow manifested in the ceremonial presence of bread. Ricoeur refers to this as the “eucharistic motif”(Page 264). This kind of discourse is embedded in a rhetoric of praise, which is, in turn, a manifestation of the power of the imagination in relation to the representation of power. History is one academic attempt to neutralise the power of the imagination in favour of the more “objective” powers of memory,understanding and reason. The representation of power thus becomes sublimated to the representation of justice, thus signifying a move towards the truth and the knowledge required to, for example, pass laws. In this shift there is a transition from “right obeying might” to the democratic ideal of “might obeying right” which places freedom, equality and human rights at the centre of political discourse. The role of the imagination is then characterised as an “arrogant force”(Page 269) that encourages a negative view of categorical reason but perhaps results in the application of the Ancient Greek/Aristotelian idea of the Golden Mean being used in the search for areté.
From the point of view of view of desire and imagination, man can then be represented as dispossessed of power(Page 271). Indeed, one act of representation, the portrait, is an aesthetic object which psychically distances itself from action and testimony, and situates itself far from the madding crowd of world-activity in general. History shifts attention from the aesthetic portrait of the individual manifesting power to the narrative of more abstract entities such as the nation-state and areté. The state, the Greeks assumed, ought to be free and self determined. It is a social manifestation of the ethical soul writ large:–in contemporary terms what we are confronting here is the democratic soul of a people.
The ethical principle of “Promises ought to be kept” lies at the heart of our practical understanding and reasoning. The fact that “promises are not kept”, and result in a betrayal of our trust, is an event in the imagination, and does not affect the rational idea of what nevertheless ought to have occurred. The Principle “Promises ought to be kept” is, of course, a representation of how things ought to be in a context of explanation/justification, and not an invitation to embark upon an investigation in a context of exploration/discovery. Non-historical narratives describe “what is actually happening” in the hypothetical context of fiction. Such narratives can also be conceptualised “ethically”. The intention of an author might, for example, be to show what happens if promises are not kept. Perhaps historical narratives also have the function of “showing” what happens in circumstances where the “promises” are of magnitude, e.g. important treaties.
Ranke claimed(Page 279) that History should not judge, but only “show” events:–a kind of “picture theory” of Historical meaning that might be relevant in a context of exploration/discovery, but is only a necessary condition of judgements belonging in contexts of explanation/justification. Ricoeur ends his account by admitting that epistemological accounts of historical events have limitations, and perhaps the wider question to raise here concerns the ontology of historical being which is also a question about time: a question about the nature of the past.
Aristotle’s view of explanation and understanding is provided in his hylomorphic theory of change in which he refers to 3 media of change(space, time, matter), 4 kinds of change(Substantial, Qualitative, Quantitative, and Locomotion), 3 principles of change, 4 causes (accounts) and three different branches of science to consult for both the understanding of scientific phenomena and their explanation(Practical sciences, theoretical sciences, and productive sciences). Kant largely embraces the above matrix, and elaborates upon it by providing us with a number of categories of understanding/judgment, which can be found in the different branches of science. Kant condenses a cloud of metaphysical speculation on the nature of the soul into the “drops” or faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason, and much effort is expended in characterising the relation between the a priori intuitions of space and time(Sensibility), the Categories of the Understanding, and the Principles of Reason.
Kant’s major task in his mature work, as we know, was to disperse the clouds of Metaphysics that had formed as a result of the triumph of Platonism over Aristotelianism in the writings of scholars. Aristotle’s works, we also know, as a result were translated into Latin very late (1200’s), and when they were, the translation itself was problematic, according to Heidegger. Certain key words of the Greek language did not retain their philosophical meaning, e.g. aletheia, psuché, physis, and eudaimonia. The “new meanings” of these words then helped to form the storm clouds of scholastic metaphysics that Kant felt the need to disperse in his Three Critiques. Other key terms such as areté, arché, diké, and phronimos were also problematically translated, because their “explanatory/justificatory” meanings were distorted. Areté, for example, is trans-categorical term extending over the domain of character(virtue) and action(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Kant’s strategy was to decentre prevailing theoretical considerations about the nature of God, in favour of practical considerations relating to freedom and the will. For Kant, it was clear that the world of willed phenomena was constitutive of the domain of History:
“Whatever conception of the freedom of the will one may form in terms of metaphysics, the will’s manifestations in the world of phenomena, i.e, human actions, are determined in accordance with natural laws, as is every other natural event. History is concerned with giving an account of these phenomena, no matter how deeply concealed their causes may be, and it allows us to hope that, if it examines the free exercise of the human will on a large scale, it will be able to discover a regular progression among freely willed actions. In the same way we may hope that what strikes us in the actions of individuals as confused and fortuitous may be recognised in the history of the entire species as a steadily advancing but slow development of mans original capacities.”(Kant’s Political Writings, Trans. Nisbet, H., B., Cambridge, CUP, 1970, P.41)
Kant is not generally recognised to be a major political/historical philosopher, but the above quote, taken from an essay entitled “Idea for a Universal History”, together with another essay from the same collection, entitled “Perpetual Peace”, are major contributions to both Political Philosophy and the Philosophy of History. The idea of the United Nations was floated in the former essay, leading to the complex idea of Human Rights incorporating ideas of freedom and legal equality. Both of these principles were needed, in addition to the above reflections for the kind of extended ethical argumentation one finds in “Metaphysics of Morals”. All the above works, including the second Critique and the Groundwork, were clearly recommending that man emancipate himself from his self-incurred immaturity via the founding activity of reconstituting political institutions on rational grounds and principles. A spirit of criticism was directed at authoritarian dogma. This spirit also avoided descending in a sceptical spiral that would deny the importance of ideas of reasons and practical a priori principles. Such a spirit required that man impose these practical a priori principles upon himself, e.g. as expressed by the various formulations of the categorical imperative. This, in turn, suggests that both politics and law require ethical argumentation and reference to necessary and sufficient conditions that are discussed in both of these practical sciences. Necessary and sufficient conditions are, of course, important in contexts of explanation/understanding/justification.
The idea of freedom, according to Hans Reiss’s “Introduction” to “Kant’s Political Writings”, requires of a government that they refrain from regulating the speech and thought of individual citizens, as well as refrain from regulating individual rights to acquire things in the external world. In the latter case everyone must respect both the freedom and right to possessions of other individuals. These factors stand or fall together. In totalitarian regimes, freedom of speech is severely limited and corruption is rife in both the economic and legal systems. Politically connected Elites dogmatically control many of the institutions in the above systems. Reiss:
“But mans inner life must not be subject to coercion. Because we cannot know for certain anything about another persons inner life, it ought not to be the task of political action or legislation to change or in any way to condition another persons thought…all individuals have this right of acquiring possessions. It is the expression of their freedom.”(Page 22)
Kant clearly sees the realm of freedom to be that which it is the task of human rights to regulate. His vision is not dissimilar to the Ancient Greek view that one ought to lead ones life in accordance with principles connected to areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), diké(justice) and phronesis. The categorical imperative incorporates aspects of these ideas of reason, especially the practically oriented second formulation which demands that we so act as to treat other people as ends-in-themselves. Kant elaborates upon the Greek position by forming the technical concept of The Will: a concept that is definitely a consequence of reflection upon the different formulations of the categorical imperative which all prioritise acting in accordance with ones duty over acting in accordance with sensibly-based personal appetites and desires. Citizens, on Kant’s view, are active agents, acting collectively, with a general universal will. The outcome of a long period of activity, will, on Kant’s view result in the establishment of a Cosmopolitan kingdom of ends composed of Cosmopolitan citizens respecting each others freedom. To be clear, what is being discussed here is not a Hegelian “final solution” of a spiritual end that disregards Kantian categories in favour of a dialectical march of opposites to some kind of absolute terminus.
Reiss points to the role of Teleology in Kant’s view of History:
“When Kant talks of plans of nature in history he does not mean that there is an actual legislator or mind called nature which has consciously made a plan to be carried out in history, but merely that if we wish to understand history as (according to him) we have to, we must resort to an Idea such as that nature has a purpose in history. This idea cannot be proved or disproved by a scientific enquiry, but without it, we cannot understand history at all”.(Page 36)
This is part of the Kantian account of explanation/understanding. Two important implications of this account are:
A rational idea is a condition of the possibility for understanding history, and
This rational idea is an idea in the mind of man that cannot be demonstrated or “proved”.
The “mind” referred to above, however, is not a mind constituted of personal individual memories and private events. Rather, we are here dealing with a form of consciousness, possessing active power emanating from different regions of consciousness(sensibility, understanding/judgement, and reason).
Ricouer’s view of explanation/understanding in History is convoluted, but it is clear, that he is sceptical of certain aspects of both the hylomorphic and critical accounts. He begins his investigation, not with the material condition of testimony that is incorporated into documentation, nor with the historical text that is the telos of the historical “work of remembering” engaged in by historians. Of course, there is a sense in which documentation “explains” testimony because the latter is a necessary condition of the former. If, however, one is concerned with characterising the whole historical process in , for example, hylomorphic terms, then the form, principle, or telos of the “work of remembering” that is involved in testimony suggests that this latter is an important element in determining the final “form” of the historical text.
Ricoeur, has, in other works(Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning,Fort Worth, Texan Christian University Press, 1976), pointed out that writing “explodes” the dialogical situation in which speech acts are directed at specific audiences present at these acts. Writing, Ricoeur insists, may be addressed to an audience that has yet to be born. Nevertheless, the implication of such “distanciation” is that there is a responsibility placed upon the author to anticipate the responses of “any audience” by incorporating in his text a response to their responses. This can be characterised as a “work of expectation” that ought to complement any “work of remembering”, which might be incorporated in the text. The historical text differentiates itself from other kinds of text by the fact that it is meant to be about long spans of time, and must also be valid for long periods of time. The problem with conceptualising long periods of time is that of deciding which categories to use for this task. Historians have tended to favour using the category of “fact” rather than “action” because statistical techniques are more relevant to the former. This approach also opens up the realm of probability theory in possible “explanations” of the phenomena one is dealing with. Bayes´s theorem, that the probability of an event is related to the information about that event, construes this information in terms of facts rather than actions, and thus excludes the use of practical reasoning in favour of a mathematical form of mathematical reasoning. Involved in this decision we can detect a scepticism with reference to the “work of expectation”, relating to anticipating actions that occur in contexts of exploration/discovery. Such work focuses upon the “unknown consequences” of action, rather than the constitutive logical characterisation of action, where the consequences of action are logically or conceptually related to the reasons that are given for that action in contexts of explanation/justification.
History is concerned with action in a context of a long temporal span and therefore with long term consequences. Its task must include explaining in general terms why the action has occurred, and this in turn requires a focus on both cause and consequence in relation to the category of actuality rather than the category of hypothetical possibility (which classifies the action as a Y rather than an X). In this work the logical identity of the action must be established before there can be investigations into its causality and consequences. Attempts at establishing “what” has been done occurs in an inductive context of exploration/discovery.
The Historian does not consult the documents in an archive in order to identify actions of magnitude and significance. Rather the concern ought to be for providing the evidence for already identified actions and the “Why”(the reasons for and the causes of the action). The action recorded is rarely an ongoing event like swimming. We are rather dealing with past actions whose consequences have largely occurred, e.g. expressed in the following terms in the above non-historical example,”The swimmer swam to the nearby island”. Here the logical identity of the action is not at issue, but is rather “named” or “rigidly designated” in the above expression which is an answer to the question “Why was the swimmer swimming?” This is consistent with the Kantian quote above in which reference is made to the idea of “purpose” or telos in History insofar as this relates to actions/events of magnitude/significance and the free exercise of the human will.
Ricoeur claims that G. E. R. Lloyd´s work “Demystifying Mentalities”( New York, CUP,1990) attempts to replace the expression “the plurality of mentalities” with another expression, namely, “styles of enquiry”. This latter expression has more of a descriptive intent than the former and belongs not in contexts of explanation/justification but rather in contexts of exploration/discovery.
Freud’s relation to History is also discussed, and this is particularly interesting and relevant, given the clear relationship there is between the activities that occur in the dialogical relation of the analyst/analysand in the psychoanalytical situation, and the equally clear relationship there is to the more structured institutional relation of judge to legal tribunal. Both proceedings involve a “work of remembering” at the level firstly, of the individual, and secondly, at an institutional level where documents are created, archived, and accessed. Involved in such activity, especially insofar as early historical documents were concerned, is a phenomenon Freud wished to categorise as “collective repression”. Freud suggests this pathological phenomenon might have occurred in relation to the records concerning the assassination of Moses. The biblical “story”, merely has Moses dying before entry into the Promised Land, and this may be a half truth necessitated by a wish fulfilment related to an admired father figure.
Ricoeur refers to Norbert Elias and his work “The Civilising process”(Trans Jephcott, E., Malden, Mass, Blackwell, 2000) as a text of importance insofar as the history of the term “representation” is concerned. There is, it is claimed, an interesting point of differentiation between a feudal state, e.g. the “Ancien regime”, and the civilising process going on in the liberation from such “feudal forces” which, as we know result in States monopolising the financing of of a society(taxation), as well as the right to coerce in the name of the law. Elias focuses upon the relation of interdependence that exists between the political organisation of a society, and its changing sensibilities and behaviour patterns. In this discussion there is no reference to the Aristotelian political vision of the political task of the creation of a large middle class, situated between the Platonic “democrats”(disgruntled sons of oligarchs) and the “feudal” oligarchs. Such a middle class will be formed, Aristotle argues, by the principle of the Golden Mean, which navigates a course (through the realm of behaviour patterns and sensibilities) between bipolar extremes. The Golden Mean is the virtue-forming principle, and part of this process of course involves widespread public education which in both its content and its form will be related to the forming of both intellectual and moral virtues. This, for Aristotle is part of his “civilising process”, or actualisation process, that is working toward the telos of installing the power of rationality(intellectual and moral) in mankind. Elias does not reason in the above hylomorphic terms, but instead refers to the more “modern” expressions of “psychic economy” and “historical psychology”(Page 208), connecting these to a process he calls “rationalisation”. Rationalisation, it is argued is a process that regulates both emotions and social settings. This, Ricoeur claims, is”more than what the history of ideas calls reason”(Page 208) Ricoeur maintains that this process is involved in the forming of “habits”, and the implication is clearly that this process is not “rational” in the sense Aristotle used the term but is rather “non-rational”.
For Aristotle the process of the Golden Mean was essentially a “rational” process implying the operation of consciousness. Aristotle’s account of non-rational habit formation is involved in the conscious operation of reason after non-rational habits such as cowardice in the face of the enemy are formed. There is some form of conscious evaluation of this irrational habit and a new type of response to the enemy is formed: e.g. rushing unintelligently into battle. This habit is equally irrational and is a far cry from the demands of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Conscious evaluation then uses the principle of the Golden mean and navigates a course somewhere in between the extremes. In the future these “bad habits” will perhaps still be present in the memory system and might require the operation of consciousness to select the new “rational” habit. The installation of the “virtuous” habit is certainly neither irrational nor rational, but rather the epitome of what Aristotle calls “rational”. It is not “rationalising” . In talking about his civilising process Elias has the following to say:
“But it is by no means impossible that we can make out of it(civilisation) something more “reasonable”, something that functions in terms of needs and purposes”(Page 367, Civilising Process)
Reference to “purpose” in the above is interesting, because it demands a recognition of action, and a relation to the formal and final “causes” that help to form a teleological explanation/justification. Now it is the case that History and its work of remembering requires a truth orientation to objects in the past. The Historian may, of course, in their final reflections on their material, in the course of the preparations for the production of a historical text, refer to the “civilising process”, or what Aristotle would call the “actualisation process”. The language of the Historian becomes more teleological and in accordance with the practical rational principles (noncontradiction and sufficient reason) at all levels of reflection.
Ricoeur, as part of his hermeneutical approach which he once described in terms of being the “long road” to the understanding of Being that Heidegger he argued approached directly, wishes to focus upon a “rationalising process” rather than the rational outcome of the process. As part of one of his themes “The Conflict of Interpretations” Ricoeur quotes Pascal:
“Diversity….a town or a landscape from afar off is a town or a landscape but as one approaches it becomes houses, trees, tiles, leaves, grass, ants legs, and so on ad infinitum.”(Pascal, Pénsés(Trans Krailshaimer, A., J., Baltimore, Penguin, 1966, 48,65).
A Historian, it is argued chooses the scale of reflection to be used, e.g. economical, geographical, institutional, or social, on the ground of “mentalities” associated with these alternatives. This in turn makes possible and interplay between these levels as well as a dialectical discussion. Here we are not talking about seeing the same thing under different aspects, but rather, “different things”(Page 211). Such attention to detail permits a change of priorities and allows the Historian to focus upon events relating to “the subordinate class”. This focus upgrades these events to events of magnitude/significance that suffice therefore to be plucked from the archives, and manifested in historical texts, e.g. the burning of a miller at the stake. In this refocussing, the life and worldview of the subordinate class becomes an issue of importance. Ricoeur believes that focussing upon the events of “village life” is “beginning at the bottom”.
Ricoeur arrives at the conclusion that this concept of “mentality” is too vague to perform the historical work of remembering. He suggests that we, instead focus upon the concept of “representation”, enriched by the phenomenological reflections of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty(Page 217). The idea of “collective representation” emerges, and focus shifts from worldviews to social bonding. Unfortunately, in this discussion, the notion of “justification” is relativised, and the perspective of “scale” is used. The criteria of workable justifications, it is argued, differs from city to city. In this process of reflection, the normative element of justification, expressed in terms of ought premises and conclusions, is reduced to factual premises that form the basis for a “successful agreement”, which is then imitatively repeated via rationalising habit-formations. This “pattern” of behaviour is not in any sense categorical, but rather part of a dialectical process that leads to a “non-rational” result. In the context of this discussion Ricoeur prefers to refer to what he calls “the category of uncertainty”(Page 226) which he then attempts to attach to the categorical idea of “trustworthiness”. Reference is also made to “the rules of the social game” and its “strategic logic”(Page 226)
Representation is then unsurprisingly placed in a dialectical context in relation to the “political field”(Page 227) and given “many meanings”. The discussion rotates back to the “faithfulness” of memory which preceded “the truth of history”(Page 229). This essentially epistemological focus on “the moment of representation” thus neutralises both Aristotelian and Kantian rationalism which prioritises the world of will over the world of representation in practical contexts. The theoretical “form” of the village is not merely subsumed theoretically under the “form” of the city but is practical “matter” “formed” by the practical rational principle of the law-governed city.
St Augustine’s reflections on Time are both interesting and problematic, from many different perspectives. He claims that we know what time is until we are asked the question “What is Time?”, whereupon we struggle to come up with an answer to this admittedly aporetic question. St Augustine claims that we have difficulty explaining what time is. It is not clear whether he intends to include the answer Aristotle gave to this question when he claims that our answers to this question are inadequate. Aristotle, as we know, provided us with the following definition of time: “The measurement of motion in terms of before and after”. St Augustine does not engage with this definition directly, so it is difficult to know what his position is. He did point out that Aristotle both thought that time is different from motion but related to it. The relation that Aristotle was thinking of was probably related to the category of “Quantity”. Apparently “The Categories” is the only work St Augustine mentions and this leaves us wondering about his view of the metaphysical aspects of Aristotle’s definition.
St Augustine argues that in order for us to measure or quantify change or motion, that change or motion must be something extended in space, and also in some sense present to us. He appears, however, not to adopt the implication of Aristotle’s definition that what is changing or moving must be something external to one. He appears to phenomenologically “bracket” this “externality, and instead describes this extension as an extension in the mind, implying that the presence is a presentness to the mind. St Augustine then argues that the past can only be made present to the mind via the power of memory whereas the future is made present to the mind via the power of expectation. One observation one can make about these reflections, is that there is no attempt at a definition of Time, but only an attempt to describe what is happening to the mind. Some commentators have taken St Augustine to be engaged in the phenomenological venture of describing the functions of Consciousness. It ought to be pointed out, however, that this idea of the present, is first and foremost a theological idea, that is related to the “eternal presence” of God for whom there can therefore be no past and future dimensions of time. Furthermore St Augustine does not aspire to producing an argument for the certainty of the existence of the human being, but rather characterises the consciousness of oneself in terms of doubt. We know it was doubt that set in motion the attempt to put the question, “What is time?”
The Aristotelian response to this question, however, was not to describe what is happening in the mind but rather to say what time ontologically must be by referring to the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in an argument. For Aristotle, furthermore, there must be something enduring and real in any change from something to its contrary. This something has two aspects, an external and an internal aspect. The internal aspect of this change is the subject that is of interest for the Delphic oracle and the prophecy “Know thyself!” , but the external aspect of this self is best given in Aristotle’s essence-specifying definition of the human self, namely, “rational animal capable of discourse”. Knowing what this self is, is of course, the most difficult of aporetic questions. “Enduring”, for Aristotle, does not mean eternally present but it does guarantee some form of finite existence which is related to the Greek notion of “psuche”. Human life in the Augustinian system differentiated itself from animal life in virtue of the fact that God breathed life into the human form. This divine breath sufficed to place us higher up on the chain of creation than animals, for St Augustine. Whereas for Aristotle, the fact that we were beings for whom our being was in question(cf Heidegger) sufficed for us to occupy one of the highest places on a chain of Being. Confronted by our own awe and wonder at the brute existence of the world, we sought not merely to describe and narrate but to explain, justify, and acquire knowledge as a result of our attempts to answer aporetic questions.
Having been created by the breath of God , for Augustine, sufficed for our doubt to be converted into hope for salvation in the conversion process that transformed us into citizens of the city of God rather than earthly citizens of de civitate terrana(Babylon).
Augustine, according to Wittgenstein, was mistaken in his characterisation of Language. Augustine resorts to description rather than explanation/justification and describes the way in which language learners learn to name objects, thereby suggesting that the naming function was the key element of language. Kant, on the other hand, puts the key moment of the learning of language, at that moment in time when the child ceases to refer to itself in the third person (e.g. Karl) and begins to use the word “I”. This moment for Kant is the dawn of thinking over a community of impulsive feelings. For Aristotle, perhaps the key moment is not just thinking but rather thinking something about something(what Heidegger called the veritative or truth-making synthesis). Naming carries no indication of time on the Aristotelian theory, and therefore must lack the complexity of a fully-fledged language.
Augustine relates language to memory in his example of someone discoursing, and being aware of what has just been said, what is being said now, and what is shortly going to be said. This is, once again, a descriptive account of what the self is conscious of at any moment of any discourse, but what it fails to take account of, is the very important aspect of the reason why the speaker is saying what they are saying, e.g. perhaps because they believe in freedom of speech or justice on grounds they could defend if required to. It is clear on the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of memory, that whilst there is a work of remembering operating here, there is also an implied work of reason preventing contradictions and preventing insufficient reasons from dominating the discourse. Obviously the tense-structure of language would also be a relevant aspect to describe if that was my purpose, and if I am in my discourse talking about the past, i.e. making historical judgments, then this would be an example of thinking about the past on Aristotles account. We can see in such complex circumstances how inadequate the Augustinian naming function of language is.
Aristotle, in his work “De Interpretatione”, maintained, as we have previously suggested that it is only with the verb that time is indicated in language:–whether it be past, present, or future. The subject is that which is firstly indicated and this can be represented either by names or descriptions. Attaching a verb to the subject when we attempt to say something about this subject(in relation to this subject) is both indicative of time and truth on the condition we are dealing with a reporting use of language, as is the case with historical statements. The Categories of Judgment(Quantity, Quality, Relation), Kant has argued, are even related to Aesthetic Judgments such as “This rose is beautiful”, even though these judgments are “subjective” and grounded upon the feelings of life and pleasure. It is this categorical structure that enables us to speak with a so-called “universal voice” in this matter, demanding a certain form of sensibility in relation to the rose. In these kinds of claim, the powers of understanding and the imagination are connected to the power of judgment. There is ,therefore, on both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts, no reason to believe that so-called “structures” have any priority over the categories involved in historical judgments, which are obviously objective statements about the past.
