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In Freud’s work “Civilisation and its Discontents” we encounter an interesting critique of the Christian maxim “Love thy neighbour”. Freud provides us with a number of arguments, one of which points a finger at the neighbour and asserts the following:
“Men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved and who at most can defend themselves if attacked, they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.”(New York,Norton, 1961, Pages 58-59)
Campbell, in his turn provides a very interesting argument against this position, which insists that the most interesting transcendental claim about the Metaphysics of man is that the opposites,”I and thou”, are essentially the same, and that if you do not love or respect your neighbour, you may not love or respect your own integrity as a human being, and may therefore be less inclined to risk your life to save the life of your neighbour. Indeed, you may on Freud’s formula, decide to murder him, before he murders you. There is also an Aristotelian argument intertwined with Campbells position which claims that mans practical rationality manifests itself in the creation of laws to regulate social behaviour. Such law-making activity would, of course, be a waste of time if the law-givers did not believe that men both ought to obey such laws, and can on the whole be trusted to do so. There is also a relevant Kantian argument in this context which implies that we ought to respect ones fellow man, because all men are indentically ends-in-themselves. We ought, that, is not to treat our neighbour as a means to our own ends. The conclusion that must be drawn from these arguments is that we are not savage beasts, but rather potentially rational animals with a transcendental view of each other.
Animals, of course, cannot be praised or blamed for their activities but humans can be praised or blamed for theirs, because we possess a battery of powers belonging to a self that enables us to choose to do or not to do what we are considering. We aim, as Aristotle claimed, for “the Good”, even if our reasoning as to exactly what is Good, is not always valid. The thought processes involved is evaluating both the consequences of the action, as well as considering whether the action concerned, respects the integrity of any life forms involved.
Campbell points to the Bodhisattva who, he argues:
“Voluntarily participates in the sorrows of the world.” (Page 139)
Campbell also claims in this context that:
“Life is pain but compassion is what gives it the possibility of continuity” (Page 139)
Campbell has, in earlier works, pointed to the first truth of Buddhism which is that “life is sorrowful”, and this recalls the Freudian characterisation of the ego, being the “precipitate of lost objects”, the consequence of a process involving both mourning and melancholia. Learning to live compasionately with ones own pain, and the pain of others, was cathartic for the Ancient Greeks, and for Freud. This identity of the “I and thou” then, also allows for the interpretation of the sacrifice of Christ in terms of an “atonement” for all the sins of mankind in the past and in the future. This, Campbell insists, ensures that the sacrifice is “at-one” with humanity. The event of the crucifixion, Campbell argues was meant to:
“evoke in mans heart the sentiment of compassion for the suffering of life.” (Page 140)
Campbell paradoxically refers to the Vietnam war and claims that such crises shake up the life of those involved and allows man to come onto contact with the reality of suffering and heroism once again. This too can awaken the vicissitude of the instincts which we give the name “compassion”.
The theme of the Waste-Land arises again in relation to the wounded Grail King who:
“is there to evoke compassion and thus bring a dead wasteland to life:” (Page 144)
More than one mystic has been crucified for insisting upon naming their experience of transcendence with the words “I and God are one”. This in the eyes of many was heresy, and might have the result of diminishing the idea of the deity the community embraces.
Campbell discusses the institution of marriage in relation to an image of the “wheel of fortune”. Marriage, he argues is at the centre of the wheel, (the still point of the turning wheel), and does not particpate in the ups and downs of fortune, but rather stays steadfastly in the same place all of the time:
“That is the sense of the marrige vow —I take you in health or sickness, in wealth or poverty, going up or going down. But I take you as my center, and you are my bliss, not the wealth that you might bring me, not the social prestige, but you.”(Page 147)
The continuity of marriage has traditionally been the guard-rail for the exigencies of a long childhood and provided security for the children of the marriage, so marriage has been related to a fulfilling a number of important needs for man, apart from its transcendental function related to the proposition “I and thou are one”.
