Archive for the ‘myth’ Category
The Mysteries of Mithras: A Symbolist Theoretic
Another essay from my seemingly endless Arts degree. This was my favourite – writing about the Mithras cult of the Roman Empire, in the process discovering a theory of cultural interpretation as per Beck and Geertz, leaving behind a misguided attempt to make cultural interpretation ‘scientific’ by simply not commenting on it at all…
The religion of the Mithras cult flourished in the Roman Empire from the first to the fourth centuries C.E., only disappearing with the triumph of Christianity. The primary source evidence for the cult, while not exactly scarce, is distinctly enigmatic, consisting of little more than iconographic images and some short, largely uninformative epigraphs. Thus the meaning of this mystery cult as a historical reality has remained, ironically, mysterious. In this essay, I will firstly review the primary source evidence, drawing upon the work of Manfred Clauss. I will then explore an interpretation put forward by Roger Beck based upon the symbolist theory of Clifford Geertz. I argue that Beck’s interpretation achieves a greater insight into the experience and meaning of the cult largely because he takes the trouble to interpret the data in an appropriately ‘religious’ fashion. As we shall see, studying the Mithras cult will not exactly ‘teach us a lesson’ but ‘open out the possibilities’ of religious experience. Since this presumably approximates the goal of the ancient cult-members, we shall see how interpretations based on strict scientific rationalism will be unilluminating and generally inappropriate.
The Primary Sources
The Mithras cult apparently emerged during the first century C.E. with the appearance of the first inscriptions and artefacts.[1] The area of spread is very large, with Mithraic sites discovered throughout the ancient empire from Egypt to England.[2] We only know about membership from short epigraphs, for example: “To the invincible god Mithras, Optimus, deputy of Vitalis, slave of Sabinius Veranus and supervisor of the customs-post, has fulfilled his vow.”[3] Early followers included soldiers, ordinary citizens, slaves and low-grade administration officials.[4] Scholars have long believed that the cult admitted no women,[5] but Griffith remarks that one textual reference is difficult to explain, from Porphyry of Tyre, the third century C.E. Neoplatonic philosopher, who wrote: “Thus initiates who take part in their rites [the Mithraic Mysteries] are called lions, and women hyenas, and servants ravens” (Porphyry, De Abstinentia ab esu animalium 4.16.3).[6]
A recreation of the interior of a Mithraeum.
Everything else we know about Mithraism comes from the physical artefacts and iconography usually discovered in the ruins of Mithraic temples. A mithraeum is a small, square-sided room, usually less than 10 metres along any wall.[7] A cave-like interior appears to have been important; mithraea tend to have vaulted ceilings – some were even carved out of rock.[8] The basic common structure is a central aisle, flanked by raised podia on each side, upon which cult-follows presumably sat or reclined.[9] The exact range of images, statues and small altars varies from site to site, but every mithraeum had a brightly painted cult-image of Mithras slaying the bull displayed at the end of the aisle either in bas-relief or, sometimes, as a free-standing sculpture.[10] Apparently, lighting effects were also important, with many lamps discovered in the ruins; some images had alcoves for candles, designed so that they could be made to glow in the darkness of the Mithraic ‘cave’.[11]
The iconography of Mithraism is remarkably varied in style and detail across the large geographical range of the cult, yet at the same time most of the scenes portrayed are roughly consistent. The most common images and the manner in which they are arranged can be interpreted as outlining the ‘sacred narrative’ of Mithras.[12] The sun-god is born from a rock; he is pictured emerging fully-formed as a child or youth, sometimes naked, wearing a Phrygian cap, wielding a torch and a dagger.[13] He is
A typical image of Mithras.
shown firing an arrow at a rock, which magically brings forth water.[14] A series of images portray his hunting a great bull – he is shown prowling, chasing, riding, guiding, dragging and even carrying the bull on his shoulders.[15] This presumably leads to the scene that forms the central cult-image of the bull-slaying (tauroctony): Mithras is shown holding down the bull with his left knee and plunging a dagger into its neck with his right hand while fixing the viewer with an expression of “easy grace”[16] or “dolor and compassion.”[17] He is almost always accompanied in this act by a dog, a scorpion and a snake, and sometimes a lion, all of whom seem to be feeding upon the bull, whose thrashing tail or gushing blood is often represented as burgeoning grain-stalks.[18] These creatures frequently take part as observers of the earlier scenes too, appearing along with images of the sun and moon, a distinctive krater (mixing bowl), the Roman sun-god Sol, and the mythic torchbearers Cautes and Cautopates.[19]
The mosaic floor at the Mithraeum of Felicissimus at Ostia.
Rarely are initiations portrayed and these are difficult to interpret.[20] Some written sources suggest the rituals were very harsh but these herald from Christian writers who obviously disapproved of the cult and almost certainly were exaggerating.[21] A lot of the theories concerning initiation have centred around the apparent 7-stage grade structure for cult-members. The lowest grade was called Raven, and progressed upward through Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Sun-runner, and Father.[22] These grades are attested by iconography at a few mithraeum sites, such as the mosaic floor at the Mithraeum of Felicissimus at Ostia near Rome.[23] Some scholars consider the grades to be ubiquitous to the cult, while others suggest they only applied in certain areas, or only to priests.[24]
Interpretation
Clauss represents the scholarly consensus when he affirms that the Mithraic cult images are difficult to interpret, that we may never know exactly what they signify, but that the tauroctony, for instance, generally gives the impression of a positive, life-affirmation.[25] Mithras’ central act of killing the bull is a “transfiguration and transformation”[26] or rebirth, not merely a scene of senseless slaughter and destruction.[27] In terms of understanding ancient mystery religions generally, Clauss exhibits an awareness that ancient peoples did not feel bound by fixed credos, and that they could worship multiple gods without conflict or contradiction.[28] However, he still finds the Mithras cult rather disorganised or not properly unified, exemplified by the evident inconsistency of iconographic detail and style, lack of evidence of a definite doctrine, the confusing syncretism of gods and symbols, and its ultimate weakness in the face of attacks by Christians.[29]
Another Tauroctony.
Undeniably, the small, dark Mithraic temples and the paucity of written description has led to assessments of the Mithras cult as deeply esoteric.[30] This has led to all kinds of theories as to the type of esoteric meaning suggested by the iconography. Many scholars have drawn on perceived links between the Mithraic imagery and astrology, in particular, proposing that Mithraic ritual was somehow supposed to lead the participant on a journey through the stars to experience the soul’s salvation.[31] Clauss is very dismissive of such interpretations,[32] but others have provided complex arguments for Mithras’ identity with the sky or the cosmos itself (Weiss), for the tauroctony as a kind of astral clock (North), or as encoding the mathematics of equinoctial precession (Ulansey).[33]
Roger Beck argues that links to astrology do seem justified but many interpretations approach the subject wrongly; there is an ad hoc nature to many interpretations which is disconcerting, inviting inconclusive readings.[34] Essentially, Beck argues that we are not missing a definitive interpretation; we lack a sensible theoretic for understanding the multiplicity of existing interpretations.
A Symbolist Theoretic
The missing theoretic, Beck argues, concerns the appropriate interpretation of mythic symbols. Clifford Geertz suggests, for instance, that applying the principles of logic – discreteness, linearity, exclusivity – is not appropriate for the interpretation of symbolic subject matter.[35] All religious systems are characterised principally by an emotional element; the intellect only provides assent to a feeling-toned worldview.[36] Geertz argues that religion comprises a worldview and an ethos which interact, forming a ‘gestalt’ which establishes a fundamental sense of numinous meaning and experienced reality, only secondarily converted into an ethics or consistent metaphysics.[37]
Beck similarly argues that Mithraism, as a feeling-toned system, cannot have a definitive meaning, like a dictionary definition.[38] Emotional experience comprises an ineffable complexity, not a specific symbol-to-meaning correspondence.[39] A particular symbol usually means many different things depending on the level of interpretative experience.[40] Thus, interpretations which involve complex intellectual workings or instrumental answers have no place in the theoretic. Hence, the Mithraic symbology is unlikely to be a complex code, which, once decoded, reveals the mathematics of astral precession. This not only draws upon incongruous modern astronomy, but such thinking exemplifies a theory of religion which suggests that only the learned can understand religious symbols, which the vulgar misinterpret.[41] This idea is often propagated by ancient intellectuals, such as Porphyry, but it is nonetheless unrealistic, or at least, peripheral to our concerns. Beck suggests we must focus upon the experience of the Mithraic majority, who were unlikely to be attending a secret astronomy class.[42]
A Tauroctony within a circle suggesting the zodiac.
The Mithraic symbols are not trying to hide their meanings – Beck suggests that what you see is what you get.[43] Mithras, as a sun-god, probably represents the sun on the primary level of interpretation.[44] Granting that the cult-followers wanted to keep their religion mysterious, the iconography is already ‘hidden’ inside the mithraeum – there was no need for further opacity. Scholars seem to forget this context, which is ironic considering the usual importance of provenance for archaeological explication.[45] Beck argues that the tauroctony alone has no context – the symbols could be interpreted ad infinitum. We must start with what the mithraeum means, within which the tauroctony resides.[46] Furthermore, we must also extend our context into the common, generally understood cultural-social milieu of the Roman Empire in this period, for, as per Geertz’s theory, it is ethos and worldview which will inform contemporary symbolic understanding.[47]
All scholars have long declared the Mysteries to be embedded in the Roman social structure; the cult even seems to support existing social hierarchies.[48] A new cult, to successfully capture imaginations and acquire followers, must appeal to conservative tastes, only realising them in slightly new combinations, a fact acknowledged by Gordon.[49] Beck argues we must ask what the mithraeum meant to most Romans,[50] and suggests we have the answer in this brief passage from Porphyry:
Similarly, the Persians [followers of Mithras] call the place a cave where they introduce an initiate to the mysteries, reveal to him the path by which souls descend and go back again. … This cave bore … the image of the Cosmos which Mithras had created, and the things which the cave contained, by their proportionate arrangement, provided him with the symbols of the elements and climates of the Cosmos. (Porphyry, On the Cave of Nymphs 6)[51]
This passage is often dismissed by scholars as it is written by a Neoplatonist philosopher not a Mithraic cult-member, yet, as Beck argues, Porphyry’s essay is not about interpreting Mithraism – the cult merely earns an incidental mention.[52] Furthermore, as per the theoretic, the allusion does not need to be exactly correct; we are not looking for exact correspondences, only a general impression of ethos. This passage suggests not only that there was a popular understanding of the mithraeum as ‘cosmos’, but it also specifies the pertinent symbolist way of thinking.[53]
The cosmology of Aristotle
Thus, deferring again to the cultural milieu, Beck next asks how Roman society conceived of the cosmos. Clauss knows the answer as well as anyone:[54] he writes of the well-known cosmology of Aristotle, with the unmoving Earth at the centre of seven invisible spheres, one inside the other, each hosting a visible ‘planet’ – Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.[55] The human soul was believed to descend through these spheres to be born.[56] The question is whether something like this cosmological worldview is symbolised in the mithraeum and its iconography. Beck responds with a resounding ‘yes’: the mithraeum is a dark cave-like room, rather like the vault of the stars, in which strange lighting effects illuminate representations of sun, moon and stars, and a seven-grade system mirrors the seven celestial spheres. To explain the animals and other iconography, we need only expand on the popular Greco-Roman symbolic associations between the planets, the gods and their mythic narratives.[57] The tauroctony does not merely picture a man slaying a bull; it portrays a man slaying a bull, accompanied by a scorpion, a dog, a snake, and sometimes a lion and a bowl – all of which were ancient and well-known representations of constellations in the zodiac.[58]
The Zodiac.
Beck elaborates on this picture, delving further into the cosmological correspondences.[59] I do not have the space to rehearse his arguments here. His interpretations become complex, yet arguably never delve beyond the contemporary Roman astrological worldview. Importantly, Beck is not suggesting that these astrological readings offer an ‘explanation’ of the cult;[60] they are only an index of primary readings,[61] the central structuring mythology, as it were. He suggests that a whole series of simultaneous symbolic correspondences overlay and interact with this astrological symbolism, the ethos interacting with the worldview.[62] A participant could experience meaning on the level of the sacred story of Mithras, of the cosmological worldview, of the earthly ethos, and that of the destiny of human souls.[63] With this interpretative picture, we gain a better sense of the depth and character of Mithraism. So much so that Beck argues that “there is no necessity for a lost ritual to be postulated.”[64] The tauroctony, for instance, seems to involve a sacrifice of the moon-bull by the sun-god. I am reminded here of an observation made by Joseph Campbell in relation to American Indian myth:
On a very special evening there is a moment when the rising moon, having just emerged on the horizon, is directly faced across the world, from the opposite horizon, by the setting sun. …[At such a moment,] if the witness is prepared, there ensues a transfer of self-identification from the temporal reflecting body [the moon], to the sunlike, eviternal source, and one then knows oneself as consubstantial with what is of no time or place but universal and beyond death…[65]
Some similar astral revelation may have furnished the Mithraic cult-followers, through ritual of some kind, with an experience of “the path by which souls descend and go back again” (Porphyry, On the Cave of Nymphs 6).[66]
Conclusion
The Mysteries of Mithras provide us with an interpretative challenge – what to make of an ancient religion about which we have very little textual evidence. Using logical deduction and the usual archaeological methods we can make interpretive guesses, but what emerges is a vague, ad hoc set of symbolic elaborations. The symbolist theoretic of Geertz and Beck does not enhance our viewpoint by disclosing new archaeological facts or even new symbolic interpretations, but provides an insight into the religious mindset that ordered and experienced such meanings. I believe this is what the Mithras cult can teach us today – its symbolic iconography exemplifies the manner in which mythic thought can be (usually is) structured. To comprehend this, we must acknowledge the importance of not just physical but cultural provenance when interpreting ancient myth and religion. From the symbolist theoretic, we can garner a greater understanding not just of the Mithras cult but of the typical human religious worldview, a perspective often buried, confused, or considered ‘esoteric’ in the usual positivist rational analysis of the twentieth-century scientist and archaeologist.
Works Cited[67]
Beck, R. 2000. “Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel.” The Journal of Roman Studies 90: 145-80.
Beck, R. 2006. The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, J. 1991. Reprint. Occidental Mythology. New York: Arkana. Original edition, New York: Viking Penguin, 1964.
Campbell, J. 2002. The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. Novato, California: New World Library.
Clauss, M. 2000. The Roman Cult of Mithras. Translated by Richard Gordon. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
David, J. 2000. “The Exclusion of Women in the Mithraic Mysteries: Ancient or Modern?” Numen 47: 121-41.
Geertz, C. 1957. “Ethos, World-View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols.” The Antioch Review 17: 421-37.
Gordon, R. L. 1980. “Reality, Evocation and Boundary in the Mysteries of Mithras.” Journal of Mithraic Studies 3: 19-99.
Griffith, A. B. 2006. “Completing the Picture: Women and the Female Principle in the Mithraic Cult.” Numen 53: 48-77.
[1] Clauss 2000, 22, 28-32.
[2] Clauss 2000, 26-7.
[3] This translation from Clauss 2000, 38.
[4] Clauss 2000, 33.
[5] Clauss 2000, 33; David 2000, 129, 131, 138-9; Griffith 2006, 65.
[6] Translated by G. Clark, quoted in Griffith 2006, 51.
[7] Clauss 2000, 42-4.
[8] Clauss 2000, 42-4.
[9] Clauss 2000, 46.
[10] Clauss 2000, 52.
[11] Clauss 2000, 120, 125.
[12] Clauss 2000, 62.
[13] Clauss 2000, 64.
[14] Clauss 2000, 71-4.
[15] Clauss 2000, 74-7.
[16] Clauss 2000, 79.
[17] Campbell 1991, 258, after Cumont.
[18] Clauss 2000, 99.
[19] Clauss 2000, 95.
[20] Clauss 2000, 103-5.
[21] Clauss 2000, 102; Beck 2000, 146 n. 10.
[22] Clauss 2000, 131.
[23] Clauss 2000, 133.
[24] Clauss 2000, 131.
[25] Clauss 2000, 79.
[26] Clauss 2000, 79.
[27] Clauss 2000, 81.
[28] Clauss 2000, 9-10, 14, 148, 158.
[29] Clauss 2000, 16-17.
[30] Clauss 2000, 61.
[31] Clauss 2000, xx.
[32] Clauss 2000, xx.
[33] All these referenced in Beck 2006, 37-8.
[34] Beck 2006, 23.
[35] Geertz 1957, 436.
[36] Geertz 1957, 421.
[37] Geertz 1957, 421-22, 425.
[38] Beck 2006, 68-9.
[39] Beck 2006, 28.
[40] Beck 2006, 27.
[41] Beck 2006, 47.
[42] Beck 2006, 46.
[43] Beck 2006, 59.
[44] Beck 2006, 37.
[45] Beck 2006, 60.
[46] Beck 2006, 70.
[47] Beck 2006, 72.
[48] Beck 2006, 72; Clauss 2000, 25.
[49] Gordon 1980, 22-3; Beck 2006, 27.
[50] Beck 2006, 61.
[51] Quoted in Beck 2006, 102.
[52] Beck 2006, 85.
[53] Beck 2006, 102.
[54] Clauss 2000, 10.
[55] Clauss 2000, 10-11; Beck 2006, 77; Campbell 1991, 255.
[56] Beck 2006, 79-80; Campbell 1991, 255.
[57] Beck 2006, 31.
[58] Beck 2006, 31.
[59] Beck 2006, 102-256.
[60] Beck 2006, 41-2.
[61] Beck 2006, 31.
[62] Beck 2006, 73.
[63] Beck 2006, 11.
[64] Beck 2006, 129.
[65] Campbell 2002, 31-2.
[66] Quoted in Beck 2006, 102.
[67] Note: all primary sources were referenced from inside secondary sources so all works cited are secondary.
Against ‘Reason’
Some weeks ago, a couple of my readers asked me to explain what I meant by this Facebook status update:
So here goes.
What is wrong with philosophy?
First, my story: My background is film, theatre, and storytelling – these were my adolescent passions. These led me to mythology, which I explored to discover how the world’s myths could help improve my writing. In the process, I discovered essentially how the world’s myths could enrich my life – that is, in exploring the fundamental concerns of fulfillment, mortality, passion, love and life-meaning.
Now, you might notice an apparent overlap here with a popular understanding of philosophy’s aims (as expressed on Wikipedia):
“Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.”
My gripe with philosophy is really about the extremely important fundamentals this definition seems to have left out. Consider again: “reality, existence, knowledge, values, mind, and language” – where on Earth has emotion, culture, art, and, well, fun got to? Might these be just as if not more important for exploring the fundamentals of human existence?
I chose to pursue philosophy in my Bachelor of Arts because I had not noticed this oversight. The philosophers I had encountered in my studies of myth seemed wise and meaningful. I soon discovered that these philosophers were either sidelined or misconstrued by the university philosophy department. My problem with philosophy is that it is unclear about what it means by ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’, and when it is clear, it is next to useless.
To illustrate I thought about dredging up some dense incomprehensible philosophical texts like anything by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl; just about any philosopher studied at university, but I thought this would be a little too hard to elucidate, and a little too easy to criticize. I have turned instead to a popular, easy to understand work – The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton. It’s available in the Popular Penguins series – those cheap books with the blank orange cover – so it is easy to obtain. In it, Alain De Botton briefly explores the ideas of Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in easy prose (with pictures!).