Aristotle focuses upon the past in his account of “recollection”. Augustine, on the other hand, focuses on the present in reflections upon time and its relation to memory. Aristotle shows no sigs of intellectual paralysis in the face of the question “What is time?”, because his reasoning is in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Furthermore, Aristotle embraces a metaphysical theory of change in which it is clear that the “past” in some sense “causes”(explains) the recollection, together with the intention or will to recall something. If this “something” is of importance to a community or a polis, it is extremely likely that the testimony of the relevant actors who witness events of great magnitude will be documented, and that this documentation will be preserved and stored in archives as part of the “work of remembering” or “recollection”-process. This archive would then, in the future, be placed at the disposal of historians. Fortunately for us these historians do not suffer from Augustinian doubts about Time. They not only know what time is, but they would explain it in much the same way in which Aristotle did.
Ricoeur raises the question of whether the writing of history is a remedy or poison. If like Theuth you do not equate recollection with “the work of remembering”, but rather with being “reminded” of something, then writing is clearly a poison rather than a remedy because this something that one is reminded of, may not be real. This may well have been a fair question to raise in relation to the writing down of myths, but when it came to the more disciplined work of remembering that occurs where reference is made to the testimony that is contained in archives, there surely cannot be any serious doubt about the fact that historians are writing about something real. Here we should also recall that we are not dealing here with a solipsistic historian sitting in his lonely study writing, with doubts about the truth of what he is communicating, but rather a community of historians, critically reviewing each other, writing knowingly about events that are real. In such a community the work of each is reviewed and criticised by all others(in terms of the truth-value of the judgments).
In a chapter entitled “The Documentary Phase” Ricoeur makes a very interesting claim that prior to the work that is archived lies another work , a work of testimony, done by living witnesses to the events of magnitude and significance so important to the existence and maintenance of the polis. Ricoeur’s reflections do not follow this particular path, but given the fact that historical events have both good and bad legal and political consequences, it is our assertion that the best “tribunal” for the evaluation of such consequences would be one in which practical reasoning is used. The kind of political reasoning we are referring to would be that of the “great-souled” statesman, the phronimos. The reasoning we would expect in legal tribunals, on the other hand, centres around a thesis about someones possible guilt, being confronted with an antithesis about possible innocence. In the course of such proceedings both physical evidence and testimony play a decisive role. The demand of the testimony is that it be true on pain of being subject to severe sanctions for contempt for the process. One can claim that the essence of such legal testimony is historical, in that it claims that an event or series of events significant for the outcome of the case , either did or did not occur. The transcendental presupposition behind the truth of this testimony is ” I was there!”(Page 148).
Historians, engaging in discussing the truth content of a peers work, are interested in passing judgment upon that work in accordance with multiple criteria which include evaluating the truth-value of the judgments contained in a context of explanation/justification typical of all sciences concerned with the advancement of knowledge. Important in this process, of course, is the place or site of the action or event. In this context, Ricoeur points to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological reflection upon the lived body in order to make sense of “my-place” in relation to the action or event. “Places of habitation” in a city(Page 150) are also important elements of historical accounts as is the “geography of the city”. Ricouer refers favourably to to a view expressed by Braudel in his work “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the Age of Philip II” (trans. Reynolds, S., New York, Harper and Row(two vols)1972-3):
“Any civilisation is at bottom space worked by men and history.”
Ekonomos or Economics will be an important aspect in this civilisation-building work. Historical time will of course transcend lived-time in political contexts. Historical time will also refer to the time of the foundation of the civilisation being written about. Such dating, of course, presupposes a calendar-system that in its turn bears some relation to cosmic time( the movement or change of position of heavenly bodies(rotational or orbital)) Thus, the lived-time, historical-time and cosmic-time framework, all help to inscribe events in a continuum. The lived-time of witnesses is positioned in this framework and helps to create the content we find in our archives. The finitude of a human life stands out against this potentially infinite continuum as a “brief” instant of time, a brief candle that seemingly burns and extinguishes in an instant. The Being-toward-death so important in Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, pales in comparison to temporal and spatial magnitude of historical events and action that affect the future and perhaps the fate of everyone, whether they have been born yet or not. Now whilst death finds a limited place in the historical archives as does love in the register of marriages, these finite aspects of lived-time are left to the poets and writers who hope to survive in our libraries after their death.
Ricoeur takes up the notions of cyclical time as represented in the days, weeks, and months of the yearly calendar, and the notion of linear time represented by the non-calendar time of years, centuries and millennia (Page 156). Cosmic history of course transcends calendars and clocks, and even the presence of witnesses. In the light of such long time-periods which the Greeks felt might stretch back into infinity along an infinite continuum, we can understand that the longer the period of human history extends, the more it will tend to transcend even the fundamental element of event/action and become more concerned with longer speculative units, e.g. Hegelian chronosophies of progress versus philosophies of regression.
Ricoeur poses the fundamental question as to whether a history without direction, or continuity, is possible and he refers to Pomian’s suggestion that “structure” replace “periods” as an organising form(Page 157). Such a suggestion would have the consequence of collecting periods into larger units such as “ages” which, Ricoeur argues, can cause problems if there are rival categorisations of these “ages”. What is clear is that “Structuralism”, as a linguistic theory, does not engage directly with either Aristotelian or Kantian categories, perhaps because these latter do not have a linguistic origin but rather are existential and logical/conceptual. The “naming” of “ages” or “periods”, is of course a complex matter, but a clue to an Aristotelian or Kantian view of a historical classificatory system that preserves intuitions of both direction and continuity is given in the naming of firstly, the era of Ancient Greece as a “Golden Age” and secondly the naming of that intense period that followed the “Dark ages” as “The Renaissance”(Rebirth of the Golden Age) These two “periods” are thus related to each other(continuity) and provide direction. Structuralism, as we know, in other contexts was a speculative theory that resulted in a reduction of historical phenomena to category-neutral events, which could then be inserted in an algebraic/logical combinatory matrix(Page 160). Ricoeur, to his credit, raises some doubts about this methodological approach, and points to his own theory of action as an example of a critical response to structuralism.
Testimony is viewed by Ricoeur as an action/event. He raises doubt about this fundamental aspect of the historical process by referring to an experiment in which subjects were asked to reconstruct or reconstitute a film sequence they had witnessed. The results, it was concluded, raised serious questions about the trustworthiness of Testimony. Ricoeur raises the issue of whether these laboratory conditions were a fair reflection of the normal circumstances in which testimony is given, with some justification. If we take as our paradigm of testimony, what occurs in a legal tribunal, we can see that in such circumstances the focus is not solely on what happened, but also on its relation to the law: at the end of this process a judgment will be made as to whether a law had been broken or not. The focus of the experiment on “the what” without any involvement of “the why” may have been a confounding variable in the above experiment.
Historical writings, on the view of Kant, ought to concern themselves both with the truth and the direction and continuity of History. This involves concern with deeds of magnitude evaluated, firstly, by the practical idea of freedom, and secondly, the several formulations of the categorical imperative. Also important in this discussion is the way in which the historical plot “unfolds” in the historical narrative. Ricouer, however, leaves a question hanging in the air over the issue of the integrity of the “archives”: the question namely as to whether they are the remedy to a malady, or a poison. The myth of Phaedrus is invoked in relation to the claim that documents in an archive are “orphaned”, and need support from their authors who, as a matter of fact, may even be dead. In many cases, of course, the authors represented institutions of the polis and, in such circumstances, living confirmation of ones archived testimony is replaced by trust in these institutions, as judged of course by the historians working with the documents emanating from these institutions.
It is, theoretically possible that there occur an event/action of significant magnitude and all the witnesses may be killed, thus preventing the production of any documentation. Nevertheless the death of all the witnesses would raise questions by the communities they were part of, and these communities would probably launch investigations into the causes of these deaths.
Ricoeur takes up the issue of fraudulent documents placed in archives, but these documents, when compared with other documentation in the same archives as well as other archives, often violate the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and stand out like flashing warning signs. Documents have been falsified in various places at various times in History, and have been discovered by either comparison with other documents or the testimony of living witnesses. For many, these unlikely possibilities suffice for them to classify History as a “Conjectural Science”(Page 174). We have ourselves witnessed the testimony of living witnesses to the holocaust, and such testimony “tests” the veracity of the archived information all over the world. No one believes that a holocaust survivor with a number tatooed on their arm which is sequential to other numbers tatooed on other survivors arms, is an untrustworthy source of information. Questioning whether they have a photographic memory of the terrible events that occurred in the camps(as the above scientific experiment suggests) is not a rational response to their suffering. Were they to appear at a trial, as they did at the trial of Eichmann, their testimony would suffice to be archived as “truth”, given the judgment that was handed down against Eichmann. Paradoxically Eichmanns defence at this trial was covered by Arendt in her book on Eichmann in Jerusalem, and she noted after reading all the trial material that the defendant was not capable of “thinking”, as she put the matter. This angered many Jews and confused many academics who perhaps did not appreciate the subtlety of Arendt’s criticism. She pointed out that, when questioned, Eichmann often mechanically and robotically repeated clichés from a very limited verbal repertoire, giving the impression that he was delivering memorised phrases and responses. She also pointed to the judgment of many commentators, that Eichmann appeared ludicrously ridiculous” on the stand. We discussed the phenomenon of memorisation previously, and pointed out the fundamental difference between this phenomenon, and the “work of remembering” that is required by a process of questioning in a trial where ones life may be at stake. Memorisation, Ricoeur noted earlier, belongs in a matrix of authority relations, so it was not at all surprising to witness Eichmanns defence, which claimed that, in signing the orders for the transport of 1.5 million Jews, he was merely folllowing orders, which he found no reason to question.
In an interesting epistemological discussion of the relation of a fact to an event, Ricoeur claimed the following:
“A fact is not an event, itself given to the conscious life of a witness, but the contents of a statement meant to represent it.”(P.178-9)
So, what is true of a fact may not be true of an event. Wittgenstein’s attempted “final solution” to all the problems of Philosophy in his work “Tractatus” insisted that:
1.1 The World is the totality of facts. Not of things.
Wittgenstein then further insisted that so-called atomic facts are related to atomic states of affairs. This suggested that everyday facts were complexes and could be divided up in much the same way as objects could, e.g. a broom, composed of the “parts” of a brush and a handle. Events such as swimming are presumably, at least theoretically, divisible into an agent and an action, but facts are categorically different on Ricoeur’s account: being “contents” of representational statements, i.e. they have a propositional character. He continues outlining the distinction:
“..it is as the ultimate referent that the event figures in historical discourse. And it is to preserve this status of the reference of historical discourse that I distinguish the fact as “something said”, the “what” of historical discourse from the events as “what one talks about”, the “subject of…” that makes up historical discourse.”(Page 179)
The above accords with the idea that the fact is predicated by “That….”, e.g. in a context of saying/believing/knowing, something about something. The ultimate meaning of a historical event may well be “something that happens”, but that in turn must also in some sense be related to actions in which actors/cities/nations/civilisations are attempting to “make something of themselves”, in accordance with arché, diké, epistemé, areté and phronesis. Ricoeur does not venture down this path of reflection, in spite of his earlier proclamation concerning the importance of action theory. An event is clearly, logically, not something that is “done” , but seemingly, rather, falls into the category of “what happens”, or “what takes place”, e.g. a pubic event. In Law, a fact is the truth about an event. This characterisation would conform to Aristotelian theory and the view that the role of the fact is to say something about something.
In Wittgenstein’s early work, the Tractatus, we are told that the world is all that is the case and one interpretation of this leaves us with the OED definition of a fact as “a thing that is the case”. Reports in archives mostly contain facts and not just information that has to be “interpreted”. This implies that much of the work of the historian involves explaining and justifying the facts in documents , rather than “Interpreting information”.
Ricoeur interestingly raises the possibility of a conflict of interpretations of events, especially if living witnesses who were “present” at an event, contradict accounts of the event given in the archives. Such an occurrence is certainly a possibility, but an unlikely possibility, when we are dealing with events of magnitude that have many consequences for many people over long periods of time, e.g. the holocaust. Ricoeur, curiously, refers to this as a crisis of testimony: a crisis of belief and trustworthiness. For Ricoeur, testimony may be flawed and he hopes that situating representation in a context of explanation will save its “reputation”. The fact of the matter, however, is that the so called “reputation” of testimony is constituted by its occurrence in a context of explanation/justification, and it is exactly this feature that guarantees its validity.
Moving from the question of what the work of remembering is, to the question “Whose memory?” and to the answer “mine”, obviously is going to result in a solipsistic end to an otherwise interesting explorative journey. Ricoeur points to Charles Taylor’s expression, “a school of inwardness”, in the context of this discussion, and Augustine is evoked as one of the sources of this school of thinking, which Ricoeur claims reaches its apex with Husserl’s Phenomenology. We have argued in our 4 volume work, “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action”, that the analytical school of Philosophy as characterised by the Logical Atomism of both Russell and the early Wittgenstein, also represented ” a school of inwardness”, which fortunately was significantly questioned by the later work of Wittgenstein. This aspect of the school can also be traced back to John Locke. Wittgenstein’s criticism of of his own earlier solipsism was reminiscent of Heidegger’s criticism of Husserl’s phenomenological positions.
The task Ricoeur sets himself is, to restore the concept and power of memory in the architectonic of Reality, in such a fashion that it no longer became connected with solipsism and the resultant objective-subjective debate. Ricoeur points out that St Augustine rejects the Aristotelian explanations of the origin of time and the basis of cosmic changes, and he also highlights the dilemma involved in the dualistic problem of reconciling the time of the soul with the time of the world. In the account Augustine provides us with. Ricoeur does not refer to the role of Descartes in the journey of thought from Augustine to Husserl, but it is clear that the dualistic reflections we encounter in Descartes’ Meditations and Reflections, provided an excellent sceptical environment for the school of inwardness. Ricoeur does, however, discuss Descartes’ notion of “substance” and what he believes is the consequent triumph of a grammatical based form of certainty over sceptical doubt. In the context of this discussion Ricoeur surprisingly connects two claims:
That Husserl is one of the philosophers of consciousness par excellence, and
That it is Locke, rather than Decartes that is behind the idea of linking the ideas of self and consciousness.
Locke’s epistemological twist of the dualistic threads of two kinds of substance serves as a basis for identifying consciousness with memory. Locke also, paradoxically claims that one of the prime motivators of man is not the pleasure-pain “principle” but rather the raw “feelings” of pleasure and pain. These feelings are, of course, important elements of consciousness but, as we have pointed out in previous works, feelings are not ontologically the right kind of entity to become constitutive elements of the categorically-directed process of thinking. Thought is necessarily about reality and directed at Truth and the validating activities of explanation/justification in tribunals of reason.
Memory is of course intentional and about the past and it is, on hylomorphic theory, the material our higher faculties used to generate both experience and also the basic terms of the sciences in contexts of exploration/discovery. Memory is also intimately related to Language and the meaning of the terms we use in our judgements and propositions. In both of these cases, however, we are dealing with general(collective?) or universal memory and not the kind of memory(e-g. particular memories) Locke was referring to, when he was discussing and attempting to define the identity of an individual person. Kant had Locke and Hume in mind as well as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz when he engaged with the task of synthesising the respective positions of empiricism and rationalism. Kant, pointedly, in his remarks on Education, maintained that training the memory in isolation from other cognitive faculties such as judgement and reason was a meaningless exercise, and should not be one of the major goals of education. Kant, too, would have agreed with the argumentation that memory and the introspective stream of consciousness were necessary foundations for the “school of inwardness”.
Locke was a follower of the more empirically biased science of Boyle, the atomist, who concerned himself with mathematically calculating formulae for the phenomenon of the expansion of gases, rather than the Newtonian project of formulating the natural and “philosophical” laws of thermodynamics and motion. The “atoms” of Locke’s system are the “objects” of experience and the simple ideas, together with the “feelings of pleasure and pain which all obey so called “laws” of association. These laws, which included physical relational characteristics, were part of Locke’s general explanation of thought. These “mechanistic” laws would be later used by the behaviourists to “associate” stimuli and responses. Involved in this “school” of Psychology was, to begin with, an outright denial of the existence of consciousness and subsequently a denial of its relevance as a means of explaining experiential phenomena. Behaviourism, it is important to note, was a reaction to the “school of inwardness” founded by the thought of Augustine, Descartes, Locke, and, later by Hume, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein. The methodological “Golden Mean” Principle,( that had earlier been used by Aristotle to avoid dualisms in all its forms, was systematically involved in the “modern” movements between schools of inwardness and outwardness), was ignored.
“Modernism” has been characterised in many different ways throughout the ages but in this context perhaps the most relevant characterisation is that by the American Philosopher Stanley Cavell who claimed that the essential characteristic of the “modern” was its questionable relation to its own history. Descartes, Hobbes, etc , we know, made it an important part of their philosophical mission to deny the methods and theories of Aristotle without, it has to be said, demonstrating any systematic understanding of his thought.
Augustine, of course, is interestingly included as an important influence upon the development of these “modern” movements and he too, like Descartes, was a dualist in many different respects. We can, indeed clearly recognise the presence of Augustine in the early theory of meaning presented in Wittgensteins Tractatus. This is also confirmed by Wittgenstein himself in his later work “Philosophical Investigations”, in which he specifically admitted to being held hostage by a picture of the functioning of language which he attributed to Augustine.The importance of Wittgenstein’s later work in the context of this debate, is that it was very concerned to redraw the boundaries between the “inner” and the “outer”. In doing this he also played an important part in creating the logical space for the reemergence of Kantian critical theory, and Aristotelian Hylomorphic theory. In his later work he completely abandoned logical atomism in favour of a view of language rooted in the Greek concept of psuche(form of life) and the hurly burly of social activity.
Locke, unlike Hume, was convinced that morality was an objective matter, whose validity could be rationally demonstrated, and this undoubtedly influenced Kant who, we know, elevated practical reasoning to Platonic and Aristotelian heights. These latter three thinkers were significant political theorists. Locke was also considered a significant political theorist. His social contract, however, is grounded upon an idea the other three theorists would not share, namely that the social contract ought to create the conditions necessary for citizens to engage in “the pursuit of happiness”. This pursuit, for Locke, was related to what he termed “commodious living” and the regulation of our rights in relation to owning property: ideas which later Marxists found so odious. The Greeks regarded the art(techné) of earning money, as a secondary concern for areté, because it ought to be restricted to the domain of the household and its local instrumental imperatives. Aristotle’s conception of the primary categorical imperatives, on the other hand, associated with areté, involved prioritising epistemé and ethical and political values in their relation to eudaimonia(the good-spirited flourishing life).
According to Ricoeur, Locke “invented” consciousness. We are not sure exactly what Ricoeur means by this remark, but it needs to be pointed out that Locke’s “consciousness” is an integral part of a network of atomistic and reductionistic assumptions. If we bear this fact in mind, there are aspects to Locke’s thought which, it can be argued, reflect hylomorphic concerns, e.g. that something(e.g. a self) is what endures over a process of change, e.g. Socrates becomes musical or tanned. Locke prefers the terminology of “person” and thereby evokes the Latin idea of “persona”, which, as we know makes reference to a mask whose actual function it is to conceal ones identity: thus making perceptual identity the key issue in the attempt to specify, via a definition, the essence of being human.
This is an epistemological shift that attempts to avoid the metaphysical implications of the aporetic question “What is a human being?”Locke thus manages to convert important characteristics of being human into something “hidden”, e.g. in ones memories. The image of a private inner theatre staging the events of a stream of consciousness which involve memories that I “possess”, thus is an important supporting image for the school of inwardness. In such a context the important task of delineating the scope and limits of consciousness as a mental power or principle becomes marginalised.
Ricoeur quotes Locke in an attempt to complement the account which equates memory with consciousness:
“concern for happiness is the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness”(Locke, J., Second Treatise of Government, Chicago, Henry Reginery, 1955, 26)
It might be the case that there is a tighter relation than “concomitance” between the pursuit of happiness and consciousness, especially if we construe “happiness”, not as a feeling in a stream of consciousness occurring on a private stage, but instead take happiness to be eudaimonia (the pursuit of a good spirited flourishing life). In this excursion into the outer realms of the technical world of the instrumental imperative, it is also clear that we need , if we wish to engage with the problem of power and the abuse of power in the activity of war, to move away from talk of consciousness and toward talk of persons. It should also, however be reiterated that in such a context the idea of the identity of the self is also problematic, i.e. Napoleon being Napoleon in virtue of the fact that he possesses Napoleon’s memories, says very little about the character of Napoleon or the ethical significance of his use/abuse of power ,which resulted in a trail of devastation across Europe. Here it would seem we need rather to raise the issue of his character in a context of a tribunal of practical reasoning.
Ricoeur then compares Husserl and Augustine in relation to the attempted transfiguration of consciousness into the prejudicial “realm ” of intersubjectivity. For Husserl, the consciousness of time is, of course, “internal”. The phenomenological reduction was used to “bracket” “world-time” which Husserl argues, common sense mistakenly sees as something “external”. Experienced time is thus conceived of as independent of that time Newton conceived of as “absolute” and “flowing”, externally in relation to us, (as manifested by the cosmic events of the movements of the heavenly bodies). If such an absolute objective idea of time is inconceivable, its polar opposite, the idea of an “absolute subjectivity”(Page 111) makes perfect sense for Ricoeur in phenomenloogical accounts of consciousness which once again raise the problems of negation, absence, etc. We are also faced once again with the problem of explaining the presence and importance of other persons who, on the view of the school of inwardness, may “possess” a completely unique “stream of consciousness” “flowing” across the “Internal” theatre of their minds. Wittgenstein’s “solution” to the problem of moving from his earlier postulated solipsistic “I” to a more communal “We” was to move closer to critical and hylomorphic approaches to these problems.
In conclusion, phenomenological theories do not seem to possess the necessary resources to describe and explain the relation of the “Who?” question to the “What?” question. Truth is obviously the major issue in the latter case. This is not to deny that there is a “Who” involved in thinking something about something, as well as the “that” or “what” component of the thought. The “person” obviously does not “possess” these thoughts in the same way in which he might be said to possess his memories. It is clear, however, that in the context of this discussion the major question is not “Who is maintaining this claim?” but rather “Why is this claim being made?”
The shift in focus from the epistemological to the “pragmatic” aspect of memory is fundamental if one is to fully understand Ricoeur’s references to the Greek distinction between that which happens to a patient(pathos), and the active power or exercise of memory that forms a part of the actualising process that aims at actualising the potentialities among a hierarchy of cognitive “powers” or functions.
He refers to the Aristotelian distinction between “Mneme” and “Anamnesis”, clearly characterising the latter term as an active search by an agency of psuche. He called this active process “recollection”, and Freud was also clearly referring to this process when he talked about the “work of remembering”. For Aristotle the process was crowned by an act of “recognition” that was associated with “aletheia” (unconcealment). Freud’s patients obviously were themselves unable to achieve this act of recognition associated with the work of remembering, and as a consequence they needed the assistance of an “interpretation” before any unconcealment occurred.
As far as Kant was concerned the recurrence of “mneme” in a psuche was a matter for Physical Anthropology to describe and explain, and such an “event” ” happened to” a patient, and was not connected to the active voluntary choices of that agent. This latter activity was best explained and justified by “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”. For Kant, the investigation of this free voluntary activity, was far more important than any passive process involving the reproductive imagination (a process constituted of a stream of images that was probably produced by a non-conscious principle that had no cognitive relation to either the past or future but rather “happened in the space of present consciousness”). This aspect of the role of fantasy in the life of his patients was described by Freud as “timeless”.
