Transformation and the History of Philosophy (Rewriting the History of Philosophy) [1 ed.] 9780367520885, 9780367520915, 9781003056409, 0367520885

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TRANSFORMATION AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

From ancient conceptions of becoming a philosopher to modern discussions of psychedelic drugs, the concept of transformation plays a fascinating part in the history of philosophy. However, until now there has been no sustained exploration of the full extent of its role. Transformation and the History of Philosophy is an outstanding survey of the history, nature, and development of the idea of transformation, from the ancient period to the twentieth century. Comprising twenty-two specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is divided into four clear parts:

• • • •

Philosophy as Transformative: Ancient China, Greece, India, and Rome Transformation Between the Human and the Divine: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy Transformation After the Copernican Revolution: Post-Kantian Philosophy Treatises, Pregnancies, Psychedelics, and Epiphanies: Twentieth-Century Philosophy

Each of these sections begins with an introduction by the editors. Transformation and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of western and nonwestern philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as religion, sociology, and the history of ideas. G. Anthony Bruno is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. Justin Vlasits is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.

REWRITING THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Series editors: Aaron Garrett and Pauliina Remes

The history of philosophy has undergone remarkable growth in the English language philosophical world. In addition to more and better quality translations of canonical texts there has been a parallel expansion in the study and research of sources, thinkers and subjects hitherto largely neglected in the discipline. These range from women philosophers and late ancient thinkers to new Western and non-Western sources alike. Simultaneously, there has been a methodological shift to far greater intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives in the history of philosophy, cutting across the humanities and social sciences. Rewriting the History of Philosophy is an exciting new series that reflects these important changes in philosophy. Each volume presents a major, high quality scholarly assessment and interpretation of an important topic in the history of philosophy, from ancient times to the present day, by an outstanding team of international contributors. THOUGHT: A PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY Edited by Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Daniel Whistler INFORMATION AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Edited by Chris Meyns HABIT AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Edited by Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc FANATICISM AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Edited by Paul Katsafanas TRANSFORMATION AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Edited by G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbooks-in-Applied-Ethics/book-series/RWHP

TRANSFORMATION AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Edited by G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

Cover image: © Getty Images First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits; individual chapters, the contributors The right of G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-52088-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-52091-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-05640-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409 Typeset in Bembo Std by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgementsviii Notes on Contributors ix

PART I

Philosophy as Transformative: Ancient China, Greece, India, and Rome 1 Introduction G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

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1 Socratic Dialogue and the Transformation of Character 5 Frisbee C.C. Sheffield 2 Aristotle on Personal and Epistemic Transformation 20 Andrew Culbreth and Marta Jimenez 3 Philosophy and Life: Nagel and Zhuangzi on Absurdity and Equanimity 35 Karyn Lai 4 On Transformative Insight as the Quieting of Views in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Nāg ā rjuna as Master of Irony 49 Antoine Panaïoti 5 The Dangers of Sects: Lucian, Galen, and Sextus Empiricus Justin Vlasits

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Contents

6 Transformation as Self-Cultivation in Plotinian Neoplatonism Michael Griffin

80

PART II

Transformation Between the Human and the Divine: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy Introduction G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

101 103

7 Human Transformation at the Limits of Animality and Divinity in Avicenna’s Epistle on Love Bligh Somma

105

8 Transformation via Mystical Experience in the 13th Century: Hadewijch, Marguerite d’Oingt, and Mechthild of Hackeborn Christina Van Dyke

119

9 Via Transformativa: Reading Descartes’ Meditations as a Mystical Text Amber L. Griffioen and Kristopher G. Phillips

133

10 Spinozan (Trans) Formations Julie R. Klein

155

11 Transformation and Essence (K’oje’ik) in the K’iche’ Maya Popol Vuh Alexus McLeod

172

PART III

Transformation After the Copernican Revolution: Post-Kantian Philosophy Introduction G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

187 189

12 Is Radicalization Becoming a Fanatic? A Historical Inquiry Joshua DiPaolo

191

13 Post-Kantian Idealism and Self-Transformation G. Anthony Bruno

205

14 Marx on Social Structure, Ideology, and Historical Transformation Jaime Edwards

223

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Contents

15 Kierkegaard and Heidegger on “Pathos-Filled Transition” Sacha Golob 16 World History in a Dictionary: Franz Rosenzweig on Teshuva, Metanoia, and Umkehr Benjamin Pollock

238

251

17 Merleau-Ponty, the Improvisatory Body, and Humans as Revolutionary Animals 265 Kym Maclaren PART IV

Treatises, Pregnancies, Psychedelics, and Epiphanies: Twentieth-Century Philosophy Introduction G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

285 287

18 A Philosophical Problem Has The Form: I Don’t Know My Way About: Wittgenstein on the Road Hans Sluga

289

19 A Deweyan Perspective on Transformative Choice Irina Schumski

303

20 Psychedelic Therapy as Affective Transformation Adam Bradley

318

21 Epiphanies: A Brief and Partial History, with Particular Reference to James Joyce Sophie-Grace Chappell 22 Pregnancy: Transformations in Philosophy and Legal Practice Suki Finn, Jill Marshall, Anna Pathe-Smith, and Victoria Adkins

333 345

Index361

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank the series editors Pauliina Remes and Aaron Garrett as well as Tony Bruce and Adam Johnson at Routledge for their support in the volume, despite numerous setbacks due to the pandemic.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Victoria Adkins is a Lecturer in Law in the School of Law and Criminology at the University of Greenwich, UK. Adam Bradley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Fellow of the Hong Kong Centre for Catastrophic Risk at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. G. Anthony Bruno is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. Sophie-Grace Chappell is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Open University, UK. Andrew Culbreth is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston College, USA, and an Affiliated Researcher with the Moral Injury Lab at the University of Virginia, USA. Joshua DiPaolo is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, USA. Jaime Edwards is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at St. Norbert College, USA. Suki Finn is Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Politics, International Relations, and Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. Sacha Golob is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art at King’s College London, UK. Michael Griffin is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and Co-Editor of the Ancient Commentators Project (Bloomsbury).

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Notes on Contributors

Amber L. Griffioen is Visiting Associate Professor at Duke Kunshan University, China, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Global Studies at Duke University, USA. Marta Jimenez is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Emory University, USA, and María Zambrano Research Scholar at the Department of Philosophy and Society at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. Julie Klein is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Villanova University, USA. Karyn Lai is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Kym Maclaren is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department of Philosophy at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Jill Marshall is Professor in the Department of Law and Criminology at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. Alexus McLeod is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, USA. Antoine Panaïoti is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Anna Pathe-Smith is a Lecturer in Law in the School of Law at Ulster University, UK. Kristopher G. Phillips is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University, USA. Benjamin Pollock is the Sol Rosenbloom Associate Professor of Jewish Philosophy in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Irina Schumski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany. Frisbee C.C. Sheffield is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Cambridge, UK. Hans Sluga is William and Trudy Auswahl Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Bligh Somma is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Fordham University, USA.

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Notes on Contributors

Christina Van Dyke is Term Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Barnard College at Columbia University USA, and Emerita Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Calvin College, USA. Justin Vlasits is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

PART I

Philosophy as Transformative: Ancient China, Greece, India, and Rome

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

INTRODUCTION G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

In this first part, authors examine how an array of philosophers conceived of the very activity of philosophy as transformative. While those in the contemporary debates surrounding transformative experience latch onto everyday examples such as childbirth or fictional examples such as becoming a vampire, many prominent philosophers of ancient China, Greece, India, and Rome considered philosophy itself as a transformative experience. The philosophical transformations discussed here were considered special and in need of philosophical theorizing precisely because they are unusual by the standards of ordinary life. The contributions to this part examine accounts of different kinds of philosophical transformation, how they are possible, and what kinds of benefits and dangers come with them. This is perhaps unsurprising. The contributions to this part describe the early stages of philosophical traditions from across the globe. Those philosophers could not take for granted that their philosophical activities were worthwhile, so the nature of that activity was the subject of intense scrutiny. Moreover, the philosophers discussed here all advocated for a connection between one’s philosophizing and one’s living. Thus, it would make good sense for a philosopher to explain the value of philosophizing precisely in terms of how that activity transformed a person’s life. These contributions show how connecting these ancient discussions to the contemporary debates about transformative experience can enhance our understanding of the ancient texts. For example, Karyn Lai shows how Thomas Nagel’s discussions of irony and absurdity can aid us in seeing Zhuangzi’s conception of embodied agency afresh. According to Lai, both Nagel and Zhuangzi deny that there is an ultimate standard that justifies those practices. However, while Nagel’s conclusion is that we should have ironic detachment from those practices, Zhuangzi emphasizes plurality and flexibility in one’s approach to those practices. But there is also benefit for contemporary discussions, in at least two ways. First, these discussions show us new possibilities that have yet to be explored. For example, Marta Jimenez and Andrew Culbreth argue that while Aristotle’s account of the transformation of the virtuous person is both personally and epistemically transformative in L.A. Paul’s senses, there is not the sort of radical discontinuity between early and later time-slices of an individual. Instead, they argue that for Aristotle there is deep continuity throughout the transformative process, since it involves fully becoming oneself. DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-2

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G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

These reflections can also, however, show just why theorizing about transformative experience is so important for philosophy. In different ways, Frisbee Sheffield, Antoine Panaïoti, Justin Vlasits, and Michael Griffin show in their contributions how philosophical activity can itself be transformative, for better if done well, but for worse if done carelessly. In her contribution, Frisbee Sheffield takes a fresh look at the Socratic dialogue and asks: what is the benefit of dialogue even when there are no positive results? On her view, the very activity of engaging in collaborative philosophical discussion with others facilitates the development of the virtues. Antoine Panaïoti explores how Indian Buddhist texts from the Pā li canon to Nāgā rjuna conceive of the ‘quieting of views’ as a transformational insight. On his interpretation, irony plays a central role in philosophical transformation, allowing emptiness to function as both philosophical theory and therapy. Justin Vlasits considers how the satirist Lucian of Samosata, the doctor cum philosopher Galen of Pergamon, and the skeptic Sextus Empiricus come to grips with the problem of how to avoid picking the wrong philosophical views. On Vlasits’ view, because joining a particular philosophical sect is conceived of as a radical transformation from which there may be no return, these thinkers thought that someone embarking on their philosophical journey needed to exercise extreme caution. Finally, Michael Griffin looks at Plotinus’ theory of how the human soul can, through a series of transformations, itself become divine. Griffin shows how the transformation of the individual is a journey, as it were, through the Plotinian metaphysical system itself.

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1 SOCRATIC DIALOGUE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHARACTER Frisbee C.C. Sheffield

Part of the great charisma of Socrates lay in the promise of philosophical practice. Those who took up the call of the “examined life” did so on the grounds that it would transform their lives and lead to eudaimonia.1 In Plato’s Apology, Socrates claims the following: T1: It is the greatest good… to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing (dialegesthai) and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living. (Apol. 38a1–7) It is notoriously puzzling how Socrates held that dialogue about the virtues is the greatest good, since his habitual mode of question and answer so often failed to deliver positive results.2 How and why did Socrates think that dialogue could effect a transformative change in its practitioners?3 That is the question of this chapter.

1.1  Dialogue as a Logical Tool Dialogue is characterised in Plato as “asking and answering questions” (Prt. 335a9–c1, 336b8–d3; Grg. 449b–c; Crat. 390c, 398d; Euth. 290; cf. Rep. 515d5, 524e6, 526a, 528a5, 534d9) or as “refuting and being refuted” (Grg. 462a4–5, 447d4–5). This kind of discussion is characterised by the giving and receiving of logos (Prt. 336b9–c1; Rep. 531e4, 533c2, 534d8–10) and the scrutiny of logos (variously construed as “reason”, “account” or “argument”). An interlocutor proposes a thesis about the topic under discussion (typically some virtue) and the questioner elicits agreements to further claims which taken together contradict the original claim. Given this form, much scholarship is focused on the logical and epistemological aspects of dialogue, namely what logical relationships can be established between sets of propositions and whether it can lead to truth or (weaker) consistency.4 Within this framework, the focus is largely on the epistemic value of dialogue, which might be captured as follows. Speech that proceeds dialogically, especially in the short question and answer mode privileged by Socrates (brachulogia), is a more perspicuous way to convey information about one’s mental contents, allowing a questioner to follow a train of thought clearly (Prt. 335b) and to ask questions when DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-3

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they do not understand. This enables them to “scrutinize more clearly”, as Socrates puts it (Prt. 329a–b, 334c–338e, 352a; Chrm. 166d; Hip. Min. 364b–c; Grg. 453b–c; Rep. I 348a–b; Soph. 217c–218a). The benefit to the answerer is that through this process of trying to give an account of themselves, they can determine better the contents of their own mental states, including commitments of which they might previously have been unaware, which are brought to light by another’s distinct perspective on the views expressed. Since it operates by the exposure of contradictions in an interlocutor’s own set of beliefs, this practice facilitates “making visible to the answerer the link between certain of his actual beliefs and the contradictory of his present thesis”.5 Since Socratic dialogue typically (though not exclusively) operates between two or more different parties, this enables a degree of accountability “which is not guaranteed when the soul is left to discourse with itself ”.6 To appreciate how dialogue of this kind can improve, the ethical content is then added to that form. The arguments are based on premises which reflect the moral beliefs of the interlocutors, those beliefs they live by, such that one ends up examining one’s way of life (La. 187e6–188a3). This feature, coupled with the claim that correctly determining the nature of that ethical content is sufficient for virtue, leads to the ethical value of dialogue; in other words, what has come to be known as Socratic intellectualism. For if one supposes that all rational agents desire their own good, then once we determine what this good is, that is supposed to be enough to make us virtuous. If virtue is knowledge, then engaging in a practice which has this epistemic value will also, and thereby, have ethical value.7 This view places the emphasis on the definitional end product of dialogue: definitions of the virtues. On such a view, dialogue is seen primarily as a logical, truth-seeking, tool, with value entering the frame only via its ethical content. This position is puzzling when we attend to the fact that Socratic dialogue is so often resultless. If all of the ethical value is supposed to reside in the end product and this is not delivered, then in what sense exactly can this practice be ethically transformative? This chapter questions whether the ethical value of dialogue is to be identified solely with its results. The account to follow is compatible with there being positive results from refutational dialogue, either in the form of definitions or in positive movement towards a definition (e.g. Eu. 12d). The claim is simply that the ethical value of the practice does not reside exclusively with its results. As McCabe (2006: 101) has argued: “conversation…has normative force, not just any old talk, but conversation and discussion conducted along the right lines and with the right precision”; a footnote adds: “it is a matter of moral character, too”. I will attempt to substantiate this insight in the following section, by arguing that attention to how “discussion is conducted along the right lines” does indeed reveal that dialogue is “a matter of moral character too”. This will involves clarifying what behaviours are required for dialogue and why, as well as specifying carefully what it means to say that dialogue is a matter of moral character. For it can hardly be the case that moral character is an entry requirement for dialogue. Not only would this rule out, in advance, characters who are most in need of its transformative promise, but this is at odds with the presentation of dialogue in Plato’s works. Socrates seems to talk to anyone who is willing, and is strikingly egalitarian for his time about whom he engages in dialogue: man, woman, citizen, foreigner, and slave, are all represented in discussion with Socrates. None of these people are asked before they start anything other than whether they are willing to have a conversation. If dialogue requires certain behaviours of its participants, the importance of these must emerge during the conversation itself, and enable its successful, or optimal, operation rather than restricting in advance those who can engage at all. It is the emergence of certain behaviours and their contribution to successful discussion, that I will attend to first. 6

Socratic Dialogue and the Transformation of Character

1.2  Dialogue: Suitable Characters and Successful Engagement One passage where Socrates seems to be explicit about the kind of person that is suited for dialogue occurs during one of his methodological interludes in the Gorgias. Before embarking on the refutation of Gorgias, Socrates says that he is afraid to complete his examination: T2: …for fear you will suppose I am not competing (philonikein) to make clear the matter we are discussing, but to defeat you. And so, if you are the same kind of man as I am, I would be pleased to continue the questions; if not, I would rather let it go. And what kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted (elenchein) if I say something untrue, and pleased to refute if someone were to say something untrue, yet not at all less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I think that being refuted is a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for a man to get rid of the greatest evil himself than to rid someone else of it – for I think there is no evil for a man as great as a false belief about the things which our discussion is about right now. And so, if you also say that you are that kind of man, let us continue the dialogue (dialegesthai); but if in fact you think we ought to let it go, let us let it go, and finish the discussion. (457c–458b; trans. Irwin 1979, italics mine) Here Socrates does draw attention to the fact that only certain persons are well suited to engage in dialogue. The kind of person who is well suited only competes collaboratively – “to make clear the matter we are discussing” and not for the sake of defeating the other party. This enables such a person to engage in the appropriate argumentative uptake, namely to receive any refutation as a benefit, insofar as it exposes a falsehood on this matter. This is important because, as Socrates explains before the cited passage, if participants are not this sort of person, then they are liable to “lose their tempers, and think the other is speaking out of malice, trying to win an argument rather than investigating the subject put forward for discussion. Some of them end up parting in a way they should be thoroughly ashamed of, hurling abuse at one another, and exchanging the kind of remarks which make the bystanders annoyed as well” (457c). Being the sort of person who is pleased to be refuted, as well as to refute, is an indication that one is concerned to make “clear the matter we are discussing” rather than to secure a private victory. The commitment of both parties to this goal enables the parties to compete together, which is to say collaboratively, for the sake of this common goal. This shapes the discussion by ensuring that questions are not asked to score points; they are asked for the sake of clarifying the issue together. And the fact that both parties are aware of that fact, which Socrates’ interlude here is designed to ensure, encourages that appropriate argumentative uptake: both are winners if a falsehood is exposed. The characterisation of dialogue as a common enterprise (Grg. 495a8–9; compare the use of koinonein and cognate terms in the Laches 179b5, e6, 180a5–7), with participants who search “in common” (498e10), towards a “common good” (koinon agathon, 505e4–6, 502e6–7; cf. 527d2–e5; Chrm. 166d2) is as important to Xenophon’s characterisation of Socratic dialogue (Mem. IV.V.12), as it is to Plato’s. It is not obvious why truth-seeking should be conducted “in common”. Even if one supposes that dialogue is valuable insofar as it encourages one to make one’s thinking explicit and “follow” a train of thought (Prt. 335b), to “scrutinize more clearly” (Prt. 329a–b, 334c–338e, 352a; Chrm. 166d; Hip. Min. 364b–c; Grg. 453b–c; Rep. I 348a–b; Soph. 217c–-218a), as Denyer (2017: 48) asks, why must “the person who gives the answers be different from the person who asks the questions (Grg. 505d; Prt. 360b–d)?”. After all, Socrates sometimes engages in dialogue alone (Grg. 505d; Hip. Maj. 298b1), and thinking is characterised by Plato as internal dialogue 7

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(Soph. 263d6–264d4; Theaet. 189e–190a). As Plato argues elsewhere, though, the business of “knowing with oneself ” is difficult (Charm. 167a–169c), which is why, according to Woolf, thinking as internal dialogue is characterised as a third person exercise when Socrates is depicted engaged in it.8 Working with another party provides distance from one’s beliefs, which can assist the task of examination. It can help to make explicit a number of beliefs that were not visible in the original formulation of a proposal, but which come to light in a questioner’s different perspective on the issue. As Leigh (2020: 276) argues: “the work of the method is directed towards investigating the grounds or reasons the interlocutor has for beliefs hidden from her own view”. Once these reasons are made explicit, dialogue with another also ensures, as Frede (1992: 218) argues, a degree of accountability “which is not guaranteed when the soul is left to discourse with itself ”. Denyer adds an element of coercion to interpersonal dialogue, arguing that: “once it is common knowledge that we have agreed on something, I can hardly avoid agreeing – and indeed giving my explicit assent – when you put to me some evident consequence of what we have agreed on. If I refuse to assent, I simply look sulky or stupid”. That is to say, an explicit and public declaration turns their separate knowledge into common knowledge which makes public “dialectical argument peculiarly coercive” (2017: 50–51). The audience of a dialogue surely adds to this publicity and accountability. In this way, collaborating with another aids the truth-seeking enterprise.9 A sense that one is involved in a common enterprise gives rise to friendly relations between participants; they are in it together, as partners and helpers. This shapes the terms of the discussion in a variety of ways. As the Protagoras puts it: “friends debate with each other on good terms; eristics are for enemies at odds” (337a).10 Compare the Meno “if they, the speakers, are friends, as you and I are, and want to discuss (dialegesthai) with one another, they must answer in a manner that is more gentle and proper to discussion” (75d). Socrates emphasises his friendly orientation towards participants in the Gorgias (Polus: 465d, 466c7, 466d, 471a3, 473a3, 479d7; Gorgias: 487b1; Callicles: 500b6, 507a3, 519e3).11 It is not obvious why friendship is proper to dialegesthai, though attention to number of features of ancient Greek thinking about friendship shows that it is in fact essential to its successful operation. First, relations in dialogue are governed by equality between participants: both have a roughly equal share of speaking time and each recognises the possibility of learning from the other.12 Neither party should dominate the discussion; for as Socrates puts it to Polus, “if you made long speeches and weren’t willing to answer the question asked, wouldn’t it be hard on me if I’m not allowed to go away and not listen to you?” (Grg. 461e). There are two parties in a discussion and they have to be accommodated equally. This is manifested in the preference for brief speech (brachulogia), attention to which is drawn repeatedly (449a1, b8, c1, c5, c7, 461d6, 462a4–5, 505e4–6; compare HMi. 364b, 373a; Prt. 334c–338a). Friendship is the recognition one gives to the other as an equal, which is designed to ensure that each is seen and heard. Friendship also emphasises the importance of the sharing and reciprocity, which are characteristic of friendship, as each takes their turn “asking and answering questions” (Grg. 449b–cl, 461a2, 462a3–5), sharing the task of question and answer and making a discursive return when required.13 Finally, friendship is also an indication that the parties will provide active support and assistance to each other, which is required for their sense of the conversation as a communal and collaborative endeavour. Socrates helps participants to “develop [their] own views, in line with [their] thesis, in whatever way [they] choose” (454c; compare 450cd, 451c, 453a). This provision of support ensures that each person’s views will receive their due expression in discussion, though give the joint truth-seeking aim, it might also be shown by asking questions to test the proposal; as Socrates puts it to Polus (and later to Callicles, 506c1–3): you are doing a favour to a friend, “prove me wrong, and rid me of some piece of nonsense”.14 If this is conducted in a spirit of friendship, then each will recognise that the other is trying to benefit 8

Socratic Dialogue and the Transformation of Character

them, and not refuting to score points; as Socrates makes explicit to Gorgias: “you must regard me as having your interests at heart in this” (455cd).15 A dialogue, then, is constituted by two or more persons, who operate together to form a community in logos, which is structured by the sharing, equality and reciprocity, characteristic of friends. Seeing it as such, can clarify why such conversation begins to look like it “is a matter of moral character, too” (McCabe 2006). For, in the Gorgias, Socrates is explicit about the kind of person who is incapable of community and friendship: someone who is characterised by akolasia and pleonexia: T3: Such a person could be friend neither to any other human nor to god. He would be incapable of feeling any sense of community, and there can be no friendship (philia) for someone who has no sense of community (koinonia). (507d–e) The thought here seems to be that someone who is indulgent towards their desires will take more than their share to satisfy these (pleonexia), as Callicles makes explicit (483b–d).16 This interferes with the co-operative activities constitutive of community and friendship.17 Socrates argues that community and friendship require “orderly” psychic states, of which the names are moderation and justice (504d); those with no sense of moderation and justice are incapable of friendship and community and lead the life of a pirate (507e2).18 So, it now seems that dialogue, structured as it is by community and friendship, is indeed “a matter of moral character”; it requires the kind of person who is capable of orderliness, moderation and justice. To return to the “entry-requirement” problem, though, notice that “capable” does not come with the thought that participants in dialogue need to be fully virtuous persons. After all, even Socrates himself disavowed the knowledge he claimed was required for virtue and yet he was a master practitioner of dialogue. The thought is rather than participants need a sense of community and friendship, along with the orderly behaviours (if not the fully virtuous states) that support them. One cannot be entirely vicious, then, but one need not be fully virtuous either. Compare the importance of intermediate states to the characterisation of those who search for knowledge in the Symposium: there are intermediate states between bad and good, ugly and beautiful, ignorance and wisdom (202b).19 As we see in may Platonic works, the point is just that dialogue will be more or less successful to the extent that participants are capable of exhibiting the required behaviours.20 Such behaviours are required to engage in dialogue optimally, or successfully, where this means collaboratively insofar as there are two or more persons in the one dialogue. In other words, the normative force of these requirements are gleaned from the simple fact that dialogue is a plurality. As Blondell (2002: 49) argues: “dialogue, which by definition involves more than one character, forces human plurality and difference on our attention…In strictly formal terms, dialogue form is an assertion of human plurality”. A dialogue consists of two or more parties that operate in the one dialogue. As one discursive endeavour, this functions better when agreeable (which is to say, communal and friendly) relations obtain. This is a version of Socrates’ claim that he himself is a plural subject, composed of distinct elements, like strings or singers, and that it is better to be out of tune with the multitude than “that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict me” (Grg. 482bc). This suggests that agreeable and harmonious relationships (in this particular context, consistent ones) are better because I am one. This generates a normative claim: since these diverse elements exist in one whole, they ought to collaborate harmoniously.21 This is an a fortiori argument: being out of tune with one’s fellow chorus members or playing an instrument out of tune is obviously bad; it is 9

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surely worse to be out-of-tune with oneself. If you are completely out of tune with yourself, it might even become a question whether you are one; there might be a point when a chorus stops functioning as a chorus if each individual is singing a different song or in a different key. So, for dialogue: since a plurality of persons are engaged in the one dialogue, they ought to collaborate harmoniously. This task, as T3 indicates, requires orderly behaviours. So, how do these orderly psychic states enter the frame exactly? As McCabe (2006: 103) argues, “the notion of a conversation… has an order, a proper sequence built in (compare Socrates’ repeated insistence on doing things in the right order, e.g. Rep. 527b, 528d, 535a)”. Socrates is insistent that dialogue must be conducted “in an orderly way” (Grg. 454c1–2) with questions put “in the right order” (Grg. 463c3–6, 494e3). This ensures that answers are relevant to the questions; “complete your answer in the terms of my question” (451a with 448d), and that each party pays attention to what the other is saying and responds on that basis rather than just waiting for their turn to speak. In order for this to be possible, though, participants themselves must exhibit behaviours associated with psychic orderliness, which Socrates characterises, specifically, in terms of justice and moderation (504d). That is to say that paying attention to the other party, and answering just what is being asked, requires a measure of restraint and fairness. Consider, first, the importance of justice to dialogue. It is crucial to the task of examination that each party gives due recognition to the other’s point of view. When Socrates explores Gorgias’ account of rhetoric, for example, he checks that he has understood the position, which Gorgias confirms, claiming that “your belief is correct and your supposition just (dikaios, 451a). Socrates cannot do the work assigned to him as questioner if he “snatches at each other’s meaning on the basis of guesswork” (Grg. 454c1–5). The questioner must attend to what is really meant when a proposal is offered (450c3–4, 451d9–e1, 453b5–7, 462c– 466a, 488b2–d3, 489d1–4, 508c3–5, 515b6–8) to enable what is characterised as a “just reckoning” (dikaion logon, 504e). If an argument has been made explicit and a contradiction exposed, one can “take back whatever one wants to take back”, as long as makrologia is held in check; this is dikaios (461d). Here, then, justice in dialogue ensures that answers are given their discursive due. The importance of discursive justice is explored further in the Theaetetus: T4: It is very inconsistent for a person who asserts that he cares for virtue to be constantly unjust in discussion. Injustice in discussion consists in not observing the distinction between a debate and a conversation. A debate need not be taken seriously, and one may trip up one’s opponent to the best of one’s power; but a conversation should be taken in earnest. One should help the other party and bring home to him only those slips and fallacies that are due to himself or his earlier instructors. If you follow this rule, then your associates will lay the blame for their confusions and perplexities on themselves and not on you. They will like you and court your society, and disgusted with themselves, will turn to philosophy, hoping to escape from their former selves and become different men. (167e–168b) The value of explicit argumentation, which determines whether each step is agreed to, is that it enables participants to realise errors as their own rather than seeing themselves as “tied up” and “muzzled” (as Polus does, Grg. 482e1–2) by the “bullying” questioner (505d4–5: Callicles). This enables participants to “pay the penalty” to the elenctic doctor for faults when these are identified (Grg. 478d6–7, 479a6–b1), which they would not be liable to do if they saw “slips and fallacies” as attempts to trip them up, for the sake of the refuter’s victory. In order for this to work, participants must be capable of that desiderative restraint, associated in the Gorgias with ordering of “the pleasures and desires within oneself ” (491d10–e1, “ruling 10

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over oneself ”, heautou archonta). As we saw earlier (T2), one must be able to take a stand on one’s desire for victory in argument for it to proceed without insults and abuse. One must also be able to restrain the desire to say as much as one wants (a tendency Socrates urges Polus to watch over, phulattein, 461d4) and one must be capable of restraining the desire for self-assertion, such that when a refutation is exposed, one will make a concession, on the grounds that this is a benefit (T2). When Callicles refuses to submit to the conclusion that “being disciplined is a better thing for the soul than the state of indiscipline you were in favour of just now” (505c), Socrates accuses him of being unable to undergo the very thing the argument is about, namely the disciplining of desires that instils moderation (505c3–5). Evidently, at this point, Callicles’ immoderate behaviour is interfering with his ability to concede. So much suggests that moderate and just behaviours in dialogue facilitate its successful operation. Many dialogues also urge courageous behaviour on its participants (Grg. 480c; M. 86b; La. 193e–194a). How and why does courageous behaviour contribute to dialogue? Consider, first, the importance of frankness (parrhesia), emphasised in the opening exchange in the Laches (παρρησια ́ ζεσθαι): Socrates is considered to be somebody not just with the necessary discernment, but someone who “will give us the benefit of it in telling us just what is in your mind” (178a). As Monoson argues, parrhesia was associated with criticism and truth-telling: “to speak with parrhesia was to confront, oppose, or find fault with another individual, or a popular view, in the spirit of illuminating what is right and best”.22 Crucially, to speak with parrhesia is to say what one thinks without regard for whether it would bring bad consequences; hence, its association with courage.23 This is a practice Socrates encourages in inquiry. Note his praise of Callicles’ abil̓ χυ ν ́ εσθαι, 487d5; ity “to speak frankly without embarrassment” (παρρησια ζ́ εσθαι και ̀ μη ̀ αι σ ́ ενος, 491e7–8 with Socrates’ response, compare 486e6–487a3, 491e5–492c8; see παρρησιαζο μ ́ ενος, 492d2). Callicles offers his own opinion, regardless of its acceptability, as opπαρρησιαζο μ posed to Polus and Gorgias, whom Socrates’ claims are restrained by the embarrassment of being defeated in argument (Grg. 487a7–b5; Prt. 360eff ). Speaking frankly ensures that a speaker is saying what they really think, and if they have skin in the game, then what is tested is not just propositions, but persons. This is crucial to the transformative potential of dialogue. As Nicias puts it in the Laches: T5: You don’t appear to me to know that whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and associates with him in conversation must necessarily, even if he began by conversing about something quite different in the first place, keep on being led about the main’s arguments until he submits to answering questions about himself concerning both his present manner of life and the life he has lived hitherto. And when one does submit to answering questions about himself you don’t realise that Socrates will not let him go, before he has well and truly tested every last detail. (187e–188c) Speaking frankly, despite the argumentative risks, is related to a further trait of courage: endurance in the face of uncertainty and difficulty. For example, in the Laches. When the discussion gets into difficulty, Socrates asks the following: T6: Are you willing that we should agree with our statement to a certain extent? The one that commands us to endure? If you are willing, let us hold our ground in the search and let us endure, so that courage itself will not laugh at us for failing to inquire courageously into the nature of courage – if endurance should perhaps be courage after all. (193e1–194a5) 11

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Inquiring courageously involves being bold enough not just to venture a claim but to persist with it, even when there is only agreement to some extent, such that one can examine the difficulties head on. One will relinquish the proposal only when one is sure that one is mistaken. Compare the Meno: T7: I do not insist that the argument is right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs both in word and deed as far as I can, that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one doesn’t know. (86b7–c2) Here, too, Socrates does not insist that the argument is right, but despite this uncertainty, he ventures to speak and act in accordance with it, believing that the parties will become braver if they continue the search. Compare the Republic. Adeimantus is concerned that Socrates is neglecting a topic of importance out of fear (449c2–3, 450c9–c2 where Socrates mentions his fear), but his friendly discussants encourage him to continue: T8: Your encouragement (ἡ παραμυθία) would be fine, if I were confident that I know the things I am talking about. One who knows the truth about the dearest and most important things can speak with firmness and audacity among smart and dear friends. But to make speeches when one is not confident and is still investigating, as I am doing, is fearful and dangerous (ϕοβερόν τε καὶ σϕαλερόν). What I fear is not to incur in the charge of being ridiculous (οὔ τι γέλωτα ὀϕλεῖν), for that would be childish. But if I fall off the truth, I will not only fall myself but draw my friends along regarding things about which it is most important not to be mistaken. I bow to Adrastea for what I am about to say, for I suppose that to kill someone involuntarily is a lesser crime than to mislead him about fine, good, and just institutions. (Rep. 450e8–451a7) To this Glaucon responds that Socrates should “take courage (θαρρήσας) and speak” (451b1–4). Something is being ventured in dialogue when one is not confident of one’s claims and takes a risk in the face of uncertainty. Here courage interacts closely with moderation; for it seems based on the awareness that one is not confident of the proposal (T6, T7, T8), and so though one is aware that continuing with it may be “fearful and dangerous”, one persists nonetheless and opens oneself up to the opposition that may follow. This combined evidence from a range of dialogue suggests that there is a lot involved in being “the kind of person” (T2), Socrates seeks as an optimal partner in dialogue. What we have come to see predominantly as epistemic values – collaboration for greater accountability, short question and answer for better scrutiny, sequential ordering, clear and explicit argumentation, making concessions, and showing resolve in the face of uncertainty and opposition, also involve ethical values.24 The fact that Socrates’ philosophical mission started with god, and that its characteristic activity is recast as a service to god (Apol. 23c1, 20e), has already suggested to scholars that pious behaviour, too, is an integral part of Socratic practice.25 As Reeve (1989: 27–8) argues: T9: By refuting those who claim to have knowledge of the most important things and, more especially, by getting then to see that they do not know what they claim to know, Socrates is helping to bring about something that Apollo especially commends and values. But if this is so, his elenctic activities go on being important as long as he believes that they continue to bring about something Apollo values… 12

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we can also see in this anti-hubristic aspect of the elenchus the beginning of an explanation of the religio-ethical significance Socrates attributes to it (30a7–b4, 36d9–e1); for anything that helps one to avoid something so repugnant to Apollo and so inimical to human well-being as hubris is of enormous significance to ethics and religion.26 Though wisdom “is known to no one, except the god” (Ap. 42a, 23ab), Socratic practice encourages not just the recognition of one’s limitations, but the awareness of a reality greater than oneself and one’s own world view, to which one is now open to exploring; as Heidegger put it, “questioning is the piety of thought”.27 Such combined evidence suggests that Socratic dialogue is also an ethical practice, which involves values in its very operation and, crucially, regardless of its results.

1.3  Dialogue: Exploring and Regulating One’s Temperament Since Plato turns attention to what is required of persons in dialogue, he emerges as a precursor to recent work in virtue epistemology, which has drawn attention to the way that knowledge seeking is a normative practice and argued that attention should be turned to intellectual agents.28 Though the behaviours identified above doubtless support the truth-seeking enterprise, I see no reason to suppose that such behaviour in the Platonic texts is just helping to “maximise one’s surplus of truth over error” (Sosa 1991: 225); it may also be part of the way that participants learn to be “better and braver” (Meno 86b7), and “less harsh and gentler” (Tht. 210c); after all, even Callicles eventually learns to make concessions when he is re-engaged (521a) and the “wild” Thrasymachus becomes “more gentle” at the end of Republic Book 1 (354a).29 Assessing how this might work will enable us to clarify the significance of the claim that dialogue is an ethical practice for the transformative potential of dialogue. One of the most obvious features of dialogue is that it involves plurality; there are two or more persons in a dialogue. If it is the case that one ought to behave collaboratively, and in a spirit of friendship, insofar as there are two or more in the one dialogue, then dialogue is first and foremost a space where we learn to co-operate with others. It is in this space of co-operation that we become more aware of both of our beliefs, which we are urged to make explicit in a dialogical encounter, and also of our own character in a broader sense.30 As Iris Murdoch once put it, “to do philosophy is to explore one’s own temperament, and yet at the same time to discover the truth”.31 We can see how this works if philosophy consists of dialogue conducted in the way Socrates suggests; for engaging collaboratively requires confronting one’s desire for victory and affirmation; engaging in a friendly manner, and attending to the equal claims of another part to be seen and heard, requires confronting one’s desire to take more than one’s share. Recognising the inferiority of one’s claims demands a confrontation with cognitive excess. And facing difficulties in argument involves confronting one’s fears, as well as one’s ability (or lack thereof ) to overcome them. As the passages cited earlier indicate, Socrates does not just attend to the examination and improvement of propositional content exchanged during a dialogue; he is equally attuned to how participants behave, prompts reflection on that behaviour and encourages participants to foster certain attitudes towards inquiry. In the Euthyphro, for example, when Socrates chastises Euthyphro for “being soft” (Euthyph. 11e2, 12a5) and urges him to “pull himself together” (12a6), examine “eagerly” (11b4), not “give up” (11e4), he is encouraging Euthyphro to adopt the relevant attitude towards inquiry, at the same time as he models and commends that attitude (5a–c, 6d, 9a, 9d, 11e, 12e, 14c). When Laches is urged to hold his ground in the search and endure (193e1– 194a5), Socrates encourages that prothumia for inquiry (which Lysimachus then learns to adopt, 13

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210c), just as Glaucon does for Socrates in the Republic (450d). And when Socrates holds Callicles in check when desires for victory interfere with his ability to make concessions when required to do so, he is attending to, and attempting to regulate, Callicles’ desires (Grg. 505c). Participants are both made aware of their own behaviour in dialogue with another, and, through chastisement and encouragement, they are prompted to regulate that behaviour, given its impact on others in the dialogical community.32 Socrates encourages participants to adopt the required standing in relation to their own selves (their cognitive states or their own desires and interests), which is first done by adopting the required stand in relation to another (Socrates in conversation). By seeing themselves in action with another who encourages reflection on their cognitive states (Euthyphro), their pleasures and desires (Gorgias), their difficulties and fears (Laches), participants learn to attend to their own plurality and relationality, and to regulate that rationally, albeit under the instruction of another. Such regulation is not reducible to being persuaded of a propositional truth pertinent to this restraint. Learning how to adopt the requisite behaviours is more like learning how to play the lyre, or how to dance, in the manner of a skill; it involves prompting reflection on, and shaping, one’s patterns of motivation and response, when they interfere with the task at hand, and developing the traits that are conducive to it, with guidance and encouragement.33 This is a further reason why the interpersonal element of dialogue is so crucial. For learning a skill requires practice of the thing that the skilled expert does, where the point in this context would be having a master practitioner (such as Socrates) to act as a model of the eager, collaborative, friendly, truth-seeker, who guides by example. This draws on a theme of central importance to Plato’s theory of education in the Republic and elsewhere: the imitation of good character (Rep. 3. 401b2). For what it means for “discussion [to be] conducted on the right lines” (McCabe) is for discussion to be conducted as Socrates does: in a spirit of community and friendship, with the co-operative behaviours these require. If so, then by imitating the habitual speech practice of Socrates, one is also, and thereby, imitating the behaviours this speech practices urges upon us.34 As Socrates suggests in the Apology, he is a paradeigma, whose concerns and practices provide an example for others (23b, 31b, 41e–42a).35 As he also suggests in the Apology (T1), this practice must become habitual, as he insistently urges (Grg. 513c, nb. practice [askesis] at 526d, 527d3; Meno 85c; Phd. 105a). If this is done not just repeatedly (pollakis), but well (beltion, Grg. 513c), where that involves cultivating the requisite traits and behaviours, then this ethical practice may well contribute to transforming the soul.36

1.4 Conclusion This chapter has argued that dialogue is neither reducible to persuading an interlocutor of specific propositions nor less does its transformative value reside solely in a definitional end product; it is also an ethical practice. Discussion of this kind is indeed “a matter of moral character, too” (McCabe 2006: 101), which is to say that when we learn how to conduct discussion properly, to give and receive logos in the distinctive way Socrates advocates, then we are also learning how to co-operate with others: to attend to other persons as equals whose views are worthy of consideration, as collaborators and helpers in our joint endeavours, and as persons towards whom we should behave with desiderative restraint so that they can be seen and heard, and who are worthy of fair treatment. And such lessons are important to our ethical lives: just as there are two or more persons in dialogue, so we are ourselves plural subjects, composed of distinct beliefs, which may harmonise or not (Grg. 482bc), as well as distinct pleasures and desires, which may be ordered by reason or not (491d). The virtues are themselves relational states, which concern the 14

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regulation and structuring of pleasures, desires, beliefs, fears and so on, by reason, which is why the relational practice of dialogue is so well suited to this task.37 For it is in dialogue with others that we acknowledge plurality (Blondell 2002: 49), and learn to co-operate harmoniously, as we must learn to do in our own selves as plural subjects. And the governing role of reason in these states, suggests why dialogue may be uniquely suited to this task.38 For as we learn from the Sophist and the Theaetetus, the optimal rational activity – thinking – just is that inner dialogue of the soul with itself (Soph. 263d6–264b4; Tht. 189e–190a), which we practice together in interpersonal dialogue. If this is a lesson from dialogue, then whether or not clear answers are to be found, there is significant transformative potential in learning to talk together in dialogue.

Notes 1 This is thematised in the Symposium, particularly by the behaviour of Apollodorus at the start and Alcibiades at the end. Compare Alcibiades I (135d9–e5). On this as a theme of ancient philosophy, see Cottingham (2013: 148–166; Hadot 1995). 2 See Tarnopolsky (2010: 125): “The problem arises out of the fact that the dialectical method of the Socratic elenchus is insufficiently therapeutic. It can diagnose and lay bare the contradictions in a person’s way of life and the norms that he uses to guide him in this life, but it cannot show this person how to change this life in accordance with the new insights gleaned from his interaction with Socrates. This is because it negates the person’s pretences and restrains their desires without replacing these with an image of the new way of life that might become possible if the person were to transform themselves in accordance with these painful insights”. Tarnopolsky argues that Socrates lacks “the power to fully cure and turn many souls” (125–126). 3 A related puzzle is how Socrates lived so virtuously, despite disavowing the knowledge he claimed this required. See Nehamas (1998): “since that was a knowledge he [Socrates] never acquired, his actions, which Plato depicts as invariably moral and right, were not produced by such reasons; they constituted a mystery: they had no source” (154). 4 See Robinson (1953); Vlastos (1983); Irwin (1977); Benson (1987, 1995); Brickhouse and Smith (1984, 1991). Notable exceptions are McCabe (2006: 72n6): “Dialegesthai has normative force…it is a matter of moral character, too”. See also Ahbel-Rappe (2010: 43), who argues that “there is an ethical dimension to the practice of the elenchus”. 5 Robinson (1953: 15, 16). Compare Leigh (2020). 6 Frede (1992: 218). 7 Penner (2000: 165) puts it thus: “‘if only we could discuss things long enough, if only we could understand what is best’, Socrates seems to say, ‘all would be well and all conduct would be virtuous’”. Intellectualism is often taken to involve the following features: the identification of virtue, or goodness, with knowledge, which comes with the corollary that the affective side of our nature is either irrelevant to goodness, or reducible to cognitive states. For this reason, intellectualists are seen to pay little attention to habituation, socialisation or the cultivation of non-cognitive habits, in the acquisition of virtue. The second feature is that virtue is not just necessary but sufficient for happiness. Socrates equates knowledge with virtue and virtue with happiness (see Prt. 356c–57e; Meno 86d–89d; Euth. 278e–282d; Chrm. 173a–174e). See Nehamas (1992: 280). 8 Woolf (2008: 92–3) puts the problem in terms of first- and third-person epistemic authority; the latter is in principle the possession of anyone, whereas the former is hard won, contra the Cartesian tradition. 9 Compare Protagoras 348c5–e1: “Protagoras, I said, I do not want you to think that my motive for talking with you is anything else than to take a good hard look at the things that continually perplex me. I think Homer said it all in the line, ‘Going in tandem, one sees before the other’. Human beings are simply more resourceful this way in every deed, word or thought. If one observes something alone, one immediately goes round looking until one finds somebody one can show it to and have it confirmed”. 10 ἀμϕισβητοῦσι μὲν γὰρ καὶ δι’ εὔνοιαν οἱ ϕίλοι τοῖς ϕίλοις, ἐρίζουσιν δὲ οἱ διάϕοροί τε καὶ ἐχθροὶ ἀλλήλοις. 11 See Duncan (1974) and Kamtekar (2005) on friendship in the Gorgias. 12 That equality is a factor in the Gorgias’ conception of friendship can be gleaned from the claim that there can be no friendship between those who are greatly inferior or superior to one another; those who are

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Frisbee C.C. Sheffield inferior will not be taken seriously (510c). The maxim “Equality is friendship” is referred to in the Laws (757a6); Aristotle reports the saying that “friendship is equality”, N.E. VIII.8. 1168b8. 13 Socrates encourages interlocutors to refute him (Polus: 467a8–b2, 469c8, 473b7; Callicles: 482b2, 506c1–3, 508a8–b3, 505e4–506a7); he does not subject others to anything he is not prepared to undergo himself. 14 Compare the Apology where Socrates acts towards citizens as philoi (31b4) and confers upon each citizen individually what he regards as the greatest benefit (36c3–4), being a refutational gadfly. 15 Friendship is associated with care (κη ́δεσθαι) at 483b4 and 487a6–b1; Socrates associates philia with care (κη ́δεσθαι) for that of which one is philon at 487a–b and at Republic III 412d2–7. 16 “To prevent these men from having more than themselves [the many] say that taking more (pleonektein) is shameful and unjust; and that doing injustice is this, seeking to have more than other people; they are satisfied, I take it, if they themselves have an equal share when they’re inferior” (483b–d). 17 It was a common Greek idea to suppose that wrongdoers cannot be friends because they are incapable of any joint enterprise. See Xenophon’s Memorabilia (2.6) and compare Plato’s Republic I 351c: a group of thieves committing unjust actions cannot accomplish anything if they wrong one another, because “factions [...] are the outcome of injustice, and hatreds and internecine conflicts, but justice brings agreement and friendship (homonoian kai philian)”. Further, “If it’s the function of injustice to produce hatred wherever it goes, then when it makes its appearance among free men and slaves, won’t it make them hate one another, and quarrel with one another, and be incapable of any joint enterprise?” (Rep. 351d9–e1). “And when it [injustice] is present in an individual, too, I suspect, it will produce all these effects which it is its nature to bring about. In the first place, it will make him incapable of action, because he is at odds with himself, and in disagreement with himself. And in the second place it will make him an enemy both of himself and of those who are just, won’t it?” (352a5-8). Compare the denial that tyrants have friends (VIII.567b–568a, 567d3). Lysis (214ff ) suggests that wrongdoers are unsteady and unbalanced, and when a thing is unlike itself and variable – anomoion kai diaphoron – it cannot become like or friend to anything else; inconsistency doesn’t lend itself to the favourable attitude. Compare Aristotle, N.E. IX.7.1167b. 18 For the idea that co-operative virtues such as sophrosune and dikaiosune are required for koinonia, see Protagoras 322c. The Protagoras passage speaks of “shame”, where the Gorgias has sophrosune, but these are related, as Taylor argues (1976: 85): shame is “virtually synonymous with sophrosune, when the latter term is used in the sense of that soundness of mind which makes a man accept his proper role in society and pay due regard to the rights of others”. See Charmides 160e. 19 Thanks to Justin Vlasits for drawing my attention to support from the Symposium here. 20 For an exploration of this theme in the Gorgias, see Sheffield (forthcoming). 21 This is also formulated as a general thesis in the Gorgias: in any one thing, composed of disparate parts, its distinctive good comes to be present by some structure (taxis) and order (kosmos, 506e2–4). See Woolf (2000: 12), who argues that “We have here a quite general theory of what it is for something to be good, and that is for that thing to have a harmonious and well-ordered structure”. 22 Monoson (2000: 53) with note 10. 23 This point is central to Foucault’s approach to parrhesia (2002: 15), who argues that “if there is a kind of “proof ” of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous – different from what the majority believes – is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes”. 24 One might object that there is a significant difference between courage in conversation and courage on the battlefield, or fair play in discussion and justice to one’s peers. The former may be normative evaluations, but fall short of the characterological virtues; so, in what sense is dialogue an ethical practice. I thank Joseph Bjelde for this objection. It is not clear that Plato would consider justice, moderation and so on to be domain specific in a way this objection requires, such that justice in discussion is significantly different from justice in the community, for example. In the Gorgias, the five values of community, friendship, orderliness, moderation and justice operate in a logos, the soul, the human community, and the world at large and seem to have one and the same basis in an appreciation of “geometrical equality” (508a). There is no sense here that any of these values are domain specific. Compare the treatment of pleonexia in the Laws. (906a–c): “Our position, I take it, is that this fault, which we are labelling ‘getting more than one’s due’ (pleonexia), when it occurs in bodily tissue, is called disease, in the seasons of the year, or over the years, plague, or in cities and political systems the same fault by a different name – injustice”. Compare Timaeus where elements unnaturally (para phusin) encroach on one another as a result of either excess (pleonexia) or deficiency (endeia). The way to remedy this is when

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Socratic Dialogue and the Transformation of Character “that which arrives at or leaves a particular body part is the same as that part, consistent, uniform, and in proper proportion (ana logon) with it” (82b). 25 On which, see McPherran (1985); Rabinowitz (1958); Weiss (1994); Burns (1985); Haden (1969); Parry (1994); Taylor (1982); Vlastos (1981: 228). 26 Compare McPherran (2000: 303), “The life of philosophy for Socrates is thus a prime case of pious, anti-hubristic ‘street preaching’ activity; activity whose aims include the rational re-establishment and revisioning of the traditionally warranted metaphysical/epistemic gap that separates mortal humans from gods”. 27 The Question Concerning Technology, 35. 28 See, for example, Zagzebski (1996: 74), “Given that almost everyone thinks the virtues are important in our moral life, I see no reason why they would deny that they are important in our cognitive life. The virtues of the mind are both interesting and too long ignored”. 29 On Callicles’ re-engagement, see Schofield (2017), especially 66: “After several more pages of Socratic talk in more than one mode, [Callicles] does take the point he could not quite grasp there: he bites the bullet and gives it as his view that good politics and good citizenship have to be a matter of flattering and gratifying the city’s ruling power” (521a–b). 30 I take no stand here on the relationship between having the right beliefs and developing a good character, which is evidently important for Socrates. I seek only to shift attention from exclusive focus on the beliefs of the other party to attend to the way in which dialogue can generate an awareness of, and shape, behaviours. What relationship those behaviours have to beliefs is a further question. 31 Murdoch (1997: 337). 32 This is clear in the Gorgias: for praise and positive encouragement, see 449d5–6, 453a8–b3, 461c5–8, 487a2–3, 487d5, 492d1–2, for “pains and suffering”, see 479a6–b1, 480c4–8, 525b4–c1. 33 Like any skill, it is not reducible to knowing but is also a kind of “doing”, on which, see Ackah (2003: 124). Compare Nehamas (1987: 299–307), who pursues this theme with reference to the notion of virtue as a skill. He argues that: “Socrates, himself a statuary and a statuary’s son (DL V.1.5) knew perfectly well that in Ancient Athens the crafts were most often transmitted, along with their secrets within the family, from generation to generation. The overwhelming evidence is that fathers trained their sons, and even that training probably began at an earlier age than in modern times. Habituation, no less than rational method, is essential for the practice of a craft…If arete was a craft, then Socrates must have known that like any craft it could be learned only through an early beginning and after long training. Such training does not only impart knowledge, it also trains one’s habits and dispositions” (italics mine). 34 For Socratic “teaching” as imitation, see Xenophon: “[Socrates] never professed to be a teacher of [virtue], but by being manifestly of this sort, he made his followers hope that by imitating him, they will become like him” (Memorabilia I.ii.2–3). For a discussion of “mimetic pedagogy” in Plato’s dialogue, see Blondell (2002: 81) who further argues that Greek texts “insist repeatedly on the importance of both setting and following a good example (paradiegma), and the perils of the opposite” referencing Theog 35–8; Andoc. 4.22; Demos 9.41, 19.245; Soph Antig. 659–60; Antiph. DK87, B62; Aris. Pol. 1336b27–33. 35 See Doyle (2004: 18) on the significance of the use of paradeigma in the Apology: “the idea is inherently normative: it does not merely draw attention to certain features of the object in question, but recommends their imitation, or attempted imitation even where complete success is acknowledged to be impossible”. 36 The claim is that such practice might contribute to the cultivation of virtue, because Socrates repeatedly emphasises the importance of knowledge for virtue, an indication of which is a logos; for “if we know something we can say what it is” (La. 190c6), and to say what something is reveals the ousia of a thing (Euthyph. 11a; Meno 71b; Grg. 448c). So, more is required than repeated practice; the claim is only that this practice, as an ethical one, contributes to the transformative end in view. 37 This aspect of courage is well brought out by Foucault (2002: 17), who argues that: “when you accept the parrhesiatic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself: you rick death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the other, and thereby requires a relationship to the other. But the parrhesiastes primarily chooses a specific relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself ”. 38 For there may be other models of harmonious relationality, appreciation of which might also provide a model for ourselves as plural subjects (e.g. the cosmos itself in the Gorgias 508a). Thanks to Verity Harte for discussion of this point.