I do not dispute the interesting, sometimes insightful findings of these philosophers nor the manner in which De Botton illuminates them – with one exception. I disagree with De Botton whenever he says something like this:
“The validity of an argument or action is determined … by whether it obeys the rules of logic.” (42)
“Anger results … from a basic … error of reasoning” (82)
“It is for reason to make the distinction.” (109)
What is reason? Most philosophers bandy the word around but do not go into detail as to what exactly they mean by it. De Botton outlines the Socratic method (24-25): one must take a statement purporting to be true, search for situations in which the statement would not be true, and use this to either modify the statement or declare it false. This sounds to most of us like good common sense. “Rationality … refers to the conformity of one’s beliefs with one’s reasons to believe, or of one’s actions with one’s reasons for action.” Basically, to be rational and reasonable, we must have reasons for doing or believing things. By implication, we must have reasons which have been examined under some more vigorous standard, which, in the case of philosophy, is, again, never specifically elucidated. Why is “because I want to” not a viable reason? This is never explained. The reason why philosophers are so vague in this area, I argue, is because there is no ‘rational’ or ‘reasoned’ standard for assessing philosophical veracity.
What about the principles of empiricism and logic? Might these form a foundation, a measure against which our rational reasoning can be measured? Unfortunately, both of these ideas are inappropriate for philosophical purposes. “Empiricism … states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.” When we say something is empirically true, we mean it has been tested in the external physical world. Human knowledge, values, and mind let alone subjective feelings and life-meaning cannot be empirically examined in the external world – they are mostly internal to us and their external manifestations are open to multifarious interpretation. Hence philosophy cannot be employing empirical reasoning.[1] Logic is a rigorous system whereby lucid, consistent, precisely delineated statements are juxtaposed to determine and corroborate a conclusion. Once again, human knowledge, values, and mind cannot be delineated using lucid, consistent, precise statements – we are examining the idiosyncratic human mind not building a bridge. The words you use to express qualities of mind are all imprecise, they are metaphors for our internal experience of consciousness: words like ‘truth’, ‘right’, ‘just’, ‘anger’, ‘trust’, ‘joy’. Logic treats these concepts as if they were physical things or forces. Just try to find a precise definition for ‘happiness’ among any group of individuals and you will see what I mean.[2]
So ‘rational reasoning’ cannot, for the purposes of philosophy, be founded in empiricism or logic. By ‘rational reasoning’, I suggest that the philosophers mean at a basic level, ‘examined thought’ or ‘careful reflection’, at a more profound level they actually mean ‘creative thought,’ that is, thought that considers the broad and multifarious areas of human experience and understanding, and attempts to make startling connections to reveal insights into the human condition. The distressing thing is that the philosophers, and particularly university philosophy lecturers, do not appear to know this. That their philosophical conclusions are ‘more rational’ is simply an opinion or prejudice. It just means, ‘I find them more sensible’ or ‘I’ve thought about them lots.’ Their ideas may be more appealing than many popular or religious ideas, but they are more practical, meaningful, compassionate, idealistic, ‘realistic’, straightforward or exciting than these ideas, not more ‘rational’.
As an example of how pointless and inappropriate reasoning based on logic is for philosophical purposes, we only need examine the thinking of Socrates. Socrates questions everything – the nature of courage, the purpose of work, the reasons for marriage – but he entirely fails to come up with any answers. (He is, in this respect, as useless and ‘amoral’ as the post-modern deconstructionists discussed here.) Now, I agree that ‘questioning everything’ frees up the mind, enlivens our thinking, staves off blind obedience to conventional views, and has led to the development of empirical science, but Socrates insists he is doing none of these things – he is (most ambiguously) ‘seeking truth’. He seeks to do this by following the dictum: “A statement is true if it cannot be disproved” (24), that is, if all reasons provided for it cannot be contradicted. Socrates seems to have forgotten to question his own method here. It is true that a lack of satisfactory reasons behind a statement may indicate that it is not true, but has he not conceived of truths that may be extremely difficult or impossible to explain in words? We cannot completely explain in terse consistent ‘logical’ statements why we feel emotionally moved by a poem, or why we love our spouse, or why a sunset is beautiful. Does this mean such ideas are false or just inexplicable? Socrates seems to have overlooked the non-rational, emotional basis of the human mind which is a very great pity considering the human mind is what philosophy is supposed to be about!
Fortunately, many of the philosophers that followed Socrates took up his ‘rational’ ‘reasoned’ ‘logical’ terminology, but nicely failed to apply his methods. Epicurus expresses his reasons for valuing friendship – solidarity, intimacy, compassion, happiness – in purely emotional terms which he can call ‘rational’ only nominally. Seneca wisely suggests our frustrations are tempered by what we can ‘rationally’ understand, even though what he really means is what we have emotionally experienced. Montaigne says we should accept and celebrate our ‘irrational’ bodily functions – when he means ‘involuntary’. Fortunately, all the rubbish about ‘rationality’ here does not get in the way of these philosophers speaking their impassioned, meaningful, creative, intuitive ideas, which are either not rational or ‘rational’ in an unconventional rather meaningless sense of the word (roughly approximating ‘well thought about’). They do not limit their thinking to mere contradiction and ‘deconstruction’, as Socrates appears to do.
However, there are a number of highly unfortunate consequences of speaking about intuitive, emotionally-satisfying ideas as based on ‘reason’. To begin with, the ideas appear to be somehow literally factually true – like the conclusions of empirical science. The philosopher does not proffer his idea as a more fulfilling way of seeing the world but as somehow the ‘right’ or ‘more accurate’ way in which the world actually is. Notice how this ironically sounds just a little bit like the absolute certainty of some extremist religious positions? ‘Reason’ in this area has become an Enlightenment superstition. Compare: when a new idea or insight emerged, the ancient thinker was more than likely to attribute such a breakthrough to ‘the grace of God’. For the philosopher, ancient or modern, he is likely to attribute it to his ‘reason’ – it is a more ‘rational’ solution to an existential question. ‘Reason’ in the second example had as much to do with it as ‘God’ in the first.
The second problem is that of expression. Most philosophers, labouring under the mis-impression that they are being ‘logical’ and ‘reasonable’ and ‘factually accurate’, write their intuitive, emotional-meaningful, interesting, inspiring ideas in a formal, stiff, pompous, academic writing style, which is wholly inappropriate to the subject matter. The result is that their ideas are often incomprehensible. I like sometimes to compare this to its opposite, as if, say, someone wrote out their tax return in lines of abstract Romantic poetry. Doing this would not only be strange, but would not serve the purpose of writing. Describing one’s earnings this quarter as “vindictively corpulent” makes as much sense as describing human value as a “categorical imperative”.[3] Montaigne is on my side here: “An incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness.” Not to mention the pretentious self-importance involved in writing in such a way.
The issue of expression is not a slight inconvenience in terms of effective philosophy. Socrates is particular about setting philosophy apart from rhetoric, which is the art of persuasive speaking. Put this way, it seems that Socrates’ goal was to be right rather than convincing. Socrates seems to be trying to emulate the physical sciences where, for example, if I have done the appropriate calculations, it does not matter how I express them, they will still be correct. However, there is a major problem with this when applied to philosophy’s concerns. The way you describe elements of the mind is intimately connected to what you are describing. Consider for example the equivalence of the following terms: “glass” = “tumbler”; “rain” = “shower”; “wind” = “breeze”. Since these refer to external things or properties, we can always refer outwardly to clarify a difference in terminology or a bad description of something. Since elements of mind are abstract ideas, if you describe them inaccurately, the reader is likely to grab hold of a completely different idea, mistaking, for example, ‘freedom’ for ‘licentiousness’, ‘love’ for ‘lust’, ‘beauty’ for ‘prettiness’ etc. There is no external reality to grab hold of to clarify. The ‘rational’ philosopher either ends up describing something other than what he intends to, or nothing at all comprehensible.
A much better more appropriate way of approaching matters of mind would be poetry, art or metaphor. These methods seek not only to describe but to express the sense, the feeling, of that which they indicate. Metaphor is, I argue, the clearest and most powerful method of expressing philosophy. One does not try to inappropriately describe values, feelings, and mind using ‘logical’ or ‘empirical’ language, one gives an example, an ‘as if’, suggesting situations in which the feeling arose or that the values imply, using ordinary everyday language to conjure up a clear impression of what one is talking about. Seneca understood this, which is one of the reasons why his philosophy is unusually clear. He suggests the metaphor of the goddess of Fortune; she represents our exposure to accident. The goddess of Fortune inflicts harm with the moral blindness of a hurricane (another metaphor). Frustratingly, when De Botton discusses this, he notes that the image of the goddess here is distinctly “unphilosophical” (92) and that Seneca introduces her only to aid the memory.
The views expressed in poetry, literature, art, and particularly myth (or, more precisely, philosophical exegeses of myth) are far clearer, more meaningful and insightful than most of those expressed by the philosophers, mostly because the philosophers are incomprehensible to most readers. Actually, the difference between philosophy and literature frequently appears extremely arbitrary, influenced by whether the author in question is using the inappropriate language of ‘rationality’ or not. I am not sure exactly how a T. S. Eliot or George Orwell or Walt Whitman or Thoreau is not in their own way a philosopher, at least, in comparison to the less ‘rationally’ obsessed ‘official’ philosophers such as Montaigne (who seems to be writing pure sociology) or Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, Sartre or Merleau-Ponty (who were also littérateurs).
The third and most troubling problem with the use of ‘reason’ in philosophy is that it makes all philosophies, properly considered, wrong or deeply wanting. It does not take much to apply real logical and empirical reasoning to their arguments and find them wanting in the pointless, deconstructive manner of Socrates. This is what university philosophy lecturers do. So not only is most philosophy expressed in an incomprehensible manner, but the intuitive, meaningful ideas hidden beneath the surface are generally extracted by philosophy lecturers in order to be demolished as not ‘rational’ enough. These philosophies are hopelessly tainted by the opinions of the author – and this a bad thing, a weakness. Yet these same philosophy lecturers can only contradict. They proffer no solutions. Why is this? Because empirical/logical reasoning will not yield any answers to the nature of mind because these are the wrong tools for the job. Instead, all such criticism produces is deconstruction, meaninglessness, and nihilism.
To conclude, I want to make it clear that I am not denying that the discoveries of reason have advanced the empirical sciences particularly affecting the areas of technology and health. My argument is that the great philosophers do not employ reason at all, but say they do. The universities, taking things very literally of course, predicate their entire philosophy program around the use of reason, and in the process:
- misinterpret and ridicule the arguments of philosophers who have something meaningful to tell us about our lives and
- endorse the useless arguments of philosophers who have next to nothing meaningful to say, but are actually rational.
Recent discoveries in neurology have emphasized the importance of emotion in ‘reasoning’. In particular, people who have brain damage affecting a particular type of emotional processing can still reason hypothetically, but not in a useful, practical manner. Thus we learn that feeling and reason are not opposites. The distinction that is made between what the philosophers call ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ is the distinction made, in their day, between emotionally meaningful ideas and those which are not. The idea of a reasonable ethics founded on maximizing the greatest happiness for the greatest number is similarly based upon an emotionally satisfying idea – all the more so for being more practically realizable for the first time in history – but it is not based upon a greater ‘reason’. To claim such is to state an untruth, to cloud the issue with an incomprehensible writing style, and, most destructively, to open your idea to logical contradiction. So enough of these ‘rationalisations’! Tell it like it is! Such an idea is more inspiring, humane, compassionate, dynamic, etc. not more ‘rational’.
[1] I leave out of this discussion the empirical observation of brain science (neurology) and the statistical basis of modern psychology as philosophy clearly attempts to separate itself from these methods.
[2] I have had people counter this argument of mine by, essentially, choosing one of these definitions and insisting on it, but this is never arrived at through any explicitly logical process.
[3] For those well-versed in Kantian terminology, I suggest that you understand this term because you have found a way of connecting this sterile language to an intuitive emotional sense of meaning within yourself. It is definitely is not the ‘mathematical principle’ that Kant’s inappropriate and obscure language makes it resemble.
Might, Cunning and Order in Hesiod’s Theogony
Is the narrative of the unfolding cosmos in Hesiod’s Theogony an explanation of the contemporary world of the Ancient Greeks?
Hesiod’s Theogony, one of the earliest extant ancient Greek texts, charts the creation and evolution of the cosmos and the genealogy of the gods up to the reigning supremacy of Zeus. The text, full of divergent narratives and genealogical minutiae, is not easy to interpret. As an explanation of the contemporary world of the Greeks it is particularly troublesome, not only in light of limited archeological evidence and scant contemporary literature, but the very nature of its mythology makes historical evaluation largely a matter of supposition. Saying this, there are some general reflections that can be made on the basis of the text, especially concerning the importance of power and intelligence in shaping the burgeoning social order; yet such reflections are hardly explanations in the usual sense of the word.
The Theogony’s social context is largely unknown or suppositional. Judging mainly from his Works and Days, Hesiod seems to have been a poor shepherd who lived around the late 8th or early 7th centuries B.C.E., in Boeotia in what is now Greece.[1] However, since Hesiod only makes one brief mention of himself at the beginning of the Theogony,[2] we must admit that his supposed biography is not exactly pertinent to our question. Similarly, we can garner a rough idea of the historical pre-history of Greece from archaeological data, yet this sheds very little light on the cultural context of the Theogony, coming as it does at the end of a period regarded by historians as a dark age due to the scarcity of artifacts.[3] The poem’s divergent structure, declamatory opening song to the Muses, and prevalence of formulaic phrases[4] suggest oral storytelling; the myths recounted are believed to be of incalculable age.[5] There are a number of scholarly theories regarding possible Indo-European,[6] Hittite,[7] and Mesopotamian[8] influences with the appearance of common motifs such as father castration, yet most of these merely confirm the existence of ancient links with the Near East and do not help to explain the contemporary culture which probably absorbed these elements centuries earlier.
Importantly, the Theogony is not an account of ancient Greek society but a somewhat obscure semi-chronology of the early Greek pantheon; this is not societal exegesis but mythology. We must interpret this text in accordance with the spirit in which we understand the Greeks to have taken their mythology. We know from subsequent literature that Greek myth is not dogmatic or systematic; there is no single canonical version of the Greek mythic corpus.[9] Greek myths are rather like traditional folktales rife with deliberate and accidental integrations of cultural ideas, such as legendary episodes, political biases, moral postures, religious beliefs, philosophical reflections, social customs and elements of pure entertainment. In most instances, it is impossible to untangle the web of integrated ideas with any degree of certainty; such a task is compounded by the multiplicity of meanings that a single element can possess. However, we can attempt a cautious reflection on such ideas, provided we are wary that a broad thematic examination will yield merely a suggestion of early Classical Greek cultural sentiments and not explanations of society or lifestyle in concrete detail.
The Theogony has something of a confusing structure. It begins with an appraisal of the Muses, who meet with Hesiod on Mount Helicon, inspiring him to declaim the Theogony (Hesiod, Theogony 1-115); this is followed by the story of the evolution of nature and the gods as the developing offspring of Chasm and Earth, through the generation of the Titans, then on to that of the Olympian gods. The poem wavers between sections of chronological narrative, mostly describing the transitions between the generations (for example, the story of Cronus against Sky at 154-83 and Zeus against Cronus at 453-506), and sections of lengthy genealogical listings of the pairings of the various gods and their offspring (such as at 241-382 and 901-1019). The genealogical asides often distort the chronology of the poem by interspersing details of much later events, for example, the account of the birth of Medusa includes the details of her death during the later Heroic Age (Hesiod, Theogony 270-94). This has the effect of further confusing the focus and final meaning of the text, especially when, for example, Zeus is described as organizing his war against the Titans (Hesiod, Theogony 391-4) before his birth is narrated (Hesiod, Theogony 465-500). I think this confusion is largely incidental and a result of the oral background; the pre-existent structure of the basic myths recounted does not fit perfectly into the chronological sequence. Yet I believe this structural distortion reveals that Hesiod is deliberately re-structuring the myths, twisting them into a super-narrative that may reveal a paradigm pertinent to the contemporary Greek ethos. This re-structuring could be seen merely as the necessary form for a poem, or it could be interpreted as an early form of rationalization, similar to the attempt of a scientist or historian to catalogue thoughts in a stratified sequence.[10]
Either way, the Theogony seems to be an account of the establishment of order[11] – this much is obvious from the contrast between the opening primitivity of Chasm and his ilk, and the concluding ordered hierarchy of Zeus’ pantheon. However, the exact nature of this new order is not immediately apparent on first reading. We may initially be confused by apparent similarities between the old and new orders – there are ways in which the poem can be considered as a mere continuity rather than a progression. For example, both orders exemplify the power of brute force; Sky’s constriction of Earth (Hesiod, Theogony 156-61) and Cronus’ defeat of his monstrous father (Hesiod, Theogony 174-90) may not seem significantly different in sentiment from Zeus’ swallowing of Metis (Hesiod, Theogony 886-90) or his punishing defeat of Typhoeus (Hesiod, Theogony 853-68). Cunning or intelligence also plays a pivotal role on both sides: Earth deviously exhorts Cronus to attack his father (Hesiod, Theogony 163-6), Prometheus is cunning in his fire-theft (Hesiod, Theogony 565-6), while Zeus contrives to create woman (Hesiod, Theogony 567-84), and entices Obriareus, Cottus and Gyges to fight on his side in battle (Hesiod, Theogony 639-53). In fact, the entire Theogony can be seen as an alternation of acts of deceit with acts of force.[12] Scholar Stephanie A. Nelson argues that Hesiod attempts to change or gloss over elements of pre-existing myth in order to fit this plan;[13] for example, he tries to make Zeus’s devouring act – properly an act of force – into an act of cunning to fit the structure: “he [Zeus] deceived her [Metis’] mind by craft and with guileful words he put her into his belly” (Hesiod, Theogony 888-9).