Memories are of the past, and it is this relation to this a priori intuitive aspect of Time that is an important component of the “work of remembering” that successfully results in the “recognition of recollection”. Further, recollection is the recollection of “something”, e.g. either of what happened or what one did in a voluntary medium of thought directed at an object which has its source in the past. Reason and rationality are not directly involved in the faithful memories that are unconcealed in the “work of remembering”. In this respect the power of memory is a very different power to the power of judgement which is connected to a “work of understanding”, involving the categories of the understanding and “correctness” rather than “faithfulness”. Judgement, according to Kant is the power of discovering something particular subsumed under a universal, e.g. Jack ought to pay the money he had promised to pay back to Jill. The power of judgement, then, is concerned with particular truths and particular actions which are in their turn related logically and conceptually to universal propositions of Reason, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept”. These universal propositions of reason are necessarily true and good in virtue of being intimately constituted by principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Their validity is also connected to the relation of the terms in these propositions and also partly a result of their relation to essence-specifying reasons which directly answer questions such as “Why should we keep promises we have unconditionally made?”
In comparison to Reason, the power of memory is obviously a very different kind of power of the sensible faculty of the mind in that it is temporally oriented toward the past(rather than the future of keeping a promise). The orientation of a mind concerned with the maxim/principle “Promises ought to be kept”, concerned as it is, with both the future and the past, is not, as such, related to intuitions, but rather to the categories of Action and Possibility/Necessity. Memories, for both Aristotle and Kant, help us to structure and organise experience by abstracting basic terms of Science. To that extent this power is largely a sensory-based classificatory power.
Memory is linked to truth partly via its systematic use in the Science of History. This use will result in a non-fictional narrative that is constructed from official documents located in physical archives, and referring to a particular period of time (and related to events/actions of a significant magnitude important to a city-state). The narrative can begin with the founding of a city-state but can probably never end with an act of destruction unless this involves the territory being uninhabitable as was probably the case with Atlantis and other cities hit by catastrophic natural disasters. In the middle of this continuum are events/actions of significant magnitude that contribute to the growth and development of a city construed in terms of the form of psuche( a living organism). There are also “Physical” historical traces, (e.g. ancient Temples and Cities) in the world, that we preserve as protected objects and living museums. They no longer serve what Heidegger would call a “ready-to-hand” or instrumental function, but rather serve as a sign of a former form of life, which because of the nature of what Heidegger calls our “historicality”, we are necessarily interested in. This kind of desire to preserve the existence of significant objects from the past is perhaps one of the signs that we are not a mere civilisation concerning ourselves only with the maintenance needs of the society but also acknowledge a temporal continuity which, the longer it stretches into the past, the more this awareness confirms an important cultural identity. The mere preservation of records in an archive, as we realised with the Nazi’s, who were meticulous record keepers, does not suffice for the exercise of what Heidegger called in his work “Being and Time” as “historicality”, an important dimension of our Dasein and Being-in-the-world. Perhaps it is this wider conception of the relation of Being and Time that should be the focus of an investigation into the exercise of memory.
Ricoeur argues that what can be legitimately be used, can also be abused, and in this contexts refers to those acts of memorisation which, at the dawn of our oral-based culture were the bearer of cultural values. This oral tradition limited itself to the evocation of significant events or facts. Remembering is not necessarily the same as this form of memorisation:
“With remembering, the emphasis is placed on the return to awakened consciousness of an event recognised as having occurred before the moment when consciousness declares having experienced, perceived, learned it. The temporal mark of the before thus constitutes the distinctive feature of remembering under the double form of simple evocation and of recognition that concludes the process of recall.” (Page 58)
Memorisation, on the other hand, is more related to passive experiences of habit in a psychological economics that belongs to the lower faculty of sensibility, a region of the mind regulated by the energy regulation and pleasure pain principles. Energy regulation is more of a biological than a pure psychological concern, and would fall into the realm of what Kant called “Physical Anthropology”, the realm of “what events happen to man” rather than what actions man performs. The pleasure-pain principle, on the other hand, is one focus of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic point of view. Habits are largely pleasurable ready-to-hand pursuits, in that it is only when they are disrupted that consciousness emerges to solve the problem present-at-hand. The recitation of things learned by heart, is one example of the use of memory. At the dawn of civilisation, when cities and civilisations were being created, the oral transmission of significant experience was one of the means used to keep in touch with the past. Memorisation of authoritative texts was the preferred use of this form of memorisation, enabling significant thought to be transmitted across generations. This is, at best, a civilising function of memory, and whilst this use of memory is a necessary condition of civilisation it is not a broad enough cognitive power for the necessary and sufficient conditions (constitution) of a Culture which Kant defined in terms of epistemé (the work of knowing) rather than techné(memorisation). Kant also claimed that happiness(the principle of self-love in disguise) is not quite the same concept as eudaimonia(the good-spirited flourishing life) because, in a culture, man dares to use his freedom and reason to make something of himself, using his theoretical and practical reason and his Judgement(Aesthetic and Teleological). Using the principles of reason is a form of recollection of what we know in order to produce new knowledge, and it is this, rather than memorisation that is going to be the most important characteristic of the cultural soul. This, we ought to point out, has been a subject of debate in the Philosophy of Education of the 1970’s in which R S Peters made the same point as Kant: principles of reasoning trumps habits (in which one attempts to memorise facts). Given that reason is a form of recollection of what we know, it must, therefore, also require a good memory as a necessary condition: a good memory in the sense of the ability to understand and work with principles, concepts and propositions toward systematic ends. On this argument, the power of reasoning is a related kind of power to the power of memory in which it is ideas rather than (verbal)images which are “ordered” temporally in accordance with an architectonic method regulated by principles(noncontradiction, sufficient reason). This latter power of reason is not directly steered by the ordering of “traces” of former activity which sometimes gave rise to the accusation that the ancient bards were “possessed” by these traces, i.e. it seemed as if this activity happened to them, rather than being spontaneously and self-consciously produced by a free will.
Ricouer, in the context of this discussion, takes up the importance of the notion of “enlightened forgetting” which is operating, and helps to prevent the prevalence of memorisation in our present steam of consciousness. Memorisation relies on memory-mechanisms such as association and causality, both of which operate at the level of sensibility in general, and the imagination in particular. The use of memorisation can also be “abusive” when it is used to manipulate audiences. Indeed much of our modern propaganda uses the “mechanism” of association and repetition rather than principles of understanding and logical reasoning to establish relations of the elements being ordered in the discourse. In such exercises of the reproductive imagination there is also no use of the categories of the understanding, and the intention of telling the truth, which involves saying something about something. Here we can see that one of the key defining issues involved in this analysis of memorisation is the instrumental thinking of techné versus the categorical thinking of epistemé.
Traumatic memories are blocked from emerging into consciousness in accordance with the pleasure-pain principle which, as such, tends to disrupt present streams of consciousness with high levels of anxiety and suffering, but also with phantasy-laden wish-fulfillment. Resistances to the work of remembering are, on Freudian theory, mechanistically installed in the psuche, and require a certain amount of energy to maintain and regulate. When such traumatic memories do emerge, because resistances become weakened, the result of such a state of affairs in the short term is not a cognitive act, but rather a pure behavioural “reflex”, which mechanistically “acts out” the traumatic content(compulsively).This causal mechanism needs to be connected to a “work of remembering” in a transference process in order for the analyst to catch a glimpse of what is troubling the patient. In this “working through” process, these traumatic repetitions are associated with the power of language which will assist in “converting” these repetitions into genuine memories as part of the work of remembering. If the trauma is embedded in a mourning process( a more natural form of “working through”) which, because it contains elements that diminish the patients self-regard (to such an extent that the patient begins to suffer from the depression involved with melancholia), then this results in the patient converting his own critical responses to the lost object into substantial and destructive criticisms of his own personality. This actualisation of melancholia is a pathological phenomenon that is described by Freud in terms of a weak ego, which manifests the characteristic of narcissism in the attempt of this ego to deal with the demands of the id, superego, and external world. In this pathological condition, there is a retreat into the world of phantasy and imagination, and a consequent attenuation of concern for the real past and the real future. This pathological condition involves repetition of of traces of experiences that are essentially iconic phantasies obeying energy regulation and pleasure-pain principles. Such a “complex” lacks the appropriate temporal structure which it is the task of language and the categories to organise. There can therefore be no “form of reality” in these representations, even if certain images must bear reality content.
The trace of experience of the traumatically lost object involved in the work of mourning, involves a reorganisation of energy and pleasure/pain which itself is anxiety-filled and painful. If this work of mourning can be attached to the work of remembering via the medium of language, the suffering dissipates, but if, on the other hand, this work is demanded of a weak narcissistic ego, there is a risk of the evocation of self-destructive fantasies(suicidal ideation) which in certain specific circumstances may result in the reflexive behaviour of “acting out” ( attempted suicide). Ricoeur correctly points out that in Ancient Greece, melancholia was associated with mood disorder. The poetic/cosmological connection of moods to the diminishing of energy/life during the season of autumn is intimately linked to the idea of psuche and the growth and development of our particularly human form of life(Eros-Thanatos). Here we are dealing with temperament rather than character: biological rather than fully fledged psychological conditions, physical anthropology rather than anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. Melancholics, Aristotle claimed, with Empedocles, Socrates and Plato in mind, are troubled in spirit. As we move toward the era of the Renaissance and characters such as Michelangelo, the melancholic character becomes romantically associated with genius. This train of thought was then interrupted interestingly by Freud, who de-romanticised the idea of a melancholic in both a hylomorphic and critical spirit, and traced the fateful state instead to mechanisms of self destruction(Thanatos). Freud also managed to transpose or transfigure this pathological state onto the soul writ large, i.e. at the level of civilisation where the aggression behind the activity of war was described and analysed in largely Kantian terms. Here, Freud argues, we encounter phenomena more reminiscent of “acting out” than “remembering”( the constitutional work of historical processes). The sovereignty of the state-principle that emerged from the Treaty of Westphalia, ran counter to the Kantian Enlightenment Spirit of Cosmopolitanism: a spirit guided by rational principles applied to political realities on the world stage. Ricoeur postulates the notion of the “happy memory” as a possible outcome of the work of remembering.
Cosmopolitanism, for Kant, was not an obsessive vision or a form of “acting out”, but rather a result of Duty and the Moral Law, both of which embodied logical principles applied to life and events on the world stage, in contexts of explanation/justification. Freud, we know was a follower of Kantian Philosophy, and undoubtedly would have regarded Kant’s view of bringing about a better and brighter future as part of the reality principle and its regulation of the work of the superego. He might, however, have been more sceptical of Kant’s argument, when it extends to the soul writ large, namely the city-state. He was well aware of the role of ought-premises in Kant’s arguments and might not have shared the conviction that rational principles would in the long term future triumph over the historical processes he saw actualising during 1929, the time of the writing of “Civilisation and its Discontents”. It was very clear to Freud that Discontentment was the theme of his Age and the light of the Enlightenment was waning. The idea that Freud, perhaps did not fully appreciate, was the practical idea of freedom which Kant saw to be operating in historical processes. Perhaps one hundred thousand years of the operation of narcissistic historical processes could never in the eagle eye gaze of Freud ever lead to the “happy memory”?
In the context of the above discussion Ricoeur points to what he calls the “heritage of founding violence”(Page 82), i.e. that record of real and symbolic wounds stored in the collective archives of states. Attempts to repress the truth or meaning of these records testifies to the tension the Greeks and all like minded great-souled thinkers after them, experienced in the recorded failures of the historical process, to result in the just exercise of political power. Power and Justice remain, even today, as a nexus or a knot that needs to be disentangled if the thread of history is to reach the Cosmopolitan future promised and hoped for by Kant.
It was John Locke that specifically connected memory to personal identity, thus transforming the essentially Greek question “What is a human being?” to the more modern “Who is the human being?”. Aristotle’s answer to the former question, as we know, was “rational animal capable of discourse”. He gives this answer in a context of a declaration that man can be both the best and the worst of animals. Transposing or transfiguring Aristotle’s question into the Lockean question of the identity of the human being was an epistemological strategy to avoid metaphysical discussion of the aporetic issues involved in this debate. Philosophical Psychology was thus colonised by the empirical theorists and perhaps created difficulties for integrating the result of such an essentially epistemological discussion with wider ethical and historical/political contexts. Focus turned from the faculty of reason to the faculty of sensibility, and the work of imagination/memory. We can of course see the importance of imagination in the earlier mythical narratives of Achilles, Agamemnon, etc, presented by Homer. But these ancient “heroes” were very different kinds of men to the more complex heroes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle , who no longer merely lived passionate “spirited” lives but were also seeking to live “good spirited” lives in which reason ruled. The works of these latter “great-souled men” testify to their character and are far more important than any narrative containing facts and events belonging to their “histories”. These works contain a commitment to rational imperatives such as “Ask of everything what it is in its nature”, and reference is not made to great events, but rather to great theories, great arguments and great principles (such as the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason) embedded in a tribunal constituting a context of explanation/justification.
Epistemology prizes facts and contexts of discovery/exploration, over arguments and contexts of explanation/justification, and this creates real problems in applying the results of epistemological investigations to the wider contexts of ethics and politics which require knowledge of values and knowledge of how to reason about these values. In this context Ricoeur quotes Tzvetan Todorov (Paris, Éditions Arlea, 1995):
“The work of the historian, like every work on the past, never consists solely in establishing the facts but also in choosing certain among them as being more salient and more significant than others, then placing in relation to one another; now this work of selecting and combining is necessarily guided by the search, not for the truth but for the good.”(Page 50)
What is obscure in the above position is, however, the question of how to account for those complex attempts to characterise arguments containing truths about the good, e.g. in Aristotelian and Kantian argumentation in ethical and political contexts. What is interesting about the above essentially modern attempt to widen the scope of the “epistemological reductions”, suggested by the English empiricists, is that it is reminiscent of the Platonic notion of prioritising the good over the true. In this endeavour we can see a vague intention to return to a rational form of argumentation, even if difficulties are then going to occur over the characterisation of what is meant by the fact-value distinction or the fact-normative distinction. Ricoeur does not engage with this debate in this work, but he does disengage himself from empirical views of History by maintaining that memory has a duty. We know that propositions about duties are best expressed in terms of ought-premises, e.g. “Wars ought not to occur”(even if they do). It is important in the context of such debates not to fall into the dualistic trap of romanticising peace and demonising war. Rather we need to reason about the event or the threat of the event in terms of universal moral laws(categorical imperatives). Such reasoning begins with “Wars ought not to occur” and ends with particular “truths” such as “The second World War ought to have been avoided” via of course the premise of “Wars can be avoided”. Other Kantian premises relating to the consequential destruction of resources that could be otherwise used, e.g. for education, could also occur in this tribunal-like reasoning process.
One is reminded here of Arendt’s categorisation of the twentieth century as “This terrible century”. This is what empiricists and some analytical philosophers would call a value-judgement and this is a harmless enough classification, unless it is claimed that because it is a value-judgement, it cannot be true, and is thereby not an objective judgement. The rationalist viewpoint of history and the work of the historian, is that this work must be partly conducted in the spirit of a judge, and partly in the spirit of a scientist searching for the truth of the documents that are assembled in the archives of the city-state. The historian must therefore to some extent be concerned with the restoration of archaic “objects” in the name of what Ricoeur calls “the happy memory”. This of course is not the memory of an individual but rather of a state striving for the virtue of justice. This, as Ricoeur points out, is something that goes far beyond the limits of phenomenology or epistemology. What perhaps is needed is perhaps a return not just to rationalism of the kind practiced by Plato, but a more refined form of rationalism that can be found in Critical and Hylomorphic Philosophy. A form of rationalism that recognises amongst othet things that History is a trans-scientific discipline subject to a number of different kinds of principle.
Ariadne’s Thread connected as it is to a temporal span of time containing a beginning, a middle, and an end which terminates with emergence from the darkness into the light is a wonderful image of a Globalisation process and its progress to the Shakespearean and Kantian end of Cosmopolitanism. Time is an ancient concern and we need Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy to provide a framework for its philosophical characterisation. Aristotles 3 media of change(space, time, and matter), 4 kinds of change, 3 principles of change, four causes of change and three kinds of Science describing and explaining change, is taken up and elaborated upon by Kant during a time when we thought we might be emerging from the labyrinth and catching a glimpse of a better world and our true natures. The Enlightenment promise of the light at the end of the journey through the darkness, aided by the “spirit” of Hegel failed to deliver what was promised. “New men” appeared in the world we call “modern” and created an “Age of Discontentment” that carried us into the “terrible 20th century”.
“Memory, History, Forgetting” is one of Ricoeur’s best works weaving together a large number of historical and Philosophical threads into a royal garment fit for a Philosopher-King. The threads are of two kinds: powerful images and revelatory symbols. These threads stretch back to the Cave of Ariadne and Greek Consciousness but more importantly, in my opinion, they stretch forward to an ideal Aristotelian/Kantian future in which it is suggested all things will be well and all manner of things will be well.
Ricoeur presents us with one of the most powerful images symbolising History : that of Walter Benjamin’s account of Klee’s work “Angelus Novus”:
“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise: it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”(Benjamin, W., “Theses on History”, Illuminations, 253-64. Transl by Zohan, H., Edited by Arendt, H., New York Schocken books, 1969.)
Calling Angelus Novus “a painting” is, of course, stretching the classical concept to breaking point. What we see is, rather, an expressionistic experiment that is attempting to create images on a canvass by a technical process that is not a painting process. We see above Benjamin’s Rorschach-like interpretation of the image, which appears to involve a considerable amount of projection going far beyond the data on the canvas, but which nevertheless appeals to all who live in the Age of Discontentment. Benjamins interpretation is accepted under the warrant of poetic licence, and his words become a symbol of modernism from the 1920’s, along with T S Eliot’s “Waste land” and Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus” which the author claimed was a work containing the “final solution” for the problems of Philosophy.
Eliot in his poem about our unreal cities containing inhabitants whose “nerves are bad tonight” contains no angels, only departed nymphs, rats, the bones of the dead and the dry sound of thunder communicating divine messages. Perhaps Tiresias is Eliot’s Angelus Novus waiting in the underworld for travellers seeking directions. Tiresias needed no wings in his domain. The wreckage of History was of course growing in volume in the eyes of Benjamin. Even Benjamin, the lover and friend of Arendt, would soon be dead bones littering the waste land of the Juggernaut of War. He would supposedly commit suicide as the Nazis were closing in after his Marxist illusions had been shattered by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the terrorism of Stalin.
Wittgensteins Tractatus shattered the Aristotelian and Kantian critical solutions to the problems generated by the “Human Condition” into “logical atoms” which did not allow meaningful discourse on ethics, religion and the human condition in general. This was the era of atom bombs that would be used on defenceless civilian populations in the name of a “final solution” to the Japanese Problem.
Benjamins characterisation of Angelus Novus is a worthy image of history, for us, who live in the Age of Discontentment. Klee’s “angel-image” looks to be a relative of Janus, the Roman God of war, who appeared to be expecting the world to end with a bang and not a whimper: the kind of image suggesting fear in a handful of dust:–all that was left of the “patient aetherised upon a table”. TS Eliot, before the dropping of the atomic bombs, went in search of what Ricoeur would call “happy memory” in his work “Four Quartets”. Transporting us from the Inferno to the Paradiso without stopping for a visit to Purgatoria, the Storm of the future carried Eliot to a peaceful Rose-Garden:–the resting place for angels in 1941. It would be only 4 years to the dropping of the atomic bombs which blew this vision into dust. A purgation by fire:
“Ash on an old man’s sleeve Is all the ash the burnt roses leave. Dust in the air suspended Marks the place where a story ended. Dust inbreathed was a house- The walls, the wainscot and the mouse, The death of hope and despair, This is the death of air.”
The spatio-temporal continuum, paradoxically, is the idea of time that perhaps serves as the best framework in which to answer Kant’s question “What can we hope for?”. The alternative cyclical Heraclitean view of time in which the road to the future is the same as the road to the past reminds one of the Freudian idea of the “compulsion to repeat” that best explains the road from the first world war to the dropping of the atomic bombs. The Logos of this journey is well captured in the final proposition of Wittgensteins Tractatus:
“Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must consign to silence”.
This was the final proposition of the final solution to the problems of Philosophy. On this view the propositions of ethics and religion lack meaning. This work clearly manifests what Heidegger would later refer to as a forgetfulness of being, refusing to contemplate the essential relations between logos and aletheia, which also were consigned to silence. It is certainly ironic that Philosophy, after the presentation of the final solution(in England) would be overshadowed by the Poetry of Eliot until, i.e., Wittgenstein attempted to repair the damage done by correcting his earlier views with later work that would never be published in his lifetime. We know Eliot studied the Philosophy of Bradley at Harvard and this was perhaps the closest he came to confronting directly the Critical Philosophy of Kant. Otherwise it was Dante rather than Greek literature that inspired his poetry.
Critical and hylomorphic Philosophy had their own solutions to the problem of solipsism expressed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Wittgenstein’s later work continued the earlier concern with language and its meaning, but as part of the criticism of his earlier solipsism, grounded language in the Aristotelian idea of forms of life. Language now becomes less a question of “naming” and more a transactional “game”. Saying that one is in pain is now no longer a private affair occurring on the stage of ones own private theatre, it becomes more of a signal to someone to sympathise. This is in line with the Aristotelian essence-specifying definition of human being e.g. rational animal capable of discourse. Sympathy is an important telos for those life forms in pain that can speak:- much more important than a logical/theoretical account of the logical atoms of language. The world, in the later work, is no longer defined in its essence as a totality of facts: forms of life and language-games now become the central focus. Science and logical space are marginalised in favour of Social Science seen from a pragmatic transactional point of view. This was, however, sufficient to open up a life-space for the humanities and Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy could once again breathe freely and speak about ethics, politics, mythology and religion:
“How could human behaviour be described?Surely only by sketching the actions of a variety of humans, as they are all mixed up together. What determines our judgment, our concepts and reactions, is not what one man is doing now, but the whole hurly burly of human actions, the background against we see any action(Zettel 567)
568.Seeing life as a weave, this pattern(pretence, say)is not always complete and is varied in a multiplicity of ways. But we, in our conceptual world, keep on seeing the same, recurring with variations. This is how our concepts take it. For concepts are not for use on a single occasion.(Zettel)
Wittgenstein was himself conscious of the fragmented nature of his later work, complaining about its structure by describing it as an “album of sketches” but he was not prepared to involve himself in the metaphysical disputes involved with ethical, political, and religious theorising. His use of the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason, however, was in many respects very similar to the way in which both Aristotle and Kant used these principles. He acknowledges that his method, for example, has much in common with the method of Kant. There is, however, no metaphysical discussion of the nature of Being or Time, but his idea of language involved the recognition of the differences between the reporting and imperative functions which in turn would have permitted discourse on ethical, political and religious matters. He would not , however as the above quotes from Zettel indicate, look for any meaning or essence, beyond what the grammar of our terms provided us with. In this work he also provides us with an album of sketches related to the terms “imagination” and “remembering”. Here he points out that images are subject to the will and do not tell us anything about the external world. He also claims that when you say to someone that you are imagining something you are sending them a signal(Zettel 108e). For Wittgenstein, images are neither pictures nor hallucinations. The words “I remember us having dinner together” do not, he argues, describe or report the memory but are an expression or transcription of the memory. Here we should remember that, for Wittgenstein, language is merely a sophisticated extension of our instinctive life:–a vicissitude of instinct. It is here however, that, accusations of relativity emerge. Where someone is certain someone else is not, he claims, and this is why our concepts are open ended. Nevertheless the hurly burly of action contains patterns which justify the use of certain concepts, i.e. forms of life are decisive in contexts of explanation and justification.