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Bibliography Ackah, E.K. 2003. “Socratic Wisdom”, History of Philosophy Quarterly 20(2): 123–147. Ahbel-Rappe, S. 2010. “Cross Examining Happiness in Plato’s Socratic Dialogues”, in A. Nightingale (ed.) Ancient Models of Mind: Studies in Human and Divine Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 27–45. Benson, H., 1987. “The Problem of the Elenchus”, Ancient Philosophy 7: 67–85. 1995. “The Dissolution of the Problem of the Elenchus”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 13: 45–112. Blondell, R. 2002. The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brickhouse, T. and Smith, N. 1984. “Vlastos on the Elenchus”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2: 185–195. 1991. “Socrates’ Elenctic Mission”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 9: 131–161. Burns, S.A.M. 1985. “Doing Business with the Gods”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15(2): 311–325. Cottingham, J. 2013. “Philosophy and Self-Improvement”, in M. Chase, S.R.L. Clark and M. McGhee (eds.) Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns – Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 148–166. Denyer, N. 2017. “Authority and the Dialectic of Socrates”, in J. Bryan, R. Wardy and J. Warren (eds.) Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 41–57. Doyle, J. 2004. “Socrates and the Oracle”, Ancient Philosophy 24(1): 19–36. Duncan, R. 1974. “Philia in the Gorgias”, Apeiron 8: 23–25. Foucault, M. 2002. Fearless Speech. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Frede, M. 1992. “Plato’s Arguments and the Dialogue Form”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 9: 201–221. Haden, J. 1969. “On Plato’s “Inconclusiveness””, The Classical Journal 64(5): 219–224. Hadot, P. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Oxford: Blackwell. Irwin, T. 1977. Plato’s Moral Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1979. Plato: Gorgias. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kamtekar, R. 2005. “The Profession of Friendship: Callicles, Democratic Politics and Rhetorical Education in Plato’s Gorgias”, Ancient Philosophy 25(2): 319–339. Leigh, F. 2020. “Self-Knowledge, Elenchus, and Authority in Early Plato”, Phronesis 65: 247–280. McCabe, M.M. 2006. “Is Dialectic as Dialectic Does? The Virtue of Philosophical Conversation”, in B. Reis and S. Haffmans (eds.) The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 100–124. McPherran, M.L. 1985. “Socratic Piety in the Euthyphro”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 23(3): 283–309. . 2000. “Piety, Justice, and the Unity of Virtue”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 38(3): 299–328. Monoson, S. 2000. Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Murdoch, I. 1997. Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature. London: Penguin. Nehamas, A. 1987. “Socratic Intellectualism”, Boston Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 2: 275–316. 1992. “What Did Socrates Teach and to Whom Did He Teach It?”, Review of Metaphysics 46: 279–306. 1998. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press. Parry, D.M. 1994. “Holiness as service: Therapeia and hyperetike in Plato’s Euthyphro”, The Journal of Value Inquiry 28: 529–539. Penner, T. 2000. “Socrates”, in C. Rowe and M. Schofield (eds.) The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 164–189. Rabinowitz, W.G. 1958. “Platonic Piety: An Essay Toward the Solution of an Enigma”, Phronesis 3(2): 108–120. Reeve, C.D.C. 1989. Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato’s Apology of Socrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Robinson, R. 1953. Plato’s Earlier Dialectic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Schofield, M. 2017. “Callicles’ Return: Gorgias 509–522 Reconsidered”, Philosophie Antique 17: 7–30. Sheffield, F.C.C. forthcoming. “Desire and Argument in Plato’s Gorgias”, in C. Shaw (ed.) Plato’s Gorgias: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarnopolsky, C. 2010. Prudes, Perverts and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Socratic Dialogue and the Transformation of Character Taylor, C.C.W. 1976. Plato: Protagoras. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Taylor, C.C.W. 1982. “The End of the Euthyphro”, Phronesis 27(2): 109–118. Vlastos, G. 1981. Platonic Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vlastos, G. 1983. “The Socratic Elenchus”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1: 27–58. Weiss, R. 1994. “Virtue without Knowledge: Socrates’ Conception of Holiness in Plato’s Euthyphro”, Ancient Philosophy 14(2): 263–282. Woolf, R. 2000. “Callicles and Socrates: Psychic (Dis)Harmony in the Gorgias”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 18: 1–40. Woolf, R. 2008. “Socratic Authority”, in P. Remes and J. Sihvola (eds.) Ancient Philosophy of the Self. Dordrecht: Springer, 77–107. Zagzebski, L. 1996. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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2 ARISTOTLE ON PERSONAL AND EPISTEMIC TRANSFORMATION Andrew Culbreth and Marta Jimenez

2.1 Introduction At the core of contemporary debates about transformative choices and transformative experiences—inspired by the work of Ullmann-Margalit (2006) and Paul (2014)—there are crucial questions about how and to what degree our experiences change us.1 Big, life-altering experiences such as becoming a first-time parent, acquiring or losing a sensory capacity, suffering a traumatic accident, or acquiring new skills and embarking on a new career, can all change us in profound ways: these experiences can teach us something new by virtue of having a first-person acquaintance with them, and they can substantially alter our preferences, extending in some cases to our personal values and self-conception. L.A. Paul’s view in Transformative Experience (2014) is that some of our experiences are radically transformative in two senses: epistemically transformative, because you cannot know what it is like to have the experience except by first undergoing it (i.e. it provides new phenomenal knowledge), and personally transformative, because you cannot anticipate what it will be like for you to be you after the experience, including your point of view, your preferences, and even your self-conception. For Paul, transformative experiences are revelations of new phenomenal knowledge, completely inaccessible to us before having those experiences.2 And as a consequence of those revelations, we undergo “core changes” to our personality such that we become a different sort of person—our pre-transformation self is replaced by our future, transformed self: [T]his is an extraordinarily salient implication of transformative experience and transformative choice. You might think that, when you undergo a transformative change like becoming a parent, you are just realizing a future version of who you are now. But you aren’t: you are replacing who you are now with some radically different, alien self. That self is you, in some sense. But not in any first-personally accessible sense. (Paul 2020: 33, emphasis added)3 In this chapter, we outline an Aristotelian alternative to Paul’s revelation-and-replacement model by looking at Aristotle’s account of how we acquire a disposition (hexis), which provides a model of transformation through cultivation-and-completion instead. Aristotle is also interested in life-changing processes such as becoming a parent, becoming a good person, or acquiring a 20

DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-4

Aristotle on Personal and Epistemic Transformation

new skill, but for him these transformations occur not as personal and epistemic radical breaks, but instead as cumulative developments, which are typically complex and gradual, require the learners’ active engagement as well as other preparatory conditions, and are personally and epistemically continuous. For Aristotle, to go back to Paul’s quote, when you go through one of these transformations, you are just realizing a future—more complete—version of who you are now. A core difference, then, is that while Paul focuses on how we are radically changed by one transformative experience alone, Aristotle views transformation as a gradual and cumulative confluence and accumulation of different factors, experiences, practices, or capacities. Although Paul acknowledges that some changes occur throughout extended time and not all at once, in her account, the transformative experience produces a biographical “break” and there is no relevant psychological and epistemic continuity between pre- and post-transformation selves.4 For Aristotle, in contrast, there is continuity: transformations take place by developing, through new experiences and practices, the partial skills and capacities that we already possess, at least potentially, and which—together with environmental and social factors—converge gradually to make us what we are and complete our nature. Instead of describing personal and epistemic transformation as becoming someone completely new, Aristotle understands it as a process of becoming one’s own developed self.5 A second crucial point of divergence is that for Aristotle, it makes a difference how the agents arrive at the transformative experience, since transformations are jointly caused by our experiences and other factors or preparatory conditions, both in the agents and in their social and physical environments. For the experiences to have transformative effect, agents must already be prepared to be receptive to those experiences in the relevant way, a preparation that comes from natural equipment, having the relevant physical and intellectual environment, the input of others, education, and self-cultivation. Because of the weight that Aristotle places on preparatory conditions, for him the difference between the pre-transformation self and the post-transformation self is not “radical” in Paul’s sense. Instead, during the process of transformation, agents are able to access, at least partially or occasionally, relevant phenomenal information, and to adopt, at least partially or occasionally, the perspective of their post-transformation selves. As a consequence, it is possible for agents to anticipate the effects that the transformation will have on their subjective experience and—as Aristotle puts it—to have “a taste” of the perspective of their future, post-transformation selves. Two additional, remarkable features of Aristotle’s view are, first, that successful transformations depend on the agent’s activity (they are achieved “by doing”), and second, that they often occur under the guidance and influence of others. These features contrast with Paul’s model, where the transformation tends to be presented as something that agents undergo passively, in the sense that the experience “happens to them”, and individually, in the sense that the testimony of others cannot provide any insight into the nature or subjective value of the transformative experience. In sum, Aristotle’s account of personal and epistemic transformation offers a complex model in which experience is only part of a broader, gradual process of cultivation and completion. Instead of an insurmountable epistemic and psychological break, Aristotle offers us a continuous process that depends on the agent’s pre-transformation conditions, the agent’s own activity, and the influence of others.

2.2  The Revelation and Replacement Model of Transformation L.A. Paul uses the term “transformative experiences” for experiences that generate the kinds of revelations that change us into a radically new self (Paul 2014: 14–17). Some of Paul’s examples are gaining a new sensory ability, having a traumatic accident, participating in a revolution, 21

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having a religious conversion, having a child, or experiencing the death of a child (Paul 2014: 16); she also offers examples of “extended” transformative experiences such as getting married, adopting and parenting a young child into adulthood, and embarking on a new career (2014: 94–104). One of Paul’s favorite examples, becoming a vampire, helps to emphasize the discontinuity between the before and after selves: becoming a vampire is becoming someone radically different, as we undergo extreme changes in our capacities, ways of perceiving, preferences, etc. (2014: Ch. 1 and passim). Prior to becoming a vampire, you do not know at all what it will be like to be a vampire and you do not have any sense of your preferences, desires, likes, and dislikes as a vampire. Since you cannot understand what the transformative experience is like without first undergoing it, you thus cannot anticipate at all what you will be like on the other side of that transformation, including whether or not you will like the change. An important feature of Paul’s model, then, is that transformative experiences cause significant psychological and epistemic discontinuities between pre- and post-experience selves. There is an epistemic discontinuity because you cannot know or imagine what the transformative experience is like prior to undergoing it, and once you undergo it, you are epistemically transformed. In her terms, the transformative experience produces an “epistemic wall” that makes our posttransformation self epistemically inaccessible to our pre-transformation self.6 In addition, transformative experience produces a stark psychological discontinuity, which she describes as a sort of “incommensurability” of points of view between past and future selves.7 There are at least two important consequences of Paul’s view that transformative experiences generate such radical epistemic and psychological gaps. A first key consequence is that these discontinuities disrupt our ability to make relevantly informed decisions about whether to transform or not. Paul thinks that many of our most significant life-altering decisions are transformative in the same way as deciding to become a vampire: transformative choices require us to choose to change what it’s like to be us without having the relevant subjective information about the resulting self. Take, for example, the decision to have a child—another of Paul’s guiding examples. Prior to becoming a parent, Paul argues, one cannot know what it’s like to be a parent, and thus one cannot access the subjective values that come along with parenthood. Consequently, it is impossible for an individual to assess and compare the outcomes of transformation in terms of their subjective value. Thus, one cannot make the decision to transform in a relevantly informed way.8 As Paul writes, “a choice to transform becomes, in effect, a leap into the unknown. You make a choice to replace your current self—that is, who you are now—with a new, alien, unknown self ” (2020: 26). A second important consequence of the discontinuities between pre- and post-transformation selves in Paul’s model is that none of our previous experiences can help us acclimate to our transformed self ’s perspective. Indeed, given the discontinuity, it seems as if there is no way to prepare oneself for the transformative experience. Our pre-transformation experiences cannot be sufficiently similar to the transformative experience as to allow us to have a sense, or anticipate to any extent, what it is like to be the post-transformation self. The transformative work is mostly done by the new experience, and there does not seem to be any mention of a process that is already underway by the time you have to make the decisive choice.9 Paul’s characterization of transformative experiences as revelations has important implications for our understanding of the agency of transformation. First, in her view, transformative experiences are passive, i.e. they happen to you as opposed to being brought about by you.10 Moreover, for Paul, we cannot imagine or gain access to the nature of the transformative experience by relying on others’ testimony of their subjective acquaintance with a transformative experience—say, their experience with parenthood—precisely because we are not them, and furthermore, we do not 22

Aristotle on Personal and Epistemic Transformation

know what we will be like once we become parents, including whether we will share their preferences.11 It seems as if others can neither help us to prepare for a transformative experience (e.g. parenthood) nor guide our deliberations about whether and how to undergo it.

2.3  Aristotelian Transformations: The Cultivation and Completion Model The Aristotelian model of personal and epistemic transformation is, in contrast, one of cultivation and completion without radical breaks. Perhaps the most clear and common examples of acquiring a new epistemic and personal outlook in Aristotle are his discussions of the acquisition of a disposition (hexis): becoming virtuous, becoming an expert, becoming musical, and even becoming a parent (although there might be questions about whether parenthood is a hexis).12 For Aristotle, acquiring a disposition is a process in which there is genuine transformation: the expert is significantly different from the apprentice, the virtuous person significantly different from the not-yet-virtuous learner, the musical person is significantly different from the learner of music, and the parent is significantly different from the parent-to-be. But these transformations, while life-altering in the sense that the agent acquires new knowledge, new preferences, and even a new self-conception, are not processes of replacing one’s old self with a radically new self. Instead, they are processes of completion of one’s nature, which occur gradually through the confluence of different factors and through the active engagement of the agent. Aristotle’s account of acquiring a hexis does not apply to cases of transformations such as becoming a vampire or acquiring a new mode of sensation—a fact that might lead us to conclude that the main divergence between the two views is the choice of examples.13 However, when we look at how the two views apply to similar examples (such as becoming a parent or becoming a doctor), there are still important differences between the views. While Paul’s explanations focus on the discontinuities produced by the transformative experiences and highlight the inaccessibility of the parents’ perspective for their previous childless selves and of the doctors’ perspective for their previous selves, in Aristotle’s model parents and doctors are instead psychologically and epistemically continuous with (and more complete versions of ) their previous selves in the relevant sense. For Aristotle, their pre-transformation selves are capable of anticipating, at least occasionally and partially, their future perspectives and subjective experiences. There is no doubt that Aristotle makes experience broadly speaking (including first-person acquaintance and practice) an essential element—and sometimes even the crux—of our personal and epistemic transformation. First, he takes experience (empeiria) to be the source of expert skill and scientific knowledge (most notably in Metaph I 1, 981a2–5, and APo II 19, 100a3−100a9).14 In addition, he makes experience crucial in ethical transformation: he says that young people cannot be practically wise (and consequently not fully virtuous) because they lack experience (NE VI 8, 1142a11−20), he claims that experience gives old people an “eye to see aright” in ethical matters (NE VI 11, 1143b6–14), and he singles out experience as the most important source of practical wisdom (NE VI 8, 1142a14−15).15 Now while experience has a crucial role in Aristotle’s account of epistemic and personal transformation, experience on its own does not do all the transformative work. Instead, transformation requires the convergence of a variety of elements. Concretely, agents become receptive to the experience by already having (and activating) certain capacities, tendencies, affective conditions, ways of thinking, etc., that prepare them for change, and without which the experience cannot be transformative. The Aristotelian model, then, is a gradual and multi-source 23

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preparation of the individual for transformation, and depends not only on our natural capacities but also on practice and habits formed through education in addition to the input of others.

2.3.1  Developing Hexeis: Epistemic and Personal Transformation as Completions One of the main features of Aristotle’s account of our development into someone new by acquiring a new disposition is that it is a process of completion (or perfection, teleiōsis) of our nature and, as he argues, not a mere “alteration” or qualitative change (alloiōsis)—or, in the terms we have been using, not a replacement. Our current selves contain the seeds (i.e. the potentiality) that enable them to develop, through proper cultivation, into their future selves; the result is not a radically different self, but rather one that is coherent and continuous with our past trajectory and our present conditions. In Aristotle’s discussion of the details of the acquisition of dispositions in Physics VII 3, we find material to explain the claim that personal transformations are completions rather than replacements. Aristotle starts by drawing a distinction between the realization of a telos (i.e. a completion or perfection, teleiōsis) and the acquisition of a new quality (i.e. an alteration, alloiōsis): Again, states [hexeis], whether of the body or of the soul, are not alterations [alloiōseis]. For some are excellences and others are defects, and neither excellence nor defect is an alteration, but excellence is a kind of completion [or perfection, teleiōsis] (for when anything acquires its proper excellence, then we call it complete, since it is then most in accordance with [its own] nature: e.g. a circle is complete [or perfect] when it becomes a circle in the highest degree and when it is best), while defect, on the other hand, is a perishing of or departure from this condition. (Physics VII 3, 246a10−17, trans. Hardie-Gaye)16 His view is that dispositions (such as excellences and vices in general) are completions (or destructions, in the case of vices) insofar as they bring something or someone to be most (or least) in accordance with its own nature. They are not alterations, which involve the destruction of one affection or quality and replacement of it by another.17 This would include not only virtues of character (such as courage, generosity, etc.) but also all kinds of expertise (such as being a doctor), skills (such as being musical), and, we think, even parenthood.18 The contrast in Aristotle’s model of hexis acquisition is not between a current self and an alien future self, but between a current self (a learner, an apprentice, or a younger self ) and a fully formed or completed self: an expert, a virtuous person, a mature person, and in general, the person with the fully formed hexis. To clarify the distinction, he offers the example of the completion (or perfection) of a house: So just as we do not call the completion [teleiōma] of a house an alteration [alloiōsin] (for it would be absurd to suppose that the coping or the tiling is an alteration, or that in receiving its coping or its tiling a house is altered instead of being completed), the same also holds good in the case of excellences and defects and of the things that possess or acquire them; for excellences are completions [teleiōseis] and defects are departures: consequently they are not alterations. (Physics VII 3, 246a17–b3, trans. Hardie-Gaye) 24

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The house example suggests that perfection is a teleological process either of generation or of coming to be a better version of itself. While in this passage, it is not clear whether “completion” refers to going through the final stages of a process of generation or to perfecting something that has already reached its final stage of generation, what is important for our purposes is that these changes are not alterations, and that this is because the subject does not come to possess any fully new attributes.19 In this model, then, personal transformation is also seen as a development of features that are somehow already in the agent, and consequently there is no replacement of our old self by a new self, but instead there is psychological and epistemic continuity. One example of this point is the treatment of learning in Metaphysics IX 8, where Aristotle highlights that learners already have “something of ” the hexis that they are developing:20 Since, of that which is coming to be, some part must have come to be, and, of that which, in general, is changing, some part must have changed (this is shown in the treatise on movement), the learner must, it would seem, possess something of the knowledge. It is surely clear, then, in this way that the actuality is in this sense also, viz. in order of generation and of time, prior to the potentiality. (Metaph IX 8, 1049b35–1050a3, trans. Ross) To acquire knowledge, and to acquire a hexis in general, learners exercise conditions, tendencies, and capacities that they already have, at least in an incipient way. This implies that learners, apprentices, and in general, younger selves have both epistemic and psychological continuity with their fully developed selves. Our current self already has some of the capacities, tendencies, preferences, and ways of seeing the world that will prepare us to be properly receptive to our new experiences. Moreover, as we explain below, it is precisely these capacities, tendencies, preferences, and ways of seeing that allow us to adopt the perspectives, to anticipate (at least occasionally and partially) the experiences, and to perform the kinds of actions that, via habit, contribute to the development of our future selves.

2.3.2  Learning By Doing: Epistemic and Personal Transformation as Active Cultivation A second main feature of Aristotle’s account of our development into a someone new by acquiring a new disposition is that it is a process of active cultivation.21 In a familiar passage in NE II 1, Aristotle distinguishes between, on the one hand, those features that we have by nature, such as the senses, which can be activated right away, and on the other, those features that we are prepared to receive by nature, but we need to activate before we can have them. Character virtues and crafts, he says, belong to this latter kind, since we need to engage in (or “activate”) the corresponding activities for us to develop them and to be able to use them reliably: Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did not come to have them by using them); but virtues we get by first activating them, as also happens in the case of the crafts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, e.g. people become builders by building and lyre-players by 25

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playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions. (NE II 1, 1103a26−b2, trans. Ross, rev. by Urmson) An important characteristic of this learning-by-doing model is that to properly activate the dispositions, agents (learners) must not only do the corresponding activities but also do them well, i.e. do them in the way in which those with the disposition do them. As highlighted in Jimenez (2016, 2020), it matters how the learners do what they do in their practices.22 To achieve the relevant transformation, the activities of the learners need to count as activations of the relevant dispositions, even before they possess such dispositions, and thus learners will have to pay attention to whether their actions engage the relevant features of the activities that arise from the fully developed dispositions. That the learners need to perform the actions well guarantees continuity between the activities of the learners and those with the fully formed dispositions (virtuous people, experts, music lovers, etc.).23 In his discussion of how we acquire virtue in the NE, Aristotle highlights this continuity by emphasizing the peculiar relationship between activities and dispositions, and by insisting that the learners are in fact engaging in activities that are relevantly similar to those of the fully formed virtuous person. Several passages from NE II 1–3 and EE II 1 express a strong correlation or similarity between the kinds of actions performed by the learners and the resulting dispositions, where the qualities of the learners’ actions—i.e. how they are performed—determine the qualities of the dispositions that they bring about. In other words, for the activities to be transformative, they need to be already relevantly similar to those of the fully formed virtuous people.24 One could try to deflate this point by claiming that surely the phenomenal content of the experiences and practices of the learner and the virtuous person (or of the learner and the expert) must be significantly different, and that learners do not have access to the pleasures or the perspective of agents with a fully formed disposition. However, Aristotle’s formulation of the correlation between the activities of learners and of virtuous people in Eudemian Ethics II 1, which he makes in terms of movements of the soul and pleasures and pains, points in the direction of the strong reading we are suggesting: Virtue too, then, is that sort of condition which is produced by the best movements in the soul, and from which are produced the soul’s best works and feelings; and by the same things, if they happen in one way, virtue is produced, but if they happen in another way, it is destroyed. The use of virtue is relative to the same things by which it is developed and destroyed, and it puts us in the best condition towards them. (EE II 1, 1220a29–34, trans. Solomon, lightly amended) The activation of the dispositions does not involve a mere superficial doing of the corresponding activities or practices, but it requires a kind of doing where the learners are already feeling similar pleasures and pains, and adopting a similar perspective to that of the virtuous person that they are transforming into.

2.4  Anticipating the Experience and Perspective of Our Future Selves In Aristotle’s account, then, some of the activities and experiences of our pre-transformation selves prepare us for the transformation and enable us to have a sense of what it will be like to have a fully formed disposition. Through active engagement in the relevant practices and practical contexts, the pre-transformation self can anticipate the experience of the future self 26

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prior to completely transforming into that sort of person, can also appreciate the value of the future self ’s activities by adopting their perspective, and can learn from the advice and guidance of others.

2.4.1  Experiencing the Pleasure of an Activity before Having the Corresponding Hexis One important feature of Aristotle’s cultivation-and-completion model is that the pre-transformation self can have a taste of the experience of the post-transformation self by engaging in their characteristic activities in the right way. Among other things, because of the way in which pleasures are bound up with the corresponding activities, the pre-transformation self can experience the pleasures of the person with the fully formed disposition. While there might be differences in intensity, reliability, or degree between the pleasures of the expert and those of the learner, the pleasures are the same in kind insofar as they are bound up with the same activities.25 Thus, learners can still imagine or anticipate what it will be like to enjoy the pleasures of experts without having fully acquired their disposition, precisely because, if they perform the activities well, learners already have an inkling of the pleasures of those activities. In NE X 5, Aristotle appeals to the notion of the “proper” pleasures of an activity to indicate that the learners (of mathematics, the arts, or crafts) must be able to enjoy doing the actions in the way that the experts, who have the full disposition, enjoy doing them: For an activity is intensified by its proper pleasure, since each class of things is better judged and brought to precision by those who engage in the activity with pleasure; e.g. it is those who enjoy geometrical thinking that become geometers and grasp the various propositions better, and, similarly, those who are fond of music or of building, and so on, make progress in their proper function by enjoying it; and the pleasures intensify the activities, and what intensifies a thing is proper to it, but things different in kind have properties different in kind. (NE X 5, 1175a30−1175b1, trans. Ross, rev. by Urmson) The learner of geometry can have the proper pleasures of geometry before being a geometrician, the flute apprentice can enjoy the proper pleasure of flute playing before being an expert musician, and the learner in general can have the proper pleasures of the expertise before becoming a fully formed expert. Moreover, just as the learners of skills and crafts enjoy the same kind of pleasures as the experts when they perform the characteristic activities, learners of virtue can experience the proper pleasures of virtue when they do virtuous actions in the right way. Aristotle confirms this sort of anticipation of the characteristic pleasures of the virtuous person when he makes “having tasted” the pleasures of the noble a necessary condition to making progress in the development of virtue and practical wisdom. For example, in the final chapter of the NE, he claims that those who have not tasted the pleasures of the noble are not able to see the point of ethical arguments and are not able to do virtuous actions in the right way—they only do them because of fear of punishment or expectation of rewards (NE X 9, 1179b11−16). In general, pre-transformation learners can experience and anticipate the characteristic pleasures of the fully transformed person. Those pleasures both confirm that learners are engaging in the activities properly and they motivate learners to continue performing those activities and to keep developing the appropriate disposition.26 27

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2.4.2  Adopting the Perspective of the Virtuous Person before Being Fully Virtuous In addition to being able to experience the kind of pleasure characteristic of the person with the fully formed disposition, for Aristotle it is also possible that learners could adopt the standpoint of the person with the fully formed disposition, e.g. the virtuous person or the expert, prior to having the completed disposition. To perform the relevant activities properly, learners need to exercise the relevant cognitive and emotional capacities and do so, at least occasionally and partly, as the person with the fully formed disposition would. Many commentators highlight the importance of imitation (mimesis) in this process, often precisely as an opportunity for learners to adopt the perspective of the person they aspire to become, and Aristotle puts imitation at the center of his account of education and moral development in his Politics.27 In Politics VII 17, Aristotle advocates for the value of playful imitation in learning and takes imitation as one of the main ways in which learners can adopt the standpoint of those whom they are aspiring to become. Relatedly, imitation helps learners to shape their preferences and aversions by offering opportunities to perceive the activities or goods in the right light and by providing material to the learners’ imagination. Leunissen (2017) makes these two points in her analysis of the text: Through imitative play, children are encouraged to reinvoke their perceptions of the actual goods presented to them via imagination—a practice that, perhaps, sharpens their discriminative ability to perceive the actual good as good—and to take pleasure in the performance of those good actions: imitation thus shapes the preferences of boys by making them enjoy—and love (see: Pol VII 17, 1336b33)—the performance of virtuous actions. (Leunissen 2017: 119–20) While the purpose and nature of these imitations is not always explicit, and they take different forms, some of the imitations are such that learners are able to adopt the perspective of the virtuous agents whom they aspire to be and then practice acting as they do in a purposeful way. This is the kind of imitation that Hampson calls “emulative imitation” in her explanation of moral development in Aristotle: Thus, to imitate an agent in the emulative sense, I submit that the imitator must attempt to adopt her perspective. She must try to see situations as her model does, and inhabiting this perspective, to then act as her model would in a given situation. Rather than merely copying the temperate agent in refusing a second piece of cake, the imitator—on the model I am proposing—will adopt the temperate agent’s perspective, and attempt to see, as if through her eyes, that the second piece of cake is one too many and for this reason is something to be refused. Where the mere observation of an agent and the actions she performs takes place from the outside, as it were, the emulative imitation of an agent requires an imitator to ‘get inside’ that agent. (Hampson 2019: 308, emphases added)28 The adoption of the virtuous agents’ perspective is crucial to the act of emulative imitation, as Hampson argues, since it is this ability to see the world as though through virtuous eyes that enables the process of moral development. It is by adopting the virtuous perspective that the learner is able to appreciate, in a certain context, the features of a virtuous person’s action that make it noble, and likewise to appreciate what it would mean for her to act nobly in other, similar contexts. 28

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As an example of Hampson’s view of emulative imitation, she offers the case of a child playing doctor and patient (315). In playing doctor, the child does not merely copy, in a mechanical way, the actions of a doctor without any understanding or intention. She might pretend to suture a wound or listen to a patient’s heartbeat, and in that respect imitate the external behavior of a doctor. In addition to this, however, the child does something else: she imagines various aspects of the make-believe scenario that afford opportunities for care (315). She may put a bandage on her friend’s knee, to use Hampson’s example, and in that moment imagine what it would be like for herself to see her friend’s knee as an object of medical concern and to see her friend as a person in need of care. For Aristotle, then, it would be in playing these roles, whether of a doctor caring for a patient or a parent caring for a child, that a child could begin to adopt the perspective of a future self. While the child’s perspective and knowledge are limited—indeed, severely limited compared to an actual doctor or an actual parent—the child nevertheless is on the path of developing a kind of perspective that is operative in a doctor’s caring for a patient or a parent’s caring for a child. Beyond the cases of emulative imitation, which are perhaps the clearest and most direct ways of adopting the perspective of the agent one is aiming to become, Aristotle acknowledges other ways, more or less indirect, of gaining that perspective through, e.g. musical melodies, stories, and art in general.29 About melodies he says: [E]ven in mere melodies there is an imitation of character, for the musical modes differ essentially from one another, and those who hear them are differently affected by each. Some of them make men sad and grave, like the so-called Mixolydian, others enfeeble the mind, like the relaxed modes, another, again, produces a moderate and settled temper, which appears to be the peculiar effect of the Dorian; the Phrygian inspires enthusiasm. (Politics VIII 5, 1340a38–1340b5, trans. Jowett) As Plato already discusses at length in Republic III, stories are also a way of initiating learners into the right feelings and ways of seeing (or the opposite). Aristotle warns that educators should carefully select the stories that children hear, since “all such things are designed to prepare the way for the business of later life, and should be for the most part imitations of the occupations which they will hereafter pursue in earnest” (Pol. VII.17, 1336a30−34). It is especially important for educators to curate the sorts of stories that children hear, since, Aristotle claims, we have a tendency to love the things that we first encounter early in our lives (1336b33). His reasoning crucially hinges on the fact that melodies, stories, and art in general are not merely entertainment, but rather occasions for learners to imitate and engage with the sort of activities, feelings, and ways of seeing that will occupy their future selves. In sum, a pre-transformation agent can adopt the perspective of one with the fully formed disposition through the conscious imitation of their activities and their deliberations, as well as through the more subtle imitation of their experiences through music, stories, and art. By adopting this perspective and practicing occupying it, learners can anticipate the standpoint of their future (virtuous, expert, etc.) selves prior to having been fully transformed.

2.4.3  Learning from Others through Their Testimony and Guidance The centrality of imitation and emulation in moral development, and in personal transformation in general, raises even more clearly an important implication of Aristotle’s Cultivation and Completion Model: namely, its social aspect. Not only do we need others around us to emulate and 29

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imitate but also we often need others to teach us so that we can properly engage in the activities and be receptive to experiences in a way that makes them truly transformative. At NE II 1, 1103b12−13, Aristotle insists that proper habituation needs the guidance of a teacher, who can indicate if we perform the corresponding activities well or badly. Moreover, at NE VI 11, 1143b6–14, he insists that it is important to listen to older people because experience has given them an eye to see things right. It is not enough for us to imitate role models in real life, stories, plays, or fiction. We often need help and guidance in identifying which aspects of a situation are relevant and which ways of dealing with them are available to us. We cannot become who we are on our own; we require a community to shape our preferences and teach us the “ways of seeing” that set us on the path toward becoming more complete versions of ourselves.30 Whereas Paul thinks that we cannot rely on others’ testimony to understand what our future selves will be like, Aristotle thinks we need input from others, from a community, to show us who we are becoming—indeed, to show us how to be better and more complete versions of ourselves.

2.5 Conclusion While both Paul and Aristotle concede an important place to experience in life-altering, transformative processes, they give experience a different role. According to Paul’s account, radical epistemic and personal transformation occurs through transformative experiences, understood as revelations that are discontinuous with our previous experience and through which a new, alien self replaces a past self. For Aristotle, in contrast, transformations are, in general, more like becoming a more complete version of oneself and less like becoming someone radically new. He conceives of epistemic and personal transformation as gradual and continuous processes of cultivation and completion that depend partly on the learner’s previous condition and partly on the learner’s activity and on their physical and social environments. Where Paul’s account of transformative experience tends to emphasize the radical break and discontinuity between our selves prior to a transformative experience and our future selves, Aristotle offers us a story of continuity, according to which we grow into our future selves. Where Paul doubts that we can either know or imagine what our future self will be like, Aristotle argues that we can know, at least partially, what it will be like to be the sort of self into which we are growing. And in fact, this is crucial to support his claim at NE III 5, 114b22–23, that we are “cocauses” (sunaitioi) of our character and of who we become through our practices and our choices. Because we become certain kinds of people (generous, good at math, good parents, and others) through the previous exercise of the corresponding capacities and tendencies, the transformation is one in which there is both a gradual initiation into what it is like to be the post-transformation self, and it requires an anticipation of some phenomenological aspects of that transformed self, including the corresponding pleasures and perspectives.

Notes 1 See also Paul (2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2015d, 2020), as well as the book symposium on Transformative Experience in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (3), 2015, Res Philosophica 92 (2), 2015, and Lambert and Schwenkler (2020) (each devoted to Paul’s proposal). 2 About the use of “revelation”, see e.g. Paul (2014): “Having the experience for the first time involves a kind of revelation: when she sees red for the first time, the intrinsic nature of having that visual experience is revealed to her, and only once she knows this intrinsic nature can she assign the experience a subjective value” (2014: 13).

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Aristotle on Personal and Epistemic Transformation 3 Lambert and Schwenkler (2020) also refer to Paul’s and Ullmann-Margalit’s pictures of transformation as “Replacement Models,” in which “a ‘new’ self or personality” replaces “the ‘old’ one who chose to go in for the transformation” (9). 4 This aspect of Paul’s view is discussed in Section 2.2. Ullmann-Margalit (2006) also emphasizes the discontinuity between before- and after-transformation selves when it comes to transformative choice: “this choice straddles two discontinuous personalities with two different rationality bases” (167). 5 The phrase “becoming someone new” appears often in the literature, including Paul (2014), who describes transformative choice as a “decision to become an unknown, radically changed, new self ” (51); elsewhere she describes the processes of transformation as becoming a “new self ” (Paul 2020: 22), or as “[becoming] someone else” (Paul 2020: 35). Ullmann-Margalit (2006) also uses the terms “New Person” and “Old Person” to refer to post- and pre-transformations selves, respectively (167). 6 See Paul (2020): “Metaphorically, it’s as if you face a blank concrete wall, where you can’t see what lies beyond;” “you don’t know what it will be like to be that self;” so “you face an ‘epistemic wall.’ It’s the unknowability that creates the problem, because you can’t ‘see’ the outcomes” (21). 7 See Paul (2020): “We replace our old point of view, our self-understanding of who we are, with a new, incommensurable point of view, a new self-understanding of who we are” (35). 8 Paul (2014: 105−123) considers the possibility that we can rationally choose to transform by determining our preferences to be transformed or not to be transformed. Note that the choice now is whether we want to discover who we could become without knowing in advance who we will be (see especially Paul 2014: 119−120). This point is beyond the scope of our paper, but see Lambert and Schwenkler (2020: 9−10) for a treatment and criticism of Paul’s “Discovery Solution” to the question of whether we can rationally choose to transform. 9 For a detailed criticism of Paul’s view of the momentous character of transformative experience and of the impossibility of preparing for the transformation, see Krishnamurthy (2015, especially 176); Callard (2018), and Callard (2020, especially 153–5). The views of Krishnamurthy and Callard are Aristotelian in character in that they both highlight the ways in which our previous practices, social interactions, and pre-transformation experiences prepare us for and ground our epistemic and personal transformation. As Callard (2018) puts it, we rarely stand on the threshold of a transformative experience and choose whether or not to change; rather, if the options have a grip on us, then the “transformative process must already be underway” (59−60). 10 This criticism concerning the passivity of the agents in Paul’s account of transformation through revelation is developed in Callard (2020), where she contrasts Paul’s view to her own notion of “transformative activities” (148–155). Callard’s response here to Paul is in line with Aristotle’s insistence on the importance of active cultivation, which we discuss in Section 2.3.2. 11 For a discussion of the irrelevance of the testimony of others, see Paul (2014: 3–4, 47, 88−90, et passim; 2020: 27–30). See also Lambert and Schwenkler (2020: 11). 12 See Connell (2019, especially §III) for an account of Aristotle’s view of parenting as a certain sort of friendship of the kind that Aristotle characterizes as a hexis in NE VIII 1, 1155a31 and VIII 5, 1157b29–32. 13 There is, of course, no discussion in Aristotle of examples such as that of becoming a vampire— although he does contemplate the possibility of becoming a god in NE VIII 7, 1159a5–12, and there is a strange comment about a dog coming to be from a horse in Physics I 8, 191b20–23 (see Kelsey 2006: 351, n. 35 for commentary on this passage). However, Aristotle often uses the contrast between using the senses for the first time, which is a case of activating a capacity that one already has, to acquiring a disposition, i.e. a process that instead requires that we engage in practice before we can have the disposition (See e.g. NE II 1, 1103a26–34, and Metaph IX 5, 1147b31–35). 14 For a detailed discussion of the crucial role of experience (empeiria) in Aristotle’s epistemology, see e.g. Butler (2003); Gregorić and Grgić (2006); LaBarge (2006); Blackson (2006); Salmieri (2010); Bronstein (2010, 2012); Hasper and Yurdin (2014). 15 For the centrality of empeiria in ethics, and concretely as a source of practical wisdom, see Achtenberg (2002), Hursthouse (2006), and Jimenez (2019). While Moss (2012) does not focus on empeiria, she offers an account of moral transformation through experience and practice in Aristotle that supports our claim that experience plays a central role in personal and epistemic transformation in Aristotle. 16 All translations from Aristotle’s texts are from Barnes (1984) with occasional small modifications. 17 Similarly, in De Anima II 5, 417b2–19, Aristotle refuses to consider the acquisition of a hexis a proper alteration, and instead insists in it at least a “special alteration” because it involves the development of an already existing capacity. See a relevant discussion of these passages in Leunissen (2017: 125).

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Andrew Culbreth and Marta Jimenez 18 For an account of parenting in Aristotle as an example of this kind of completion, see Connell (2019), who explains why becoming a parent is seen by Aristotle as a way of contributing to our own good. 19 See Leunissen (2017: 111−113) for a more detailed discussion of these passages that supports this point. 20 For an analysis of the Metaphysics IX passage in these lines, see Witt (2003: 30−34); see Sherman (1989: 187−8) and Jimenez (2016, 2020) for this point in the context of the passages on habituation in the NE. 21 For a defense of the necessity of active engagement and practice for transformation in Aristotle, see e.g. Burnyeat (1980) and Hampson (2020). A modern version of a model of transformation through active engagement is presented in Callard (2018) and directly contraposed to Paul’s model in Callard (2020, especially 148–53). 22 See e.g. NE II 2, 1103b29–31. There is extensive discussion of this point in Jimenez (2016, 2020). See also Hirji (2018) for a discussion of the importance of how pre- and post-transformation agents engage in the corresponding activities in an Aristotelian context. 23 The continuity between the actions of the learners and the dispositions (hexeis) that they will eventually acquire is a crucial tenet in Jimenez (2016 and 2020), and goes back to the explanations of Aristotle’s account of moral development in Burnyeat (1980) and Sherman (1989). 24 See e.g. NE II 1, 1103b21−23: “Thus, in one word, dispositions arise from similar activities. This is why we must do activities of a certain kind. It is because the dispositions result from the differences between these.” See also NE II 2, 1103b29−31 and 1104a27−29, NE II 3, 1104b19–21 and 1105a15–16, and EE II 1, 1220a29–34, cited below. 25 See Strohl (2011, especially 283−6, 2018) for explanations of how, given Aristotle’s account of pleasure, pleasures differ in kind relative to the activities which they perfect. 26 For a discussion of this double role of pleasure in moral development, see Burnyeat (1980) and Jimenez (2015, 2020: Ch. 2). This picture in in harmony with how Aristotle explains in Physics VII 3 the role of pleasures and pains in processes of acquiring a disposition (247a7−19). For more on this the connections of Physics VII 3 to ethical habituation, see Leunissen (2017: Ch. 5, especially 114−138). 27 For relevant discussions of the centrality of imitation in moral development, see Sherman (1989: Ch. 5); Kosman (1992); Fossheim (2006); Cagnoli Fiecconi (2016); Leunissen (2017: Ch. 5); Hampson (2019). 28 See Hampson (2019: 305−6), also for a helpful treatment of the passage on emulation in Rhetoric II 11, and a discussion of how it connects to the imitation of virtuous agents. 29 Krishnamurthy (2015) makes a similar comment from a contemporary point of view: “There may also be other ways of gaining phenomenal or ‘what it is like’ knowledge through related types of experiences caused by imagination, empathy, and art. Art and film, through stimulation of empathy and imagination, may be the basis for phenomenal knowledge, since they may cause what it is like to feel, believe, desire and to be disposed to do something” (182, n. 22). 30 Some of the contemporary responses to Paul are similarly concerned with the social dimension of personal change. For example, in her response to Paul, Barnes (2015) refers to the story of several disability activists (Simi Linton, Steven E. Brown, and Tammy S. Thompson), all of whom learned how to view their disability differently (and thus transform) by engaging with the disability community (Barnes 2015: 181−184). In other words, their transformation was highly influenced by the input and support of others in their community.

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Aristotle on Personal and Epistemic Transformation Butler, Travis. (2003). “Empeiria in Aristotle.” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 41.3: 329–50. Cagnoli Fiecconi, Elena. (2016). “Harmonia, Melos, and Rhythmos: Aristotle on Musical Education.” Ancient Philosophy, 36: 409–424. Callard, Agnes. (2018). Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming. New York: Oxford University Press. Callard, Agnes. (2020). “Transformative Activities.” In E. Lambert and J. Schwenkler (eds.) Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change. New York: Oxford University Press: 147–161. Connell, Sophia. (2019). “Nurture and Parenting in Aristotelian Ethics.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 119.Part 2: 179–200. Cooper, John M. and Hutchinson, Doug S. (eds.). (1997). Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Fossheim, Hallvard J. (2006). “Habituation as Mimesis.” In T.D.J. Chappell (ed.) Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism in Contemporary Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press: 105–117. Gregorić, Pavel and Grgić, Filip. (2006). “Aristotle’s Notion of Experience.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 88.1: 1–30. Hampson, Margaret. (2019). “Imitating Virtue.” Phronesis, 64.3: 292–320. Hampson, Margaret. (2020). “Aristotle on the Necessity of Habituation.” Phronesis, 66.1: 1–26. Hasper, Pieter Sjoerd and Yurdin, Joel. (2014). “Between Perception and Scientific Knowledge: Aristotle’s Account of Experience.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 47: 119–50. Hirji, Sukaina. (2018). “Acting Virtuously as an End in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 26.6: 1006–1026. Hursthouse, Rosalind. (2006). “Practical Wisdom: A Mundane Account.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 106: 285–309. Jimenez, Marta. (2015). “Aristotle on “Steering the Young by Pleasure and Pain.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 29.2: 137–164. Jimenez, Marta. (2016). “Aristotle on Becoming Virtuous by Doing Virtuous Actions.” Phronesis, 61.1: 3–32. Jimenez, Marta. (2019). “Empeiria and Good Habits in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 57.3: 363–389. Jimenez, Marta. (2020). Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good. New York: Oxford University Press. Kelsey, Sean. (2006). “Aristotle Physics I 8.” Phronesis, 51.4: 330–361. Kosman, Aryeh L. (1992). “Acting: Drama as the Mimesis of Praxis.” In A.O. Rorty (ed.) Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press: 51–72. Krishnamurthy, Meena. (2015). “We Can Make Rational Decisions to Have a Child: On the Grounds for Rejecting L.A. Paul’s Arguments.” In Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan and Richard Vernon (eds.) Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting. New York: Oxford University Press: 170–83. LaBarge, Scott. (2006). “Aristotle on Empeiria.” Ancient Philosophy, 26.1: 23–44. Lambert, Enoch and Schwenkler, John. (eds.). (2020). Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Leunissen, Mariska. (2017). From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press. Moss, Jessica. (2012). Aristotle on the Apparent Good: Perception, Phantasia, Thought, and Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paul, L.A. (2014). Transformative Experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Paul, L.A. (2015a). “Précis of Transformative Experience.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 91.3: 760–765. Paul, L.A. (2015b). “Transformative Choice: Discussion and Replies.” Res Philosophica, 92.2: 473–545. Paul, L.A. (2015c). “Transformative Experience: Replies to Pettigrew, Barnes and Campbell.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 91.3: 794–813. Paul, L.A. (2015d). “What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting.” Res Philosophica, 92.2: 149–170. Paul, L.A. (2020). “Who Will I Become?” In E. Lambert and J. Schwenkler (eds.) Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change. New York: Oxford University Press: 16–36. Salmieri, Gregory. (2010). “Αἴσθησις, Ἐμπειρία, and the Advent of Universals in Posterior Analytics II.19.” Apeiron, 43.2−3: 155–186. Sherman, Nancy. (1989). The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.

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3 PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE Nagel and Zhuangzi on Absurdity and Equanimity Karyn Lai

Stepping back is an important component of philosophical reflection. We normally “take a step back” from a particular situation or event for a range of reasons. We might be seeking to curb personal involvement that is inappropriate, or potentially harmful, either to ourselves or others. Or we might do so by detaching from the event’s particularities to place it in a wider context, in order to explain or justify its causalities, or implications, or significance. Alternatively, we might wish to move beyond a mere descriptive understanding of the situation to engage with it at an evaluative level. Stepping back is useful to us for a wide range of reasons, including for our emotional, interpersonal, intellectual, ideational, ethical, and prudential wellbeing. In this chapter, I consider a specific notion of stepping back, as it is used in philosophy. In doing so, I consider how philosophy can help us think about why we do what we do. Can it help motivate us, or equip us with strategies to justify our pursuits, or will it tell us how to prioritise our goals? In a piece entitled “The Absurd” (1971), Thomas Nagel exposes a common misconception of philosophy’s role in justifying our pursuits. He points out that insofar as philosophical methodology involves taking a step back to evaluate our values and pursuits, it is often wrongly assumed that this method will lead us to a vantage point from which we can establish standards to distinguish pursuits that are valuable, or honourable, or worthwhile, from those that are not. Moreover, while we are committed to at least some of our goals, philosophy prompts us to be cautiously doubtful about even the ones we take as basic. From Nagel's point of view, can we justify these commitments and, if not, where does this leave us? Yet, Nagel assures us that the realisation that the philosophical “stepping back” reveals no justifiable standards can be found, is not cause for despair. He recommends the adoption of a sense of irony rather than regret or despondency. Indeed, there is more to be positive about, and appreciated, as the ability to understand the limitations of human thought is “a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics” (Nagel 1971: 726), though this is no reason for self-adulation either. I reflect on Nagel’s views on philosophical absurdity in light of the Zhuangzi, a 4th century BCE Daoist text. The Zhuangzi, a sceptical text in many ways, invites readers to take a step back, to scrutinise their entrenched beliefs and practices. Readers are prompted to contemplate off beat scenarios, where animals speak and craftsmen perform ordinary tasks in extraordinary ways. These vignettes can be unsettling as they cast doubt on the familiar pursuits and practices that would have been perceived as being important and necessary for human flourishing. DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-5

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I propose that both Nagel and the Zhuangzi recommend stepping back from our engagements and undertakings, to think about the reasons for our pursuits. In both cases, philosophical stepping back brings us to the realisation we may not be able to locate or identify the meaning of our chosen projects. This is not a dead end for either, however. Instead, the realisation that results from stepping back affords a transformative experience. The discussion in this chapter shows how bringing Nagel’s and the Zhuangzi’s views into the conversation enriches our understanding of transformation in three ways, which I introduce briefly as follows. First, the realisation that there are no standards, or that there are none to be found, can be disquieting. Yet, both Nagel and Zhuangzi are committed to the view that this realisation can be liberating at some level. The idea of being liberated from constantly having to align one’s undertakings with grand visions of human achievement is more pronounced in the Zhuangzi than in Nagel’s proposal. While Nagel’s advice on accepting absurdity with irony does not specifically mention freedom from the norms that constrain human life, it nevertheless promotes equanimity with respect to our grasp of the limitations of humanity. Secondly, both views are grounded in epistemological scepticism, though in subtly different ways. Nagel holds a stronger version of the view—that no standards may be found—even though he recognises that some people find fulfilment in service to a higher being or entity, be it God, the state, or a cause. For Nagel, ultimately, these anchors of meaning in life will likewise be subject to the same levels of scrutiny to satisfy our epistemological demands. By contrast, the Zhuangzi does not explicitly state that no standards may be found, but rather suggests that no justification may be found for proposing one set of standards for all humanity. The implications of this for the Zhuangzi are significant, as we shall see in the next point, in that it supports a plurality of human pursuits. This contrast between Nagel and the Zhuangzi helps bring out not only the subtle differences in the way the two views approach epistemological scepticism, it also highlights some distinctions between the two intellectual traditions, as we will see later.. Thirdly, Nagel’s view celebrates the philosophical rigour that humans are capable of, and asks us to accept the implications of our cognitive-intellectual capacities. The Zhuangzi pushes its sceptical considerations further to articulate how the transformation may be embodied. In stepping back to demonstrate that a singular set of standards for all humanity is not defensible, the Zhuangzi encourages readers to develop a unique dao (way or path), that is, an individual way to flourish. Transformation in the Zhuangzi is a liberation from the psychological and epistemological servitude that requires individuals to abide by conventional grand narratives, so that a person may take an active role to develop their own dao (path). Engaging the two views allows us to grasp the idea of transformation by reflecting on the dynamics of philosophical activity (Nagel), and how they may be realised in embodied agency (Zhuangzi). The three main comparisons above are set out across seven sections. The first two briefly outline Nagel’s views on philosophical stepping back and (philosophical) absurdity. Section 3.3 examines the implications of Nagel’s views to consider how some of its elements could be instrumental in the transformation of the individual. Sections 3.4 to 3.6 cover the Zhuangzi’s themes in a way that parallels Sections 3.1 to 3.3. The concluding Section 3.7 reflects on the nature of philosophical steeping back to compare what the two views afford in relation to transformation.