But the Olympian ordering principle is not simply a continuity of the primitive brute force and cunning of the earlier gods; it is a new combining of these elements – this integration is the new order. The two principles of intelligence and force are united at last in the figure of Zeus.[14] This “puts an end to the continual overthrow of cunning through force and of force through cunning.”[15] The transformation is epitomized when Zeus swallows Metis and assumes the wisdom (Metis) unto himself (Hesiod, Theogony 886-90). This is a key coming together of opposites – not only of cunning and force but also of genealogy, of mother and father.[16] Recall, Zeus’s father and grandfather performed similar acts of constriction and absorption – but of their offspring not their wives (Hesiod, Theogony 156-61, 459-62). In fact, it is their wives who cunningly plot against them with the next generation (Hesiod, Theogony 163-6, 467-74). Zeus essentially stops (or contains) this endless cycle of parental violence and cunning patricide by absorbing the mother instead of the son. Zeus uses his unique combination of masculine force and feminine wisdom to re-order the cosmos hierarchically. He does this both genealogically, by taking multiple wives and filling out the hierarchy with his progeny, and diplomatically, by absorbing pre-existing gods into his new order through the distribution of honours (Hesiod, Theogony 884), the apportioning of roles and duties.[17] Nelson notes that Hesiod appears to pointedly avoid the myth that the gods decided their stations by casting lots – “[n]ot chance, but the combination of intelligence and force in Zeus are, for Hesiod, the sole source of divine order.”[18]
This divine order is reflected simultaneously in the natural cosmological order and the divine familial/political order under the reign of Zeus; in fact, it is possible to read these two ‘orders’ as not just concurrent but equivalent.[19] Zeus is not like the God of the Abrahamic traditions who positions himself wholly outside nature and time; Yahweh upholds a social morality considered to be intrinsically right – this is why he is so dogmatic. Zeus only appears in this way at the moments in which he is personified and acts on the world.[20] At other times, he appears to be guided by a nature which unfolds of its own accord.[21] This nature is often exemplified in subsequent texts by the prophesies of the Fates; in the Theogony the prophecies come from primeval Earth and Sky (Hesiod, Theogony 889), forces which Zeus has largely subjugated and assumed. These two aspects of Zeus are also represented in the narrative sections of the poem, where Zeus directs the action, and in the genealogical sections, where he is apparently produced and guided by a self-motivated unfolding.[22] And yet these two threads are represented as the same god; for the archaic Greeks, “the paradigmatically divine event [was] a natural one.”[23] Zeus’s laws, his morality, his deeds, his hierarchy, and his existence, his progeny, and the pre-existing nature of the world – are one.
This uniting of social, familial, and natural forces under a powerful intelligent ordering principle permits a greater philosophical flexibility than with a moralistic or dogmatic mindset. This flexibility is exemplified in the Theogony not only by Zeus’ multifarious identification and participation with the earlier generations of the gods, but by the inconsistencies which he takes in his stride. For example, at 520, Zeus is described as binding Prometheus and setting an eagle to tear our his liver every day. Then we are told this eagle was subsequently killed by Heracles, and Prometheus was freed (Hesiod, Theogony 525-27). We might be given to wonder here how all-powerful Zeus could be so defied. But Hesiod explains that such was “not against the will of Olympian Zeus,” (Hesiod, Theogony 527) who apparently allowed the eagle to be killed “so that the glory of… Heracles would become even greater than before” (Hesiod, Theogony 527-30). Here Zeus seems to be in conflict with himself, and yet we are assured of his consistency – we have switched from Zeus’ ‘acting’ aspect to his ‘happening’ aspect. This suggests that what appear to be inconsistencies are human, not divine notions; Zeus is playing an ordered game which humans will never completely understand, like nature and life itself in its often unpredictable mysteriousness.[24] Thus nature (and Zeus) is both contained within and beyond the Olympian order, itself exemplified by an intelligence which both subsumes and unfolds alongside natural processes – rather like the processes of empirical rationality, testing and ordering while unfolding in accordance with natural laws.
This orderly paradigm is, I believe, the principal explicating suggestion we can take from Hesiod’s Theogony concerning the archaic Greek world. It appears reflected in the new centralizing city-state of the polis, which could be seen as uniting political structure,familial household genealogy, and the sometimes mysterious processes of nature and time by means of a dynamic but evolving order, both powerful, intelligent and socially flexible.[25] This intelligent order may foreshadow the development of rationality in subsequent centuries, with the result that Hesiod’s text could be interpreted as midway between mythology and early philosophy.[26] However, this is only a reflection on the order of Zeus as exemplified in the mythology of Hesiod’s epic poetry; it is not an explanation of the ancient Greek world or its prevailing cultural ethos. For this, more corroborating evidence is required.
Bibliography
Primary sources:
Hesiod Theogony trans. G. W. Most, from Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia (Cambridge, MA, 2006).
Secondary sources:
Athanassakis, A. N. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, 2004).
Holscher, T. ‘Myths, Images, and the Typology of Identities in Early Greek Art’ in E. S. Gruen (ed.) Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean (Los Angeles, 2011).
Hine, D. Works of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns (Chicago, 2005).
Kirk, G. S. The Nature of Greek Myths (London, 1974).
Luce, T. J. The Greek Historians (London, 1997).
March, J. The Penguin Book of Classical Myths (London, 2008).
Most, G. W. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia (Cambridge, MA., 2006).
Nelson, S. A. God and the Land (Oxford, 1998).
Pomeroy, S. B., Burstein, S. M., Donlan, W., Roberts, J. T., and Tandy, D. W. Ancient Greece: a political, social and cultural history, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 2012).
West, M. L. Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (Oxford, 1988).
[1] Pomeroy (2012), 120; Nelson (1998), 37.
[2] Hine (2005), 5.
[3] Pomeroy (2012), 57.
[4] March (2008), 8.
[5] Hine (2005), 7; Pomeroy (2012), 92-3.
[6] Athanassakis (2004), 3.
[7] Kirk (1974), 117; West (1988), xii; Pomeroy (2012), 59.
[8] Pomeroy (2012), 83.
[9] March (2008), 4.
[10] Luce (1997), 11; Holscher (2011), 50.
[11] Athanassakis (2004), 5.
[12] Nelson (1998), 46.
[13] Nelson (1998), 99.
[14] Nelson (1998), 43, 46, 99, 101; Athanassakis (2004), 6.
[15] Nelson (1998), 46.
[16] Nelson (1998), 101.
[17] Nelson (1998), 103.
[18] Nelson (1998), 103.
[19] Nelson (1998), 44, 105.
[20] Nelson (1998), 61, 62.
[21] Nelson (1998), 61, 62.
[22] Nelson (1998), 62.
[23] Nelson (1998), 62.
[24] Nelson (1998), 71.
[25] Pomeroy (2012), 104.
[26] Most (2006), lxvii; Hine (2005), 18.
Detached Action in the Bhagavadgītā
This is another essay from my Arts degree. Enjoy!
At Bhagavadgītā 2:47-48 Kṛṣṇa says that the path to liberation requires that we should perform the actions required by our svadharma without regard to their “fruits”. What does this mean? Is it a plausible practical philosophy?
Krishna and Arjuna
The Bhagavadgītā seeks to marry the activism and quietism of earlier Indian traditions by advocating a performance of action without attachments to the ‘fruits’ (phala) of such action. Specifically, the action to be performed is that of one’s svadharma, approximately, one’s social duty or essential nature. In this essay, I will explore the meaning of this philosophy of ‘detached action’ (karma-yoga) as described in the Gītā, before arguing more broadly for its plausibility and practicality by countering the objection that it disregards ordinary human motivations and ethics.
The earliest schools of Indian philosophy advocate two apparently very different teachings. The Vedic tradition advocates an activism (pravrtti) exemplified in a powerful ritual orientation: one is to play one’s role in the community, to participate in rituals that reflect and uphold the universal order (rita) in order to reap the benefits of virtue, success and enjoyment.[1] A weakness apparently inherent in this philosophy is that in acting according to one’s dharma (approximately, one’s moral duty),[2] one is seeking to acquire merit (through karma);[3] the Vedic ideal could be seen as basically selfish.[4] The later Upanishadic tradition avoids this egocentric taint by advocating the ideal of liberation from all karma, whether good or bad,[5] in an introverted doctrine of quietism (nivrtti). Yet, with its focus on individual liberation (mokṣa), it advocates a renunciation of all action through solitary contemplation.[6]
The Bhagavadgītā seeks to discover the golden mean between these two apparently contradictory ideals with its suggestion that one should act so as to disregard the ‘fruits’ of action: “work alone is your proper business, never the fruits (it may produce)” (2.47).[7] This not only resolves the incompatibilities of the earlier doctrines but corrects for their weaknesses[8] – one is not to act selfishly, nor wallow in lazy worklessness: “let not your motive be the fruits of works nor your attachment to (mere) worklessness” (2.47).
The Gītā establishes worklessness as impossible:[9] “not for a moment can a man stand still and do no work, for every man is … made to work by the constituents… of Nature” (3.5). We cannot live without breathing, without feeding ourselves – “without working you will not succeed even in keeping your body in good repair” (3.8). Therein lies the flaw of quietism: however much one tries to purge one’s involvement with karma (or with saṃsāra or duḥkha)[10] one cannot renounce completely while yet remaining alive.
The Gītā may appear to advocate action instead, yet it actually seems more concerned about the achievement of a certain detached mental state: “[w]ith body, mind, soul, and senses alone-and-isolated do men engaged in spiritual exercise engage in action” (5.11). The Gītā is very clear that it is not action itself that leads to mokṣa but the detached attitude of the doer: “Attachment gone, deliverance won, his thoughts are fixed on wisdom: he works for sacrifice (alone), and all the work (he ever did) entirely melts away” (4.23). While the Vedic philosophy advocates acquiring good karma as a reward for performing certain sacred ritual actions, one is encouraged in the Gītā to act without consideration for one’s karma, good or bad; while acting, one is to “[h]old pleasure and pain, profit and loss, victory and defeat to be the same” (2.38). The Gītā even goes on to advocate performing the duties of one’s svadharma, just as the Vedic sages do, but, again, without attachment to the rewards (18.45-7).
Detachment is of course a negative term – the difficulty here is in properly describing the positive, practical attitude that is implied. M. Hiriyanna suggests that the Gītā advocates that one should proceed according to the act itself rather than the ends; the end is dismissed from the mind while performing the act.[11] In this respect, it sounds as if we are to simply act without concerning ourselves with motivation or ethical consequences. Not only is it unrealistic and impractical to expect people to behave without adequate motivation, but neglecting the consequences of one’s actions, even if in accord with one’s social duties, is a very irresponsible way to behave. To address these objections, which are popular concerns often voiced by modern Westerners, we must re-examine the Gītā’s philosophy in detail.
The Gītā is well established as part of the Brahminical tradition in India, thus, to clarify the message of the Gītā, we must examine the terms it uses from this earlier tradition, whose meanings the Gītā assumes we understand.[12] The most important of these for our argument is mokṣa, often translated ‘salvation’. It is related to the earlier ideas of brahman and Ātman, and the Sāṃkhya idea of samādhi. These terms all denote slightly different concepts but I shall treat them all as more or less one, as indeed the Gītā seems to.[13] Broadly speaking, they denote a positive goal approximating liberation, salvation, release, balance or rest, but beyond (or without) empirical description or conceptual categories of thought.[14] They denote a psychological state to be achieved, even if, in the instance of brahman for example, they are sometimes described as a substantial element of external reality also.[15]
In contradistinction to the mokṣa-state, are, as the Gītā tells us, the guṇa-states of sattva, rajas, and tamas.[16] These are said to ‘bind’ the embodied self (14.5),[17] respectively, to happiness and wisdom (14.6), to craving and works (14.7), and to ignorance and sloth (14.8). Broadly, these states[18] are suffused with duḥkha (sorrow/craving), entangle one in saṃsāra (the endless round of life-death), and steep one’s being with karma, trapping one between the opposites of fear and desire.[19] Essentially, in the guṇa-states, one is pursuing desire, one is in a state of craving a happy state (sattva), possession (rajas), or a slothful state (tamas), or fearing the absence of such. Consequently, the Brahminical systems do not advocate the gaining of pleasure as helpful in attaining the mokṣa-state as pleasure leads to either a desire for more pleasure or sorrow at its absence. Overcoming such frictions could only conceivably be achieved in a state of compromise – a kind of rest-in-stasis between craving and fearing, beyond the opposites. Philosophically, we might describe this as a state of neutrality or balance. This is approximately the mokṣa-state the Brahminical works advocate, including the Gītā when it encourages us to “surmount (all) dualities” (4.22).
I want to pause for a practical example of these two broad states in action. W. Timothy Gallwey in his book on the psychology of tennis,[20] advises players to avoid forming judgments about their performance during a tennis game. He advises them to avoid calling a particular shot ‘good’ or ‘bad’; he instead asks them to let the play happen, to avoid over-trying.[21] In other words, he advises players to perform without the distraction of their desire-to-win or their fear-of-losing – these guṇa-values distract the player psychologically from her game. Instead, he advocates a kind of neutral observation of one’s own actions in order to remove this distraction. This I liken to the mokṣa-state of the Gītā.
In returning to the text, we must be wary not to mix up the terminology of the guṇa– and mokṣa-states. Any terms which the Gītā employs (particularly in translation) to refer to the mokṣa-state which suggest conceptual categories of thought (such as pleasure or pain, fear or desire) cannot truly be meant in the sense those words usually indicate (when referring to the ordinary guṇa-states). The mokṣa-state is not, strictly speaking, “peaceful” (2.64) in the way that having a nice relaxing bath is. The detached state cannot be the pleasurable, all-good-in-opposition-to-bad sort of peace but a kind of neutral sense of centredness. Similarly, terms such as sameness, detachment, renunciation, and disregard must be in fact attempts to describe the balance/neutrality of the beyond-opposites mokṣa-state, not suggestions to become oblivious, distracted, inactive or ignorant.
Now we have clarified the Gītā’s stance, we can return to our objections concerning the motivation for and ethical consequences of the action it advocates. My contention is that both ethics and adequate motivation are irrelevant to the discussion. Both motivation and ethics are concerned with a choice of right action – these are guṇa-value decisions. ‘To act’ here does not mean ‘to choose an action’ as this implies a choice between conceptual opposites – between right and wrong, fear and desire, action and non-action; we have already established that the Gītā is not interested in choosing between opposites, but instead thinking past them.
And thinking past the opposites, does not mean banishing or ignoring them. The guṇa-values are the ‘attached’ values that, like action, will always occur while we are living: “Let a man but think of the objects of sense – attachment to them is born” (2.62) and, “there is no agent other than these constituents [the guṇa-values]… which give the body its existence” (14.19-20). Importantly, in the mokṣa-state, the guṇa-values still continue to occur: “As one indifferent he [the one who has transcended the three constituents] sits, by the constituents unruffled: ‘So the constituents are busy’: thus he thinks” (14.23); he experiences them still yet he is unmoved by them, being in the mokṣa-state. So, one may still form one’s own motivations in the usual way – making moral choices, practical decisions, playing tennis to win – but one is to neutralise the impact of anxiety, uncertainty, duḥkha associated with these necessary acts, one is to exist while neutralising the guṇa-values inherent in living.
In fact, I contend that the Gītā does not advocate any particular action (or non-action): “Renouncing works – performing them (as spiritual exercise) – both lead to the highest goal” (5.2). The Gītā only puts action over non-action as a corrective to the popular Upanishadic quietism. It is primarily concerned not with doing but with being. The Gītā’s recommendation of acting according to one’s svadharma may appear to contradict this, however, we have once more to examine the full implications of the terminology and context. In Indian society, one’s svadharma was not just one’s social role as we mean it today; it was considered also one’s intrinsic inborn nature – what one is. This explains why the Gītā does not explicitly describe social duties in great detail.[22] Essentially, since we cannot escape guṇa-values or the propensity to act, the action the Gītā recommends is to be that which is in accord with one’s inborn nature (svadharma), while neutralizing guṇa-values. Arjuna therefore must fight, not just because he is in the warrior class, but because his sudden decision to renounce all fighting is borne out of the guṇa-values of fear and uncertainty, not out of his genuine being (svadharma). In fact, the genuine being of svadharma is considered synonymous with the right state of mind, which is the mokṣa-state, just as brahman (“ultimate reality”) is considered the same as Ātman (“the self”) in the later Upanishads; the mokṣa-state is a realisation of the Indian conception of the genuine self, true being.
So, to conclude, in suggesting we should perform our actions without regard for their fruits, the Bhagavadgītā advocates existing, while in action or not, and neutralising the distracting effect of the guṇa-values natural to our being. The directive ‘to act without regard for the fruits’ is not an instruction ‘to choose your action without considering the consequences’. Nearly every word in the sentence needs to be more carefully defined. For ‘to act’ we should understand something like ‘to be’, or ‘to observe neutrally the world’, because the Gītā is unconcerned by what the action is. For ‘without regard for’ we should recall that this, like ‘without attachment for’ or ‘while renouncing’, is a negative verbal phrase used to indicate the detached neutrality of the mokṣa-state – this is not obliviousness or ignorance. ‘The fruits’ are not just the ‘consequences’ or ‘results’ but the ‘guṇa-values’ involved in determining or anticipating these. They are the ‘selfish interests’ which distort the serene neutrality and balance of the mokṣa-state which permits us to perform perfectly what circumstances and our essential being (svadharma) have determined as necessary action. (If there were another course of action to be done, one’s own essential being (svadharma), involving one’s sense of duty, morality, motivation, and logic, would provide it.) The ‘detached’ mokṣa-state allows us to do ‘what must be done’, come what may; it permits us to live deliberately. And as much as this mokṣa-state is a mindset, a quality of experiencing not just thinking (since all thought is conceptual), I must add that the terms ‘neutrality’ and ‘balance’ may themselves be too conceptually cold to adequately express what must be an ineffable categorical sense of rightness, or the sublime. One must feel a kind of amazed stupor at the wordless, a-conceptual mystery of life as it is even while in action, as Arjuna must feel before the revelation of Kṛṣṇa’s glorious and terrible divinity even in the person of this commonplace chariot-driver.
Bibliography
Gallwey, W. Timothy. The Inner Game of Tennis. London: Jonathan Cape, 1975.
Hiriyanna, M. Outlines of Indian Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin, 1932.
Koller, John M. Asian Philosophies, 6th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012.
Perrett, Roy W. “Hindu Ethics.” In The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Hugh LaFollette, 2410-2419. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
Perrett, Roy W. Hindu Ethics: A Philosophical Study. Honolulu: University of Hawaiai Press, 1998.
Zaehner, ed. The Bhagavad-Gītā. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
[1] John M. Koller, Asian Philosophies, 6th ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2012), 13-17.
[2] Koller, Asian Philosophies, 93.
[3] Koller, Asian Philosophies, 10.
[4] M. Hiriyanna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1932), 120.
[5] Roy W. Perrett, “Hindu Ethics” in The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Hugh LaFollette (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 2412.
[6] Koller, Asian Philosophies, 17.
[7] All primary source references from R. C. Zaehner, ed. The Bhagavad-Gītā (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). Zaehner’s square brackets have been converted to parentheses to avoid confusion with my own square brackets.
[8] Hiriyanna, Outlines, 120; Roy W. Perrett, Hindu Ethics: A Philosophical Study (Honolulu: University of Hawaiai Press, 1998), 16.
[9] Hiriyanna, Outlines, 123; Perrett, Hindu Ethics, 15.
[10] Perrett, Hindu Ethics, 23.
[11] Hiriyanna, Outlines, 119.
[12] Hiriyanna, Outlines,124.
[13] For example, samādhi at 2.53, mokṣa at 5.28, brahman at 7.29, etc. All translated in similar ways.
[14] Koller, Asian Philosophies, 18-19, 94.
[15] Koller, Asian Philosophies, 18. I shall not be addressing ontological claims in this essay, as our question concerns only attitudes for action (see further below in note 18).
[16] Zaehner, Bhagavad-Gītā, 140.
[17] Zaehner, Bhagavad-Gītā, 140.
[18] I am aware there is an ontological claim here regarding the actual existence of the ‘guṇa-constituents’ which may or may not be plausible. However, since our argument concerns the Gītā’s stance on action, and by implication, attitudes for action, we are only interested in these ‘guṇa-constituents’ (ontologically existent or not) insofar as they influence the attitudes of the doer. Hence I refer to the ‘guṇa-states’. One can correct for this if one wishes by reading ‘states of mind influenced principally by the ‘guṇa-constituents’’ every time I use ‘guṇa-states’ or similar.