Ricoeur criticises the Cartesian account of memory and imagination, claiming that on this account, there is a difference between the “I” that remembers and the “I” that imagines. The suggestion of Decartes’ followers and some empiricists was that the “I” that remembers is “affected” by memory, rather than actively involved in the evocation of “memories”. This marginalisation of the function of memory was then counteracted or convoluted by a perspective that bore some relation to Aristotle’s hylomorphic view of remembering, namely, that imagination concerned itself with both phantasy and the fictional, the unreal, in contrast to the real of what is remembered. Ricoeur does not wholly commit himself to this position but does focus on what he calls Aristotle’s lodestar, namely:
“All memory is of the past”(Parva naturalia: On memory and recollection)
The above amounts to an essence-specifying definition of the function of memory and will serve as one foundation of Ricoeur’s account which stretches over the terrain of phenomenology, hermeneutics and eschatology. The Platonic problem of the presence of the absence of something, implying a past which is no longer present, is demystified by the idea of a conscious picture-image. The memory-image is characterised as necessarily pictorial, and this then leaves us with the problem of phenomenologically distinguishing the functions of remembering and imagining. Ricoeur discusses Plato’s account from the Theaetetus at length, and in this discussion it is obvious that Plato is concerned to give a “substantial” account in which the technological art of mimesis has a role to play. The idea, however, of the soul receiving an imprint from its experiences would have been a difficult one to assimilate in Aristotle’s hylomorphic account. This idea connects up to the Platonic idea of a craftsman(demiourgos)at work in relation to our souls: a work which produces a substantial “thing” or entity with certain substantial qualities. Aristotles account of the soul in his later work, however, no longer appears to be in terms of an immaterial substance but rather to be a principle working in the course of an actualisation process to actualise the human powers of discourse and rationality. The Platonic discussion clearly has both materialistic and dualistic elements construing the soul as some kind of immaterial substance connected in some way to the substrate of a body via the relation of “participation”. The idea of a physical “trace” in relation to the activity of the soul involved in “remembering” is left like a question-mark hanging in the air. Later Descartes would locate the “trace” in the pineal gland of the brain thus clearing the way for neuroscientists to speak with authority about neurones and protein networks being facilitated in the memory process.
The Kantian and Aristotelian idea of the self causing itself to do something, e.g. causing itself to choose to go to the agora, is lost in this materialistic jungle of processes and traces. Aristotle, in his reflection on memory in the work cited above, speaks specifically of the memory of the past in the soul distinguishing itself from the presence of future expectation and present sensations/perceptions. We differ from the animals, Aristotle argues, because we “perceive time” and he means by this that we sensibly distinguish a now from before and after. He distinguishes between those humans with retentive memories and those humans who can not recall things easily. He also distinguishes remembering from imagining by referring to the relation of the image recalled to something else that has been experienced in the past. Hallucinatory images are not so related to the past or the future (where the image is of what one intends to do). There is no stable relation to the perception of time when someone is hallucinating, and to that extent this experience constitutes a dream-like sensory landscape. Such images can dissipate as quickly as they are formed, e.g Macbeth’s dagger. They do not endure ,and are in a state of Heraclitean flux, largely beyond the control of the subject. In Aristotle’s terms, such images fail to form memories, i.e. imprint themselves on the material substrate of the soul. A memory-image, then, is very like a photo of which we exclaim “That is him!”. Here we are not dealing with a generic image of a human being. Similarly, expectations may be related to images of the future which, in Wittgenstein’s language, are pictures of what we wish to bring about in the future. If the will is engaged with this image, the reality principle is involved in the experience, if not, and the future is merely wished for as part of a wish fulfilment, it is the pleasure-pain principle that is operative.
Some animals possess memory but animals do not possess the power of recollection. Recollection, Aristotle argues is a kind of inference resulting from a process of investigation. Only rational animals capable of discourse who have the power of deliberation have this power of recollection. This investigation is a kind of search for an image imprinted in a corporeal substrate. Those of melancholic disposition, Aristotle claims, may have difficulty with exercising the power of recollection. Presumably, in such cases energy regulation difficulties make the recollection process difficult for melancholics because the power is conditional upon the capacity to maintain the investigative deliberative process until the “inference” is made. In such souls there may well be a flow of insubstantial images that are directed neither at the past nor at the future: such images are part of the operation of the pleasure-pain principle that underlie fantasy-laden mental activity.
The problem of the will “searching” for a material/mental trace is resolved in Aristotle’s hylomorphism by appealing to the material and efficient conditions or causes(aitia) postulated in explanations that belong in contexts of exploration/discovery. Remembering, or memory, Ricoeur maintains, also relates to formal and final causes(telos) that belong in contexts of explanation/justification. Ricoeur refers to the telos in terms of what he calls “the happy memory” associated with the contentment associated with a formal “inference”.
The “wreckage” confronting Angelus Novus is clearly a symbol of the unhappy memories associated with History and this “work” of art may be as close as one can get to representing the relation of a divine being to History. The “strangeness” of this work may be partially a result of the attempt to represent History as it figures in the world of an infinite being. Only finite beings such as rational animals capable of discourse possess the powers of remembering and recollection. One of the important conditions for the existence of the phenomenon of the “happy memory” is that of the memory being “faithful to the past”. The role of testimony in the authentication of historical accounts is also referred to in Ricoeur’s account. It is the feature of the faithfulness of testimony to the past which Ricoeur connects to the duty we all possess not to forget terrible crimes against humanity. Such faithfulness thus connects to truth (aletheia) which in turn correctly presupposes both the enduring of entities in the stream of experience and the beginning and end of the existence of such entities.
Ricoeur criticises some of the work of Husserl for being committed to the “metaphysics of the present”: a target that Heidegger also aimed at. What is clear is that the Husserlian account of the Lebenswelt and time-consciousness does not fit comfortably with either the Aristotelian or Kantian analyses of sensible memory. Kant, as we have indicated in our previous work(A Philosophical History….vol 4) distinguishes clearly between physical anthropology and pragmatic anthropology. This distinction is of an ontological nature insofar as Psychological reflection is concerned. Kant characterises this distinction in terms of that which happens to man, and that which man makes of himself. The former belongs in the domain of observation by a spectator . The latter requires transcendental accounts that explain and justify, rather than explore and discover. Kant in his work “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”, like Aristotle, places memory and productive imagination in relation to the will but he places the reproductive imagination into a category of “unfaithful” images:images that are not revelatory of anything external to themselves. The degree to which these unfaithful images “play with” the human being is the extent to which that human being’s mind is deranged(either temporarily or permanently). Kant is here presupposing the “faithful” operation of inner intuition or Time which knows the “now” in relation to the before and after.
Historical memory is, of course, related as much to Space as it is to the faithful representation of time. Facts of history are essentially related to Places, and ones knowledge of them. These facts, however, also relate to the actions of significantly located actors, to their decisions, their speeches, their deeds, and and the consequences of all these activities. We are again confronted with that difficult dialectic of events and actions we discussed in Volume 4 of our work “A Philosophical History of Psychology…”. Events appear to be that which necessarily happens to us, whilst actions are, on the other hand, that which the agent does:—each of these alternatives fall on different sides of Kant’s ontological distinction. Observation obviously plays an important role in relation to the consequences of actions and also therefore plays an important role in the conversion of actions into events, but there is nevertheless a residue of meaning that is not quite captured in such transcription. This transcription, Ricoeur argues does not quite know what to do with witnesses and their verbal testimony in relation to recorded events that have become historical under the 30 year rule. Presumably they can be recorded and be referred to in 30 years time, but this does appear to limit somewhat attempts to historically justify the occurrence of “terrible” events such as crimes against humanity. There is no doubt that that we see the testimony of victims as a moral explanation and moral “evidence”, but in the end the historian must refer back to faithful documents in archives rather than the truth of the statements being made in the public domain now. This is one reason why legal prosecution of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity are so important . Such trials produce “faithful” documents for the archives. There are certain things which mankind has a duty not to forget.
Where events and actions occur they are as important in History as the date at which they occurred, because such knowledge also plays a role in the search for further evidence if it is needed. The “fictional” character of myth may be connected to this lack of connection with Place, relying as it sometimes does on a belief expressed by “Once upon a time”. Such displaced narratives fail to become “faithful” documents, and become curiosities. Homers account of the deeds of Agamemnon and Achilles long remained a curiosity until archeology uncovered evidence that the places referred to in Homers narratives, actually existed. Achilles was a real hero of his time and Agamemnon was a real and powerful King that are now part of our Historical space-time continuum.
Ricoeur discusses Aristotle’s Poetics in relation to Historical memory. He argues that History is related to recollection and involves attaching “pure memory” to images: a process that involves the establishment of the faithful images in a present, thus converting the image into an operation resembling perception.(Page 52) Fiction, Ricoeur argues, is a narrative that occurs in accordance with some kind of contract between the writer of a text and a reader which involves a de-realisation of the images therein: an agreement that suspends belief in the reality of the verbal expression of these “images”. Ricoeur elaborates upon this point in relation to Bergsons account imagination and remembering:
“At one end: “To imagine is not to remember. No doubt a recollection as it becomes actual, tends to live in an image: but the converse is not true, and the image, pure and simple, will not be referred to the past unless, it was in the past that I sought it, thus following the continuing progress which brought it from darkness into light”(Page 52)
Fiction is thus distinguishable from History but it does not, Ricoeur argues, fall into the same category as hallucination. In hallucination there is no willed intention, as Aristotle put the matter, of “placing before the eyes”–a process that makes absent things visible. Kant will claim in relation to hallucination that the image “happens” to the subject and it will endure just so long as a cognitive activity does not replace it, e.g. Macbeth’s dagger. Hallucinatory daggers owe their existence to seismic events occurring in a stratum of the mind over which we have no direct control. Macbeth’s reaction: “Is this a dagger I see before me?” is a question that begins a cognitive process that sets off in search of the reality of the dagger. The vision of the dagger, for Kant, is an event of the reproductive imagination steered by the energy regulation principle, whilst the motor response of attempting to grab the dagger, is a voluntary willed action steered by the reality principle. The surprise involved at the failure to complete the action involves also the pleasure-pain principle which ends in the judgement: “There is no dagger before me!”
This first chapter has been Ricoeur’s response to the epistemological dilemmas occurring in relation to imagining and remembering. The following chapters will widen his concern into pragmatic and eschatological issues.
Objects exist and we can sense them, think about them, and the relation between them, and reason about them. The relation, however, between an objects existence and the activities of sensing them, thinking about them and reasoning about them, is a complex one that Kant believes neither common sense nor the rationalism and empiricism of his day can fathom. The ancient Greeks did not speak about reality in these terms. It has been noted, too, that the Latinisation of Greek Culture and Greek Philosophy transformed the term “hypokeimonon” into subjektum. This together with the translation of “ousia (primary being) into substantia set the stage for an epistemological interpretation of the being that underlies all appearance and all knowledge of it. Kant’s Copernican Revolution is an attempt to restore our relation to Being and give an account of that which remains the same throughout change: the enduring subject. This account takes the form of a metaphysical/transcendental inquiry in which the existence of reality is neither assumed by the subject nor constituted by the subject characterised by Kant in terms of the faculties of sensibility, understanding and reason. This is clearly neither a realist nor an idealist position and perhaps is best construed as an elaboration upon Aristotelian hylomorphism.
The First Critique is a paradoxical work in that it provides us with a very technical abstract account of experience (concepts and intuitions), but it nevertheless is very concerned to limit metaphysical speculation by principles of experience. Kant criticises all principles that transcend any possible experience, especially principles purporting to be rational. Experience is, of course, broadly defined, and includes not just what happens to us but also what we do, e.g. thinking. Insofar as we are dealing with the latter notion of experience, Kant focuses upon my understanding of reality in terms of the “I think”. In the course of the examination of the first person case of thinking the focus is upon not my sensory encounters with reality but rather my understanding of what is encountered–an understanding that is concerned with objects that:
“render intelligible the objective validity of its a priori concepts”(Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Trans, Kemp Smith, N., London, Macmillan, 1929, P.12)
In this form of examination there is also a rejection of reference to examples which appeal to the faculty of Sensibility and a verdict in favour of conceptual clarity and distinctness. Concepts are a form of general principle and determine, therefore, the way in which an object is thought about. Logic is an important tool in Kant’s investigation and is applicable in both theoretical and practical forms of reasoning. The telos of these forms of reasoning is either epistemé (knowledge) or making something ( the object of the thought) actual. Galileo, Torricelli and Stahl are cited as examples of scientists who refused to be led by natures leading strings, and instead forced nature to answer questions formulated in a tribunal of reason. The tools of judges in such a tribunal are both logical reasoning and the experiment. The procedure of the tribunal ought to provide a guideline for metaphysical reflection (The Queen of the Sciences):
“Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts have, on this assumption ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.”(P.22)
This is the famous “Copernican Revolution” initiated by Kant, and the difference between his Critical Philosophy and Aristotle’s hylomorphic Philosophy may be seen in Kant’s focus upon the idea of an object. This focus was a reflection of the epistemological discussions of his era– a discussion which , prior to Kant, disregarded the earlier integration of epistemological and metaphysical issues we encounter in Aristotle. Kant’s “destruction” of the metaphysical projects of his times aimed at a better integration of these two perspectives. Kant’s “revolution” also required a division of the mind into the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason, and this in turn also encouraged a focus upon objects and what we can know of them via observation and experiment as well as what we can know of them via a priori knowledge. Objects. concepts, and principles are a reflection, then, of the activity of the above faculties but the focus upon the object is also an important consequence of Kant’s emphasis upon the importance of the principles of experience in his Philosophy. A priori knowledge was another important emphasis and also necessary to give an exhaustive account of scientific activity and theory in terms of the principle of sufficient reason. Kant criticises the metaphysical tendency to abandon all contact with experience and insists upon the role of the understanding and transcendental structures of the mind in determining what is possible, actual and necessary in experience. Critical thinking, then uses the principles of noncontradiction in the following manner:
“For what necessarily forces us to transcend the limits of experience and of all appearances is the unconditioned which reason by necessity and by right demands in things as required to complete the series of conditions. If, then, on the supposition that our empirical knowledge conforms to objects as things in themselves, we find that the unconditioned cannot be thought without contradiction and that when, on the other hand, we suppose that our representations of things as they are given to us, does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but that these objects as appearances, conform to our mode of representation, the contradiction vanishes…..(P.22)
This mode of representation can be intuitive or conceptual dependent upon the faculty of mind involved and dependent upon the nature of the experience. The above makes it clear why sensibility or intuition as such is not co-extensive with what is real (in-itself). Kant will later claim that sensibility plays an important role in what we regard as “empirically real”. Kant further insists that things-in-themselves, as a consequence, cannot be known but that we can, however, think about them and reflect upon them.
The discussion of Practical Reasoning also confirms the above conclusion of theoretical thinking but its focus is upon action and the will that motivates it:
“there is no contradiction in supposing that one and the same will is, in the appearance, that is, in its visible acts, necessarily subject to the law of nature, and so far not free, while yet as belonging to a thing-in-itself, it is not subject to that law, and is therefore free.”(P.28)
So, we cannot know that we are free but are able to think this idea of practical reason, and it is critical for Kant’s ethical theory that this be so, because otherwise there would be no metaphysics of morals: merely a theory representing the determining causes of action. We must, Kant insists, ask not for the law-like causes of action, but rather for the reasons for action. Kant’s theory has distinct advantages over analytical theories which flatly reject the Aristotelian postulate that all human activities aim at the good, and probably also the Aristotelian claim that we praise people for the good that they do and blame them for the harm they cause by not doing what they ought to do. Unless, as Kant claims, freedom of choice trumped being caused to do these same things, praise and blame would be meaningless. There would be no general attitude in which people expected other people to do what they ought to do. On analytical views where the world is defined as the totality of facts, everything that is done is merely a fact, and there would be little point in praising anyone for anything–we do not praise reality for being what it is and not something else. Perhaps our regret or joy would then focus on the cause or causal chain that brought the event of the action about (and the associated “sensations”). For many analytical philosophers, the cause and the effect are neither logically nor conceptually connected and this leaves us in contexts of explanation with the refuge of many empiricists, the so-called “law of association”. Many attempts to construct psychological theories from such unlikely elements have been attempted, including the theory of the pragmatist, (and enemy of metaphysics), William James. Paradoxically, however, James’ definition of Psychology might have been found acceptable by the targets of his attacks (e.g. Aristotle and Kant):
“The Science of Mental Life, both its phenomena and conditions.”(Principles of Psychology, James, W, New York, Dover Publications, 1890, P.1)
James’ pragmatism is, however, grounded in materialism as is evident in his interpretation of the conditions of mental life:
“The experiences of the body thus are one of the conditions of the faculty of memory being what it is. And a very small amount of reflection on the facts shows that one part of the body, namely, the brain, is the part whose experiences are directly concerned.”(P.4)
One of the major laws of brain functions is of course the “law of association”. Given James’ admission that the boundary-line of the mental is obscure, and also his claim that:
“a certain amount of brain physiology may be presupposed as included in Psychology”( P.5)
we can but wonder whether the stage is not being prepared for another act in the drama or dance of the materialists and the dualists. James, however, mysteriously defines association in the following way:
“Association, so far as the word stands for an effect between things thought of—it is things, not ideas, which are associated in the mind….And so far as association stands for a cause, it is between processes in the brain–it is these which by being associated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be thought.”( P.554)
The only “things” in the brain, however, are neurones, and these are either connected with each other or not in various networks. We should recall that Psychological theory concerns itself with learning and one physiological definition of learning is:
“The facilitation of neuronal pathways such that, as a result, a type of experience is present that was not present before.”
James takes the example of a child reaching for the attractive stimulus of the light of a candle and as a consequence burning his fingers. The motor activity and the consequent sensation of pain (response) are associated in a network that now prevents the completion of the reflexive reaction to the light. A question that might arise here, given James’ earlier reflection is: “Is pain a thing?” It surely is an experience, but it is an experience that is undergone and the question then becomes whether the reflex operation of reaching for the candle is an experience? John Dewey in his work “Art as Experience”(Dewey, J., New York, Capricorn Books, 1958) defined experience both in terms of what is undergone, and in terms of what is done. The OED in its turn, defines experience as “practical contact with facts and events”, and this suggests that both sensory and motor events can be elements of experience. Yet in terms of the above quote by James, we still remain sceptical about the claim that a pain can be a thing. It certainly can be a fact, but it is not a fact that I observe in the normal case of my experience of pain. I can observe “things” and order them in causal networks. The act of reaching, and the feeling of pain, however, are not “things”, but the one event certainly causes the other, and the child would not have been transformed by the experience unless the events occurred in the context of a principle that prevented the effect of pain upon the next encounter with the exciting stimulus. Surely, one can insist, it is this kind of principle that we ought to be reflecting upon in a work entitled “Principles of Psychology”.
For Kant, pain is certainly something that we undergo and it is part of the activity of the faculty of sensibility which ought to be accounted for under the heading of “Physical Anthropology”. It is, however, “Pragmatic Anthropology”, Kant insists, that concerns itself with what we do and the principles behind what we do. In Kant’s view the ontological distinction between what we do and what we undergo is a key distinction that ought to be observed, and these ought also to be the concern of different disciplines. In Modern Philosophical Psychology, as we have seen, in our previous reflections on the History of Psychology, the sensation emerged as the postulated fundamental element of psychic life and consciousness. We argued that this was probably the result of materialist tendencies wishing to “atomise” and wishing to reduce the psychic whole to more comprehensible elements.
Merleau-Ponty, (MP) in a work entitled “Phenomenology of Perception.”(Trans Smith, C., London, Routledge, 1962) comments on the tendency to focus upon sensation:
“if we try to seize sensation within the perspective of the bodily phenomena which pave the way to it, we find not a psychic individual, a function of certain known variables, but a formation already bound up with a larger whole, already endowed with a meaning distinguishable only in degree from the more complex perceptions.”(P.10)
The brain, MP argues, is not a collection of contents (“things”) or facts, Rather its structures are ordered in terms of psychological functions or principles. The system of sensations of colour, for example, belong to a more comprehensive life-structure such that:
“The destruction of sight, whatever the injuries be sustained, follows the same law: all colours are affected in the first pace, and lose their saturation. Then the spectrum is simplified being reduced to four and soon to two colours: finally a monochrome grey stage is reached, although the pathological colour is never identifiable with any normal one.Thus in central as in peripheral lesions the loss of nervous substance results not merely in a deficiency of certain qualities but in the change to a less differentiated and more primitive structure. Conversely, normal functioning must be understood as a process of integration in which the text of the external world is not so much copied as composed”(P.10)
MP goes on to claim that physiological events obey biological and psychological laws. He does not however name these laws in the way Freud does. Freud regards the state of homeostasis the brain strives for, a result of the operation of the Energy Regulation Principle(ERP). This is the most primitive brain function for Freud. The next level up in the hierarchy concerns the psychological functioning of the entire organism and this occurs under the auspices of the Pleasure-pain Principle(PPP). It is at this level that the faculty of sensibility becomes the focus of attention for the Psychologist. Finally we arrive at the Reality Principle(RP) which governs the most complex aspects of mental functioning for human forms of life. This is the Kantian realm of the understanding/reason which for Freud is the field of operation for the agencies of the ego and superego. James does not directly appeal to any of these principles or laws but rather to the law of association between things, and the causal relations between them, thus succumbing to the reductionist strategies of the materialistically minded empiricists that MP, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein rejected so convincingly. James does, however mitigate his empiricism with an interesting definition of the Mental:
“The pursuance of future ends and the choice of the means for their attainment are thus the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon.”(P.8)
Here James is concerning himself not with the conditions, but with the phenomena to be studied and it is in this arena that he is at his best. In the above quote there is allusion to the Greek idea of telos, and by implication, an appeal to areté, since he goes on to evoke the idea of “intelligence” to explain what is meant by the above definition. This, however, if anything, is a narrowing (from a Kantian point of view) of what initially looked like a practical concern, to a theoretical concern, and it might be related to the earlier discussion of the laws of association in which “ideas” were replaced by “objects”. Of course there is no conceivable representation of an “association-relation” between ideas unless one “mechanises” what is essentially a logical or thought-relation. Perhaps such a concentration upon the condition of the possibility of experiencing an object is useful in the scientific process of exploration/discovery, but given the hypothetical nature of such activity, it would be problematic to characterise what is going on here as determined by a law or a principle. Such activity might assist us in the discovery of a law or principle but cannot itself be characterised as such. Moreover the unity of the “I think” we find in Kantian Critical Philosophy is missing from the account James provides us with. James, for example, claims that there is no unity of the self because we are constituted of a number of different selves and different kinds of self. This is empiricism at its most extreme. Once the unity of something that remains the same throughout myriad changes is compromised, the chances of producing a unified theory of Psychological Principles is diminished significantly. The pluralistic pragmatism James espouses is anti-metaphysical, and this is one explanation behind the move to give concrete and materialistic accounts of the conditions of phenomena. James’ discussion of the phenomenon of the “spiritual” self becomes puzzling and appears dualistic. We should recall that when the dualist Descartes was forced to answer mind-body relation questions he retreated to the materialist explanation of “brain activity”.
