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Chapter Two, entitled “The journey Inward” poses many interesting questions in the domains of Metaphysics, Poetry, Biology, and Psychology and much analysis is required that must wait for a later work on Mythology. Campbell cites the following transformational/developmental sequence of events:
The black moment—-transformation—–the light of salvation
Philosophers of course will immediately recognise two items of importance. Firstly, the work of the Aristotelian formal cause in the actualisation of the essence of the human psuché (the rational animal capable of discourse), and secondly, the Platonic Allegory of the cave is an image that lies embedded in the above transcendental process of self- actualisation. We recall, however, in that allegory that it was Philosophers who returned to the cave of ignorance from which they came, to liberate their fellow men obsessed by the play of images on the cave wall. Those that could be persuaded could then look forward to a life of freedom in the sunlight.
Bill Moyers, Campbell’s interviewer, sets the stage for the chapter by claiming:
“These myths speak to me because they express what I know inside is true.”(Page 44)
Moyers, in this claim, is not referring to some psychological process of introspection that mystically guarantees the truth of what one “introspects”, but is rather referring to the existential ground of Being which he is prepared to call “the unconscious” (in the spirit of Jung rather than Freud). Campbells response to this claim was:
“That’s right. You’ve got the same body with the same organs and energies, that Cro-Magnon man had 30,000 years ago. Living a human life in New York City or living a human life in the caves, you go through the same stages of childhood, coming to sexual maturity, transformation of the dependency of childhood into the responsibility of manhood or women hood, marriage, then failure of the body, gradual loss of its powers, and death. You have the same body,, the same bodily experiences and so you respond to the same images. For example, a constant image is that of the conflict of the eagle and the serpent. The serpent bound to earth, the eagle in spirited flight—isn’t that conflict something we all experience? And then the two amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings. All over the earth people recognise these images.” (Pages 44-45)
The Freudian and Jungian ideas of the unconscious differ both in their origin and nature. Freud’s idea is undoubtedly psychological in the sense of being a part or an aspect of a mind that is formed from the energies of the organ system of the body. Freud’s idea is also psychological rather than strictly biological because Freud claims that he is dealing with the psychical representatives of the instincts. Jung’s images, according to Campbell have their origin in the biology of the human psuché, in the emotions and feelings that the organs generate in concert.
The transformation of the mind of the Freudian patient that we encounter after the catharsis of bringing unconscious representations into the “light” of consciousness, occurs in the unique context of an animal that passes through a very long childhood and in doing so, needs to master the various processes of the Oedipus/Elektra complex. Processes which assist in the maturation of the individual and the initiation into a form of life in which one takes responsibility for ones own life, through taking responsibility for various roles related to ones love-life and work-life. To love and to Work adequately require a strong ego and a manageable superego, Freud claims. Freud defines the ego as a precipitate of object losses over the period of ones life, indicating that he believes in the Greek regulation of pleasure/desire by a reality principle following various principles. Various defence mechanisms of the ego are brought into play in the individuals love-life and in his work-life. If, for example he decides to become an artist and the Oedipus/Elektra complex has been resolved in favour of a strong ego the sexual component is replaced by a nonsexual form of substitute satisfaction, and the defence mechanism of “sublimation” will regulate the transformational process that will hopefully take the individual the rest of the way to the “good-spirited flourishing life” (eudaimonia). On this journey identifications with key transitional authority figures become important, if this process of self-actualisation is to take place satisfactorily. The Ego needs, for example, to be able to tolerate substantial losses if Culture is to be successfully introduced into this personality equation. It is here that Mythology may perhaps play a substantial role in the catharsis of the artist’s life: a role in which both desires and fears need to be regulated by the Reality Principle.