[19] Hiriyanna, Outlines, 120.
[20] W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975).
[21] Gallwey, Inner Game, 42.
[22] Hiriyanna, Outlines, 124.
My 2008 book, The God Allusion, now online
This is just a quick post to let you know that my 2008 book, The God Allusion, is now up on the website.
To check it out click on the image below. 🙂
Two Species of Monster
This is an undergraduate literature essay from last year. I read it again recently and decided its content is relevant to this site: namely the distinction between allegory and mimesis is really the distinction between political, moral, rational ideas on the one hand, and creative, artistic, mythological and ’emotional’ ideas on the other. It may be surprising for some to realise that rational philosophy, for example, is really, in effect, a variant form of moralism mixed with occasional allegory.
The monster-figure in literature can be interpreted as a primal beast, a representation of the societal or unconscious ‘other’, a challenge to mainstream values, or a particular social, political, or moral evil. Whether the monster is interpreted as one or some or all of these depends upon authorial intention and reader interpretation, influenced by factors both within and outside the text. In this essay, I will compare two modes of presentation employed within a narrative, two modes which have a bearing upon the narrative significance and meaning of monsters – allegory and mimesis. Allegorical monsters take on the form of personified phenomena as part of a figural narrative, such as the dragon Errour in Spencer’s Faerie Queene or Rumour in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Mimetic monsters, such as Polyphemus in The Odyssey or Grendel in Beowulf, can be said to personify either nothing explicit, an obscure multiplicity of phenomena, or, looked at another way, only themselves. I will examine the implications of these stylistic and hermeneutic modes on these monster-narratives and assess their relative strengths and weaknesses in achieving particular authorial intentions.
Allegory as a literary concept is difficult to classify definitively. This is largely due to many centuries of commentary and scholarship in which the term is often proscribed slightly differently; literary scholar Gary Johnson’s 2012 book The Vitality of Allegory provides the foundation for my understanding of the term. Johnson defines allegory as “a class of works that fulfills its rhetorical purpose… by means of the transformation of some phenomenon into a figural narrative” (8). By “rhetorical purpose,” Johnson means something approximating authorial intention, the meaning the author is trying to convey (10). By “figural,” he approximates ‘metaphoric’: “figuration.. [involves] things representing or standing for other things” (8). However, Johnson notes that allegory is figural in a particular way; “[a]llegory entails duration” (Johnson 14). Thus, allegorical figurations intrinsically involve narrative; the figurations not only pervade the whole narrative but the narrative effects a ‘comment’ on the concept referenced (Johnson 12). Furthermore, scholars note that there is “a [large] degree of manifest incompatibility between the tenor and the vehicle” (Miller 357); the figural reference “point[s] to an earlier and fuller reality outside itself” (Krieger 4). In other words, allegory entails a reading of the narrative as metaphoric of a relatively specific concept which is extrinsic to the meanings inherent in the narrative taken for itself. Thus, Johnson takes issue with a definition such as this: “[allegory is] a way of giving a narrative form to something which cannot be directly narrativised” (Butler qtd. in Johnson 11). This is too broad; allegorical figurations tend to refer to more specific content (Johnson 11).
A work that achieves a high level of ‘figural narrative transformation’ Johnson designates a ‘strong allegory’ (37). A ‘weak allegory’, he notes, references extrinsic concepts, but it is difficult to specify exactly what these are (54). Animal Farm by George Orwell is the classic example of a strong allegory although it should be noted that strong allegories are generally rare. (Johnson suggests Kafka’s short stories are an example of the weak type (63).)[1] In Orwell’s novel, a narrative involving farm animals is explicitly figurative of the extrinsic concept (and ‘narrative’) of Soviet Communism. This concept is extrinsic as, for instance, Communism itself is never mentioned in the story itself. It may help to contrast such an allegory with a ‘symbolic’ narrative (or a narrative involving symbolism). A symbol differs from an allegory in that the metaphoric reference is more obscure (less precise), and this reference is to ideas more closely related to itself, i.e. “the substance and its representation do not differ in their being but only in their extension” (de Man qtd. in Johnson 14).
As an allegorical monster, Errour in The Faerie Queene has been said to represent “intellectual speculation… learned error” (Waters 283), the “false rationalism of the church of Rome” (Waters 284) or “the temptation to lust” (Klein 177). This multiplicity of references suggests that this is not a strong allegory, however, the fact that such extraneous references could be suggested by a mere “ugly monster plaine” (1.14.6)[2] identifies this as an allegory all the same. Readers of The Faerie Queene understand from the text alone that the author intends to instruct us “in man’s progress toward goodness” (Klein 174-175) and to comment and critique the events and characters of the English reformation (Padelford 1). We are aware that overall it “combines social commentary with moral and epistemological inquiry” (Borris 174), yet it contains few moments of explicit commentary; it is a poetic narrative. Allegory is employed to reference these extraneous and specific allusions, and this is achieved through the author’s stylistic methods.
To signal to the reader that an allegorical reading is required, a delicate balance between verisimilitude and the extrinsic reference is maintained (Kelley 38). The character of Rumour in Ovid’s Metamorphoses provides a simple illustration.
“Picture a space at the heart of the world…
Here there are eyes for whatever goes on, no matter how distant;
and here there are ears whose hollows no voice can fail to penetrate.
This is the kingdom of Rumour, who chose to live on a mountain,
with numberless entrances into her house and a thousand additional
holes, though none of her thresholds are barred with a gate or a door.
Open by night and by day, constructed entirely of sounding
brass, the whole place hums and echoes, repeating whatever
it hears… Rumour herself spies every occurrence
on earth, at sea, in the sky; and her scrutiny ranges the universe.”
(12.39, 41-48, 61-21)[3]
Ovid has essentially personified an abstract concept in this passage; rumour – an extrinsic idea (unrelated to kingdoms, or mountains, and possessing no body with spying eyes) – has become an entity. We are alerted to the allegory by the very perverse incongruity of this ‘mixed mode’, by the precise and explicit nature of the metaphor; “it is the predicates that ‘say’ the one and the (personified) nouns that ‘mean’ the other” (Levin 25). To remove the allegory here, we could substitute the personification noun with an ordinary one (Levin 28) – instead of ‘Rumour’ we could say ‘Sarah’ (or whoever). However, Rumour, to be an effective allegorical monster, cannot be too conceptual or too ‘realistic’. For example, Ovid would struggle to personify a specific rumour or the concept ‘talk’ as these are difficult to caricature simply. Equally, the allegory would collapse if the character of Rumour as described were to undertake too many person-like actions, such as if she were to pull Achilles’ hair or develop a too ‘well-rounded’ personality; rumours are not actual people and cannot literally pull hair (this shatters the figurative unity). Thus, “in allegorical narrative, [discourse] and personification are inversely prominent” (Johnson 66); more of one, less of the other. Allegorical monsters are therefore less well-rounded characterizations and more glyph-like. “The more personal attributes we give our personification, the more we turn it first into a… character type… and finally into.. [an] individual” (Whitman 6) – which would push the allegory out of the reader’s awareness.
We know that The Faerie Queene is an allegory because this balance is sufficiently maintained throughout. The Red Crosse Knight and Una are described without overcomplication of either extrinsic concept or intrinsic characterization; the allegory is apparent – he is a “norm of Holiness” (Padelford 2), she is “Christian Truth” (Padelford 4). Errour appears as a hideous supernatural monster, half-woman, half-serpent. Her very name, Errour, and her hybrid human-animal form alert the reader to another ‘mixed mode’ reference – the mismatch of idea (‘error’) and personification, the extrinsic references of woman and snake in unnatural combination. It is important to note that it is not Errour’s supernatural quality that is distinctive of allegory but the incongruity of the elements; they do not cohere on their own terms. (Does she possess the upper or lower half of the woman? Presumably the upper, but then how do her thousands of offspring fit inside her mouth?) When Red Crosse attacks her, Errour not only spews forth poison and gore but “bookes and papers.” (1.20.6). There is simply no credible way, within the frame of the story itself, that these could have got inside her (let alone remain intact). This signals that allegorical figuration is present.
So the allegorical quality of monsters like Errour involves both thinness of characterization and internal incongruity (‘outsideness’ or ‘artificiality’) to reference the extrinsic ‘other narrative’ idea. When considered dynamically in interaction with other figures and constructs within the narrative, these monsters clarify, educate, or challenge readers’ understandings and opinions about specific extrinsic concepts, events, or ideas. For example, Red Crosse is driven into the Wood of Errour by a tempest. This tempest is often taken to represent the beginning of the Reformation (Whitney 44). It is telling that Red Crosse ends up confronting the foul dragon Errour when he is helplessly lost as a result of this tempest, even though he is accompanied by Una and the dwarf – hence the allegorical meaning: even ‘Truth’ and ‘Prudence’ are confused in the calamity of the Reformation (Whitney 44).
Mimetic monsters have a noticeably different quality within their narratives. I am using the word ‘mimetic’ not so much because these monsters actually resemble (‘mimic’) ‘real’ monster-antagonists. I use ‘mimetic’ mainly in the sense of ‘non-allegorical’; these monsters have a stronger kind of internal ‘reality’. They make some sort of (albeit fantastic) sense within the narrative. Mimetic monsters are more believable. However, this does not necessarily mean they are more realistic in the sense of ‘resembling historical or physical reality’. For example, within the context of a narrative, Hitler is not necessarily a more believable antagonist than Grendel from Beowulf. Hitler may have actually existed in history whereas Grendel presumably didn’t, but both characters can be presented as mimetic, believable monsters; it depends, once again, upon the style and context. In one sense, all the characteristics of an allegorical monster are simply reversed – a mimetic monster is a more complex characterization, more intrinsic to its narrative ‘world’, and either does not suggest figurations, or such figurations are intrinsic and complex or obscure.
The Cyclops Polyphemus in The Odyssey, for example, is a much more well-rounded and complex monster than Errour or Rumour. Once again, the style of the narrative contributes to this impression. Homer’s use of contrasts contributes to a more believable narrative ‘world’. The menace of Polyphemus’ cave is all the more affecting in contrast with the apparently idyllic pastoral scene portrayed beforehand (Murgatroyd 166): the land is “no mean spot, / it could bear you any crop you like in season” (9.143-144),[4] the water-willows are “soft and moist” (9.146), the harbour, “snug” (9.150). This introductory episode, positions Polyphemus out of view contributing to a sense of unease but it also increases identification with Odysseus and his men (Murgatroyd 167); we care about them as people, rather than representative ideas. Johnson remarks, “[i]nstead of thinking about what [the character] represents, we must contemplate… what he will do” (66, emphasis in original).
More contrasts follow: the abject horror we experience when Polyphemus starts devouring Odysseus’ men is contrasted with dark humour as Odysseus tricks the monster into getting drunk on wine (Murgatroyd 168). Furthermore, even though Polyphemus is a loathsome, stupid and primitive monster as initially described, he is presented, briefly, in a sympathetic way, when he cowers in pain at his blinding, and shows a pitiful affection for his ram (Murgatroyd 170). In contrast to the monster Errour, who is “lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine” (1.14.9), and who dwells in a shadowy cave in a dark wood, Polyphemus is much less a black-and-white caricature.
All of this ambiguity and detail makes it very difficult to interpret the story allegorically. The very complexity of Odysseus’ escape plan – involving drink, the blinding, hiding under sheep etc. – cements the events into the specific world of the narrative itself; allegorical figurations would have to reference a parallel extrinsic narrative equally as detailed. Mimetic narratives can of course be read allegorically if a reader should choose to do so; in fact, Homer was often interpreted allegorically in 16th century Europe (Borris 16-20). However, such readings can be rather unconvincing and reductive; a lot of the detail must be overlooked or glossed over. Whitman outlines a section of The Iliad where the 18th century translator, Alexander Pope, capitalizes ‘Grief’ and ‘Rage’, as if these are allegorical personifications when no such personifications are present in the original text. “In Homer it is the person who acts, not the personification,” Whitman remarks (18). It is certainly difficult to conceive of a specific extraneous figurative reference for Polyphemus; he has symbolic rather than allegorical connotations involving the obscure forces of primitive irrationality (epitomized by Polyphemus’ character and actions within the story itself).
When comparing these two species of monster – the mimetic and the allegorical – it is clear that, despite the propensity for mimesis and allegory to overlap sometimes, each monster-type is largely unique and diametrically the opposite of the other. Author and scholar J.R.R. Tolkien was scathing of critics who interpreted his novel The Lord of the Rings as allegory;[5] it must be admitted that allegory and mimesis have very different aims and functions. Even as long ago as the late 18th century, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge remarked that “[a]llegory cannot be other than spoken consciously” (qtd. in Johnson 34), and he meant this as a criticism. Others complained that allegory “too consciously limits the text’s signifying potential” (Johnson 35), that it “distort[s]… apparently real or material details” (Kelley 31), and that it is “so obvious and so pedantic, so ‘sermonlike’” (Johnson 36). Of course, many of these criticisms were made by those specifically interested in mimesis with its more believable characters and situations, in which “readers leave their present reality, and dwell, for the duration of the story, within the world the writer creates” (Card 158).
A number of 20th century literary critics have disparaged mimetic literature (particularly modern fantasy novels) as populist and ‘escapist’, suggesting that the indulgent nature of the narratives distract, or propagate old-fashioned or harmful social-political ideas (Card 153). However, science fiction writer Orson Scott Card argues that mimetic narratives are not generally read for their social-political comment. In fact, ideology is likely to ruin a mimetic story; after all, “[Fantasy (mimesis)] is at its best when it is presented by a poet who feels rather than makes explicit what his theme portends” (Tolkien 15). 
Card uses the example of a mimetic monster, the giant spider Shelob from book 4 of The Lord of the Rings, to illustrate this. In their increasingly desperate and dangerous quest to infiltrate the land of Mordor unseen, hobbits Frodo and Samwise must pass through a dark tunnel inhabited by Shelob. Against enormous odds, Shelob is eventually skewered on the hobbits’ sword and painfully crawls away, apparently to die a painful death elsewhere. If we feel the painful and cruel death of Shelob to be too much for us, that she does not deserve to be dealt this death blow (by one of our heroes no less), Card argues that “the effect is not an argument, but rather a withdrawal from the world of the tale” (Card 164). Either that or the reader ignores the mistreatment of Shelob and tries to move on. Modern readers may feel a similar concern for Polyphemus when Odysseus skewers his eye; this may ‘break the mimetic spell’, as it were, leading to rejection of the ‘reality’ of the story.
So in conclusion, mimetic monsters such as Grendel, Polyphemus or Shelob tend to be characterized by a degree of believability achieved by an obscure complexity of connotations and contrasts in authorial style. These monsters ‘live and breath’ within the narrative structure. However, these qualities pose a problem if the author wishes to reference specific extrinsic ideological evils. In this instance, allegorical monsters such as Errour and Rumour achieve their authorial intentions far more effectively, having the clarity of a particularly pertinent illustrative example in a text book or ideological treatise. Relatively simple, fable-like characterization allows for specific extrinsic figuration – such that the reader can easily designate their status as personified phenomena and in so doing detect a specific authorial ‘message’. Each species of monster therefore has a unique, exclusive function; rare instances of overlap between allegory and mimesis actually entail reading the same text in two drastically different and mutually exclusive ways.
WORD COUNT: 2520 (not including in-text citations)
Works Cited
Borris, Kenneth. Allegory and Epic in English Renaissance Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Card, Orson Scott. “How Tolkien Means.” Meditations on Middle Earth. Ed. Karen Haber. London: Earthlight, 2002. 153-174.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Viking Penguin, 1996.
Johnson, Gary. The Vitality of Allegory. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2012.
Kelley, Theresa M. Reinventing Allegory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Klein, Joan Larsen. “From Errour to Acrasia.” Huntington Library Quarterly 41 (1978): 173-199.
Krieger, Murray. “‘A Waking Dream’: The Symbolic Alternative to Allegory.” Allegory, Myth, and Symbol. Ed. Morton W. Bloomfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. 1-22.
Levin, Samuel R. “Allegorical Language.” Allegory, Myth, and Symbol. Ed. Morton W. Bloomfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. 23-38.
MacLean, Hugh, ed. Edmund Spenser’s Poetry. New York: Norton Critical Editions, 1982. 6-19.
Miller, J. Hillis. “The Two Allegories.” Allegory, Myth, and Symbol. Ed. Morton W. Bloomfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. 355-370.
Murgatroyd, Paul. Mythical Monsters in Classical Literature. London: Gerald Duckworth, 2007.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. David Raeburn. London: Penguin, 2004.
Padelford, Frederick Morgan. “The Spiritual Allegory of the Faerie Queene, Book One.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 22 (1923): 1-17.
Tolkien, J.R.R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983. 5-48.
Waters, D. Douglas. “Errour’s Den and Archimago’s Hermitage: Symbolic Lust and Symbolic Witchcraft.” ELH 33 (1966): 279-298.
Whitman, Jon. Allegory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Whitney, J. Earnest. “The ‘Continued Allegory’ in the First Book of the Faery Queene.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 19 (1888): 40-69.
[1] Johnson emphasizes that no value judgment is implied in the terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’; these “simply designate degrees of allegoricalness” (8).
[2] Quotations from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene taken from MacLean 6-19. References are in ‘canto: stanza: line’ format.
[3] Quotations from Ovid’s Metamorphoses taken from David Raeburn’s translation. References are in ‘book: line’ format.
[4] Quotations from Homer’s The Odyssey taken from Robert Fagles’ translation. References are in ‘book: line’ format.
[5] The concept that the One Ring represents anything as specific and extrinsic as ‘the threat of nuclear war’, for example, may perhaps cause readers to “turn [their] heads away in some embarrassment” (Card 156). This is as dubious as interpreting Animal Farm on the level of an amusing rural fairy-tale such as ‘The Three Little Pigs’ or E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.
Death and Rebirth Myths: Baal and Dumuzi and the Question of Interpretation
This is an essay written for my Near Eastern Mythology subject at Melbourne Uni. Needless to say, this subject was right up my alley. Once again, I used this essay partly to investigate one of Joseph Campbell’s theories again – this one concerning his championing of James Frazer’s ‘Death and Resurrection’ mythic archetype. The evidence suggests that Frazer’s methods are out of date but there is once again no real reason not to chose to interpret the myths in this way anyway. In fact, the subject of this essay is really an attack upon those who would somehow claim that one interpretation (or no interpretation) is somehow more ‘scientifically’ valid when we are in fact free to choose.
The theme of death and rebirth appears frequently in myth and literature throughout history. The Mesopotamian myth of ‘Inanna/Ishtar’s Descent to the Underworld’, and the Canaanite myth of ‘Baal and Mot’ have been interpreted as representing this theme, most notably by the influential social anthropologist James Frazer, writing at the turn of the 20th Century. However, in more recent times, some scholars have cast doubt upon the categorization of these myths, suggesting that they represent the theme of a disappearing or merely dying god instead.