The Kantian metaphysical/transcendental investigation into the conditions of experience rests upon a priori knowledge in the form of intuitive representations (space and time) and the form of of the categorical framework of conceptualisation. James was familiar with this account and rejected it, but his grounds for doing so were unclear. In his work on Pragmatism we encounter an objection to metaphysics that, on inspection, turns out to be not a criticism of the Kantian account, but rather a criticism relating to a conceptual dispute over whether to say someone is circumambulating a squirrel when the squirrel is adjusting its position out of sight as we are circumambulating the tree in order to catch sight of it. This does not resemble the metaphysical disputes we usually encounter in criticisms of the major metaphysical systems of Aristotle and Kant. In his work on Pragmatism there is a reference to G K Chesterton, and James praises him for his claim that the most important thing about a man is his view of the universe. It is a pity that James did not pay attention to Chesterton’s fence-principle, which urges those who wish to tear down a fence to first ask themselves why the fence was built where it stands. James, however, is not alone in systematically ignoring metaphysical and transcendental logic in his Psychological and Philosophical investigations. Indeed it is almost a defining feature of our modern era that thinkers embrace some form of this anti-metaphysical attitude. Phenomenological thinkers, e.g. Husserl, believed, that one should abstract from the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason in order to “represent things as they are in themselves.” Many modern thinkers, would also object to the claim in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, that:
“We are in possession of certain modes of a priori knowledge, and even the common understanding is never without them.”(P.43)
The notion of cause, is an example of a priori knowledge that we impose upon representations as a category when we conceptualise experience. This category also contains, Kant argues, a relation to the modality of the necessary: a relationship Hume (the believer in the law of association) denied. Hume claimed, that we become acquainted with the idea of cause through the repeated association of causes and effects. Kant rejects this on the grounds that the mechanism of association could never produce the modality of necessity that is attached to causal judgements. Such judgements, Kant argues, cannot be negated without violation of the principle of noncontradiction and these judgements are further characterised by Kant as synthetic a priori judgements which he claims forms the nucleus of metaphysical investigations:
“Metaphysics, even if we look upon it as having hitherto failed in all its endeavours, is yet, owing to the nature of human reason, a quite indispensable science, and ought to contain a priori synthetic knowledge. For its business is not merely to analyse concepts which we make for ourselves a priori of things and thereby to clarify them analytically, but to extend our a priori knowledge. And for this purpose we must employ principles which add to the given concept something that was not contained in it… This metaphysics consists at least in intention, entirely of a priori synthetic propositions.”(P.54-5)
Kant then takes up a discussion relating to how such synthetic a priori judgements are possible. He points out that Hume did not realise that the propositions of Mathematics are synthetic a priori (e.g. the shortest distance between two points is a straight line). Had he realised this fact, Kant continues, he might have realised the importance of metaphysics for philosophical investigations. He would, that is, have realised the importance of the faculty of reasoning and its use of the principles of a priori knowledge. Kant also defines the transcendental in terms of reason:
“I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects insofar as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori.”(P.59)
The principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason are, then, the substantial core of transcendental knowledge. The role of experience in this context has two aspects and depends upon whether the part of the mind involved in the experience is the faculty of sensibility or the faculty of understanding. If it is the former:
“In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes place only so far as the object is given to us. This again is only possible to man at least, in so far as the mind is affected in a certain way.”(P.65)
Kant also claims, in hylomorphic spirit, that sensation is the matter, and that which is responsible for ordering all representations into a unity is a “form”(principle). Sensibility, for Kant, has both an inner and an outer aspect. Outer sense enables us to represent objects outside of us in space (a form of outer intuition). Inner sense, on the other hand, is ordered in Time and this is an a priori form(principle) which underlies all kinds of representation. The key Aristotelian notion of change, for Kant, is only possible via the a priori inner intuition of Time.
MP argues that Time is:
“the most general characteristic of psychic facts.”(P.476)
and even though we are aware of the fact that events occur in time, they nevertheless, according to both Kant and MP presuppose Time as a necessary condition of experience. Moreover:
“The events are shapes cut out by a finite observer for the spatio-temporal totality of the objective world.”(P.477)
This also applies to the activity of observation. The Kantian ship, for example, steaming down the river, cannot be divided up into events in proximity to each other. Neither can this experience be reduced to a series of “Nows” juxtaposed and tied together by some form of causality. The subject that “constitutes” time in the Kantian sense does so, MP argues, not by projection of memories into the future but via a network of intentions operating continuously throughout a “lived” process centred in the present. MP characterises the role of Time in experience in terms of the “Logos of the Aesthetic world”(P.498).
Aristotle, on the other hand, defines Time as “the measure of motion in terms of before and after”. The advantage of such a definition is that it places man in an active role as a measurer existing continuously, not in a series of juxtaposed “nows”, but as something that endures through change and moreover measures this change in terms of before and after–making the “now” a nothing–a mere point or boundary between these aspects of change. In terms of Aristotle’s categories, Time is a Quantity that is related to any enduring entity capable of initiating any change witnessed . This entity is also something that itself is capable of changing. As something capable of changing, e.g. acquiring a sun tan, material and efficient causes/explanations will be appropriately appealed to. If we are dealing only with the “logos of the Aesthetic world” as MP maintains and Kant suggests in his claim that no judgements of the understanding are involved in intuitive representations, then Mathematics in its use of number may be a science dedicated to the measurement of the aesthetic world and “counting” may be an activity that primarily involves the faculty of sensibility.
Thought about objects, for Kant, is a function of the faculty of understanding which uses concepts that provide us with a power to know objects. In the context of knowledge both sensibility and understanding are equally important, and the role of reason is that of an organiser of the categories of the understanding/judgement in knowledge systems, e.g. the sciences. Logic is the science that we use to explain/justify our claims at many different levels of thought:
“Logic again, can be treated in a twofold manner either as the logic of the general or as the logic of the special employment of the understanding. The former contains the absolutely necessary rules of thought without which there can be no employment whatever of the understanding. It therefore treats of understanding without any regard to the difference in the objects to which the understanding may be directed. The logic of the special employment of the understanding contains the rules of correct thinking as regards certain kinds of objects.” (P.93)
The general employment of logic uses the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason (pure a priori principles). Mathematics and the Natural Sciences are examples of knowledge systems that focus on different objects. Number, for example, focuses upon Time, and its relation to change-in-general, and Natural Science investigates the efficient and material causes of the physical changes we see in the natural world: a world that contains inorganic stars ( df= gravitationally bound balls of hydrogen and helium made self fluorescent by internal nuclear fusion) and organic life forms(psuche). Similarly different kinds of objects will be focussed upon in the practical and productive sciences as defined by Aristotle. Psychology is specifically mentioned by Kant in this discussion:
“General logic is called applied when it is directed to the rules of the employment of the understanding under the subjective empirical conditions dealt with by Psychology.”(P.94)
Psychology as a discipline also makes an appearance in contexts of practical reasoning where we are dealing with both pure and applied ethics. Pure ethics relates to the constitution of the moral law by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Applied ethics, on the other hand, is concerned with the limitations placed upon moral action by feelings, inclinations and passions. The activities of praising and blaming moral agents for their possession or lack of possession of the virtues is the empirical aspect of moral understanding. Insofar as rational demonstration or justification of an action is concerned this can only occur in deliberations in which principles relate to the moral law: it cannot occur in relation to the pluralistic sphere of the many and various virtues. In this context Kantian ethical theory is an elaboration upon and improvement of Aristotles pluralistic virtue theory.
The role of transcendental logic in Kant’s Critical Philosophy is partly as a regulator of the categories, and relates to the non empirical a priori origin of knowledge, its scope and validity. Insofar as experiential judgements are concerned, the role of transcendental logic relates to both the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason. In a discussion on the Nature of Truth, Kant adopts a position similar to that of Aristotle when he claims that a general definition of Truth cannot be given because truth claims carry specific reference to specific objects. Kant agrees, however, that we can “nominally” say that Truth is the agreement of knowledge with its object, but given the different realms of knowledge no universal formula is possible, and insofar as we attempt to apply the principle of sufficient reason, this is also limited to specific realms and their differing objects. Logic, insofar as it relates to the categories of the understanding, however, provides us with both universal and necessary rules, and here we use logic in its “special use”: a use which includes an understanding of the a priori elements of Space and Time. Kant calls the abuse of logic its dialectical use and he refers to this as “the logic of illusion”(P.99). The role of the concept in this system is clearly defined:
“concepts rest on functions. By “function” I mean the unity of the act of bringing various representations under one common representation.”(P.105)
Concepts are then used in judgements which have the structure of thinking something about something (a representation of a representation). Concepts are not in immediate relation to objects in the way intuitions are. They are, rather, that which we use to think about intuitive representations and they can also form conceptual and logical relations with each other in accordance with categories and principles. Pure concepts abstract from the content of judgement and form 12 logical kinds in accordance with 4 groups of categories. The most important question to ask in this context is “With what right is the concept used?” In other words, what is the justification for the use of the concept in the judgement. Kant calls this a quaestio juris, and distinguishes this type of question from one in which the answer expected is factual.
Consciousness as a phenomenon does make an appearance in Kant’s first Critique in the context of the deduction of the concepts of understanding:
“Intuitions are nothing to us, and do not in the least concern us if they cannot be taken up into consciousness, in which they may participate either directly or indirectly. In this way alone is any knowledge possible. We are conscious a priori of the complete identity of the self in respect of all representations which can ever belong to our knowledge, as being a necessary condition of the possibility of all representations.”(P.141-2)
This is Kant’s version of the more general Aristotelian principle of change whereby something endures throughout the change: if this change is to be understood and explained. Kant goes on to say that it is appearance of reality combined with this consciousness that produces Perception.(P.143). He further claims in a footnote:
“Psychologists have hitherto failed to realise that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.”.
It is the imagination that synthesises representations into the form of an image, which is the schema of the concept. In this context Kant speaks of the role of association not as a law but as a power of the faculty of Sensibility. This power rests upon the power of the mind to both synthesise and connect representations in an “abiding and unchanging I”(P.146). Once this power is exercised, a further power of the understanding in the form of the use of the categories is, then, also needed to provide the unity in experience required for knowledge. It is this combination of powers that allows us to view nature as law-governed. The activity of connecting or combining concepts, however, is not a matter for the sensible power of the imagination, but is rather an “affair of the understanding”(P.154), There is a difficulty which Kant acknowledges concerning the nature of the relation between the I that is conscious of itself (intuits itself) and the I that thinks (combines and connects concepts in thought). Kant points out that there is no difficulty in representing oneself as an object of intuition and inner perception. The “I” that thinks, on the other hand, is not a representation of an appearance but rather a representation of my existence. This is the region in which the difficult realm of knowledge of myself dwells. Kant is, in the context of this discussion, pointing to a distinction between the “phenomenal” self that “appears” in intuitions and an existential self which is not the same as the “noumenal” self and is the focus of activity in ethical action and reflection. All three notions of the self (phenomenal self, existential self, noumenal self) are aspects of the self-in-general that the Delphic Oracle had in mind when she challenged humanity with the imperative “Know Thyself!”. Kant insists that we cannot know ourselves except through the categories, judgements and intuitions of myself and my powers. The role of Judgement in the triumvirate of the higher faculties of knowledge (understanding, judgement and reason), is to decide whether something does or does not accord with a category and will therefore use special rather than general logic in an investigation that is in accord with the principle of sufficient reason. This opens up a space for the use of transcendental logic which will focus both on the category involved and an example that correctly exemplifies the category. The role of reason in this triumvirate is to be:
“the faculty of principles”(P.301)
The Principles of Logic, for example enable us to generate knowledge from a special principle, e.g. “All men are mortal”. The reasoning process in this case is familiar:
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Both the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason are at work in the operation of the above deduction. But the ultimate task of reason is to provide us with the totality of conditions for phenomena and also to focus on what is unconditioned. Kant gives us a very illuminating example of the use of reason by Plato to illustrate both the scope and limits of reason:
“Plato made use of the expression “idea” in such a way as quite evidently to have meant by it something which not only can never be borrowed from the senses but far surpasses even the concepts of understanding (with which Aristotle occupied himself), inasmuch as in experience nothing is ever to be met with that is coincident with it. For Plato, ideas are archetypes of the things themselves, and not, in the manner of the categories, merely keys to possible experiences. In his view they have issued from the highest reason.”(P.310)
Kant continues:
“Plato found the chief instance of his ideas in the field of the practical, that is, in what rests upon freedom which in its turn rests upon modes of knowledge that are a peculiar product of reason.Whoever would derive the concepts of virtue from experience and make (as many have actually done) what at best can only serve as an example in an imperfect kind of exposition, into a pattern from which to derive knowledge, would make of virtue something which changes according to time and circumstance…On the contrary as we are all aware, if anyone is held up as a pattern of virtue, the true original with which we compare the alleged pattern and by which alone we judge of its value is to be found only in our minds.”(P.311)
Sensibility, and Human Nature in general, which Kant elsewhere characterises as prone to antagonism because of a desire to rule himself as he wishes and obey the rule of others only when he wishes, is an obstacle in the way of the achievement of the archetypal idea of virtue (areté). At the level of judgement, virtue or areté is characterised in action-terms as “doing the right thing in the right way at the right time” but at the level of reason, virtue is characterised in terms of the three formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Kant, as is the case with Aristotle, extends his account of practical reasoning from the realm of ethics to that of Politics:
“A constitution allowing the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with laws by which the freedom of each is made to be consistent with that of all others—I do not speak of the greatest happiness for this will follow of itself–at any rate a necessary idea, which must be taken as fundamental not only in first projecting a constitution but in all its laws”(P.312)
This projected perfect state of affairs of course does not, strictly speaking, exist, and will not do so, Kant argues, for another 100,000 years. One of the obstacles in the way of the actualisation of this perfect state of affairs is mans nature: man is a being, Kant argues, in need of a Master in his current pre-rational state, but there is ambivalence in his attitude toward living in a society because he also desires to live as an individual free of all ties, deciding for himself in accordance with his own selfish idea of “The Good”(The Good-for-himself). In this “primitive” state there still exists a moral disposition urging him toward good deeds but this disposition will not be transformed into an absolutely good will until the moral law becomes a dominating force in this species defined by Aristotle as “rational animal capable of discourse”. Until man becomes more rational, wars will continue to plunge us back into primitive states of nature. Eventually, however, a combination of catastrophic experiences and rationality will allow a moral disposition to mature into the good will required by the Categorical Imperative. This in turn will have consequences for the societies man dwells in and a so-called “kingdom of ends” will supervene in which the laws will be fully rational: man will treat man as an end-in-itself, and maxims of action be willed to be universal laws. Societies, that is, will transcend earlier stages of civilisation and culture. This is “the hidden plan” (Kant’s Political Writings, Ed. Reiss, H., Cambridge, CUP, 1970 “Idea for a Universal History”, P.50) of nature that is operative in human history. The Enlightenment in general, and Kant’s work in particular raised the idea of freedom to a central place in the march of History in accordance with this “hidden plan” and this has been a central theme of the 4 volumes of this work. The Globalisation process and its end-state, Cosmopolitanism, where all races and notions are integrated, perhaps not geographically, but morally, may well have been submerged by the tsunami of totalitarianism in the 20th century. One century, however, in a span of 100,000 years is merely a temporary setback for “the hidden plan”. Three generations of the 20th century experienced two world wars and a cold war before a light appeared at the end of the 20th century tunnel and the journey toward Cosmopolitanism continued ( very tentatively). The idea of the end of Cosmopolitanism is largely the result of the work of three thinkers, e.g. Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, but many other thinkers have contributed toward the idea of the archetype of the ideal society. All three thinkers, for example, consistently criticise the empirical tendency to deduce what ought to be done in the name of morality from the experience of what is done. One cannot jump in logic from an is-judgement to an ought- judgement without presuming a major ought-premise which manifests a principle relating to an archetypal idea or action in ethics or politics. All three thinkers also see Education as a necessary condition of moral and political action, and all three thinkers see the Law as something freely constituted by the rational activity of man. Laws must meet the criteria of justice demanded by Glaucon in the opening books of the Republic, namely that justice be both what is good in itself and what is good in its consequences. Other virtues such as wisdom, honesty, self control, magnanimity etc also need to meet Glaucons criteria.
In practical reasoning we see reason relating not to the objects of sensibility but to concepts and the categories of the understanding and judgement. Kant argues in this context that the metaphysics of critical philosophy ought to deal not only with freedom but also with immortality of the soul and God, as well as the complex of relations that exist between these ideas.
Psychology again emerges as a theme of the first Critique in relation to the concept/judgement “I think” which Kant connects to the understanding and conscious thought. Kant categorises this kind of reflection as “Rational Psychology”. Thinking something about something whether that be as banal as “Socrates is a man” or thinking the “I” as (an immaterial) substance is attributed to what Kant terms “personality”( rather than “intelligence”). Personality is the bearer of both lower psychological and higher mental powers (cf O Shaughnessy’s ontology). The cogito argument is the starting point for rational psychology which, for Kant, but not for Descartes, extends into a categorical framework for all thought. The first consequence of this Kantian account is the proposition claiming that the I is an absolute subject, substance, or principle of thought. This substance or principle is furthermore that which endures throughout processes of change. There can be no trace of sensibility or intuition in the characterisation of this thinking I, and as a consequence:
“We do not have and cannot have any knowledge whatsoever of any such subject. Consciousness is, indeed, that which alone makes all representations to be thoughts, and in it, therefore as the transcendental subject, all our perceptions must be found; but beyond this logical meaning of the “I”, we have no knowledge of the subject in itself, which as substratum underlies this “I” as it does all thought.(P.334)
Beyond reference to the categories there is nothing more to say about the “I” and the form of consciousness Kant is speaking about here is:
“Self consciousness in general is therefore the representation of that which is the condition of all unity and is unconditional.”(P.365)
Rational Psychology, therefore, will contain no empirical predicates asserted of the soul, and will in no sense be doctrinal, but merely serve as a discipline assisting us in avoiding the rocks of materialism and the sandbanks of dualism. Personality theory is here being theoretically presented as a theory of the soul, and no reference is intended to the body or the nature of the relation between the body and the soul. In this sense it conforms to the requirements of transcendental reflection, and is only substantial in the sense of being a principle. A principle can only have an abstract timeless relation to what it constitutes or regulates. If, then, the soul is a principle and is timeless, this is the respect in which it is immortal. In this case “immortal” merely means “not mortal” in the categorical sense of not belonging to the category of mortal things. Rational psychology, then obviously deals with the intelligible world to the exclusion of the ever-changing fluxions of the sensible world in which boats steam downstream and befores are transformed into afters by the time constituting intelligible subject or personality. Even as a sensible being occupying the sensible world, this sensible “I” legislates by ordering world-phenomena into a spatio-temporal framework. Kant’s Copernican revolution thus reaches down into the depths of the “logos of the aesthetic world”. Even at the level of the act of apperception that unites representations into a timeless concept there is an I functioning as a principle. The “I think” that legislates for the intelligible world of thought, however, is closer to the noumenal supersensible that lies at the source of our moral personality. We see this I at work in the world via the medium of action embedded in a framework of “Reason-Action-Consequence”(RAC). In such contexts the I-principle formulates maxims which are constituted by the categorical imperative: the action and consequences that follow upon this rational law are logically and conceptually linked.
Modern Psychological Theory systematically ignored the moral aspect of personality presented in Kant’s “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”. The term “pragmatic” connoted for Kant two ontological aspects: a concern for what man makes of himself via his actions and deeds, and a concern for what nature makes of man. In the former case we are dealing with a telos of uniting the citizens of the world into a cosmopolitan unity.
Eysenck’s personality theory is a good example of a theoretical account of the human being based on biological descriptions and explanations of what nature makes of man. References to genetics, the sympathetic nervous system and testosterone occur in a spirit of materialism and atomism. The personality traits that Eysenck delineates in his matrix are all innately determined and peripherally influenced by environmental factors. The human and moral dimension of a man making something of himself, e.g. doing his duty, telling the truth, and becoming a citizen of the world, are not directly the concern of Eysenck’s theory. What we are presented with is, rather, a trait theory that is built upon the obscure foundations of materialistic and atomistic energy regulation principles and pleasure-pain principles. The moral personality is atomised into a number of traits whose relation to the “I” is obscure and whose relation to each other is largely determined by a position in a matrix.
Freudian trait theory may be rooted in Biology (oral, anal, phallic, genital) but these characteristics were embedded in a developmental hylomorphic actualisation process in accordance with Principles (ERP,PPP,RP) which are operating in humanistic contexts such as a children identifying with parents and authority figures. There is, therefore, no inherent difficult for Freudian theory to engage in criticism of civilisation. In such contexts Freud does not refer to the sympathetic nervous system or testosterone, but rather to aggression and wars and the moral depravity associated with such phenomena. Freud’s theory has both Hylomorphic and Critical aspects, whereas trait theory of the kind one encounters in the writings of Eysenck and Jung would be consigned by Kant to be theories explaining what nature makes of man, i.e. theories that belong to what he termed “Physiological Anthropology”. For Kant all attempts to root moral character in a matrix of temperaments rooted in biological functions would be misdirected.
We know today what Kant merely suspected, namely that the formation of hypotheses in the context of exploration/discovery and the truth value of these hypotheses are dependent upon probability theory which in turn builds upon Bayes’ theorem (The probability of an event is determined by the information we have about that event). The problem with investigations rooted in contexts of exploration/discovery is that we do not know whether we have arrived at the terminus of complete information . Determining whether an event is probable at a high level of significance is not possible in such circumstances. We may, that is, think we have complete information about the functioning of the sympathetic nervous system or testosterone in character formation, but this must remain an open question as long as we isolate such biological “parts” from the biological/psychological whole. The relation, that is, between the parts of a person may not be relevant to the formal and final relations constituting a holistic phenomenon such as the character of a person. The probability of the event of the withdrawing of a white ball from a bag of 10 black and 10 white balls is easily determined, because the information about the variables of this system is complete: this is a so-called closed system. The material composition of the ball and the relation between any possible “parts”, e.g. its atoms, is irrelevant to this calculation. Returning to the Psychological theory of Eysenck, defining the axes of the matrix in terms of neuroticism and stability, and characterising these ultimately in terms of the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system may be useful in terms of clarifying a possible material necessary condition but this is only a part of the whole story of a persons character (and probably not the most important part–many including Socrates would have thought it to be irrelevant). In this realm of reflection we are seeking reasons (formal and final causes) and not causes. As far as Kant was concerned reflections upon the physiological characteristics connected with temperament are a concern for physiological anthropology.
Jung’s theory is similarly biological and is related to a matrix of two types of orientations toward the world (extraversion, introversion) and 4 psychological functions (thinking feeling intuition, sensation). Jung once claimed in a film documentary that the reason his theory was so different to Freudian theory lay in the fact that he was very much influenced by Kantian theory which he claims Freudian theory was not. The above matrix and its psychological functions are reminiscent of some of the concerns we find in Kantian Anthropology and they have also proved useful in the construction of personality assessment tools such as the Myers-Briggs Personality Index. Many aspects of Jung’s theory, however, appeal to genetic mechanisms for their final justification and are therefore problematic. Jung’s theory of the archetypes of the unconscious mind, for example, are supposed to be innate and transmitted by genetic mechanism– a position that genetic scientists themselves disavow. This is of course merely another form of materialistic atomism, a position that fails to acknowledge the Kantian view of Human nature. The moral implications of Jung’s theory are obscure and it appears that this was a deliberate strategy on the part of Jung.