3.1  “Stepping Back” in Philosophy A primary motivation for philosophical stepping back is to explore the “why” question, namely, the rationale for our undertakings and our projects. This is not the “why” that looks primarily at causation, as for example, in the question “Why is the global surface temperature 1.1°C 36

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higher in 2011–2020 than in 1850–1900?”1 Rather the “why” seeks not only to explain but also to justify our actions or decisions, such as “Why should we care that the average global surface temperature over the 10 years from 2011 to 2020 was 1.1°C above that in 1850–1900?” In brief, taking a step back in the relevant philosophical sense calls for the justification of our actions or beliefs, or more generally, why we (should) care that something is good, or right, or true. Nagel says: [H]umans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed, with that detached amazement which comes from watching an ant struggle up a heap of sand. (Nagel 1971: 720) We have the capacity to ask many “why” questions of this relevant type. We may ask why a person prefers to go into work when they can work just as effectively from home, when their organisation allows them to do so. Or why a person commits to a weekly walk with a neighbour who can hardly keep up with the person’s pace. Or why so much thought is put into selecting a nursing home for one’s elderly parent. Or why someone is an active member of a community garden project. This kind of reflective practice is valuable as it opens up the space for us to think about, and to revisit, the reasons for both our shorter- and longer-term commitments, as well as the lower-order and particularly the more fundamental ones. It is an exercise requiring rigour in prioritising our commitments. We see that not all the “why’s” above are equally fundamental: for instance, it would be silly to ask us to provide reasons for each task or action we complete in our everyday lives, such as why we have breakfast or walk our dogs.2 Yet, even after setting out our priorities, the “why” question remains for our fundamental and more enduring commitments. This question seems to require us, honestly and sincerely to examine where our commitments lie: are our hearts in the right places, so to speak? How can we justify our most basic commitments?

3.2  “The Absurd” It is in this—attempting to justify our most basic commitments—where, Nagel believes, we hit a snag. When we step back, methodically, to articulate reasons for our commitments, the process must stop somewhere, as an infinite regress does not make sense. Somewhere, that is, whereupon we can anchor our basic commitments. But can we actually get “there”? Nagel describes the difficulty thus: The crucial backward step is not taken by asking for still another justification in the chain, and failing to get it…We step back to find that the whole system of justification and criticism, which controls our choices and supports our claims to rationality, rests on responses and habits that we never question, that we should not know how to defend without circularity, and to which we shall continue to adhere even after they are called into question. (Nagel 1971: 720) This must be unsettling. For we set our aims and goals, and go about each day, as if there is some meaning to all that we do. We consider it important (and a privilege by no means shared by all humanity) if we are able to: choose our vocation; cultivate good habits; develop meaningful relationships; think about how we nurture our children; plan responsible courses of action in view of the earth environment and future generations; and more generally, cultivate in ourselves the traits we value. Perhaps, more poignantly, consider how a person in a war-ravaged country, 37

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or a person who is displaced and living in a camp in an inhospitable foreign nation, struggles to go on with their daily lives. In practice, “[l]eading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern” (Nagel 1971: 718–9). Yet, there is dissonance here: a mismatch between how we conduct our lives, on the one hand, and our not being able to provide justification, on the other, for the projects and tasks we commit to (e.g. why do I make an effort to have a healthy lunch?). At some level, we can provide some justification (e.g. it is better to have good health than otherwise). But why should we seek good health? Nagel’s point is that stepping back, further, does not quite help, not even if we abstract a bit more from the everyday to think about how our undertakings—such as healthy lunches—are strung together over the course of a life. He speaks of a potentially infinite regress of justifications, further abstracting to locate our lives in causes that transcend individual lives. The point is not to keep stepping back but to realise that this activity, which is so central to philosophy, does not help supply an answer that justifies our pursuits and gives meaning to our lives: [Taking a step back] is not supposed to give us an understanding of what is really important, so that we see by contrast that our lives are insignificant. We never, in the course of these reflections, abandon the ordinary standards that guide our lives. We merely observe them in operation, and recognize that if they are called into question we can justify them only by reference to themselves, uselessly. We adhere to them because of the way we are put together; what seems to us important or serious or valuable would not seem so if we were differently constituted. (Nagel 1971: 722) Attempts to justify our pursuits and choices by taking the path of further stepping back lead us nowhere. As valuable as philosophical stepping back is, we cannot use it to establish the firm ground upon which our commitments are justified. Indeed, what we discover in this process is not the answer we were seeking. Rather, it is something perhaps more important, that is, that there is no answer: no ultimate justification can be found for our pursuits. For Nagel, absurdity—a philosophical sense of absurdity—helps crystallise this predicament. The absurdity is this: philosophical stepping back is meant to afford us a vantage point from which to understand the project of life, to which we each “devote decades of intense concern” (Nagel 1971: 719).3 Yet, in doing so, we begin to realise that there are no standards “there”, standards that we can appeal to, to justify our commitments. Yet, that does not stop us from going on with life, armed with the philosophical insight that there is no particular reason we can provide to justify these goings-on. Should this matter? Does it not matter?

3.3  Transformation and Irony How do we resolve this predicament? Nagel first suggests that we could attempt to handle the absurdity in two ways, both of which he rejects. First, we may deny that any justification is required. After all, most other animals conduct their lives in this way, without feeling the need to provide justification for their daily goings-on. In other words, we should not be required to answer the “Why?” question. Yet, this sounds implausible as we would need to accept that none of the activities we undertake will ever be nontrivially significant. A consequence of this solution is that it flattens the different qualities and characteristics of our pursuits, that no one reason for pursuing them is more important than another, except in a trivial way (Nagel mentions the life of a mouse, for example). This could well be a colourless existence. Besides, one’s having consciously 38

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to push back on the question about the justification for why we pursue certain activities is precisely a manifestation of the absurdity. Another way to resolve the absurdity is to relinquish aspects of the everyday—perhaps the dog walks or perhaps the actions taken to reduce our carbon footprint—unless they have a place within the greater plan. This may be a path taken by some religious believers, who anchor their deepest commitments upon a divine being or a transcendent source, or a deeper consciousness. The absurdity in this case would be lessened as the enduring basis of their ultimate commitment does not need to be justified with reference to the practicalities of daily life. Nevertheless, the question remains concerning just where we could plausibly draw the line between the daily grind and the transcendent goals. How much unworldliness is needed in this plan? Rejecting both proposals, Nagel recommends that life after philosophical stepping back should not be one of anguish. The absurdity that runs through all our undertakings is not a cause for despair. It is, rather, acceptance: acceptance of the irony that is our absurd lives. The transformation for Nagel is that we should perhaps even celebrate this awareness: I would argue that absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. Like skepticism in epistemology, it is possible only because we possess a certain kind of insight—the capacity to transcend ourselves in thought. (Nagel 1971: 726–7) Nagel urges that we recognise the absurdity and keep going on, armed with a sense of irony. The transformation is precisely this: not despair, not defiance, but irony. He rejects Camus’ account of the Sisyphean predicament, which understands absurdity in terms of the lack of fit between humanity’s need for meaning and the world (Nagel 1971: 721–2). As we can see from the passage mentioned earlier, absurdity in Nagel’s sense arises from the exercise of our capacity to be sceptical, and not from the lack of fit between our expectations and the world we live in. The transformation associated with Nagelian absurdity sits squarely with each individual, who grasps both the significance of the distinctive capacity he has qua human to step back, and that, if used properly, demonstrates that there is no basis upon which we can pin the meaning of our lives. The attitude of irony is key to Nagel’s view, as he concludes that “If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn’t matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair” (Nagel 1971: 727). For Nagel, control of this transformative process is well within our reach: “It need not be a matter for agony unless we make it so” (ibid.). Yet, Nagel may not have fully pondered the level of difficulty which individuals might face in trying control their emotional-psychological response to this realisation. The upshot of Nagel’s notion of irony is that, where it contributes to transformation, it does not make life easier or more meaningful but more thoughtful. Nagel does not venture into the question of how we might reorder our priorities as a result of stepping back. I suggest two possible scenarios. A person who follows through with Nagel’s recommendation to accept that there is no bedrock upon which to justify her pursuits could be quite at sea. Or, alternatively, she might develop a sense of freedom, approaching life ironically, neither cynical nor deflated about not locating its meaning, and pursuing what she chooses so to do. These are, of course, only two possibilities; in practical terms, the implications of the stepping back process for each individual are deeply intertwined with their dispositions and capabilities, as well as their circumstances. As we will see in our discussion of the Zhuangzi, there is a similar open-endedness after stepping back, and we see this manifest in images of ordinary life. 39

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3.4 The Zhuangzi: Scepticism about Standards The Zhuangzi, a text whose origins date to the 4th century BCE,4 challenges those in official positions who defended their chosen doctrine (言 yan; also meaning “word”) as the only correct approach for rectifying society. The Zhuangzi raises questions about their attempts to regulate the lives of people on the basis of their specific vision. Readers are prompted to consider questions concerning standards of right and wrong, how they are determined, and how their implementation impacts the way humans encounter life. In this section, I set up the background within which we may understand the Zhuangzi’s views on a process not unlike the “stepping back” that Nagel refers to. As I will show, the text pushes back not only on the standards themselves but also on their negative impact on the lives of the people. These, I believe, are the text’s first-order rebuttals of prevalent official views of its time. In the following section, I examine some higher-order, philosophical, considerations on the issue of (determining) standards, where the text suggests that no universally applicable set of standards can be found. First, what are standards? Some officials attempted to implement particular norms such as ritual propriety (li 禮) and rightness (yi 義), using these as models ( fa 法) and measures (du 度) of human behaviour and attainment (Zhuangzi 14/40–445). “Shifei” (是非: correct/incorrect) is an important phrase the Zhuangzi uses to express its hesitations about affirming and endorsing such standards. Shi! Fei! (Yea! Nay!) are expressions of assent and dissent, in support or denial of standards associated with a thinker’s vision of a flourishing society. “Shifei” may refer to a particular set of standards (e.g. those endorsed by the Mohists), or it may refer to the process by which standards are determined. The Zhuangzi characterises the process in terms of verbal wrangling or disputation (bian 辯; e.g. Zhuangzi 2/55–64). Those who believe this is the way to resolve the correct set of standards hold faulty assumptions, that: (i) implementing standards is an important component of good governance and (ii) where there is disagreement about standards, disputation is the means by which the disagreement may be resolved. Is the aim of this process to pick a winner, the Zhuangzi asks? (Zhuangzi 2/73–92). The text evokes a sense of the childlike bantering of the disputants: “[h]ence we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and Mohists, each affirming what the other denies and denying what the other affirms” (Zhuangzi 2/26–7; trans. Ziporyn 2020: 14). Elsewhere, he calls them “twisted officials”, likening their shackled condition and close-mindedness to a frog in a well, with whom we cannot speak about the seas, and to a summer insect, with whom we cannot speak about ice (Zhuangzi 17/5–6).6 A fictional conversation in the Zhuangzi highlights the stubbornness with which a person abides by a set of standards and, on that basis, makes judgements about what is correct or incorrect. In the conversation, Yi-er Zi had returned from visiting Yao, an ancient (mythical) Confucian sage king. Xu You, whom Yi-er Zi visited, was keen to hear what Yi-er Zi had learnt from the revered sage king, in particular, his Confucian teachings of ren (仁 beneficence; benevolence) and yi (義 rightness): Yi-er Zi went to see Xu You. Xu You asked, “What did Yao present to you?” Yi-er Zi said, “He said to me, ‘You must fully comply with beneficence and rightness, while speaking clearly to distinguish right from wrong (shifei).’” Xu You said, “Why, then, did you come to see me? Yao has already tattooed your face with beneficence and rightness and cut off your nose with right and wrong. How will you be able to wander spontaneously, unconstrained, and drifting along paths?” (Zhuangzi 6/82–89) 40

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In this passage, the Confucian message handed down by the sage king Yao provides a vantage point from which judgements and assertions of “right” and “wrong” are made. The passage speaks out against the binding nature of standards as it reduces a person’s openness and responsiveness to the situation at hand. In another passage, the Zhuangzi describes the projects of asserting right and wrong as being fraught with anxiety as each person strives to win: “As if launching arrows from a bow; this is how we authoritatively judge right and wrong. As if maintaining (our commitment) to oaths; this is how we safeguard our victories” (Zhuangzi 2/11). We have so far seen the Zhuangzi’s objection to standards because of their negative impact on human pursuits. It is not difficult to grasp and agree with these hesitations. After all, it seems obvious that adherence to a set of standards implies that a person or group is bound in some way to it, thus excluding decisions or actions deemed incompatible with those standards. In the following section, I examine the Zhuangzi’s reasons for having these concerns.

3.5  In Search of an Adjudicator What shall we do about the fraught debates about standards? In this section, I demonstrate that the Zhuangzi does not offer its own set of standards, not even an all-inclusive one.7 I propose, instead, that the text intimates serious doubts that there is a correct set of standards—the one picture of human flourishing—for all. To begin, I examine the Zhuangzi’s discussion about the disputation processes seeking to determine that standard: Suppose you and I get into a debate. If you win and I lose, does that really mean you are right and I am wrong? If I win and you lose, does that really mean I’m right and you’re wrong? Must one of us be right and the other wrong? Or could both of us be right, or both of us wrong? If neither you nor I can mutually know the other’s shifei [Yea! Nay!] commitments, a third person would be even more benighted. Whom should we have straighten out the matter? Someone who agrees with you? But since he already agrees with you, how can he straighten it out? Someone who agrees with me? But since he already agrees with me, how can he straighten it out? Someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he straighten it out? Someone who agrees with both of us? But since he already agrees with both of us, how can he straighten it out? So neither you nor I nor any third party can ever mutually come to know each other’s shifei commitments—shall we wait for yet some “other”? (Zhuangzi 2/85–90; adapted from the translation by Ziporyn 2020: 20) The process of stepping back in the Zhuangzi helps illuminate this debate on shifei, highlighting what a person affirms and what she denies, and how she seeks to establish her beliefs. The passage accentuates the problematic nature of the resolution that is sought in this type of debate. To win, one needs to prove the other wrong. But there is no shared standpoint upon which these thinkers see eye to eye (or even from which they may seek to understand their disagreement). So, how can the disagreement be resolved since they each have their own set of affirmations and denials? Calling in an adjudicator will not help either, for those same reasons. But what are the matters on which these thinkers are making shifei pronouncements? Earlier, in the passage, some big questions in life are discussed: How then do I know that delighting in life is not a delusion? … Lady Li was a daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first captured and brought to Qin, she wept until tears drenched her collar. But when she got to the palace, sharing the king’s luxurious bed, 41

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and feasting on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead don’t regret the way they used to cling to life? … This one is a lord, they decide, that one is a shepherd—what stubborn prejudice! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you’re dreaming, I’m dreaming too… (Zhuangzi 2/78–84; trans. Ziporyn 2020: 20) The passage steps back in a number of ways. First, it stands back from a temporally bound perspective on life’s events to highlight the momentariness of our desires and anxieties. Yet, we are inescapably ensconced in life’s moments, and our feelings so palpable and present in each of them such that it is difficult to dismiss them or wish them away. This reminds us of Nagel’s comments about how we devote ourselves fully and conscientiously to the day-to-day, as if there is a deeper meaning to them all. Secondly, the passage above also takes a step back from the certainty in our pursuit of objectives, especially in the way we carve up the world socially, morally, and politically. Norms in these domains are functional for facilitating life together. However, when entrenched and unquestioned, they may have a hold over the way we approach life, such as Lady Li’s prejudiced view of life with the King. As in Lady Li’s case, conformity with a set of standards will shape how people understand success and human achievement. And, indeed, the passage demonstrates how fleeting some of our commitments are. Thirdly, at the end of the section cited above, the stepping back is most pronounced when the author advises that what he has articulated is not established on solid bedrock; he might be dreaming! Is he suggesting, as does Nagel, that no standards are to be found? I see a subtle difference in the two positions. Nagel’s enterprise of seeking justification for one’s pursuits is very much focused on an individual’s projects. By contrast, the Zhuangzi expresses scepticism especially in relation to the attempts by officials to determine right and wrong. In the text, what follows this passage immediately above is the passage on adjudication we discussed earlier. There is no ideal adjudicator: there is no possibility of an impartial spectator, an absolute view, a view from nowhere, or a God’s-eye view. Whereas, according to Nagel, the misguided aim of stepping back is to discover and defend the meaning of one’s commitments, the Zhuangzi’s preoccupation is with the officials’ affirmations and denials of standards with which to regulate life. Yet, both thinkers seek to dispel the mistaken belief that all we undertake can ultimately be justified—can be said to be meaning ful—if we take the right steps to locate the anchor for the point of our pursuits. But what if there are no such standards or if they cannot be found? Here, again, Nagel’s and Zhuangzi’s views differ: Nagel proposes there are no such standards, whereas the Zhuangzi’s discussions suggest a weaker view, that no one standard may have that elevated status that grounds all meaning in life. At the very most, we can take the Zhuangzi to be saying that there are no standards that hold for everyone across all time.8 Therefore, the processes associated with defending any one set is doomed to fail. The stepping back in the Zhuangzi brings out the futility of determining standards, indeed, of how wrong it is to impose a set of standards where we cannot establish a basis for agreeing on any one of them. How, then, should we proceed in life?

3.6  Transformation and Mastery The Zhuangzi offers a number of stories about men engaged in ordinary craftsmanship. Their achievements in some of the stories border on the fantastical. The activities include butchering, wheelmaking, cicada-catching, ferrying (a boat), training fighting cocks, swimming, carving bell stands, scribing (calligraphy), and metal forging. Often in these stories, observers look on in amazement as 42

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the men take ordinary tasks to extraordinary heights. The Zhuangzi not only criticises the status quo, its stories provide a positive philosophy by offering alternative models of human achievement.9 As the stories vary in their meaning, tone, and context, there is no room to discuss them all. For now, I look at the story of Lun Bian (輪扁), the wheelmaker called “Flat” (“Bian”). The story has been selected as it extends our inquiry about words (language) and disputation in the effective transmission of wisdom. Duke Huan was reading in the hall above, and wheelwright Bian [“Flat”] was carving a wheel below. Putting aside his hammer and chisel, the wheelwright ascended the hall and addressed Duke Huan, saying, “May I ask, whose words are these that the Duke is reading?” The Duke replied, “The words of the sages.” “Are the sages still alive?” “They have been long dead,” said the duke. “If that is so, what you, Sir, are reading, are the sediments of the old (dead) men!” Duke Huan said, “How dare a wheelwright comment on my reading of books! If you have an explanation, that would be acceptable. If not, you will die!” Wheelwright Bian said, “As for me, I see it in terms of (how I handle) my work. When I carve a wheel, if I hit the chisel too gently, it slides along but does not take hold. If I hit too hard, it jams and can’t go further. Not too gentle, not too hard—I feel it in my hand and respond to it with my heart-mind. I cannot put this into words, even though I grasp what is involved there, in (the midst of ) the activity. I cannot impart my understanding to my son, and he cannot receive it from me. So, at the elderly age of seventy, I’m still carving wheels. When the men of old died, what they could not transmit died too. Therefore, what you, Sir, are reading must be the sediments of the old (dead) men! (Zhuangzi 13/68–74) Wheelwright Bian has come to the realisation that words cannot guarantee successful action (whether they are the second-hand words of sages in antiquity, or his own). At one level, the message is simple and uncontroversial as it notes the gap between (propositional) knowledge and effective action. At another level, Bian’s description about how he carves highlights his engagement in the activity, which is critical to his success. Here, we are drawn to the irreducible conditions of his success: “I feel it in my hand and respond to it with my heart-mind”. To put it differently, successful wheel carving, as with successful government administration, requires sustained and responsive engagement with the world. The story of Bian, as is the case with many of the Zhuangzi’s craftsmen, is presented deliberately to contest the culture of officialdom. I propose that these stories offer models of how life can be transformed. These masters engage in ordinary work that does not receive the respect due to the achievements of prominent and successful members of society. Nevertheless, they excel extraordinarily such that Lords and Dukes seek to learn from them. Here, Bian instructs the Duke on how to govern well, by speaking about his approach to wheelmaking. The masters have been liberated from having to conform to conventional measures of achievement, as well as the methods typically used to attain them. The craftsmen and their craftsmanship are living testaments to Zhuangzi’s defiance of the idea that there is one standard of human achievement. How does the realisation that there is no one meaning in human life make a practical difference? I suggest two related ways in which it does. First, the release (and relief!) from having to 43

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adhere to a fixed set of standards liberates the masters to develop ways to pursue their chosen goals. Not only in their choice of ends but also of means, are they liberated from being assessed by those entrenched measures.10 And, in more positive terms, the release from having to conform to prescriptive measures engenders psychological freedom.11 Moreover, the fact of not having to conform to standardised measures opens up opportunities for a person to exercise initiative in responding to the situation at hand.12 In Bian’s wheel carving, he feels the chisel in his hand and responds to it with his heart-mind. What is important here is that Bian does not use the standard tools such as compass and square (guiju 規矩).13 Not using these guiding instruments allows Bian to carve wheels responsively—he might take into account the size of the required wheel, the density of the wood, the burls in the wood, and so on. For those like Bian who have acquired some level of attainment in an activity, freedom from adherence to standards is welcome, as expertise abhors standards. But it is also clear from the stories that the fluency and expertise with which the craftsmen undertake their tasks do not come easy. Not everyone will be better off, psychologically, when working outside the familiar. This may be why Bian’s son is unable to learn wheelmaking from him. The potential psychological difficulties precipitated by the lack of standards has largely gone unnoticed in scholarly literature on freedom in the Zhuangzi. Being aware of this matter may temper our enthusiasm for what Zhuangzian transformation offers. Yet, on the other hand, many of the stories on mastery fall on the optimistic side, offering accounts of how it is possible to harness the freedom afforded by stepping back. With these many models, which one should we follow? This is the second aspect of Zhuangzian transformation. Not any single one of them, I suggest, if we accept that the aim of the Zhuangzi is not to offer yet another blueprint for life. The models are not meant to be applied normatively. Rather, their plurality is a highlight of the text, in demonstrating nonstandard snapshots of human achievement.14 The diversification of human pursuits is an outcome of Zhuangzian stepping back. The spectators who marvel at the performances of the masters, and the readers of the Zhuangzi, witness how transformation may be realised in everyday pursuits.

3.7  Transformations: Life after Stepping Back What is there to look forward to after stepping back? Nagel’s exploration of absurdity has a hopeful tone: the idea that, as humans, we have a capacity to step back to evaluate the point of our pursuits and to continue to plan for future ones, invigorates our aspirations. The capacity to step back is promising, potentially, as it allows us to affirm the meaning and value of our lives and, upon that, to justify our longer-term pursuits as well as our daily undertakings. Yet, Nagel says, in spite of the uplifting thought that humans have a unique capacity to step back to work out a firm ground for meaning in our lives, we will find that there is no point at which we can stop, where no more justification is required. Indeed, it is due to this very capacity for epistemological scepticism, that we can see the absurdity. The issue at the heart of the absurdity is our realisation that for which we have the capacity to seek cannot be found. That same stepping back process, propelled by our search for meaning, also reveals to us the limitations of humanity. Nagel writes, “And that is the main condition of absurdity—the dragooning of an unconvinced transcendent consciousness into the service of an immanent, limited enterprise like a human life” (Nagel 1971: 726). In a similar vein, the Zhuangzi takes a heartening approach: through stepping back, it resists attempts to prescribe what is right and permissible for humankind. It challenges the rigidity and utmost seriousness accorded to the implementation of norms. At the basis of this rejection is its scepticism about how the expectations and standards that facilitate life together are imposed. Do they not also constrain and thus impoverish lives? Where there is guidance, there are also 44

Philosophy and Life: Nagel and Zhuangzi on Absurdity and Equanimity

constraints. Therefore, the models of mastery in the Zhuangzi provide positive examples of how being discharged from having to abide by standardised measures can facilitate diversity in human projects, as well as higher levels of attainment. As I have alluded to above, the emancipation from a guided life may not be an unqualified good. A person might get disoriented by the abundance of options and be at a loss concerning what he should do. Epistemologically, it may lead to perplexity and, emotionally, it may cause deep disquiet. Yet, from the Zhuangzi’s perspective, it is better to have that opportunity than to be in fetters.15 What lessons can we glean from Nagelian and Zhuangzian stepping back? Nagel suggests that we proceed with life, enlightened by the perspective of irony: that we continue to pursue the projects “to which we devote full-time attention” (1971: 719), knowing that we will not be able to present a properly grounded, nontrivial justification for why we do so. This realisation may or may not change the projects we undertake, but it will transform how we think about them. The transformation involves reorientation not about what matters but about how our projects matter. In the first instance, it will illuminate our understanding of questions about the meaning of life, correcting a misunderstanding that there is an answer to that question, made available by a person’s stepping back. Secondly, and in a far deeper way, this is a personal reorientation, as Nagel states candidly: the absurdity of our situation derives “from a collision within ourselves” (1971: 722). Although Nagel highlights the disquiet arising from this realisation, his recommendation of irony provides a reorientation that avoids either despair or pretension about the human condition. This is the psychoemotional transformation offered in Nagel’s epistemological scepticism about the meaning of life. By contrast, even if there is some initial disquiet, equanimity resulting from transformation is palpable in the Zhuangzi. Its endorsement of the diversity of human achievements is uplifting as it affirms there is not just one way of getting it right and, indeed, it asks whether we should be seeking to “get it right”. The stories provide readers with some confidence that there are better, more fulfilling, options in life than just accomplishing what is recommended by the status quo. However, as readers, we are also aware that a life transformed in the Zhuangzian way is not easy to attain. It would require appropriate dispositions and capabilities to handle the lack of certainty arising from the rebuff of prescribed measures. If we are able to do so, however, much awaits: the satisfaction of the Butcher who carves well (Zhuangzi 3/2–12), the success enjoyed by the cicadacatcher (Zhuangzi 19/17–21), and the enjoyment of the swimmer in treacherous waters (Zhuangzi 19/22–26), to name a few. In brief, Zhuangzian transformation offers new and different options for human achievement for those who are able to take them up. I have offered two culturally disparate and historically distant views on transformation resulting from philosophical stepping back. Interestingly, while one speaks specifically about stepping back as a philosophical activity, the other would most likely not have had a conception of philosophy as we know it. Nagel’s view brings out the distinctiveness of our reflective capacities, especially to grasp the limits of the human condition. Compellingly, the possibility of responding to this matter in a way that does not threaten human well-being lies in the hands of individuals. The Zhuangzi, too, sees the exercise of initiative as key to transformation. Its concerns were different from Nagel’s, though, as it sought to resist the attempts to carve a singular vision for all. In doing so, the Zhuangzi presents many models that challenge those entrenched views of its day, speaking out against the constraining forces in its socio-political milieu. By engaging the views of Nagel and the Zhuangzi on stepping back, this discussion has articulated their different projects and the ways in which the outcomes of stepping back may be realised. Here are their two philosophical journeys: difficult paths, though also offering fascinating ways to think about human pursuits and achievements. In examining this uniquely human capacity, both traditions have, not unoptimistically, faced the reality of humanity’s limitations. 45

Karyn Lai

Notes 1 IPCC, 2023. Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 184 pp., doi: 10.59327/IPCC/AR69789291691647. [online] Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/longer-report/ [Accessed 09 September 2023]. 2 Nagel notes that not all of the tasks we undertake need to be justified, as some are self-justifying: “No further justification is needed to make it reasonable to take aspirin for a headache, attend an exhibit of the work of a painter one admires, or stop a child from putting his hand on a hot stove. No larger context or further purpose is needed to prevent these acts from being pointless.” (1971: 717). 3 Nagel distinguishes between the kind of absurdity we typically encounter and absurdity in the philosophical sense. Ordinarily, in deeming a situation absurd, we make the assessment on the basis of certain standards, noting the lack of alignment in a particular way that makes the absurd situation so. However, according to Nagel, “…the philosophical judgment [of absurdity] depends on another contrast which makes it a natural extension from more ordinary cases. It departs from them only in contrasting the pretensions of life with a larger context in which no standards can be discovered, rather than with a context from which alternative, overriding standards may be applied” (Nagel 1971: 722). 4 The extant Zhuangzi comprises 33 chapters, after a major revision of the 52-chapter text by Guo Xiang (d. 312 CE). Guo Xiang appears to have edited out 19 chapters of that text. However, it is not clear whether some parts of those 19 chapters may have been incorporated into the existing 33 chapters. The extent of Guo Xiang’s editing of the text is not insignificant, and it is not possible fully to determine its impact on the 52-chapter Zhuangzi (Knaul 1985). A few scholars believe that the first seven chapters of the text were authored by the person Zhuang Zhou. However, the unanimous view in scholarship is that the 33-chapter text was not written by a single author. The discussion in this chapter uses the name of the text, Zhuangzi, and the name of its alleged author, Zhuangzi, interchangeably for stylistic reasons. Phrases such as “Zhuangzi believed that” indicate that the source of the idea is to be found in the Zhuangzi. It is not the intention to suggest that Zhuangzi was the author of all of the ideas in the extant text. 5 References to the Zhuangzi passages follow the Zhuangzi Yinde 1956. 6 All translations of the Zhuangzi are by the author, unless otherwise specified. 7 Some commentators believe that the Zhuangzi offers an overarching view that incorporates all the other proposals. I have argued against this interpretation in Lai and Chiu (2013). 8 In a conversation between Nie Que and Wang Ni, the issue of how we may discover the one standard is discussed. At one point in the conversation, Wang Ni, the Zhuangist spokesperson, says “How could I know that what I call ‘knowing’ is not really ‘not-knowing’? How could I know that what I call ‘notknowing’ is not really ‘knowing’? Now let me try asking you something. When humans sleep in a damp place, they wake up deathly ill and sore about the waist—but what about eels? If humans live in trees, they tremble with fear and worry—but how about monkeys? Of these three, which ‘knows’ what is the right place to live? Humans eat the flesh of their livestock, deer eat grass, snakes eat centipedes, hawks and eagles eat mice. Of these four, which ‘knows’ the right thing to eat? Monkeys take she-monkeys for mates, elks mount deer, male fish frolic with female fish, while humans regard Mao Qiang and Lady Li as great beauties—but when fish see them they dart into the depths, when birds see them they soar into the skies, when deer see them they bolt away without looking back. Which of these four ‘knows’ what is rightly alluring? From where I see it, all the sproutings of humankindness and responsible conduct and all the trails of right and wrong are hopelessly tangled and confused. How could I know how to distinguish and demonstrate any conclusions about them?” (Zhuangzi 2/64–73; trans. Ziporyn 2020: 18–19). Wang Ni’s comments about the abodes and diets of the different animals seem to be pushing towards relativism. However, it is important to see that Wang Ni’s comments conclude not by endorsing relativism but in expressing scepticism—epistemological scepticism—about whether any of these positions can be solidly grounded and soundly defended. There are three anthologies that present scholarly debates on whether Zhuangzi should be considered a relativist, and/or a pluralist, and how its scepticism can be understood. See Mair (1983); Kjellberg and Ivanhoe (1996); Cook (2013). I have presented an account of scepticism in the Zhuangzi that asks unsettling questions but which nevertheless does not move

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Philosophy and Life: Nagel and Zhuangzi on Absurdity and Equanimity to relativist conclusions (Lai 2017). There is also an interesting anthology on epistemological issues in Chinese philosophy; see Lenk and Paul (1993). 9 For a discussion of the different mastery stories, see Lai and Chiu (2019). 10 Recall the earlier discussion of those “twisted officials” who are shackled to their ideals. In a conversation involving Confucius, he admits that he is bound by the ways of society, and that he suffers from oppression by Heaven (Zhuangzi 6/60–74). 11 Discussions of psychological relief in the Zhuangzi may be found in the papers by Fraser (2014, 2019) and Graham (1983), for example. Details of the range of views have been set out by Mercedes Valmisa (2019: 10, n. 14). 12 Across the stories, various masters are absorbed in their activity, with the cicada catcher seeing nothing apart from cicada wings (Zhuangzi 19/17–21), and the bell-stand carver fasting in order to select trees (Zhuangzi 19/54–59), for example. For an interesting discussion on the masters’ absorption in the activity, see Fraser (2019). 13 Refer to the discussion by Lisa Raphals, who makes this observation, remarking on how distinctive Bian’s approach to wheelmaking is (Raphals 2019). 14 I have, with Wai Wai Chiu, presented a detailed account of plurality in light of the shifei views (Lai and Chiu 2013). We examine the imagery of a rotating pivot, the pivot of dao (daoshu 道樞) (Zhuangzi 2/27–31). Unlike the shifei views, each of which is lodged in a static position (upholding a fixed set of shifei), the rotating pivot of dao may respond limitlessly to the shifei views without permanently lodging in any one of them. We propose that the view from the pivot is a metaphilosophical view, not lodged in any one of these positions, but rather having the illuminated (ming 明) view that each of the shifei views is lodged within its own static frame. 15 In a passage in the Zhuangzi, Confucius is deeply committed to implementing his plans for moral order. The passage describes Confucius as being in fetters (Zhuangzi 5/29–31).

References Cook, S (ed.) 2013, Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Fraser, C 2014, “Wandering the Way: a Eudaimonistic Approach to the Zhuangzi”, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 541–65. Fraser, C 2019, “The Ferryman: Forget the Deeps and Row!”, in K Lai and WW Chiu (eds.) Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi, CEACOP East Asian Comparative Ethics, Politics and Philosophy of Law Series, London: Rowman and Littlefield International, pp. 163–82. Graham, AC 1983, “Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of ‘is’ and ‘ought”, in V Mair (ed.) Experimental Essays on Chuang-Tzu, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 3–23. Kjellberg, P and Ivanhoe, PJ (eds.) 1996, Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Knaul, L 1985, “Kuo Hsiang and the Chuang Tzu”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 429–47. Lai, K 2017, “Zhuangzi’s Suggestiveness: Skeptical Questions”, in S Hetherington (ed.) What Makes a Philosopher Great?, London and NY: Routledge, pp. 30–47. Lai, K and Chiu, WW 2013, “Ming in the Zhuangzi Neipian: Enlightened Engagement”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 40, no. 3–4, pp. 527–543. Lai, K and Chiu, WW (eds.) 2019, Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi, CEACOP East Asian Comparative Ethics, Politics and Philosophy of Law Series, London: Rowman and Littlefield International. Lenk, H and Paul, G (eds.) 1993, Epistemological Issues in Classical Chinese Philosophy, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Mair, V (ed.) 1983, Experimental Essays on the Chuang-Tzu, Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press. Nagel, T 1971, “The Absurd”, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, no. 20, pp. 716–27. Raphals, L 2019, “Wheelright Bian: A Difficult Dao”, in K Lai and WW Chiu (eds.) Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi, CEACOP East Asian Comparative Ethics, Politics and Philosophy of Law Series, London: Rowman and Littlefield International, pp. 129–42.

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Karyn Lai Valmisa, M 2019, “The Happy Slave Isn’t Free: Relational Autonomy and Freedom in the Zhuangzi”, Philosophy Compass, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 1–15. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12569 [Accessed 1 May 2021]. Zhuangzi Yinde ⟪莊子引得⟫ (A Concordance to Zhuangzi). 1956. Hong, Ye (ed.) 洪業主編. Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement no. 20. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Ziporyn, B (ed.) 2020, Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings, Indianapolis/Cambridge, USA: Hackett Publishing.

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4 ON TRANSFORMATIVE INSIGHT AS THE QUIETING OF VIEWS IN INDIAN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY Nāgārjuna as Master of Irony Antoine Panaïoti 4.1 Introduction This chapter explores a specific strand in Indian Buddhism, namely that which regards the quieting of all views as the highest form of insight (prajñ ā; Pā li: paññ ā ).1 My principal contention will be that the philosophical teaching which was developed to provide this seemingly paradoxical conception of insight with a theoretical foothold of sorts – namely Nāgā rjuna’s doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā ) – is best understood as an ironic maneuver. I will further argue that putting Nāgā rjuna’s philosophy to practice involves committing oneself to a program of radical self-transformation in and through the cultivation of ironic detachment vis-à-vis all of one’s views and beliefs. This chapter proceeds in four steps. In Sections 4.2 and 4.3, I explore the ideal of relinquishing all views qua highest form of insight as it manifests in canonical Pā li literature, with a special focus on the poems contained in the early (i.e., fifth to fourth century B.C.E.) Aṭṭhakavagga portion of the Sn. In Section 4.4, I examine the teaching of emptiness and its connection to the ideal of ‘quieting all views’ as it is set out first in turn-of-the-era Prajñ āp āramit ā Mah āyā na texts, then in Nā g ā rjuna’s (second century C.E.) principal philosophical treatises, the MMK and VV. In Section 4.5, I discuss the crucial role of what I call N āg ārjunian irony in both the propounding of Nā g ā rjuna’s central teaching and the type of self-transformation that it is designed to call forth. In Section 4.6, finally, I argue that my interpretation carries us above and beyond the false dilemma between construing emptiness as therapy versus theory, particularly as this is set up in Tom Tillemans’ recent truth-deflationist interpretation of early Madhyamaka thought (2017).

4.2  Thirsting, Ego, and the Relinquishing of Views in the Pā li Canon According to the Mah āvagga section of the Pā li canon’s Vinaya division,2 the historical Buddha, Siddhā rtha Gautama (ca. fifth century B.C.E.), made it very clear in the first teaching he gave to his earliest disciples that suffering (dukkha) represents the basic problem facing all sentient beings (V I.10).3 This text and others like it tell us that the Buddha was also adamant that suffering could be brought to cessation (nirodha) through a thorough transformation of the subject’s DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-6

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relationship to self and world.4 This, he taught, could be achieved through the cultivation or practice (bh āvan ā ) of the so-called noble eightfold path (ariya a ṭṭha ṅgika magga), a demanding program of self-transformation in which philosophical insight (paññ ā ), ethical conduct (s īla), and meditation training (sam ādhi) are meant to complement and reinforce one another.5 The Buddha’s optimistic prognosis, this same source reports, rests on his incisive insight into the psychological ground6 or ‘source’ (samudaya) of mental distress. It is the unhealthy attitude of ‘thirsting’ (ta ṇh ā ) that pervades and defines benighted beings’ mode of engaging self and world which, according the Buddha, is responsible for the turmoil and discontent that suffuses ordinary existence.7 Such thirsting comes in three forms, namely (a) thirsting after objects of pleasure (k āma-ta ṇh ā ), (b) thirsting after the arising or persistence of desired entities/events/states-ofaffairs (bhava-ta ṇh ā ), and (c) thirsting after the cessation or destruction of undesired entities/ events/states-of-affairs (vibhava-ta ṇh ā ) (V I.10; SN IV.421). Bringing such threefold thirsting to cessation by treading the eightfold path with rigor and determination is thus, according to the Buddha, required if one is to bring mental distress to cessation. From here we are but one step away from what may be described as the properly philosophical dimension of the Buddha’s teaching. For indeed, ‘thirsting’ does not merely denote an affective stance; it is also said to bear an essential relation with specific forms of ideation – or, in the language of the Pā li canon, specific ‘views’ (di ṭṭhi) or ‘conceptions’ (samanupassan ā ). These concern the ‘self ’ (attan; Sanskrit: ātman). Thus, in a short yet important discourse entitled ‘The Path Sutta’ (Pa ṭipad ā Sutta), the Buddha provides a list of the various ways in which a subject may conceive of the evanescent physical and mental events that co-constitute her as an ‘empirical person’ in such a way as to sustain the fiction of an enduring, substantial self, and then declares these to be the ‘set of conceptions leading to the source of suffering’ (dukkhasamudaya-g āmin ī samanupassan ā ) (SN III.44).8 Bearing in mind that the phrase ‘source of suffering’ (dukkha-samudaya) is consistently glossed as ‘ta ṇh ā’ throughout the Pā li canon (e.g., at V I.10), what the Buddha appears to be saying here is that the delusion that I exist as a stable, enduring self is inextricably tied to the ‘thirsting’ that turns my life into the nightmare that it is.9 But there is a silver lining here. As the Buddha goes on to explain in this Sutta, it is possible for me to bring suffering to cessation provided that I am successful in overcoming all forms of self-identification with the various physical and mental events that co-constitute me as an empirical person, viz., the so-called ‘five constituents’ (pañca khand ā ) of (1) physical form (r ūpa), (2) feeling (vedan ā ), (3) conceptualization (saññ ā ), (4) volitional dispositions (sa ṃkh āra), and (5) consciousness (viññ āna).10 What is on offer here is the promise of thoroughgoing transformation through philosophical insight into the nature of self hood. Come to know the truth about what you are (or what you are not), and you will be set free. Such, in a nutshell, is the Buddha’s message. Small wonder, then, that the permanent self – and more specifically the importance of overcoming it as a pernicious delusion – represents the central theme in the second set of teachings the Buddha is said to have propounded immediately after teaching his earliest disciples about suffering and its source (V I.13–14; SN III.66–67).11

4.3  The Epistemological Implications of the No-self Teaching in Early Buddhism The textual evidence at hand suggests that Early Buddhist practitioners, authors, and thinkers took this fundamental idea of ‘no-self ’ in two very different directions. In brief, some embarked on a quest to discover and endorse correct views (samm ā-diṭṭhi), while the others strove instead to 50

On Transformative Insight as the Quieting of Views in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Nāgārjuna as Master of Irony

relinquish all views. This section is concerned with examining each of these two strands of early Buddhism in turn. What was for roughly the four centuries after the Buddha’s death the dominant (and apparently hardly contested) way of responding to the no-self doctrine involved developing detailed accounts of the constitutive elements of the world as it is experienced by sentient beings – i.e., ‘dhamma-s’ (Sanskrit: ‘dharma-s’) – and of how these are causally related. The original motives, here, appear to have been (a) to establish beyond doubt that, contrary to appearances, no enduring self is to be found anywhere in the world of experience, and (b) to provide meditation practitioners with phenomenological-cum-conceptual roadmaps to assist them in validating and thoroughly internalizing this basic insight (thereby bringing thirsting, and with it suffering, to cessation). This kind of taxonomic project is central to the philosophical traditions known as Abhidharma (Pā li: Abhidhamma).12 The basic categories Ābhidharmika taxonomists invoked were the five constituents of experience (listed above), the six senses bases (āyatana), and the eighteen elements of cognition (dh ātu), all of which the Buddha had discussed at length in his teachings. Starting with these broad categories, they built complex maps of a lived-world bereft of self. Roughly around the turn of the era, certain schools of Abhidharma – most notably the Vaibhāṣika Sarvā stivāda – began to conceive of this project as ontological rather than merely taxonomical (Cox 2004). Getting Abhidharma right was reconceptualized as working out the correct view as to what actually exists and how causal laws actually operate in the mind-independent world. A sharp division, the Vaibhāṣika Sarvā stivāda taught, separates the ‘substantially existent’ (dravya-sat) constituents of reality (dharma) endowed with an ‘intrinsic nature’ (svabh āva) from those entities that, as contingent aggregates of these, were only conceptually existent (prajñaptisat) (Cox 2004; Dhammajoti 2009; Williams 1980, 1981). The latter had purchase only from the standpoint of so-called conventional truth (samv ṛti-satya), while the former alone were to be accepted as real from the standpoint of so-called ultimate truth (param ārtha-satya).13 Organized around a robustly metaphysical reality/appearance opposition, this dominant form of turn-ofthe-era Abhidharma thought was committed to a full-fledged realist ontology, the details of which were the object of vigorous philosophical debates. And the stakes were very high indeed, for embracing the correct metaphysical view was, from these Ābhidharmikas’ perspective, essential to undermining the delusion of self and, through such radical self-transformation, securing peace of mind. A very different take on the ‘no-self ’ teaching finds expression in the Aṭṭhakavagga section of the Sn, which contains a short collection of poems which scholars of early Indian Buddhism regard as the most ancient of Pā li compositions (Gómez 1976; Shulman 2017). This appears to have been far less popular; in fact, for all we know, it may very well have remained ‘dormant’ for several centuries before blossoming again in the Early Classical period. In the Aṭṭhakavagga poems, the Buddhist sage is described as a person who relinquishes all views (diṭṭhi), doctrines (dhamma), and theories (kappa), seeing these as mere expressions of what we now refer to as ‘ego.’ Consider the following exemplary verses from this striking body of texts:14 Sn 787:

Sn 796:

Only those who are involved with theories (dhamma) enter a debate (vāda). How and by means of what could an uninvolved (an ūpaya) person argue? For him, there is nothing that is either ‘held’ (atta) or ‘rejected’ (niratta). He has cleansed himself from all views (diṭṭhi) here in this world. When a person in this world places something high above, settling in views which he considers to be ‘supreme’ (uttara), then he calls all other views ‘inferior.’ In this way, he fails to go beyond argumentation (vivāda).

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Antoine Panaïoti Sn 841, 843:

Relying on views and constantly asking questions, you become infatuated with that which you hold on to and thus you do not understand even the smallest idea! You perceive everything through a veil of stupidity (momuhata). […] Why should the pure one (br āhma ṇa) say ‘this is the truth’? With what should he quarrel, saying ‘this is a lie’? He for whom there is neither ‘equal’ nor ‘unequal,’ with what shall he start a debate?

Sn 847:

He who is unattached is not tied to what he perceives. He who has been freed by insight (paññ ā-vimutta) suffers from no delusions (moha). In contrast, those who grasp ideas and views fare in this world mocking each other continuously.

Sn 859–861:

He has put greed to an end, he is unselfish (amaccharin). The sage does not speak of himself as being among the superior ones, nor among the mediocre ones, nor among the inferior ones. He does not adopt a theory (kappa), so there is no point in theorizing about him. […] He claims to nothing as his own in this world. He does not grieve when something stops existing. He does not thrust himself into doctrines. He, indeed, is the one we called ‘pacified.’15

These verses largely speak for themselves. On the ideal of the Buddhist sage which they put forward, overcoming the delusion of self goes hand-in-hand with ceasing to advance and defend any view or doctrine as ‘the truth,’ which is here described as an object of unhealthy attachment. Self-transformation through philosophical insight implies the complete overcoming of pride, and thus the relinquishing of all views.16 A stance more opposed to the Ābhidharmikas’ is difficult to imagine. Unsurprisingly, the Aṭṭhakavagga poems do not provide anything coming close to a psychological explanation for why quieting the ego should entail relinquishing all views, as opposed to adopting correct theoretical views that make it possible to dismantle the falsehoods that plague sentient beings’ minds (in good realist Ābhidharmika fashion). Nor do they provide anything coming close to a philosophical account of what the relation might be between, on the one hand, rejecting the existence of unified, stable selves and, on the other hand, regarding all views as, in the final analysis, groundless. Most might be tempted to say that the authors of the Aṭṭhakavagga verses could not have provided such an account, on pain of both practical and logical self-contradiction. Be that as it may, this situation would dramatically change with the advent of Mahāyā na philosophical traditions.17

4.4  Emptiness and the Quieting of Views in Prajñāpāramit ā Literature and Nāgā rjuna Around the turn of the common era, what came to be known as Prajñ āp āramit ā texts began circulating in Indian Buddhist monasteries. As their emphatic title indicates – a straightforward translation of which would read ‘Apotheosis (p āramit ā ) of Insight (prajñ ā )’ – these early Mah āyā nist18 texts claimed to give expression to the highest form of Buddhist insight. Now, the notion that the ideas propounded in these texts were developed as a deliberate pushback against what some Buddhists in Early Classical India perceived as the Ābhidharmikas’ ontologizing excesses cannot be affirmed with any certainty. This is, at best, a plausible conjecture. Having said this, what is clear is that Prajñ āp āramit ā texts propound teachings that are squarely at odds with Abhidharma teachings, and in particular the Vaibh āṣika Sarvā stivādins.’ Uncoincidentally, Prajñ āp āramit ā texts also appear to re-affirm the ideal of self-transformation 52

On Transformative Insight as the Quieting of Views in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Nāgārjuna as Master of Irony

propounded in the Aṭṭhakavagga poems. Indeed, highest insight, here, is once more characterized by the dissolution of all views. Consider, in this connection, the central ideas imparted in the highly concise PpHS, a fourth century C.E. text which claims, plausibly, to contain the ‘heart’ (h ṛdaya) of Prajñ āp āramit ā teachings. The text kicks off with a report of the meditative experience of Avalokite ś vara, a figure held in high esteem in Mah āyā na Buddhism for his profound insight and limitless compassion. While deeply absorbed in mediation, Avalokite ś vara is said to have realized that the five constituents (Sanskrit: skandha) – which happen to be the five categories most widely used by the Ābhidharmikas’ as the basis for their taxonomies and ‘reality maps’ – are ‘empty of intrinsic nature’ (svabh āva- śūnya) (Vaidya 1961: 97). From here, things quickly unfurl. Emptiness (śūnyat ā ), we are told, is one and the same as physical form; in fact, it is one in the same with the four other constituents as well. This leads to the conclusion that all dharma-s (i.e., the ‘building blocks,’ so to speak, of Classical Abhidharma ontology) are ‘characterized by emptiness’ (śūnyat ā -lak ṣana) (Vaidya 1961: 97). This in turn purportedly entails that they ‘are subject neither to arising nor to cessation, neither stained nor pure, neither deficient ( ūna) nor whole (parip ūr ṇa)’ (Vaidya 1961: 97). From the standpoint of emptiness, the text bafflingly continues, none of the five constituents exist, and neither do the six senses and their object (another set of categories central to Ābhidharmika ontology). This also applies to suffering, its source (thirsting), its cessation (the destruction of thirsting), and the path leading to it, as well as to knowledge ( jñ āna) and to spiritual attainments (prāptitva) (Vaidya 1961: 97). All of the Buddha’s teachings, in short, appear to be washed away in the torrent of emptiness, such that true discernment implies the quieting of all views. And yet it is precisely the cultivation of this supreme form of insight, the Sūtra concludes, that sages throughout the ages have relied on to cut through ‘mental obstructions’ (citt āvara ṇa) and transcend all ‘errors’ (viparyā sa) (Vaidya 1961: 97). Roughly two centuries after the appearance of the earliest Prajñ āp āramit ā texts emerged one of the most important figures in the history of Buddhist thought, the Central Indian monk, scholar, philosopher, and founder of the Madhyamaka school of thought Nā g ā rjuna.19 In his magnum opus, the MMK, Nā g ā rjuna seeks to systematize and provide a theoretical underpinning of sorts to the baffling teachings imparted in the Prajñ āp āramit ā texts20 and thus also, mutatis mutandis, for the ethical vision imparted in the Aṭṭhakavagga poems.21 Indeed, Nā g ā rjuna’s central goal in this monument of technical argumentative prowess is rigorously to defend the basic notion which, according to the PpSH, occurred to Avalokiteśvara while he was deeply absorbed in meditation, namely that all possible objects of thought (and thus also of knowledge) are ‘empty of intrinsic nature’ and thus, by the standards of the Vaibhāṣika Sarvā stivādins’ realist ontology, unreal. Though the details of the hundreds of highly technical arguments he constructs in the MMK are notoriously difficult to pin down (and beyond the scope of the present discussion),22 Nāg ā rjuna’s overall strategy can be described without great difficulty. This consists in a form of argumentative parasitism. Indeed, Nāg ā rjuna surveys all of the basic categories and concepts of Abhidharma ontology, and unrelentingly presses upon his interlocutor the insurmountable theoretical difficulties (read: patent and irresolvable contradictions) that arise when we think through to their logical conclusions the implications of conceiving of any formal object of thought (or ‘thing’) as (1) self-identical, (2) essentially separate from the other such objects/things with which it purports to bear merely contingent relations, and (3) possessed of an unchanging ‘intrinsic nature’ or svabh āva (to be clear: Nāg ā rjuna obviously thinks these three properties stand and fall together). 53

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The upshot of Nā g ā rjuna’s demonstrations is that all things must, in the final analysis, be thought of as ‘empty’ (śūnya). In positive terms, the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyat ā ) states that, to the extent that ‘things’ have any existence – bearing in mind, here, that Nā g ā rjuna knew full well that the very notion of ‘thinghood’ does not, strictly speaking, survive his critical analyses – this consists in being nexuses of dependently co-originated (prat ītya-samutpanna) factors or events (MMK XXIV.19; VV 22, Autocommentary). Such universal dependent co-origination (prat ītya-samutp āda) is the closest we get to an ‘ultimate truth’ (param ārtha-satya) in Madhyamaka thought. In negative terms, this same ‘ultimate truth’ simply states that no ‘thing’ exists in the manner in which we ordinarily think things must exist (and in the manner in which realist ontology insists that their substantial constituents exist). It is in precisely this sense that we can say, with the PpHS and a wealth of other Prajñ āp āramit ā texts, that all ‘things’ are ‘subject neither to arising nor cessation, neither pure nor stained, etc.’, that neither the five skandha-s, nor the six senses, nor their objects, nor suffering, nor thirsting, nor even knowledge itself actually exist. As for the domain of conventional truths (samv ṛti-satya), this, for Nāgārjuna, is somewhat less austere. In fact, it is a luxuriant field populated by just about everything you and I are familiar with – mid-sized objects, human individuals of various genders, trees, animals, earth, sky, and sea – as well, more importantly yet, as the key concepts of the early Buddhist teachings – suffering, thirsting, the eightfold path, the Buddha himself, his Teaching, the Buddhist Community, etc.23 Nāgārjuna goes so far as to explain that it is only by virtue of being dependently co-originated and thus empty of intrinsic nature that things could be as they appear to be in everyday experience: ‘Everything holds when emptiness holds; nothing holds when emptiness doesn’t’ (MMK XXIV.14).24 As Nāgārjuna’s early commentators make a point of stating explicitly, even the kinds of things theorists think it is useful to talk about (properties versus that in which they inhere, contingent qualities versus essences, particulars versus universals (or tokens versus types), valid versus invalid syllogisms, etc.) survive in the domain of conventional truth.25 Of key concern to Nāgārjuna, however, is that we acknowledge that all of this (i.e., what we talk about in everyday life, the basic theoretical constructs of Buddhism, analytic distinctions of various kinds, etc.) is devoid of any ontological grounding and should, accordingly, be regarded as nothing more than the product of conventions (linguistic, social, practical, technical, therapeutic, etc.) which, though neither entirely arbitrary nor unconstrained by what experience teaches us, are nevertheless heavily contingent on sentient beings’ goals, needs, and aspirations. Regard any of these items or categories as ‘real’ – in the sense of bearing properties (1) to (3), above –and you shall immediately become a candidate for painfully thorough confutation; make any claim to ‘possess the truth’ about entity E’s mode of existence as an ‘isolated thing,’ and it shall be obvious that you fall gravely short of genuine insight. Emptiness, Nāg ā rjuna thus writes, dissolves all conceptual proliferation (prapañca) and dichotomizing thought (vikalpa) (MMK XVIII.5, 9, and 11). In that these presuppose existence through intrinsic nature, emptiness reveals the groundlessness of all and any ‘theory’ or ‘view’ (Sanskrit: dṛṣṭi) (MMK XXVII.29–30). For indeed, insofar as ‘holding a view’ implies ‘firmly believing P’ and that this in turn implies ‘taking P to adequately describe how things really stand concerning substantially existent entities E, E′, etc.’, the full realization of emptiness effectively entails the quieting of all views qua supreme form of insight, à la Aṭṭhakavagga. But what, we may now ask, does any of this have to do with overcoming of the delusion of self hood? The short answer is that it has everything to do with overcoming this delusion. To wit, as Nāg ā rjuna’s early commentators quickly saw, insight into śūnyat ā is really just a matter of thinking the non-existence of a stable, unified self to its logical conclusion. Nāg ā rjuna, they aver, had understood (a) that the Ābhidharmikas’ delusional construst of ‘intrinsic nature’ is to ‘factors of 54

On Transformative Insight as the Quieting of Views in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Nāgārjuna as Master of Irony

existence’ (dharma-s) what the delusional construct of ‘self ’ is to ‘persons’ (pudgala), and (b) that the former derives, in the manner of a projection of sorts, from the latter.26 Genuinely overcoming the delusion of ātman, on this line of thought, implies deconstructing the fiction of svabh āva. And this is true at both at the theoretical level of philosophical reflection and at the experiential level of the psychology and phenomenology of view-formation – which meditating on emptiness is supposed to fuse into a seamless unity.27 Thus, Nāg ā rjuna effectively provides us in one grand motion with those two things which, as noted above, are not on offer in the Aṭṭhakavagga, namely: (1) a psychological explanation for why quieting the ego entails relinquishing all views and (2) a philosophical account of what the relation is between, on the one hand, rejecting the existence of unified, stable selves and, on the other, regarding all views as, in the final analysis, groundless. (1) goes something like this: quieting ‘ego’ means not just giving up on the fiction of self (at a deep, experiential level) but also giving up (at a no less deep, experiential level) on the fiction of ‘intrinsic existence’ that underpins all views. (2), for its part, straightforwardly follows from the principles (a) that ‘svabh āva’ is to ‘dharma’ what ‘ātman’ is to ‘pudgala’ and (b) that it is the same psychological mechanisms of reification, hypostasis, and the like, that are responsible for these twin delusions. For this entails that ātman and svabh āva, philosophically considered, stand and fall together. This in turn appears to provide a rational ground for the relinquishing of all views recommended in the Aṭṭhakavagga poems and Prajñ āp āramit ā texts alike. From here, however, we are rapidly lead to a series of very difficult questions: Isn’t emptiness to be accepted as the ‘ultimate truth’? Doesn’t Nāg ā rjuna expect us to hold the view that ‘All things are, in the final analysis, empty’? Isn’t emptiness just another theory? Indeed, how else are we to interpret Nāg ā rjuna’s seemingly metaphysical claim to the effect that emptiness is the condition of possibility for the world of experience being the way it is? And how, more generally, can global unbelief ever admit of a rational ground? In fact, this problem is adumbrated in a critical Aṭṭhakavagga verse. This reads as follows: Sn 792:

The person who has taken on vows of his own fancy gets excited and depressed as a consequence of his attachment to concepts (saññ ā ). But he who possesses true knowledge (vidvan), who has understood the True Doctrine (dhamma) thanks to the true teachings (vedehi), he gets neither excited nor depressed, his insight is broad (my emphasis).