Perhaps scholars in love with their subject, or the activity of examining ones life via the rituals of reading, writing, and lecturing, are also experiencing these transcendental moments of bliss. Campbell takes up the case of Poets, who:
“are simply those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.” (Page 148)
Campbell also notes in this context, that during his teaching career he has seen many students move via these rituals of reading, writing and examination, into the realm where transcendental experiences become possible. He also recalls that some fathers actively discourage their children from making the journey on the “transcendental path”, because they are fearful that their children will not “make a living”. In this context, Campbell’s own experiences serve as a beacon of hope. He recalls that in 1929, upon returning from being a student in Europe three weeks before the financial crash, he could not obtain employment for five years, yet:
“I did not feel poor. I just felt that I didn’t have any money. People were so good to each other at that time. For example I discovered Frobenius…. and I had to read everything Frobenius had written.” (Page 149)
Campbell was a Sanskrit scholar and could translate complex texts and complex symbolic terms. which he claimed were relevant to the understanding of certain mythological themes. He also believed in a life after death (Page 150), and felt that invisible hands guided him in the right direction and put him on the right road to bliss where the “waters of eternal life” could be found. The Philosopher would not categorically deny that what he is claiming is a hypothetical possibility, but the Philosopher also knows that the opposite thesis, namely, that life comes to an absolute end in a long dreamless sleep, is equally possible, and the context of this (namely, that death is not an experience), makes it impossible to choose between these two hypotheticals.
Wittgenstein in his earlier work claimed that experiencing death is a logical impossibility because when I am dead there is no longer any I: that is, the transcendental subject that stands outside the world is gone. He nevertheless saw religious language and behaviour to have meaning, but claimed he did not know what someone claiming that they would be resurrected could possibly mean. Wittgenstein, in relation to this idea of bliss, maintained that he did not know what the purpose of our existence was, but he was certain that it was not to be happy. Kant too would concur with this last thought, claiming as he did, that happiness was merely the principle of self-love in disguise, and that our willingness to evaluate the worthiness of our actions is what constituted our integrity. Kants claim is that happiness must be connected to our worthiness to be happy.
Chapter V entitled “The Hero’s Adventure” begins with a question by Moyers asking why there are so many stories of heroes contained in mythological literature. Campbell replies:
“Because thats what is worth writing about. Even in popular novels the main character is a hero or heroine who has found or done something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”(Page 151)
Campbell elaborates upon this point by claiming that there are two types of action: one in which the hero displays considerable courage in circumstances of significance, such as a battle, or alternatively, saving the life of another. Quite often a spiritual personal transformation is involved in a transcendental experience, and the story of this transformation is often told to others. Campbell uses Christian mythology, and speaks of heroic adventures in relation to death and resurrection. He includes both the experience of birth by the baby and the mother giving birth in this category of spirituality. Mothers we know, can die in the experience of childbirth, and the infant may well be traumatised in the transition from a warm watery environment to the colder air based environment outside the womb. Campbell, in relation to the mothers experience, expresses regret that society does not deem the action of raising children as a heroic act. He cites the work of the psychoanalyst, Otto Rank:
“Otto Rank makes the point that there is a world of people who think that the heroic act in being born qualifies them for the respect and support of their whole community.”(Page 154)
What appears to be necessary for us to regard an adventure as heroic, is that courage is required in an activity that has as its purpose some service to the community. He cites the Koran as well as the Old and New Testaments, in which we can encounter courageous actions in trying circumstances. These may or may not be in the presence of the experience of spiritual revelations. Moyers asks whether all leaders are heroes, and Campbell makes a distinction between empire building achievements in battle accomplished by the tyrants of Napoleon and Hitler, and genuine spiritual achievements that benefit mankind both ethically and politically. This wider concern for humanity, Campbell designates as “cosmological”.
Mythological stories such as that of Prometheus bringing fire to mankind, have cultural and planetary significance in that the use of fire may well have been the begiining of civilisation. The use of fire certainly separates us from the animals—signifying the fundamental fact recorded by Aristotle’s definition of psuché, that we are n one sense the same as the animals, but in another sense, different, having the unique capacity of becoming either the best of the animals or the worst of the animals.