Turning to our Christian Mythology/Religion: Our “saviour” endured betrayal and a painful premature death, which he needed to be psychologically prepared for. Jesus accepted his fate in Greek stoical style with the words, “Forgive them father for they know not what they do”, but almost spoiled the whole plot at the end by the lament ” Father, why has thou abandoned me!” One can of course argue that this was a cry of human agony, but it certainly will not have sent positive messages to his disciples. Jesus is nevertheless a “symbol”, perhaps a sublime symbol, of the importance of salvation for mankind. The message of the life and times of Jesus is meant to have a cathartic affect upon the egos of humanity, pointing to the necessity for sacrifice, if one is to lead a good spirited flourishing life. This moment before his death, when he wondered if his heavenly father had abandoned him, was the black moment Campbell referred to earlier. His passing away from this world thus needed a moment of light for the whole experience to make sense. A “life-after death” would appear to be the only way out of a dead end in which life must come to a final and inevitable end— a long dreamless sleep as Socrates put the matter. But with the categorical hylomorphism of Aristotle it is possible that life in its essence must be defined as something that comes to a final and irrevocable end. If this is the essence- specifying-definition of life, it would then be a contradiction to claim that there was another life after death. After all Socrates who was agnostic about what death was, left us with the possibility that it was a long dreamless sleep. Plato did not twist the end of the Socratic tale by picturing Socrates to be alive somewhere living in eternity with the Theory of Forms. The tale of Socrates did not suffer, and he is in the only sense possible “immortalised” in Plato’s writings, partly through his response to the unjust death sentence passed upon him by the Athenian state. The circumstances of the death of Jesus and the death of Socrates were indeed very different. Jesus had come to save the sinners of the world, almost all of us, whereas we find none of that Christian pessimism about man in Greek Philosophy or Mythology. We do find an oracular pessimism relating to whether mans creations can ever lead to anything other than ruin and destruction, that is to say death may be the inevitable fate of civilisation and the only reasonable individual response to such a state of affairs is to live out the time we have in Socratic fashion. There does seem to be in the refusal of the Greeks to twist the tale of life into something that transcends our knowledge completely, a more balanced view of life than that we find in the Christian scriptures. The same point can be made in reaction to all the resurrection myths that we find in the world mythologies, namely, that the idea of a life after death seems to be a Freudian wish-fulfillment, an idea born of a wish for life and a fear of death. For Freud, Reality demands the catharsis of such a desire and fear, and this may be the Socratic/Platonic/Aristotelian view. The Greeks seem, that is,to focus more on the idea of “The Good” than the idea of evil and sin. The death of Socrates was therefore never a sacrificial act ,but rather a pedagogical lesson relating to linking the ideas of “The Good” and “Death”. With Socrates we are not dealing with a Being hidden behind the scenes but rather with difficult to understand transcendental principles (arché) of life (psuché) which include episteme (knowledge) and diké (justice). The Greek narrative of Socrates urges us to lead the examined life and see what happens. There are no guarantees that it will all end well. Given the oracular proclamation relating to human creations and ruin and destruction, the best that can emerge from such a story is “hope”. Kant gave voice to this pedagogical lesson by claiming that leading a rational worthwhile life would indeed be a good-in-itself and would justify a hope for happiness.
Socrates, through his method of elenchus, may well have thought that what he was doing, in the medium of discourse was cathartic, was a kind of “talking cure”, which would bring his interlocutors into a closer relation with reality, and also simultaneously improve their knowledge of themselves. The unjust nature of his death suggests that his method, to some extent, failed, if viewed over his whole life, but this was not his own death-bed view and we ought also to recall that both Plato and Aristotle followed in his footsteps. Aristotle of course replaced face to face confrontation and Platonic dialogue with written academic logos. As a consequence of the work of all three of these great Philosophers, in a teacher pupil relation wit each other, the historical verdict favours not demoting Socrates to a lower status just because his method of elenchus deflated the over blown egos of those authorities who thought they knew what they did not know. (the Cardinal “sin” for the oracles).
The Socratic ego is strong enough and has rid itself of all dependency in its self-sufficiency, making no reference to any father or divine being when the tragedy is upon Socrates. This indeed may be the only genuine fatal criticism of authorities who must know what they claim to know if we, who depend upon them, are to avoid the ruin and destruction prophesied—whatever the cost for the individual.
Mythological monsters like the Minotaur and the unnamed thousand-headed monster populated the dialogues of Plato. The latter was a symbol of what happens when desires multiply in an organism (each head representing a desire) to such an extent, that even should reason determine to cut off a head, a new head immediately grows to replace it. The monster is a representation of what happens when raw desires( Epithumia) are not controlled by Reason. Monsters are there to be slain in Plato’s dialogues and in Greek mythology, for example the Minotaur (half man half bull) living in the Cretan cave of Daedalus until it was slain by Theseus.