The Freudian superego, we know, is a result of an environmental actualisation process of identification with authority figures, and Freud would have rejected any suggestion that genetic mechanisms had any relevant direct explanatory connection to the character of a person, We know Freud claimed that his Psychology was Kantian, and there is much that speaks for this characterisation, especially if one agrees with the thesis that Kantian Critical Philosophy is intimately aligned with Aristotelian Hylomorphic theory. If this is the case, then the view that Freud was a strict determinist is problematic. Indeed it is difficult to believe that Freud would not have subscribed to the following Kantian reflection on human freedom:
“But any beginning of action presupposes a state of the not yet acting cause; and a dynamical beginning of the action, if it is also a first beginning, presupposes a state which has no causal connection with the preceding state of the cause, that is to say, it nowise follows from it. Transcendental freedom thus stands opposed to the law of causality… It is not to be met with in any experience.”(P.410)
Kant cites the example of a man rising from his chair and claims that, when this is a spontaneous action, it is due to a self-originating source that generates the action spontaneously. Pragmatic Psychology rests upon the foundation of freedom and the forms of psychological explanation/justification that are provided in the name of this kind of Psychology are formal and final. The desire to arise from my chair, that is, has no prior material or efficient cause (e.g. the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system or the increase in testosterone) . Rather, it arises from an “I” that thinks and exists. It also ought to be pointed out that Kant does believe that there is a role for research into the role of biological factors, insofar as the body is concerned. Such research, however, would be a matter for physiological anthropology and not of interest for pragmatic anthropology.
In the act of arising from the chair, viewed intelligibly, there would be a reason and an action and the reason would incorporate Aristotelian efficient, formal and final causes. This same action, however, according to Kant, has an empirical character and could be categorised by the understanding in terms of a chain of causes appearing in the sensible world. My non-observational knowledge of what I am doing, however, has less to do with the observational knowledge of the above gained by acts of perception and more to do with an apperception and the I that thinks and exists. A clue that we are in the intelligible realm of reasons and actions is indicated by the way in which we use the concept of ought in our reasoning about our actions. In arising from my chair I might have done so “in order to” or because I ought to take the dog for a walk. This would in turn determine the consequence of fetching the leash for the dog. Looking upon this action with observational intentions it would not of course make sense for any observer to negate this “reason” by claiming that I ought not to take the dog for a walk. Such observations of mans behaviour and explanation in terms of causation in the sensible world of appearances are, for Kant, at the level of the understanding rather than reason. Things are as they are in such a context of exploration/discovery and there is no logical space for the unconditioned condition of all voluntary acts, namely freedom. How these two forms of explanation/justification interface can be seen clearly in the following passage:
“Let us take a voluntary action, for example, a malicious lie by which a certain confusion has been caused in society. First of all, we endeavour to discover the motives to which it has been due, and then, secondly, in the light of these, we proceed to determine how far the action and its consequences can be imputed to the offender. As regards the first question, we trace the empirical character of the action to its sources, finding these in defective education, bad company, in part also in the viciousness of a natural disposition insensitive to shame, in levity and thoughtlessness, not neglecting to take into account also the occasional causes that may have intervened. We proceed in this inquiry just as we should in ascertaining for a given natural effect the series of its determining causes. But although we believe that the action is thus determined we none the less blame the agent, not indeed on account of his unhappy disposition, not on account of the circumstances that have influenced him, nor even on account of his previous life…..Our blame is based on the law of reason whereby we regard reason as a cause that irrespective of all the above mentioned empirical conditions could have determined and ought to have determined the agent to act otherwise.”(P.471)
In other words , the agent was free to act otherwise. For Kant all the virtues are ideas of reason with practical power that ultimately resides in our freedom to choose what ought to be done. Ideals, for Kant have less practical power but function as archetypes, e.g. the idea of the statesman as a “phronimos”, a great-souled man, is an example to be imitated. The Phronimos might even approach divine status and be thought of as a God. We are clearly dealing here with a transcendental idea. Trying to prove the existence of this idea or ideal may be, for Kant futile, because it is the telos that is important–what will exist in the future– not what has existed in the past. We should rather, insists Kant, attempt to show how this idea or ideal can be thought. On the Aristotelian account we are entitled to ask how the idea or ideal came to be , i.e under what conditions.
Now whether or not the ideal or idea of God exists, I can nevertheless think of God and the power of divine agency. This thought, however, is probably more remote than the thought of my own existence and powers, which Kant pointed out can in fact supervene in the experience of the sublime. Kant insists that the existence of God cannot be concluded from the mere having of the idea of God as some ontological arguments would claim. This idea cannot be constitutive and can only be regulative:
“which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all sufficient necessary cause.”‘(P.517)
Conceiving of the cause not as a materialistic form of substance but as a substantial principle, as both Kant and Aristotle did, serves to refocus the entire debate and allows Kant to reason his way to a being/principle that will ensure that a good will and good action will result in good consequences for all, namely a good spirited flourishing life. Aristotles conception of a “pure form” or principle is somewhat more abstract and theoretical and tends to identify God with all forms of pure contemplative thought. For Kant, however, the freedom of man was the most important of the three ideas of reason (God, immortality of the soul, freedom) and practical reasoning was the most important aspect of his philosophical contribution to the Enlightenment:
“By the “practical” I mean everything that is possible through freedom. When, however, the conditions of the exercise of the free will are empirical, reason can have no other than a regulative employment in regard to it, and can serve only to effect unity in its empirical laws.Thus, for instance, in the precepts of prudence, the whole business of reason consists in uniting all the ends which are prescribed to us by our desires in the one single end, happiness, and in co-ordinating the means for attaining it. In this field, therefore, reason can supply none but pragmatic laws of free action, for the attainment of these ends which are commended to us by the senses; it cannot yield us laws that are pure and determined completely a priori. Laws of this latter type, pure practical laws, whose end is given through reason completely a priori, and which are prescribed to us not in an empirically conditioned but in an abstract manner, would be products of pure reason. Such are the moral laws; and these alone, therefore, belong to the practical employment of reason.”(P632)
As we have noted previously this form of reasoning is then used as a platform to argue for the importance of the idea of God on moral grounds. The question “Is there a God?” and “Is there a future life?” are, then, answered in relation to the questions that define the scope and limits of theoretical and practical reason, namely “What can I know?” “What ought I to do?” “What can I hope for?” and “What is a human being?” In the answers Kant gives us to these questions the idea of happiness is a secondary idea related to the moral issue of whether one is worthy of happiness. In a world designed by a wise architect or author there will be a logical relation between what one is worthy of, and a good spirited flourishing life.
The role of Psychology in such an architectonic system must therefore be that of a science that is connected to Ethics and Politics and the world views embedded in these practical sciences. Physiological Psychology is clearly situated in a context of exploration/discovery where the focus of the investigations is what nature has made of man. We have suggested that there is always a question mark hanging in the air over such investigations: questions relating to whether we have collected all the necessary evidence relating to the conditions of the phenomena being investigated. Questions which, if answered completely, are in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason.
Kant’s First Critique is a work that explores and explains the boundaries of the mind as a whole by delineating the structures and functions of parts of the whole Kant names the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding and Reason. There is no doubt that Kant largely subscribes to the hylomorphic definition of being human as being a rational animal capable of discourse. Kant, however, obviously advances the thought of Aristotelian metaphysics by claiming that there are two realms of metaphysics: a metaphysics of nature and a metaphysics of morals. Copernican revolutions aside the major contribution of Kant’s Critical Philosophy to the enlightenment was his emphasis upon practical rationality and the idea of freedom at the expense of theoretical explanation and its seemingly endless generation of hypotheses in search of the truth. There was, however, more to come from Kant on the topic of the nature of our minds in his third Critique on the power of Judgement.
This work built upon the threefold divisions of the mind by a threefold division of of our cognitive powers: understanding, judgement and reason. Kant thus provided a much needed convolution in the landscape of our theoretical characterisation of human capacities and powers. It is these powers that tear us away from a merely sensible contact with our environment: a process that in the case of conceptualisation begins with the act of the unity of apperception, or act of thinking something about something. Heidegger called the act of thinking or saying something about something, the veritative (truth-making) synthesis. The conditions for such synthetic truths are thus provided for us: conditions which enable us to use concepts or “principles” or “forms” as a consequence of the “act” of thinking. The act of conceptualisation occurs in the context of the a priori categories of the understanding which produce categorical judgements ( e.g. S is P) and not hypothetical judgements (e.g. Is S, P? or Assume that S is P). The latter may of course occur in the context of exploration in which concepts or principles are “formed”. The truth-making synthesis results in judgements such as “Men are mortal”. There is no experiential verification of this judgement which of course would involve surveying ones environment to find an immortal man( an impossible feat because the Methuselah we discover may die tomorrow). The function of the understanding is purely categorical (knowing what life is) and conceptual (knowing what a man is). This judgement is also a candidate for what Aristotle called an essence-specifying definition. The “form” or principle of psuche (life) determines how we conceive of the human form of life, providing at the same time a matrix for a number of other related judgements– a matrix that also forms the context for another essence-specifying definition of man, namely rational animal capable of discourse. Psuche would, of course, be the element that ties all the elements in this latter definition together.
In the aesthetic judgement, however, we still encounter the ” S is P” form of judgement, but in this case the something that is thought about is not related to the world nor is it conceptual. It is rather, a claim about the universal judging self and the harmonious play of two cognitive faculties: the imagination and the understanding. The aesthetic object that is the occasion of this judgement, e.g. a particular rose, is initially intuited by the faculty of sensibility but the manifold of representations is not categorised and conceptualised : it rather retains its particularity and uniqueness. Instead ,the understanding engages with the life form of the rose and an awareness of the interactions of the imagination and the understanding forms in the mind of the appreciator of the rose along with a feeling of pleasure. There is, however, a categorical element to the judgement “This rose is beautiful” because we spontaneously claim that the rose is beautiful with a so-called “universal voice”. The pleasure involved is not one related to the physical experience of a sensation, but rather the kind of pleasure related to the learning of something. This pleasure is also disinterested. Practical desires and interests are excluded and this to some extent accounts for the reflective form the judgement takes. In reflecting upon this power or capacity for Judgement, Kant is in search of an a priori principle that can account for the structure and function of both aesthetic and teleological judgements. In this respect Kant’s investigation is a transcendental one. In the case of the aesthetic judgement the principle of the finality of nature suggests itself:
“Now this transcendental concept of a finality of nature is neither a concept of nature nor of freedom, since it attributes nothing at all to the Object, i.e. to nature but only represents the unique mode in which we must proceed in our reflection upon objects of nature with a view to getting a thoroughly interconnected whole of experience and so is a subjective principle, i.e. a maxim of judgement”(Kant’s Critique of Judgement, Trans. Meredith J C , Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, P.23)
Involved in this process is an interaction of the cognitive faculties of the imagination and understanding which, in turn, is related to the supervening of a disinterested pleasure. The Aesthetic object that occasions this activity , e.g. the beautiful rose, of course has to have the appropriate “form” to cause the subsequent stream of events that eventually lead to the judgement “This rose is beautiful”.
The Critique of Teleological Judgement, on the other hand, argues Kant, is not capable of generating a constitutive principle and is, in contrast to aesthetic judgement, not a reflective judgement but a determinant judgement that attempts to use the cognitive faculties of understanding and reason to estimate the real finality of the object of attention in Nature. Here the aporetic question of the relation of reality to the categories of the understanding is encountered once again and standard realist and idealist(Berkeley) positions are rejected on the grounds of violating the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. We are here witnessing the use of transcendental logic, but no principle emerges from the discussion. Rather this adventure of criticism focuses upon what Aristotle would have called the final cause or telos of Nature. Kant insists that this telos or end of Nature is neither in us (as is the case with the aesthetic judgement) nor is it really in the Object (because all we can know about the object is related to the categories). In the spirit of Aristotle, Kant asks whether we are dealing with a special kind of causality or order of nature (Critique of Judgement, P.4). Though it is not clear whether we can “project” real ends onto nature, Kant argues, we can:
“…picture to ourselves the possibility of the object on the analogy of a causality of this kind–a causality such as we experience within ourselves–and so regard nature as possessed of a capacity of its own for acting technically: whereas if we did not ascribe such a mode of operation to nature its causality would have to be regarded as blind mechanism. But this is a different thing from crediting nature with causes acting designedly.”(P.5)
It is important to note that Kant insists upon a difference between an estimate of reality in accordance with a principle of judgement and a determination by an idea of reason that derives effects from their causes. No principle emerges from this transcendental investigation into the relation of teleological judgement to nature–merely an analogous causality to that which we experience within ourselves, which of course neither acts technically nor blindly. Is this a form of “projection” or not?
In the Third Moment of the Critique of the power of Aesthetic Judgement, Kant elaborates upon the notion of purposiveness which he claims can be characterised in the following manner:
“the causality of a concept with regard to its object.”(Critique of Judgement, P.61)
He uses the term “imagine” in the above reflection. The reference to the work of the imagination allows us then to claim, not finality in the object (i.e. that they have “real” ends), but rather merely to estimate a finality of form in the object. We, who are familiar with 20th century aesthetics, are accustomed to discussions in which “form” or “significant form” is defining for analysing the formative arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture etc. This 20th century discussion was distinctly hylomorphic and referred to the organisation of the material medium the artist is working with. In some cases one also was claiming that involved in the creative process a causality was operating that was analogous to that at work in the harmonious play of the faculties (sensibility, understanding). What we see at work in the work of creation of an art object is the organisation of the material of the medium in an attempt to imitate reality. This aspect is a central feature of the design or composition of the work of art. This technical work however is not represented as such and it is rather the intentions of the artist relating to the point of the work that are perceived in the object (given of course that one has the requisite knowledge of the medium and its possibilities).
The beauty of the work of art, however, Kant argues , is different from the free beauty of the rose. He terms the beauty of a work of art a “dependent beauty” and he includes in this characterisation the beauty of animals and the human body. Both of these life forms, he argues are concept-dependent beauties and thereby carry an interest with them in any activity of aesthetic appreciation associated with them. The idea or form of The Good is the motivating force for the artists intentions insofar as their “works” are concerned. If a human being is represented in a painting or a sculpture, then, there must be some kind of reference to mans moral virtue. In the Giorgione Painting “Tempesta”, for example, the man standing in the foreground against the background of a brewing storm appears at peace with his surroundings and with himself:
Giorgione’s “Tempesta”
The causality involved in Teleological Judgement is illustrated in the idea or ideal of works of art which ought to be viewed, not in terms of any technical or “mechanical” causation, but rather in terms of a causation which is ideal or final. The contrast between technical/mechanical and final/ideal causes is characterised in the following manner by Kant:
“Thus a house is certainly the cause of the money that is received as rent, but yet, conversely, the representation of this possible income was the cause of the building of the house.”(Critique of Judgement, Part II P.20)
A house is an object nested in a network of instrumentalities but may also be viewed purely aesthetically in terms, for example of the mass-effect of its stone or the “blossoming ” of carved features on its walls. In this latter case we view all the parts of houses appreciated aesthetically as constituting a unity of the whole: a unity that is:
“being reciprocally cause and effect of their form” (P.21)
In these cases the formal and final causes of the whole are the primary organisers of the more technical and mechanical material and efficient causes. This kind of transcendental reflection is also important, Kant argues, in Political Philosophy in which the parts (the citizens, their character, and territory) are the material cause of the “form” of the organised state which they partially “constitute”. “Constitution” is an important political form for Aristotle which he conceived of in terms of “organic” form, thus linking the matrix of concepts linked with psuche to the estimation of political activity.
Kant’s discussion of teleological judgement and the necessity of teleological explanation to fully characterise the essence of a blade of grass rejects material and efficient “mechanical” explanation in his transcendental investigation. Involved in this rejection is appeal to the principle of sufficient reason and the matrix of concepts associated with psuche. The principle involved is, Kant insists, a reflective and not a constitutive principle, and this is a crucial difference between the forms of aesthetic and teleological judgement. Nevertheless, Kant argues, we are in need of this reflective principle in natural science but rational limitations ought also to be observed when using teleological explanations in the natural sciences. For example, introducing the idea of God from Theology will only destroy the integrity of both the natural sciences and Theology. Material and efficient causes, can, never be invoked in relation to the idea of God which is best characterised in terms of formal causation/explanation. This kind of confusion or transference of ideas from one domain of epistemé to another may have been responsible for the confusion that led to characterising God as the physical creator of the universe when the more neutral principle- related ideas of “architect” or “designer” would have been more appropriate. We have earlier in this work pointed to the fact that the Ancient Greeks did not succumb to this confusion and left the actual physical process of creation to the Demiurge. Nevertheless, the extent to which natural science ignores the importance of teleological explanation is the extent to which:
“…the nexus does not touch the constitution of things, but turns wholly on the combination of our conceptions.”(Part II, P.34)
Modern science has several times manifested the tendency to regard reasoning in terms of final or teleological causation, as a contradiction of the results achieved in “mechanical” explanation. The Scientist relies on a form of perception he calls observation, to ground his reasoning, and this appears to conflict with the more philosophical account of perception presented by Wittgenstein in his later work, where it was claimed that an ambiguous figure can be seen both as a duck and a rabbit depending upon the organising activity of the eye. If Wittgenstein’s account is correct then, observation may not be the royal road to understanding the essence of things because it requires some kind of organising principle itself: an organising principle that must be “formal”. Kant also takes up this discussion in relation to our manipulation of objects and events, and insists that there is no contradiction between the following claims:
“All production of material things and their forms must be estimated as possible on mere mechanical laws.
“Some products of material nature cannot be estimated as possible on mere mechanical laws(that is, for estimating them quite a different law of causality is required, namely, that of final causes)”(P.37)
Kant´s explanation for this is:
“For if I say I must estimate the possibility of all events in material nature….This assertion is only intended to indicate that I ought at all times to reflect upon these things according to the principle of the simple mechanism of nature, and consequently push my investigation with it as far as I can, because, unless I make it the basis of research there can be no knowledge of nature in the true sense of the term at all. Now this does not stand in the way of the second maxim when a proper occasion for its employment presents itself–that is to say, in the case of some natural forms…..we may, in our reflections upon them, follow the trail of a principle which is radically different from explanation by the mechanism of nature, namely the principle of final causes”( Part II P.38)
This, roughly speaking, is the position Aristotle adopts. Kant’s account is more elaborate and more complex, and rests on a conviction that explanations relating to the noumenal world of things in themselves, refer to a supersensible realm beyond what we can know. We can, however, think of this realm without knowing anything about its constitution. In the context of this debate it is worth recalling Christopher Shields’ essence-specifying definition of a star, namely:
“A star is a gravitationally bound ball of hydrogen and helium made self luminous by internal nuclear fusion.”(P, 98)
A number of materialistic scientific concepts are combined in this definition and we can be forgiven for believing that once we have studied the theories these concepts are embedded in, we must be coming close to knowing what a star is in itself. No one can deny that many misunderstandings may be avoided if one understands the above definition, but the suspicion remains, however, that if stars are the remnants of a cosmic explosion, they may yet be a part of a whole we only partially understand. Was, the universe a form of matter and energy at the inception of this explosion? What was the state of this universe before this explosion? These are questions that can be reflected upon in the spirit of Aristotelian and Kantian principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason
Returning to the earlier discussion relating to whether we can be said to “project” ideal causality onto the world, we find Kant claiming the following:
“For strictly speaking, we do not observe the ends in nature as designed. We only read this conception into the facts as a guide to judgement in its reflection upon the products of nature. Hence these ends are not given us by the object.”(Part II P.53)
So we cannot say categorically, Kant continues, that “There is a God”– we can only represent the world we experience as the product of a divine architect, i.e. of a God. There is, therefore, no alternative but to think about objects exceeding the capacity of our understanding in terms of the:
“subjective conditions necessarily attaching to our human nature in the exercise of its faculties.” Part II P.58)
Such reflections cannot just assume the idea of an unconditioned original foundation of nature. Instead we read into nature a form of finality: a matter of judgement, not of understanding. The problem with the linking together of mechanical and teleological explanation, is partly the problem of finding a common source for both. Kant claims that this source is the supersensible substrate of reality. Being part of the noumenal realm of Being, we cannot form a conception of this source, though perhaps we can in some sense indicate or show what we are reflecting upon.
Kant asks the question “What branch of knowledge does Teleology belong to?”, and rejects the alternatives of natural science and theology in favour of claiming that teleology is better characterised as the “method of critique” used by the faculty of judgement. This method, Kant argues further, proceeds according to a priori principles. This continues to be a philosophy of limitation which is well expressed in the following:
“For the mode of representation based on final causes is only a subjective condition of the exercise of our reason in cases where it is not seeking to know the proper estimate of the form of objects arranged merely as phenomena, but is bent rather on referring these phenomena, principles, to their sensible substrate, for the purpose of recognising the possibility of certain laws of their unity, which are incapable of being figured by the mind otherwise than by means of ends( of which reason also possesses examples of the supersensuous type) (Part II P.91-2)
Kant refuses to regard man as the peak of creation in the light of his frailty in the face of the mega-forces of nature and also because we harbour destructive tendencies that are more than capable of bringing the species to ruin and destruction. The only characterisation of man’s telos that Kant is prepared to endorse is his freedom in his choice of ends, especially those cases in which the free action conceived of is aiming at “The Good”. Kant also distinguishes between civilisation and its instrumental works (means to ends) and Culture and its categorical works (focussing upon ends-in-themselves). What is highlighted in this discussion is the critical distinction between good works of skill (techné) and good works of knowledge (epistemé). The latter rely on an absolute of “the good will” which:
“consists in the liberation of the will from the despotism of desires, in our attachment to certain natural things, we are rendered incapable of exercising a choice of our own.”(Part II P.95)
There are in these reflections an echo of a distinct concern of Socrates who never directly endorsed the “fevered” city of Plato’s Republic. He never produced arguments to abandon the picture of the healthy city he painted in the early books of The Republic: a city obeying one principle–the principle of specialisation (a city without warriors or philosophers). In the “fevered city” we encounter desires out of control, and privileged individuals oppressing others less fortunate than themselves, chaining them to a form of existence that is undignified. Kant’s solution to this problem is not to conceive of a city ruled by philosophers telling “noble lies”, but rather to conceive of a culture whose constitution contains laws which prevent the infringement of the freedoms of any individual. This, Kant continues to argue, can only occur if we develop a system of states that is cosmopolitan– a system which prevents one state infringing upon the freedom of another state. Without such a system “war is an inevitable outcome”(P.96).