Campbell also, rather surprisingly discusses Solo’s heroism in relation to Luke Skywalker, in the film “Star Wars”. This is a somewhat paradoxical reference given Campbells objection to current life styles and the influence of the technological and mechanistic, at the expense of the spiritual. The genre of science fiction would appear to have a natural home in the minds of those fascinated by technological developments and a wish to escape from the confines of the earth that was the origin of their existence. Campbell mentions some of the cultural causal factors that have brought our current state of affairs about:
“Now it has become to such an extent a sheerly mechanistic world as interpreted through our physical sciences, Marxist sociology, and behaviouristic psychology, that we are nothing but predictable patterns of wires responding to stimuli. This nineteenth century interpretation has squeezed the freedom of the human will out of modern life.” (Page 160)
We could well imagine both Aristotle and Kant saying something similar if they had witnessed what Campbell had witnessed in the name of civilisation. The genre of science-fiction with its roots in a fantasy that is not strictly speaking grounded in traditional science, may be a form of fiction with less reality-content and less contact with basic terms conneted to the human psuché than other forms of fiction. There is no doubt that the will to explore would eventually turn to what has been referred to as the “final frontier” of space, and this has been accelerated with the increase in the power of telescopes to provide information of distant solar systems and galaxies. The fantastic supernatural elements of Star Trek, however, may be the result of a desire to escape the earth conceived of as a prison.
Sitting in a cinema, and passively watching such spectacles in circumstances in which we appear to have lost the will to engage with threats to our civilisations and cultures might, then, seem to be another symptom of a pathology of “escapism”, especially given the fact that there is very little content in such spectacles relating to the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Man. We appear to be dealing with a form of substitute satisfaction that contributes very little to the task of beoming the “still point of the turning world” in circumstances which Campbell describes as a “Waste Land”. In this waste land, Campbell points out that our bodies are neglected, and need to be sustained by mechanical exercise programs. In such circumstances the very concept of the hero is in jeopardy. This state of affairs is well-described in Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”:
“No I am not Prince Hamlet
Nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant Lord, one that will do
To swell a progress start a scene or two”
Moyers specifically claims that Campbell’s scholarship embraces Science, but both Aristotle and Kant embraced Science in different ways. Kant saw Newtons Principles of Physics to be significant contributions to the Metaphysics of Nature and Aristotle painted a broader picture embracing three different categories of science, theoretical, practical and productive. It is not clear that Cambell is interested in these aspects that relate essentially to contexts of explanation/justification. He, on the contrary seems to be more interested in the explorative dimensions of science related to, for example technical investigations into whether an atom is a wave or a particle or alternatively, techncal investigations into the sources of life. This appears to be his motivation:
“Thats the reason we speak of the divine. There’s a transcendent energy source. When the physicist obeserves subatomic particles, he’s seeing a trace on a screen. These traces come and go, come and go, and we come and go, and all of life comes and goes. That energy is the informing energy of all things. Mythic worship is addressed to that.” (Page 162)
Wittgenstein in his later work claimed that scientific questions did not interest him as much as psychological, aesthetic and religious questions and one can see in his concept of “forms of life” clear connections to the Aristotelian concerns with Psuché. Wittgenstein also claimed that language-games were rooted in instinct and the mastery of techniques emerging from the hurly burly of social activity where language-use was the focus of explanation and justification. Scientific views of language such as logical atomism or systems theory often restrict themselves to the context of exploration, where theory-building activity is perhaps looking for what Aristotle called “basic terms” (is an atom a wave or a particle?) which, when found, will require a search for principles (arché) that can justify the statements of knowledge composed of these basic terms. When we are concerned with living organisms, however, it appears that any “parts” (for example, neuronal systems and their energy regulations), will be used holistically by global powers, and this fact diminishes the importance of viewing an organism as a bundle of efficent causes. The Kantian account refers instead to a totality of conditions which “form” (formal cause) the actualised unconditioned whole. (The whole is greater than the sum of the parts). This whole is, of course, connected to the transcendental unity of apperception which Kant relates to the “I think” which also is a potentiality that is actualised and is the power responsible for viewing the world not as a totality of facts but as an unconditioned totality of conditions.