Theseus is famed for the unification of Attica and also played important roles in helping Hercules through his trials and enduring a series of trials of his own. In the narrative about Theseus we also encounter the problematic relation that can exist between fathers and sons. King Aegeus, Theseus’s father had instructed his son that upon returning from his dangerous adventures he should exchange his black funeral sails for white neutral sails. Theseus forgot his promise, and his father committed suicide upon sight of the incoming black sails. This deed was of sufficient magnitude for the Greeks to name the sea he jumped into, the Aegean sea. Theseus, like Jesus was reputed to have two fathers, one mortal and one divine, (Poseidon, god of the sea). Theseus did not however, die like Jesus, he died by being cast off a cliff on the island of Scyros, and the Delphic Oracle ordered the retrieval of his bones to be buried in the country he united, namely Attica. It is clear from the narratives from Greek Mythology, that it was the fate of cities not individuals that were of primary importance, The Spartans were prepared to sacrifice themselves for honour and Sparta, and the Athenians for justice and Athens. Whether or not individuals were to find salvation via their faith in whatever religion, would hardly have interested Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. Focusing on the sins of the forefathers of man to explain the “fallen” nature of mankind would have mystified the Ancient Greek Philosophers, who believed in leading the examined contemplative life in accordance with the knowledge of good and evil. The thought of having been cast out of the Garden of Eden and future generations being punished for the eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge would have cast doubt upon the Being who would do such things.
Campbell claims that a myth is the dream of a society and we know that from Theseus down to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle via Solon (one of the seven sages of Greece), that unity of the polis was a matter of transcendental importance given the oracular proclamation that “everything created by Humans is destined for ruin and destruction” Plato’s work “The Republic”, attempted to unite myths related to the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals: the Sun was the allegory of the Good bringing both the heat the human psuché needs to function, and the light the human needs to both see and understand. It seems that in the very early days of Philosophy, myth was needed to support the principles of argumentation, if one was to make sense of the unity of Being. Aristotle de-mystified his argumentation by placing his moral faith in the laws of the state, the Rhetoric of Politics and “the Good of Ethics. He replaced mysticism and magic with Principles such as that of the Golden Mean, non-contradiction, sufficient reason etc. Throughout the Dark Ages he was referred to as “The Philosopher” because his hylomorphic Philosophy of Change provided us with the conditions to both Know Ourselves and repair the insidious affects of the divisive conflict between the oligarchs and their “democratic” sons lusting after the power of their fathers in the name of freedom.
Campbell’s high praise for the USA in the light of the advent of the MAGA movement was historically premature given that a tyrant oligarch was elected twice and upon the second occasion proceeded to dismantle all the significant institutions of “Democracy” as understood by the Europeans: the justice system, (including the Supreme Court) law-enforcement, the role of the military, the role of the media, scientific institutions, foreign policy, finance, immigration etc. Rationality has been displaced with an extreme right wing agenda that oscillates between the criminal and the ridiculous.
The Democracy we inherited from the Greeks and a long history (millennia) of the rule of common sense and principles included the Principles (arché) of logic, the sciences, the arts and the Principle of the Golden Mean. We also inherited ides for an educational system that aimed to enlighten a growing middle class that prised the values of knowing themselves, and the nature of the society they lived in. The oligarchs of Ancient Greece with their lack of “knowledge” were indeed laying the foundations for the coming to fruition of the oracular prophesy relating to ruin and destruction.
It was another of the seven sages, namely Thales with his mystical claim “All things are full of Gods” that began the long uncomfortable relation between the rationality of knowledge/philosophy and the spiritualism and mysticism of mythology/religion. Aristotle provided us with the first systematic account of the relations between these two competing views of the world, a task that Kant elaborated upon in his Critical Philosophy, which saw a place for a rational idea of God related to his Categorical Imperative and telos of the Kingdom of Ends.
The narratives of the OT and NT are not closely aligned with the idea of philosophical rationality we inherited from Thales, Solon, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle etc. This might be due to the fact that Philosophical discourse is in a dialectical argumentative form that was meant for both aesthetic political/legal appreciation. These are clearly different forms of discourse to the OT and NT narratives that use images, symbols and metaphors to accomplish their persuasive goals. The Ancient Greek concept of areté, for example, was related to a correct or justified system of beliefs that aimed either at The True” or “The Good”. The criteria of judgement that is used to evaluate the appeal of a series of images representing various states of affairs must be backed by an appropriate principle. The Energy Regulation and Pleasure-Pain Principles operating as they do at the Biological and lower Psychological levels do not however engage readily with the transcendent and continuous nature of being. The image of the serpent for example is a positive one in most Cultures but not with the Hebrew Yahweh who curses the serpent by removing its legs and making it crawl on its belly as a punishment for its evil influence. The female Eve is also persona non grata with the Hebrew God who constructed her from Adams Rib. Mortal sex and reproduction too was not good enough to produce Jesus whose mother ,Maria, needed to be impregnated by the Holy Ghost whilst remaining a virgin. The Christian sect, in many ways was very different to the other religious sects of the time, yet the imaginativeness of the writers of the Gospels was, in the matter of the birth of the son of God via the Holy Spirit, indeed impressive. Jesus according to them was born without pain, like an idea in the mind, except that he was born in physical life-form but not according to biological principles. The Divine Being, according to Aristotle in his work on “Metaphysics”, thinks about thinking. We humans, on the other hand, in our finitude, can only think something about something. We need, however to turn to the Ethics of Spinoza to understand that the divine Being can take an infinite number of forms but we human beings, can only know of divinity via two forms, thought and extension in reality.