In this essay I will examine each of these myths in turn, briefly reviewing their historical context, the reconstructed texts, and the variants we possess. I will then examine the argument for and against the interpretation that these are death-and-rebirth myths and conclude with a consideration of the nature of mythology itself and how this affects the argument. I will argue that while it is of paramount importance to base interpretations upon the archaeological evidence, it is difficult to affirm or deny a particular mythological interpretation over another when the often-incomplete archaeological evidence sustains both interpretations. Furthermore, such disputes, when directed toward interpretations of mythology, concern not differing facts but relatively superficial disagreements over names and definitions.
Ugaritic (Canaanite) Baal
The myth of ‘Baal and Mot’ heralds from a set of texts discovered on the site of the ancient city of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra in Syria). The coastal town had its beginnings in the 8th millennium B.C.E. but is best known as a key trading port at the end of the 13th century B.C.E.[1] It is generally considered by historians as part of the ancient land known as Canaan situated approximately in the modern Levant, along the eastern Mediterranean coast, including the lands of modern Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and the coastal regions of Lebanon and Syria.[2] Canaan was inhabited by mainly Semitic peoples divided into a number of different kingdoms or cultures[3] often involved in complicated political alliances.[4] Ugarit was the capital of a kingdom of the same name and Baal-Hadad can be construed as Ugarit’s patron god.[5] Baal was a storm god,[6] often portrayed as king of the pantheon, although he was still acting under the supreme god El.[7] His adversary in this myth is the underworld god Mot, a figure that does not often appear in the texts;[8] he is the personification of the concept of death.[9]
His myth is considered part of a cycle of Baal myths – the earlier parts recount Baal’s battle with the sea god Yam and the completion of his palace.[10] At this point, Baal has a premonition that he is to be swallowed by Mot.[11] Baal and Mot exchange messages; Mot declares he is hungry and invites Baal to visit.[12] The next section is very difficult to interpret. Some scholars suggest that Baal receives instructions from another god.[13] Baal decides to engender a child from a heifer;[14] it is unclear if this is related to the instructions. There now follows the first sizeable lacuna in the text.[15] When the story resumes, Baal’s death is announced to the gods, who find Baal’s body, undertake his burial, and unsuccessfully seek a replacement in king Athtar.[16] The goddess Anat threatens Mot, who admits swallowing Baal. Anat slices, winnows, burns, grinds and sows Mot (like wheat).[17] After another brief lacuna, the god Latipan appears to be having a dream in which he sees that Baal is alive, but El points out that the fields are still parched and destitute.[18] Sun goddess Shapash says she will seek out Baal before the text lapses into another lacuna.[19] Baal has returned when the text resumes. Baal has a final battle with Mot, before the intervention of Shapash results in Mot conceding to Baal.[20]
Variants of myths involving Baal and death or disappearance are fragmentary. T. N. D. Mettinger mentions a version in which Baal is not killed by Mot but by entities called “eaters” or “devourers” – perhaps some kind of beast. Baal’s death results in a drought for 7-8 years.[21] Mettinger suggests that this more simple account of Baal’s death may be an early version, the rebirth element entering the mythology later, perhaps with influence from the Mesopotamian Dumuzi myth.[22]
Mesopotamian Dumuzi
Dumuzi (also called Tammuz) was a vegetation/fertility god of ancient Mesopotamia, one of the earliest high civilizations stretching back as far as the 4th millennium and located between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in modern Iraq. Unlike Baal, Dumuzi may originally have been an historical king, as the name appears more than once in Mesopotamian king-lists,[23] suggesting at least a legendary background. Like many mythic characters, Dumuzi appears to be a syncretistic amalgam of more localized and earlier god-figures that shared characteristics such as vegetative powers or even just a similar name.[24] Historian Thorkild Jacobsen theorized in the 1970s about the differing Dumuzis, suggesting, for example, a local incarnation for the cowherds – the ‘Wild bull’ Dumuzi[25] – and another for the shepherds of the central grasslands.[26] Both Dumuzis were portrayed as married to Inanna (called Ishtar in the later Akkadian period), a powerful goddess.
Dumuzi’s early death is apparently an integral part of his character, although brought about in various ways depending on the version of the myth.[27] The best-known and most complete extant version we possess is ‘Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld’, a myth initially more concerned with Inanna and her desire to conquer her sister Ereshkigal, goddess of the underworld.[28] Inanna ventures to the underworld but Ereshkigal kills her. The god Enki revives her and Inanna attempts to escape, but she is told that she can only return to the land of the living if she proffers a substitute to remain in the underworld in her stead.[29] Ultimately, it is her husband Dumuzi whom Inanna sends to take her place, displeased with his carousing in her absence.[30] Luckily however, Dumuzi’s sister Geshtinanna makes a deal – she will take Dumuzi’s place in the underworld for half of every year, allowing Dumuzi to rise to the land of the living during that time.[31]
A later version of the story (discovered earlier than the reconstructed version above), written in the Akkadian language, is much briefer and vaguer.[32] In this version, Ereshkigal simply orders Dumuzi brought down to replace Ishtar in the underworld[33] and the ending involving Dumuzi and his sister (here called Belili) is far more obscure. Belili has vengeful thoughts and apparently declares, “when Dumuzi comes up to me… the dead shall come up and smell the smoke offering.”[34] No specific mention is made of the half yearly bilocation.
The Debate
James Frazer in The Golden Bough (1890) considered the dying and reviving god to be an important essential feature of all myth and religion,[35] listing many examples from the Near East, such as Dumuzi, Tammuz, Adonis, Osiris, Attis and Christ.[36] Frazer’s work was certainly influential, although since publication most of his methods and many of his conclusions have been disproved or questioned.[37]
The argument against Frazer’s idea is founded on the view that lumping myths into the death-and-rebirth category often involves making unwarranted assumptions about missing or obscure parts of the recovered text and even overlooking details that contradict the theory. The main counterarguments involve the idea of disappearing deities – who do not die – and dying gods – who do not resurrect.[38] For example, the myth of Telepinu from the Hittite religion furnishes an example of the disappearing deity type. The god Telepinu, wishing to punish his people, disappears. Since Telepinu is a weather/fertility god, this leads to drought and starvation as the crops die in his absence. Eventually a goddess finds where Telepinu is hiding and convinces him to return. Humanity is forgiven and the land is fertile once more.[39]
J. Z. Smith argues that the Baal myth exemplifies a similar motif of disappearance-reappearance rather than death-and-rebirth.[40] He argues that Baal evades death by sending down a substitute to be eaten by Mot. The basis of this ‘substitution’ view seems to be founded on a fragmentary section which appears before the first major lacuna in the text: “He (Baal) loved a heifer in the pasture(s),… he did lie with her… and she conceived and gave birth to a boy. [Mightest] Baal did clothe him with [his robe], [ ] him as a gift for the…”[41] The clothing of the boy in his robes seems to indicate, at least to some, a disguising of the boy to look like Baal.[42] This way, Baal essentially fakes his death with Mot and then disappears, to be rediscovered by the goddess Shapash, presumably narrated in the significant lacuna near the end of the tale.
But Mettinger finds this substitute/disappearance interpretation unconvincing. He argues it is clear that Baal has died: the gods find his corpse, arrange his burial, search for his replacement, and Mot even confesses eating him.[43] Indeed, if a substitution has occurred, it has fooled not only Mot but all of the gods and, while this is not inconceivable, it is remarkable that the extant text nowhere acknowledges their foolishness in being taken in. The most convincing evidence for Baal’s death is that the crops withered,[44] a detail suspiciously absent from retellings of the myth that advocate the substitution theory.[45] Either way, it is difficult to come to a definite conclusion since there are two large lacunas in the text at the crucial sections.
The argument against Dumuzi’s status as a death-and-rebirth god is mostly unconvincing since the reconstruction of the Sumerian version of the myth. The obscurity of the Akkadian version, particularly the ending, led some scholars to question Dumuzi’s return from the underworld. Smith interprets, “when Dumuzi comes up to me” as indicating either the month Dumuzi or he translates ‘comes up to me’ as in ‘greets me’,[46] an interpretation that Mettinger considers unjustified.[47] Some have remarked on the puzzling ritual evidence, which seems to indicate a ritual of mourning for Dumuzi but no reliable accounts of rebirth celebrations.[48] A very convincing piece of evidence for Dumuzi’s conception as a death and rebirth god is found in the reconstructed text of a letter, discussed by Mettinger, from one Yaminite king to another in which the king compares himself to the god: “As for me,” he writes, “look at me. … I escaped from death… ten times during uprising[s]. Why, now, [am I not] like Dumuzi? They kill him, at the [time of] counting the year. [In the spring (?),] he always comes back to the temple of Annunitum […].”[49] I would argue this evidence is particularly convincing as it apparently expresses an actual contemporary interpretation of the myth.
The Nature of Myth
From the examination above, I conclude that it is still appropriate to speak of these stories as death-and-rebirth myths, however, if we take a step back and examine the fundamental question we are seeking to answer, we will discover that the two alternatives are virtually synonymous in all important respects.
As students of history and archaeology, we are interested in reconstructing the myths of an ancient people because we wish to learn not only about how these people lived but also about what they thought and believed. In doing so, we must be aware of the nature of the primary source material we are examining, as far as this is possible. In this instance, we must be conscious that the texts under discussion are mythological texts. We therefore must bear in mind what we know already about mythology and particularly Near Eastern myth. As Tammi J. Schneider remarks, “[a]ncient Mesopotamian religion was not dogmatic or systematic.”[50] This means that we cannot expect a dogmatic consistency between retellings of the same myths, between retellings of different myths, or even within divergent parts of the same retelling.[51] From what we know of the Baal cycle, this also holds true for Canaanite myth. Also, Mettinger notes, “[a] particular myth may not be identical with a certain text”.[52] Furthermore, mythic characters can be conflated with an historical person, several historical persons, a local god, or several local gods. The same events can be recounted in different ways – literal, historical, metaphorical, comical, euphemistically, allegorically – with influence from other myths, stories, historical events, political biases, social-cultural interactions, moral posturing, philosophical reflection, and elements of pure entertainment.
Within this highly complex mythological framework, we must be wary of making arguments that are inappropriate not just in terms of content (what is argued) but in terms of method (how we argue). As N. Wyatt cautions, “The besetting sin of too much contemporary scholarship is … to fail to recognize the depth of the symbolic dimension [of ancient mythology].”[53] The language of myth is not the language of history, the usual language of archaeological scholarship. A primary source artifact that reveals, hypothetically, that Sargon of Agade disappeared in 2215 B.C.E. may lead us to conclude that this was the year of his death. A primary source artifact that states the high god Baal disappeared or died, even if this could be dated, should not be interpreted in the same way. Baal’s mythological death, for example, is a mythical event occurring in the life of a mythical character recounted in a particular text or fragment; such an event, frankly, could mean anything. In fact, the very multiplicity of practical, political, emotional, metaphorical, allegorical and contradictory meanings contained in a text is exactly what we should expect of a mythology.
This makes the concept of ‘proving’ a mythological event highly ridiculous, meaningless and inappropriate; historical events can be proved but mythic ones cannot. Most myths are impossible to conclusively interpret, even modern ones, let alone mythologies read in fragments several millennia after they were written down. J. Z. Smith’s critical scholarship is riddled with such inappropriate ‘proofs’: “This is a disappearing-reappearing narrative,” he writes. “There is no suggestion of death and resurrection.” “The tradition of bilocation… has no suggestion of death and rebirth.”[54] He is correct that bilocation need not necessarily suggest death and rebirth, but to argue that it absolutely does not is as ridiculous as arguing that it absolutely does. As Mettinger remarks offhandedly, “One could add that descent and disappearance are two analogous metaphors for death.”[55]
Conclusion
To conclude, the distinction between the Dumuzi and Baal tales as death-and-rebirth or as disappearance-reappearance myths is a question of mythic interpretation rather than archaeological proof. We have textual evidence for distinct parts of particular renditions of these myths which permit us a glimpse of the lost content of these mythic cycles. However, we possess very sparse and inconclusive evidence for their interpretation throughout the centuries in which they were alive in the imaginations of these ancient Near Eastern peoples. Our inability to draw conclusions is due to (a) the fragmentary nature of the recovered text, and (b) the plethora of multiple and contradictory meanings that any mythology will arouse even within its own historical-social context.
The argument is worthy of a footnote at best, for the conclusions do not define but merely categorize myth for our convenience – we need merely be reminded that (a) the Baal myth does not specify the precise details of Baal’s apparent death and rebirth, or that (b) the Dumuzi myth suggests an annual cycle of death and renewal but we do not possess many clear indications of its contemporary interpretation. Smith himself seems to be preoccupied with mere categorization at times, arguing that the Dumuzi myth should be considered a substitution myth rather than a death-and-rebirth myth. Neither alternative makes any significant difference as to the knowledge we possess about these ancient peoples; we simply file these myths under different sub-headings.[56] The most disturbing part of the whole debate is that the expansion of this minor footnote into pages and pages of fussy scholarship demonstrates a disturbing lack of understanding of the nature of mythology in general; in the interests of historical accuracy (the prime concern of archaeology as opposed to literary criticism), a complete, unfragmented mythology cannot be meaningfully condensed into such reductive categorizations.
Word Count: 2650
Works Cited
Dalley, S., ed. and trans. 2008. Reissue. Myths from Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Revised edition 2000. Original edition, 1989.
Frazer, J. 1996. Reprint. The Golden Bough. Abridged edition. London: Penguin. Original edition, 1922.
Gibson, J. C. L. 1977. Canaanite Myths and Legends. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Jacobsen, T. 1970. Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture. Edited by William L. Moran. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kramer, S. N. 1979. From the Poetry of Sumer: Creation Glorification and Adoration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Leick, G. 1991. “Baal and Baal-Myths.” In A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology, 18-23. New York: Routledge.
Mettinger, T. N. D. 2001. The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Schneider, T. J. 2011. An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion. Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Segal, R. A. 2004. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, J. Z. 1987. “Dying and Rising Gods.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Eliade, M. et al. New York: Macmillan, 521-26.
Tubb, J. N. 1998. Canaanites. London: British Museum Press.
Wyatt, N. 2007. Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone: And Other Papers on Ugaritian Thought. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.
Yon, M. 2000. “Ugarit: 6,000 Years of History.” Near Eastern Archaeology 60: 187-89.
[1] Yon 2000, 188.
[2] Tubb 1998, 13.
[3] Tubb 1998, 13-4.
[4] Yon 2000, 188.
[5] Wyatt 2007, 102.
[6] Mettinger 2001, 55.
[7] Wyatt 2007, 63.
[8] Wyatt 2007, 102.
[9] Wyatt 2007, 103.
[10] Smith 1987, 522.
[11] Leick 1991, 21.
[12] Mettinger 2001, 57.
[13] Leick 1991, 21.
[14] Mettinger 2001, 58.
[15] Mettinger 2001, 36.
[16] Mettinger 2001, 58.
[17] Mettinger 2001, 58.
[18] Gibson 1977, 77-8.
[19] Gibson 1977, 78.
[20] Mettinger 2001, 58.
[21] Mettinger 2001, 67.
[22] Mettinger 2001, 209.
[23] Mettinger 2001, 198.
[24] Jacobsen 1970, 24; Mettinger 2001, 185.
[25] Jacobsen 1970, 27.
[26] Jacobsen 1970, 29.
[27] Jacobsen 1970, 29.
[28] Kramer 1979, 82.
[29] Kramer 1979, 82.
[30] Kramer 1979, 83.
[31] Kramer 1979, 83.
[32] Smith 1987, 525.
[33] Dalley 2008, 160.
[34] Dalley 2008, 160.
[35] Segal 2004, 65.
[36] Frazer 1996, 392.
[37] Segal 2004, 24.
[38] Smith 1987, 521-22.
[39] Mettinger 2001, 78.
[40] Smith 1987, 522.
[41] Gibson 1977, 72.
[42] De Moor in Mettinger 2001, 59.
[43] Mettinger 2001, 61-62.
[44] Mettinger 2001, 59.
[45] Such as Leick 1991, 21-22.
[46] Smith 1987, 525.
[47] Mettinger 2001, 24.
[48] Alster in Mettinger 2001, 25; Kutscher in Mettinger 2001, 199.
[49] Mettinger 2001, 201.
[50] Schneider 2011, 39.
[51] It should be noted that even within the more dogmatic systematic religions such as those of the Abrahamic tradition, inconsistencies and contradictions are still rife in matters of interpretation, moral strictures, and even fundamental events, especially when expressed by divergent sects at different times throughout history.
[52] Mettinger 2001, 187.
[53] Wyatt 2007, 105.
[54] Smith 1987, 522.
[55] Mettinger 2001, 77, my emphasis.
[56] An argument perhaps could be made that we should shy away from Frazer’s death-and-rebirth terminology to avoid association with his outdated social Darwinism, but this argument never materializes.
The Unseating of the Goddess
This is an essay written for my Literature class at Melbourne Uni. I was however using the essay to investigate Joseph Campbell’s theory that the early mythologies of the world’s high civilisations were matriarchal in outlook before the rise of patriarchy. I discovered, as I often do with Campbell, that modern scholarship does not agree in detail but that this hardly affects the sense of Campbell’s argument – a more egalitarian mythology is certainly more matriarchal than a patriarchal one and this was Campbell’s point in essence.
The portrayal of women in classic texts can be seen as reflecting important developments in a culture’s relationship to maternity, kingship, the chthonic other, the social order, and the actual treatment and position of women, largely because these are the ideas that the dominant masculine hierarchy projected upon female characters in their literature. The portrayal of women will be explored through an examination of the characters of Tiamat in the Epic of Creation and Eve in Genesis[1] from the Bible. I argue that despite the portrayal of the feminine through a repressive or at least contrary patriarchal masculine mindset, the modern reader can still detect traces of a deeper wisdom hidden behind the text, a wisdom, if not of a matriarchal goddess, at least of a more egalitarian, and so spiritually-centred, cultural ethos.
Feminist scholar Rosemary Radford Ruether argues that most early Near Eastern goddesses and female mythic characters were primarily “invented by men to serve male interests” (303). We must bear this in mind when considering a convincing reading for the contemporary audience of these texts. The forthright and domineering aspect of some Near Eastern goddesses, such as Ishtar or Anat, has lead scholars such as Marija Gimbutas and Jane Ellen Harrison to suggest that these characters were vestiges of an early matriarchal culture preceding the rise of authoritarian patriarchy. However, Ruether convincingly argues that, while this idea is an important inspiration for modern feminism (274-298), it is an over-simplification of history (20-40). The development was probably a less dramatic shift from a more egalitarian society, with the divine pantheon structured using metaphors of the family, to a more overt patriarchy, with mythology more blatantly promoting the new political hierarchy (Ruether 46-47). As the masculine ethos came to overpower and unbalance the earlier more egalitarian dynamics, feminine powers were sidelined, distorted by male interests or, in some cases, such as that of the Old Testament, virtually eliminated altogether.
The Epic of Creation uniquely appears to reflect such a moment of transition, the suppression and unseating of a goddess. Tiamat is initially portrayed as a benign primal mother, who not only “bore them all” (233),[2] that is, all of the pantheon, both male and female, but also bears with them all: “However bad their ways,” we are told, “she would indulge them” (233). Crucially, unlike in the later text of the Bible, a goddess here gives birth to all the gods and initially acts as a mother in the natural way, that is, reflecting natural human patterns of childbirth and motherhood. Furthermore, as the primal mother, she is an immensely powerful and important figure.