Kant further argues that the role of the arts and sciences in such a culture is to prepare man for the adventure of freedom. The utilitarian pseudo-argument that mans telos or final end is happiness is dismissed many times throughout all three Critiques. The Critique of the Power of Judgement uses the following argument:
“The value of life, for us measured simply by what we enjoy (by the natural end of the sum of all our inclinations, that is by happiness) is easy to decide. It s less than nothing. For who would enter life afresh under the same conditions? Who would even do so according to a new self-developed plan (which should, however, follow the course of nature) if it also were merely directed to enjoyment? We have shown above what value life receives from what it involves when lived according to the end with which nature is occupied in us, and which consists in what we do, not merely what we enjoy, we being, however, in that case always but a means to an undetermined end. There remains, then, nothing but the worth which we ourselves assign to our life by what we not alone do, but do with a view to an end so independent of nature that the very existence of nature itself can only be an end subject to the condition so imposed.(Part II ftnt P-97-8)
The implication of this argument is that everything in nature is conditioned by the supersensible substrate, including our internal thinking nature. Man, that is, has a supersensible noumenal aspect that is manifested in his freedom and moral action, and this is well illustrated in Kant’s “parable of the waterfall” (a discussion of mans relation to “the Sublime”). Confronted by “dunamis” or the power of a mighty waterfall, mans first response is awe and wonder in the face of this force of nature but this, however, is quickly displaced by a positive estimation of his own power of freedom to act as a moral agent. This for Kant is the sublime unconditioned noumenon that lies at the heart of all conditioned phenomena. Happiness, Kant points out, is variable, and cannot therefore be the true end of human existence: it appears to vary within the same individual at different times of his life. If I am ill, my health makes me happy, but if I am healthy but poor, wealth appears to make me happy until fear of losing my fortune forces me to pursue power to preserve my fortune. This fear, however, is then replaced with the fear of losing my power. Happiness also appears to vary between different individuals: what makes Bentham happy does not appear to make Kant happy. Nevertheless, Kant maintains, happiness is part of the summum bonum of life, but only if it is a supervening consequence of a good will and moral activity. It is in relation to these kinds of reflections that man forms an idea of an architect or author of the world: an idea which ensures that the good-in-itself is necessarily related to good consequences (eudaimonia–a good spirited flourishing life). These ideas embedded in these reflections are regarded by Kant as subjectively practical but emanating from our reason as they do, they are nevertheless important and necessary and resemble principles that can regulate our existence. These ideas are also practically real and transcendentally possible and related to the principle of sufficient reason. This matrix of ideas and principles then forms the conviction that becomes part of our faith in a transcendental Being. Transcendent objects of thought are apriori and also:
“mere matters of faith”(Part II P.142)
This true reflective form of faith differs from the kind of faith that is built upon historical narratives and personalities. It is also in this region that the philosophical distinction between facts and values lie. Faith is:
“the moral attitude of reason, in its assurance of the truth of what is beyond the reach of theoretical knowledge.”(P.145)
This is probably what Plato had in mind when he placed the idea or form of the Good above that of The Truth in the metaphysical reasoning he presented in The Republic. Kant elaborates upon this thought in terms of freedom, and claims that faith has its foundations in the practical reality and transcendental possibility of freedom. Christianity appears to lean very heavily on historical narrative and personalities but Kant has a great respect for this religion which also places emphasis upon mans moral life:
“But this is not the only case in which this wonderful religion has in the great simplicity of its statement enriched philosophy with far more definite and purer conceptions of morality than morality itself could have previously supplied. But once these conceptions are found, they are freely approved by reason, which adopts them as conceptions which it could quite well have arrived at itself and which it might and ought to have introduced.”(P.146)
Faith also relates to the idea of the soul, but there are great difficulties in the representation of this supersensible, noumenal aspect of ourselves which historically became characterised as “immortal” because it clearly is a representation that must be disconnected from the time-conditions of experience. This, however, does not entail that the soul is substantially timeless, unless by “substantially” one means “in principle”. One can claim that the soul is, in principle, timeless because its time conditions appear to be the same as the time conditions of ideas which must necessarily exist as long as there are humans thinking these ideas. Ideas, however, do not appear to possess the practical reality that actions do, and it is for this reason that Kant proposes that freedom proves its own objective reality:
“of the three ideas of pure reason, God freedom and immortality, that of freedom is the one and only one conception of the supersensible which(owing to the causality implied in it) proves its objective reality in nature by its possible affect there. By this means it makes possible the connection of the two other ideas with nature and the connection of all three to form a religion.”(P.149)
The surprising inclusion of freedom as an important component of religion has startling consequences when it comes to interpreting the historical narratives of the Bible. We discussed the parable of “The Garden of Eden” earlier in this work, and questioned the ecclesiastical interpretation which claimed that this was a story about “The Fall” of man from the Grace of God–a narrative about the disobedience of man partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. On a Kantian interpretation, this story is obviously an anxious moment in mans history, because it is a moment in which instinct was left behind as an organiser of mans life, and a choice had to be made as to whether one ought to place ones faith in knowledge. This was clearly a moment of freedom, of emancipation, and characterising it as a fall from the Grace of God merely testifies to the primitive idea of God man must have had at this time. God is undoubtedly an important part of the supersensible noumenal substrate, and as such is going to present difficulties in the attempt to represent this form of Being. To recognise our duties as divine commands is testimony to the fact that whilst we are potentially rational beings, we are not as yet (as a species) actually so. Hence the command structure of the categorical imperative and ought matrix of concepts that lie at the foundation of our moral intentions and actions. Nevertheless it is still reasonable to pose the question “What is it that we have an obligation towards?”. There appear to be three possible answers to such a question:
Being
Ourselves
to the potentiality of the species
All three answers may be correct if elaborated upon in a Kantian spirit. Conceiving of God as a Prime mover as Aristotle does is criticised by Kant on the grounds of it requiring a definite conception of a form of Being in relation to the Category of Causality. This, for Kant, is a confusion of different aspects of the thinking process. Aristotle also, we know, used the term “Primary Form” in the sense of “Primary Principle” to represent God and this formulation of the power of the divine appears to be more in line with Kantian thinking.
Kant proposes using the term “intelligence” to characterise the being of God and his “activity” and there is a clear risk of anthropomorphising the principle that is being referred to : confusing an idea of reason with something that appears to be connected (at least in the modern mind) with the categories of understanding. Hughes in his work on the Critique of the power of judgement equates intelligence with:
“the teleological cause of the object”(P.49)
If however purposiveness is also implied in this telos, then there is a risk of it being reduced to concrete purposes and this will confound any thinking which sees intelligence to be a manifestation of a principle (e.g. areté). Any principle equated with the “intelligence” of God would, of course be far beyond the reach of human understanding and reason. Our understanding is limited to representing this Being in terms of formal and final causes and presumably material and efficient causes or any form of “mechanical” characterisation would be otiose (using the principle of sufficient reason as the logical standard)
The presence of “analogous thinking” in any characterisation of the telos of living beings is elaborated upon by Kant in his claim that living organisms are both cause and effect of themselves: they cause, i.e. both their own activity and the reproduction of their kinds. The difference between the telos of living organisms and the teleological explanation of the divine principle is that in the former case the principle is likened unto a plan or goal of action, whereas in the latter case, there can be no conceivable separation between a plan and its outcome i.e. no separation between God’s contemplation of a change and that change coming about: everything is actual and the potential dissipates and this is the explanation of our earlier point that God, the principle, is not subject to experiential time-conditions. Both Aristotle and Kant believe that the telos or natural purpose of the living organism is internal to that organism. Such organisms are actualising their potentials under sequential time conditions. Taking the example of a rose, the principle of the telos of roses is internalised, but the question is whether this is related to the aesthetic idea of the form of finality of the rose that we find beautiful. These two aspects are clearly different since in the aesthetic appreciation of the rose we are not exploring the properties of the rose with a view to classifying it as such. We may however be appreciating the psuche of the rose. Now whilst life itself cannot be said to have a telos, different forms of life clearly do. The activity of the harmony of the faculties occurs only in relation to objects manifesting themselves aesthetically and this is clearly happening when we appreciate the life form of the rose.
Does nature as a whole have a purpose? Well, life forms would have natural purposes on Kant’s account and together would constitute a “system of purposes”. The question that arises is how to characterise Gods role in this system of purposes. Is the principle internalised in the system or does it stand at the boundary of the system as the physical eye does to the visual field? Kant’s challenge is a reflective one and not directed at understanding what by definition lies outside. There can then, be no definition of God and we are then challenged to follow Plato’s example when he could no longer give an account in terms of the principle of sufficient reason. Plato’s response to this state of affairs is to present us with analogies or allegories, and this is what we must do in our attempts to represent the God-principle. We ought that is to look at both nature as a system of purposes and the role of God in this system in terms of metaphor or analogy. The Being of God ,for example, can be represented as if it were an architect or supersensible intelligence. This amounts to claiming that the God-principle is a regulative idea in our minds. This complex form of existence of the God-idea or God-principle clearly is a contributory factor involved in the difficulty of maintaining a large community in which this principle or idea is revered.
Modernist conceptions of the world are bipolar—whatever exists must be subject to observation or manipulation, and if ideas can neither be observed nor manipulated in such a relatively primitive sensory-motor system, such ideas have no form of existence. We can, on this account, only have knowledge of what exists. Thoughts are parsed in this sensory motor system as particular items that could vary depending upon which private chamber of consciousness they reside in. They might have a particular psychological relation to the chamber they inhabit but they have the quality of sensations which can only privately “felt”.
For many the acid test of teleology is in the experiencing of life forms and the above account seemingly makes it impossible to see the manifestation of these life forms in their activity. This may to some extent be so in the case of being a human form of life and also in our attempts to “read” the behaviour of other animal life forms: analogous thinking may be required to understand some aspects of what we are experiencing. We humans, from hylomorphic and critical perspectives, stand in the middle of a continuum of life forms. We certainly need to apply analogous thinking to activity connected to the God-principle or God-idea especially when it concerns trying to understand the role of such a principle or idea in natures system of purposes. It could be argued that in some respect we “participate” in the “form” of the divine via the actualisation of our potentiality for rationality in a similar way to the way in which we “participate” in the “form” of animality in the context of attempting to understand the behaviour of non human animal forms of life. Our attempts to understand pure matter and pure form as presented in the Aristotelian system are also problematic because in the former case our sensory-motor and thought systems may well “disguise” the true nature of what we are experiencing, and in the latter case we are encountering a form that is not physically embodied. The brain (the most complex object in the universe), for example, according to Gerald Edelstam in his work “Bright Air brilliant fire” is “merely” organised carbon, hydrogen oxygen nitrogen sulphur phosphate and a few trace metals. It is, Edelstam argues, the organisation of this material that makes a brain a brain.
That we are dealing with analogous thinking is manifested in Kant’s first Critique when it is claimed that insofar as our search for, and reliance upon knowledge, is concerned, we are organising our experience rationally for the purpose of acquiring empirical knowledge via observation and conceptualisation. “Construction” is involved in this activity of processing by two different cognitive faculties and as we pointed out above this might “disguise the true nature of “things-in-themselves”–the supersensible substrate. How can we, then, even think such a possibility? We do, Kant argues have some limited kind of contact with this noumenal realm in our moral activity–contact with people as ends-in-themselves and contact via thought with a future kingdom of ends which better manifests these ends-in-themselves. Given the structure of our sensory motor activity and limitations of conceptualisation activity, we have no choice, Kant argues, but to use analogous thinking in reflections about nature in itself and the God principle in itself. Conceiving of this principle as a primary form or an intelligent architect ought, then, to be conceived of analogously or metaphorically because we are dealing with a non material non observational a priori “principle”. Being a principle entails that God’s “thinking activity” is “deductive” “moving” from wholes to parts instantaneously. Whether one wishes to call this strategy related to analogy “projection” or not depends to a large extent on what one understands by this term. The form of existence of this divine form of intelligence is both beyond our knowledge and to some extent beyond our capacity to think something about this form. This is why many thinkers, in an attempt to explain exactly what it is they have faith in, end up throwing up their hands in despair and proclaiming “God must exist!” Kant’s explanation also arrives at this conclusion via an account that stretches over a number of works including one specifically aiming at the presentation of theological difficulties with the problem of the existence of God(Religion within the bounds of reason alone).
The ” new men”, Descartes and Hobbes, regarded life-forms as “mechanical” and Descartes barbaric experiments on unaesthetised animals indicate a form of disrespect for life forms we have not encountered by Philosophers before. Such examples also testify to the extent to which mechanical explanations with the aid of mathematics fail to meet the requirements of the principle of sufficient reason. We should recall in the context of this discussion Kant’s claim that mechanical explanations fail even to meet this requirement insofar as explaining the existence of a blade of grass is concerned.
Aesthetic reflection places us at a psychic distance from scientific investigation in general and mechanical explanation in particular, partly because it is disinterested and partly because of its refusal to think in terms of possibilities and necessities (categories of the understanding). In many respects aesthetic judgement manifests an interesting combination of two of the major cognitive faculties in its representing activity. The particular is perceived and the imagination is engaged in a search for a universal that is not categorical. In this process we intuit(sense) the form of finality of nature, e.g. we do not perceive the rose as a botanist might but rather see it as a life form striving to preserve itself in its form of existence. Involved in this process of reflection is also the seeing of the rose as being the manifestation of the “work” of a divine intelligence. This form of speculative reflection leads us back(via a different route) to God seen under the aspect of the beautiful(as compared with the aspects of the Truth and The Good). Reflective judgement thus bears some relation to moral judgement which provoked Kant to claim that beauty is the symbol of morality and furthermore prepares the mind for ethical understanding. The life-form of the human being is the most interesting aspect of one form of aesthetic judgement perhaps because of this intimate connection with our moral natures. In this respect humans are not simple beauties such as flowers but nevertheless “partake” of the form of the beautiful. In judging that a human being is beautiful we are estimating this part of nature as if it were a work of art. We cannot, however look at all nature in this way because we are well aware of the devastating impact of forces of nature on human civilisations: tsunamis, earthquakes, and massive volcanic activity regularly cause widespread ruin and destruction in relation to humans and everything created by humans. We spontaneously and naturally judge such events to be in some sense “evil” exactly because of the fact that we “project” the good onto works of nature and in an act of further reflection attribute these good works to the divine artist. We do not normally attribute natural catastrophes and disasters to anything divine, however.
One of Freud’s thoughts in the context of this discussion orbits around the idea of religion being a “delusion”: he claims namely that religion is the unhealthy projection of psychotic minds. In earlier discussions of this claim we suggested that it was not absolutely clear what the target of the Freudian attack was. The fact that Freud claimed his Psychology was Kantian would suggest that Freud would not place the Kantian interpretation of nature as art or the work of the divine artist, in the same category. Freud may, that is, have been talking about “patients” and their religious tendencies to “Project” their anxieties and wish fulfillments into a being that in the end is a substitute for the father they wish they had. These patients appear to dwell permanently in the realm of an imagination plagued by anxieties and desires they cannot control. It almost seems impossible for them to move reflectively toward the realms of understanding and reason and do the work of interpretation needed for genuine religious understanding.
Kant’s characterisation of the divine principle or law-giver is in terms of omniscience, being all-good, all-powerful, all knowing, absolutely just, absolutely wise, eternal, and One. This might be how Aristotle conceived of Primary Form. There may however be other aspects of the divine form that escapes us. Spinoza, we know, conceived of God in terms of a substance possessing an infinite number of dimensions. We humans, Spinoza claims only know of God under two aspects: namely thought and extension.
On Kant’s gravestone there is a quote relating to the two things that evoke awe and wonder in the human mind: the starry sky above and the moral law within. Scientists, when conducting their experiments are not reflecting aesthetically upon the parts of the world they are concerned with, and furthermore they would not know what to do with the result of an experiment with humans which resulted if the subjects responded with awe and wonder at the experiment. Kant, however much respect he had for science and the manipulation and measurement of dependent and independent variables was Philosophically less interested in the confirmation or verification of imagined hypotheses and more interested in investigating aspects of being that generate awe and wonder. In his transcendental investigations into human and divine existence, judgement obviously played an important role whether it be aesthetic or teleological.
The Enlightenment is an era in which the hylomorphic Philosophy of Aristotle transforms itself into a broader metaphysical view in which it is claimed that the practical reasoning governing our conduct is regulated by both principles and a moral law. One aspect of this transformation was a more formal reorganisation of the Aristotelian ideas of arché and psuche, in relation to the arts and sciences involved in leading the good spirited flourishing life( eudaimonia). In this reorganisation perhaps the biological determinants of psuche fell away in favour of the more psychologically oriented determinants. We maintain, however, that the essence-specifying definition of Aristotle, namely rational animal capable of discourse, is embraced by Kant, and this can be seen in the later elaboration upon Kantian Philosophy by Freud’s Philosophical Psychology. This aspect is best manifested in Kant´s work “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”. Kant’s reorganisation emphasises also the primacy of practical reasoning and a system of concepts orbiting around the theme of agency and the categorical activity of Action. Action for Kant, retains the quality of bringing about good in an environment of a world “worlding”, and subjecting oneself to events that happen: events calling upon the agent for action. In this arena of reasoning the account we are given, or the “logos” of the phenomena we encounter, refers to world-building instrumental actions that transmit the “forms” of children, artefacts(houses etc) and important ideas in the community. For Kant, as for Aristotle, Action and all forms of activity aim at goods-in-themselves such as health, courage, justice, and wisdom, (in the spirit of areté, arché, diké, eros, and eudaimonia). Kant’s Political Philosophy can also be seen to be a sophisticated elaboration upon the hylomorphic naturalism of Aristotelianism : one which, coming as it does millennia after the fall of city states to the empire-builders, proposes a view of a cosmopolitan fully global “kingdom” of ends lying one hundred thousand years in the future (a kingdom that will be based on universal human rights which could not exist without acceptance of the categorical imperative of a moral law). In this account Kant embraces the necessity of mans social/political nature, a necessity that requires “good” laws and public education to realise human potential to the full. Kant also shares with Aristotle an appreciation of the value of religion. There is perhaps a shift away from the centrality of the theoretical idea of God, toward the practical idea of the freedom but there is nevertheless a firm commitment to an idea of the divine and the sacred that sees man’s rationality as limited in form compared to the thought of eternal unchanging Being whose primary form surpasses our limited understanding. The good will, for Kant, is the will guided by the forms or principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and he often refers to this absolute in terms of the “holy will”. Man may be composed of the material of “crooked timber” (his animality) but he has sublime potential whch can be realised in actualisation processes that occur with the assistance of principles: processes that aim at the ultimate good of a kingdom of ends.
The focus upon the practical idea of Freedom was undoubtedly a Kantian contribution which to some extent revised hylomorphic ethical and political philosophy. The idea that “everything created by man was destined for ruin and destruction” was a reference by the oracle, not just to the crooked timber of humanity, but also to the way in which the potential to become a good being, with a good will, living in a good community was being stifled by the ways in which we were choosing to organise these communities. The Aristotelian focus upon justice needed to be complemented by an idea of freedom that respected universal human rights and this in turn required the political creation of an international institution whose responsibility it was to protect these human rights internationally(The United Nations).
Centuries of discussion of the idea of “I think therefore I am” enabled the construction of a very abstract and theoretical idea of consciousness and this discussion was certainly on Kant’s mind when he was formulating his critical Philosophy. Criticism of the Philosophies of the “new men”, e.g. Descartes and Hobbes, with arguments resembling those used by Aristotle to criticise the dualism and materialism of his time was a priority of the Kantian agenda. The Kantian “architectonic” of the canon of sciences resting upon a metaphysical and logical foundation, was also reminiscent of the Aristotelian project. Kant, however, does not seek to authenticate the proliferation of university subjects of his time and probably was suspicious of both the principle of specialisation that reflected the guild structure of the towns and cities of the time and the instrumental/pragmatic spirit in which many subjects were taught. The new men had certainly succeeded in launching a search for what was new and different at the expense of “first principles”. The Enlightenment spirit of “sapere aude” was, with the advent of Hegelian Philosophy, being diluted by a spirit in which some felt that everything was possible, and many felt that nothing was possible anymore. The real realm of possibility was obscured by the self obsessed fantasy constructions of a manic-depressive mentality.
The Spirit of the Enlightenment, up to the point of Hegel’s appearance, rivalled the Spirit of the Golden Age of Greece. Hegel, it can be argued constructed a form of idealism in which the retinal image of Culture was turned upside down and the world was seen through a pair of Stratton spectacles darkly—North became South in the name of dialectical logic. It would not be, however, until the World was ravaged by two World Wars in the twentieth century, that an attempt was made to remove the spectacles and see real possibilities again. In the interim, Freudian Psychology would chart the contours of insanity in the spirit of Kantian Psychology, and in a way that acknowledged mans instinctive endowment in hylomorphic terms. After the second world war an old Kantian “possibility” was realised with the creation of the United Nations and the war against totalitarianism was fought on the terrain of human rights. The metaphysics of Morality had condensed from a cloud of potentiality into the actuality of a global organisation. The metaphysics of Politics also began to return to the Aristotelian idea of the “Politics of the golden mean” and public education began the task of educating the “classical” middle class of men. Both freedom and justice were important ideas in the restoration of what had been lost. Restoration was also on the agenda of the later Wittgenstein when he retreated from his earlier position of reductive logical atomism, and began using Aristotelian phrases such as “forms of life” in the context of a Philosophy of Action that was neither behaviourist nor pragmatic, but shared some of the commitments of hylomorphic and critical rationalism. The unique focus of Wittgenstein was however on the medium of communication, namely language, but it nevertheless succeeded in providing the philosophical community with arguments against logical atomism, logical positivism, non hylomorphic forms of naturalism, instrumentalism, pragmatism, phenomenalism, existentialism etc. This reshaped the philosophical landscape sufficiently for both hylomorphism and critical Philosophy to reemerge as significant historical landmarks. Wittgenstein insisted that Language had a rational structure and thereby avoided the relativism associated with a blunt “language creates the world” formula. For Wittgenstein grammatical investigations were essence specifying activities and therefore presupposed the rational principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason shared by both Aristotle and Kant. Language–for Wittgenstein–was an activity embedded in a form of life and had the teleological function of aiming at the good. Whether the concept of “language-games” embedded in these forms of life was a useful one or not remains to be fully evaluated. A game is minimally constituted of moves (e.g. Kn to QB4), rules, and principles(Protect your queen) but somehow the seriousness of the world appears to be missing in such an idea. Both life and the issue of the quality of life are serious matters and reducing them to conventional regulation by rules would not be taken seriously by either Aristotle and Kant. Neither Philosopher would for example consider viewing the laws regulating life and the quality of ones life in a society as arbitrarily conventional. The idea of the rule governed game does however have the advantage of closing down the number of real possibilities that can occur in the course of the development of sequence of events. The number of possible “moves” of possible “agents” is circumscribed and because it is so, is amenable to mathematical calculation using Bayes’ theorem (the probability of an event occurring is determined by the information we have relating to that event). If the field of variables to be calculated is indeterminate or “open”, no value can be calculated. The idea of a game(being a closed field of variables) therefore, is one way of introducing mathematics into the arena of the social sciences, but it is important to note that the introduction of this concept is at best hypothetical (if human activity is regulated by rules, then we can determine its value). Both Plato and Aristotle would regard the introduction of mathematics into the field of human action as problematic on the grounds that mathematics manipulates abstract images of things rather than those things themselves. Games and images. for serious philosophers concerned with Being qua being and first principles, do not engage with the seriousness of life and its catastrophes and calamities each of which is capable of bringing the ruin and destruction of all our hopes and desires. It is this latter aspect of life that is the concern of Ethics and the categorical forms of language that govern this region of our existence. Kant went in search of an absolute in the arena of ethics and found it in the form of the idea of the good will. To use a Wittgensteinian metaphor to describe this hylomorphic “move”, one could claim that a cloud of practical Philosophy was condensed into a drop of Philosophical Psychology. One needs, however, to detach the idea of a game from this reflection and insert the idea of a good will into a hylomorphic framework of first principles, thought, self-knowledge, and self-sufficiency for it to become completely intelligible. The essence- specifying definition of man as a rational animal capable of discourse also needs to be part of the apparatus of explanation/justification. Practical reasoning and first principles govern the “moves” that can be made in the ought-system of concepts we encounter in the arena of the explanation/justification of actions that aim at both the good in itself, and the good in its consequences. Universality and necessity are important features of reasoning in this system of concepts.
Needless to say, the introduction of a Cartesian inspired idea of consciousness into such a context of explanation/justification is merely going to destabilise the system. Kant in his willingness to divide the whole of the mind into the parts of Sensibility , Understanding, and Reason, does however invite a non Cartesian idea of Consciousness into the arena—an invitation that would later be accepted by Freud when he constructed a topography of forms of Consciousness differentiated into the agencies of the ego, id and superego. The three principles of Energy-Regulation, Pleasure-Pain and Reality could well have come from Freud’s reading of Aristotle earlier in his career. These are not first principles but rather domain-regulating principles that presume a self actualising process over a long childhood of living among the discontents of civilisation. Hughlings Jackson was also an influence on the Freudian neurological account of higher centres interacting with lower centres. The language centres of the brain and Language as an activity of the mind obviously stretches over the domains of sensibility and understanding and perhaps over the domain of reason too. It plays an important role in the Freudian system by being the medium through which preconscious and unconscious items are brought into the “light” of consciousness which itself, according to Freud, has an instinctive base and is in fact a vicissitude of instinct. Language for Freud engages with both sensibility and thought in its various forms and becomes not just the medium of disclosure of difficult to access thoughts and feelings, but is also connected in a complex way to the memory system which is used in the process of “the talking cure”. The compulsion to repeat traumatic events over and over again, for example, is partly caused by the inability to “remember” these events in the normal way ( which enables the thought of the event to fade in intensity over time).