It turns out, then, that there is a definitive teaching according to the authors of the Aṭṭhakavagga. But isn’t this in utter contradiction with the spirit and letter of this text? And isn’t Nāg ā rjuna likewise propounding a self-contradictory teaching in presenting the view of emptiness as providing a rational justification for the quieting of all views?

4.5 Nāgā rjuna as Master of Irony The problems which we hit upon at the end of Section 4.5 admit of an elegant solution. The trick, in broad outline, is to come to appreciate the ironic character of Nāg ā rjuna’s teaching (and thus also of Sn 792). Reading Nāg ā rjuna as a master of irony, as I shall argue, immunizes him against the dual charge of practical and logical inconsistency. But it does more than this: it also allows us to gain a better understanding what kind of transformation is on offer in the Madhyamaka Buddhist tradition. This consists in the cultivation of a specific type of irony as an essential component of self-healing. 55

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Let us begin by examining those pivotal moments in his writings where Nāg ā rjuna ‘goes meta’ (if I may be pardoned the use of this somewhat inelegant phrase) and tells us about how his teaching of emptiness ought – and ought not – to be understood: MMK VII.7–8:

If any non-empty entity (a śūnya) existed, then it might make sense to say that there exist empty entities (śūnya). But nothing non-empty exists, so why would there be anything empty? The victorious (i.e., exalted Buddhist sages) taught emptiness as a remedy against all views (sarva-d ṛṣṭīn āṃ […] ni ḥ sara ṇa). But those for whom emptiness is itself a view, they are called incurable (asādhya).

MMK XXIV.18a–c:

It is dependent co-arising that we call ‘emptiness.’ This is [but] a conventional designation (prajñaptir up ādāya) (i.e., a façon de parler).

VV 29:

If I had any thesis (pratijñ ā ), then indeed the fault (do ṣa) (of self-refutation) would apply to me. But seeing as I do not put forward a thesis, this fault does not apply to me.

Nāg ā rjuna is adamant that the proposition ‘All things are empty of intrinsic nature’ ought not to be understood as a traditional philosophical thesis, that ‘emptiness’ is a mere façon de parler. How can we make sense of these self-effacing gestures? Well, let the domain of ultimate truths be the set of all propositions that adequately describe entities possessed of intrinsic nature (and the relations between these). Nāg ā rjuna’s ‘thesis’ is that the set of ultimate truths is an empty set – and that it is empty even of his own claim to that effect, for the simple reason that his ‘thesis’ does not purport to describe anything in terms of ‘intrinsic nature’ and the like. To wit, from the standpoint of supreme insight, there are no ‘entities’ lacking or possessing ‘intrinsic nature,’ there is neither emptiness nor non-emptiness, and the very notion of an ‘ultimate truth’ as the Vaibhāṣika Sarvā stivādins conceive of it should simply be disposed of. Nāg ā rjuna’s sixth to seventh century C.E. commentator Candrak ī rti speaks, in this connection, of the ‘emptiness of emptiness’ (śūnyat ā- śūnyat ā ) (MA VI.186). The idea, here, is that Nāg ā rjuna’s basic teaching is a self-dissolving therapeutic intervention, the relevance and appropriateness of which is contextually dependent on sentient beings’ unhappy proclivity to hypostatize and reify what is given to them in the world of experience. Emptiness, in short, is not so much a view (in the strict sense of the term) as a corrective. A helpful way of making sense of the foregoing, as submitted earlier, is to understand Nāg ā rjuna as a master of irony. Note, before going any further, that I am not the first scholar to suggest that irony might play an important role in Buddhist thought and practice. Such a suggestion was initially made by Mark Siderits in his 2003 Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons. Siderits argues that we should think of Buddhist moral agents committed to a (pre-Mahāyā nist) reductionist view in the philosophy of personal identity as partaking in a form of ‘ironic engagement’ with other sentient beings, whereupon suffering is ironically conceived of as inhering in substantial ‘persons’ (even though they know such ‘persons’ to be conceptual fictions) (2003: 106–9).28 More recently, Stephen Harris has developed an entirely orthogonal argument – indeed, Harris makes no mention of Siderits – for a partial rapprochement between Madhyamaka thought and Rortyan ‘ironism’ with a view to comparing the relation between antifoundationalism and ethics in American Pragmatism and Mahāyā na Buddhism (2010). What I propose to do here, however, is altogether different from what my predecessors29 have done. First, though it certainly has a bearing on interpersonal ethics (very much a story for another day), what I am primarily 56

On Transformative Insight as the Quieting of Views in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Nāgārjuna as Master of Irony

concerned with is irony as it relates to ‘thought, discourse, and belief ’ (as broadly construed as possible). Second, I will be far more systematic in comparing and contrasting what I call ‘Nāg ā rjunian irony’ to other types/concepts of irony. Third, my exposition will culminate in the bold claim that cultivating Nāg ā rjunian irony is essential to achieving the kind of self-healing, -emancipation and -transformation that is on offer in Madhyamaka Buddhism. Now, the idea that Nāg ā rjuna is a ‘master of irony’ is admittedly, in and of itself, rather vague. Sure, Nāg ā rjuna signals that he doesn’t entirely mean what he asserts – on a particular (if very natural) understanding of what asserting propositions is taken to involve at any rate. And in this sense, he may indeed be described as making use of irony of some kind or another. But precisely what concept of irony, my more demanding reader might ask, is supposed to be at work here? For indeed, there is no reason to assume, and good reasons to doubt, that there exists a single type (and thus concept) of irony. What’s more, given the specificities of Nāg ā rjuna’s rather peculiar philosophical program, it is safe to assume that ‘Nāg ā rjunian irony’ – if such a construct even holds any promise – will very much be its own beast. Two questions need to be answered to address these perfectly legitimate concerns, namely: 1 What does Nāg ā rjuna’s irony have in common with other historically significant concepts of philosophical irony, namely so-called Socratic irony30 and Richard Rorty’s ironism 31? 2 How, more generally, does Nāg ā rjuna’s differ from these other forms of irony? With a view to answering (1), let us begin by determining what Wittgensteinian ‘family resemblances’ (1953, §67) various concepts of philosophical irony may have in common. To begin, I think it is uncontroversial to say that all types of irony are closely connected to pretence. To make use of irony unavoidably involves pretending of some kind or another (though the inverse certainly doesn’t hold). Thus, just as Socrates, who pretends that he is ignorant, or the Rortyan ironist, who pretends like she’s more confident in the adequacy of her vocabulary and values than she actually is, Nāg ā rjuna pretends as though emptiness is the ‘last word’ in philosophy even though it is no ‘word’ at all. Now, I think we can go further here and say that such pretence is always a matter of achieving some goal. Another common thread uniting various forms of irony, I submit, is precisely one such goal, namely that of establishing distance – viz., between the ‘asserter’ and what she ‘asserts.’ Irony, we may say, serves to create and maintain a ‘gap’ of sorts – to open up a certain measure of emotional ‘space’ – so that I am not so strongly ‘wed’ to what I assert or assent to. My final suggestion – with respect to answering (1) – is that the ‘pretence’ and ‘distance’ aspects of things are, in fact, inextricably intertwined. Phenomenologically (and/or psychologically) considered, irony’s epistemic dimension – whereupon what is ‘asserted’ does not represent the actual belief states of the ‘asserter’ – and its affective dimension – whereupon a certain detachment vis-à-vis what is asserted or assented to is achieved – are, I suggest, the two sides of a single coin. Moving on to (2), it is when we come to the other function most commonly associated with irony that the Nāg ā rjunian variety parts company with its Socratic cousin. What I have in mind, here, is the notion that irony serves to mislead or to deceive one’s interlocutor, which is indeed what Socratic irony seems to be all about.32 Nāg ā rjuna’s irony has the opposite function: his goal throughout is to show his interlocutors the way out of the confusion and delusion in which they are trapped. Thus, Nāg ā rjuna even calls attention to his use of irony to limit the chances that his interlocutors will be misled by his words (Socrates would never even think of doing this). Irony, on this same line of thought, is often seen as entailing some form or another of insincerity or inauthenticity, which, again, seems à propos in connection to the way Socrates wields it. But Nāg ā rjuna is by no means insincere or inauthentic. He does not lie. His words do not ‘hide the 57

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truth.’ As a discursive intervention designed to operate at the meta-ontological-cum-psychological level, then self-dissolve, emptiness doesn’t ‘veil’ anything that may lay ‘behind’ or ‘beneath’ it. In fact, its very self-dissolution is a self-confirmation and thus self-affirmation. Likewise, far from being inauthentic, Nāg ā rjuna’s irony is, on the contrary, an expression of his authenticity. Adopting an ironic stance vis-à-vis the emptiness of ‘things,’ their dependent co-arising, and all the other ways one may give expression to the so-called ‘ultimate truth’ is indeed the only way Nāg ā rjuna can remain true, both to himself and to his message. So much for the fundamental differences between Socratic and Nāg ā rjunian irony. It would be a mistake, albeit an easy one to commit, to regard Nāg ā rjuna’s irony as the strict converse of Socratic irony. For, on the face of it, Nāg ā rjuna’s ‘feigned knowledge’ appears to be the antipode of Socrates’ ‘feigned ignorance.’ Adopt a Buddhist perspective on this question, however, and the appearance of a strict opposition quickly dissolves. Indeed, ‘ignorance’ (avidyā ), in Madhyamaka philosophy, is regarded as what is most fundamentally responsible for our confused tendency to grasp at persons and entities as bearers of a substantial core and essence. Such ignorance is thus closely tied to thirsting, the delusion of self, and all of their discursive outgrowths. Nāg ā rjuna’s ‘feigned knowledge’, then, is also, from a Buddhist perspective, a form of feigned ignorance. Putting a surprising Buddhistic twist on to the practice and spirit of the εἴρων of Classical Greek drama, Nāg ā rjuna is effectively at once pretending that he knows less and that he knows more than he does in ‘propounding’ the ‘doctrine’ of emptiness. This, one could say, is necessary if Nāg ā rjuna’s message is to infiltrate his public’s deluded minds.33 Still on (2), the most important difference between Nāg ā rjuna’s and Rorty’s conceptions of irony turns on the private/public distinction.34 Irony, Rorty writes, is ‘essentially a private matter’ (1989: 87). Thus, the Rortyan ironist’s systemic circumspection about any possible ‘final vocabulary,’ awareness of the historical contingency of all norms and values (even those she happens to cherish), and commitment to free, open-ended, and individualistic aestheticist self-creation are and ought to remain, according to Rorty, a personal matter. ‘Going public’ on one’s radical historicism-cum-nominalism, Rorty thinks, risks corroding social trust in important public institutions and undermining human solidarity.35 Nāg ā rjuna’s irony, by contrast, is by no means such a strictly private affair. Quite the contrary, it is central to the way in which his message is delivered. In fact, it is the only mode of discourse allowing for the fully coherent expression of his message. What is more, Nāg ā rjuna is forthcoming about his use of irony (both as a means of rational self-defense and as a way of ‘driving home’ his message, two moves that can only artificially be distinguished), and he clearly recommends the cultivation of irony among his followers (both as an essential hermeneutic instrument and as part of the path of self-healing). In fact, if Nāg ā rjuna calls attention to his ‘irony,’ it is among other things to limit the risks of his message leading to the embrace of the same basic kind of nihilism Rorty is worried about (to wit: take emptiness to be the ‘last word’ in philosophy, and it is only natural to conclude that, insofar as nothing is real, nothing matters).36 Unlike the Rortyan ironist, then, Nāg ā rjuna’s irony is essential to his mode of ‘engaging the public sphere’ so to speak. Having said this, if we turn to the recommendation of irony that forms an essential component of Nāg ā rjuna’s message to his public, it becomes evident that, as happened when comparing it to the Socratic, unexpected affinities emerge between Madhyamaka irony and its Rortyan counterpart. For indeed, Nāg ā rjuna does not only teach with irony, thereby performatively instructing us in its art; he also encourages us to cultivate an ironic stance, not only in connection to our interpretation of and assent to his teachings, but with respect to all of our professed beliefs (forget not, after all, that all views, according to this strand of Buddhism, are to be relinquished in transformative insight). Nāg ā rjuna, in other words, invites us to self-transform by becoming 58

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masters of irony ourselves. Here, irony as a mechanism of distancing and detachment is of central importance. Indeed, as the points I raise on the relation of ‘self ’ to ‘intrinsic nature’ at the end of Section 4.4 make clear, the cultivation of ironic detachment or distance relative to the propositions I assent to is essential to overcoming the delusion of self (as Madhyamaka philosophycum-psychology understands this process). Note, in this connection, that Rorty’s ironism is also very closely associated to the ideal of loosening up one’s sense of identity. Ironists, Rorty writes, are ‘never quite able to take themselves seriously because [they are] always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change, always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves”.37 The end-goals envisioned by Nāg ā rjuna and Rorty might be different – very quickly: the Rortyan ironist uses the detachment and self-distancing afforded by irony for the sake of ‘autonomy’ and (potentially narcissistic) self-creation, while the Madhyamaka ironist aims instead to gain liberation from the prison of suffering with a view of being better equipped to aiding others in doing the same – but in both cases irony represents a cure to the malady of over-rigid identity.

4.6  Emptiness as Therapy, Theory, or Both? I would like to close this essay by considering what I think would be the most compelling way of pushing back against the interpretation I have set out. In responding to this critique, I hope not only to reinforce my reading of Nāg ā rjuna as ironist but also to show how this interpretation allows us to move past the false dilemma which would have us choose between construing emptiness as ‘therapy’ versus ‘theory.’ Indeed, some may worry that my interpretation of Nāg ā rjuna as a master of irony makes him look like a mere ‘therapist’ bereft of any real interest in rational argumentation and the conclusions we may reach by engaging in it. On this line of thought, if Nāg ā rjuna were indeed just pretending to put forward a rationally supported view, then he would have no claim to the title of ‘philosopher.’ Likewise, if emptiness were a curative (ni ḥ sara ṇa) that merely postures as a ‘teaching,’ then it would have no claim to the title of ‘theory,’ and all the so-called arguments that are supposed to support it would really be ‘fake.’ For Tom Tillemans, the kind of ‘therapeutic Nāg ā rjuna’ that emerges from interpretations such as mine is but a ‘Derridean deconstructionis[t] avant la lettre,’ who makes no genuine contribution to philosophy whatsoever (2017: 120).38 For Tillemans and his fellow travelers, the antidote to such a misinterpretation consists in reading Nāg ā rjuna as committed to a deflationist theory of truth (Priest, Garfield, and Tillemans 2011; Tillemans 2017). This interpretation grows out of the so-called ‘semantic interpretation’ of the no-thesis stance Nāg ā rjuna adopts at VV 29 (cited and discussed in Section 4.5). On the semantic interpretation, what Nāg ā rjuna means when he says he has no thesis is simply that he is not making a claim that could be deemed true or false by the virtue of purported states of affairs among entities bearing intrinsic nature (Westerhoff 2009b). This, on the semantic interpretation, is Nāg ā rjuna’s way of signaling his principled opposition to semantic realism, which – as its name suggests – tells a realist story about the relation of language to world (or words to things). For Nāg ā rjuna, statements are not made true by virtue of corresponding to how things stand in an external or pre-linguistic world construed in metaphysically thick terms, i.e., a world purportedly populated by substantial entities possessed of intrinsic nature. Emptiness rules that out. But Tillemans thinks Nāg ā rjuna is nevertheless content to leave ‘statements of customary truth’ untouched (Tillemans 2017: 119). This is because such ‘statements of truth’ need not make any claim to faithfully represent a world of metaphysically real entities in order to have the purchase that they do.39 Indeed, as a truth-deflationist, Nāg ā rjuna invites us to realize that both everyday language and 59

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the everyday standards of verification which apply to distinguish lies from truths, accurate from fanciful statements, etc., are metaphysically non-committal. Abandon a realist semantics, embrace deflationism about truth, and we shall be able to ‘disentangle innocent truths from confused hypostatization’ (Tillemans 2017: 119). It is easy to see how this interpretation renders the role of irony entirely superfluous. Indeed, on Tillemans’ reading, emptiness, entities’ lack of intrinsic nature, the dependent co-origination of all things, etc., are all ‘innocent,’ metaphysically non-committal truths, which makes it unnecessary to read Nāg ā rjuna as an ironist. What is more, the truth-deflationist interpretation happily restores his reputation as a philosopher: emptiness is not ‘just therapy,’ but a (de/flat/ed) truth argued for in good faith; and Nāg ā rjuna, as a proponent avant la lettre of what has become a formidably popular view in contemporary analytic philosophy from Frege (1918) onward, is nothing short of a philosophical visionary. To get a sense of what is wrong with this pushback, I think we must begin by posing a series of simple questions concerning Nāg ā rjuna’s understanding of the role of ‘realist semantics’ (assuming for the sake of argument that he would have employed such language) in the human predicament. How easy does Nāg ā rjuna think it is to dispense with a ‘realist semantics’ in our ‘everyday lives’? How easily does he think it is for ordinary beings to cease interpretating statements under such a semantics? More to the point, would Nāg ā rjuna really have regarded ‘semantic realism’ as a mere ‘theory’ that a person may adopt or reject after reflection and deliberation? Does it not instead seem as though Nāg ā rjuna treats ‘semantic realism’ not as a theory, precisely, but as a part of the way the ordinary beings’ minds are ‘hard-wired’ – i.e., as a crucial component of suffering sentient beings’ ‘existential predicament’? Tillemans writes as though semantic realism is something that we can ‘just set aside’ or move on from, particularly from the moment another, better semantic theory is on offer: from the moment I realize that everyday truths about persons, tables, fruit, and the like are really metaphysically non-committal and thus ‘innocent,’ I can readily see that hypostatization is without rational ground; and from here I am but one step away from the abandonment of metaphysics and of all the sterile debates, confusions, and frustrations it gives rise to. This strikes me as very far from the spirit of Nāg ā rjuna’s oeuvre. Why, if this really were Nāg ā rjuna’s program of philosophical transformation, would I need to devote a lifetime (let alone several) to meditating on emptiness genuinely to internalize the Prajñ āp āramit ā Sūtras’ insights? And why would he claim that emptiness dissolves all discursive proliferation, concepts, and dichotomizing thoughts, such that all ‘things’ are revealed be neither arisen nor unarisen, neither annihilated nor non-annihilated, etc.? This can only be made sense only of if we regard implicit commitment to a realist semantics as an outgrowth of the delusion of self that benights the ordinary mind – and thus as part of the cognitive counterpart of thirsting. Realist semantics, on this line of thought, belongs to the very fabric of the ordinary mind; far from being the object of some ‘theoretical commitment,’ it expresses a broader affective, cognitive, behavioral, and existential posture that bears a direct relation to human suffering. Nāg ā rjuna seems utterly uninterested in developing a ‘correct’ semantic theory. Instead, all of his attention is turned to helping us overcome semantic realism as a form of mental derangement. As such, he clearly understands himself to be operating in context where this has not yet been removed. His task, then, is that of infiltrating everyday language, or everyday modes of conceptualization (read: conceptualization under a realist semantics). And it is in this task of infiltration that his irony is key.

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Thus, even if were to assume for the sake of argument that, on Nāg ā rjuna’s view, those who have fully recovered from the delusion of self were indeed truth-deflationists, it would nevertheless be clear that, insofar as Nāg ā rjuna regards realism as having the status of default semantics in everyday life, they would also have to be masters of irony for as long as they are not ‘fully healed’ – and, even after that, for as long as they continue to engage with other subjects’ views and beliefs. Perhaps it would in principle be possible to drop Nāg ā rjunian irony once all are liberated from the delusion of self. Note, however, that at that point, no one would need to talk about emptiness anymore. Until then, emptiness can and should be regarded as both theory and therapy.40 There is simply no good reason to think it can’t be both at once. Provided, of course, we’re willing to stomach a little irony.

Notes 1 All translations from Pā li and Sanskrit texts in this chapter are my own. When citing or discussing these, I use the standard abbreviations for the titles of the following primary source texts: MA = Madhyamak āvat āra of Candrak ī rti; MMK = M ūlamadhyamakak ārik ā of Nā g ā rjuna; MN = Majjhimanik āya; SN = Sa ṃyuttanik āya; PpHS = Prajñ āp āramit āh ṛdayas ūtra; Sn = Sutta Nip āta; V = Vinaya Piṭaka; VV = Vigrahavyāvartan ī of Nā g ā rjuna. 2 The Pā li Vinaya corpus is primarily concerned with the monastic discipline of the very ancient yet still extant Theravāda school of Buddhism. Its Mah āvagga section, however, opens with a brief biographical account of the Buddha’s life which begins with the night of his ‘awakening’ (bodhi) and proceeds to relate his early deeds and teachings qua ‘awakened one’ (buddha). These reports are corroborated by several other reports of the Buddha’s discourses as recorded in the Pā li canon’s Nik āya division. Such Pā li texts are the earliest extant records of the Buddha’s teachings (most were composed in the two to three centuries after the Buddha’s death in the fifth or fourth century). How accurate they are from a historical perspective is an open question which will in all likelihood never admit of a definitive answer. From a traditional Buddhist perspective, however, these reports (or their for all intents and purposes identical non-Pā li counterparts in the early scriptures of non-Theravāda traditions) are authoritative. 3 The pervasiveness of suffering in sentient beings’ existence is traditionally described as the first of the Buddha’s ‘four noble truths’ (catt āri ariya-sacc āni). In his first teaching, the Buddha insists that this fact of life is to be ‘fully understood’ (pariññeyya) by his disciples if they are to make any progress on the Buddhist path (cf. Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta) (IV.420–423). 4 This is the good news brought by the third ‘noble truth’ (V I.10; SN IV.421). 5 The existence of such a path constitutes the fourth ‘noble truth’ (V I.10; SN IV.421). The influential threefold division I allude to here is attributed not to the Buddha, but to Dhammadinn ā, a Buddhist nun said have set it out in a teaching to her former husband turned lay disciple (MN I.301). 6 Some might accuse me of anachronism in using such a phrase as ‘psychological ground’ to describe early Buddhist thought. I think this would be doubly misguided. First, a certain measure of anachronism is an unavoidable feature of intellectual history. Second, as I hope the following will make evident, there are good grounds to think that key components of Buddhism effectively constitute psychology avant la lettre. In what follows, I will make use of contemporary terms and phrases without fuss, happy to bite the bullet of (moderate) anachronism. 7 This is the second ‘noble truth’ (V I.10; SN IV.421). 8 Here, I am rendering a straight-up singular form in the Pā li (‘samanupassan ā ’; literally: ‘conception’) as a collective noun, viz., ‘set of conceptions.’ I take this to be justified by the fact that the Buddha has just listed no less than 20 ways in which an ordinary person may conceive of her existence as a permanent self. 9 On this critical point, see also Albahari (2006: 61–3) and Panaïoti (2012: 136–7). 10 True to his method of establishing symmetrical parallels, the Buddha describes not conceiving of one’s existence as a self in any of the 20 ways he has just listed as ‘the set of conceptions leading to the cessation of suffering’ (dukkha-nirodha-gāmin ī samanupassan ā ) (SN III.44). Note that the phrase ‘cessation of suffering’ (dukkhanirodha) is consistently glossed as ‘the complete dissolution and cessation of thirsting’ (ta ṇh āya asesa-vir āga-nirodha) throughout the Pā li canon (e.g., at V I.10). For a philosophically elegant

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Antoine Panaïoti account of how Buddhists analyze what I here call the ‘empirical person’ in terms of the previously listed ‘five constituents,’ see Ganeri (2012: 127–38). 11 The number of discourses in which the Buddha enjoins his disciples to dismantle the delusion of self are too numerous to be counted. For an analytically rigorous and exegetically scrupulous examination of the Buddha’s arguments against the existence of self as they appear in the Pā li canon, see Collins (1982: 95–110). 12 For two excellent general surveys of the Abhidharma philosophical program and its development in the centuries after the Buddha’s passing, see Gethin (1998, Chapter 8) (which focuses on Theravāda Abhidhamma) and Westerhoff (2018, Chapter 1) (which is broader in scope). 13 On the famous conventional versus ultimate truth distinction and its initial function as a hermeneutical device (cf. its transmutation into an ontological distinction at the Vaibh āṣika Sarvā stivādins’ hands), see Ganeri (2007: 59). 14 I have chosen to render these verses in English prose. I trust the reader will forgive me for not being up to the challenge of rendering them in the form of philosophically clear verse. 15 Other Aṭṭhakavagga verses similar in spirit to those I have cited include Sn 760, 799, 823–829, and 846. 16 Cf. Tom Tillemans’ incorrect assertion that such Sn verses ‘seem to be straightforwardly readable as [nothing more than] a prudential caution against bad debates’ (2017: 112). Indeed, it is clear that the authors of the Aṭṭhakavagga poems regarded the propensity to engage in philosophical disputation as symptomatic of the mental malady that afflicts us all. For a detailed, book-length study of Pā li Nik āya materials which (somewhat controversially) argues that the Aṭṭhakavagga take on ‘views’ faithfully expresses early Theravāda Buddhism’s final position on this matter, see Fuller (2005). 17 For a careful study of the ways in which the Aṭṭhakavagga poems effectively anticipate philosophical developments which would only come to the fore in the works of Classical Indian authors, see Gómez (1976). 18 The rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism is very closely associated to the appearance of these Sanskrit (or Hybrid Buddhist Sanskrit) texts, which set out ideas that are prima facie in tension with what is found in most of the teachings recorded in the Discourse (Nikāya/Āgama) and Abhidhamma/Abhidharma divisions of such Early, non-Mahāyānist Buddhist schools as the Theravāda or the Vaibhāṣika Sarvāstivāda (Mahāyānist nevertheless regard these as authoritative, yet superseded, in a way that recalls Christians’ sentiments toward the Tanakh). Jan Westerhoff is thus right to describe the emergence of the Mahāyāna as a ‘textual movement’ (2018: 85). 19 Nā g ā rjuna is regarded as the ‘second Buddha’ in a great number of Buddhist countries, where legends and hagiographic accounts of his life and deeds abound. The most authoritative (by the standard of modern historical research) biography of Nā g ā rjuna to date is Joseph Walser’s (2005) N āgārjuna in Context: Mah āyāna Buddhism and Early Indian Culture. While numerous writings are attributed to Nā g ā rjuna, in what follows I rely on the MMK and VV alone (his authorship of these texts being wholly uncontroversial). 20 For a classical treatment of the relation between early Prajñ āp āramit ā literature and the rise of Madhyamaka philosophy, see Williams (2009: Chapter 2). For a more recent (and briefer) take on these matters, see Westerhoff (2018: 84–95). 21 On the affinities and continuities between the Aṭṭhakavagga texts and Nā g ā rjuna’s philosophy, see Gómez (1976). 22 For a detailed exploration of these arguments, the reader should turn to Mark Siderits’ and Shōry ū Katsura’s elegant translation of and perspicuous commentary on the MMK, N āgārjuna’s Middle Way: M ūlamadhyamakak ārik ā (2013). For a more general philosophical analysis of Nā g ā rjuna’s project, see Westerhoff (2009a). 23 On this point, see, in particular, Chapter XXIV of the MMK. 24 One hears a clear echo of this claim in the final verse of Nā g ā rjuna’s VV: ‘All things prevail when emptiness prevails; nothing prevails when emptiness does not’ (70). See, also, MMK XXIV.36. 25 For a brief and helpful survey of these and other developments in Madhyamaka thought, see Westerhoff (2018: 120–38). A discussion of the main points of contention that fueled debates among Nā g ā rjuna’s commentators throughout the centuries – most notably the epistemic status and ontological implications of Nā g ā rjuna’s appeal to reductio ad absurdum (or, as they are known in the Sanskritic traditions, prasa ṅga) arguments – are, though not unrelated to its principal claim, beyond the scope of this chapter and will, therefore, not be discussed in these pages. 26 On this crucial insight and the fascinating discussions it gave rise to Indian Madhyamaka philosophy, see, in particular, Lopez (1988). 27 Indeed, genuinely embracing Madhyamaka philosophy – and thus seeking transformation through it – requires far more than merely accepting its teachings. Rather, one must internalize these through

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On Transformative Insight as the Quieting of Views in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Nāgārjuna as Master of Irony sustained meditative practice. In the language of the third century C.E. Indian Buddhist philosopher Harivarman, the insight that arises through listening (śruta) and thinking (cinta) only comes to fruition in ‘meditation-formed insight’ (bh āvan āmay ī prajñ ā ), (Shastri 1975: 510). 28 I take this up, albeit with insufficient care, in my 2012 monograph, Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy (153–7). For a recent discussion of Siderits’ proposal, see MacGarrity (2015). 29 Wherein I include my 27-year-old self, author of Nietzsche and Buddhist philosophy. 30 This, in broad outline, refers to the ignorance Socrates feigned in discussing various philosophical matters with his contemporaries, and particularly the epistemically unhumble Sophists. For contemporary work on this classical construct, see Griswold (2002), Vlastos (1991), and Wolfsdorf (2007) – though Søren Kierkeegard’s 1841 treatment remains an incontournable (Hong and Hong (ed. and trans.) 1992). 31 See, in particular, Rorty’s fairly idiosyncratic, yet influential conception of irony as set out in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (1989). This, in a nutshell, denotes the attitude to language, self, and world of modern subjects with a strong enough sense of history to accept the radical contingency of all things, institutions, and values, and thus also a hard albeit open-ended semantic contextualism (xv; 73–74). Note, in closing, that Rorty’s ironism, historically considered, is not entirely dissociable from Socrates’, seeing as it may be described as a late outgrowth of the German Romantics’ mediations on irony, Socratic and otherwise (concerning these, see, in particular de Man 1996). 32 In that Socrates often appears to mock his interlocutors through his use of irony, this is not unrelated – though certainly not reducible – to what the German Romantic theorists of irony, especially Friedrich Schlegel (Firchow (trans.) 1971), had to say about its relation to wit (hence irony’s relation to sarcasm, parody, satire, and pastiche in the contemporary popular imaginary). 33 Note that Socrates’ irony also serves the function of helping him ‘infiltrate’ his interlocutors’ mental and conceptual landscape. 34 I am indebted to Harris (2010) for bringing this point to my attention, though my focus here is, as mentioned earlier, very different to his. 35 Unless, of course, one ‘goes public’ on irony so as to ‘put it in its place’ and constrain its dissolutive power, which is arguably precisely what Rorty proposes to do in publishing Contingency, Irony, Solidarity. 36 Consider, in this connection, Paul de Man’s concerns about not ‘knowing where to stop’ with irony: ‘pursued to its end an ironic temper can dissolve everything in an infinite chain of solvents’ (1996: 166). In that emptiness is not just to be ‘stated’ with irony, but is also – as I explain in more detail later – an invitation to cultivate irony down to the very roots of one’s being, this kind of concern was unsurprisingly also on Nāg ā rjuna’s mind: ‘Badly understood, emptiness destroys the dim-witted, as would a mishandled snake or a miscast spell’ (MMK XXIV.11). Designed as it is to show that Buddhist ethics and practice are not threatened by the teaching of emptiness, the single purpose of Chapter XXIV of MMK is effectively to avert this sort of catastrophe. Be it for Rorty or Nāg ā rjuna, then, insight is potentially dangerous. 37 Though Rorty doesn’t cite him in this book, his description of irony is strongly reminiscent of Schlegel’s rich meditations on this topic in his Lyceumsfragmente or “Critical fragments” (Firchow (trans.) 1971). 38 In his critique of this Derridean Nā g ā rjuna, Tillemans focuses on C. W. Huntington’s interpretation of Nā g ā rjuna as engaged in the project not of rationally defending claims, but of ‘conjuring up a philosophical and religious world in which is appears possible completely to cease identifying with any doctrine, thesis, tenet, or point of view’ (2007: 129). Having said this, Tillemans’ pushback against Huntington applies mutatis mutandis to what I have proposed in this essay. This, of course, by no means implies that my reading and Huntington’s are aligned on all points (however much Huntington might also have at times sought to establish parallels between Nā g ā rjuna and Rorty – see, in particular, Huntington and Wangchen 1989). They are not. But this, as they say, is a story for another day. 39 Something along the lines of this principle, I submit, roughly qualifies as the truth-deflationists credo. For a classical discussion and defense of this doctrine, see Quine (1970). 40 That my interpretation allows Nāgārjuna’s teachings to stand as theory is one of the principal ways in which it differs from Ethan Mills’ to all intents and purposes anti-philosophical interpretation of Nāgārjuna as a so-called sceptic about philosophy (2018), which, as I see it, relies on too restrictive a concept of what may count as ‘philosophy.’ While critical of the Vaibhāṣika-Sarvāstivādin conception of philosophy as realist ontology, I take it that Nāgārjuna has no problem with philosophy/theory as it is practiced in the Madhyamaka tradition, i.e., as therapy. Another feature of my interpretation which sets it apart from Mills’ is that it makes it very clear how and why Nāgārjuna is first and foremost a Buddhist philosopher operating a distinctively Buddhist context of debate, and only secondarily a ‘sceptic’ about (certain types of ) philosophy (on this problem and Mills’ failure to appreciate this, see, in particular, Balcerowicz 2021: 6–7).

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References Albahari, Miri 2006, Analytical Buddhism: The two-tiered illusion of the self, Palgrave McMillan, New York, NY. Andersen, Dinen (ed.) 2017, Suttanip āta, third edition, Pali Text Society, London. Balcerowicz, Piotr 2021, “The three pillars of skepticism: N āgārjuna, Jayar āśi, and Śr ī Har ṣa. By Ethan Mills. Lanham: Lexington Books,” Philosophy East and West 71(1): 1–9. Collins, Stephen 1982, Selfless Persons: Imaginary and Thought in Theravāda Buddhism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Cox, Collette 2004, “From category to ontology: The changing role of ‘dharma’ in Sarvā stivāda Abhidharma,” Journal of Indian philosophy 32(5/6): 543–597. de Man, Paul 1996, Aesthetic ideology, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Dhammajoti, Bhikkhu K. L. 2009, Sarvā stivāda Abhidharma, fourth edition, The Buddha-Dharma Centre of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Féer, Léon (ed.) 1975, Sa ṃyuttanik āya, volume III, second edition, Pali Text Society, London. Féer, Léon (ed.) 1990, Sa ṃyuttanik āya, volume IV, second edition, Pali Text Society, London. Frege, Gottlob 1918, “Thoughts,” in Logical investigations (1977), Blackwell, London. Fuller, Paul 2005, The notion of diṭṭhi in Theravāda Buddhism, RoutledgeCurzon, London. Ganeri, Jonardon 2007, The concealed art of the soul: Theories of self and practices of truth in Indian ethics and epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Ganeri, Jonardon 2012, The self: Naturalism, consciousness, and the first-person stance, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gethin, Rupert 1998, The foundations of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gómez, Luis O. 1976, “Proto-M ādhyamika in the Pā li canon,” Philosophy East and West 26(2): 137–165. Griswold, Charles L. 2002, “Irony in the Platonic Dialogues,” Philosophy and literature 26(1): 84–106. Harris, Stephen 2010, “Antifoundationalism and the commitment to reducing suffering in Rorty and Madhyamaka Buddhism,” Contemporary pragmatism 7(2): 71–89. Huntington, C. W. Jr, and Namgyal Wangchen 1989, The emptiness of emptiness: An introduction to early Indian M ādhyamika, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu. Huntington, C. W. Jr 2007, “The nature of the Mādhyamika trick,” Journal of Indian philosophy 35(1): 103–131. Johnston, Edward and Arnold Kunst 1951, “The Vigrahavyāvartan ī of Nā g ā rjuna with the Author’s commentary”, Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 9: 99–152. Kierkeegard, Søren 1992. The concept of irony with continual reference to Socrates, ed. and trans. by H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong, Princeton University Press, New Haven, NJ. Lopez, Donald S. Jr 1988, “Do Śr āvakas understand emptiness?,” Journal of Indian philosophy 16(1): 65–105. MacGarrity, Leah 2015, “M ādhyamikas on the moral benefits of a self: Buddhist ethics and personhood,” Philosophy East and West 65(4): 1082–1118. Mills, Ethan 2018, The three pillars of skepticism: N āgārjuna, Jayar āśi, and Śr ī Har ṣa, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD. Oldenberg, Hermann (ed.) 1969, Vinaya-piṭaka. Mah āvagga, second edition, Williams Norgate, London. Panaïoti, Antoine 2012, Nietzsche and Buddhist philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Priest, Graham, Jay L. Garfield, and Tom J. F. Tillemans 2011, “The (two) truths about truth,” in The Cowherds (eds), Moonshadows. Conventional truth in Buddhist philosophy, 131–150, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Quine, Willard V. O 1970, Philosophy of logic, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Rorty, Richard 1989, Contigency, solidarity, irony, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Schlegel, Friedrich 1971. Lucinde and fragments, translated by P. Firchow, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Shastri, Natesa A. ed. 1975, Satyasiddhi śā stra of Harivarman, Oriental Institute, Baroda. Shulman, Eviatar 2017, “Polyvalent philosophy and soteriology in early Buddhism,” Philosophy East and West 67(3): 864–886. Siderits, Mark 2003, Personal identity and Buddhist philosophy: Empty persons, RoutledgeCurzon, London. Siderits, Mark, and Shōry ū Katsura (ed., trans., and comment) 2013, N āgārjuna’s middle way: M ūlamadhyamakak ārik ā, Wisdom Publication, Boston. Tillemans, Tom J. F. 2017. “Philosophical quietism in Nā g ā rjuna and early Madhyamaka,” in Jonardon Ganeri (ed.), The Oxford handbook of Indian philosophy, 110–132, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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On Transformative Insight as the Quieting of Views in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Nāgārjuna as Master of Irony Trenckner, Vilhelm (ed.) 1993, Majjhimanik āya, volume I, second edition, Pali Text Society, London. Vaidya, Paramasurama L. (ed.) (1961). Mah āyāna-s ūtra-sa ṃgraha ḥ, volume I, Mithila Institute, Darbhanga. Vlastos, Gregory 1991, Socrates: Ironist and moralist, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Walser, Joseph 2005, N āgārjuna in context: Mah āyāna Buddhism and early Indian culture, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. Westerhoff, Jan 2009a, N āgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A philosophical introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Westerhoff, Jan 2009b, “The no-thesis view. Making sense of verse 29 in Nā gā rjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartan ī,” in M. D’Amato, J. L. Garfield, and T. J. F. Tillemans (eds), Pointing at the moon: Buddhism, logic, analytic philosophy, 25–40, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Westerhoff, Jan 2018, The golden age of Indian Buddhist philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Williams, Paul 1980, “Some aspect of language and construction in the Madhyamaka,” Journal of Indian philosophy 8(1): 1–45. Williams, Paul 1981, “On Abhidharma ontology,” Journal of Indian philosophy 9(3): 227–257. Williams, Paul 2009, Mah āyāna Buddhism: The doctrinal foundations, second edition, Routledge, New York, NY. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953, Philosophical investigations, volume I, trans. by G. E. M. Anscombe, Macmillan, New York, NY. Wolfsdorf, David 2007, “The irony of Socrates,” Journal of aesthetics and art criticism 65(2): 175–187. Xuezhu, Li (ed.) 2015, “Madhyamak āvat āra-k ārik ā chapter 6,” Journal of Indian philosophy 43(1): 1–30.

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5 THE DANGERS OF SECTS Lucian, Galen, and Sextus Empiricus Justin Vlasits

Philosophers, ever a self-interested bunch, are usually quite quick to emphasize the transformative potential of philosophy as a plus, something that will get us out of our inferior perspectives, and open us up to a better perspective sub specie aeternitatis, both epistemically and ethically. Two versions of this view as they were known in Greek and Roman philosophy are 1) the view that becoming a philosopher as such, that is, one who is engaged in the project of seeking wisdom, is a positive transformative experience and 2) the view that becoming the right kind of philosopher is a positive transformative experience. The former is well illustrated by the Socratic arguments in, among other places, the Republic. The latter can be seen especially clearly in Epicurus. Of course, depending on one’s conception of philosophy, these may come together. But to begin, it will be useful to keep them separate. Each of these views about the transformative power of philosophy is associated with a version of the genre of philosophical writing known as “protreptic” or “exhortation”. The very raison d’être of this genre is the observation that, because philosophy is a radical transformation, we need special kinds of arguments that can turn one’s soul toward the philosophical way of life (the root of “protreptic” is pro-trepein, “to turn toward”). These arguments must have force for someone “on the outside”. This chapter will probe the differences between these two ways of conceiving of philosophy as a transformative experience and their associated forms of protreptic. I will show how Sextus Empiricus and his rough contemporaries Lucian of Samosata and Galen of Pergamon give powerful arguments for the danger of transforming into a philosopher with particular views. This sort of notion of transformation became increasingly important in Greek and Roman philosophy after the philosophical schools were dispersed from Athens in the second and first centuries BCE and became more doctrinally homogenous. By the time that we reach the Second Sophistic (~2nd– 3rd centuries CE), there is the idea that joining a philosophical sect meant adhering to a specified set of doctrines (dogmata) according to which one is to live. Sextus, Lucian, and Galen are particularly concerned with the dangers of sects precisely because they think that joining one is transformative. The problem for them is that one can seriously mess up by choosing wrongly. In this chapter, I will first briefly present the Platonic and Epicurean ideas and connect them to two genres of philosophical protreptic literature. In the second

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-7

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part, I analyze the common argument from my trio in the Second Sophistic. Finally, I show how each member of the trio exemplifies a different reaction: Lucian abstains from philosophy as a whole, Sextus attempts to do philosophy without dogmata at all, and Galen believes that intelligent philosophy draws critically on the dogmata of different sects.

5.1  Two Ways to Transform Yourself As we will see below, philosophers, at least since Socrates, were keenly aware of the transformative aspect of becoming a philosopher. How are we to make this happen? The literary genre of protreptic, or exhortation, was developed for this very purpose. In his own Exhortation to Philosophy, the late ancient Platonist Iamblichus distinguishes between two genres of philosophical writing that are meant to encourage a non-philosopher to take up the philosophical life: Normative, exhortative likenesses, using things that are clear to all, move our desire towards genuinely taking hold of the virtue understood to be common among every sect. Suitable Pythagorean exhortative maxims are able to summon someone to the very best and most divine philosophy [=Pythagoreanism]. (Iamblichus, Protrepticus 3,7–17)1 In this chapter, Iamblichus distinguishes between those exhortations to philosophy that are common to all schools and those that exhort a student to one school in particular. In both cases, however, the writer or speaker is aiming to effect a radical transformation of the student. This transformation has both desiderative and epistemic dimensions: on the one hand, it “moves our desire” (κινοῦντα ἡμῶν τὴν προθυμίαν) so that, instead of wanting whatever one wanted before, one desires a life of virtue for its own sake. Iamblichus clearly thinks that this is a fundamental shift in one’s desiderative outlook. Because these are not just any desires, but the ultimate values of one’s life, this counts as personally transformative. Furthermore, it is epistemically transformative, since through the transformation one “learns to understand things in a new way” (Paul 2014: 11). These exhortations are essentially about acquiring new knowledge, in the first case, knowledge common to all philosophical sects, and in the second case, the tenets of some particular sect. But this isn’t just any sort of knowledge—it is knowledge that alters one’s perspective on the world. Indeed, it is precisely because it is perspective-altering knowledge that demands this particular genre of writing. Ordinary knowledge about, say, geometry can be transmitted in ordinary ways. A work such as Euclid’s Elements presupposes that one is already playing the geometry game. But the knowledge that Iamblichus wants to impart is what one needs to get going in philosophy in the first place. My goal in this section is modest: I aim to motivate the claims made above on the basis of Iamblichus through two kinds of well-known philosophical protreptic in antiquity. In Section 5.1.1, I will discuss Republic IX to illustrate “general” protreptic and from Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus to illustrate “particular” protreptic. I choose these texts for two reasons: 1) They are both extremely clear illustrations of the two genres that Iamblichus discusses, which will be important in what follows. 2) They both make clear how becoming a philosopher and a particular sort of philosopher is a transformative experience, in the sense defined by L.A. Paul. Many of the points which I am about to make would also apply to other protreptic texts from antiquity, such as the Socratic protreptics in the Euthydemus, Aristotle’s Protrepticus, or, indeed, the Wisdom of Solomon in the Septuagint.

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5.1.1  General Protreptic in Republic IX In Republic IX, Plato describes three character types and ways of life depending on which part of their soul “rules” the rest, asking which character’s life is most pleasant. The appetitive person values food, drink, sex, and money; the spirited values victory and high repute; and the philosophical values truth. Each of these characters, Socrates says, will say that the kind of pleasure that they value is best (Rep 580d–581d). How do we choose between these rival claims? First, it is clear that adopting the philosophical life is a transformative experience in Paul’s terms. Who is Plato imagining to be the target? We know for sure that Glaucon is a target, because this argument is part of the response to Glaucon’s challenge in Book II. Glaucon asked Socrates to describe 1) what justice and injustice are in the soul, 2) how they come about, and 3) why one should choose justice over injustice (358b–c). It is only in Book IX, having completed his discussion of the just soul and the varieties of unjust souls, culminating in the soul of the tyrant, that Socrates finished 1 and 2. But I happen to think that the considerations Socrates puts forward here could, in principle, be accessible to a spirited or appetitive person, provided that they don’t have a terrible upbringing. (I think this partially explains Socrates’ choice of framing the argument in terms of pleasure in the first place.) Glaucon’s characterization and role in the dialogue help us to see this. He is portrayed by his own brother as honor-loving and spirited (548d), suggesting that, in a way, he is not yet leading the sort of philosophical life that Socrates leads. On the other hand, he does claim that the life of justice really is superior to the life of injustice, even though he does not possess a satisfactory argument for this claim (358c) and Socrates believes him because of the way he has conducted his life (368b). Finally, by taking up the role of Thrasymachus, he is playing the part of someone who is diametrically opposed to the philosophical way of life that Socrates is here trying to defend. This confluence of factors suggests two things. First, Glaucon himself is probably someone who leads a more or less good life, even by Socrates’ high standards. However, he lacks philosophical training and thus balks at Socrates’ more outlandish political proposals along with everyone else (450a). So he too requires, at least to a certain extent, a major transformation of his values. This is even more so when we take into account how he is standing in for Thrasymachus. Thus if Socrates’ arguments are to reach him while he plays this role, they must be persuasive to someone who stands firmly outside of the philosophical way of life and be able to bring them to fundamentally change their perspective on the world. Given this context, we can see why we have a transformative experience on our hands. By definition, the change of one’s fundamental values and way of life is personally transformative. But because of the peculiar nature of the philosophical way of life, it is also epistemically transformative. The language of “turning the soul” toward the forms used throughout the Republic resonates with Paul’s descriptions of the phenomenology of transformative experience. One of her most valuable insights is how transformative experiences shift your perspective on the world in ways that you cannot foresee. Plato is keenly aware of this issue. It seems to me that the entire educational apparatus of the dialogue could be read as an elaborate way of organizing society so that rulers are as good as possible despite the fact that they cannot reliably guide their own ethical development. This is most clearly illustrated when Socrates argues that, with the wrong upbringing, even philosophical natures can turn out badly, indeed far worse than ordinary people (490e ff ).