Yet, as Ruether states, the primary purpose of the Epic is to “herald the ascendency of the God Marduk, patron of Babylonia, over the more ancient deities” (48), and Marduk cannot come second to anyone. Even the earlier masculine deities are portrayed as weaklings, presumably to enhance the prestige of Marduk – Apsu is treacherous and easily dispatched (234-235); Anshar and Ea are cowardly and impotent in the face of threat (241-242). Tiamat is no weakling of course, yet a weakness must be found; we see what Bettina L. Knapp terms “a certain passivity” (31) in her attitude, a certain “unwillingness to act aggressively to bring order to an evidently chaotic condition” (31). Tiamat is unable to act even when her consort Apsu is murdered: “You did not go to his side,” the gods complain, “but sat mute” (236). When she does finally rise up against the rebelling gods, her powers are still as potent as ever, but have been transformed from life-giving maternal powers to chthonic powers of darkness; she becomes a kind of vicious dragon, bearing forth venomous snakes and mutant animal creatures (Daley 237). Joseph Campbell defines this as a type of mythological defamation, which, “consists simply in terming the gods of other peoples demons, [and] enlarging one’s own counterparts to hegemony over the universe” (80). Indeed, these strangely gruesome and threatening offspring justify Marduk’s violent attack upon Tiamat; he appears as the shining hero-warrior against her image as an impulsive, devouring dragon. He tears her apart and fashions the world from her dismembered body, effectively appropriating her maternal world-creative powers.
This usurpation or appropriation of female powers has apparently progressed much further in Genesis (Campbell 85). Here there is no goddess at all. God creates the world from the word, by simply performing ‘creation’ (1:3).[3] He even, in chapter 2, causes a woman to be born from a man (22), a particularly jarring biological incongruity (Katz 45). Eve, a mortal woman (definitely not to be interpreted as a goddess in this emphatically patriarchal monotheistic text), then sets in motion humankind’s expulsion from the blissful Garden of Eden by listening to the serpent, eating of the tree of knowledge, and sharing this fruit with Adam, the first man (3:1-24). The contemporary audience of this text would undoubtedly view the whole incident of the expulsion as negative. In the Christian tradition, this becomes the Fall of Man, the basis of Christ’s saving mission. In the Jewish tradition, the event was less far-reaching – Rabbi Hertz (qtd. in Campbell 115) attests that Eve’s sin was more than remedied by the handing down of the Law of God from Mount Sinai (Exodus 19). All the same, Eve, and womankind throughout history, has incurred blame for this disaster; as Paul writes, “It was Adam that was created first, and Eve later, nor was it Adam that went astray; woman was led astray, and was involved in transgression” (1 Timothy 2:13-14).
Thus to a contemporary audience of these texts, female characters were looked on with suspicion; both these texts suggest that woman should submit to man and that she may harbor powers that are chthonic or sinful which men should be wary of. To a modern audience, these are clearly sexist portrayals of women, but it is striking how modern readers can detect more complex readings in small details of the text which the contemporary audience would have glossed over or considered unimportant.
For instance, Claire Elise Katz considers Eve’s transgression as an “act of defiance” which “demonstrates will, autonomy, and thoughtfulness”, qualities decidedly lacking in Adam who “blindly obeyed Eve’s suggestion to eat the fruit” (45). Furthermore, she argues that since Adam was asleep at the time of Eve’s creation from his rib, he played no role in her creation, thus “he did not have any control over Eve” (45). Campbell similarly considers Eve to have essentially created the world of time and knowledge by eating of the tree and releasing us from the unconscious passive dreamtime of the Garden. Viewed this way, “it was not God but Adam and Eve to whom we owe the great world of the realities of life” (110). Indeed, Katz points out that in Hebrew, Eve’s name, Chava, means ‘life’ (45).
Furthermore, much has been made of the similarity between the words ‘Tiamat’ in the Epic and ‘tehom’, ‘the deep’, in Genesis (Heidel 98; Lambert 287; Campbell 85). The ferocious winds summoned by the dominating Marduk against Tiamat in the Epic (251) are here compared and equated with the breath of God which stirred the waters of “the deep” on the first day (Genesis 1:2). Such a reading reveals the goddess still present throughout Genesis – she has merely been de-anthropomorphized, reduced to elemental form as “the deep”, and as “the earth”, out of which man and woman were made by God (Campbell 29), much as the world was formed out of her substance by Marduk.
Today, one is tempted to feel sorry for Tiamat as she is sliced to pieces by Marduk in a manner which the modern reader cannot help registering as excessively violent and brutal. The entire story can be read at cross-purposes: Tiamat’s initial reluctance to act aggressively against her rowdy progeny could easily be seen not as impotent passivity but as “extreme understanding of the energetic needs of youth” (Knapp 31). Furthermore, Campbell notes that Marduk has brought about by violence what Tiamat as the primal goddess would have brought about of her own accord – the creation of the world. From her point of view, Marduk is “actually nothing but her agent, seeming to bring to pass what is coming to pass. But she lets him feel he is doing it himself, building his fine house of blocks with his own strength; and so is a good mother, indeed” (Campbell 86). Campbell hastens to add, however, that this is certainly not the contemporary purpose and sense of the Epic.
Finally, we should note that the unseating and repression of the female is not merely an incidental rearrangement of existing mythology, nor do only women feel its negative ramifications. The goddess represented a life-giving, maternal force, a power associated with unconditional care, love and compassion, that is not easily assumed by masculine symbolic imagery often already carrying contradictory associations, with, for example, political power, warfare, and the unyielding office of law. With the repression and subversion of the goddess, her largely peaceful maternal aspects are hidden underground, between the lines of the text, often unrealized, unnoticed and unfelt. In fact, one wonders if this was not the true intention of the authors all along.
To conclude, we can use these texts to theorise about the thematic development of certain ideas in these early civilisations. As the scale of these societies increased, with amplified political power and more violent military conflict, it seems that a deliberate and concerted effort was made to repress feelings of compassion, of unconditional love for humankind, and to focus upon exclusionary ideas of devotion to the one state (or one God) who had to be seen as tough, heroic and forceful in order to rally troops and marshal clan-loyalty. I have demonstrated how two examples of feminine mythic characters, no doubt representing these undesirable maternal qualities in early mythology, were unseated and displaced. These literary developments may help explain the relative brutality and phlegmaticism of later patriarchal societies, particularly those inheriting these myths. In a way, the suppression of actual females may be regarded as a tragic side effect of unfavourable literary associations particularly when these myths were taken literally or used as precedent.
Word Count: 1647 (not including in-text references).
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. 1991. New York: Penguin, 1964.
Dalley, Stephanie, ed. Myths from Mesopotamia. Revised edition. 2008. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Heidel, Alexander. The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation. 2nd edition. 1963. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
Holy Bible, The. Knox edition. London: Burns & Oates, 1963.
Katz, Claire Elise. Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003.
Knapp, Bettina L. Women in Myth. New York: University of New York Press, 1997.
Lambert, W. G. “A new look at the Babylonian background of Genesis.” Journal of Theological Studies 16 (1965): 287-300.
Lyons, Deborah. Gender and Immortality. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Rae, Eleanor. Women, the Earth, the Divine. New York: Orbis, 1994.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Goddesses and the Divine Feminine. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
[1] Whereas it is usual to italicize the names of books, the books of the Bible and the Bible itself often seems to escape this convention. As a result I will italicize The Holy Bible but refer to individual books and the colloquial name, ‘The Bible’, without italicization despite the inconsistency this involves.
[2] Quotations from the Epic of Creation are taken from Dalley 233-274. Since this edition does not have line numbers, the numbers in parentheses are page numbers where the relevant section can be located.
[3] Quotations from the Bible are taken from The Holy Bible,Knox edition 1-21. References are in the traditional ‘chapter:line’ format.
Husserl’s Challenge to Empirical Psychology
This is another essay from my philosophy class at Melbourne Uni. Husserl’s criticism is I think a radical point that can provide the basis of a ‘psychology’ of experience that is not confused with scientific/psychobabble theories which hold knowledge as the basis of experience (something I consider a tautology). I look forward to investigating this further in the summer break when I’ll have time to study what I want. I am particularly looking forward to attempting to join Sartre’s existentialism to mythological concepts.
Husserl believes that without phenomenology empirical psychology remains ‘naïve’. What does he mean? Is he right?
Edmund Husserl argues that empirical psychology cannot provide a sound methodology for investigating the structures of human consciousness. He argues that empirical psychology discloses confused, unreliable, often merely peripheral findings, limiting both the questions it can ask and the answers it can provide. This leads Husserl to argue for phenomenology as providing a more complete and logical system. I find Husserl’s argument to be confusingly presented but basically credible within the parameters of consciousness and its investigation. However, I would like to raise the suggestion that a credible argument, while not usually vitally affected by confusing presentation, may in fact be fundamentally undermined by such presentation in the unique instance of phenomenological theory.
In his 1911 essay, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” (“Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft”), Husserl speaks of, “the ‘naiveté’ with which… natural science accepts nature as given” (172). By ‘natural science’, Husserl refers to the branch of the sciences focussed on studying the rules governing the natural world. These sciences – for example, physics, chemistry, biology – operate by means of the scientific method of empiricism. The basic empiricist practise involves positing a theory about nature, testing this theory in the physical world so as to determine if it is confirmed by natural conditions, thereby discovering nature’s laws, processes, and properties. This is what Husserl means by ‘accepting nature as given’; the empiricist necessarily presupposes that (a) there is a substantial physical world that exists to be tested: “Nature [is] considered as a unity of spatio-temporal being subject to exact laws of nature” (Husserl 169).
Further to this, Husserl also argues that the empiricist presupposes that (b) this world is existing separately from us, that is, the physical ‘natural’ world is not seen to rely on or be affected by our human perception. This is why empirical researchers take great care to ensure that their experiments are unaffected by human bias or influence: “physics… excludes in principle the phenomenal [read: the subjective human influence] in order to look for the nature that presents itself” (Husserl 178).
Husserl is not referring to the natural sciences per se as ‘naïve’. Famously, the empiricist theory has facilitated many of the great advances of modern science. Rather, Husserl attacks the application of empiricist methods (and their associated ‘naturalism’) within the social sciences, particularly within psychology, the study of human mental functions and behaviours. Husserl argues that the proper means of studying human consciousness is via phenomenology, broadly defined in this essay as the philosophical science concerning ‘anything psychical’ (180). The psychical dimension Husserl outlines is drastically different from the physical world as conceived of by the natural sciences. “Everything psychical…,” he writes, “is… a unity that in itself has nothing at all to do with nature, with space and time or substantiality and causality, but has its thoroughly peculiar [unique] ‘forms’. It is a flow of phenomena” (180). Husserl considers empirical psychology ‘naïve’ because it fails to take account in its methodology of this fundamental difference between ‘human’ and ‘physical’ nature.
For instance, in the psyche, Husserl argues, “there is, properly speaking, only one nature, the one that appears in the appearance of things” (179). This means that there is no fundamental split between the apparently ‘subjective’ elements of human perception and the physical, ‘natural’ phenomena of the empiricist’s conception. All phenomena of consciousness, including both ‘real’ things and ‘imagined’ things, are experienced in the same “flow” of consciousness. This contradicts (b) above. Along with this, the concept ‘real’, as defined by the empiricist, as in ‘substantial’, and ‘physically existing’, can have no intrinsic meaning in the psychical mode (Husserl 179). The mind experiencing a phenomenon does not necessarily “posit existentially… the individual being of empirical details” (Husserl 182). This contradicts (a); in the psychical mode, the substantial physical world need not exist – at least, not as the empiricist defines it.
And yet, and this is Husserl’s thesis, empirical psychology often presupposes nature, that is, human consciousness is studied as if it were a part of and functioning within the field of empirical nature. Nature is not removed from the equation at the outset so that consciousness can be studied in and for itself (as subjective consciousness was when studying nature), instead it is left in, where it distorts and confuses the enquiry. Husserl uses the example of a calculator, or, as Klaus Held elaborates for modern times, a computer (Held 11). The two domains of empirical naturalism and psychical phenomenology are imagined as the different ‘worlds’ of a computer’s hardware and its software. The ‘phenomena’ of these two worlds are very different: the ‘hardware’ world contains keyboard, mouse, table, and chair; the ‘software’ world contains icons, scroll bars, and windows. It then follows that the old joke about the secretary who applies liquid paper to the computer screen is a metaphoric illustration of how Husserl believes that empiricists are conducting their psychical research – by mixing up the two domains.
One could object that by separating the domain of psychical investigation from natural enquiry, Husserl is leaving the domain of credible science altogether. After all, when we study, say, rock-wallabies, we do not try to abandon human conception of nature (or rock-wallabies) and attempt to discover what the rock-wallaby sees itself as, in rock-wallaby terms. Such an exercise sounds, at best, like an expressive, artistic activity rather than a scientific one. However, when it comes to human consciousness, there is, I argue, one strong reason why we should abandon the empirical field and plunge into purely psychical thinking: the reasoning phenomenological philosopher is him- or herself, knowingly or unknowingly, examining the psychical from within the psychical domain itself. Hence another argument that supports Husserl’s thesis is that empirical study requires a separation from the object of study ((b) above) and no thinker can achieve this separation with respect to human consciousness; the empirical method is inoperative in such a situation. The human observer is forever compromising the empirical process when examining human consciousness itself.
Husserl also argues that the confusion between the psychical and the physical in empirical psychology reduces the psychical, the supposed object of study, to “a variable dependant on the physical” (169), lobsidedly granting intrinsic value to empirical facts only (170). The result is that psychical phenomena are treated as if they had the consistent physical qualities of substantial objects. Husserl likens this to a study of abstract numbers as if these were actual things that existed somewhere. Also, this effectively becomes a study of the content of consciousness while excluding the all-important structuring principles of the mind. The best result, according to Husserl, is that “experimental psychology… discovers… valuable regularities, but of a very mediate [incidental, peripheral] kind.” (174). However, it might be objected, to this view, that empirical psychologists do not mean these terms quite as concretely as Husserl suggests. Investigating ‘depression’ or ‘the Freudian id’, the psychologist interprets his or her terms less distinctly or partly metaphorically even in empirical studies, although this inconsistency is itself concerning.
Husserl suggests that only phenomenology can effectively investigate consciousness as it treats the psychical “according to its [own] essence in all its distinguishing forms” (173). His method is necessarily philosophical and rational, as in, non-empirical, because it must “admit no absurd naturalizings” (180). Indeed, Husserl argues that the very idea of conducting an empirical-style experiment ‘within’ the psychical domain is illogical, or at least, highly dubious. The “psychical… comes and goes; it retains no enduring, identical being that would be objectively determinable” (Husserl 180).
And yet, Husserl has a tendency of exaggerating all that phenomenology encompasses. This, I argue, has lead some interpreters (if not Husserl himself) to argue, or appear to argue, that phenomenology can offer radical new ontological discoveries (that is, discoveries about the actual existence of phenomena), or that Husserl at least leaves this option open. I argue that Husserl’s criticisms of empirical philosophy make it absolutely clear that phenomenology can in no way address the problem of ‘being’ in the sense that we usually mean this term, that is, as signifying empirical and ‘natural’ existence. When Husserl writes that, “In the psychical sphere… there is no distinction between appearance and being” (179), I interpret him to mean that, within the psychical mode, phenomena that are said to empirically exist are not intrinsically more meaningful or more ‘present to conscious’ than phenomena that we would empirically call ‘imaginary’, ‘subjective’, or ‘mere appearance’. (He may also mean that phenomena in a sense are, or exemplify, the structures of consciousness, as experienced.) He does not mean that phenomena, as experienced, may provisionally exemplify something intrinsic to empirical being at the same time as being only psychical ‘appearances’. If he is making this claim, Husserl is being inconsistent as: “What psychical being ‘is’, experience cannot say in the same sense that it can with regard to the physical” (180), and, “Knowledge of essence is by no means matter-of-fact knowledge” (182). Phenomenology, as clearly shown in relation to empirical science, cannot comment on empirical being as empirical laws and processes do not apply, cannot be made to consistently work, within the closed field of the psychical.
This confusion arises as a consequence of Husserl’s word usage (which may possibly be linked to the concrete terms required by rational philosophical discourse itself). For example, to demonstrate the type of problem: When we ask, ‘what exists for the psychical?’ if we mean ‘exists’ in the empirical sense, there is no answer to this question. It is invalid. But if by ‘exists’ we mean ‘is present to’, as in, ‘makes up’ and ‘is encountered as part of’, the flow of consciousness then this question can be answered using phenomenology. And yet the confusion around fundamental words, like ‘being’, remains.
In criticising Husserl’s confusing writing style (at least in translation), we must be wary that this may result from “the extraordinary wealth of consciousness-differences…[which] flow into each other without differentiation” (175). However, one wonders that Husserl can criticise psychology for using words in a vague, chaotic fashion (177), when his own use of terminology is hardly more illuminating. For instance, he often uses common terms but with obscure and diverse meanings that he fails to separately define – ‘intuitive fulfillment’, ‘casual perceptions’, ‘being-there’. Worse, he writes in abstractions and only very rarely provides examples to illustrate and clarify. This means that Husserl has many commentators all providing slightly differing impressions of his theory, to which I add the summary (or perhaps interpretation) in this essay.
This confusion in Husserl’s writing style is not likely to endear his arguments to a popular audience, but in most philosophical disciplines it is usually the reasoning that counts over the presentation (which can be overlooked as a mere irritating hindrance to ingesting the theory). I would like here to suggest, however, that when it comes to phenomenology, confused presentation may equate to confused reasoning. Husserl writes, “In the psychical sphere… there is no distinction between appearance and being” (179). He implies that, when studying consciousness, it is not what our consciousness perceives but of what it consists of that is pertinent. In other words, it is not what we are conscious of but the way of perceiving (of ‘being present to consciousness’) that should be studied. I argue this equates to the expression, ‘It is not what is said, but the way it is said.’ Hence, the word chosen to describe the psychical is as significant to consciousness as the appearance-being delineated. A misunderstood word (such as ‘being’) results in the grasping hold, in the mind, of an entirely incorrect conception, which any lack of clarifying metaphoric examples or word-definitions in the surrounding text may render entirely incomprehensible or permanently misunderstood. Phenomenology is the ultimate study of self-referential natively indistinct abstract structures of thought and meaning – a misplaced word actually changes the psychical structures delineated.
This is not the place to outline an alternative language system but I want to suggest that the metaphoric structures delineated through comparative mythology[1] might provide a clearer vocabulary for phenomenology. Metaphors are capable of multiple connections across the same ‘field’ of psychical phenomena as the mental processes they are mirroring. This way, there would be, as per consciousness, no difference between a metaphoric image (in the mind, of a phenomenon) and a meaning-structure (to the mind). I have not the space to argue this here but I raise this to illustrate how Husserl’s difficult language can be seen to compromise his argument, perhaps fundamentally.