For Kant the idea of a form of life stretches from the animal/instinctive to the rational animal capable of discourse, and to the divine will that is not limited by the lifetime of physical organ systems that can fail with trauma or age. This continuum testifies to the inherent tragedy of the human condition that can lose the gift that makes it what it is. The form of life of the divine is unchanging for both Aristotle and Kant.
The Gods of course were the subject of Homeric concern and Homer was on Plato’s mind when he considered excluding artists from his ideal Republic. Homer we know portrayed divine beings as quarrelling, deceptive beings, using humanity as a means to their selfish ends. This called into question one of the essence-specifying features of divine beings, namely, that they ought to be necessarily good. Aristotle too would have objected to the contamination of the idea of the divine with human qualities. Kant speaks of the divine life in terms of the holy will but does not attribute physical action to this form of life and thereby shares with the Greeks the idea that even conceiving of the divine as acting to create the universe is inconceivable and requires an intermediate form of life , e.g. the demiurge.
Aesthetic creations of artists are activities, therefore, that ought to aim at the good in the spirit of areté and this is one way in which “forms” are communicated in the polis. The other two types of forms that assist in the building of civilised communities are the reproduction of children for these communities and the transmission of “good” ideas in the name of education. These latter ideas are the most important and in this respect insofar as artists take upon themselves this role they ought to respect the integrity of these ideas. In aesthetic contexts, for Kant, we communicate ideas of reason using categories of judgement. The best forms of art will strive to produce objects that help to explain the mysteries of human life and existence, thus promoting a self understanding that is part of the Delphic project for rational animals capable of discourse, namely to “know themselves”. These objects are presented as goods-in-themselves in a context that requires a certain amount of psychic distancing from the everyday instrumental concerns of life. They also require a culture in which understanding of the media of artistic communication is an important part of the process of building a civilisation. Art, in the Aristotelian architectonic of his scientific curriculum is a productive science which nevertheless has necessary connections with Truth and the theoretical sciences as well as “the Good” that is aimed at by the practical sciences. It was the work of Aristotle that suggested the definition of Philosophy as the systematic understanding of the world as a systematic whole. Kant continued this tradition by claiming that reason seeks for the totality of conditions for anything that happens or requires explanation or justification.
There are differences between the projects of Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy but we have argued in this work that the differences lie on a continuum at least insofar as basic principles and worldview are concerned. In the 20th century a contrary view emerged in relation to the Ethics of the above two systems. Let us examine this further by referring to a relatively recent work by Gerard J Hughes entitled “Aristotle on Ethics”(London, Routledge, 2001). Hughes confirms the connection we are proposing in his outline of the topic, structure and aim of Aristotle’s ethics:
“What do we aim at in life?What is it that would make living worthwhile? A worthwhile life must surely involve developing our specifically human characteristics to the full.How could we find out what those are?Upon reflection we can see that what is most characteristically human about ourselves is the way in which thought colours all our lives–not just intellectual pursuits, but also our feelings and emotions, our choices and relationships. So we start by considering the was which thought influences those traits of character which contribute to living a worthwhile fulfilled life…We need to think about choice and responsibility in more detail.”(P.11)
The conditions for understanding the meaning of these reflections are embedded in the Greek language: in the meaning of the words, areté, diké, arché. epistemé, eros, ananke, and eudaimonia. Responsibility and choice presuppose freedom as well as the right view of akrasia (weakness of the will) which, according to Aristotle, is a failure of rationality. The Nichomachean Ethics is crystal clear in its position that all activities aim at the good and the specific relation to epistemé insofar as ethical activities are concerned is that if we know the good we will do it. Akrasia, then, as a phenomenon, is characterised as a kind of confusion caused by the cognitive system being overwhelmed by intense desires , emotions etc, in a similar way in which the functions of the body are overwhelmed by the overconsumption of alcohol. This confusion can neutralise the activation of the knowledge we have of the premises constituting the reasons for the action concerned —so the knowledge lays dormant in the system because other systems relating to the sensible part of the mind are using all available energy for their purposes.
Ethics and Politics are both Practical sciences and aim at the good, not theoretically, but with the aim of becoming Good, i.e. to possess in Kantian terms a good will. Kant. like Aristotle, views this matter in terms of the principles of logic regulating premises, e.g.
Promises ought to be kept
Jack promised Jill he would pay the money back he borrowed from her
Therfore
Jack ought to pay Jill the money he owes her
The above argument mirrors the typical form of an ought argument that refers to the virtues of Promising and honesty. We see in this argument the integration of truthfulness and areté (doing the right thing at the right time in the right way). The ought major premise is a necessary warrant for the formulation of the intention to do a particular action. Promises, we know are not merely ethically important, they are of central importance to the process of ruling in civilisation-building political activity. Promising is the arché of Politics, and is intimately related to the demand placed upon the shoulders of politicians to take responsibility. The Greeks were the first to begin the understanding of these virtues in the context of Political Power. Dunamis is one Greek term for power and this concept is closely related to the hylomorphic ideas involved with the actualising of potential. It is also itself an idea that responds to Glaucon’s challenge in the Republic to prove that Justice (diké) is both good in itself and good in its consequences. Power in the Greek philosophical mind was related to the sacred and the divine and thereby possessed both a civic aspect as well as a divine aspect. Dunamus was therefore a characteristic of the divine being, and therefore something sublime and mysterious. Using the power of the law to bring Socrates to justice, for many intellectuals of the time, was a sacrilegious act because the power that brought people together was a divine power and it was clear at least to them that Socrates was aiming at the good in his philosophical activities in the agora. The Latin term religio contains an interesting reference to binding things together that might otherwise fall apart or fragment. The idea of diké, (Justice), on the other hand, contains the meaning of separating things that do not belong together–perhaps we can conceive of this as the drawing of a line between those possessing a good will (Socrates) and those that are weak willed (his accusers). Justice also carries with it a consequentialist idea relating to its recipients deserving what they get out of life, and here we can see the importance of the role of the system relying on agents of justice acting with a good will. That was not the case with the accusers of Socrates and a miscarriage was the inevitable result. Socrates was accused of bringing new Gods into the polis and corrupting the minds of the youth. The accusers of Socrates were, then, not just guilty of abusing a legal system but they were also defiling what was sacred.
The next great era of Cultural restoration after the Golden Age of Ancient Greece began with the Renaissance and culminated in the Enlightenment. In these centuries there was an intensification of all forms of human activity but particularly in the arenas of Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, and Theology. Politics was becoming more and more important than Theology, and Aesthetics was also threatening to displace Ethics at the level of individual action. The science of physics was also growing in importance. Generally in cognitive terms there was a move away from justification in terms of the principles of reason and understanding, and toward explanation in terms of the principles of judgement. The Kantian response to this state of affairs was to shift the focus of Philosophy from Theoretical rationality to Practical rationality, to crush pseudo-metaphysical projects, and to initiate reflection into several central issues in the arena of Philosophical Psychology. In doing so he retained the relation of the Sublime to both Ethics and Theology. The practical idea of Freedom replaced the theoretical idea of God as the central metaphysical concern, and became a central focus of both cultural and political activity. Hegel, of course, was to destroy this web of relations with an idea of Spirit embedded in a form of dialectical reasoning best suited to contexts of exploration/discovery rather than contexts of explanation/justification. For Hegel, the development of mans Sensibilities became more important than the development of his intellectual powers of understanding and reason. Hegel’s criticism of Kant led eventually to a Romantic idea of man as sufficient unto himself, as long as he follows his instincts, emotions and passions. It was this “spirit” that was instrumental in forming the idea of heroic men for whom “everything was possible”, even if the vast mass of men were beginning to feel “nothing was possible anymore”. Kant’s Critical Philosophy along with its underlying hylomorphic commitments was submerged in this new form of populism that appeared to be able to create mass movements that would later play a catastrophic role in the political events of the 20th century where both fascism and communism found soil in which to flourish. The Aristotelian idea that Politics ought to concern itself with noble and just actions was washed away by waves of selfish pity and fear. The Aesthetic object and its descriptions of of the sensible activity of man (his feelings, emotions, passions) occupied the public stage and distracted attention from more complex explanations and justifications of world-events. The world lost its depth, and inner exploration and discovery supplanted external objective concerns. The relation between areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and eudaimonia (leading the good spirited flourishing life)was ruptured. One curious consequence of this state of affairs and the intellectual reaction to it was the elevation of a mathematical form of arché (axioms) above forms of explanations/justifications such as the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. This, some observers have noted, may have been an inheritance of the Cartesian conception of the external world in terms of a system of coordinates( by a system of thought that confirmed the existence of man in the bare terms of the Cogito argument). God “saved” the whole Cartesian system from collapsing by guaranteeing that life was not a dream that we might at any moment awake from. At the beginning of the 20th century this commitment to mathematical forms of reasoning focussed upon German idealism as the source of fundamental confusions about the nature of reality. For some obscure reason both Kant’s Critical Philosophy and Hegel’s historical actualisation of world spirit were placed inside the same pair of brackets. The Kantian arguments against materialism and dualism of the Cartesian kind were disregarded and these oppositions unsurprisingly emerged in new forms. The idea of Consciousness also emerged as an organising principle of experience and the imagination was appealed to as an important power of thought. Heidegger’s reflections on this era of our history pointed to what he called a “forgetfulness of Being” but it nevertheless criticised Kantian appeals to Ancient rational principles and claimed that Kant had missed an opportunity to rest his whole critical philosophy upon the foundation of transcendental imagination. This forgetfulness included the forgetfulness of of the objective rational quality of the good but Heidegger failed to acknowledge this aspect of modernism: a forgetfulness that rejected the Aristotelian argument for the good-in-itself:
“If there is some point to everything we do, something we want for its own sake and which explains why we do everything else, then obviously this has to be the good, the best of all. And there has to be some such point otherwise everything would be chosen for the sake of something else and we would have an infinite regress, with the result that it would be futile and pointless to want anything at all.”(1, 2, 1094a 18-22)
On this account the good spirited flourishing life would also include the qualification that nothing was lacking in such a life and this contributed to making this the most worthwhile of all forms of life: a life that is deserved only by those who have led virtuous lives. Only organisms possessing the powers of discourse and rationality could lead such lives and whilst the power of the imagination might be important for the purposes of correctly conceiving of what is possible and what is not, it is nevertheless the case that the principles of rationality are of greater importance for determining the correctness of ones conceptions.
Aristotle’s requirement that men ought to lead lives of contemplation is partly shared by Kant, but it is not clear whether Kant shares the Aristotelian characterisation of the importance of “theoria” and its connection to thought and the activity of God. It is clear however that our theoretical understanding of this Primary Being that is the manifestation of Pure Form or Pure Principle is limited, and we have more access to this pure form via our practical activities that aim at the good in the realm of the noumenal.
Areté is connected to ethical action or “deeds” in accordance with the following Aristotelian formula:
” So a virtue is a habitual disposition connected with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, a mean which is determined by reason, by which the person of practical wisdom would determine it.”(11, 6, 1106b 36-1107a2)
The above disposition is not connected to the disposition to feel sensations occurring in the sensible part of the mind, because, as Aristotle maintains, no one is praised or blamed for having feelings. Agents are praised or blamed for their choices and their choices build upon the reasons the agents have for doing whatever they have chosen to do. One can praise or blame the agent’s reasons and we can also blame him/her for his/her character. The reference to the golden mean in the above quote is meant to highlight the processes involved in the acquisition of our habits–processes that occur primarily in the context of exploration/discovery. The reasons an agent gives in contexts of explanation/discovery differ significantly from the reasons given in a context of exploration/discovery that occurs largely in the mode of the hypothetical. Sufficient explanation or justification is praised and insufficient explanation/justification is blamed. Self-sufficient justification is of course a key to leading a worthwhile flourishing life. Habits can also have a technical character(techné) in which case we are praised or blamed for a skill we possess as measured by the quality of the objects created by those skills. This contrasts with the ethical case in which it is the reasoning leading to the intention or action that is praised or blamed and there is also an epistemic element related to our knowledge or lack of knowledge of what is good-in-itself. If we build good houses we are called a builder and this instrumental power is praised. The form of praise a man receives for his good will and good character however is a different form of praise and is more desirable because in our scale of values epistemé is more valuable than techné because the former is good in itself and good in its consequences whereas the latter has merely an instrumental value—good in its consequences.
Emotions such as carelessness or cowardice in the course of a battle are what they are, but the praise-blame system will introduce a willingness to transform ones responses into a more rational response. Areté is the key idea to apply here, and a part of its application to the behaviour of soldiers in battle is not just doing the right thing at the right time in the right way, but also perhaps having the right feelings at the right time and both of these can be shaped by discourse and rationality. The man whose character has been shaped by practical reasoning over a long period of time, is called a phronimos, a great-souled man, a virtuous man. He has become the master of the golden mean. The relation of emotions to knowledge is a complex matter involving objects we are concerned with, and ways of of being aware of the world that are regulated by the lower order principles of energy regulation, and pleasure-pain. We know that in emotional states, the world can take on the “colouring” of the emotion. In my anger, I am as likely to lash out at substitute objects as I am at the real cause/object of my anger. In such a state my perception is of a world that is hostile to my agency and intentions. Sartre calls this a magical transformation of the world, but a supplementary account comes from the work of the Later Wittgenstein which showed us how perception in the form of seeing something as something ( a triangle as “half a square” or as having “fallen over”) appears to be half sensibility and half thought. In such an experience, Wittgenstein implies that I can become conscious of myself as organising my experience, especially in those cases where I first see one aspect of the thing and then another. Seeing the triangle as half a square is of course less of a magical transformation than seeing it as having “fallen over”. The emotions, then, might also fall on a continuum of perception and thought and be subject to regulation by different principles. Courage, for example would be a more complex entity than anger and this might explain why we praise agents manifesting the former and blame agents for manifesting the latter. More thought obviously appears to be involved in the former “virtue”(areté). As we ascend the hierarchy of virtues to the wisdom of a phronimos, or ruler of a Republic, the principles involved become more abstract and require more complex explanations that may rely on the kind of knowledge we find in the architectonic of theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. These explanations/justifications will also rest upon “First Philosophy” and the higher order principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.
Wittgenstein once claimed in one of his earlier “Notebooks” that the world of the happy man is a different world to that of the unhappy man. Happiness is of course a precipitate of the good spirited flourishing life, and both Socrates and Aristotle bear witness to the way in which leading examined and contemplative lives are different forms of life to lives that lack these properties. The question “Why?” plays an important role in such lives, as does the accompanying forms of consciousness of awe and wonder at a world and a soul that appears to be susceptible to endless exploration. It is of course not difficult to think of the happy man leading a good spirited flourishing life as someone who systematically deliberates about the Good-in-itself , Good consequences, and Good means to ends. This kind of deliberation occurs naturally in the context of explanation /justification and begins with the arché of first principles, e.g Promises ought to be kept, and ends in a particular verdict/telos of a particular action that ought to be performed. The “attitude” involved in such a deliberation is that of a Kantian judge putting questions in a tribunal whose purpose it is to reason its way to a grounded judgement. The phronimos deliberates in this fashion, in the spirit of areté, proceeding from the arché to the telos.
Perusal of the Greek language used in Athenian courts reveals the use of the terms “hekon” and “hekousion” which Hughes translates as “willingly”. This is the fundamental condition required for holding someone responsible for their actions. Modern philosophical discussions of willed actions involves reference to “intention” which is technically defined (in Anscombe’s work on “Intention”) in terms of the agent seeing his action as falling under a particular description, e.g. “shooting a deer moving in the wood”. If, as a matter of fact, it turns out that I shot my father, it is the task of the tribunal to determine whether the shooting of my father occurred intentionally or not. The presumption is that an investigation will be able to reveal the relevant facts necessary to make such a determination. What I did immediately after ,during, and before, the act may contain decisive evidence, as may what knowledge I had, e.g. did I know my father was in this region of the wood. If I could not have known he was, there the tribunal must find me not guilty of murder, but may well find me guilty of some other criminal act relating to negligence, perhaps because sufficient precautions were not taken before the act of shooting occurred.
For Aristotle, Eros and Philia are the “bonding” conditions that shape families, villages and cities. Kant prefers the term “respect” for the attitude involved in treating people as ends in themselves, whether they be familiar figures or strangers that visit the agora. This respect even for strangers carries with it the expectation that these strangers will both understand and respect the laws of the city. The absolute of the good will that we encounter in the Kantian ethical system we can also encounter in Aristotelian philia toward strangers. Aristotle himself was a stranger in Athens as a young man. Philia is also Aristotles term for friendship and there are three forms of friendship: relations of utility, relations of pleasure, and relations involving the good-in-itself. In relations of utility the parties involved seek mutual utilitarian benefits. In relations of pleasurable transient interaction, the utilitarian relation to the external world is to some extent suspended, e.g. in the case of the meeting with strangers and people one knows in a symposium where the collected company enjoys discourse and feasting together. In the case of the deepest forms of friendship where two people care for each other as ends in themselves, there is in this latter case, as there may not be in the former, a preparedness to sacrifice ones own goods for the person who is ones friend. Here we are clearly dealing with the goods for the soul that are necessary to lead a good spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia).
The difference between Politics and Ethics insofar as Aristotle is concerned is partly due to the fact that political theory is a more abstract reflective elaboration upon ethical principles in the public context of justification we encounter in the arenas of justice. Aristotle’s “justifications” did not extend to arguing for the justification of the existence of the city-state, perhaps because for him it is the mark of an educated man to know when to require a justification and when one is not required because of the self-evident certainty of the issue. For Aristotle it is self evident that the idea of a state is both good-in-itself and good in its consequences as long as the laws governing that state are rationally constituted and respected, i.e they are just laws. Part of the essence of being human involves living in organised communities in which the laws can facilitate actualising processes that will provide one with a reasonable quality of life. We have a need not merely to live (survive) but to live well and this manifests itself in a commitment to public education (communication of knowledge of “the sciences”).
To argue as Hobbes does that the law is mere words unless these words are defended by swords, is to reject Aristotle’s political (hylomorphic) naturalism. The basis for such a rejection is usually based on the claim that the laws of a city are mere artificial conventions necessary to prevent internecine strife in a community. Aristotle’s political views rest on a view of human nature and cultural development that is historically constituted of structures building upon structures, in organic fashion. The family might well survive in a benign environment, if the family was large enough, but, as Hobbes claimed, life in a state of nature would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Families that unite into a village will experience advantages that are both utilitarian and pleasurable but still lacking some of the goods of the external world and most of the goods for the soul that can be provided by a well functioning polis. The family and the village are social structures that are assimilated by the polis. These structures are transformed into a unit of self-sufficiency that provides a quality of life that only knowledge of the Good can bring with it. Our modern obsession with the private individual alone in his chamber of consciousness would have seemed a regressive concern for Aristotle.
Aristotle was very familiar with the political problems of his time partly via the works of Plato and partly via the research of his own school into a large number of constitutions of city-states (158). He develops as a consequence a schema of good and deviant states based on an idea of The Good that rejects “noble lies” and other questionable Platonic practices outlined in “The Republic”. Here “The Good” is characterised as “Aristos”(“the best”)(Shields Aristotle, P 365) and this conception combines the best elements of oligarchy and democracy into a so-called “aristocracy” in which an emerging educated middle class will unite the polis into a self-sufficient unit where peace reigns. It is this form of constitution, Aristotle argues, that will most likely provide the conditions necessary for its citizens to lead a good spirited flourishing life, a virtuous life.
Such a constitution would include respect for techné and allow a free cultural space for rhetoric and poetry. In these activities, which aim at the good, there will be a reliance upon areté, arché and epistemé. The telos of rhetoric, Aristotle argues, is political persuasion via enthymemes and related rational instruments. Rhetoric was of course used (abused?) by the accusers of Socrates to end the philosophers life, but Aristotle would not have regarded this use of pseudo-arguments as legitimate rhetoric. For him the measure of rhetoric was Truth, and this measure was discarded by the accusers of Socrates who were using rhetorical devices for their own utilitarian (technical) ends. This testifies to the weakness of all technical activities–namely, that they can always be detached from the knowledge of the good in itself, and used for evil purposes (consequences). So far as rhetoric is guided by the truth and the good, however, it is rationally constituted and will contain principles that may even be “first principles”.
Poetry for Aristotle, is connected to learning even if there s an element of “imitation” involved. The production of poetry is for the purposes of learning via the imitation of reality. Actors dress up in clothes, imitating real kings and strut about a stage amidst scenery imitative of castles or cities. The words they utter are also imitative of characters they are attempting to portray. This, for Aristotle, is a natural form of learning something about something, e.g. that flatterers are not to be trusted, that kings are not gods etc. Learning such things brings us a non-utilitarian form of pleasure connected to epistemé and the knowledge of the good. We are, in the above examples, clearly learning about the essences of things in practical contexts, especially if the creator of the production is a genius, a great souled writer like Shakespeare. The spirit of tragedy contains necessary references to Thanatos, suffering, and Ananke, all of which are capable of evoking powerful emotions in man, e.g. pity at undeserved suffering and fear of ruin and destruction at the hands of processes we do not fully understand. The question “Why?” looms in tragedies as it does in most other processes of change initiated by humans and if the semblance of an answer suggests itself in the work of the great souled artist this purifies the minds of the audience leaving them in a musing contemplative state. Presumably in such lessons we also learn something about the self that is thrown into the midst of events of considerable magnitude. Even if the tragic work is historical it is not facts as such that are important but rather universal “possibilities” that are suggested in the prophecy of the Greek oracle: “everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”. Learning that flatterers are not to be trusted or kings are not gods, then, is a matter of learning about the universal possibilities of tragedy.
Christopher Shields in his work on Aristotle points out in a chapter dedicated to the legacy of Aristotle that his works were not distributed for several hundred years after his death, and when they became available again, the Neo-Platonists dominated the means of production with their commentaries. When all philosophical schools were closed by order of the Emperor in the 6th century AD, Aristotle’s works were again “lost”, until Aquinas discovered a translation. Aquinas’ interest was largely religiously inspired and his interest at best could be described as perspectival. Shields insightfully comments upon Aristotle’s legacy in the following :
“Often enough the views rejected as Aristotelian in the early Modern period are not recognisable as such to anyone with a primary familiarity with Aristotle’s texts.”(P.401)
This is certainly true of the writings of the “new men” e.g. Descartes and Hobbes, and their rationalist and empiricist followers, who failed to understand the Aristotelian arguments against dualism and materialism. Shields notes that hylomorphism today is viewed as an interesting alternative to the extremes of reductive materialism and Cartesian dualism that continue to flourish in our universities (P.402). There is, however, no acknowledgement of either Hylomorphic or Critical theory in spite of the fact that these positions have been the most effective critics of the above extremes. There is also no acknowledgement of the relation of Aristotelian to Kantian metaphysics. Instead Shields focuses upon postulated differences between the ethical theories of these two philosophies. Elisabeth Anscombe and her followers are cited as lying behind this state of affairs. We believe, however, that the story of the relationship between these two philosophies is more complex and that the reason for this postulated opposition between the two ethical theories, the so called deontological and teleological opposition, rests upon misinterpretations of Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics.