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So here we have a case of a transformative experience. What is interesting about the case is that Socrates thinks that there is a way of rationally judging these lives: How are we to judge things if we want to judge them well? Isn’t it by experience, reason, and argument (ἐμπειρίᾳ τε καὶ φρονήσει καὶ λόγῳ)? Or could anyone have better criteria than these? (Plato, Republic 582a)2 Socrates then argues that the philosopher surpasses others on each of these fronts. He, unlike, the other two, has experienced (literally in this passage: “tasted”) all varieties of pleasure and is furthermore characterized essentially by his use of reason and argument. Presumably, what the philosopher must do in order to convince her appetitive or spirited interlocutor is to convey her experiences by means of reason and argument. Socrates uses this claim to argue that the philosopher’s testimony is to be trusted. For Paul, this cannot do the work Plato’s Socrates takes it to. Testimony is fundamentally limited in its capacity to inform us about our future experience (Paul 2014: 3). If we are to use only the kind of information conveyed through testimony, then our decision must be inauthentic, because that would be to ignore one’s subjective values. These values, for Paul, partially constitute someone’s identity and they cannot be translated into third-personal information without loss. Plato and Paul, therefore, disagree about this fundamental question concerning transformative experience. Plato believes rational and authentic choices are possible in some cases because certain kinds of testimony can be used. Paul, on the other hand, thinks there are general features of testimony and transformative experience that rule out authentic and rational decision on its basis. This is too quick. At some points, she seems to think that there may easy cases of transformative choice where testimony is enough.3 I don’t think Plato’s case is such an easy case (the rival claims of the appetitive and spirited lives seem enough to secure this), so consider everything that follows to concern only the hard cases. How will philosophers, according to Socrates, communicate the pleasure of philosophy to the non-philosopher? The easiest way, I think, is for the non-philosopher to witness, and then participate in, philosophical conversations.4 This is not question begging, since being party to a philosophical conversation is not enough to have had the experience of being a philosopher.5 We might see a model in Alcibiades and other hangers-on of Socrates. From the description we get in the Symposium, these people aspire to be like Socrates after first seeing him do his thing and then talking to him about philosophical issues.6 They are not in a position to know who they will become (either what they will value or what it will be like), but the presence of an exemplar helps. Moreover, if they have reason to think that this exemplar is superior to others in their experience, reason, and argument, what could be more rational than aspiring to be like them? This necessarily very brief discussion has led to the following results. 1) For Socrates, becoming a philosopher is a transformative experience in Paul’s sense. 2) Unlike for Paul, a special kind of testimony, which will eventually be known as “general protreptic”, is considered to be effective in allowing an agent to rationally choose to undergo this transformation. 3) General protreptic in this case seems to involve being witness to philosophical discussion and then aspiring to the way of life of someone who engages in such discussion.

5.1.2  Particular Protreptic in Letter to Menoeceus Epicurus was probably born a few years after Plato’s death and also founded a philosophical school in Athens at the end of the 4th century BCE. While many of his major treatises are only

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preserved in fragments, we possess several complete letters, which served as introductions to various aspects of his philosophy. In one such letter, addressed to a certain “Menoeceus”, we find the following: Greetings from Epicurus to Menoeceus, Neither should one delay philosophizing while young, nor grow tired of philosophizing while old. For no one is under-ripe nor overripe for the health of the soul. But the one who says that either one is not yet of the age to philosophize or that one has passed the age is similar to someone who says that the age for happiness is either not yet here or already passed. Thus both the young and old ought to philosophize, the latter so that as they grow old they are youthful with good things because they enjoy what has come to pass, and the former, so that they are young and old at the same time because they do not fear what is coming. One must take care to do all things for the sake of happiness, if indeed, when it is present we have everything, but when it is absent, we do everything in order to possess it. (Diogenes Laertius X.122)7 The beginning of this letter reads as if it were the same sort of exhortation to philosophy in general that we saw in Plato or would find in Aristotle’s Protrepticus. Indeed, the conclusion that one “ought to philosophize” (philosophoteon) is a perfectly general conclusion. However, on closer inspection, we see that matters are not so simple. Already here we have the suggestion that, by philosophizing, the old “enjoy what has come to pass” and the young “do not fear what is coming”. It is not clear how philosophizing in general has these consequences. Rather, one gets the sense that Epicurus is thinking that only a particular kind of philosophy will have this consequence. That suspicion is borne out by the rest of the letter, in which Epicurus exhorts the reader not merely to philosophize, but to become an Epicurean philosopher. Epicurus recognizes his rivals here as including philosophers, but thinks that their particular philosophical systems do not deliver the goods.8 One cannot get the results that he is promising (enjoyment and freedom from fear) except by adopting the doctrines that he holds. He gives several examples of this, but I will discuss only the first, which he himself takes to be the most important: Practice continuously doing what I am going to relate to you if you are going to grasp that these are the elements of beautiful living. First: considering that god is an immortal and blessed animal, as common thinking about god attests, attach nothing that is foreign to immortality nor anything unbefitting blessedness to him. […] But the way that the many consider them to be is incorrect. For they [the gods] do not guard us, as they think. And someone who destroys the gods of the many is not impious, but rather impious is the person who attaches the common opinions to the gods. For the common claims about the gods are not preconceptions but false judgments. Thence the greatest harms for evil people come from the gods, as well as the greatest benefits. (Diogenes Laertius X.123–124) Here we see that Epicurus considers certain views about the role of the gods to be harmful and the correct (Epicurean) views to be beneficial. Thus, it is only if philosophy is understood narrowly to mean Epicurean philosophy that his exhortation would make any sense. To see this, consider a few different cases. First, suppose that one is a mere novice philosopher. One wants to discover the truth, but one still has various ordinary views, such as the view Epicurus says that the 70

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many hold: that the gods watch over us. Even if such a person is in the process of interrogating their views, they are still in the grip of precisely the thing Epicurus says will make us miserable. So philosophy in the very broadest sense is not enough. Nor is belonging to another sect of philosophy, for example, the Stoics, going to help one, since they hold as a matter of philosophical doctrine that the gods do in some sense watch over us. Thus, the beneficial transformation that Epicurus is trying to help the addressee attain is only possible if they become an Epicurean philosopher. Thus, we see here an example of Iamblichus’ second variety of protreptic. Moreover, it is clear that Epicurus’ aim here is to effect a radical transformation in one’s knowledge and values. This is a transformation not into a mere philosopher but an Epicurean philosopher. As a completely contingent matter having to do with the rise of philosophical schools in the late Roman republic, this sort of philosophical transformation and its corresponding genre of protreptic literature came to acquire greater importance than the Socratic protreptic.

5.2  The Problem of Particular Protreptic In the previous section, we were introduced to two forms of protreptic discourse linked to two ways that becoming a philosopher can be transformative. In this section, I will show how authors of the Second Sophistic like Sextus Empiricus, Lucian of Samosata, and Galen of Pergamon all raise an important problem for particular protreptic and its corresponding form of transformation. The problem identified by these authors can be understood as specifications of a cryptic point made by Socrates in the Protagoras about associating with Protagoras: Then, Hippocrates, does the sophist happen to be some kind of importer or retailer of wares, from which the soul is nourished? For he seems to me to be that sort of chap.—The soul is nourished by something, Socrates?—Indeed, by teachings, I said. And make sure that, when the sophist praises what he is selling, he doesn’t deceive us, as the merchants and retailers of bodily food would. For they don’t know whether the goods they have on offer are useful or damaging for the body. Instead, they praise everything they’re selling. Nor do those buying from them, unless they happen to be a physical trainer or a doctor. But in this way, those offering up teachings in cities, selling and retailing them to those who always want them, praise everything they sell. But perhaps, my dear friend, some may be ignorant about whether what they’re selling is useful or damaging for the soul. And it is the same with their buyers, again, unless one happens to be a soul-doctor. Now if you happen to be knowledgeable about which of these things is useful or harmful, it would be safe for you to buy teachings from Protagoras or anyone else. But if not, watch out blessed friend, lest you run risks gambling with your nearest and dearest. For the danger is much greater when it comes to buying teachings than food. For when food or drink are bought from a retailer or importer, they are carried away in other vessels and before the body receives them by eating or drinking, once it is stored at home it is possible to ask for advice, calling on the person who knows what one should and shouldn’t eat and drink, and how much, and when. Thus there is no great danger in the purchase. But teachings cannot be carried away in other vessels. Instead, when one has stored the teaching with honor in one’s own soul, having grasped it and learned it, one leaves either harmed or benefited. (Plato, Protagoras 313c4–314b4)9 The danger that Socrates is pointing out has nothing to do with whether one associates with a sophist or a “true philosopher”, whatever that may be. The problem is rather that you are what 71

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you eat, since you are your soul and learning is how the soul eats. And you cannot tell, in advance of learning, whether what you are learning is good for you or not. But Socrates’ way of spelling out this problem is not at all clear. However, with my trio of Lucian, Galen, and Sextus, we are able to see more precisely what is at stake. I begin with Lucian. In his satire Hermotimus, or On Sects, Lucian dramatizes a dialogue between someone who clearly stands in for himself (Lykinus) and Hermotimus, a Stoic philosopher. Hermotimus recounts his own journey to becoming a philosopher, in which he looked at the various schools available to him (Epicureans, Stoics, Peripatetics, Platonists, and more) and, based on the number of disciples, their reputations among the non-philosophers and their outward appearance, decided for the Stoics. Lykinus easily shows these to be ridiculous reasons, but there does not seem to be anything better available. If he goes to the philosophers of each sect, they will inevitably praise their own way to happiness. And if one tries oneself to get there, “it is not easy, when you have committed yourself with a spread of canvas to the wind, to get home again” (Hermotimus 47, trans. Fowler), since once one has granted the principles, one can have everything filled out consistently with them. And the more one hears this, the more one is convinced that this is indeed the only way. To combat this, Lykinus suggests suspending judgment until one has heard all sides, but this does not truly solve the problem, since thorough understanding of all these sects would reasonably require many lifetimes of study. The problem that Lucian raises here is very similar to the problem of the Protagoras, especially the problem of going back once one has started on a particular philosophical path. Galen of Pergamon, by far the most famous and influential of the bunch, also clearly dealt with the problem of sects, both in medicine and philosophy. Medicine in this period, like philosophy, was divided up into competing sects, each with its own distinctive doctrines about the causes and treatments of disease. For Galen, the understanding of the different medical sects was so important that he prescribes the reading of his introductory “textbook” on the differences between the major medical sects (On Sects for Beginners) to students as the very first thing that an aspiring doctor should read (On My Own Books c. 1). But at the same time, he calls those who belong to a sect “slaves” (ibid.), since they only followed the sect that they did for highly contingent reasons, for example, because their parents were in that sect or the only teacher of philosophy in their city was in that sect (On the Order of My Own Books c. 1). These bad reasons for joining a sect resonate strongly with those that Lucian satirizes, suggesting not only that it was a somewhat widespread practice to join a sect for one of these reasons, but also that it was taken by some to be a serious intellectual failing of their age. Sextus Empiricus has in a way the most extreme reaction to the problem of sects, because he isn’t even sure what a sect is! He gives two candidate ways of thinking about them: 1 “an inclination towards doctrines (dogmata) which cohere with each other and the appearances” where doctrine is understood as “assent to something unclear” (PH I.16). 2 “a way of life (agôgê) which coheres with some argument (logos) in accordance with appearance, where this argument sets out how one can seem to live correctly” (PH I.17). Sextus claims that it is only in the latter case that Pyrrhonism would even qualify as a sect, since the Pyrrhonist assents to nothing unclear. But why would Sextus even care about splitting hairs over this question? It is because, I submit, he connects the very existence of sects with the features we saw in Lucian and Galen—with persistent irresolvable disagreement and closemindedness. Since he understands the dogmatic sects as considering inquiry to be at an end as a result of rashness in assent, he wants to find a way of understanding philosophy where the views, the dogmata, are no longer at issue, but instead it is about inquiry itself (PH I.1). 72

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This is clearest in Sextus when he argues that the dogmatists face a version of Meno’s Paradox: Now see whether the dogmatists themselves are not prevented from inquiring. For it is not inconsistent for those who agree that they do not know how things are by nature to continue to inquire about them, but it is inconsistent for those who think they know these things with exactness. For inquiry is already at an end for the latter, as they suppose, but for the former the reason why every investigation is conducted (one thinks one has not yet discovered) is present to the greatest extent. (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism II.11) In these lines, we get the epistemic version of the Protagoras problem, since the problem for the dogmatist that Sextus is outlining is that, once they have committed to their view of the world, they are incapable of escaping it through inquiry.10 These three authors circle around the problem discussed in the Protagoras, emphasizing different aspects of the problem. For Galen, the problem has admittedly very little to do with the ethical focus of either Lucian or Sextus, but the epistemological problem is quite close.11 What is new in all three authors is the attention to the problem of the dangers of philosophical sects. This could not have been Plato’s problem—there were not yet any such sects. The philosophical schools of Plato, Aristotle, and (if we are not overly prejudicial in our use of the term “philosophical”) Isocrates were not doctrinally unified. David Sedley has argued in a series of papers12 that when philosophy was “decentralized” in the second and first centuries BCE, a major shift took place. Once philosophical allegiance was no longer determined by a specific institution in Athens (the Garden, the Porch, etc.), it came to be determined by views, dogmata. What we see in my trio of authors above is a reaction to this shift.

5.3  Three Responses While these three authors agree about the disease of dogma, they disagree about the cure. In this respect, they present a united front against their contemporaries, such as the commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias or the handbook author Alcinous, who think philosophy can and should be practiced within the context of schools. For my trio, by contrast, one cannot simply go on philosophizing as before.

5.3.1  Lucian: Anti-Philosophy Lucian’s Hermotimus ends aporetically, without pointing a way forward for the interlocutors. On the one hand, philosophy seems to be presented as something important and worthwhile. But for that very reason, it is considered something quite dangerous. Something of an answer does, however, come from Lucian’s Icaromenippus. This story, like the famous Lives for Sale, dramatizes the search for a philosophical school as a sort of shopping trip. The main character, Menippus, in this case goes to all the schools, just as Hermotimus said he did, asking for their opinions about what goes on in the heavens. But they disappoint him, just as Hermotimus disappointed Lykinus. Instead of ending here, however, Menippus builds some wings and flies into the heavens to see for himself. It is almost impossible not to read this as signaling to the reader that the way forward is not with philosophy at all. Lucian here replaces philosophy with a combination of common sense and technical skill. Common sense is what led Menippus away from the philosophers in the first place and expresses itself in a preference for 73

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first-hand experience of the heavens over theoretical speculation.13 Technical skill here is made explicit by the reference to Daedalus and the feat of engineering that allows Menippus to make his flight to the heavens. Lucian may not be completely comfortable with this alternative, as it clearly suffers from many of the problems he himself identified in the Hermotimus, but one gets the impression that the flexibility of common sense and technical skill are positively contrasted with the rigidity of philosophizing. Indeed, it is notable that Menippus is depicted as succeeding where the philosophers failed. He reaches the heavens and discovers something about them, while the philosophers remained on the earth squabbling. In a sense, Lucian’s philosophical world is the world of philosophical sects—despite his prodigious imagination, he cannot consider what it would be like to philosophize outside of the school context. Thus his recognition of the dangers of sects leads him to a complete rejection of philosophy. But this move itself misses the possibility of the sort of transformation that Socrates imagines in Republic IX, in which becoming a philosopher is not conceived as coming to hold a certain set of views, but rather as seeking reality beyond mere appearance.

5.3.2  Galen: You Can Go Your Own Way Galen’s response is to say that, despite appearances to the contrary, an inquirer is able to make an informed choice about which sect to join. But this is by no means easy. As we saw above, Galen himself could not find a way out for a period of his own life. He was “saved”, however, by realizing that the methods used in geometry withstood skeptical pressure. How is that supposed to work? According to Galen, geometry is skepticism-resistant because it makes use of demonstrative methods, which teach “discerning the true from the false” (MM X.9K, trans. Hankinson). These methods, moreover, are ones that anyone can learn before embarking on the quest for the right views about, for example, medicine or philosophy. This gives the inquirer the independence necessary to approach the issues on which the various philosophical schools differ. So a lot hangs for Galen on the ability to acquire knowledge of these universal demonstrative methods.14 Unfortunately, his massive work on this topic, On Demonstration, is no longer extant, although he discusses this book and related issues frequently in scattered parts of his corpus. From these, it is clear that he recommends training in the broad discipline of “logic”, which included, in addition to the study of valid deduction, various procedures to help one acquire true basic premises for one’s demonstrations.15 As Menn (2003) has emphasized, however, there is an equally important strand in Galen which emphasizes the necessity of independent thought if one is to avoid the problem of sects. This is most notable in his approach to teaching his own craft of medicine: in his work The Best Sect, his aim is not to simply list his views, as his predecessors did, but to give the student the tools they need to find out the truth for themselves (which will happen to be the same views that Galen came to).16 Thus while Galen does not conceal his indebtedness to “the ancients” (especially Plato and Hippocrates, but also Aristotle and sometimes even the Stoics), in each case, he presents himself as someone who assesses their views for himself with the tools of logic. Galen’s optimism may sound almost too naïve to serve as a solution to the problem of the dangers of sects. But it challenges one of the central ideas in the argument from the Protagoras, namely, that one cannot assess a teaching without ingesting it and it is worth thinking about how Galen is rejecting it. It seems to me that he sees general education (in logic, but also in literacy and elementary mathematics, in general, the traditional liberal arts) as giving one the tools to critically evaluate views that one is presented with. This has some plausibility, although it might also be thought to simply push the problem back to the liberal arts.17 74

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5.3.3  Sextus: A Safe Sect I present Sextus at the end because he seems to be aware of and to reject the sorts of solutions offered by Lucian and Galen. Like Galen and unlike Lucian, he thinks there is a way to do philosophy without adhering to a particular set of dogmata. Unlike Galen, Sextus does not view logic as a neutral tool to use for establishing new dogmata. Instead, Sextus presents Pyrrhonism as a way to be a philosopher without feeling the need to reach dogmata at all. For Sextus, becoming a Pyrrhonist is still a radical transformation, but one which is at the same time open-ended. With him, I will suggest, we see a merging of the general protreptic found in Republic IX with the particular protreptic of Epicurus. Sextus is able to do this by making the sect of Pyrrhonism something radically different from other philosophical sects: in effect a sect that is defined by inquiry itself rather than adherence to dogmata. That is to say, the Socratic searching is no longer a prelude to the divine philosophy (to return to the Iamblichean turn of phrase), but rather a sort of end in itself. To see this, we should begin with Sextus’ story of how a Pyrrhonian philosopher comes to be. We say the causal principle of skepticism is the hope of being undisturbed. For, when talented people are disturbed on account of the discrepancies in things and are puzzled about which of these things they should rather assent to, they begin to inquire into what is true and what is false among these things, as though they will become undisturbed by deciding among these. (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.12)18 Up to now we say that the skeptic’s end is undisturbedness in matters having to do with belief and moderation in what is forced upon us. For having begun to philosophize for the sake of deciding and grasping which appearances are true and which false, so that we become undisturbed, they fall into equipollent dispute, which they are unable to decide. Fortuitously, undisturbedness in matters of belief followed on when they suspended judgment. (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.26) The story that Sextus tells here has three stages. First, there is the talented person. Such a person apparently has various commitments about what is good and bad by nature and at the same time is beset by a variety of puzzles. This leads the person to inquire, with the idea that successful inquiry will resolve the puzzles and lead them to the correct views. The second stage begins after the talented person has become a dogmatic philosopher and settled on some views. They thought that this would be the end of their problems, but it is not. Now the clever person is still beset by worries about whether they chose correctly. At this point, the philosopher makes the final leap to suspend judgment and continue inquiring.19 This account of becoming a Pyrrhonist illustrates the claim above that Sextus has combined both forms of protreptic. For the first, pre-dogmatic stage of inquiry and the third, postdogmatic, properly Pyrrhonian stages are similar in their activity, but different in their goal. Both are inquiring, but in the first stage, the inquirer has their heart set on finding dogmata, whereas in the third stage, this desire has been eliminated and undisturbedness has followed fortuitously. General protreptic was aimed at precisely this sort of philosophical inquiry. The specifically Pyrrhonian twist is to remove the felt need to reach a final answer.20 Particularly striking in this regard is the Pyrrhonian claim to reach undisturbedness, ataraxia, since this was precisely the goal that Epicurus laid down in his philosophical protreptics as the distinct benefit of joining his sect. 75

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Thus, Sextus not only combines the two genres but also appropriates the very goods that were on offer from one of the dogmatic sects. From this account, we can see how Sextus would respond to the objections of Lucian mentioned above. First, given that thorough inquiry into all possible views is a monumental enterprise, which there is little hope to be able to complete, why should we do it at all? Sextus’ answer is that, as it turns out, it is by means of inquiry itself that we get what we were after all along: tranquility. This is precisely the merging of general and particular protreptic that I mentioned above. Sextus finds that the very act of inquiry, when one does not engage in it in an enddirected way, gets the goods that someone like Epicurus claimed for their philosophical school.21 Now we can answer Lucian’s second objection: how can one avoid getting “sucked into” the various views that one studies? Here Sextus has a special trick up his sleeve, which I have hitherto left unmentioned: the modes. Here is not the place to give a full account of this very controversial aspect of Pyrrhonism.22 I will confine myself mostly to what is common ground among interpreters. It is universally agreed that the purpose of the Pyrrhonian modes is to bring about suspension of judgment (PH I.31). But there is a second, related aim frequently mentioned in combination with the modes: to prevent rashness in matters of opinion (e.g., I.20). Pyrrhonists use the modes as a sort of medicine to counter dogmatic rashness both in themselves and in others. How does this work? Consider one of the simplest modes of Aenesidemus, which consists in looking at differences among species with regard to their sense organs (I.44). It is easy to be sucked in by one’s sense perception into thinking that, just because it seems some way, it is so. This is just one instance of Lucian’s problem. But the mode counters this tendency by bringing up alternative ways this either do or could seem to other beings with differently constructed sense organs. More generally, the modes seem tailor-made to prevent one from precipitously accepting claims.23

5.4 Conclusion My aim has not been to give a solution to the problem of philosophical transformation that I have been discussing under the heading of “the dangers of sects”. Rather I hope to have motivated it as a real problem, which admits of no easy solution. It is probably apparent, however, that my sympathies lie with the Sextan Pyrrhonist. My reason for this is that the Pyrrhonist, more than Lucian or Galen, captures the Socratic spirit with which we began, since he is the only member of this trio who considers philosophy to be essentially about striving. This emphasis seems to me to be an important one, which is often lost in discussions about philosophy as a way of life.24 If one approaches philosophy to get the final story about how to live, it seems inevitable that one will come away either disappointed or a bit of a lunatic. Sextus shows us how the practice of philosophical inquiry itself can be transformative and in this way develops and extends the Socratic insight. But it seems to me equally the case that Lucian and Galen make important points, which are not so clear in Sextus. With Lucian, we see that it is not at all an obvious choice that we should go all in for philosophy in the first place. Undergoing this transformation is not mandatory. Even if there is the possibility of a great benefit, it may not outweigh the possibility of harm. Perhaps Sextus would himself recognize this, since he explicitly raises the possibility that Pyrrhonism may not be for everyone, but only for “talented” people who are bothered by the discrepancies that they encounter in life. Many people are not like that.25 Galen teaches us that a certain degree of intellectual independence is crucial, even if it is unclear that such independence is sufficient to solve the problem. 76

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What I aimed to show was that each member of this trio could contribute to our understanding of this very peculiar kind of transformation. Perhaps now that we do not think of philosophy as fundamentally about joining this or that school of thought and then living our lives in accordance with that, it may not seem so immediately relevant to us. But insofar as we want philosophy to make a difference to who we are and think that philosophy is supposed to do this by delivering us intellectual food, we face the same problem that confronted Socrates in the Protagoras and animated my trio. You cannot check the safety of your intellectual food before eating it.26

Notes 1 Text is from Pistelli (1888). All translations from ancient texts are my own unless otherwise noted. 2 The Greek text used is Slings (2003). 3 For example, her objections to the use of testimony in the decision to become a parent are 1) that testimony from parents is unreliable, 2) that one doesn’t know whether one’s friends or relatives are relevantly similar to one psychologically, and 3) that having children changes one’s preferences in such a way that “people who have never had children have preferences such that, if they knew what it was like to have a child and retained their pre-child preferences, they would not choose to have a child” (Paul 2014: 90). Even the last does not seem to be constitutive of epistemic and personal transformations, since it is not necessary for a transformative experience to involve a shift in one’s core preferences to prefer being in the transformed state from dispreferring it. 4 On the role of dialectic in this process of conversion, see McCabe (2015) and Politis (2022). 5 Simply being party to a philosophical conversation is not enough to have had the experience of being a philosopher. 6 The example of Alcibiades and the importance of aspiration were suggested by Callard (2018). 7 Greek text used is Dorandi (2013). 8 Plato’s Socrates, by contrast, tries to show that his opponents are not philosophers at all, but rather politicians, sophists, or orators. 9 The Greek text used is Burnet (1903). 10 On this passage, see the important contributions of Vogt (2012) and Fine (2014). 11 Although ethical considerations do crop up in Galen from time to time when he wants to explain the deficiencies of the current age of doctors, for example (The Best Doctor is Also a Philosopher c. 2). Here he argues that a doctor must scorn wealth and bodily pleasures if they are to truly follow the example of Hippocrates and he claims that the best doctor must learn all parts of philosophy: logic, physics, and ethics (ibid., c. 3). 12 Sedley (1989, 2003). 13 While it seems to me clear that Lucian contrasts philosophical speculation with first-hand experience, the philosophers themselves, particularly in the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions, may not see them as opposed at all. Such a reader may be inclined toward reading the Icaromenippus as making room for philosophy. For my part, I don’t see this as compatible with Lucian’s portrayal of philosophers as “earthbound”. One might further wonder to what extent building wings to find out about the heavens is common sense. I suggest that it is commonsensical that to know about a place, one has to visit it, not merely talk about it. 14 Galen is aware of attacks on the suitability of logic as a scientific method from the side of the Pyrrhonists and Academic skeptics and goes some way toward addressing them, even though he does not take them very seriously, since he takes the epistemic credentials of geometry and applied science (which he calls architecture) to be decisive. See, for example, On My Own Books c. 11 and Errors of the Soul c. 1. 15 For a summary of Galen’s approach to logic in science, see On My Own Books c. 11, which contains a brief summary of the work On Demonstration. 16 See, for example, On the Order of My Own Books c. 1 and Errors of the Soul c. 2. 17 This may provide helpful context for Sextus Empiricus’ work against the liberal arts, Against Those in the Disciplines as well as his logical works. On the latter, see Vlasits (2020). 18 The Greek text used is Mutschmann and Mau (1958). 19 See Veres (2020) for more on this important passage.

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Justin Vlasits 20 There is one significant difference between general protreptic as Iamblichus describes it and what Sextus is doing. In general protreptic, the argument is supposed to change one’s desires and thereby lead one to philosophical inquiry. For the Pyrrhonist, however, philosophical inquiry itself satisfies a prephilosophical desire. Thus there is no encouragement to change one’s desires, rather a realization that there is an unusual way to satisfy them. Nevertheless, both Sextan and Iamblichean general protreptic are alike in encouraging someone to engage in philosophical inquiry. 21 On the advantages of Pyrrhonian inquiry, see Olfert (2015). On these issues more generally in Hellenistic philosophy, Nussbaum (1996). 22 See Barnes (1990) for a book-length treatment of the Modes of Agrippa, Annas and Barnes (1985) for the Modes of Aenesidemus. More recently, Morison 2011, 2018) and Bett (2019). 23 Striker (2001) has claimed that this feature means that the skeptic is not engaging in genuine inquiry (see also Barnes 1990; Hankinson 1995; Bett 2019). In other work, I show how Sextus’ conception of the modes as argumentative medicine is, in fact, compatible with taking them to be modes of inquiry. Doing so requires jettisoning the idea that they are universally applicable. 24 I have in mind less the work of Hadot (1995) than the cottage industry of “philosophical self-help” that has sprung up in recent years, promising that Stoicism or whatever will save you. While I am all for bringing philosophy to the people, these books and magazine articles tend to portray a philosophy as a completed whole of dogmata and de-emphasize the Socratic-skeptical search. 25 Vogt (2020). 26 I am very grateful for audiences at the University of Chicago and Northwestern as well as comments from G. Anthony Bruno, Sam Fleischacker, Irina Schumski, and Thomas Slabon, which corrected many errors and suggested new lines of inquiry.

References Annas, J. and J. Barnes, 1985, The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barnes, J., 1990, The Toils of Scepticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bett, R., 2019, How to Be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burnet, J. (ed.), 1903, Platonis Opera Tomus III, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Callard, A., 2018, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dorandi, T. (ed.), 2013, Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fine, G., 2014, The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno’s Paradox from Socrates to Sextus, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hadot, P., 1995, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Oxford: Blackwell. Hankinson, R.J., 1995, The Skeptics, London: Routledge. McCabe, M.M., 2015, Platonic Conversations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Menn, S., 2003, “The Discourse on Method and the Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography”, in J. Miller and B. Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 141–191. Morison, B., 2011, “The Logical Structure of the Sceptic’s Opposition”, in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, XL (Essays in Memory of Michael Frede), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 265–95. Morison, B., 2018, “The Sceptic’s Modes of Argumentation”, in T. Bénatouïl and K. Ierodiakonou (eds.), Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 283–319. Mutschmann, H. and J. Mau (eds.), 1958, Sexti Empirici Opera, Leipzig: Teubner. Nussbaum, M., 1996, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Olfert, C., 2015, “Skeptical Investigation and Its Perks: Diog. Laert. 9.69-70 and 79-89”, in K.M. Vogt (ed.), Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 147–170. Paul, L.A., 2014, Transformative Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pistelli, H. (ed.), 1888, Iamblichi Protrepticus, Leipzig: Teubner. Politis, V., 2022, “Dialectic and the Ability to Orient Ourselves: Republic V-VII”, in J.K. Larsen, V.V. Haraldsen and J. Vlasits (eds.), New Perspectives on Platonic Dialectic, London: Routledge, 193–212.

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The Dangers of Sects: Lucian, Galen, and Sextus Empiricus Sedley, D., 1989, “Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World”, in M. Griffin and J. Barnes (eds.), Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 97–119. Sedley, D., 2003, “Philodemus and the Decentralisation of Philosophy”, Cronache Ercolanesi 33, 31–41. Slings, S.R. (ed.), 2003, Platonis Rempublicam, Oxford: Oxford Classical Texts. Striker, G., 2001, “Scepticism as a Kind of Philosophy”, Archiv Für Geschichte Der Philosophie 83(2), 113–129. Veres, M., 2020, “Keep Calm and Carry On: Sextus Empiricus on the Origins of Pyrrhonism”, History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 23(1), 100–122. Vlasits, J., 2020, “Pyrrhonism and the Dialectical Methods: The Aims and Argument of Outlines of Pyrrhonism II”, History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 23(1), 225–252. Vogt, K.M., 2012, Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vogt, K.M., 2020, “Skepticism as Philosophy: A Reply to Richard Bett”, Skepsis XI(20), 105–116.

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6 TRANSFORMATION AS SELF-CULTIVATION IN PLOTINIAN NEOPLATONISM Michael Griffin

6.1 Introduction Plato’s dialogues have been read as an ‘inexhaustible mine of suggestion,’ a reservoir of questions designed to spark curiosity and investigation.1 During the Hellenistic period (c. 323–31 BCE) and the Roman Empire (27 BCE–476 CE), those questions invited a resurgence of new solutions, as textual commentary became a primary vehicle for philosophy.2 One of the liveliest puzzles concerned the nature of philosophy: what is the goal of the philosophical life according to Plato? What way of living was Plato’s Socrates intended to model for us?3 By the first century CE, many of Plato’s expert readers would answer that the philosopher strives for a special kind of self-transformation: a process of ‘becoming like the god,4 so far as possible’ (homoiōsis t ōi the ōi, kata to dunaton, Theaetetus 176A–B).5 Two centuries later, the Egyptian philosopher Plotinus (204/5–270 CE) 6 would advance that goal further: ‘our striving (spoudē) is… to be god’ (Enn. 1.2.6).7 Still, a vital strain in Greek literature and theology maintained the distance between divinity and mortality.8 Plotinus and his intellectual inheritors, traditionally designated ‘Neoplatonists’ today,9 sought to bridge that gap through a ‘progressive divinization of the human soul,’ a curriculum of steps (bathmoi) in self-study, philosophical understanding, and receptivity to inspiration, cultivated through conceptual learning, music and rhythm, embodied ritual, visionary experience, and the love of beauty.10 The present chapter explores Plotinus’ account of the self-transformation of a person in the process of ascending that ladder, or, in a metaphor adapted from Plotinus, traversing a river from delta to source.11

6.2  Plotinus, Self-Cultivation, and Self-Transformation Plotinus’ system is notoriously difficult to study; skillful critics of his own generation, like Longinus, already found his writing difficult to interpret.12 Plotinus did not offer a comprehensive summary of his thought in one place, although his pupil and editor Porphyry attempted to provide such a systematic resource in his Sentences (c. 234–305 CE).13 For the purposes of this chapter, it may be helpful to emphasize that Plotinus strives to correct human ignorance and forgetfulness about the genuine nature of reality and, more specifically, about human nature. He stands in a line of philosophers, poets, and artists driven by a niggling sense that we do not 80

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really belong here—where ‘here’ implies the milieu of ordinary experience, where we appear constrained to seek comfort and avoid pain, to seek social status, and to confine our awareness to this very place and time, even though our mind can soar above to view the stars and contemplate eternity.14 Where, Plotinus wonders, does human consciousness15 really come from? How did we ever come to be ‘here,’ forgetting that place of origin, and how can we return ‘there?’ (Enn. 5.1.1). Solving the question is not only a matter of academic curiosity, but integral to locating our individual and collective well-being (eudaimonia), our way of maturing both as a human soul and as a member of our social community.16 Plotinus outlines a process of self-transformation that is also self-rediscovery: we have only forgotten our genuine selves. Thus, he follows Socrates in investigating the Delphic injunction to ‘know thyself ’ (Enn. 4.3.1, 6.8.41). And like Plato and Aristotle, he considers contemplation (the ōria) essential to this mission. His philosophical project is also supported by first-personal methods, or ‘spiritual exercises,’ adapted in part from earlier Hellenistic schools.17 This chapter focuses on Plotinus’ depiction of self-transformation against the background of his metaphysics and psychology. He offers a rich and systematic philosophy—each Plotinian treatise, even as it unfolds organically in answer to a specific question or a puzzle, presupposes a coherent system of assumptions and arguments. For example, the cosmos is not (merely) material, and its beauty can neither be seen or touched, but only intuited; the world is not mechanistic, but intelligent, organically interconnected, and aware. We are not surrounded by a random march of sensory data, but we really perceive the Patterns, the Platonic Forms, that permeate and structure experience. And so, the world can be known.18 Plotinus argues these points, but he is at his most powerful when he turns to guide the reader, not by persuasion, but by vision: see, look, understand.19 The resulting fund of ideas and metaphors would remain profoundly influential in subsequent Greek pagan and Christian philosophy, well into the renaissance and early modern intellectual and literary history.20 For Plotinus, the reality beneath ordinary experience is multilayered. Each momentary appearance is the result of a deeper process that has flowed through three ‘hypostases’ (literally ‘under-standings,’ foundations, or by way of Latin, sub-stances): these are traditionally translated as One (to hen), Intellect or Mind (nous), and Soul (psych ē). The One can be pictured like the source of a river, and each subsequent hypostasis can be pictured like a grand eddy, a point of pause where the water ‘turns back’ upon its source before going on, and in this very reversion, comes into being as a distinct reality (Enn. 5.2.1). Each hypostasis is constituted by two aspects, an ‘internal’ and an ‘external’ activity (Enn. 5.4.2, 27–33; 4.3.7, 17), analogous to the current turning back and continuing forward. Each hypostasis designates a mode of being, but is also laid open to a corresponding mode of awareness.21 No level of being is in principle inaccessible to experience (even though deeper levels are inaccessible to ordinary cognition, as we will find below), and acts of introspection can reveal deeper layers of self and world, each nearer the source. If the One is the origin of this ontological river, passing through the eddies of Mind and Soul, then ordinary experience is its delta, a final outflow into the sea. In the remainder of this section, I will try to summarize a way of reading this dynamic structure, which the remainder of the chapter will explore in detail. We will travel in reverse, beginning from the delta, and returning to the origin. 1 Our ‘ordinary’ self and world are constructed around what we typically value, subjectively and intersubjectively: for instance, our possessions, social identity and standing, sensory impressions, especially of pleasure and pain, and the reflexive appetites and aversions that these 81

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motivate (Enn. 1.1.1). In Plotinus’ view, all this is partly real, an image, like the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave; it is projected from the following, more basic layers. 2 The first genuine, underlying reality or hypostasis is called ‘Soul’ (psych ē); outwardly, it projects the ordinary self and world, and is recognizable as the principle of life in animals and the cosmos; inwardly, it is characterized by activities of apprehension (antilēpsis) that have representational structure (phantasia) and operate ‘bit-by-bit’ or ‘one at a time’ (kata meros). Typical examples are discursive thought (dianoia), belief formation (doxa), and the second-order representation that Plotinus calls parakolouthesis (loosely, ‘tracking consciousness’).22 When we reflect on Soul, we experience it as the ‘owner’ or ‘controller’ of speech and voluntary bodily movement (cp. Plato [?] Alcibiades I, 129b, with Plotinus Enn. 1.1.3); thus, souls are outwardly manifest to us as animating principles in our bodies and the cosmos.23 3 Soul in turn is caused by a more fundamental principle, which Plotinus calls Mind or Intellect (nous). Outwardly, Mind causes Soul; inwardly, Mind is characterized by the ‘comprehensive awareness’ (sunaisth ēsis) of simple, immediate ‘projections’ (epibolai), in which the subject apprehends the object ‘all at once’ by contrast with the representational and ‘bit by bit’ sensations of Soul.24 The objects perceived in this way are the manifold of Platonic Forms or Patterns (eidē); within that manifold, there is a unique Form corresponding to my individual Mind, which has a distinctive ‘point of view’ on the whole.25 4 Mind in turn is grounded in the principle that Plotinus calls Oneness or the One (to hen). Outwardly, the One causes Mind; inwardly, it is beyond description. Metaphysically, the One is uncomplex, and so phenomenally, there is no clear distinction of subject from object here. Nonetheless, there is still ‘something it is like’ to be aware at this level, which Plotinus memorably compares with a transcendently ‘drunken’ state of Mind (6.7.35); and there is still a perception of the One as one’s self (6.9.9–10). Against the background of these layers, Plotinus employs the first-person plural pronoun ‘we’ (h ēmeis) in a distinctive and creative way (1.1.7).26 He situates ‘us’ as a locus of apprehension and agency, a ‘fluctuating spotlight of consciousness,’27 seated at the pinnacle of Soul as the activity of Mind. ‘We’ can turn our attention downward, to project the ordinary world and so identify ourselves with a small portion of it, striving ideally for the life of social or constitutional virtue; or we can turn upward to witness and identify ourselves with our unique viewpoint in Mind, which is authentically ‘us,’ and genuinely divine and immortal: ‘simply god, and one of those gods who follow the First’ (1.2.6, 7–8). This amounts, for Plotinus, to the height of the contemplative life (bios the ōrētikos) discussed by Aristotle in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. These lives are contrasted in the treatise On Virtues (1.2 [19]).28 From here, we can even attain union with the One (1.1.8), which on Plotinus’ view is the deepest sense of the ‘likeness to god,’ by means of ‘virtue’ (aret ē) that Plato commends as the goal of philosophy (Theaetetus 176b). Later Platonists will endorse Plotinus’ view that ‘we’ are the consciousness of Soul; they complicate his further view that we are Mind and the One in a simple sense, arguing that we are these higher principles in a ‘relational’ way (kata skhesin), but the basic structure remains.29 In this context, Plotinus considers self hood to be a kind of virtuous achievement, a quest for ‘likeness to god’ pursued in the course of climbing a ladder (bathmoi) of virtues.30 Loosely, traits of unification, permanence, and intelligibility characterize a personhood that can and should be achieved, but this does not describe our ‘default’ condition as we find ourselves, or rather as we suppose we find ourselves. By cultivating philosophy, we are also becoming more and more ourselves, even as we step further away from our ordinary constructions of ourselves. When we ‘turn’ to recognize our genuine self in Mind, and as our mind (nous) in its pure awareness, we 82

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have an experience that is not accessible to discursive thought or language. From the vantage point of the ‘we’ with which we begin, then, to borrow the language of Paul (2014), philosophy is ‘epistemically transformative,’ in the sense that we cannot know ourselves until we engage in such a ‘turn’; and it is ‘personally transformative,’ because we find a new self here, constructed, or rather discovered, like a statue brought out of the marble by a skillful artist (1.6.9).

6.3  Ordinary Experience Socrates had pointed out that we ‘ordinarily’ place primary value on apparent objects, delivered by our senses and beliefs. Plato’s allegory of the cave can be read as illustrating the point. A philosopher visiting the ‘cave’ would find there ‘cities inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream by people who fight one another for shadows (skiamachein)’ (Rep. 7, 520C–D), desiring some and avoiding others. In Plato’s picture, echoing the simile of the divided line at the end of Republic 6, these shadows are only projected images, several layers removed from real being. In pursuing or avoiding these, Socrates suggests that we devalue the condition of our soul (psych ē), rating its virtues and health as less important. Importantly, Socrates—in Plato’s ‘early’ dialogues, and other early Socratics—treats this as a process of self-knowing and self-care (epimeleia tou heautou).31 Plotinus agrees and puts the point powerfully: ‘[Souls] honour other things, admiring everything rather than themselves… for what pursues and admires something else admits at the same time its own inferiority’ (Enn. 5.1.1, 14–19). He regards philosophy’s first task, then, as turning the soul’s attention and value away from these images (cf. Enn. 1.1.3, 24–26), and toward itself. Hence Plotinus recommended that members of his circle ‘turn away from’ or renounce the apparent world of everyday life (apostroph ē tou biou, Porphyry, VP 7, 21.33). He recognized that this act of renunciation could be accomplished by a strategy of disenchantment, emphasizing the lack of value (atimia) of appearances (5.1.1, 26–27). But this is not Plotinus’ preference. Rather than talking down appearances, Plotinus prefers to talk up the soul, ‘teaching and reminding the soul how high its birth and value are’ (Enn. 5.1.1, 27–28). Thus, Plotinus strives to draw the soul’s attention to the value of its own characteristic activities: bringing life to what is lifeless (5.1.2), and engaging in acts of mental experience (1.1.7). Here, as we will see, he suggests a kind of cultivation of who we already are, and to some degree know who we are, rather than a radical transformation.

6.4  Psyche (psych ē) Plotinus’ ‘psychology,’ or views about the soul and self, was a subject of special interest to his contemporaries.32 Like Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus maintains that the soul has characteristic capacities and activities (although he elaborates these in a distinctive way, distinguishing internal from external activities: see below). When Plotinus strives to turn the soul’s attention toward itself, he first depicts one of its most recognizable functions, giving life. With this, we approach the first of the ‘gods’ to whom we may ‘liken’ ourselves, in Plato’s language.

6.4.1  Soul: External Activity In early Greek thought, soul (psych ē, ‘breath’) named that principle which is present in a living being but absent in an inanimate being; the ordinary Greek word for ‘alive’ is empsychos, ‘ensouled,’ just as the English words ‘animate,’ ‘animal,’ and ‘inanimate’ derive from the Latin anima, ‘soul.’ In the Platonist world-view, all animals (including human beings) and the entire 83

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cosmos are ‘alive’ or ‘ensouled’ in this basic sense; the world evidently does not remain still like an inanimate object, nor does it move and change with merely deterministic mechanics, like clockwork (3.8.2), nor does it move and change with the action of a single material element or force to the exclusion of others (4.7.2), nor does it move and change at random as the atomists had argued (4.7.3); rather, the world moves with life, possessing ‘an inner [i.e., autonomous] source of change and stability’ (Aristotle, Physics 2.1, 192b20–23). In one of Plotinus’ more poetic passages, he invites each soul to consider the majesty of its life-giving function (Enn. 5.1.2, 1–4.14–27, tr. Armstrong), responsible for the motion of sea and stars, and the thriving of vitality in the world.33 This activity of life-giving is observable from outside the soul, so to speak; it is an outward effect that implies its cause, as heat implies the presence of fire (Enn. 5.4.2, 30–33). This brings us to a crucial distinction in Plotinus’ thought, that every real being has both an internal and external activity. The internal activity (energeia) of a being is of its essence (t ēs ousias); it is what it really is. The external activity of a being is how it ‘shows up’ on the ‘outside’; it is an activity (energeia) that proceeds outward from (ek) the essential activity of the being. (See Enn. 5.4.2, 27–33; 4.3.7, 17). For example, fire has an internal activity of combustion, and this is what it is to be fire; but the heat of fire also shows up on the outside as an external activity, when my hand is warmed near the fire by the exothermic process of releasing energy in the form of heat. An external activity is generally easy to observe and implies the presence (parousia) of a being, but doesn’t disclose what that being is. If heat is present, an observer might infer the presence of fire, but it is more challenging to determine just what fire is in its essence, e.g., oxidation by combustion. In Plotinus’ terminology, animating the inanimate is the external activity of the soul, like sunlight from the sun. The name for this external activity, depending on the context, is nature (phusis) (cf. Enn. 3.8.2), or the animation of a living being (zōion). It is how soul ‘shows up’ from the vantage point of an external observer; a body is animated (empsychos) and its capacities for life are actualized—in particular, the capacity to ingest nutrition and grow, sense the environment, act on appetites, and move locally.

6.4.2  Soul: Internal Activity But the soul also has an internal activity, an ‘activity which is of its essence,’ and is ‘actually what it is’ (cf. Enn. 5.4.2, 27–33). This activity is only observed from inside the soul, so to speak; and it begins to get us nearer to who we are, and what is most divine about the soul. In the treatise that Porphyry places first in the Enneads, Plotinus isolates the real ‘functions’ of the soul, beginning with a traditional laundry list of affections like pleasure, pain, fear, and courage (1.1.1, 1–14). In the Platonist tradition, these are the non-rational affections (path ē) of the soul.34 The experiences of pleasure and distress are nearest to sensation (aisth ēsis); they belong to the desiring or appetitive part of the soul (epithumia). The experiences of fear and courage belong to the spirited part of the soul (thumos). Desire and aversion are habituated consequences of the feelings of pleasure and distress. In the remainder of the treatise, Plotinus considers these non-rational affections, and after examining several alternative possibilities (1.1.2–5), offers the following conclusion: the soul’s external activity shows up as the activation of an organic body’s capacity (dunamis) to experience a feeling (pathos), while the soul itself remains unaffected (1.1.6–7). Plotinus uses the analogy of light to illustrate this idea of an ‘external activity’ (1.1.7), as he elsewhere uses the analogy of fire (5.4.2): when I place my hand near the fire, the fire’s internal activity or essence (ousia) shows 84

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up in the activation of my hand’s capacity to be warmed; when a reflective mirror is placed in the sun, the sun’s essential activity shows up in the activation of the mirror’s capacity to reflect light. In the same way, when one of the capacities of psych ē —nutritive, sensory, appetitive, or locomotive35 —is ‘present with’ (pareinai, 1.1.7, 2) an organic body that has the appropriate capacity, the soul’s activity shows up in the activation of that capacity: for instance, when soul is present the human being is a living, experiencing agent, and when the soul’s capacity for sensation is present, it shows up in the activation of the capacity of the human visual system to generate visual sense-experience. The soul’s ‘presence’ with an appropriately disposed body is luminous, ‘like light’ (hoion ph ōtos, 1.1.7, 4),36 and this radiance or presence can be labeled as an intermediate entity in its own right, ‘the living being’ (zōion). Plotinus stresses that the non-rational ‘affections’ that we seem to experience—pleasure, distress, fear, courage, desire, and aversion—are not really ‘us.’ This may seem counter-intuitive; but Plotinus is motivated by the Platonic view that the soul, and so the person, is properly like a Form, stable, constant, and unitary (Enn. 1.1.2). Moreover, on Plotinus’ view, the contemplation of a form does not necessarily cause an alteration of the subject: the ‘change’ involved in apprehending an intelligible form is simply the ‘actualization’ of a potential, as Aristotle had already argued (DA 3.4). Still, it’s hard to explain how sensations do not really affect or alter the person who has them. Plotinus offers a radical explanation. What appears to be my sensory experience of a visual field (including, for instance, a painting of the Mona Lisa) is actually my soul’s witnessing or contemplation (the ōria) of a relevant Form or bundle of Forms (including, for instance, the Form of Beauty). 37 An apparent sense-object participates, or imitates, a constellation of Forms; likewise, my apparent perception of that object participates, or imitates, my contemplation of that constellation of Forms. To put this another way, I unconsciously construct the impression that I am sensing an external, third-personal object out of my actual, first-personal apprehension of qualia.38 [S]oul’s power of sense-perception need not be perception of sense-objects, but rather it must be conscious (antilēptikos) of the impressions produced by sensation on the living being; these are already intelligible entities (noēta). So external sensation is the image of this perception of the soul, which is in its essence truer and is a contemplation (the ōria) of forms alone, without being affected. (Enn. 1.1.7, 9–14, tr. after Armstrong) We may clarify the force of the central, but difficult term without a clean parallel in English, nous and noēsis. Often translated ‘Mind’ or ‘Intellect,’ nous can also have a force like ‘awareness,’ ‘attention,’ or ‘intentionality;’ it might be usefully compared to the notion of ‘witnessing’ awareness in modern philosophy of mind.39 For Plotinus, nous in its essential activity, does nothing but witness Forms that are internal to itself. But it is capable of a further external activity, namely, causing that inward experience to show up as ‘consciousness’ or ‘apprehension’ (antilēpsis) of an object external to itself; object-consciousness in this latter sense is an activity of nous, not something that happens to it or alters it (Enn. 1.4.10). Plotinus has answered part of his initial question: non-rational feelings ‘belong’ to the ‘living being,’ an intermediate entity or image comprising the ‘luminosity’ of the soul showing up in the realization of the capacities of a suitably disposed body.40 The next part concerns the experiences of discursive thought (dianoia) and belief (doxa) and attention itself (1.1.7, 14–20). Plotinus locates ‘us’—in a celebrated apparent innovation,41 using the pronoun ‘we’ (h ēmeis) to pick out the locus of first-person experience and self hood—‘here and upward’ in our field of experience, 85

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in what Plato described as logos or reason. We really are our experiences of discursive thinking, believing, and awareness, which are internal activities of soul, constituting what a soul actually is in essence. In a derivative and external sense, we are also owners, users, and controllers of our ‘lower,’ non-rational feelings and bodies, to which we relate, roughly, as craftsmen or musicians to their instruments,42 the sun to sunlight, or fire to its external heat. Thus, it is possible to pursue virtue (aret ē) as the ‘attunement’ or moderation of the affects of the soul, on this level, and this is what Plotinus takes Plato (Rep. 4, 430c) to mean by the ‘civic’ or ‘constitutional’ virtues (1.2.2). Crucially, Plotinus envisions soul as twofold, as higher and lower. Soul itself, in its internal activity, is always acting as nous, present in the ‘intelligible world’ and witnessing Forms (e.g., 4.8.8, 1–3). Crucially, this ‘undescended soul’ or ‘higher self ’ is not really subject to the cycle of incarnation; it persists in the intelligible or noetic world of pure contemplation. (This was a point of contention between Plotinus and a later school of Neoplatonism, which maintained that the soul as a whole must descend).43 This higher soul’s external activity amounts to a ‘lower soul,’ a chain of images or capacities—‘like a face caught in many mirrors’ (1.1.8, 17–18) beginning with the capacity for sensation (aisth ēsis) and ‘descending’ to the basic function of nature, causing generation and growth (1.1.8, 18–24). This ‘lower soul’ is subject, naturally, to incarnation, and it is also the soul that experiences punishment or benefit based on past actions (see, e.g., Enn. 1.1.9). Its capacities include non-rational elements of the Platonic tripartite soul, thumos, and epithumia. As souls, we use these tools, or ‘lower’ capacities, for a specific purpose: we strive to achieve our natural good (Enn. 1.7.1), sometimes experiencing that drive as a kind of erotic and visceral attraction (Enn. 3.5.9, 40–41), since, as Socrates already stressed, all human beings aim for what they consider good (cf. Enn. 1.4.6). But this basic desire for the good, carried out using the body, may manifest in two ways: one (orexis), for external goods which may, in some cases, not be goods at all; the other (ephesis) for the true good which lies ‘above’ and ‘within.’ Plotinus describes the former (1.4.6). The soul’s reasoning pursues such necessities as a kind of image of the good; when it does its very best in its external activity, it engages in practically virtuous action, which is a reflection or ‘shadow’ of contemplation (3.8.4). But a more satisfying expression of the soul’s desire for good lies in its contemplative ascent to the higher, inward principles (1.4.16), to which we turn next. With this ascent, we are coming nearer to the genuine self, and to a higher sense of the ‘god’ to whom we are made like (1.2.1).