To conclude, Husserl’s criticisms of empirical psychology centre on the inappropriate application of empirical methods to psychical studies. Husserl argues that empirical methods can only distort as the object of examination (the ‘psychical’) is either overlooked altogether or addressed only mediately. The extent which psychologists objectivise and ‘naturalise’ may be somewhat exaggerated but Husserl’s criticism is credible when we consider that empirical methods cannot function properly when human consciousness examines itself. However, Husserl’s attempts to explain phenomenology using ill-defined abstract terminology leads to a lack of clarity which hampers his argument and may undermine his philosophy as a viable alternative. This may in fact be Husserl’s ‘naivety’.
Word count: 2179 (including footnotes but excluding in-text references).
Works Cited:
Held, Klaus. “Husserl’s Phenomenological Method.” Translated by Lanei Rodemayer. The New Husserl. A Critical Reader. Ed. Donn Welton. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003. 3-32.
Husserl, Edmund. “Philosophy as Rigorous Science.” Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Translated by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. 71-147. Reproduced in PHIL20041 Phenomenology and Existentialism Tutorial Reader 2012. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2012. 2-12. (Page numbers in the text are according to the original 1965 translation pagination.)
[1] Mythology is here defined in the sense of myth and religion interpreted in a non-dogmatic, literary-style analysis in which the elements of the myth are read as metaphoric of psychical structures.
The Atheist, the Believer and the Confusion on both sides
This is another piece written for my philosophy class. I’m sure there are “logical” holes and “unverified statements” in it but, honestly, I think it’s a tautology to correctly reason for the inappropriateness of reason. It’s like using emotion to be impassive. (This is another article in my series surreptitiously themed, ‘philosophy is just applying the logic systems of reason to experience, feelings and perception and then wondering why it all doesn’t make sense’…)
“The Christian begins the recital of his faith with the words, ‘I believe’, and it would be an utter distortion to construe this as anything like ‘I have inquired and found it reasonable to conclude’.”
“A person’s belief in anything, including religion, should be directly dependent on the evidence in favour of it.”
Discuss. Is the first of these claims right? The second? Both? Neither? Explain why.
These two statements represent the philosophic debate surrounding religious belief. The atheist thinks religious belief is ‘irrational’ because it is not verified by evidence. The theist argues that the basis of religious belief is not evidence but ‘faith’. I will argue that both misunderstand each other. The second statement is more incorrect as it treats religious belief as if it were a scientific hypothesis instead of a personal conviction. These things are very different. The first statement, made by Richard Taylor, is more correct but Taylor goes on to use faith as supporting religious belief which, as we shall see, is also problematic.
The contention here surrounds the definition of belief – there are two conflicting interpretations involved. The first defines belief as conditioned and adjusted by evidence – this belief we shall call a hypothesis. This is exemplified by the second statement above. The second definition is not conditioned or affected by external evidence – this belief is what Michael Scriven considers as simply confidence in an idea. I believe the impression is much stronger than this; it is really a personal conviction, as represented in the first statement. A hypothesis and a personal conviction are very different things, the former involving knowledge content – a hypothesis expresses fact content about the external world – the latter experience content – a personal conviction is subjective, internal and feeling-based.
Of these two ideas, it is important to note that one is not simply a poor or invalid version of the other. Consider: an incorrect hypothesis is distinctly different from a personal conviction. A personal conviction is expressive of personal experience or subjective impressions. Examples include statement like, ‘I believe in true love’ or ‘I really enjoy playing tennis.’ These statements cannot be ‘proved’ using external evidence as they involve some internal personal evaluation – they are subjective. Contrast this with statements like, ‘I believe I can jump from a ten-storey building and gravity will not pull me down,’ or ‘I believe I can drink arsenic and not die.’ Apart from being externally verifiable through evidence, these statements also do not involve subjective evaluation – they have no feeling content or ‘meaning’ without their factual value.
The cause of contention regarding religious belief is that these two concepts – hypothesis and personal conviction – have become mixed up, their definitions blurred. The situation is rather like that involving a smoker who enjoys smoking so much, it gives her such a personal buzz, that she claims it must be good for her despite the evidence against this. The personal conviction, ‘I enjoy smoking’ has been confused with the hypothesis concerning the physical effects of smoking on the human body, ‘I believe smoking is good for me.’ Examination of the physical effects of smoking (the evidence) by a scientist can invalidate the hypothesis but, unfortunately, for many a smoker this does not affect the personal conviction that smoking is enjoyable. Similarly, the theist’s personal conviction that God exists is not threatened by any evidence to the contrary, however this is only a personal conviction, I am not sure what the hypothesis is that the atheist attempts to invalidate. It may be something like, ‘A physical God exists somewhere overlooking our lives.’ Note that if this is the hypothesis, there is no physical evidence to examine here. God as a physical presence technically cannot be proven to not exist any more that it is possible to prove any negative statement. The atheists position here is that, since physical evidence cannot prove God’s existence, God is merely unlikely.
It has always concerned me that the atheist usually attempts to prove belief in God is irrational rather than harmful. The implication that anything irrational is necessarily valueless or worthless is a disturbing disparagement of important irrational elements in life such as emotional experiences, creativity, love, meaning, etc. Some more extreme atheists have argued that religious belief is harmful but these usually involve criticism of elements only peripherally associated with belief such religious wars, paedophile priests, conservative moral values or hypocritical church leaders. Science might equally be disparaged with reference to nuclear disasters, pollution or chemical warfare. These unflattering elements have no vital link to the core of the belief and prove nothing.
So what is the core of religious belief? To get to the answer to this question we need to examine the common traits of religious experience not popular hearsay or negative offshoot ideas. Michael Scriven says that the popularity of an idea such as religious belief cannot be trusted as evidence in its favour. I agree with this view – just because a large group of people believe something does not mean that they may not all be wrong. But Scriven contradicts himself when he goes on to dismiss religious belief based on refuting the popular views of religious people. This is not examining the physical effects of the belief – it is listening to hearsay.
If Scriven were a medieval doctor trying to discover a cure for disease, what he does here would be like listening to the superstitious stories of the survivors who claim that “I prayed to God,” or “I wore this lucky charm to keep off the devil.” He ignores the physical experience of his patients who, unbeknownst to them, may have saved themselves by simply washing more frequently. Such a doctor ignores the physical symptoms and listens to superstition and hearsay.
The ‘symptoms’ of religion do not include the usual ideas which atheists ‘disprove’ as ridiculous such as a physical God or the system of metaphysical punishment and reward, or even ideas like the Trinity. The essential religious element is a powerful awe-inspiring feeling, of wonder, of the numinous, a strong emotional intuition for a sense of rightness or emotional truth. This feeling is the basis for the personal conviction of religious belief. The internal source of this feeling is the reason why external evidence does not affect such a belief. Furthermore, the conviction ‘God exists’ is only one particular expression of what the religious experience is or means. By challenging this conviction, the atheist philosophy only challenges the particular verbal expression and not the religious experience itself. This is attacking only an associated idea again.
In reality, this verbal expression – ‘belief in God’ – only amounts to something like a metaphor which attempts to describe the religious experience. There is some objection to this idea by religious people as it seems to belittle God, but, significantly, every word we use to describe strong feelings is a metaphor to some extent. When I feel sad, this is an indistinct personal feeling which I may gauge as ‘sad’ or ‘sorrowful’ or ‘suicidal’ or ‘a bit down’. When we experience a personal attraction to another person we may call this ‘love’ or ‘lust’ or maybe I just ‘like’ them. It is significant that we often cannot easily tell which it is. This shows that the words we use are only expressions, verbal approximations for emotional feelings. However, these effects definitely exist to us despite their relatively insubstantial nature and our imprecision in naming each state definitively. Scriven dismisses metaphoric religion on the basis that most religious people deny this reading but once again, he does not listen to his own council – he is listening to hearsay and popular ideas instead of addressing the basis of belief.
So it seems that both sides in this debate are making vital errors. The religious believer, overcome with a powerful feeling of the numinous, explains this as ‘belief in God’, then makes the mistake of over-interpreting this literally, positing a physical God, and denying the feeling and metaphoric basis of the ‘power that fills his soul’. The atheist then comes along and correctly refutes the over-interpreted idea, but rather than criticising the theist’s verbal expression of ‘belief’ as too general or confusing, he dismisses the religious experience altogether. This rightly offends the theist because the atheist is essentially censuring him for having a meaningful experience, indeed this experience is the source of any and all awe-inspiring feelings in anyone’s life. Just as no one is necessarily unable to experience love or anger, even the atheist can feel the awe-inspiring ‘religious’ feeling too, it is simply that the atheist refrains from naming the experience as anything other than ‘joy’ or ‘happiness’. (This vagueness may, disturbingly, devalue such an experience, which is what can happen if you over-emphasise rational thought).
So in conclusion, the first statement is closer to the truth because the second disparages religious belief based on an inappropriate definition – it says all forms of belief must be based on hypothesis which is not the case. However, the first statement is used by Taylor to suggest ‘faith’ is the basis of religious belief and ‘faith’ is another cloaking metaphor for the religious feeling which is only called upon because it is conveniently vaguer and so less refutable by scientific hypothesis. However, later in Taylor’s article he quotes Hume describing faith as “a continuing miracle in [a believer’s] own person.” What could this bizarre sentence mean if it is not a metaphor expressing poetically a numinous feeling-impression? Until either side of the argument is willing to admit the experiential nature of belief or define properly their use of the word ‘belief’ then both sides will be arguing against each other’s own misunderstandings.
Kant’s Autonomous Willpower
This is my essay from Philosophy class. Warning: the gobbledegook that is philosophy is present in most of the first section, although I think my point surpasses and outcomes this. The marking of a philosophy essay is frankly beyond me (see note at end).
Kant claims: “an absolutely good will, the principle of which must be a categorical imperative, doesn’t specify any object, and contains only the form of volition, as such, and this form is autonomy.”[1]
Explaining such a statement is the central problem of Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals. I will attempt an explanation of the statement above, presenting his best argument for it, but I will go on to argue that, due to his attempting to represent in words the essentially non-representative forces of the intelligible world of the will, we shall need to redefine or, at least, refine the definition of many of Kant’s terms to fully make sense of his theory. This semantic confusion is perhaps a result of philosophic discipline or it may be purely linguistic and historical, the work concerning numinous impressions translated into words, translated into 18th century German, translated into 21st century English. I contend further that this best objection is more of a misunderstanding which clouds the issue than a bad argument.
To begin, I will address each of the statement’s terms in turn, starting with the absolutely good will. A will, for Kant, is “the ability to act according to the thought of laws.”[2] It is the decider which rational beings possess that chooses, using mental evaluation, which action to take according to principles of some sort. An absolutely good will evaluates in such a way as to be absolutely good in this choice of action. It is, in a sense, good character,[3] to be a good decider of action (as distinct from merely doing pleasing deeds). Power, intelligence, personality – these things may be desirable but without good will, Kant argues, they are not truly good or virtuous.[4] There is some necessary circularity in his argument: “good will is good because of how it wills – i.e. it is good in itself.”[5] In other words, good will is good because it is good. This circularity comes from the word, ‘absolutely,’ that is, completely, unquestionably, perfectly. It is difficult to find other words to describe something so perfect and complete.
Kant’s absolutely good will commands categorical imperatives because ‘categorical’ means ‘absolute’. Something absolutely good cannot be only conditionally good – ‘conditional’ as the opposite of ‘absolute’ means ‘subject to the conditions of, for example, the situation, the people involved, your goal, the weather, etc.’ A categorical imperative is unconditional – the command is given without provisos.[6] The command is not, ‘do this when such-and-such condition prevails’ or, ‘if in situation A, then do this,’ etc. This explains the ‘absolute’ part of the absolutely good will. When we add the quality ‘good’, we read, ‘you should do this because it is absolutely good’ – absolute goodness is the only condition, if you like. Once again, the reason for this circularity is that there are no words to define or compare absolute goodness hence there are no words to justify absolute goodness, as it is wholly absolute. The absolutely good will must give categorical imperatives because otherwise the will would not be absolutely good.
As a result of all this, the absolutely good will cannot specify an object, something we are trying to attain. Firstly, an imperative containing the clause ‘in order to attain a specific goal’ would be conditional: ‘you must do this if you want to attain the goal.’[7] Therefore the will would not be issuing a categorical imperative and so not be absolutely good (see above). Secondly, by having a specified object, the will would be treating everything it encountered as a means to attain this object, that is, it would make decisions as to actions based on their relative value.[8] ‘Relative’ is also in opposition to ‘absolute’; to decide which action to perform based on its relation to a goal, could not be operating from a standpoint that is absolute. For instance, the actions would be only good for the goal in question, for me, for achieving X; they would not be absolutely good.
The absolutely good will only contains the form of volition insofar as we understand what a categorical imperative is. A categorical imperative by its very nature, is only the form of volition[9] because the content of volition would be a specific goal we are seeking to attain and this, as per above, would be conditional, specific and relative, all opposed to the concept of absolute good.
Kant called this mere form of volition autonomy in the sense that it is a command that emanates from inside the mind. Since, as we have seen, an absolutely good will can only issue categorical imperatives, unconditioned by any specific situation or object, it is clear that the motivation of the command does not herald from the material world. The material world can only be accessed via your body, which is always in a particular place at a particular time – in other words, in a situation. As a result, all directives issuing from the outside world can only motivate you to act if there is a material-world object interesting you in performing the action. Therefore, the idea of absolute goodness must arise a priori, without derivation from empirical, material-world experience. The proof for this rests largely on the all-pervading, irresistible idea of freewill; we feel we can choose our actions independent of the natural laws of the material world.[10] For instance, we do not explain our actions as exclusively a combination of situation, biology, habits, or the causal qualities of space and time (though, of course, since our body is in the material world, we must be subject to these laws all the same). Furthermore, the requirement that a categorical imperative must apply categorically, also includes that it must apply to oneself, not just to others or the universe generally. In this sense, the absolutely good will is autonomously self-directing, a mysterious force or volition emanating from within the mind.
I contend that Kant’s best argument for this claim is analytic and, as frequently illustrated above, contained in the definition of the word ‘absolute’. Since the absolutely good will does not rest on material-world experience – it is a purely a priori idea – explaining it or arguing for it on the basis of real-world examples is, I think, a poor way of arguing for its importance and validity.[11] It clearly operates entirely apart from these concerns.
My principal objection to Kant’s view is that he makes the mind, along with the will itself, more rational and moral than is justified. Consider: what does Kant mean by absolute good exactly? Kant is referring to a sense of absolute, all-pervasive ‘rightness’ or ‘correctness,’ I think, but I mean these words without any moral, ethical, or rational content, as, I believe, though unbeknownst to him, Kant does. He writes of a powerful sense of absolute good that does not rely on empirical-world terms. This removes it from the social sphere of governmental law with its statues of rights but also from the subjective human sphere of rationally or even ethically right-or-wrong judgements;[12] good and bad, useful and useless involve real-world input. Kant argues that the idea of absolute good therefore must be rational, that is, a result of ‘pure reasoning’. This is a tenuous leap. By ‘pure reasoning,’ most people mean abstract though concrete thought such as logic or mathematics with their systematic laws and theorems. But Kant’s absolutely good will does not employ, by any stretch of conception, a set of concrete laws or even terms. Of course, he calls the process ‘moral law’ but, as he repeatedly emphasises, there is no input, no object and no content in its workings; it does not treat people, actions or concepts like mathematical or syllogistic[13] processes (this would be using them as a means to an end), and furthermore, he writes, “how this presupposition [of freedom]… is possible can never be grasped by human reason.”[14] In sum, absolute good will is an irrational,[15] unreasoned though abstract sense of intrinsic ‘rightness.’ It is not conditioned by specific ends; it does not suggest doing but being, being a good decider of action, being a good person.[16] In this sense, it is a pure sublime impression, going beyond reasoned moral judgement. The word ‘right,’ as in intrinsically ‘correct,’ ‘appropriate’; or ‘true,’ not in the factual sense, but in the emotional – as in emotionally ‘real,’ ‘genuine,’ ‘balanced’, ‘at one’ even just mysteriously ‘meaningful’ – are, I argue, closer to the absolute good that Kant outlines.[17]
Kant’s conclusions should not be devalued by this criticism. His system provides a tenable framework explaining genuine altruistic inspiration. His weakness is in trying to subsume too much under rational processes (in this respect he is similar to other Enlightenment philosophers, who felt the need to justify inspiring religious feeling[18] by ‘proof’ of God’s accord with reason). His insistence on rational terminology makes the Groundwork excessively confusing but not invalid per se. A relaxing of Kant’s language – something like ‘a sense of rightness’ for ‘moral law’, ‘meaningful suggestion’ for ‘categorical imperative’, ‘impressionistic’ for ‘intelligible’ – would clarify the proper feeling of these mysterious experiential elements – although the Groundwork makes perfect sense when read metaphorically, with an understanding that rational language is here used semi-poetically to refer beyond reason to a ground of pure emotion/mystery. Kant seems to recognise this himself when he suggests applying his three principles of morality simultaneously “to introduce a certain analogy[19] that will bring an idea of reason closer to intuition and thus nearer to feeling.”[20]
[1] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Jonathan Bennett; available from http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/kantgrou.pdf: p. 40. [Access date not given.]
[2] Ibid, p. 18 (emphasis removed).
[3] Ibid, p. 5. The parallel is implied: “[good talents and temperaments] can become extremely bad and harmful if the person’s character isn’t good – i.e. if the will that is to make use of these gifts of nature isn’t good.” Here character and good will are equated.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid (Kant’s emphasis).
[6] Ibid., p. 19.
[7] Ibid., p. 28.
[8] Ibid: “Things that are preferred have only conditional value, for is the preferences (and the needs arising from them) didn’t exist, their object would be worthless.” (Kant’s emphasis.)
[9] Ibid., p. 20: The categorical imperative is “concerned with… the form and the principle from which the conduct follows.”
[10] Ibid., p. 44.
[11] Ibid., 24. The perfunctory way in which Kant treats his real-world examples suggests their relative unimportance. He puts off the “serious, considered division of duties for a future metaphysic of morals” (footnote 9, p. 24). The examples he gives are somewhat confusing in their hallucinatory logic and besides, “we can’t site a single sure example of someone’s being disposed to act from pure duty” (p. 14) anyway.
[12] These right-or-wrong judgements are what we usually call morality (indeed this is what Nietzsche means by the term) but Kant uses his own definition of ‘moral law,’ ‘ethics’ and even ‘rationality’.
[13] A logical syllogism requires an “if” and so could not be categorical.
[14] Kant, Groundwork, p. 51 (my emphasis).
[15] As in, ‘emotional, not based on the pure reasoning of logic or maths,’ not, ‘other than mental’.
[16] Kant, Groundwork, p. 5: As mentioned earlier, see Kant’s equating it with ‘character,’ being a good person.
[17] Of course, Kant seems to reject the emotional ‘meaning’ qualities I am suggesting with the use of words like ‘rationality,’ ‘reason’ and ‘moral law,’ but I contend that he has redefined these terms so that they do not mean what most people take them to mean, at least not today.
[18] If religious awe is not related to this idea of absolutely good will, what is it then?
[19] A.k.a. metaphor.
[20] Kant, Groundwork, p. 34.