When the divine Being thinks about thinking this manifests itself in changes in the physical universe, which is one with divine thinking. This kind of description/explanation is transcendent for us because we can only think something(represent) about something (extension in reality). Spinoza argues it is by forming adequate ideas and reasoning according to the principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason, that we can lift the veil off the face of Divine Being. Kant, in the context of this discussion, reminds us of the inscription on one of the statues representing the divine Being at the Temple of Isis:
“No human has ever succeeded in lifting this veil.”
This Being declares itself to be all that was, that is, and that will be.
To the extent that, as Campbell points out, the divine is within us, as well as all around us, is the extent to which we can in some sense be said to have something in common with the divine being, but this might nevertheless still preclude us from being able to think something about this divine Being.
Campbell refers in this chapter to the symbolic account from the Upanishads in which the creator “realised” that he is the creation. If a human using a divine principle were to come to the same conclusion then they (per impossibile) would have identified with the divine principle of creation (Page 52). Knowing oneself in this kind of context, is knowing what one cannot know or think—-the criterion the Delphic oracle used to identify Socrates as the wisest man in Athens.
For both Ancient Greek Mythology and Ancient Greek Philosophy the divine is not just good-in-itself, but also what Plato called “The Form of the Good”, from which all good consequences flow, including the good which flows through us into the world. There is one complication which ought to be observed in the above discussion relating to Spinozas claim that we can only “know” of the divine being in two of a possible infinite number of modes, namely thought and extension in reality: namely the complication that when we are made aware of the fact that our human origin is in material realm of extension, a fundamental limitation of human psuché presents itself. We are more likely to lift the veil of essence off material things, than things in the realm of thought, which are also related to the other infinite modes of Being. Kant attempts to deal with these issues by distinguishing between the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals. The former would certainly include the material basis of life and its principles, including the energy regulation principle and the pleasure-pain principle. The emergence of life from material surely is in accordance with the energy regulation principle, and ascending levels of complexity resulted in the emergence of the pleasure-pain principle. The Perception of pain by a dog kicked by a passer-by in a street in Greece invoked the wrath of Pythagoras, who is said to have complained at the treatment on the grounds of the dog having a soul(psuché-life) The dog wished for better treatment as all complex living beings do. A dog may not be rational or be capable of discourse but it can nevertheless give voice to being unjustly treated. A dog, as we learn from the writings of O Shaughnessy, is tethered immediately to its environment in a way that we húman psuché are not. We have the capacity to relate to representations of absent environments, events, people, objects etc. We can also form very complex ideas such as “Lets build Rome on this site!” The reality of such an idea formed eons ago stands as testament to our powers to build cities that endure, thereby contesting the oracular proclamations relating to ruin and destruction. Of course the Rome that stands where it does today is not the same as the one that fell into ruin and destruction in accordance with the oracles proclamation. Rome never succeeded in replacing Greece, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its military and engineering prowess. Ancient Greece was the birthplace for these powers, but it was also the venue for the birth of the use of categorical reasoning that would in the Enlightenment free us from our childhood dependency upon our religions and mythologies. There are, of course, as Campbell testifies to, adult religions and mythologies, and those of Ancient Greece must be counted amongst these. We ought also to recall that it was Ancient Greek Philosophy that took us into the rational realm of the categorical logos which transcended the dialectical interplay of opposites such as good and evil, male and female etc. Heraclitus, we recall, claimed that with logos we can realise that the road going up the hill is the same road going down the hill. It was Aristotle who formalised the categorical thinking of logos into logic and began the real philosophical attempt to lift a corner of the veil from the face of transcendence.