6.5  Intelligence (Nous) Plotinus states that ‘we’ are the ‘activity of nous’ (1.4.9, 29): that is, as we will find below, the unison of our cognitive processes as ‘acts’ of a single agent. Reiterating his earlier distinction of ‘internal’ from ‘external’ activity, the internal activity of soul is constituted by the external activity of nous. In its external activity, nous performs the essential function of unifying the diversity of psych ē’s psychological states and functions; from a phenomenal point of view, this unification may be experienced as a common field of self-awareness embracing all our psychological actions44 — perhaps comparable to a kind of adverbial character of ‘cognitive unison’45 —while from a metaphysical and value-theoretic point of view, this activity of nous is unifying, substantiating, and good for psych ē, a distinct ‘image of nous’ (5.1.3, 8–20).46 The following discussion begins with Plotinus’ description of the external activity of nous, then focuses on its internal activity. As above (Enn. 5.4.2, 27–33; 4.3.7, 17), Plotinus has in mind a distinction like that between the combustion process of a fire (its ‘internal’ activity, which 86

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constitutes its essence), and the radiant heat produced by that fire, which can be observed externally by a third-person observer (its ‘external’ activity).

6.5.1  Nous: External Activity For Plotinus, nous is experienced as a kind of undistracted and single-minded cognitive awareness. This experience is subtle and difficult to recognize. Even noticing the experience itself, or ‘second-order’ awareness, can constitute a distraction from it: Actually… we are the activity of nous, so that when that is active, we are active. [10] Perhaps we do not notice it because it is not concerned with any sensory object… But why should not nous itself be active [without sensation], and also its attendant soul, which comes before sensation and any sort of apprehension (antilēpsis)? There must be an activity prior to apprehension if ‘noein and being are the same’ [Parm. B3; cf. Enn. 5.1.8, 17]. It seems as if apprehension exists and is produced when the activity of nous is reflexive and when that in the life of the soul which is active in noēsis is in a way projected back, as happens with a mirror-reflection when there is a smooth, bright, untroubled surface…. One can find a great many valuable activities, theoretical and practical, which we carry on both in our contemplative (the ōria) and active (praxeis) life even when we are fully conscious, which do not make us aware of them. The reader is not necessarily aware that he is reading, least of all when he is really concentrating; nor the person who is being brave that he is being brave and that his action conforms to the virtue of courage… (1.4.9, 27-10, 27, tr. after Armstrong) In this passage, Plotinus sketches the phenomenal quality of nous itself, which is a kind of bare, pre-reflexive, and unifying awareness. Where verbs of reflection and apprehension (antilēpsis) correspond to psych ē, verbs of awareness (sunaisth ēsis) apply to nous.47 This awareness can occur in a ‘pure’ way, as an ‘all-at-once’-ness (homou ta panta, 1.1.8, 8), which constitutes the internal activity of nous (discussed below); but here, with attention to its external activity, Plotinus notes that it can occur in regular cognitive processes (the ‘attendant soul,’ or psych ē: 1.4.10, 4–5), perhaps as an underlying quality of unifying awareness or continuity. This external activity of nous is experienced as a ‘state’ of soul (hexis, 1.1.8, 2), an ‘unrolled’ (aneiligmena, 1.1.8, 6–9) process of coherent reasoning (dianoia, logismos, 5.1.3, 13) worked out over time, in sequence, and sometimes as one among many trains of thought, in contrast to the ‘all-at-once’-ness of the internal activity of nous. Both soul and nous apprehend the same reality, however: real being, or the Forms. Roughly, nous in its external activity ‘shows up’ as the actualization of the soul’s capacity to arrive at a truth; by contrast, in its internal activity, nous is a direct contemplative awareness of that truth with full attention.

6.5.2  Nous: Internal Activity What is nous in itself—in essence or ousia—and how do we relate to it? This is a different question, as Plotinus stresses (1.1.8); it is not a matter of how the external activity of nous ‘shows up’ from the vantage point of soul, as a unified awareness of our experienced cognitive states, but rather what nous really is. For Plotinus, nous is simultaneously a real being, and the direct, incorrigible witnessing of this real being. This real being is a ‘one-many’ (e.g., Enn. 4.8.3, 10), because reality is a unified plurality of unique individuals; nous is the Forms thinking themselves, many in 87

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the sense that there are many irreducibly48 unique Forms, but one in the sense that all Forms are transparent to one another. In the semi-mythologized discourse of Platonism, nous is portrayed as a kind of ‘divine mind,’ akin to the Demiurge of the Timaeus, which is consistently contemplating the paradigmatic Forms and creating images of them, thereby generating the reflections that we experience as the sensible world (via a mediating principle, soul). For Plotinus, however, the Forms are not separate from nous: they are in nous, and nous is in fact the Forms (cf. 5.9.3, 4–8). The internal activity of nous is self-directed contemplation (5.3.7, 18–20; 8, 16–49). At first, Plotinian nous might sound like a kind of second-order consciousness: its ‘internal activity’ might be a sort of ‘awareness-of-being-aware,’ while its ‘external activity’ might be constituted by higher-order thoughts or perceptions about lower-level psychological states, like cognition and sensation.49 But that interpretation is unlikely, given Plotinus’ insistence that apprehension (antil ēpsis) of an activity hinders the activity, and apprehension in this sense of antil ēpsis is subordinate to nous. Strictly speaking, nous is not ‘aware that it is aware’—that second-order awareness is a feature of its external activity (e.g., 1.4.10), as are discursive reasoning and sensation. Plotinus recognizes that some might criticize his view on the grounds that even a sleeping person could possess contemplation (1.4.9), but he sees that as no obstacle, if pure awareness is correctly understood. He also stresses that apprehension (antil ēpsis) is crucial: it is not to be abandoned altogether, but turned inward and concentrated until it is no longer a distraction (5.1.12). Plotinus suggests various visualization or ‘negative imagery’ exercises to help us get at the phenomenal character of nous. For instance, he suggests that we begin from ‘ordinary’ consciousness and strip away spatiality, temporality, and any mental imagery (e.g., 1.6.9, 5.3.9, 5.3.17, 5.8.9). What remains will be a kind of ‘one-many’ with the phenomenal character of luminosity,50 which Plotinus sometimes characterizes as a non-sensory ‘sight seeing itself.’ There is still a recognizable duality of subject and object, but they are also one: this is a being-seeing-itself. This experience, Plotinus suggests, is always present under all our ordinary experience. Its illumination is a kind of interpenetrative mutual vision of all possibly real beings, of which one—which is, in a subtle sense, oneself—‘stands out’ (exechei). In one vivid description, Plotinus develops a metaphorical depiction of the experience (so to speak) of life in nous as a realm of luminous, mutually transparent, individually unique viewpoints on the Forms (5.8.4). In the ‘experience’ of dwelling in nous, an individual does not lose their individuality; on the contrary, Plotinus often speaks as if the true self is at the ‘level’ of nous,51 and what ‘stands out’ in each individual is especially vivid here. Plotinus countenanced Forms of unique individuals, for example, a ‘Form of Socrates’ (which would reincarnate as various embodied souls throughout a world-period).52 The uniqueness of the nous that one is, akin to one’s unique point of view on the manifold of Forms, underlies the uniqueness of one’s soul, experience, and action.53 Life in the purely noetic world, then, could be the experience of a real and unique individual, maintaining its distinctive character while interpenetrating transparently and luminously with other individuals.54 What is the relation of the ‘we’—Plotinus’ ‘fluctuating spotlight of consciousness,’ in E. R. Dodds’ memorable phrase55 —to nous in this strict sense, to its internal activity? Significantly, Plotinus no longer speaks simply as if nous is us, but explains: But how are we related to nous? I mean by nous not that state (hexis) of the soul, which is one of the things we derive from nous, but nous itself. We possess this too, as something transcendent in us (huperan ō h ēm ōn).56 We have it either as something we share (koinon), or as unique (idion), or rather both shared with all and unique; shared, because it is without 88

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parts, and is everywhere the same; but unique, because each person has the whole of it in the primary part of our soul [i.e., the higher soul]. So we also possess the Forms (eidē) in two ways: in our soul, in a manner of speaking unfolded and separated, and in nous all together. (1.1.8, tr. after Armstrong) Plotinus emphasizes several points here. Again, we ‘possess’ nous in two ways: as its external activity in soul, which unifies the functions of soul, but is experienced as an unfolded, unrolled, or separated sequence (discursive cognition, dianoia); and as its internal activity or real essence, which is all at once (a single intuitive awareness, no ēsis). Each unique one of us possesses the internal activity of nous as a whole, without exception; accordingly, no ēsis is idion, unique or particular to this person here (compare the Stoic notion of the idi ōs poion or uniquely qualified individual). It is also unique or particular in the sense that one Form—the Form of this individual that I am—‘stands out’ in the field of awareness that is populated by the intelligibles. From a different vantage point, however, the internal activity of nous is koinon, something ‘common’ to all, because it is something partless and everywhere the same, like a single day present in many towns.57 We are all constantly engaged in the internal activity of nous (4.8.8, 1–3)—a consistent selfcontemplation, which is also the contemplation of all Forms—even if we do not know it. We may not know it because ‘we… are not [only] a part of soul but the whole soul… if there is to be conscious apprehension of the powers which are present in this way [including noēsis], we must turn our power of antilēpsis inward, and make it attend to what is there’ (5.1.12). Nous is characterized by simple ‘projections’ (epibolē) of awareness of the Forms; to reach this stage of experience and inward activity is to ‘liken’ oneself to the god in a higher sense, and to achieve ‘virtue’ in a higher sense (1.2.6–7). At the same time: Our concern is not to be out of error, but to be god. If, then, there is still any element of involuntary impulse… a man in this state will be a god or spirit who is double, or rather who has someone with him who has a different kind of virtue: if there is nothing, he will be simply god, and one of those gods who follow the First. For he himself is the god who came from There [the intelligible world], and his own real nature, if he becomes what he was when he came, is There (1.2.6, 2–9, tr. after Armstrong).

6.6  The One (to hen) Plotinus maintains that there is one reality—and deity—‘higher’ than, or ‘prior’ to, nous. This assertion presents an intuitive challenge, because nous describes the unified plurality of all beings that really are, at once constituted and experienced in subtle, pure awareness. Why posit a principle ontologically prior to this? For Plotinus, there are a number of motivations to do so. First, nous is complex; even in its essential, internal activity, it contemplates the plurality of Forms, and the distinction of subject from object that seems to characterize even the most attenuated awareness. Plotinus, motivated in part by a strong monistic strain in Greek philosophy (as he recognizes, Enn. 5.1.8), seeks an utterly simple first principle; he seeks a principle that can answer to the ‘One’ of Plato’s Parmenides.58 He also seeks a principle that can answer to the Good of Plato’s Republic 6, explaining the essence, knowability, and teleological goal of all beings; nous cannot be this principle, because while nous possesses the good that it seeks, it is not itself that good. 89

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Although Plotinus’ account of to hen is certainly influenced by earlier texts, his motivation is not only scholastic. He frequently offers vivid descriptions, even struggling with the limitations of language, of the contemplative experience of this principle (e.g. Enn. 6.9). Apparently, his contemplative attainment of this experience was a matter for discussion in the school; his biographer Porphyry can specify that Plotinus experienced this state four times while they were together in Rome (VP 23,4–17). The nature of the reality corresponding to this experience, and the phenomenological contours of the experience, are famously difficult to articulate except in metaphor.59 In fact, it is problematic to describe this attainment as an ‘experience’ in the familiar sense, since it is described as transcending the familiarity duality of a subject and object of experience. To hen is not any thing or being, although it causes all beings to be what they are; it is properly ‘beyond being’ (cf. Republic 6, 509B), beyond even the luminous awareness of nous, and somehow causal of both reality and awareness for all things. Plotinus notes that the ordinary names for this principle, including to hen—‘the One’ or ‘oneness’—and to agathon, ‘the good,’ or ‘goodness’— are only suggestive (6.9.4, 31–33). The neuter definite article to is also significantly ambiguous: to hen could mean ‘the one [thing],’ but it could also mean ‘unity,’ ‘individuality,’ or ‘oneness’ as a feature of things, just as the Greek to kalon might mean ‘the beautiful [thing],’ or ‘beauty.’60 I will occasionally render the phrase as ‘Unity’ here, although this interpretation can also be problematic. As with the earlier principles, to hen is envisaged as having an external and internal activity. In its external activity, it unifies and individuates all things, beginning with nous and Forms. Its internal activity is transcendent and properly speaking undescribable, but has phenomenal character; there is something it is like to experience unqualified hen ōsis, individuation or unity, as Plotinus describes (for example) in Enn. 6.9 and in the celebrated first-personal introduction to Enn. 4.8.

6.6.1  To hen: External Activity One of the ways of getting at the external activity of unity for Plotinus, and its broader meaning, is to consider relatively mundane cases first. Plotinus begins an extended treatise on the One or Unity (to hen) with an ‘intuition pump,’ building on a traditional Stoic hierarchy of ‘grades of unity’ or coherence in individuated things.61 From very loosely organized and individuated items that scarcely qualify as real (socially conventional collections like an army) to artifacts, continuous bodies, and living beings, the being of things depends on to hen, that is, their unity or individuation (Enn. 6.9.1, 1–14).62 In this sense, items falling under many ‘grades’ of being—ascending in coherence from social constructs to inanimate bodies, living beings—are what they are in virtue of unity. With unity come goodness and health: And there is health when the body is brought together into one order, and beauty when the nature of the one holds the parts together; and the soul has virtue (aret ē) when it is unified into one thing, and one agreement. (6.9.1, 14–17, tr. after Armstrong) Soul, as Plotinus stresses, brings unity to bodies in the course of its external activity (6.9.1); after all, bodies without soul eventually fall apart. But soul too has plurality in its own internal activity, in its capacities—for instance, reasoning (logizesthai), desiring (oregontai), apprehending (antilambanesthai) (6.9.1, 40–42); hence, while soul may be unified and have the capacity to unify other things, it is not unity in its own essence. 90

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But the soul is itself an image or activity of a prior reality, nous, which is the proximate source of its unity. Nous, in its external activity, binds together the soul’s capacities, causing them to be one, experienced as a single field of pure awareness, the soul’s state (hexis) of nous (1.1.8); and as in the case of the body unified by soul, this unity deriving from nous is good for soul.63 Then again, like soul, even the internal activity of nous is complex, in several respects. Most importantly,64 in its nature as awareness, it is both the subject (what is aware, nooun) and the object (what it is aware of, nooumenon) (6.9.2, 36–37), and thereby contains an intrinsic duality, the duality of subject and object. This duality must be unified because, in the case of nous, subject and object are identical: nous contemplates itself, real being, as the Forms. But nous is the external activity of unity itself (to hen), which unifies nous, and is good for nous, in the same way that nous unifies psych ē and psych ē unifies body. Unity also serves to unify each of the Forms (6.9.2, 19). The external activity of unity ‘shows up’ in the most direct way as the unification of nous, in the unity of subject and object in pure awareness; it shows up less directly, mediated by nous, in the unity of the capacities of the soul; and it shows up even less directly, mediated by psych ē, in the unity of living bodies, other continuous bodies, artifacts, and simply social or linguistic constructs.

6.6.2  To hen: Internal Activity What is the ‘internal activity,’ or essence, of to hen? In the terms that Plotinus has framed, that activity is especially challenging to articulate, because unity or to hen is described as ‘beyond’ essence: causal of being, but not a being itself. [B]ut if we must give it a name, ‘one’ would be an appropriate ordinary way of speaking of it, not in the sense of something else and then one… [it] can be better known by its product, essence (ousia)—and it is nous that leads [us] to ousia—and its nature is of such a kind that it is the source of the best and the power which generates the real beings, abiding in itself and not being diminished and not being one of the things which it brought into being. Whatever is even before [real beings], we give the name of ‘one’ to by necessity, to indicate its nature to one another, bringing ourselves by the name to an indivisible idea and wanting to unify our souls… (6.9.5, 32–42) [W]hen you think of him as nous or God, he is more; and when you unify him in your thought, here also the degree of unity by which he transcends your thought is more than you imagined it to be; for he is by himself without any incidental attributes. But someone could also think of his oneness in terms of self-sufficiency… the One does not need itself; for it is itself… (6.9.6, 13–21) [I]t transcends good, and is good not for itself but for the others, if anything is able to participate in it. (6.9.6, 41–42, tr. after Armstrong) It is tempting to regard to hen as some single being, as the common, capitalized English rendering ‘the One’ suggests; and Plotinus frequently uses the noun ho theos, ‘God,’ to name it, attracting the occasional use of the grammatically masculine pronoun above, though without gender implications. (Here, Plotinus is influenced by Plato’s account of the human good as ‘likeness to God,’ homoiōsis t ōi the ōi, at Tht. 176B: for Plotinus, unity is divinity, and unity par excellence is divinity par excellence.) In reality, to hen is no thing, however lofty, but rather one-ness, a core feature that shows up in all things that are one ( just as grammatically, to kalon is not ‘the Beautiful [thing]’ but ‘beauty’). To hen is the irreducible individuality present in all things that (in some more or less attenuated sense) are. It causes everything that is to be just what it is; consequently, 91

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in value terms, it is also what is good for that thing, since it is bad for real beings if they fall apart and cease to be what they are, and good for them if they cohere and continue to be what they are. To hen is participated in different degrees by exceptionally unified beings (nous), by coherent complexes (psych ē), and by indirectly unified beings like bodies, artifacts, and social constructs. Accordingly, Plotinus stresses that it would be an error to look elsewhere for ‘the One,’ or unity—that is, to look ‘outside’ or in something ‘other’ than ourselves. Our ‘unity’ or ‘oneness’ is what we really are. After exploring what the One is not (6.9.6)—spatial or temporal, even one or good in the senses we know—Plotinus adds that ‘[W]e exist more when we turn to him and our well-being (eudaimonia) is there, but being far from him is nothing else but existing less’ (9, 13–14). If the soul ascends, Plotinus says, ‘it will arrive, not at something else (heteron), but at itself, and in this way, since it is not in something else it will not be in nothing, but in itself; but when it is in itself alone and not in being, it is in that; for one becomes, not essence, but ‘beyond essence’ by this converse’ (6.9.11, 38–41). Plotinus repeatedly emphasizes the limitations of language in expressing this principle: ‘the vision is hard to put into words. For how anyone could say that it was ‘other’ (heteron), when what he saw there, in that contemplation, was not something else, but unity (hen) with himself ?’ (6.9.10, 9–21; cf. 6.9.9, 56–10, 3). To hen is in fact ‘oneself ’ (heauton, 6.9.10, 10–12.21), but beyond the construct of ‘self ’ (autos) as firmly as it is beyond the constructs of ‘being’ and ‘vision’ (6.9.11, 11–12). It has positive phenomenal content of a kind: it is like an experience of peace and tranquility (h ēsukh ēi, 6.9.11, 13), like inspiration (enthousiasas, 13), like vision (tropos tou idein, 23), like both movement and stillness (ephesis… stasis, 23–24; for the hedging ‘like’ or ‘sort of,’ see hoion, 16; tropos, 22). In addition, in a particularly famous passage from Enn. 6.9, Plotinus describes the experience of the One in terms of simple projection (epibolē) of nous, but now ‘drunken’ rather than sober (6.7.35): ‘nous… falls in love, simplified into happiness by having its fill, and it is better for it to be drunk with a drunkenness like this than to be more respectably sober’ (tr. after Armstrong, in Clark 2016: 91). This experience and reality has no subject-object duality; it is the proper subject of no predication or name, but still qualifies as a kind of foundational phenomenal experience. This (as Plotinus also seems to think) is subtle enough that people might think its achievement is practically useless, since it could appear to be available in deep sleep, unconsciousness, or even death.65 Plotinus describes hen ōsis as a kind of ‘out of body’ experience: that is, one feels powerfully and authentically distinct from one’s body, in an experience with such force that embodied experience subsequently appears odd and false.66 Plotinus reports in the first person a kind of confusion that arises in the ‘descent’ from this contemplative attainment, through noēsis and cognition, to sensory embodied experience (4.8.1). This vivid first-person account—the only autobiographical passage in the Enneads—has been a subject of considerable scholarly debate; in particular, it is not clear whether Plotinus is describing an ascent to to hen, or an ascent to the peak of nous.67 But this particular point doesn’t matter for our purposes here; Plotinus certainly does speak (for instance in 6.9.9) as having experienced unification (hen ōsis) directly. Plotinus sometimes speaks as if the body is a hindrance to the experience (6.9.10, 1–3). He has in mind something like Plato’s Phaedo 67c–69e and Aristotle’s view in Nic. Eth. 10: basic physical needs (Enn. 4.8.2, 14) interfere often with contemplation, which would otherwise be continuous. Plotinus also suggests that spatial and temporal assumptions can interfere with a direct experience of awareness (e.g. 5.3.17, 5.8.9). On the other hand, Plotinus treats body and embodied nature as a kind of ‘work of art’ created by nature (1.6, 3.8) (cf. Ricken 1991: 237–39), adopting Plato’s image (Rep. 10, 510A) of apparent nature as a kind of artwork depicting reality: for Plotinus, nature and the body express the basic unity or bare individuality that is to hen.68 92

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From an ethical vantage point, it is also interesting to stress that Plotinus also analyzes hen ōsis as true freedom (eleutheria), and indeed as the only kind of genuine freedom (e.g., Enn. 6.8). The soul is characterized by a striving toward this freedom; nous has such freedom; and to hen alone just is such freedom, the unconditioned goal toward which they strove (6.8.7).69

6.7 Conclusions Plotinus interprets the Platonic advice to ‘become like the god’ as a process of self-cultivation, which amounts to a virtuous reorientation of the attention and values that ‘we’ hold. ‘We’ come to witness ourselves as the divinity Soul (psych ē), then as Mind (nous), and finally as the One (to hen). While this turn amounts to a reorientation of the faculties of conscious attention that we already use, largely toward a self-reflection on their own nature and causes, the further steps of identification with Mind and the One amount to a radical transformation. This transformation is ‘epistemic,’ in the sense that we cannot yet, prior to that turn, know what it is like; and ‘personal,’ in that we discover and cultivate ourselves anew there. In Pierre Hadot’s words, it corresponds to a transformation of our vision of the world and a metamorphosis of our personality.70 Because, from Plotinus’ standpoint, the self we discover is who we were all along, personal transformation might appear simply to be epistemic transformation; and later Platonists test Plotinus’ theory here, proposing that ‘our’ relationship with these higher principles is not one of identity.71 Both agree, however, that self-transformation is a gradual and profoundly worthy practice of ‘working on our statue’ (1.6.9): although one’s self is in the ‘marble’ all along, it requires committed work on our part to realize it. This is the Good Life: adopting Diotima’s lesson, which inspires Plotinus in this treatise, ‘here, if anywhere, should a human being live their life… and if any human being could become immortal, it would be them’ (Symposium 211d–212a).

Notes 1 Whitehead 1929: 39. 2 See Sorabji 2016a, 2016b, Sedley 2012: 1, Karamanolis 2006, and on authority in Platonist commentary, Erler et al. 2021. As George Boys–Stones has cautioned, Middle and Neoplatonic philosophical development is not only a matter of resolving textual puzzles—as tempting as this conclusion can be (Boys-Stones 2001). 3 For Socrates as an exemplar for the philosophical life in Plato, see Blondell 2002, Nightingale 1995. For self-transformation in Plato, see also Sheffield’s contribution to this volume. 4 The definite article does not need to imply a particular god here, but ‘the god’ as a kind, like ‘the lion’ in the sentence ‘the lion is brave’. 5 Theaetetus 176ab. On the development of the goal of ‘likeness to the god,’ see Sedley 1999, Annas 1999, O’Meara 2003: 40–81, and Armstrong 2004). Historically, Eudorus of Alexandria may have been a particularly important contributor to this development (see Dillon 1996b). 6 Useful contemporary introductions to Plotinus include O’Meara 1993; for a crisp survey of his system and relationship to earlier Platonism, see Gerson 2013: 227–304; for his cognitive vocabulary and account of awareness, see Hutchinson 2018; and for his description of the self, with Sorabji 2006 and Remes 2011, see Mortley 2014. A rich hagiographical narration of Plotinus’ life was published by his pupil Porphyry, together with the latter’s edition of Plotinus’ treatises in the ‘Enneads’: for an English translation of the Life of Plotinus with commentary, see Edwards 2000 and the excellent new Plotinus translation (Gerson et al. 2018). 7 Thus, Iamblichus and later Platonists question whether our souls can be all things in an ‘unequivocal’ sense (askhet ōs) (Proclus, in Tim. III, 246, 27); they disagree with Plotinus when he holds that divine souls and our soul differ in activity not in essence (245, 25–26). 8 The classical injunction toward hubris, one interpretation of the Delphic guidance to ‘know thyself.’ Compare Iliad 5.127–28, Pindar 8.95–97.

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Michael Griffin 9 As Gerson stresses, this modern label was developed with a pejorative connotation, and in some respects, obscures more than it clarifies (Gerson 2005). See also Catana 2013. For a useful general overview of Neoplatonism as an intellectual movement, see for example Remes 2014; for the social and educational dimensions of the movement, see Watts 2008. For core Neoplatonic texts, valuably organized along topical lines, see Sorabji (Sorabji 2004). For a systematic treatment of the continuity of Platonism in antiquity, including Plato himself, see Gerson 2013. 10 O’Meara 2003: 40. 11 The ‘scale of virtues’ itself has been carefully studied; see recently Chiaradonna 2021, and for Plotinus’ seminal treatise Enn. 1.2, O’Meara 2018. This chapter will focus more specifically on themes of selftransformation in Plotinus’ metaphysics. 12 For Porphyry’s assessment of Plotinus’ way of writing, see VP 8, 13, and 20. 13 For a sample study of Porphyry’s systematization of Plotinus, particularly with respect to Enn. 1.2 and the scale of virtues, see Brisson (2006) and O’Meara (2018). Proclus’ Elements of Theology is a schematic working-out of a later Neoplatonist system (Dodds 1968). 14 For instance, the treatise 5.1 [10] 2 offers a vivid example of the pattern that Pierre Hadot would call the ‘view from above’ in ancient literature (Hadot 2004: 206–11). 15 Hutchinson (2018) outlines Plotinus’ terminology for consciousness; see further discussion below. 16 See Chiaradonna 2021 on the ‘scale of virtues,’ and for the combination of individual and collective well-being, O’Meara 2003. Porphyry’s title for the late treatise he sets first in his collection of the Enneads, ‘What is the living being? What is the human?’ suggests his own value for self-knowledge as an entry-point into Plotinus’ thought. 17 See Hadot 1995, and Cooper 2012: ch. 6. 18 One way to capture these assumptions is developed in Gerson 2013: Plotinus is a Platonist in the (very broad) sense that he is committed to anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, antirelativism, and anti-skepticism. 19 It is instructive to compare the Stranger’s dialectical argument in the Sophist with Plotinus’ parallel discussion of the movement and life of mind in Enn. 6.2: where the Stranger works out the case for the mobility of Intellect from premises to conclusion, Plotinus instructs the reader in a kind of guided meditation, to see the Intellect full of dynamic movement, to have the vision that it is not static. 20 Plotinus’ influence can be detected in an extraordinary range of philosophical and theological authors, artists, and poets, ranging from the Christian Church Fathers and St Augustine to William Blake. A particularly vivid example of his philosophical influence, as Bruno points out to me, is the Idealism of Schelling (Beierwaltes 2002; see also Bruno’s chapter in this volume). 21 Plotinus agrees with Parmenides (DK B4) that ‘thinking (noein) and being are one’ (Enn. 1.4.10, 3.8.8; for the reception of this idea in Neoplatonism, see Perl 2014). Plotinus’ insight into this unity arguably flows from experience (e.g., 4.8.1) as well as philosophical dialectic. The subject and object of experience are arguably united at the ‘level’ of the One (6.9.9–10); as the ‘river’ flows from the One into the eddy of Intellect, the ‘gaze’ of Intellect returning to its source generates the apparent distinction between viewing subject and viewed object (5.2.1, 10–14). 22 For a summary of this vocabulary, see Hutchinson (2018: ch. 2 and Appendix). 23 The activities of psych ē could be compared, very loosely, to the functions that Block (1995) classifies under ‘access consciousness,’ where content is ‘poised for use as a premise’ and ‘poised for rational control of action’ (231). By contrast, the activities of Mind (nous) described below are ‘phenomenally’ conscious in Block’s terms; they arguably include even sensations, because sensory experience is really a reflection of our nous perceiving its own objects (1.1.7, 9–12). 24 In a memorable example, whereas Soul ‘apprehends’ a face as its parts—nose, mouth, and so on—Mind grasps the face ‘all at once’: see Enn. 4.7.6.8–9, 4.4.1.16–25. 25 For the individuality of ‘my’ nous, see Karfik (2014) and (Mortley 2014) for the interpretation as a distinctive ‘viewpoint,’ see Hutchinson Enn. 6.2.20, 4.4.1, and Hutchinson (2018: 22–31). 26 See Remes (2011), Sorabji (2006), and Mortley (2014). 27 E. R. Dodds, in ‘Discussion’ following Schwyzer (1960). 28 O’Meara (2018). 29 For an interpretation of a later Platonist view of reasoning soul as authentic self, see n. 7 (above) and Riggs (2015). 30 See n. 18. 31 See for example Plato, Apology 29d–30b; Plato (?), Alc. I 124b, 129a, 132b, Xen. Mem. 1.2.1–8, 1.2.17, 3.6.1.

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Transformation as Self-Cultivation in Plotinian Neoplatonism 32 See Karfik (2014). For Plotinus’ psychological thought, and especially his views on self hood, see again Remes (2011) and Sorabji (2006). 33 Translations here and following are generally from the Loeb editions of A. H. Armstrong, sometimes heavily adapted. See more recently the excellent updated translation by Gerson et al. (2018). 34 For discussion here and in the following analysis of Enn. 1.1, see Kalligas (2014, ad locc). 35 See Aristotle, DA 2.3, 414a31–32. 36 For the imagery of illumination in Plotinus, see Schroeder (1992). 37 This is one interpretation: see 6.3.8.20–32, cf. Chiaradonna (2014). On Plotinus’ theory of sensation (aisth ēsis), see Emilsson (1988). 38 In this passage, building on his interpretation of Aristotle, Plotinus means something like the following: when I seem to sense an object, I am really acting as a field of attention (nous) actualizing its inner potential to recognize or become aware of intelligible forms: say, the form that I can name ‘yellow’ or ‘beautiful.’ By the time I do apprehend these forms, they are ‘already intelligible’: that is, what I am experiencing is no longer a physical arrangement of elements, but the qualia (as we should say) that I call ‘yellow’ and ‘beautiful.’ 39 On this comparison, see further discussion below under Nous. On ‘witnessing’ consciousness in the sense developed there, see in particular Miri Albahari (2006; 2009) and Aaron Henry and Evan Thompson (Henry & Thompson 2011); for its Indian philosophical roots, see Gupta (1998). 40 See Karfik (2014) and Hutchinson (2018). 41 See here Remes (2011) and Kalligas (2014: 119). 42 This is the fundamental account of the Platonic Alcibiades (above, §1.3.2). 43 See for example Proclus in Tim. III, 245, 25–26, and 246, 27 for a view of Plotinus and Theodore of Asine. 4 4 See Sorabji (2006: 14). 45 For cognitive unison as an adverbial idea, centering on undistractedness, see Mole (2010, esp. ch. 4). 46 See Gerson (2013: 242). 47 See Hutchinson (2018: ch. 2 and Appendix). 48 ‘Irreducible’ in the sense that each Form is unified by unity (to hen) alone: see 6.9.2, 19. 49 So, David Rosenthal’s study of self-awareness as higher-order thoughts (HOTs) and William Lycan’s study of self-awareness as higher-order perceptions (HOPs). Sorabji (2006: 247) points out the difficulties posed by Plotinus’ account, and in the remainder of ch. 14 offers a rich summary of later Neoplatonic views on this issue. 50 See Gerson (2013: 237–42). 51 See Blumenthal (1996: 96). 52 See Enn. 5.9, Rist (1963). 53 See again Karfik (2014) and Hutchinson (2018: 25–31). 54 Compare the dialectical ‘interpenetration’ or ‘interweaving’ of Forms in Plato’s account of the ‘greatest kinds’: Sophist 259E, with Shields (2013). Plotinus deals directly with the ‘greatest kinds’ in Enn. 6.2. The Forms can be distinguished from one another, in the sense that their multiplicity is organized by five structuring principles: being, sameness, difference, change, stability (cf. Plato, Sophist 254B–C). 55 See Dodds’ ‘Discussion’ following Schwyzer (1960). 56 Armstrong translates ‘something that transcends us,’ Gerson et al. as ‘it transcends us.’ In this translation, I take a different approach, for the following reasons (Kalligas 2014: 122). For Plotinus, nous is wholly present (5.8.4, 4–11, 6.5.6, 1–6, 6.7.9, 31–35), and when the soul’s hexis of nous (i.e. the external activity of nous) is active, the soul is really identical with nous itself. At this point, ‘transcendence becomes a property of the ‘I’’ (Trouillard 1955: 78); see commentary by Kalligas (2014: 122). 57 Compare Plotinus 5.8.4, 4–11, 6.5.6, 1–6, 6.7.9, 31–35, and the ‘day and sail’ argument of the Parmenides 130E–131E: nous, like the Forms, is participated like a day (omnipresent everywhere it is), not like a sail covering many sailors (each one gets a bit). 58 See Dodds (1928). 59 See Harrington (2005), Clark (2016: ch. 8), and Mazur (2009). 60 See also Butler (2005, 2016). Bruno points me to a fruitful comparison with Schelling’s early and continuing challenge of parsing intellectual intuition of the absolute (qua identity of subject and object, thought and being); see his chapter in this volume. 61 SVF 2.366–8, 1013; see above, Section 6.5. 62 This intuitive introduction to the idea of ‘unity’ would be adopted in later Neoplatonism; Proclus’ influential and systematic Elements of Theology, for example, begins with the proposition that ‘every

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Michael Griffin multiplicity somehow participates unity.’ See Dodds’ edition (Dodds, 1968), prop. 1, with commentary ad loc. Proclus’ systematization of Neoplatonic metaphysics would be influential across the Christian West and East, and in Islamic philosophy. 63 The unity that nous imparts to the composite psych ē is indissoluble, or at any rate never will be dissolved, because nous is always maintaining it; the Neoplatonists often connected this view to the claim of the Demiurge in the Timaeus that his works will never be dissolved, save by his consent (and he will never dissolve them) (Tim. 41B). The Demiurge of the Timaeus, who witnesses Forms and creates their images in time ‘below,’ is a literary model for the Neoplatonic concept of nous. 64 In addition, the objects of nous, the Forms, are plural, and in a subtle sense complex objects: the Form of ‘human,’ for example, defined as ‘rational living being,’ can be seen as containing both ‘rational’ and ‘living being.’ 65 Unconsciouness: 1.4.9, 1–2; deep sleep: 1.4.9, 5–6; death (analogously): 1.4.11, 1–3. Compare Damascius On Phaedo 1.62 on the endurance of the subject in sleep. 66 The phenomenology of similar experiences are accessibly described by Thompson (2014: 203–230), with careful attention to third-person neuroscientific evidence. 67 The traditional view, also adopted in the ancient and Arabic traditions, has been that Plotinus here describes an ascent to to hen (see Rist 1967: 56), with his n. 4. The view is now more standard that he describes an ascent to divine intellect (Blumenthal 1996: 95; O’Meara 2003: 104–5). 68 In this sense, Plotinus’ depiction might even be compared with Merleau-Ponty’s apparently very different view of the body as the seat of subjectivity. For a discussion of Merleau-Ponty and the distinction of bodily subjectivity from embodied experience, see (Thompson 2007: 245–47). See also Kym McLaren’s contribution to this volume. 69 See also Hutchinson (2018: ch. 6). 70 (Hadot 1995: 82). 71 Above, n. 7.

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Michael Griffin Griffin, M. J. (2014b). “Proclus on the Ethics of Self-Constitution” in Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity (pp. 202–219), eds. A. Marmodoro & B. D. Prince. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Griffin, M. J. (2014c). Universals, Education, and Philosophical Methodology in Later Neoplatonism” in Universals in Ancient Philosophy (pp. 353–380). Pisa: Edizioni della Scuola Normale. Griffin, M. J. (2016). Olympiodorus: On Plato First Alcibiades 10–28. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gurwitsch, A. (1941). “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1(3), 325–338. Hadot, P. (1995). Philosophy as a Way of Life. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Hadot, P., J. Carlier, A. I. Davidson, M. Djaballah and M. Chase (2011). The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hadot, P. (2004). What Is Ancient Philosophy? Tr. M. Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harrington, M. (2005). “The Drunken Epibole of Plotinus and Its Reappearance in the Work of Dionysius the Areopagite.”Dionysius 23, 117–38. Henry, A. and E. Thompson. (2011). Witnessing from Here: Self-Awareness from a Bodily Versus Embodied Perspective. In The Oxford Handbook of the Self (pp. 228–250). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hutchinson, D. M. (2018). Plotinus On Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Inwood, B. (1985). Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Irwin, T. (1977). “Plato’s Heracliteanism.” The Philosophical Quarterly 27, 1–13. Irwin, T. (2008). “The Platonic Corpus”. in The Oxford Handbook of Plato (pp. 63–87), ed. G. Fine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johansen, T. K. (2008). “The Timaeus on the Principles of Cosmology” in The Oxford Handbook of Plato (pp. 463–483), ed. G. Fine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, M. R. (2005). Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kalligas, P. (1997). “Forms of Individuals in Plotinus: A Re-Examination.” Phronesis 42(2), 206–27. Kalligas, P. (2014). The Enneads of Plotinus: A Commentary, Vol. 1. Translated by Elizabeth Key Fowden and Nicolas Pilavachi. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Karamanolis, G. E. (2006). Plato And Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Karfík, Filip. (2014). “Parts of the Soul in Plotinus” in Partitioning the Soul: Debates From Plato to Leibniz, eds. Dominik Perler & Klaus Corcilius. Berlin: De Gruyter. 107–148. Korsgaard, C. M. (2009). Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lorenz, H. (2008). “Plato on the Soul” in The Oxford Handbook of Plato (pp. 243–266), ed. G. Fine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matthews, G. B. (2008). “The Epistemology and Metaphysics of Socrates” in The Oxford Handbook of Plato, ed. G. Fine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 114–138. Mazur, Z. (2009). “Having Sex With the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor” in Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth, eds. P. Vassilopoulou and S.R.L. Clark. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 67–83. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2013). Phenomenology of Perception. Milton Park: Routledge. Mole, C. (2010). Attention Is Cognitive Unison: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, C. (2014). “How to “Know Thyself ” in Plato’s Phaedrus.” Apeiron 47(3), 390–418. Morrow, G. R. and J. M. Dillon (1992). Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mortley, R. (2014). Plotinus, Self and the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nightingale, A. W. (1995). Genres in Dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2012). Not for Profit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2013). The Therapy of Desire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. O’Meara, D. J. (1993). Plotinus. Oxford: Clarendon Press. O’Meara, D. J. (2012). “Aristotelian Ethics in Plotinus” in The Reception of Aristotle’s Ethics (pp. 53–66), ed. J. Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Meara, D. J. (2003). Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford. O’Meara, D. J. (2018). Plotin: Traité 19: Sur les vertus. Paris: Vrin. Parry, R. (2004). “Ancient Ethical Theory” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/ethics-ancient Paul, L. A. (2014). Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Transformation as Self-Cultivation in Plotinian Neoplatonism Peterson, S. (2008). “The Parmenides” in The Oxford Handbook of Plato (pp. 383–410), ed. G. Fine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Press, G. A. (2000). Who Speaks for Plato? Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Rappe, S. L. (1995). “Socrates and Self-Knowledge.” Apeiron 28(1), 1–24. Rashed, M. (2007). Essentialisme: Alexandre D’Aphrodise Entre Logique, Physique Et Cosmologie. Berlin: De Gruyter. Remes, P. (2011). Plotinus on Self: The Philosophy of the ‘We.’ Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Remes, P. (2014). Neoplatonism. Milton Park: Routledge. Ricken, F. (1991). Philosophy of the Ancients. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Riggs, T. (2015). “Authentic Self hood in the Philosophy of Proclus: Rational Soul and Its Significance for the Individual.” International Journal of Platonic Tradition 9(2), 177–204. Rist, J. M. (1963). “Forms of Individuals in Plotinus.” Classical Quarterly 13(2), 223–231. Rist, J. M. (1967). Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schofield, M. (2013). Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoreanism in the First Century BC: New Directions for Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schroeder, F. M. (1992). Form and Transformation. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press - MQUP. Schwyzer, H.-R. (1960). ‘Bewusst’ und ‘Unbewusst’ bei Plotin. In Les Sources de Plotin (pp. 341–378). Geneva: Fondation Hardt. Sedley, D. N. (2012). The Philosophy of Antiochus. Cambridge. Sedley, David. (1999) “The Ideal of Godlikeness” in Plato: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul. Vol. 2 of Plato, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (pp. 309–328), ed. G. Fine. New York: Oxford University Press. Sellars, J. (2006). Stoicism. New York: Acumen. Shields, C. (2013). The Grounds of Logos: The Interweaving of Forms. In G. Anagnostopoulos & Sorabji, R. (2002). Emotion and Peace of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sorabji, R. (2004). The Philosophy of the Commentators 200-600 AD: A Sourcebook. Duckworth. Sorabji, R. (2006). Self: Ancient and Modern Theories About Individuality, Life, and Death. Oxford. Sorabji, R. (2016a). Aristotle Transformed. Bloomsbury, 2nd. Ed. Sorabji, R. (2016b). Aristotle Re-Interpreted. Bloomsbury. Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life. Harvard University Press. Thompson, E. (2014). Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. Columbia UP. Torrance, A. and J. Zachuber (eds.) (2014). Individuality in Late Antiquity. London: Routledge. Trouillard, J. (1955). La purification plotinienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Tsouna, V. (2001). Socrate et la connaissance de soi: quelques interprétations. Philosophie Antique. Vander Waerdt, P. (ed.). (1994). The Socratic Movement. New York: Cornell University Press. Vlastos, G. (1983). “The Socratic Elenchus.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1, 27–58. Vlastos, G. (1991). Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cornell University Press. Watts, E. (2008). City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria. UC Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality. New York: Macmillan. Wilberding, J. (2005). “Creeping Spatiality”: The Location of Nous in Plotinus’ Universe.” Phronesis 50(4), 315–334. Xenophontos, Sophia and Anna Marmodoro. (2021). The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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PART II

Transformation Between the Human and the Divine: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy

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INTRODUCTION G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

Plotinus’ account of becoming divine in Chapter 6 provides an excellent segue into the main set of issues in this part. Here, the contributors focus comparatively less on the way that philosophy itself is transformative and instead think philosophically about a variety of transformative experiences centering around the divine. This includes both the question of what we may now call ‘religious experience’, but also the idea of the divine itself undergoing change of some kind. While it is by no means the case that global philosophical activity in the period from 400 to 1700 was exclusively religious or theological in nature, theorizing about transformation often took place in a religious framework. From the point of view of the contemporary debate about transformative experience, it is notable that in this period, as with antiquity, transformations are not everyday occurrences. However, unlike the ancient traditions on which transformation worked largely within the sphere of human activity, the medieval and early modern discussions emphasize the importance of divinity, which is conceived of as either outside of the human or as a special part of the human or both. It is this divinity which plays a special role in making possible human transformation. Nevertheless, the contributions in this part stress the need of the human to prepare themselves and make themselves receptive to the divinity in order for transformation to take place. Such insights into the importance of both activity and passivity in the transformational process also have implications for those who want to understand radical transformation in a more secular context. From a historical point of view, it is especially notable that the theorizing around transformation was continuous between the often starkly opposed medieval and early modern periods, a fact which is well-illustrated by the first three chapters in this part. Bligh Somma examines Avicenna’s account of love, which functions both as a metaphysical principle operative throughout the universe, animal love, and finally love in human souls. They show how love in animal souls plays an important role in the specifically human transformation towards understanding the divine. Moving from the Islamicate to Latin Christendom, Christina van Dyke argues that for the important 13th century contemplatives Hadewijch, Marguerite d’Oingt, and Mechthild of Hackeborn, mystical experiences are best understood as parts of long term, social processes of transformation involving contemplative practices and not merely ‘break-through’ moments. By analyzing their autobiographical accounts, van Dyke shows that mystical experiences for these thinkers requires a sort of training, but also that the accounts themselves function as exemplars DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-10

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to aid others on their spiritual journeys. Amber L. Griffioen and Kristopher G. Phillips argue in their contribution that Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy should not be read as a merely discursive treatise but rather as a broadly mystical text. By situating Descartes’ choice of genre within medieval and early modern contemplative traditions, they show how the Meditations contains important structural features in common with mystical texts and can shed new light on enduring exegetical issues such as the Cartesian circle. The final two contributions, however, buck the trend, showing that this period does not merely conceive of transformation as a human process caused by the divine. In her contribution, Julie Klein considers how Spinoza both rejects the traditional conception of transformation that was outlined in the first three contributions of this part, since his monistic metaphysics of substance and mode precludes the possibility of radical transformation as such. Nevertheless, Klein shows how Spinoza’s theory of human political change, shorn of commitment to a divine teleology, can qualify as theory of transformation in an important sense. Finally, Alexus McLeod shows how themes of transformation pervade the Popol Vuh, a Mayan text now only preserved in a romanized K’iche’ script from the early 18th century, but likely reflecting earlier thought. Unlike the other contributions, this chapter details how transferal of essence can occur through practices such as ritual performance and places such transformation within the context of a Mayan metaphysics that considers actions and things to be on the same ontological level.