Interdependent Arising: Meanings for Buddhism and for the Individual
This is an essay for one of my uni subjects. It fits the theme of the writings on this site. The prompt was to explain the Buddhist concept that ‘you are nothing more than a collection of ever-changing parts’, its validity and its problems
The Buddhist idea that you are nothing more than a collection of ever-changing parts is difficult to disprove. The idea reveals a fundamental property of existence, however, the conclusions reached about its implications for the actual living of life conflict even within Buddhism itself. I will argue that the most intelligent objection to the idea is not based on its validity per se but on its potentially destructive effect upon the development of the mature individual when too narrowly considered. However, the deepest conceptions of Buddhist ideas are so numinous and life-affirming that even these objections are revealed as probably misinterpretations.
The idea of interdependent arising (pratitya samutpada) is a central teaching of Buddhism. Briefly stated, it is the idea that “human life is a continuous process of change, rising and falling through interdependence with numerous other processes” (Koller, 153). All that we see around us is conditioned by interconnected and fluctuating processes; nothing is either permanent or separate (Koller, 157). Ignorance of this leads to duhkha, the dissatisfaction, suffering and anguish of life. By considering anything in life as permanent and separate, one generates trishna, futile desires and attachments to people, things and ideas that are ultimately devoid of any absolute reality. The idea of the self which most people consider largely continuous and unchanging is also a fiction. The person is only an aggregate of mental and bodily processes, of sensation, perception, volition, consciousness and physicality (Koller, 157). Pursuit of self leads to futile suffering and ultimately death, rebirth and the continuance of this vain struggle in future lives. The Buddhist aim is to extinguish trishna by experiencing the reality of interdependent arising thereby reaching the state of nirvana (literally, ‘extinguished’).
Firstly, interdependent arising is not a difficult idea to marry with modern science. Our bodies are impermanent (we die) and made entirely of foreign elements; the living organism is supported solely by fresh supplies of water, oxygen and food. The impermanent nature of reality is well supported by modern scientific understandings of matter as dynamic and active (Jinpa, 873). The concepts of the relativity of space and of quantum mechanics (Yong, 53) marry with the Buddhist rejection of absolute notions of time, matter and consciousness (Jinpa, 873). And no matter how much we may delve into the complexities of neuroscience, the discovery of a verifiable (not to mention separate) ‘self’ is not likely.
And yet how we react to and emphasize the reality of impermanence makes a world of difference both in terms of how we experience life and of how we view Buddhist ideals. For instance, as per Joseph Campbell: “It is extremely difficult for an Occidental mind to realize how deep the impersonality of the Oriental lies” (276).[1] The concept of no-self could not be more averse to the view of the Western individual; as Susan E. Donner states: “the self [in the West] is… treated as though it were a definable knowable entity with particular characteristics” (217).
It is tempting to see this individualistic view as deluded, a reflection of the ‘materialistic’ West, yet it may be more sophisticated that the Buddhist view in some respects. The idea of the id in the psychology of Freud and Jung – the selfish ‘pleasure principle’ constantly demanding, ‘I want it!’ – is an exact match for the Buddhist concept of trishna. Yet in Western thinking, the selfish id motivations are to be sublimated under the rational guidance of the ego, which is the centre of the mature personality. In Buddhist thinking, we are to give up ego altogether, but what is meant by ego in Buddhism is actually what is meant by just the id in Western thought. In other words, the Buddhist system does not acknowledge the possibility of a balanced, rational human ego at all – the individual psyche is either deluded (in the grip of the id) or it has been dissolved away into the impersonal bliss of nirvana (Campbell, 14-15).
Thus, the primary objection to Buddhist interdependent arising is that, while it is apparently true, it is too narrow-sighted by itself and not conducive to the maturation of a personality. This personality provides the impetus for development in society, in the arts, in technology; for adventure and achievement within the world, and for the formation of moral values. Without social institutions advocating expressly human ethical values, there are few means of protesting on the socio-political level – hence the weak resistance to inhuman acts of violence such as those perpetrated by the “maniac” Chinese despot Wuzung (Campbell, 452) or by the Chinese Communists when invading peaceful Buddhist Tibet (Campbell, 505-516). Similarly, P. T. Raju argues against the Buddhism tendency toward asceticism and the resulting collapse of society, the huge ascetic population no longer favouring work or defence (269-270).
Even if an idea, such as interdependent arising, is apparently true, its value is reflected in its position within the entire framework of conception. The Therevada and Mahayana Buddhist traditions provide a good example of differing frameworks. Interdependent arising suggests the apparent solidity of life is an illusion. The Therevada conclusion: reject the world, purge oneself of illusion, board the ferryboat built solely for the mendicant life (hence the derisive designation ‘small ferryboat’ (hinayana) by the Mahayana) and struggle toward the yonder shore of nirvana (Campbell, 279). But, the Mahayana Buddhist asks: where do you think you are going? If the world and the self is really ‘empty’ then from where are you voyaging to reach which yonder shore? The universe itself is a ‘great ferryboat’ (mahayana) going absolutely nowhere, since we all are already ‘empty’. There is no need to retire to the woods, nirvana is everywhere; it is a state of mind that but needs realisation (Campbell, 280).
Both schools use the same terminology but reach two different conclusions from the original idea of interdependent arising. I would argue that the Mahayana conception is the deeper and more complex reading as it recognises the psychological and experiential nature of nirvana. After all, the experience of enlightenment is repeatedly emphasized by the Buddha (Dwivedi, 206). I would argue that this idea of nirvana as pure experience comes closest to the spiritual truth of interdependent arising and coincidentally it is also the most conducive to Western thinking – since the vital experience is non-dual, nirvana can be achieved just as well through the performance as through the cessation of acts.
Therefore the Buddhist conception of the Western individual as the ‘little self’ – “an arbitrary, somewhat idiosyncratic aggregate of processes that come and go” (Donner, 222) – is to my mind an error of judgement. Individual attachment versus collective extinction is just another pair of opposites that the experience of nirvana should go beyond. Like the Bodhisattva, we should realise the truth of interdependent arising, that nothing is really there, but then venture back into the world of exciting illusions to play the game while still experiencing this truth inside. The criticism of individualism is, I suspect, based on the assumption that the Western individual is not experiencing the blissful joy of the non-dual experience. Indeed, with the post-modern conception of the self as merely “a cultural construction subjectively experienced… overstimulated and bombarded [with] shifting values” (Donner, 225), it is indeed difficult to achieve. But this does not mean a spiritual centring is impossible, in fact the post-modern deconstruction of the self “offers a great deal in disarming the destructive force of uncontemplated power dynamics” (Donner, 226) which, it could be said, is the aim of the Buddhist ideal too.
The modern Western concept of interdependent arising rests within a different, more challenging framework than the Buddhist idea – the Western aim is not to reject but to solidify ego, to nurture and refine a balanced, mature, yet unique self that can sublimate the sometimes destructive urges of the id and convert the impersonal maelstrom of a fluctuating ‘interdependent reality’ into numinous personal meaning. The Western idea of ego is as a unique arbiter between challenging inner and outer processes; the apparent emotional instability of ‘capitalist’ daily life may properly reflect an unrealised, often dangerous yet humbling, nearness to the numinous (nirvana).
Word count: 1,350 (including citations).
Works Cited:
Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology. New York: Penguin, 1962.
Donner, Susan E. “Self or No Self: Views from Self Psychology and Buddhism in a Postmodern Context.” Smith College Studies in Social Work. 80 (2010): 215-27.
Dwivedi, Kedar Nath. “An Eastern Perspective on Change.” Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 11 (2006): 205-12
Jinpa, Thupten. “Buddhism and Science: How Far Can the Dialogue Proceed?” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science. 45 (2010): 871-82.
Koller, John M. Asian Philosophies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.
Raju, P. T. “The Concept of Man in Indian Thought.” Concept of Man. Ed. S. Radhakrishnan and P. T. Raju. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960. 158-206.
Yong, Amos. “Mind and Life, Religion and Science: His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Buddhism-Christianity-Science Trialogue.” Buddhist-Christian Studies. 28 (2008): 43-63.
[1] As my assessor remarked, the use of the word “Oriental” is dated but Campbell does not use the word in the pejorative, exoticist, repressive Western-empirical sense. One could substitute “Asian” as per modern scholarship. Indeed, the subject-recommended Koller text, “Asian Philosophies”, has a note inside its cover stating that the earlier editions of the book were similarly entitled, “Oriental Philosophies.”
Richard Dawkins & the Theists
I watched (or tried to watch) Richard Dawkins in his Q&A episode and found it really very irritating. It was just atheists versus theists and it seems to me that both sides make the same blunders – so much so that it is pretty painful to watch (much like watching two people fighting over lack of water when you know there is a well full of fresh clear water right next to them that they both fail to notice).
There is something very one-sided about both “belief” in a religion and “trust” in rationality. I think these two groups – the religiously devout and the rational atheist – belong together, as in they are both interpreting life in the same way, but each has a different eye open. It is hard to say which is more important: religious feeling (including Love, Meaning and God) or rational thinking (including Logic, Science and Reason). And I am frustrated because I believe choosing between these two is a stupid argument. Without meaning or reason, life would be near impossible. The debate over which is more important is explosive because each is equally important.
What makes this difficult for people to see? Only the social and historical brandings of races, religions, sciences, and other socio-political divisions that separate individuals into opposing groups. Here are a few sentences from a short book called “The God Allusion” I wrote a couple of years ago (but which I’ve been rather lazy in getting around to sending to publishers):
Science (including rationality) is concerned with understanding.
The theory must be consistent and comprehensible, not personal or emotional.Mythology (including religion) is concerned with experience rather than understanding.
(Myth is too subtle for science.)These are the only areas in which science and myth have respective authority.
So: It is ridiculous to apply reason to a religious rite – a religious rite does not set out to define the physical universe.
And: It is ridiculous to invoke myth to argue for, say, a geocentric universe – whether we say the Earth orbits the sun or the sun orbits the Earth has no bearing on an individual’s experience of life (the experience of either configuration is subjectively identical).
Myth over-interpreted as literal fact is destructive because deep down we know we are wrong. We suppress our doubts and our beliefs then become violently compulsive.
‘Idolatry of the real (facts, sciences etc.)’ involves making judgements based on literal fact rather than emotional worth. We’ve mistaken the truth of the story for the experience of the story.
Science is true and myth is true.
Conflict arises from mixing up the definition of the word ‘true’ –
1. literally true, a fact
2. emotionally alive, a true experience.What is factually true and what is meaningful are often completely at odds.
Literal truth is not necessary in myth because it isn’t necessary for something to exist for us to be moved by it. E.g. the movie monster that we know is not real, but we can still be scared.“This mythic image (e.g. God) is highly meaningful for me, makes me feel emotionally alive. This experience is true (definition 2). Therefore, the image itself must be true (definition 1).”
However, this is not always so and it is not necessary for this to be so.
I think this is a very big issue for our age. Listening to Dawkins again on ‘Sunday Night Safran’ on Triple J, the squabble continues. There is John Safran who loves the inter-group scandals, the politically-dicey controversies and the rationally ludicrous dramas stirred up by the religious/racial groupings (and I suppose he does a good job at dissipating some of their deceptive solidity). Yet John cannot admit that his rationality and wit is only good for exposing (and therefore destroying); and exposing facts or hypocrisy only aids in understanding (forming judgments) on that very social-political level – this does not touch the ‘religious truth’ at all. He talks to Father Bob, who as a Catholic priest comes from within one of these dividing groups. He can only “blather on” in sometimes surprisingly insightful ways but he cannot find the terms to say something concretely meaningful because he cannot admit that his “religious feeling” (that he knows so well is somehow significant yet diametrically opposed to Dawkins’ rationality) applies only to individual experience; in short, he would find the very terms he needs in his own religion if he could acknowledge Jesus, Mary, God, the Cross – the whole mythology – as a metaphor rather than oddly inexplicable and nonsensical facts (with a pleasant social agenda).
Anyway, that’s my waffle on. (Father Bob gets so close to – and yet so far from – hitting the nail on the head in the Dawkins interview that it is, once again, an annoying near-breakthrough.)
Trapped In The Belly Of The Whale
Are you a sensible, down-to-earth, broad-minded, interesting person?
(Modest, aren’t you.)
If you think you’re in control – guess again.
We delude ourselves when we think we can control our feelings. Here’s what Jung has taught me recently:
Stage 1. The Change
We think we’re in control but then the world throws a surprise our way – from the nasty divorce to the tram not turning to up.
Stage 2. The Blockage
Our attitude needs adjustment but there is a tendency to get upset, to blame the world for not living up to our expectations. (This causes an emotional blockage.)
Stage 3. The Split
We try to rationalize the shock. We split the world into pairs of opposites – was it this, or that? But it clearly wasn’t me at fault – we can see no easy way out so we shrug and go to the pub. But the doubt won’t go away – “What is wrong with me?” we ask – so we lock down and force our attitudes even stronger. They become one-sided and brittle, liable to snap at any moment.
Stage 4. Retreat Inside
Then, eventually, we snap! releasing some of that blocked psychic energy – we become possessed by an inner demon and do something nasty. This is a natural reaction – our psyche, sensing the blockage, eases the pressure on the opposites, and retreats into our rejected unconscious. This is projected outwards and up come our forgotten infantile traumas, sexual taboos. We are plagued by unjustified fears and bizarre desires. We are in limbo.
Stage 5. Search for a Solution
But the psyche thrusts the unconscious onto us for a reason – in the hope that we will find a useful baby among the bathwater we thought we didn’t need in our narrowly conscious mind. The problem is, the longer we searching for this “baby”, the longer we’ll spend lingering in this unhappy and irrational state.
This is all very interesting, I’m sure, but I was having a read of this theory of Jung’s when it suddenly occurred to me why it is that modern life is in a bit of a destructive degeneration.
In the past, attitudes were largely inspired and maintained by religious convictions. Through the unconscious references of a prime myth, the conscious and unconscious were brought into line. In this respect, there was One Truth – the truth of the Eleusinian Mysteries, or of the Bible or Koran. In olden times, within their cultural horizons, the great myths were perfectly in synch with the current scientific knowledge, the current view of the universe, the current social order and they gave the individual a definite place in his world, inspiring a sense of completeness and meaning throughout life.
But then, Stage 1. The Change:
Some surprises fell our way – we discovered the world was not flat, the sun didn’t go round the Earth, and, responding, the social order became rationally determined not decreed by God.
Stage 2. The Blockage:
The myth is cast into doubt; conscious and unconscious are no longer flowing smoothly. We vent our uncertainty with violence and repression. (There is a tendency to blame the world, i.e. ‘immoral heretics’, for not living up to Revelation.)
Then, Stage 3. The Split:
The mythology breaks into opposites – light versus dark – something called the Devil must (somehow) be to blame. (The One Church splits into hundreds of differing denominations, as the collective psyche breaks into fragments.) None of this helps, so the playful myth is forced into a set of inflexible rules, becoming one-sided and brittle (and so we say, nowadays, it is “bullshit”). The believers become crusty and extreme in an attempt to hold off their own doubts, while the rest of us are isolated from our subconscious, get cocky and blame the government, those rich people, those dole-bludgers, the misguided political left or right, or those immoral Jews/Blacks/Homosexuals.
Then comes Stage 4. The Retreat Inside:
Out streams the unconscious. Up wells the infantile desires, and compulsive fears – the need for “security”, the desire for meaningless sex, the lack of compassion and maturity, and overall, a great emptiness – a feeling of dissatisfaction with the world. We are alone in the universe because we’re out of touch with our insides. And we seek to distract ourselves with fads, techno gadgets, political outcries, sexual dalliances and violent outrage.
Stage 5. Search for a Solution
There is no solution of course, as we have no spiritual order. All of the myths are dead. But we have forgotten that the psyche thrusts the unconscious onto us for a reason.
It’s as if we have lost a precious diamond (spiritual wholeness) and every day, we get up and crawl through slime and rubbish and excrement (our projected unconscious) to find it. It is bleak and unpleasant but some days we come across some excitingly heady odours and some racy novelties – low, sexy, repressed infantile things. And as time wears on, we begin to think that these things are all there is to life.
We are all ‘In The Belly of the Whale’. Every story has a beginning, middle and end (Act 1, Act 2, Act3). Writer David Mamet tells us that in act 1 the hero sets out on quest with a clear goal – say, to find the lost diamonds. In Act 2, he gets lost in the underworld (like Jonah (or Pinocchio) in the whale) and even forgets what his goal was. As Mamet puts it, “It’s hard to remember you set out to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators.” We are searching in the dustbin in order to find something. (In musical terms, we are in the development section in search of a recapitulation.) The hero must fight on in spite of the temptress from the deep. The message is: don’t give up.
(This is why romances and melodramas offer only destructive distraction. The hero succeeds because of his own magical brilliance – he succeeds by co-incidence or super-human powers or because he has a bigger gun – and we all end happily ever after without undertaking any effort. We are encouraged to think that success and enlightenment comes easily. We are encouraged to give up when we face similar challenges and don’t find them resolved quite so easily.)
Scary Whale
Joseph Campbell tells us, “You cannot invent a myth any more than you can predict what dream you’ll have tonight.” We have no universal myth and can’t just make one. But we can take the hint and try to find our own, all you need to do is answer The Call.
What is The Call? The hero is off in the woods hunting when he sees a beautiful bird and follows it. The bird leads him out of the known world into the mysterious world of the subconscious depths. Each of us has our call. Many of us don’t know what it is, have forgotten what it is, or have repressed it. It will be something personal. It will be something you have a predilection for, something that is not easy but, when it comes to doing this thing – whatever it may be, you could well be ‘The Chosen One’. It may be a dream-job, or an artistic gift you never pursued. Jung suggests thinking about what you did when playing as a child. For Jung, it was playing with building blocks. He found great fulfillment and rewards in building his own home from scratch. When you deny The Call, life dries up.
So answer The Call. Do not let the temptations and deprivations of the unconscious distract you from your goal. If each of us took the time to find that something that ‘activates your being’, we can all slowly begin the journey out of the belly of the whale and into a new beginning. There is huge social pressure nowadays to focus on the economic and the “productive” – these are hollow goals on their own. If we all took the trouble to find out what truly motivates and satisfies us each in our own way for its own sake, there would be no need to project our own dissatisfactions onto to anything or anyone. (Why commit crime when you are satisfied in your soul? Hell, even advertising and political coercion doesn’t turn you head when you are living with spiritual wholeness.) Only you can save your Self.
The first step of this process is to become conscious of the existence of the unconscious – with what your feelings are telling you. (And for heaven’s sake, explore the old myths, but read them psychologically, as metaphors.) And start the search for your goal. My personal suggestion: seriously consider whether you need to work quite as much as you do, especially if you are under 30 and do not have a family of your own. I would encourage everyone to ask themselves why they are working full time. Are you meeting your basic requirements or are you simply living out of restlessness or convention? In today’s fractured and spiritually-undeveloped world, if you follow the dictates of any kind of mass creed – whether religious, political or just ‘popular opinion’ – you are not living your own life. Do you spend money just to pass the time, just to distract yourself from looking within, from facing what seems to be an empty void? Fill it with passion not possessions. In this day and age, doing anything simply because everyone else does it is the most demoralizing activity you could possibly do. Take the time to find something genuine – the spark that brings your being up above the waves so you can swim in the unconscious sea instead of drowning.
Thomas's Rant 