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7 HUMAN TRANSFORMATION AT THE LIMITS OF ANIMALITY AND DIVINITY IN AVICENNA’S EPISTLE ON LOVE* Bligh Somma Avicenna (d.1037) in his Epistle on Love (Risāla f ī l-ʿišq) attributes an innate love for perfection to everything that is. From matter to form, plants to the celestial bodies, all things move toward their final end and relative perfection owing to a love for their own unique goodness. These individual instances of love are themselves unified and organized within one general principle of love for the First Cause with which the entire universe is imbued. This First Cause is, according to Avicenna, identical with the Pure Good, which manifests itself in and to all things in its provision of specific goods for those things. In turn, it is the ultimate object of love for all that is. In this chapter, I will examine the process of human transformation within this treatise and, specifically, the role of animality within human transformation. Human transformation is the process whereby a human being realizes their utmost perfection, intellecting the First Cause, in turn becoming a substantial intellect. Thus, this transformation begins within the material sphere with the elective love proper to animality, and ends in the immaterial sphere of intellect as the human essence is perfected and actualized as an eternal substance. This process occurs by an internal negotiation of capacities and activities until all of one’s animal powers of the soul are quiet and subdued beneath the rational power. I will argue that a feature of animality, elective love, underlies the possibility of human transformation since it is the manifestation of the metaphysical love proper to all things that allows for an individual to weigh benefits and to choose between potential goals. Thus, elective love—itself a feature of animality per se—makes possible the human transformation into the realm of the divine. It is ultimately responsible for driving this perfection and actualizing the potential for human transformation. By introducing this metaphysical principle, Avicenna complicates a rejection of all aspects of the animal, and he distinguishes between the elective love proper to the animal as such and the animal powers of the soul that are tied to matter. Although the result of the transformation (intellection of the intelligibles as a substantial intellect) might not be historically novel, Avicenna’s presentation of the process of the transformation of the human animal into an eternal substance is importantly

* This article was written under the aegis of the project “Animals in the Philosophy of the Islamic World”, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC), under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 786762).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-11

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different from other conceptions of human transformation, wherein anything associated with the animal must be categorically left behind. After first examining the notion and history of metaphysical love as such, I will lay out Avicenna’s account of this love as a general principle within the Epistle. Turning to the basic features required for human transformation—preparation, apprehension, and elective love—I examine the steps within human perfection that lead to their ultimate transformation. As I will argue, the capacity to discern benefits and goods in the world belongs to nonhuman as well as human animals, the difference between the two in that regard being one of degree rather than kind. Since human beings have a rational power, they can utilize this discernment for their own proper perfection. While this perfection does make them substantially different from most animals, the capacity to choose between goods, essential for the process of human perfection, is nevertheless still a feature of their animality. Thus, Avicenna’s development of elective love solves an inherent difficulty of the Aristotelian definition of the human being as a rational animal—human beings perfect themselves in a way that raises them to divinity, and a necessary condition of that transformation is the elective love they acquire as animals. Thus, they require a basic feature of their animality to become uniquely different from other animals.1

7.1  Love (ʿišq) as a Metaphysical Principle of Perfection Before diving into the text, it would be helpful for us to establish on what grounds Avicenna might posit something like love as a metaphysical principle in the first place. The very suggestion that all things—including inanimate ones and aspects of reality that are not even things at all, such as matter and form—would have an innate love of any sort appears to be rather odd. Why should we think that any natural thing other than human beings would be capable of loving? Let us first consider the notion of a metaphysical, conative principle behind all that is. First, the supposition that this sort of force underlies all ends-based activity or even mere existence as such is neither unprecedented nor unparalleled.2 We find Plotinus (d.270) posits desire or striving (ἔφεσις) as a basic feature of the whole world, especially in his discussions of the structure of hypostases and substance (Somma 2021a: 26–45). Later, we find a similar conception of desire at work in the Font of Life by Ibn Gabirol (d.1070), who lived and worked in the western Islamic world in the generation following Avicenna (Pessin 2013: 15–21). Even later, we find a similar analogue in Baruch Spinoza’s (d.1677) notion of conatus, expounded famously in his Ethics III.6–7 (Gebhardt 1925: 146). So, insofar as Avicenna is positing a sort of striving as a metaphysical principle that explains on what grounds things stay in existence and are what they are, he is in good company. Further, within a Platonic or Aristotelian framework, desire functions to account for ends-based activity, either of the soul itself (as in Plato’s account from Republic or Phaedrus) or spurred by a specific power of the soul (as in Aristotle’s accounts in De anima III.10–11 and De motu animalium). In Aristotle’s view, desire accounts for animal motion, and thus is at work even beyond instances of true agency or rational choice, which are proper only to human beings. Further, the Unmoved Mover in Aristotle’s Metaphysics moves the heavens, which are not obviously animals, in virtue of being their object of desire (1072a26–28). As will become clear below, Avicenna uses these various applications of the concept of desire throughout his Epistle, as he was familiar not only with Aristotle’s De anima and Metaphysics but also with the ensuing commentary tradition on Aristotle’s texts. Thus, there are two sorts of conative activity within the Epistle: the metaphysical love underlying all that is and the psychological desire based in the desiderative power of the soul responsible for things such as appetites. It is important that we keep these separate moving forward, since Avicenna will ultimately insist the latter must be subjugated by reason, while the former is essential to his account of human perfection. 106

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Second, let us consider the terminology that Avicenna uses within the treatise, and especially his decision to employ ʿišq in denoting the principle at issue. This term is itself distinctive. Rather than meaning love in a generic sense (for which one would expect maḥabba or ḥubb, which share a root), the term ʿišq denotes an intensely passionate, potentially excessive, love for something. Thus, Avicenna’s choice of vocabulary is remarkable (Bell 2009: 79). Many scholars who have investigated Avicenna’s Epistle have argued that the treatise evinces Sufi tendencies. Moreover, the Epistle itself influenced the discourse on love important for later Sufis (Ingenito 2021: 312–318). Indeed, Avicenna himself mentions the Sufis by name (ṣūfiyya) near the end of the Epistle, claiming that the highest reception of the Absolute Good or First Cause is the same as what the Sufis call “unification” (ittiḥād). In addition to Avicenna’s own reference to the Sufis, his description of this principle as a passionate love would appear to lend further credence to an interpretation of his Epistle as Sufi inspired (Massignon 1963, as discussed by Bell 2009: 80). Further, several scholars have connected Avicenna’s examination to other mystical or theological discourses (Anwar 2003; Bell 2009), while another has connected his discussion to Plato’s discussion of love in his Symposium (Rundgren 1978: 43–44).3 Plus, the general connection of Avicenna’s thought as a whole to mysticism or Sufism has been largely debated and severely problematized (e.g. Gutas 2006; Janssens 2016). Nevertheless, there is precedent in explicitly philosophical texts before Avicenna of rejecting the sort of love this term usually denotes (Alghani 2014). However, if we consider the use of love (ʿišq) before Avicenna, I think it is clear that we do not need to have recourse to other traditions—like Sufism—to account for his use of the term. Within philosophical texts—specifically to describe desire or love in relation to the First Cause—ʿišq was, if not common, clearly attested (cf. Bell 2009: 80). Notably, al-Fā rābī describes the love for and of the First Cause in precisely these terms in both of his major works On the Perfect State and Political Regime (al-Fā rābī 1964: 52, 1998: 88–89, 118–119).4 Specifically, al-Fā rābī describes both the First’s love of itself and the love the celestial intellects have for the First in terms of love (ʿišq), so we should, if only owing to this background, not be surprised to read Avicenna using this term to describe a metaphysical reality. Further, the concept of passionate love may be better understood by distinguishing it from the notion of desire (usually denoted with the term šawq). Avicenna consistently distinguishes between the two, and when he cites the role of desire within beings, he discusses it in a way wholly consistent with philosophical discussions as well. Those discussions include his own later discussions of desire in his magnum opus The Healing (Kit āb al-šifā ʾ), where desire is discussed as a psychological power within animal souls, proper to the various other psychological powers, and also responsible for the motion of the celestial bodies (summarized in Somma 2021a: 216–218). In Avicenna’s Pointers and Reminders (al-Išārāt wa-l-tanbih āt), he helpfully distinguishes desire, which always indicates need or incompleteness, from love (ʿišq) (Somma 2021a: 221). On the whole, in both Avicenna and his predecessor and influence al-Fā rābī, love routinely is something that things have for the First Cause and especially that the First Cause has for itself. This usage is also found to some extent in translations of Greek philosophy into Arabic (of Plotinus, Badaw ī 1955: 174; of Aristotle, Averroes 1938–1952: 1599).5 So while love is used in philosophical texts, it has a unique status, just as it has a unique status in this Epistle. As a result, we may see Avicenna’s use of the term in the Epistle as being of a piece with this specific philosophical usage, and thus the term need not necessarily be explained with recourse to other traditions like Sufism. Now let us turn to the text. The Epistle comprises seven sections, beginning with (1) a reflection on the principle of love in all things, moving on to consider love (2) in the simples (by which Avicenna means things like matter, form, and accidents), (3) in vegetative souls, (4) in animal souls, (5) in fine and young human beings, and (6) in divine souls, before moving to 107

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(7) a conclusion accounting for the connection of all innate love to the First Cause, i.e. the Pure Good. I will spend most of this chapter examining sections (4)–(7) of this treatise, but first I would like to highlight Avicenna’s definitions of love in the first and last sections of the Epistle. The first section of his Epistle begins with the following programmatic claim: Each one of the organized (al-mudabbara) beings has by its nature a striving (n āziʿan) for its perfection (kam āl), which is the goodness ( ḫayriyya) of the being pouring forth from the being of the Pure Good (al- ḫayr al-maḥḍ) [and] a fleeing from the deficiency proper to it, which is an evil (šariyya) for the beings and non-beings, since each evil [is] from an attachment to matter and non-being. (Mehren 1894: 2)6 This observational point raises the Epistle’s basic issue—in what way we can account for the fact that everything we see works both toward an end simpliciter and toward a good end, that is to say, an end appropriate for it and any proper perfection that might be possible for it. On such a reading, the Epistle aims to explain the apparently ubiquitous teleological activity observable in the world. Avicenna offers a principle that stands as the explanation: inborn love. He says, “Thus, it is clear that each one of the organized existences has a natural desire (šawq ṭabīʿiyya) and an innate love (ʿišq ġar īziyya), and it follows necessarily that love is in these things as a cause for their existence” (Mehren 1894: 2).7 He then argues that anything that is in any sense must have some relevant perfection—otherwise, it would be pure deficiency and nothing at all. Since all that is has a relevant perfection in virtue of which it maintains its being, everything also has “in its nature a love and striving for what exists united with its perfection” (Mehren 1894: 3). Avicenna has offered an implicit definition of perfection (“its perfection, which is the goodness [ ḫayriyya] of the being”), and we find it explicitly rearticulated in the final section, where he explicates the role of the First Cause. According to that section, perfection may be understood as in fact reaching what is good for the respective thing, or, Avicenna says, “[each thing’s] perfection means an attainment (taḥṣīl) by it of its goodness” (Mehren 1894: 22). Although Avicenna has clearly identified perfection and goodness, he gives further detail on what a specific good is using the notion of suitability: The specific good (al- ḫayr al- ḫāṣṣ) [is] the attainment (nayl)8 of something 9 in reality or the reckoning [of it] as being in what is believed to be truly suitable. Moreover, deeming good and tending towards as well as finding repugnant and averting from [are] in the existent owing to [its] attachment to its goodness, since those [terms] do not apply to an existent10 in a truly sound way except with respect to its goodness […] (Mehren 1894: 4) This definition is abstruse, which is attested to, but certainly not helped by, the numerous textual problems that occur in these few lines of Arabic in the manuscripts. Regardless, goodness is clearly defined in terms of suitability and indicated by innate attraction and repulsion. Further, insofar as one can ascribe theoretically or distill from observation that any given animal has an inclination toward certain things and an aversion away from certain things, one must also accept that the individual thing has a specific good that organizes and governs the applicability of those concepts. For Avicenna, that specificity applies at the level of species and essences, something which we will see again below. Let us here consider a brief example. Take a billy goat. The species “goat” will have a good specific to it that determines which things this billy goat goes after 108

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(grass, a certain sort of mate) and which things the billy goat avoids (coyotes, thirst). The inborn love this goat has is attached to its specific goat perfection, which is to say, its specific goat goodness, which is defined in terms of its essence and, when attained, is that which ensures the goat have a flourishing goat life.11 The ultimate capacities in virtue of which that goat survives belong to and are introduced at the level of his animality.

7.2  The Sphere of Animality and the Possibility of Transformation Avicenna’s theory of innate love burgeons when he turns to discuss animals. This change should not be entirely surprising, since from an Aristotelian perspective, the very notion of desire applies specifically to the animal soul, which needs to be capable of inciting the locomotion that is proper to animals. We ought also to note that, even beyond this section, Avicenna spends a lot of time discussing animality in the Epistle; for example, the first section on human beings addresses the role of animality and the animal powers within the human person. Thus, there is a philosophical reason for this protracted consideration of animals, for, while the theory of innate love can be easily applied in instances of natural motion, e.g. when rocks fall downward, it is more evidently explanatory in accounting for why animals choose one thing instead of another. By extension, it is integral for accounting for the grounds on which a being can choose to become something after having been something else, i.e. on what grounds transformation is genuinely possible. Before we look at love per se in the animal, there are a few related concepts we need to clarify before we begin in order to appreciate for what reason animal love works in the way it does. All of these concepts function relative to the orientation animals have to their perfections, since that orientation requires them to be structured such that they are capable of realizing that perfection. That Avicenna assumes this requirement is confirmed by the first notion I want to highlight—superfluity. The notion of superfluity (muʿa ṭṭal) is found multiple times throughout the Epistle. Avicenna uses it in both the first general section and in the concluding section to explain the notion of preparation (which is the second notion I will highlight in a moment). Superfluity arises in the section on animal soul, which begins with a statement on the presence of love in animal souls and powers, which are, according to Avicenna, internal psychological powers typical and partially constitutive of animal soul. Largely based on Aristotle’s power psychology, these include powers like the common sense, sensation, imagination, memory, and, in Avicenna’s mature psychology, the power of estimation.12 On superfluity, Avicenna says: There is no doubt that each one of the animal powers and souls are specified with a comportment toward which an innate love urges it. If [the animal souls and powers] did not have a natural aversion whose source is an innate detestation and a natural desire who source is an innate love, then [their] existence in the animal body would be completely superfluous ( f ī jumla l-muʿa ṭtal āt). That is clear in each one of the divisions [of the soul]. (Mehren 1894: 8) The contrafactual use of superfluity is a longstanding defense within teleological systems. We find the claim that nature does nothing in vain or that is superfluous (periergos) both in Aristotle and in Galen, authors whose works were translated into Arabic in the 9th–10th centuries. As a result, this refrain became popular in Greek-inspired philosophy of the Islamic world.13 One of the ways that Avicenna avoids this sort of superfluity is by utilizing the notion of preparation. Preparation (istiʿdād) occurs throughout Avicenna’s corpus, and indicates the readiness of something (matter, a soul) to receive its proper perfection (kamāl).14 Here, it is a state the existence of 109

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which must be explained by reference to perfection, in order to avoid superfluity. Though it is in need of explanation, it also grounds that explanation by containing within itself an essential relation to whatever will perfect it (which will in turn guarantee the purpose of that preparation). For example, in his discussion of human perfection and divine souls, Avicenna concludes by saying that, were human souls without an innate love for their perfection, “[the soul’s] existence in its proper preparation for its perfection [would be] superfluous (muʿaṭṭal). Thus, the true object of love for the human and angelic souls is the Pure Good” (Mehren 1894: 22). I will discuss the innate love in a moment, but here I want us to see that the notion of preparation is the initial state from which a human being begins when it starts to realize its own perfection. For a human being, this perfection will entail the inclusion of an innate love that is present along the entirety of its journey and that drives that perfection. However, in the case of animals (human and nonhuman), something else is needed, namely, something that allows the animal to discern and thus to guide itself toward its perfection, i.e. its relative good. Avicenna accounts for that need with recourse to apprehension. The structure of apprehension is part and parcel of innate love’s ability to take its subject from a state of preparation to one of perfection. For, according to Avicenna, apprehension as such discerns benefits that are related to the essence of the apprehending subject. The benefit or good discernable in apprehension is, as we saw in the previous section, a relative perfection of the apprehender. Importantly, the capacity to apprehend a benefit is something common to animals as such, which means that nonhuman animals and human animals are both able to discern their goods with the same internal mechanism, albeit to varying degrees. In fact, in his description of the utmost part of human transformation, at which level they are capable of apprehending the true good as such—that is, the Pure Good—Avicenna connects the awareness these perfect humans have of the Pure Good with the awareness animals have of their own basic goods. Whenever something [with] reality to [its] existence apprehends or obtains a certain good,15 it loves [that good] by its nature, [ just like] the love of animal souls for beautiful forms, and further whenever something [with] reality to [its] existence apprehends with a sensitive apprehension or an intellectual apprehension, and follows a natural path to something that is advantageous to it as a benefit in its existence, [the apprehender] loves it in its nature, especially when the thing is a benefit to it in its proper existence ( ḫāṣṣ al-wu ǧūd). (Mehren 1894: 18) This characterization of apprehension occurs toward the end of the Epistle in the discussion of the end of human perfection, and Avicenna makes clear that anything that is capable of apprehending will discern its own benefits in that very apprehension. Further, it is clear that Avicenna takes the mechanism for benefit discernment to be the same in animals and in human beings— the discernment merely happens in different sorts of apprehension (sensation as opposed to intellection, for example). All animals, human and nonhuman, can apprehend what is proper to their existence, ḫāṣṣ al-wu ǧūd, in virtue of their being an animal, i.e. being capable of apprehension. As Bertolacci has shown, the term “proper existence,” wu ǧūd ḫāṣṣ, is another term in Avicenna’s vocabulary for essence, since it denotes the certain way of existing proper to a particular essence (2012: 267–68). Thus, this passage from the Epistle articulates that apprehending existents love their essential goods by nature, and that this applies to the human souls that are in the process of becoming divine. For these individuals, the capacity to discern benefits allows them to identify the true good and indeed source of goodness—the First Cause or Pure Good itself. This means that insofar as human beings realize their utmost perfection and transform out of the sphere of 110

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material animality and into the rational sphere of divinity, they do so by virtue of the capacity to apprehend simpliciter that they share with animals and that is proper to their animality. Importantly, this apprehension goes hand in hand with the particular kind of love responsible for the human capacity to transform as well, itself also proper to animals. Let us turn now to look at the love that exists alongside this capacity for good discernment. In his discussion of animals, Avicenna highlights that the teleological purpose of animal psychological powers introduces a division of innate love into two types: natural love (ʿišq ṭabīʿī) and elective love (ʿišq iḫtiyār ī). Natural love is such that, “The one who has it does not by itself stop outside of its aim in any state, as long as there is not something external forcefully opposing it,” such as the stone that falls downward (Mehren 1894: 9). Elective love, by contrast, is such that: The one who has it sometimes turns by itself from the object of its love, owing to [its] imagining (taḫayyul) a harm owing to an occurrence facing it, [and] it weighs the power of [that] harm against the weight of the benefit of the object of love. (Mehren 1894: 9) As a result, the one with elective love is capable of a choice that is grounded in a principle of self-preservation. That is, while animals cannot direct themselves in the rich, Aristotelian sense of rational choice, they are nevertheless capable of directing themselves in one way rather than another, so that we can understand this elective love as self-direction in the most basic sense. Avicenna then explicates elective love by offering a donkey as an example. He explains: [As in the case of ] the donkey, for whenever there appears to him an individual wolf approaching his direction, he stops chewing the barley, and commits himself to flight, owing to the fact that the harm attached to [the wolf ’s] occurrence is weightier than the benefit of not heeding [the possibility of harm]. (Mehren 1894: 9) The distinctive feature of elective love, namely, the capacity to follow one good rather than another, is reliant on the preparation proper to, e.g. the donkey essence, and on the structure of the donkey’s apprehension that allows him to discern between goods in the first place. This example is an early forerunner of the famous example of the sheep who fears the wolf in Avicenna’s exposition of the psychological power of estimation (wahm) in his Book of the Soul (Kit āb al-nafs) from The Healing.16 While in the later example the sheep’s power of estimation is responsible for ensuring the sheep’s self-preservation, here in the Epistle, it is the innate elective love and apprehension that make possible the donkey’s desire to preserve itself and aversion from what will harm it. With elective love, Avicenna accounts for the aim of nonhuman animals, namely, the preservation of the species. Were animals incapable of elective love, they would be just like inanimate natural objects since their activity would always be the same, like the rock that falls down and the fire that moves up.17 Elective love is the driving force that ensures animals actually follow the benefits and goods they discern when they apprehend. Human beings have this love because they are animals, and it is responsible for their ultimate transformation into intellects and a sort of divinity, specifically because it is the driving force toward perfection that allows them to choose one thing over another, something that is necessary when they negotiate their internal capacities and desires. This role of elective love balances accounts of human perfection of transformation whereby the only capacity deemed responsible for human transformation is the rational power of the soul, which 111

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human beings have not because they are animals, but because they are human beings. The inclusion of elective love as a basic part of human transformation allows Avicenna’s presentation of that transformation to be more convincing, since it is genuinely the same subject (the human animal) that realizes a new way of being. We can contrast his account with an alternative case in which the subject is the rational power that, once realized, is identified as the human being in the most proper sense, human animality all but falling away completely. As an example of such a contrast case, consider the position of another dedicated Aristotelian, Ibn Bāǧǧa (d.1135), according to whom truly human desire is rational desire alone (and, therefore, is something that human beings explicitly do not share with animals), and according to whom any human being who follows an animal desire is in that activity merely an animal in human form.18 Thus, Avicenna’s counterposition here offers a clear alternative whereby human animality is embraced and incorporated into the process of true human perfection. Further, the benefits that animals are capable of discerning in the world (which human beings too discern, e.g. as children) are related to and effects of the same overarching Pure Good that human beings are themselves able to trace, to imitate, and to intellect.

7.3  Realization of the Human Essence as Self-Transformation Now that I have laid out the basic groundwork for the possibility of human transformation, let us turn to Avicenna’s account of the process. Elective love plays an analogous role in human beings as in the case of the donkey, since it is the driving force of the attainment of the human good, i.e. the realization of the human intellect. However, there is a basic difference between these ends, which is that the human being is capable of attaining permanence as an individual substantial intellect, not only on the species level as is the case for all other animals, donkey included. For the animal, this choice applies in cases like predator avoidance. In the human being, it applies in cases like the moderation and use of internal psychological powers and the conceptualization of universals. Although nonhuman animals can elect to do one thing rather than another, their psychological powers do not enable any meaningful transformation in them (since all of their powers are tied to the body). By contrast, human beings can realize a nonmaterial essence that is substantially different from an animal essence, and it is into this substantial intellect that they can transform. Within the Epistle, the discussion of human beings and human souls begins as an apparent continuation of the discussion of animal powers. In particular, the entire discussion of the first section on the human being concerns the struggle between reason and animality, a struggle articulated in terms of the rational power versus the animal powers of the soul. There are, in fact, two sections in the Epistle dedicated to human perfection. The first is entitled, “On the Love of the Fine and the Young for Beautiful Faces”,19 and the second simply “On Divine Souls”, wherein Avicenna discusses both the perfected human soul and the eternally perfect angelic souls, i.e. the souls of the celestial bodies. Why would Avicenna need two sections devoted to human souls, when for other sorts of being one has sufficed? The answer, of course, lies in the twofold nature of human beings. Avicenna later articulated this double nature differently and with respect to the rational power specifically in his discussion of practical and theoretical intellect in his Book of the Soul, characterizing the soul as having two faces. He says: The human soul, as will become evident later on, is one substance, but it has a relation and a reference to two sides, a side below it and a side above it, and in accordance with each side it has a faculty by means of which the connection between it and that side is regulated… So it is as though our soul has two faces. (Avicenna 1959: 47; Alpina 2021a: 219–20) 112

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As we have already seen, in Aristotelian thought within the Islamic world, there was significant divergence among thinkers regarding what makes a human being a human being rather than an animal in human form. It is precisely the transition between the human animal and the perfect human that is at issue in Avicenna’s account in these two sections, first on the fine and the young and second on the divine. Avicenna begins the section on the fine and young by laying out at some length four premises that he wants his readers to accept before he can move on to discuss human souls (Mehren 1894: 11–15). These premises effectively lay out the way in which the rational power can and should relate to the animal powers within the human soul, a relation that itself constitutes the first steps in human transformation. Note, importantly, that the animal powers of the soul are different from the elective love that characterizes animals on an essential, metaphysical level. Thus, Avicenna is making a careful distinction here in his discussion of human transformation between powers that belong to the animal soul and are intimately tied to the body and the way in which an animal exists as an animal per se. Let us turn to these premises in brief. First, when a lower power of the soul comes into contact with a higher power, the higher one refines and strengthens the lower one. Sometimes, this empowerment results in the animal power itself being taken over by the rational (n āṭiqa) power until the latter transforms (tataʿāṭay) the animal power’s ends (maqāṣid), allowing it to engage in a better activity.20 This possibility applies to the sense, desiderative, and imaginative powers of the soul, all of which count as the “animal” powers. Thus, while these powers must ultimately be subdued, they may still be used by the rational power in a way that allows them to play a positive role in human transformation. That fact leads to Avicenna’s second premise, which is that the activity of the animal powers of the soul are themselves better owing to their union with the rational power. For example, the sense power is used to collect universals, after which the imagination then reflects upon them, and both activities are made better owing to their basic association with the rational power. Thus, both the aims and activities of the animal powers can be refined and made better due to an alliance with reason. Nevertheless, this association has its limits, and Avicenna establishes the third premise by emphasizing that some things which are appropriate for animals may be altogether inappropriate for the human being since they can harm the rational power. Such an excess, for example, rabbits’ excessive fear that leads them always to flight, constitutes a vice in the human being, since excessive fear allows part of the animal soul to rule over the rational power, like when a soldier should stand and fight rather than fleeing. Fourth and finally, both the animal soul and the rational soul love beautiful order, although the animal soul loves it only by being close to the rational power. Thus, Avicenna says, the animal soul loves beautiful order due to a natural instinct (bi-nawʿ tawlīd ṭabīʿī), the rational soul does so because things of a more perfect order are closer to the First Cause. Each of these premises describes cases of partnership between the rational and the animal powers, but a partnership, while being an important first step toward ultimate human perfection, is ultimately insufficient. The premises, in fact, show the extent to which the human being’s relation to animality is on Avicenna’s mind, especially regarding the so-called animal powers of the soul, such as imagination and appetite. Although elective love is proper to the sphere of animality and ultimately responsible for the human being’s capacity to negotiate their powers, most aspects of the animal powers of the human soul must be subdued before the human being can attain ultimate perfection, which is not only the apprehension of beautiful, good things but also the Good itself, the cause of beauty. That awareness, as Avicenna will make clear, consists in the theoretical activity of intellection of universals and imitation of the First Cause. The first of the above four premises is especially important, since Avicenna there explicitly discusses the change in the animal powers of the human soul that allows them to be subjugated 113

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to or even to be transformed by a higher power. Effectively, that transformation of ends and activities is the extent of the “perfection” of the souls of the fine and the young. Nevertheless, we still find that on this level of perfection, the individual is capable of attaining higher degrees of benefit and goodness than animals per se. For example, a primary characteristic of these fine or young souls is the fondness for a beautiful sight (al-na ẓar al- ḥasan) or beautiful faces (al-awjuh al- ḥisān) (Mehren 1984, 11, 15). Above we saw Avicenna say that it is proper to the animal soul to love beautiful forms (al- ṣuwar al-jamīla), saying, “Whenever something [with] reality to [its] existence apprehends or obtains a certain good,21 it loves [that good] by its nature, [ just like] the love of animal souls for beautiful forms” (Mehren 1894: 18). While this characteristic fondness of the fine and the young is close to the animal soul, this sort of love, Avicenna clarifies, is from a combination of the animal soul and the rational power. As a result, when it is from a combination of the two, it is considered a sign of fine manners (ta ẓarruf ) and generosity ( futuwwa). For one who loves a beautiful form (al- ṣūra l-malīḥa) as a human being (and not as an animal) does so “in virtue of an intellectual consideration (bi-iʿtib ār ʿaqlī)” (Mehren 1894: 15). Since it is intellectual in nature, this sort of vision leads the individual closer to the First Cause and true source of goodness, since it brings one a step closer to the ultimate object of love, the Pure Good (Mehren 1894: 15). Thus, even while the animal powers of the soul can be bettered, Avicenna identifies the activity of the human soul as laudable only in virtue of its intellectual component. The need to reduce and to subdue the animal powers of the soul beneath reason is explicit in his claim at the end of this section, where he says, “Rational love (al-ʿišq al-nuṭqī) will not be pure unless the animal power is entirely subdued” (Mehren 1894: 18). It is only in his discussion of divine souls that Avicenna is more explicit about the process of human perfection, preparation, and the attainment of the Good as such, since it is the object of love (maʿšūq) of divine souls. In turn, this is where we find human transformation made explicit, as human beings realize their ultimate potential as substantial intellects, which grants them true eternity beyond their temporal, animal lives. The content of human perfection and transformation into divinity consists primarily in two things. The first is the comprehension of the intelligibles, which is in itself an imitation (tašabbuh) of the essence of the Pure Good, while the second is the action that in turn issues from the perfect, divine soul (Mehren 1894: 21). This comprehension is called an imitation of the Pure Good, since human beings are supposed to think that Good in the way it thinks itself. This imitation also extends to actions, since, just as they conceive of what is good in itself, human beings must also do what is good, as a consequence of what they have intellected. Thus, Avicenna specifies that, for human beings, this perfection consists in acts of justice and intelligence, echoing the twofold completion of virtue in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in Books V and X, respectively (Mehren 1894: 25). Divine souls as such comprise two different sorts of soul: human soul and angelic soul (souls of the celestial bodies).22 Within this category, only human souls are ever in a state of preparation, since angelic souls are eternally perfect. Avicenna characterizes that preparation as the fact that the human soul “has an innate desire (šawq ġar īz ī) for knowing the intelligibles, [the knowledge of ] which is its perfection” (Mehren 1894: 21). This desire for the intelligibles ultimately entails an innate love for the Good itself, since the Pure Good gives those intelligibles the quality in virtue of which they are desirable in the first place (Mehren 1894: 22). Importantly for our purposes, this love of the Good is the highest manifestation of the animal’s drive to choose what is to one’s benefit, which Avicenna identified as elective love. Although the animal powers must be quieted, elective love is still at work by enabling human beings to develop their intellect, not as a stone that falls but as an agent who chooses. As I highlighted above, in animals, that elective love ensures their preservation in species, while in human beings, it makes possible their attainment 114

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of truly eternal individual preservation in the form of a substantial intellect. Thus, human beings transform from their original animal state into a state of divinity when they attain their perfection and, in fact, know the First Cause. That knowledge is the ultimate criterion for divinity and for human perfection, as Avicenna specifies, “The divine souls of the human [souls] and the angelic [souls] merit being called divine in a true sense only when they achieve knowledge of the Absolute Good. It is clear that these souls are characterized by perfection only after the comprehension of the intelligibles [that are] caused” (Mehren 1894: 18). The reason that this perfection is also a transformation is not only the fact that human beings become divine. When the human soul becomes perfected, it becomes changed in substance. Although Avicenna elsewhere discusses the substantiality of the acquired intellect at length, in the Epistle we have only an oblique reference to the process whereby this acquired intellect comes about (cf. Alpina 2021a: 222). He discusses the perfection of the divine soul in intellect as taking place by means of the actualization of the principles of a higher intellect. Avicenna calls this process of actualization a manifestation (tajallin). Then the divine souls attain [the manifestation] also attaining [it] without mediation, and even if [the attainment] is by mediation, [it is by] the help of the active intellect when it brings [the souls] from potentiality to actuality, and its giving [them] the power to conceptualize and to hold fast to the conceptualization and tranquility. (Mehren 1894: 24–25) By contrast, the immediate manifestation is the revelation of the First Cause itself: “the manifestation without mediation…is the apprehension of [the First] in itself ” (Mehren 1894: 24). Importantly, Avicenna highlights that the human actualization of intellect is indeed the highest realization of what began in its animal form. In fact, all things receive some manifestation of the First Cause corresponding to the extent they are capable of attaining it, and that includes animals, plants, and natural objects (Mehren 1894: 25). In turn, human beings are able to discern this Good to varying degrees within their lives and stages of perfection. While they are only fully perfected when they know the First in itself, they are still able to discern lower manifestations of this good, using as they go their various psychological powers to aid them. Thus, although the transformation of the human soul results in an acquired intellect, that transformation is also the utmost completion and perfection of the human animal, made possible and sustained by the elective love proper to their animal being.

7.4 Conclusion The object of this investigation has been to offer an account of human transformation within the Epistle that reveals the important role of human animality within a process that would appear to take them away from all features of animality entirely. I have argued throughout that Avicenna’s account of a metaphysical love proper specifically to animals is unique in that it allows a basic trait introduced at the level of animality—elective love—to be foundational to human perfection. Although that perfection is ultimately a transformation out of the material lives of animals to the immaterial realm of intellect and the First Cause, his assignment of a metaphysical love proper to animals per se allows features of animality to be integral in aiding human beings reach a level of divinity. I take Avicenna’s account in this Epistle (as I have laid it out above) to be genuinely unique since it not only coherently incorporates animality into the process of perfection of the human being, i.e. of the rational animal. It makes human transformation itself the 115

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full realization of the animal ability to choose. Within the Aristotelian tradition, it is easy to see conflict between reason and animals, or the rational power and the animal powers of the soul as constant and necessary. However, here in the Epistle on Love, Avicenna has given us an account that shows the respective strengths of each part of the human being, allowing animality and reason to sit more comfortably side by side. Together, they make possible a new way of living for the human being who has completed this transformation. In presenting human perfection as the intellection of universals as a substantial intellect, Avicenna presents an account of human living (which is more or less to say human thinking) that is different from the lives of other human beings, for example from the merely refined souls.23 In so doing, Avicenna gives us an account of animality transformed, human living and thinking anew.

Notes 1 The Arabic text of the Epistle unfortunately still awaits a proper critical edition. See Rundgren (1978: 47–49) and earlier Soreth (1964). For more information on the Epistle with respect to Avicenna’s other work, see Gutas (2014: 480–481). 2 Cf. the following to Rundgren’s philosophical comparison, which includes Parmenides and Heidegger (Rundgren 1978: 42). 3 Whether the Symposium was translated into Arabic to an extent that would render it a source text on this topic—specifically Diotima’s speech—is doubtful (Gutas 1988). 4 Rundgren also discussed the influence of al-Fā r ābī specifically regarding Avicenna’s understanding of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Rundgren 1978: 50–51), while Fackenheim noted the similarity between some of Avicenna’s characterizations of love in the First Cause and the one al-Fā r ābī offers in On the Perfect State (Fackenheim 1945: 209). 5 For a discussion of the way in which Plotinus’s metaphysical notion of striving was changed as it was translated into Arabic, see Somma (2021a: 69–109, especially 82 and 82fn28). 6 The Arabic text is from Mehren (1894), with consultation of Ayasofya 4801 and Haci Mahmud Efendi 5690. All translations are my own. 7 The attribution of an innate desire and a natural desire has a long history in both Greek philosophy and philosophy of the Islamic world. See Somma (2021a) and Wirmer (2011). Also on the likeness between Avicenna’s approach here and Plotinus’s use of desire, see Gardet (1951). 8 Reading with Ayasofya 4801 44a and Haci Mahmud Efendi 5690 63a al-nayl instead of Mehren’s al-mayl. 9 Reading with Ayasofya 4801 44a and Haci Mahmud Efendi 5690 63a bi-l-šayʾ instead of Mehren’s li-lšayʾ. See also Rundgren’s translation of this passage based on Ateş’s edition (1978: 54). 10 Reading with Haci Mahmud Efendi 5690 63b al-mawj ūd instead of Mehren’s al-wuj ūd. 11 For a general investigation of Avicenna on animal goods, see Somma (2021b). 12 For a good overview of Avicenna’s so-called internal senses, see Alpina (2021b), and for a comparison of Avicenna’s psychological powers to Aristotle’s, see Alpina (2014: 175–77). 13 Cf. Fackenheim (1945: 209, n 19). 14 On the role of preparation (istiʿd ād) in matter and with respect to the reception of forms, Lizzini (2019: 13–18), and Belo (2007: 55–87). 15 Reading with Ayasofya 4801 48b and Haci Mahmud Efendi 5960 68a ḫayran min al- ḫayr āt instead of Mehren’s naylan min al- ḫayr āt. 16 On Avicenna’s notion of estimation, see Black (1993) and again Alpina (2021b). 17 Cf. Pseudo-Peter of Spain (fl. 13th century) on the difference between animal discretion and magnetic discretion in Oelze (2021: 97). 18 See Somma (2021a: 173–182). 19 On the title of this section and its relation to Sufi practice, see Bell (2009: 75). 20 The extent to which Avicenna’s characterization of the rational power here might concur with the contemporary notion of the transformative theory of rationality (as opposed to an additive one) would be worth considering. For an overview, see Keil and Kreft (2019: 7–16). For a criticism of additive theories, see Boyle (2016, especially 527–533).

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Human Transformation at the Limits of Animality and Divinity in Avicenna’s Epistle on Love 21 Reading with Ayasofya 4801 48b and Haci Mahmud Efendi 68a ḫayran min al- ḫayr āt instead of Mehren’s naylan min al- ḫayr āt. 22 For an investigation of the extent to which Avicenna considered the celestial bodies also to be animals, see Alpina (2021c). 23 A famous, and rather forceful, interpretation of Avicenna’s presentation of philosophical practice is offered by the 12th-century doctor and philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl in his Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān. See the description of the spiritual exercises the title character undertakes in Gauthier’s edition in Ibn Ṭufayl (1936: 105–120), and Goodman’s English translation Ibn Ṭufayl (2009: 142–149).

Bibliography al-Fā r ābī, Abū Na ṣr, (1964). Kitab al-Siyāsa al-Madaniyya, al-Mulaqqab bi-Mabādiʾ al-Mawj ūd āt. Edited by Fauzi M. Najjar. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-K āṯ ul ī kiyya. al-Fā r ābī, Abū Na ṣr, (1998). On the Perfect State (Mabādiʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīnat alfāḍilah). Revised and translated from the Arabic by Richard Walzer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alghani, J. A., (2014). Medieval Arabic Love Theory between Dissonance and Consonance: Abū Bakr Mu ḥ ammad Ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-R ā z ī and His Argument against ʿIshq. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. 67(3), 273–287. Alpina, T., (2014). Intellectual Knowledge, Active Intellect and Intellectual Memory in Avicenna’s Kit āb Al-Nafs and Its Aristotelian Background. Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale. 25, 131–183. Alpina, T., (2021a). Subject, Definition Activity. Framing Avicenna’s Science of the Soul. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Alpina, T., (2021b). [Forthcoming]. Retaining, Remembering, Recollecting. Avicenna’s Account of Memory and Its Sources. In V. Decaix, C. Thomsen Thörnqvist, eds. Memory and Recollection in the Aristotelian Tradition: Essays on the Reception of Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscentia. Turnhout: Brepols. Alpina, T., (2021c). Is the Heaven an Animal? Avicenna’s Celestial Psychology at the Intersection between Cosmology and Biology. In R. Salles, ed. Cosmology and Biology in Ancient Philosophy: From Thales to Avicenna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anwar, E., (2003). Ibn Sī n ā’s Philosophical Theology of Love: A Study of the Risālah f ī al-ʿIshq. Islamic Studies. 42(2), 332–356. Avicenna. Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Ayasofya 4801, ff. 43a–51a. Avicenna. Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Haci Mahmud Efendi 5690, ff. 62b–71a. Avicenna, (1959). Avicenna’s De Anima. Edited by F. Rahman. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Avicenna, (1996). Ibn Sīnā and Mysticism. Remarks and Admonitions: Part Four. Translated from the Arabic by Shams Inati. London: Kegan Paul International. Avicenna, (2005) The Metaphysics of The Healing. Translated from the Arabic by Michael Marmura. Provo: Brigham Young University Press. Avicenna, (2008). al-Išār āt wa-l-tanbīh āt. Edited by Muǧ tabā al-Zarʿ ī. Qom: Bū st ā m-e Ketab. Badaw ī, ʿAbd al-Rahman, ed. (1955). Aflutin ʿinda l-ʿarab. Plotinus apud Arabes. Theologia Aristotelis et fragmenta quae supersunt. Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍ a al-Miṣriyya. Bell, J. N., (2009). Avicenna’s Treatise on Love and the Nonphilosophical Muslim Tradition. Der Islam. 63(1), 75–89. Belo, C., (2007). Chance and Determinism in Avicenna and Averroes. Leiden: Brill. Bertolacci, A., (2012). The Distinction Between Essence and Existence in Avicenna’s Metaphysics: The Text and Its Context. In F. Opwis and D. Reisman, eds. Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion. Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas. Leiden: Brill. 257–288. Black, D., (1993). Estimation in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions. Dialogue. 32, 219–258. Bouyges, S.J., M., ed. (1938–1952). Averroes. Tafs īr m ā baʿd a ṭ- ṭabīʿa. 4 vols. Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique. Boyle, M., (2016). Additive Theories of Rationality: A Critique. European Journal of Philosophy. 24(3), 527–555. Fackenheim, E. L., (1945). A Treatise on Love by Ibn Sina. Translated. Mediaeval Studies. 7(1), 208–228. Gardet, L., (1951). La pensée religieuse d’Avicenne. Paris: Vrin. Gebhardt, C., ed. (1925). Spinoza Opera. Vol. II. Heidelberg: C. Winters. Gutas, D., (1988). Plato’s Symposium in the Arabic Tradition. Oriens. 31, 36–60.

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Bligh Somma Gutas, D., (2006). Intellect Without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna. In M. CândidaPacheco and J. Francisco-Meirinhos, eds. Intellect et Imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale. Vol. 1. Turnhout: Brepols. 351–372. Gutas, D., (2014). Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill. Ibn Ṭufayl, Abū Bakr Mu ḥ ammad, (1936). Hayy ben Yaqdhân, roman philosophique d’Ibn Thofail. Texte arabe avec les variantes des manuscrits et de plusieurs éditions et traduction Française. 2nd ed. Translated from the Arabic and edited by Léon Gauthier. Beirut: Imprimerie catholique. Ibn Ṭufayl, Abū Bakr Mu ḥ ammad, (2009). Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān. Translated from Arabic by Lenn Goodman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ingenito, D., (2021). Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry. Leiden: Brill. Janssens, J., (2016). Ibn Sī n ā: A Philosophical Mysticism or a Philosophy of Mysticism. Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge. 1, 37–54. Keil, G., and Kreft, N. eds. (2019). Aristotle’s Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lizzini, O., (2019). Matter and Nature. On the Foundations of Avicenna’s Theory of Providence: an Overview. Intellectual History of the Islamicate World. 7, 7–34. Massignon, L., (1963). Opera Minora. Vol. II. Beirut: Dar al-Maaref. Mehren, M.A.F., ed. (1894). Risālah f ī l-ʿishq. In Traités Mystiques d’Aboû Alî Al-Hosain B. Abdallaâh B. Sînâ ou d’Avicenne. IIIiéme fascicule. Leiden: Brill. 1–27. Oelze, A., (2021). Animal Minds in Medieval Latin Philosophy. A Sourcebook from Augustine to Wodeham. Basel: Springer. Pessin, S., (2013). Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rundgren, F., (1978). Avicenna on Love. Orientalia Suecana. 27, 42–62. Somma, B., (2021a). Models of Desire in Graeco-Arabic Philosophy. From Plotinus to Ibn Ṭufayl. Leiden: Brill. Somma, B., (2021b). Avicenna on Animal Goods. Journal of Islamic Ethics. 5, 1–34. Soreth, M., (1964). Text- Und Quellenkritische Bemerkungen Zu Ibn Sī n ā’s Risā la F ī-Lʿišq. Oriens. 17, 118–131. Wirmer, D., (2011). Das natürliche Begehren des einsamen Philosophen. Bildung durch Wissenschaft bei Ibn Bāǧǧa und Ibn Ṭufail. In L. Honnefelder, ed. Albertus Magnus und der Ursprung der Universitätsidee. Berlin: Berlin University Press. 206–240.

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8 TRANSFORMATION VIA MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE IN THE 13TH CENTURY Hadewijch, Marguerite d’Oingt, and Mechthild of Hackeborn Christina Van Dyke The phrase ‘transformative experience’ seems almost tailor-made for discussions of religion and mysticism: most (if not all) world religions include reports of people receiving divine revelations via mystical experiences that radically transform both them and their communities. Thus, Moses is given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai; Paul is struck to the ground by a blinding flash of light and hears Christ’s voice on the road to Damascus; Muhammad receives the first verses of the Qur’an from Jibril in the Night of Power on Mount Hira. These experiences mark turning points that transform not only the lives of the individuals involved but also constitute vital points of connection between God and entire communities. Dramatic and definitive as they are, however, I believe that these sorts of mystical experiences are not best understood as themselves transformations-full-stop, but are instead better understood as ‘break-through’ experiences in longer, more mundane processes of transformation in the lives of people already engaged in contemplative practices and who model a certain sort of ‘active receptivity’ to the divine. The larger context of the pivotal moments mentioned above bear this out: Moses’s development into the leader of his people neither begins nor ends on Mt. Sinai; Paul is already deeply embedded in a religious life as a Pharisee when he hears Christ’s voice, and his subsequent epistles to various communities detail his continuing spiritual growth; Muhammad is on Mount Hira for a meditative retreat, and his receiving of the Qur’an continues to unfold over the next 23 years. In short, although individual mystical experiences can be (and often are) life-altering, the deepest sort of transformation takes place not at a moment but over an extended amount of time, usually a period of years. Furthermore, ‘break-through’ mystical experiences typically occur within the lives of people already dedicated to contemplative disciplines such as meditation and prayer, disciplines that are meant to prepare their practitioner for deeper levels of engagement with the divine. Finally, both individual mystical experiences and the larger transformative processes in which those experiences occur – which I will refer to as mystical transformations – often possess a communal function. Reports of mystical experiences typically appear within narratives of spiritual transformation and are presented as important to both individual and common life: the mystical transformations of individuals provide the communities

DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-12

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in which they live insight into God’s nature and desires for them, and they offer moral/spiritual exemplars meant to inspire and encourage others. What follows is a focused case study of this relation of mystical experiences to mystical transformations in three of the most influential Christian contemplatives in later 13th-century Europe. The figures on whom I focus – Hadewijch, Marguerite d’Oingt, and Mechthild of Hackeborn – present autobiographical accounts of their mystical experiences that demonstrate gradual revolutions in thinking, living, and loving that are carefully framed to highlight the ways in which they serve as lessons or exemplars (‘mirrors’, in medieval parlance) for their audiences. These authors also all exert a significant influence on that religious tradition, both in their own time and in later centuries. And, as we’ll see, these figures’ visionary literature offers ‘inside-out’ perspectives on mystical transformation that demonstrate how individual mystical experiences can 1) fit into a longer process of transformation, 2) presuppose an ‘active receptivity’ developed by spiritual practices, and 3) possess communal as well as individual significance.

8.1  Common Context By the mid-to-late 13th century, often referred to as the Later Middle Ages, the ‘Latin West’ (which roughly corresponds to modern-day Western Europe) was in a period of turmoil. The Roman Catholic Christian tradition dominated social, political, and religious realms, but papal schism was looming; the university system had become firmly entrenched in religious as well as intellectual life, but struggles over whether and how Aristotelian metaphysics were compatible with Christian doctrine (and the Platonism it had been imbued with by Augustine, Boethius, and others) polarized intellectual communities and led to the infamous condemnations of 1277. The trade routes that made Aristotle’s full corpus and the wealth of Islamic commentary and independent philosophical treatises available to the Latin West toward the end of the 12th century continued to develop and expand, leading to an exchange of intellectual and cultural as well as physical goods across Europe, Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.1 The plague had not yet arrived, and the popularity of pilgrimages (particularly to Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, and Rome) meant that large numbers of people were journeying thousands of miles each year: even those without the means to travel the longer and more expensive routes would try to make pilgrimages to closer shrines and cathedrals (such as those at Canterbury and Chartres). At the same time, the mendicant orders founded in the early 13th century had spread across the Latinspeaking world, and their emphasis on humility and love resonated strongly with laypeople who felt increasingly disenfranchised both by the spiritual power given to the clergy after the Gregorian reforms of the 11th century and by the intellectual elitism of those in the university system.2 Lay religious movements sprang up throughout Europe in this period, inspired by the ‘vita apostolica’ (life of Christ’s apostles) and spearheaded by women as well as men. Chief among these was the massive movement in the 13th–15th centuries of laywomen, called beguines, who lived alone or in communities of like-minded women (called beguinages), and who devoted their lives to prayer, teaching, penance, contemplation, and service.3 All these factors contributed to a virtual explosion of mystical and contemplative literature in the late 13th century, and it is in this complicated and changing world that Hadewijch, Marguerite, and Mechthild lived, wrote, and underwent their mystical transformations. I have chosen this particular grouping to represent different spiritual traditions (Augustinian, Carthusian, and Benedictine/Dominican, respectively), geographic regions (the Lowlands, France, and Germany), and relation to official church orders (Hadewijch is beguine – a laywoman dedicated to a religious life, while Marguerite and Mechthild are nuns). These women also bear importantly 120

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different relations to their texts: Hadewijch and Marguerite wrote their own works, while Mechthild’s book is compiled from verbal reports and dictation.4 The similarities we find in these descriptions of mystical transformation, then, are not merely tropes of particular religious orders or regional styles of piety – they underlie these differences. And, as we’ll see, the autobiographical descriptions of these three figures’ mystical experiences present a gradual transformation of their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual lives, shared as a guide for others.

8.2 Hadewijch5 Almost nothing is known about Hadewijch’s life apart from what we can glean from her texts, which indicate that she was a beguine active in the mid-13th century in the Flemish lowlands. (She addresses many of her letters and even one vision to her ‘sisters’, but she does not appear to have been a nun.) Her familiarity with a variety of literary genres and languages and her poetic skill, however, suggest that she came from a noble family and had an extensive literary education. Her extant work includes letters, poetry, and visions written in Middle Dutch, replete with scriptural and theological allusions and quotations from Latin texts (particularly the Vulgate and Augustine), and she draws extensively on French verse to model the soul’s relationship with God in the trope of fin amor. For our purposes here, her visionary literature is the most relevant, being carefully constructed to highlight her gradual spiritual transformation. Over the course of 14 visions, Hadewijch develops from what she describes as a child-like state in her first mystical experience to someone capable of “being God with God”. As we’ll see, this process requires practicing a variety of virtues and is described in a way meant to instruct others interested in following suit.

8.2.1  Mystical Experiences as Part of a Larger Process of Transformation That moral and spiritual transformation requires long and arduous work is a central theme in Hadewijch’s work. Picking up on a Pauline metaphor made popular by Augustine and others, Hadewijch frequently identifies the end goal of faith with being ‘grown up’ and becoming relevantly like God: “For that is the most perfect satisfaction – to grow up in order to be God with God” (280). Nowhere is this theme more visible than in the progression of her 14 recounted mystical experiences. Following the conventions of medieval visionary literature, Hadewijch opens with a description of her prior state: setting as a constant her love for God and strong desire “to be one with God in fruition,” Hadewijch explains that she was at this point “too childish and too little grown up” to attain this goal, both because she has “not as yet sufficiently suffered for it” and because she lacks “the number of years requisite for such exceptional worthiness” (263). The first mystical experience she goes on to share involves an angel (a mediating figure, since she is unready for direct contact with God) showing her a number of trees, which represent different aspects of the human self and its potential relation(s) to God.6 The subsequent 13 visions she relates detail Hadewijch’s growing understanding over the years of both herself and God (particularly the mystery of the Trinity). This understanding parallels the development of her will’s conformity to God’s will and corresponds to ever-deeper levels of union with God. Her visionary literature also demonstrates a continued interest in embodied experience, particularly as it relates to Christ’s humanity.7 One of the key motivators throughout the process of Hadewijch’s mystical transformation is her love for the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ. Consistently described in the visions as ‘the Beloved’, Christ becomes Hadewijch’s bridegroom in Visions Ten and Twelve – a sign 121

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of growing spiritual maturity. Christ’s doctrinal status as fully human and fully divine also presents Hadewijch with a perfect model for unity with God, for (in her words) the “perfect pride of love” is “to know how we shall love the Humanity in order to come to the Divinity” (292).8 Christ’s mother, Mary, features prominently in several visions as well, providing another exemplar for Hadewijch’s spiritual development. In Vision Six, when Hadewijch asks how she can become “full-grown like him [Christ] and like her [Mary], so as to content both of them according to their dignity?” (275), the answer is that she must actively prepare herself to receive God in whatever manner God sees fit, continuing to cultivate the virtues. In Vision Thirteen, Mary appears and tells Hadewijch that those preparations have succeeded, and her humility, prudence, and faith have won her Love’s prize: “You cherished Love with humility; you adorned and tasted Love with loyal reason; and, with this lofty fidelity and this entire power, you vanquished Love and made Love one” (301). Love’s prize is that the now-mature Hadewijch is able to be ‘one with Love’.9 In her final vision, Hadewijch elaborates on what it means to have reached full maturity. In line with medieval theological depictions of the ultimate goal of human life, she sees God face to face – and the description of what is required for this makes clear what Hadewijch’s process of mystical transformation has involved. As she writes: “The Countenance, which God had at that moment, was invisible and inaccessible to the sight for all creatures who never lived human and divine love in one single Being, and who could not grasp or cherish the notion of attaining union with the Divinity, so as to have been flowed through by the whole Godhead, and to have become totally one, flowing back through the Godhead itself ” (303). The final image she leaves us with in Vision Fourteen is of Hadewijch herself serving as the throne of God: “He who sat on the new throne, which was I myself, had the imposing appearance of the fearful, wonderful Countenance” (305). Hadewijch has been transformed from the spiritual child of Vision One into someone who has reached ‘fruition’ and can be God with God – someone who can “taste Man and God in one knowledge, what no one could do unless they were as God” (305).

8.2.2  Active Receptivity via Spiritual Practices The spiritual progression glimpsed via these 14 visions provides an excellent illustration of how individual mystical experiences can function in a larger process of mystical transformation. Although Hadewijch does not delineate distinct stages on the mystical journey in the way many other contemplatives do, she stresses the importance of spiritual disciplines such as prayer and the cultivation of virtue as a crucial part of developing the sort of active receptivity the Virgin Mary recommends to her in Vision Six. Hadewijch also carefully links her visions to particular moments both in the ecclesiastical calendar (e.g., Christmas, Epiphany, and Pentecost) and in daily liturgy (e.g., the elevation of the host in celebration of the Eucharist). ‘Tagging’ her visions in this way would have provided her original audience with rich context for the experiences she goes on to report. It also would have served as food for thought and a potential model for her readers when reaching the same moment in such services themselves. (This feature of keying mystical experiences to particular Scriptural passage and moments in the liturgy is common to the visionary literature of Marguerite and Mechthild as well.) In general, Hadewijch portrays the process of contemplative transformation as becoming the sort of person disposed to receive mystical experiences and to learn from them. Developing both these states requires certain virtues. Humility, faith, and the use of ‘enlightened reason’ play especially prominent roles in this respect, but Hadewijch stresses a number of virtues that make 122

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one ready to receive more of God. In Vision Twelve, for instance, she sees a host of virtues “conducting a bride to her Beloved” (294). As the vision continues, Hadewijch herself becomes the bride, being attended by 12 virtues who have “served her nobly and looked after her so proudly that they could present her as worthy to be received by the mighty great God” (294). Significantly, the virtues listed are not just the standard theological and cardinal virtues (faith, hope, and love/charity,10 and wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, respectively) or the fruits of the spirit listed in Galatians 5 in the Vulgate (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, forbearance, gentleness, faith, modesty, self-control, and chastity).11 Instead, the list consists of a more idiosyncratic group that Hadewijch identifies as particularly important to her spiritual development: Faith, Hope, Fidelity, Charity, Desire, Humility, Discernment, good Works, Reason, Wisdom, Peacefulness, and Patience. Each of these virtues receives its own description of what it is and how it has helped Hadewijch progress. Wisdom, for instance, “showed her to be familiar with all the power of every perfect virtue that must be encountered in order to content the Beloved perfectly,” as well as demonstrating “that she also had profound knowledge of each Person of the Trinity” (295).

8.2.3  The Communal Significance of Individual Mystical Transformation The end goal of delineating these virtues and their role in Hadewijch’s life is to serve as a testament and a model for others who also long to be fully grown and experience ‘being God with God’. In Vision Thirteen, when she is given full knowledge of Love, Hadewijch is told by Mary that the fullest fruition of knowledge requires abandoning her earthly body – something that she herself is ready for, but that she will put off “for the sake of those whom you have chosen to become full-grown with you in this, but who are not yet full-grown, and above all for the sake of those whom you love most” (301). In short, growth happens on a group as well as individual level. Hadewijch is part of a spiritual community committed to a mutual goal; even now that she is full-grown, she will continue to share her mystical experiences and process of transformation as long as God wills, for the advancement of the other people in that community. The communal aspect of Hadewijch’s work is evident in her poetry and letters as well as her visionary literature. Her poems, for instance, contain masterful re-framings of popular troubadour tropes and thus presuppose an audience. They frequently recount deeply personal experiences that contain an outward-facing moral: “So must you, if you wish to gain love….” Her letters share insights about the nature of God and virtue and contain extensive advice about how to make moral progress; they are addressed more personally to members of her spiritual community, whom she calls her ‘sisters’ (some of whom are called by name). Those same sisters appear to be the intended audience for her visionary literature. Although most of her visions are written in first-person narrative voice, detailing what Hadewijch was doing at the moment the mystical experience began and then the nature of the experience, in her final recorded vision Hadewijch breaks from this narration in order to address her reader directly. “I am continuing this too long,” she writes, “Because you are glad to hear in what that happiness consisted which was so beautiful, or so beyond human nature, and so conformed to the Humanity of God.” She goes on to mention other visions “about which I have written you recently” and to apologize for not being able to record all her experiences despite the fact that she has been asked to do so: “Since you wish to know everything that concerns me, I am very sorry that you do not know everything you wish to know” (304). This explicit mention of her readers in her final vision underscores the communal purpose of her visionary literature. In contrast to the contemporary stereotype of the mystic as an isolated individual caught up in personal rapture, Hadewijch writes not as an 123

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‘Other’ addressing disciples but as one member of a community sharing details of the process of her mystical transformation with her fellow members for their mutual enlightenment.

8.3  Marguerite d’Oingt12 Our second case study features someone from a strikingly different spiritual tradition and relation to ecclesiastical hierarchy. Unlike Hadewijch, who appears to have been a laywoman devoted to the religious life, Marguerite d’Oingt (c.1240–1310) was a nun in the Carthusian order – a contemplative order that emphasized solitude, humility, and transcribing Scripture and other authoritative texts, and whose members took strict vows of silence. Marguerite came from a noble family and was well educated (as evidenced by the fact that she writes her Meditations in Latin, while her later works are in Franco-Provençal).13 She spends her entire life as a nun in the charterhouse of Poleteins, where she eventually became prioress; her writings – which consist of a Page of Meditations, a Mirror, a history of a fellow nun, and a collection of letters that contain practical as well as visionary insight into her life – were quite popular in her own time and subsequent centuries. (This popularity is why Marguerite’s works remain extant; today, her writings are some of the only texts we know were authored by a female Carthusian in the Middle Ages; they thus provide important insight into Carthusian spirituality as it was experienced and lived in convents.) Not surprisingly, Marguerite’s visionary literature stresses different themes than Hadewijch’s: Christ’s life versus the abyss of God’s wisdom, for instance. Yet we find in her writing the same general features of mystical transformation – namely, portraying individual mystical experiences as 1) part of a continuing process of transformation, 2) requiring preparation via spiritual exercises such as prayer and meditation, and 3) being received, recorded, and shared for communal as well as personal edification and improvement.

8.3.1  Mystical Experiences as Part of a Larger Process of Transformation All of these features are on display in Marguerite’s brief Mirror, which chronicles her spiritual growth. The medieval literary genre of a ‘mirror’ serves as a guide for a particular quality or social role by describing a model or ideal of its subject; what Marguerite does, then, by presenting her own development (modestly written in the third-person) is to offer her practices of prayer, meditation, and introspection – and subsequent illuminative mystical experiences – as a model for others. The distinct mystical experiences that she relates over the course of Mirror’s three chapters demonstrate her ongoing transformation, as she moves from being able to see only the outside of a book held by Christ, to being able to see heaven in the wonderful interior of the book, to seeing Christ ‘face to face’. Marguerite opens her Mirror by explaining that she has spent much time meditating on the nature and life of Christ, to the point where she has “put sweet Jesus Christ so firmly into her heart that it sometimes seemed to her that He was present and that He held a closed book in His hand in order to teach from it” (41–42). At this point, she closely observes the outside of the book, which she describes as “completely covered in white, black, and red letters” and bound by clasps that “had golden letters on them” (42). As she meditates on the significance of those colors and those letters, she understands that they all symbolize things that have been written about Christ. (The black letters, for instance, recount the evil things done to Christ, while the gold letters recount Christ’s heavenly status post-resurrection.) When she progresses to this point of understanding, the first chapter ends, and the second chapter begins with Marguerite seeing the book finally open. Rather than being filled with more letters, the inside of the book is like ‘a beautiful mirror’ 124

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which gives her a glimpse of heaven and the Trinity. As she goes on to write: “In this book appeared a delightful place, so large that the entire world seems small by comparison. In this place appeared a glorious light which divided itself into three parts, like three persons, but there is no human mouth that could speak of it. From this place came all possible good things” (44). In the third and final chapter, after more prayer and meditation on her previous experiences, Marguerite returns to this ‘delightful place’ and sees Christ seated on the throne of God, “so glorious that no human heart could conceive of it” (45). The remainder of the chapter expands on this vision and the insight it gives her into God and the rest of creation – particularly the nature of human beings. Writing now directly to her audience, Marguerite explains what this means for them: “Now you can imagine the great goodness that is in Him who has thus given everything He has to His friends…He made them so beautiful and so glorious that each of them sees the Trinity in himself, as one sees in a beautiful mirror that which is in front of it” (46). Not only are human beings capable of being friends of God, but we are ourselves a model of the Trinity, mirroring the three-fold nature of God to each other and to the rest of creation. Marguerite then closes the Mirror with a call from the Beatitudes to purify and polish our inner mirrors, for “the pure of heart will see God face to face in His great beauty” (47). Although the number of visions and the details of those visions differ from Hadewijch’s, Marguerite’s mystical experiences similarly change and deepen over the course of her spiritual development, and in conjunction with continued spiritual disciplines such as prayer and meditation; her ability to experience God is directly correlated to her growth in virtue, love, and understanding.

8.3.2  Active Receptivity via Spiritual Practices Marguerite is emphatic that she receives these mystical experiences from God purely by grace rather than by any effort on her own part.14 At the same time, she consistently ‘shows’ rather than merely ‘tells’ how regular practice of the four central spiritual disciplines of the Carthusian order – lectio divina (close, careful reading of important religious texts, particularly the gospel accounts of the life of Christ), meditatio (reflection on and imaginative engagement with those texts), oratio (prayer for further illumination and understanding), and contemplatio (contemplating God, particularly ‘face to face’ via mystical union)15 – plays a vital role in preparing her to receive (and understand) those experiences. Again, a careful reading of her Mirror is instructive in this respect: it repeatedly presents her reading the word of God, meditating on the life of Christ, praying for illumination, reaching a contemplative height in a vision, and then returning again to reading, meditation, and prayer. In demonstrating how regular practice of the first three disciplines leads to contemplating God ‘face to face’, Marguerite is following the advice of a fellow Carthusian, Guigo II, who identifies these four disciplines as particularly important in his late 12th-century Ladder for Monks; in recording her experiences in her local vernacular rather than Latin, Marguerite is helping normalize and popularize these practices beyond the Carthusian charterhouse. At the end of the first chapter of her Mirror, for instance, Marguerite – who has already emphasized how often she reads about and meditates on the life of Christ – is inspired by her vision of the colored letters on the book’s cover to think about “how the blessed Son of God is sitting on the right side of His glorious father.” Yet she finds that her eyes are “still so darkened” that she is unable to “contemplate our Lord in heaven” (43). That is, she can still gain access to God only via textual revelation, not personal experience. Marguerite concludes the first chapter by explaining that her response to this is to return again, as always, “to the beginning of the life that our Lord Jesus Christ led on earth,” and she ends the chapter in meditation. (“In this way, she meditated for a long time” (43).) 125

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The second chapter opens with Marguerite engaged in the practice of praying, during which “she began to look at her book, as was her habit.” (The book to which she refers is the ‘imaginary’ book discussed in the first chapter; regardless, the fact that she is looking at a book during prayer wouldn’t indicate impiety or distraction, as praying in the 13th and 14th centuries was not associated with closing one’s eyes.) As she prays, and “when she was not expecting it” (a detail that highlights God’s activity and her receptivity), she finally sees the book open: “until then, she had only seen it from the outside” (43). Careful study of the life of Christ, meditation, and prayer is what allows her to look inside that book and see the light of the Trinity. The transition between the second and third chapters is similar, but this time as she is praying and thinking again about Christ being seated at the right hand of the Father, she experiences a vision not merely of a book about God, but of Christ himself: “her heart was so ravished that she thought she was in a place much larger than the entire world, and more brilliant all over than the sun…[and] she seemed to see Jesus Christ, so glorious that no human heart could conceive of it” (45). In short, her final experience of contemplative union with God in the Mirror is the culmination of what her previous practices have specifically aimed at.

8.3.3  Communal Significance of the Mystical Transformation The Carthusian emphasis on silence and solitude might make it seem less likely that Marguerite would see her mystical experiences and process of transformation as more individual than communal. Yet Marguerite consistently frames her experiences in terms of how they can inspire and enlighten her larger community. As she writes toward the end of her Mirror: “I truly believe that there is not a heart in this world so cold that it would not be set on fire with love, if it could imagine and know the very great beauty of Our Lord” (47). Since she has literally just shared her experience of seeing Christ face-to-face, it is clear that one of the goals of the treatise is to help her readers’ heart burn with greater love. Marguerite’s use of the mirror genre itself shows that she sees her mystical experiences as having practical benefits, since the entire purpose of a literary mirror is to reflect an image for its readers to emulate. She makes this even more explicit when she writes: “It seems to me that you have heard it said that, when you listen to someone tell of some grace given by our Lord to some of his friends, you are the better for it for a long time.” It’s a common assumption in her community that hearing about someone’s experience of God’s grace is beneficial; Marguerite presents this as the motivation for sharing both her own experiences and her personal understanding of the reason she has received them: “And because I desire your salvation as my own, I will tell you, as briefly as possible, of a great favor done not long ago to a person of my acquaintance. And so that you will profit from this as much as possible, I will tell you the reason why God, in my opinion, did this favor for her” (41). This outward-looking perspective appears throughout Marguerite’s work, establishing that she sees her process of mystical transformation as a journey of communal as well as individual significance. Like Hadewijch, Marguerite frequently ‘keys’ her visions to particular dates in the church calendar – an action that both contextualizes what she experiences and provides a link between that experience and those of her readers as they participate in the same liturgy themselves. She frames her Meditations, for instance, by noting that it was the Septuagesima (the Sunday 70 days before Easter), that she was at mass, and that the verse “The sighs of death will surround me” was being sung. This framing sets an appropriate context before Marguerite goes on to detail her meditations on Christ’s life and passion. Although much of what Marguerite reports resonates with other medieval visionary literature from this period, there is one respect in which her experiences are quite unusual: they contain 126

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no voices. Marguerite does not receive verbal instructions from either God or angels; her visions contain no unseen voice telling her what she is seeing and what it means, and she herself does not speak, either to God or to anyone else. Because the Carthusians took strict vows of silence, communicating primarily through physical signs and written words, it is only appropriate that the spoken word doesn’t play a role in Marguerite’s mystical transformation. Instead, she discerns God’s will through reading Scripture, meditating, praying for illumination, and contemplating both the visions God gives her and the meaning of those visions. In all these ways, she quietly models Carthusian spirituality to her readers.

8.4  Mechthild of Hackeborn16 Like Marguerite d’Oingt (and unlike Hadewijch), Mechthild of Hackeborn (c.1240–1298) was a nun. Yet, Mechthild’s convent at Helfta – a lively intellectual community in which Mechthild served as choirmaster – presents a sharp contrast to the silent Carthusian chapterhouse in which Marguerite spent her life.17 Founded by the Benedictines but overseen by Dominican spiritual directors by the mid-to-late 13th century, the community of Helfta produced a number of influential writers and thinkers in the later 13th and early 14th centuries. In just Mechthild of Hackeborn’s own time, for instance, the convent housed Gertrude the Great (author of the Herald of Divine Grace and Spiritual Exercises) and Mechthild of Magdeburg (a former beguine who took refuge at the convent as an older woman, where she completed her Flowing Light of the Godhead). Although little known today, Mechthild’s own Book of Special Grace was quite popular in the 14th and 15th centuries. As Rosalynn Voaden notes, “Mechthild of Hackeborn was one of the best known and most widely read visionaries in late medieval and early modern Europe. Hundreds of copies of her book of revelations, the Liber specialis gratiae, were in circulation in both complete and excerpted forms, in Latin, and translations into at least five different vernaculars” (431).18 Mechthild’s book, a pastiche of spiritual advice, reported visions, and musings on the religious life and the cultivation of virtue, is self-described as a collective effort produced by some of her closest sisters. Despite differences in production, emphasis, and sensibility from the visionary literature of Hadewijch and Marguerite, however, we find the same pattern of mystical experiences being portrayed as moments along a longer process of transformation, supported by regular spiritual exercises, and with a communal function.

8.4.1  Mystical Experiences as Part of a Larger Process of Transformation Mechthild is not a subject of interest for the scribes of the Book of Special Grace as a model of spiritual growth per se; the sisters recording her mystical experiences and spiritual advice are more concerned to present her as a model of spiritual maturity and insight. Nevertheless, the mystical experiences described in the book involve a gradual transformation, particularly with respect to Mechthild’s attitude toward the book’s creation. Mechthild is described as initially unaware that the visions and revelations she regularly shares with her community are being recorded, and as horrified when she finds out that her sisters have been working on the Book of Special Grace. In addition to worries about how this is setting her up as better than her sisters, she worries about whether what’s being recorded about her experiences is accurate. “How can I know if everything they write about these things is true, when I have neither read nor approved it?” she asks. In response, God assures her that the real author of book is neither Mechthild nor the women recording her words. Rather, the author of the book is God, “Truth itself.” Echoing Augustine’s theory of divine illumination (particularly as laid out in De Magistro/The Teacher), God explains 127

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to Mechthild that what knowledge human beings acquire comes straight from this divine Truth. On their own, human beings can understand nothing – they need God to illuminate their intellects and their hearts so that they can grasp truth, and all truths they access have their ground in God as Truth. Thus, Mechthild’s worries are ill-founded, because God ensures that her words will convey truth; in fact, God is integrally involved in all aspects of the book’s creation and reception. In a memorable passage, God explains: I am in the hearts of those who desire to listen to you, stirring up that desire in them. I am the understanding in the ears of those who hear you; it is through me that they understand what they hear. I am also in the mouths of those who speak of these things. And I am in the hands of the writers as their helper and collaborator in every way. Thus, all that they compose and write in and through me is true, for I am Truth itself. Just as a builder has many assistants who help him with his work, although they do not all complete the work as the master does, still each of them works in his own measure, and the project is completed by the master craftsman along with his assistants. It is the same with those who write these things.” (5.22, pp. 242–3) In short, God is the architect of Mechthild’s book. Because fallible human beings are helping construct it, the book is subject to minor imperfections of various kinds, but since these scribes are being assisted by the Master Craftsperson, the end result will be what God wants it to be.19 (It’s worth noting that the way the book’s authors employ the Augustinian trope of God as the only true teacher here gives what’s written in this book the stamp not just of divine approval but also of divine authority.) After being assured that the book will share God’s Truth with others, Mechthild accepts its creation. As its writers report, “Thus the Lord took away all of her sorrow. So from that day forward, they showed her the book whenever she wished, reading it in her presence in its entirety (except for the prologue and the conclusion).” In fact, Mechthild develops into an active participant and spiritual ‘fact-checker’ for the book, consulting directly with God about anything that seems uncertain: “Whatever they discovered in it whose truth was suspect, she at once sought [clarity] from God as soon as she could.” (245–246). In this way, Mechthild grows in confidence, and her relationship with her mystical experiences becomes more active – a sign of spiritual maturity.

8.4.2  Active Receptivity via Spiritual Practices Like Hadewijch and Marguerite d’Oingt, Mechthild emphasizes the need to prepare oneself for the process of mystical transformation by cultivating virtue and practicing spiritual disciplines. The particular virtues and spiritual exercises on which she focuses, however, underscore how the general practice of cultivating active receptivity toward divine illumination and mystical experiences can take different forms depending on context. Toward the outset of the first book (1.2), for instance, Mechthild emphasizes the importance of nine qualities that are ‘supremely useful’ to those who wish to develop their relation to God, and which are foregrounded in the rest of the book: purity (here identified with virginity), humility, desire for God, love for God and neighbor, loyalty, patience, faithfulness, prayerfulness, and dedication to contemplation. Communal virtues are stressed here (more than in Hadewijch’s or Marguerite’s texts), as are qualities specifically associated with living a cloistered religious life. Indeed, the majority of books three and 128

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four are devoted to instructions on the religious life, sharing advice based on what Mechthild has learned in her own journey, both via her life in the convent and via her mystical experiences. At the same time, we see a common emphasis on humility, love, patience, as well as the disciplines of close reading of Scripture, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.20 Also like Hadewijch and Marguerite, Mechthild’s mystical experiences are carefully keyed to particular events in the church calendar, so that her readers have vital context for them and can reflect on them when participating in the same events. As Barbara Newman notes, “Mechthild’s scribes arranged the revelations in book 1 according to the liturgical year, which begins on the first Sunday of Advent,” so that they form a sort of calendar of insights. In addition, “Visions are frequently introduced with the opening words of the Mass (Introit) for the day” (Mechthild 2017, 37). Mechthild’s reports of mystical experiences are seamlessly worked through with Scripture passages. Again and again, her recalling a passage of Scripture, puzzling about its meaning, and then asking for illumination via prayer lead to her being given an answer in a ‘face-to-face’ encounter with God. In this movement between close study of the Word of God (lectio divina), thoughtful imaginative engagement with its content (meditatio), requests for illumination (oratio), and responses via mystical experiences (contemplatio), we see how the four-fold sequence of spiritual disciplines delineated by Guigo II in his Ladder for Monks has spread beyond the Carthusian community to set the standard for spiritual devotion, providing a common structure to personal devotion that remains popular in the Rome-based Christian tradition through the 16th century. Unmeditated experience of God is ‘the’ central goal of contemplative literature in this period; Mechthild shows by example how we can make ourselves actively receptive to such experiences.

8.4.3  Communal Significance of the Mystical Transformation The communal significance of Mechthild’s visions and mystical transformation is at the forefront of the Book of Special Grace. The whole reason her sisters begin transcribing her visions in the first place is to have a record of them for future reflection (and to be able to share them with others), and Mechthild herself expresses concern for how best to express her experiences so that they can benefit her community. In 5.22, for instance, Mechthild reports that she feels “divinity streaming into her with a mighty rush like a river,” but then worries that she won’t be able to express enough of the experience to benefit her sisters, for “whatever I can explain of that knowledge to others, is scarcely so much as an ant can carry away from the largest mountain” (242). Partly in response, Mechthild is then given a vision of “three rays of light extending from the heart of God into the hearts of the two scribes who write this book” (243), which reminds her that the task is not hers alone (as well as emphasizing the Trinitarian nature of God and God’s powers of illumination). The importance of sharing mystical experiences for the good of others is one of the central themes of the book, stressed by both Mechthild and the sisters who are recording and arranging her words. After receiving the vision described above, for instance, Mechthild concludes: “It will comfort me if this book inspires praise for [God] and spiritual progress in its readers” (243). As one of her scribes observes, “I dare say truthfully that often much more was revealed to her than she had any wish to tell. But for the glory of God, she revealed those things that she believed would be useful and instructive” (241). In other words, Mechthild shares her visions and mystical experiences not as one idly recounts an interesting dream the next morning, but because she believes she has received those contemplative experiences in part for the illumination of her spiritual community. And, although she thought of her community primarily as the convent in which she spent her life, the Dominican emphasis on preaching and teaching leads the spiritual 129

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advisors of the convent at Helfta to disseminate Mechthild’s book widely; her sharing of her personal experiences thus impact a large number of people.

8.5  Mystical Experiences and Mystical Transformations The main goal of this chapter is quite straightforward – it is to observe that although individual mystical experiences can deeply impact their subjects and serve as turning points in their lives, the deepest sort of mystical transformation occurs not via an isolated experience but over an extended period of time and in conjunction with disciplines meant to prepare their practitioner for deeper levels of engagement with the divine. The significance of this observation is the way it draws attention to the socially embedded and deeply communal aspects of mystical experiences, which today are often studied outside those contexts and thus often misrepresented and misunderstood.21 The fact that mystical experiences typically occur within the lives of people already dedicated to contemplative disciplines such as meditation and prayer, for instance, is crucial to understanding the role those experiences play in moral and spiritual transformation. So also is the role of community, as the case studies of Hadewijch, Marguerite, and Mechthild indicate, for both individual mystical experiences and the larger mystical transformations of these figures are explicitly offered to their communities as models and encouragement for others, in addition to providing insight into God’s nature and desires. In this respect, the differences between Hadewijch, Marguerite, and Mechthild are as illuminative as their similarities. The three figures represent a wide range of spiritual traditions, geographic regions, languages, and relationship to their texts, and their visionary literature reflects these differences, demonstrating how particular styles of piety can impact both the reception of mystical experiences and their recounting. Hadewijch’s and Mechthild’s list of virtues most important to the spiritual life are both different from each other and idiosyncratic in the larger Christian tradition, for instance; a closer examination of those virtues and their role in preparing for/attaining union with God would shed light on their broader theological and philosophical commitments. So would a comparison with Hadewijch’s understanding of the spiritual disciplines that undergird mystical transformation with those of Marguerite and Mechthild, both of whom are working within the four-fold model of lectio divina/meditation/ prayer/contemplation. Hadewijch also differs from the other two in frequently referencing the groundless abyss of God, which features prominently in the works of later Flemish and Rhineland mystics (such as Jan Van Ruusboec, Meister Eckhart, and Johannes Tauler), while the strict vows of silence Marguerite took as part of the Carthusian order is mirrored in her (silent) interactions with God and models “the Carthusian plan” of moving from study of the written word to self-interrogation (Gilbert 2014, 372). Meanwhile, Mechthild’s mystical experiences are full of sounds as well as sights and smells, as seems appropriate for a much-loved convent choirmaster. Yet despite these differences, all three figures provide autobiographical descriptions of mystical experiences that gradually transform their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual lives, and they share those experiences in ways designed to guide others working toward mystical transformation. In so doing, they demonstrate an understanding of mystical transformation as a long and gradual process not constituted by individual mystical experiences, but rather shaped by those experiences and guided by an ‘active receptivity’ for such transformation that is developed by spiritual practices. Finally, in stark contrast to contemporary conceptions, these individual mystical experiences function not to set their subjects apart from the ‘regular’ members of their communities but instead as contributing to communal as well as individual transformation. 130

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Notes 1 For more information on the often-overlooked importance of the African trade routes for medieval Europe, see Berzock (2018). 2 We can see this frustration with the intellectual elite, for instance, at the outset of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, as well as Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead. 3 The classic work on this movement remains Grundmann (1935). For origins of the beguines, see Neel (1989). 4 The fact that Mechthild of Hackeborn reported her mystical experiences to others (rather than recording them herself ) raises worries in the modern readers about authenticity and veracity: how might her experiences have been filtered, changed, and framed for the purposes of her scribes? This is indeed a thorny issue, and the subject of much scholarly debate. Medieval and contemporary sensibilities about historical accuracy differ, with medieval authors keenly aware of their roles as producers of texts available to various interpretations – records of visions often include in the text the rules for how to read them. The vitae of female saints are especially subject to this sort of worry, as close comparison between their experiences as recorded by themselves and as described by their male confessors and hagiographers demonstrate sometimes quite significant differences. (See, for instance, the set of essays in Mooney (1999).) This is why I’ve chosen a figure who was directly involved in editing and producing the resulting manuscript. 5 All quotes from Hadewijch come from Hadewijch (1980). For more about Hadewijch’s life, works (letters, poetry, and visions), and influence, see Hampton (2020), McGinn (1994), Murk-Jansen (2010), Suydam (1996). 6 For more on the importance of trees as symbols of the self in medieval contemplative literature, see Van Dyke (2022, Chapter 2). 7 Contemplative authors from this period emphasize the fact that Christ remains fully human even after his ascension into heaven. See Van Dyke (2019). 8 See also Vision Seven, where she writes: “I desired that his Humanity should to the fullest extent be one in fruition with my humanity, and that mine then should hold its stand and be strong enough to enter into perfection until I content him, who is perfection itself ” (280). 9 A medieval contemplative who takes this unity with Love to its furthest extreme is Marguerite Porete, who was burnt at the stake in Paris in 1310 for refusing to recant her position in the Mirror of Simple Souls on the radical unity of the ‘annihilated soul’ with God. For more on Porete and the theme of losing oneself in love, see Van Dyke (2022, Chapter 4). 10 I list both love and charity here because the interplay between love as ‘amor’ or erotic longing for one’s Beloved and ‘caritas’ as the love one has for God and one’s neighbor becomes run together in interesting ways in the 13th and subsequent centuries. For more on the relation between caritas and amor in this period, see Newman (2003, Chapter 4). 11 This list differs from the one in modern translations of Galatians 5, which just consists of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 12 All quotes are from Marguerite d’Oingt (1990). For more on Marguerite’s life, thought, and imagery, see Marguerite d’Oingt (1990), Fibla (2017), Paulsell (1991). 13 Marguerite’s earliest surviving work is the Page of Meditations, which she writes in Latin and sends to a spiritual advisor (her prior, Huges of Amplepuis) for approval. After the Chapter General gives her Meditations, its imprimatur, Marguerite has license to write more freely, which she chooses to do primarily in her vernacular – thus making it more widely accessible to her immediate community, who were much less likely to be schooled in ecclesiastical Latin. For more on her choices of language, see Marguerite d’Oingt (1990: 15). 14 See, for instance, the opening of the first chapter of the Mirror, where Marguerite writes of her experiences as “a great favor” which God has granted to her, as a grace that God shares with God’s friends (41). 15 See Hollywood and Beckman (2012) for chapters corresponding to each of these disciplines. 16 All quotes are from Mechthild of Hackerborn (2017). For a biography and overview of her work, see Voaden (2010). 17 Bynum (1984) remains an invaluable source for information about the community at Helfta. 18 Voaden (2010). 19 This is a recurring theme. See, for instance, 5.31 where God assures Mechthild: “Just as truly as you received it from my Spirit, so truly my Spirit compelled them to write it down and elaborate it” (245).

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Christina Van Dyke 2 0 For more on the dual nature of contemplation as activity and receptivity, see Van Dyke (2022, Chapter 4). 21 To read medieval visionary literature with an eye toward diagnosing the underlying medical condition of the person reporting their experience or determining how to replicate such an experience in a laboratory, for instance, is to miss the careful way in which reports of these experiences are constructed to be intelligible and meaningful to their original audiences.

References Berzock, Kathleen Bickford. 2018. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1984. “Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: the Case of the Nuns of Helfta” in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 170–262. Fibla, Sergi Sancho. 2017. “Colors and Books in Marguerite d’Oingt’s Speculum. Images for Meditation and Vision” in Commitments to Medieval Mysticism Within Contemporary Contexts, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium. Peeters, 255–271. Gilbert, Bennett. 2014. “Early Carthusian Script and Silence.” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 49:3, 367–397. Grundmann, Herbert. 1935. Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, With the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, translated into English by S. Rowan and published in 1995. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Hadewijch. 1980. Hadewijch: The Complete Works, ed. and trans. Mother Columba Hart. Mahwah: Paulist Press. Hampton, Alexander. 2020. “Mystical Poetics” in The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology, eds. E. Howells and M.A. McIntosh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 241–266. Hollywood, Amy and Beckman, Patricia eds. 2012. Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marguerite d’Oingt. 1990. The Writings of Margaret of Oingt, Medieval Prioress and Mystic (d. 1310), trans. with an introduction, essay, and notes by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. McGinn, Bernard ed. 1994. Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. New York: Continuum. Mechthild of Hackeborn. 2017. Mechthild of Hackeborn: The Book of Special Grace, trans. Barbara Newman. Mahwah: Paulist Press. Mooney, Catherine ed. 1999. Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Murk-Jansen, Saskia. 2010. “Hadewijch” in Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c. 1100–c. 1500, eds. A. Minnis and R. Voaden. Turnhout: Brepols, 663–685. Neel, Carol. 1989. “The Origins of the Beguines.” Signs 14:2, Working Together in the Middle Ages: Perspectives on Women’s Communities, 321–341. Newman, Barbara. 2003. God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Paulsell, Stephanie. 1991. “Writing and Mystical Experience in Marguerite d’Oingt and Virginia Woolf.” Comparative Literature 44:3, 249–267. Suydam, Mary. 1996. “The Touch of Satisfaction: Visions and Religious Experience According to Hadewijch of Antwerp.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 12:3, 5–27. Van Dyke, Christina. 2019. “The Phenomenology of Immortality (1200–1400)” in The History of the Philosophy of Mind. Vol. 2: Philosophy of Mind in the Early and High Middle Ages, ed. M. Cameron. London: Routledge, 219–239. Van Dyke, Christina. 2022. A Hidden Wisdom: Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Voaden, Rosalynn. 2010. “Mechthild of Hackeborn” in Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c. 1100–c. 1500, eds. A. Minnis and R. Voaden. Turnhout: Brepols, 431–451.

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9 VIA TRANSFORMATIVA: READING DESCARTES’ MEDITATIONS AS A MYSTICAL TEXT Amber L. Griffioen and Kristopher G. Phillips* 9.1 Introduction In recent years, Descartes’ reputation as representing a decidedly singular voice against medieval scholasticism has come under some much-needed scrutiny, creating a challenge to the common narrative that paints him as the “father of modern philosophy.” For example, some scholars have drawn parallels between his thought and that of late medieval thinkers, such as Francisco Suárez or Teresa of Avila,1 and the influence of late scholastic textbooks on his pedagogical approach, such as that authored by his contemporary Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (Eustache Asseline), has also been noted (Ariew 2014; Mercer 2017). We agree that Descartes’ thought did not emerge ex nihilo, nor was he single-handedly responsible for transforming philosophy in 17th-century Europe. Such a story gives him too much credit at the cost of ignoring other contributions, as well as the complex intellectual, theological, and political contexts in which he was located. In this chapter, we argue that to adequately capture the complicated relationship between Descartes’ work and late medieval thought, philosophers need to think not only about his ideas but also about his presentation and choice of genre. Reading the Meditations as a mere discursive treatise containing a progressive and consistent set of arguments intended to establish a particular philosophical position fails to appreciate the eponymous genre that Descartes explicitly chose to employ in writing them. Instead, we argue that reading the text in light of the long tradition of contemplative meditative literature opens up a radically different way of interpreting the Meditations as a “mystagogical” project of spiritual edification and epistemic and volitional transformation. During such a transformation, the meditator undergoes a series of revelatory experiences structurally similar to those we find in various so-called “mystical”—or what, from here on out, we will call “mystagogical”—literature in the Latin Christian West. Before we proceed, we would like to clarify our use of the term ‘mystagogical.’ Like its sisterterm, ‘mystical,’ ‘mystagogical’ ranges over various strands of medieval contemplative, meditative, and devotional literature. However, our intentional avoidance in this context of the term ‘mystical’ and its cognates indicates our more general discomfort with the experiential, esoteric,

* Co-authoring note: authors contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order

DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-13

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and irrational(ist)—not to mention heavily gendered (see Jantzen 1997)—connotations commonly associated with mysticism today. In their own time, many of those texts that have come to be labeled “mystical” were not viewed as relevantly distinct from more “speculative” theological literature, even if they did not always conform to the strict format of the medieval scholastic disputation or commentary. From at least the 14th century onward, such texts (including those authored by women) not seldomly appeared in both Latin and the vernacular, suggesting they enjoyed a wide readership, including (but certainly not limited to) classically educated scholars. Today, however, mysticism has often been presented as “philosophy’s ‘other,’ as that which must at all costs be excluded from philosophical discourse” (Hart 1991: xi). And while we, in contrast, think that reclaiming “mysticism” for the history of philosophy can be a fruitful way to think differently about both continuities and caesuras between the medieval and early modern periods, we prefer the more precise term ‘mystagogical’ to ‘mystical,’ since it further points to the fact that this kind of literature was not strictly divorced from the pastoral, spiritual, and devotional contexts in which it found application. The term also points to the fundamentally pedagogical and edificatory nature of these texts, an aspect often ignored by contemporary references to both mysticism and meditation (Griffioen 2022; Griffioen and Zahedi 2018).2 In Section 9.2, we motivate the view that Descartes himself was both familiar with the relevant contemplative, mystagogical traditions in Catholic theology and had good reason to think it would be rhetorically effective in bringing philosophers and theologians to accept the Cartesian project. We argue that Descartes’ historical and intellectual development can be traced through Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle and his influences—including, among others, the Oratorians, Madame Acarie and her circle, Benet of Canfield, and the Rheno-Flemish contemplative tradition(s)—and that marks of these influences can be found in Descartes’ own writing. Ultimately, we believe that commentators who have focused on connections to specific works are not thinking big enough. Rather, following David Cunning (2010) and Amélie Rorty (1983, 1986), we argue that the Meditations is a text that draws from a broad swath of intellectual, philosophical, and theological traditions. That is, his use of the meditative genre does not stem solely from, e.g., Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, or Augustine of Hippo, but rather draws on tropes and structural elements common to various figures and traditions in early modern Europe that would later come to be classified as “mystical.” In Section 9.3, we illustrate some of the similarities between the Meditations and particular trends commonly found in mystagogical literature. Specifically, we will point to the structural parallels between the phases of transformation stressed in much mystagogical literature and their instantiation in the Meditations. Further, we will explore a few common tropes employed in the service of mystagogical transformation that find interesting parallels in the Cartesian meditative project. While some of these structural and tropological comparisons have already been touched upon in other analyses, their transformational significance has not yet been sufficiently explored. We show how paying attention to these mystagogical aspects of the Meditations can open up new avenues for understanding the connection between the theoretical, practical, and theological aspects of Descartes’ thought. Such a reading resolves a number of seemingly glaring problems and peculiarities in the Meditations, including the Cartesian circle and the tension in the Cartesian notion of the freedom of the will. We also argue that the odd detours the meditator takes in the Sixth Meditation through physiology are not mere digressions but rather mark an often-overlooked aspect of the mystagogical story—the return to embodiment as a transformed self. Indeed, the overly intellectualist emphasis of contemporary scholars on both the contemplative aspects of mystagogical literature and the epistemological focus of Descartes’ project in the Meditations have caused them to largely overlook the ways in which the aim of both medieval 134

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and Cartesian meditation involves a transformative re-orientation of the whole person and their understanding of the world—one that has practical, moral, and social consequences. If we are correct in our re-reading of the Meditations, then the sort of transformative experience Descartes’ meditator undergoes is much more comprehensive than the traditional “rationalist” reading of Descartes would lead us to believe. That is, we take our reading to add to the traditional “rationalist” reading through a more holistic, historically sensitive interpretation that at once resolves long-standing questions in Descartes scholarship and draws our attention to underappreciated aspects of the tradition in which he chose to write.

9.2  Descartes’ Intellectual and Theological Context There are two major events that occurred early in Descartes’ intellectual career that are both widely known and underemphasized in much of the philosophical literature concerning his writing. The first is the largely recounted, but often over-rationalized or ignored, series of dreams Descartes claims to have experienced while in a state of ecstasy in 1619. The second is the salon where Descartes, upon the prodding of Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, criticized an alchemist named Chandoux for offering a merely probabilistic form of science as a replacement for the dominant Aristotelian paradigm.3 Despite how widely known both of these events are, scholars have, by and large, developed a narrative surrounding Descartes that seeks to divorce him from the intellectual and theological context in which he was living. It’s easy enough to read a scientific focus into the latter vignette and to attempt to divorce the metaphysical or epistemological issues from the theological worries of the period, but it’s somewhat more difficult with Descartes’ dreams. Scholars have not shied away from downplaying or rationalizing the dreams, seemingly in order to maintain a consistent picture of Descartes as a straightforward “rationalist” (Keevak 1992: 381). Despite the developments in the natural sciences in the 17th century, intellectual life in Europe was decidedly less “rationalist” than traditional philosophical narratives would have us believe. Suggestions of demonic possession were common, and at the turn of the century, public exorcisms drew substantial attention.4 The fact that Descartes had three dreams, which he described as involving divine inspiration, is not disputed. What we should do with that information is, it seems, a much livelier topic. We will not recount here in detail the specifics of the dreams.5 Instead, we will note a few salient features of the dreams and of Descartes’ own reflections on his thinking at the time, with an eye toward building a case that he was open to mystical experiences. Of the dreams, Alice Browne writes that Adrien Baillet provides an account of Descartes’ state of mind during that time: [He] had not been drinking, and he had been in a state of enthusiasm for some days […] Descartes, then, went to bed on the evening of 10 November 1619, having made a discovery which seemed very important to him, and expecting a dream-revelation. (Browne 1977: 258–259) There are two important notes to be drawn from this passage. The first is that Descartes was expecting some form of revelation, which he subsequently claimed to have received. The second is that he considered himself in a state of “enthusiasm,” which in the 17th century was almost entirely associated with religious experiences (and not seldomly with what we now call ‘mystical’ experience). Whatever we make of Descartes’ own account of these dreams, it is clear that he was, at least at this early stage of his intellectual development, steeped in a context where the ideas of prophetic dreams and divine inspiration were not out of the ordinary. 135

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The dreams themselves are wild, and specific aspects seem to recur throughout Descartes’ later writings. In one of the dreams, he claims to have been visited by an “evil genius” who caused him physical pain (Browne 1977: 260). To be sure, the manifestation of this evil genius is decidedly different from the deceiver of the First Meditation, but the similar phrasing is striking. Similarly, in his first dream, he describes a “whirlwind” that spun him around several times. At the start of the Second Meditation, the meditator reflects on his experience with the radical doubt that concluded the previous meditation and describes himself as feeling as if he fell into a “deep whirlpool” which results in a feeling of disorientation (Descartes 1984: 16).6 Of course, to establish that Descartes intended the Meditations to represent his own experience of divine inspiration would take substantially more argument. Our claim here is rather more modest, namely that there is reason to think that Descartes was both open to, and familiar with the idea of mystical experience and that his own experiences with purportedly prophetic dreams had a lasting impact on his thought.

9.2.1  Descartes and the Oratorians The question remains, however, what exactly Descartes’ experience with the so-called “contemplative” genres in the Christian tradition was. It is surprising that, despite noticing the connections between Descartes and Bérulle, much of the work tying Descartes to Augustine, Teresa, and de Sales, among others, remains quite speculative. Scholars focus on his Jesuit training at La Flèche, suggesting that he would have been exposed during his time there to meditational texts from a variety of sources (Hatfield 1986; Mercer 2017; Underkuffler 2020). Others suggest that given the relative importance and visibility of figures such as Teresa of Avila and Francis de Sales in early 17th-century France, there is good reason to think Descartes would have been at least exposed to their writings. The trouble, of course, is that Descartes rarely cited anyone and was loath to read anything too terribly long (see Descartes’ letter to Mersenne 6 August 1640, Descartes 1991: 154). Moreover, in communal religious contexts, many ideas from the mystagogical traditions that may have influenced Descartes may have been transmitted orally, as opposed to in written form. Yet there remains some direct evidence of the influence that such thought might have had on him. Despite the well-known connection between Bérulle and Descartes, few have fully explored how intimately the two men knew one another,7 and their relationship is by no means exhausted by their interaction at Chandoux’s salon. Bérulle was the founder of the Parisian Oratory and was a statesman during the time Descartes studied at La Flèche. Gary Hatfield notes that during Descartes’ time at La Flèche, the Jesuits would hold annual spiritual retreats of which the “Augustinians of the Oratory were fond” (Hatfield 1986: 54; see also Vendler 1989: 194). Mersenne was certainly familiar with the Oratorians, and he brought Descartes to meet with them regularly during the 1620s. This is likely the time during which he met various members of the Oratory, including Bérulle, and struck up a closer relationship with Guillaume Gibieuf (Williams 1989: 226), as we discuss below. This series of meetings over the course of three years strikes us as particularly salient for a few reasons. First, following the salon, Bérulle encouraged Descartes to pursue his philosophical project, a project that would lead to Le Monde, the Discourse, and ultimately to the Meditations (Williams 1989: 227). It seems unlikely that Descartes would be so encouraged to pursue such a large intellectual project were it not for a closer relationship than that suggested by much of the literature.8 Additionally, during this period, Bérulle himself was working on a project in the contemplative tradition, the Vie de Jésus, which represented a more meditative sequel to his 136

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(not uncontroversial) 1623 Discours de l’état et des grandeurs de Jésus (Thompson 1989: 16). This gives us good reason to think that Descartes would have been familiar with the contemplative tradition as preached and exercised by Bérulle and the Oratorians. Another particularly important connection to come from Descartes’ interaction with the Oratory is the relationship he developed with Guillaume Gibieuf. Gibieuf was a prominent figure in the Parisian Oratory and maintained a relatively close intellectual relationship with Descartes throughout the course of the latter’s life. In fact, it was Gibieuf who would later argue (albeit unsuccessfully) for the inclusion of the Meditations at the Sorbonne in 1641 (Williams 1989: 227). During the time Descartes was in Paris and visiting the Oratory house, Gibieuf was working on a piece trying to reconcile human freedom with divine omnipotence, De Libertate Dei et Creaturae. Descartes would later ask Mersenne for a published copy, going on to cite this piece approvingly (Gaukroger 1995: 138). Gibieuf ’s project was not the same as Descartes’; still, it should be noted that there appears to have been enough of “an analogical relationship between the projects of the two men which contributed to their friendship” (Williams 1989: 228). There is, therefore, substantial evidence that Descartes was reasonably familiar with the Oratorians during the late 1620s. This connection bolsters the claim that he might have been familiar with the contemplative traditions emphasized by the Oratorians. Let us now turn to a discussion of Bérulle’s spiritual background and thereby trace the influences of various mystagogical traditions of late medieval and early modern Europe through the Oratorians to Descartes.

9.2.2  Bérulle’s Ties to Mystagogical Traditions The Parisian Oratory was itself guided by a blend of mystagogical traditions that had become increasingly visible during the late 16th and early 17th centuries in France. The French School (as with many of its “mystical” precursors) brought together ideas from Neoplatonist and Christian (and Neoplatonist Christian) sources (Thompson 1989: 32–33). Additionally important to our subject, however, is that Bérulle himself was directly and substantially influenced by a number of other figures whom scholars have sought to tie to Descartes. For example, through his connection to Madame Barbe Acarie and her spiritual circle (which included a number of prominent figures in the mystagogical traditions of 17th-century France), Bérulle would have had access to, and perhaps come to internalize, a number of styles in the mystagogical genre. The Acarie circle provides us with the most direct connections between Bérulle and a number of mystagogical traditions, especially that of Teresa of Avila. Acarie’s own purported visions of Teresa of Avila in 1601–2 had convinced her that she should pursue the founding of a reformed Teresian Carmelite order in Paris—and aided by Bérulle, de Sales, and others, she was able to do so in 1604 (Cruickshank 1994: 53). In fact, Bérulle was awarded superiorship over the Carmelite nuns upon their arrival in Paris and hand-picked the nuns who would eventually move from Spain to France, insisting that only the most exemplary of the order should found the French group. Bérulle himself undertook two pilgrimages to St. Teresa’s tomb, evidently seeking post-mortem permission from her for relocating her order (Williams 1989: 59). In any case, the connection between Bérulle and Teresa provides further evidence for Christia Mercer’s (2014) position that Descartes would likely have been familiar with Teresian mystical theology. Given the tight connections between Bérulle himself and the Discalced Carmelite order’s founding in Paris, the tradition was almost sure to make its way to Descartes. Of course, Teresian meditation was by no means the only style of mystagogical thought present in the Acarie circle. For example, John Cruickshank notes that the Acarie circle’s “new religious enthusiasm” was not only informed by 16th-century Spanish mysticism but also by the 137

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earlier mystical traditions of the Low Countries and the Rhineland region (Cruickshank 1994: 49). While Dom Beaucousin appears to have introduced the Acarie circle to the Rheno-Flemish mysticism of such figures as Tauler, Ruusbroec, and Harphius (Wright 2013: 444), it is in Benet of Canfield’s work, Règle de Perfection, that we find the most direct influence of these traditions on this group. The Règle had clear ties to works by Bonaventure, the Pseudo-Tauler, Ruusbroec, and the anonymously penned Theologia Germanica (Williams 1989: 14; see also Emery 1984: 9–16), and we know that a manuscript was circulating in and being used as a meditative device by the Acarie circle as early as 1593 (Cruickshank 1994: 55). The influence of Benet’s Règle on the Acarie circle, and on Bérulle in particular, is noteworthy. Indeed, there are a number of ideas present in the Règle that ultimately find a home in Cartesian thought: Themes such as a strict adherence to the doctrine of divine simplicity (one which seems to place a primacy on the divine will over the divine intellect),9 an understanding of human freedom as alignment with the divine will, and the notion of purging the intellect of images during the meditative process, all make a prominent showing in both Benet’s work and Descartes’ Meditations. Given the conceptual overlap, and the close connection between Descartes and the Oratory, there is perhaps reason to think Descartes would have been familiar with the style, genre, and mystagogical theology of the Rheno-Flemish tradition, at least as filtered through the Règle.

9.2.3  Descartes, Bérulle, and the Style of the Meditations We have now introduced a number of threads in Cartesian thought that seem to be tied together in the thought, writing, and political exercises of Cardinal Bérulle. First, it is clear that Bérulle was not only familiar with Teresa of Avila’s works but also found them to be of special importance—so much so that he worked to introduce her work to the French spiritual scene (Wright 2013: 444). Rather than merely adopting the teachings of St. Teresa, however, Bérulle worked to blend her thought with his own background in the Rheno-Flemish tradition. Moreover, through the Acarie circle, Bérulle was exposed to and worked with figures from disparate orders including the Carthusians, Capuchins, and Jesuits (Cruickshank 1994: 50). Second, it is through Bérulle’s Oratory that we find direct connections to thinkers that Christia Mercer, Bradley Rubidge, and Wilson Underkuffler have suggested might have influenced Descartes. Bérulle and his Oratorians provide us the link to a variety of traditions and their blending into a uniquely French form of “everyday mysticism” which incorporated aspects from a variety of sources.10 That Descartes spent so much time with the Oratorians shortly after having had, by his own account, a mystical experience, is noteworthy given Bérulle’s own experience addressing putatively mystical experiences through Madame Acarie’s ecstatic visions. All of these themes converge in Descartes’ Paris years, and this suggests that his access to various mystagogical traditions extended well beyond the Jesuit curriculum at La Flèche. As we have seen, Descartes’ intellectual context was imbued with mystical thought. The figures with whom he interacted were themselves steeped in various mystagogical traditions and figured prominently on both the intellectual and political stages. Moreover, Bérulle encouraged Descartes to pursue his philosophical and scientific program, and such an encouragement may well have carried more weight than scholars have thus far acknowledged. For example, citing Adrien Baillet’s early biography of Descartes, Zeno Vendler suggests a very different interpretation of the interaction between Descartes and Bérulle. Vendler notes that, as the highest officials in the Catholic Church, cardinals “have jurisdiction over the spiritual life of any faithful seeking their guidance,” such that Bérulle “had the power to impose an ‘obligation of conscience’ upon 138

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Descartes in the name of God”—and he goes so far as to suggest that this is precisely what Bérulle did, “adding the warning of divine displeasure should he disobey” (Vendler 1989: 216).11 Additionally, there is a tendency among contemporary scholars to understand Bérulle’s encouragement both as grounded largely, or even entirely, in modern science. It was, after all, Chandoux’s scientific method that Descartes seemed to have been criticizing at the salon. We argue, however, that while natural philosophy was unquestionably part of the motivation, the story is more complicated. For Bérulle, “natural philosophy was charged with theological and metaphysical questions […], and one of Descartes’ first tasks on arriving in the Netherlands was to work on [such] metaphysical and theological questions” (Gaukroger 1995: 186). So, the anachronistically non-theistic scientific focus of contemporary scholarship problematically narrows our focus. If indeed Cardinal Bérulle’s “encouragement” was more like the communication of a divine command to pursue a scientific project in the service of larger (and more significant) metaphysical and theological goals, then we should not be surprised to see Descartes produce a meditational text grounded squarely in the very mystagogical traditions that may have provided the contexts for such an injunction.12 There is still a question, however, regarding Descartes’ use of the genre. Mercer has argued that Descartes owes a debt to Teresa (among others), and Underkuffler suggests that de Sales and the Augustinian tradition are more operative in the Meditations. Our view is closer to that of Rorty (1983, 1986) and Cunning (2010), insofar as we maintain that Descartes pulled aspects from a wide variety of traditions in order to impact the widest audience possible. As Cunning puts it: Most obviously, different intellects will have different commitments. Some of the individuals working through the Meditations will be Aristotelians; some will be mechanists; some will be theists; some will be atheists; some will not (yet) have an articulated view of reality at all. Descartes will write the first-person Meditations so that it is sensitive to the different commitments of the spectrum of unemended intellects, and so that as many of us as possible will be able to reason from and through and past our commitments in the direction of a paradigm that is new. (Cunning 2010: 7) It is well known that Descartes wrote in a number of styles throughout his life: in addition to the Meditations, we see a more traditional textbook in the Principles, modeled after late scholastic texts (Ariew 2014), scientific and physiological treatises in Le Monde and L’Homme (among others), and the autobiographical Discourse on the Method.13 During his time at La Flèche, Descartes studied rhetoric intensely. Additionally, Descartes was friends with, and admired the rhetorical style of, the famed French stylist, Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac. In particular, Descartes seemed to appreciate in Balzac’s writings a rejection of “arid” styles, a rejection of forms of eloquence that conceal the absence of arguments, and above all the priority of persuasion over style […] On closer examination, then, Descartes is not so much concerned to defend traditional rhetoric as to identify those features that he finds valuable, and these are those which induce a heightened “attentiveness” on the part of hearers or readers, with the result that they are better able to grasp things clearly and distinctly. (Gaukroger 1995: 182) When we consider his consistently shifting style in light of his connection to Balzac and his intense study of rhetoric, it becomes clear that Descartes was not merely interested in presenting 139

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mere syllogisms to his interlocutors. He saw his project as attempting to reach and persuade as many people as possible.14 Given this interest in style, persuasion, and casting a wide net, it would be unsurprising to find that there is no one style that provides the singular influence on Descartes’ approach to the Meditations. We have shown that he would have been familiar with a number of styles, and given his stated interest in appealing to as many different minds as possible, there is good reason to believe he blended mystagogical styles in his own works.

9.3  Turning and Transformation: Parallels between Medieval Mystagogical Traditions and the Meditations We have thus far provided good reason to think that Descartes was familiar with various strands of mystagogical literature, and that he employed it in order to reach a wide readership. Importantly, this is compatible both with an interpretation of the Meditations according to which Descartes is sincerely trying to demonstrate how the theological aims of medieval spiritual literature could be reconciled with more “modern” scientific and mechanistic approaches to reality, as well as with a reading of the project that sees Descartes as slyly trying to turn Christian contemplation on its head by pursuing a radical “new philosophy” within the confines of this already familiar textual tradition.15 Whatever Descartes’ intentions regarding the use of the meditative genre, there is nevertheless value in teasing out some of the continuities between the “new” Meditations and the “older” mystagogical traditions. Minimally, such a reading can help (re-)orient us toward Descartes’ text in ways we might not have expected, and thereby elicit a transformation in the way we approach the Meditations in our own scholarship and teaching. With this as one of our goals, we propose the analogy of a mirror, whereby Descartes’ text both reflects and refracts certain ideas and tendencies in the mystagogical genres with which he would have been familiar. Such an approach employs comparison, as Saeed Zarrabi-Zadeh puts it, as a “tool of clarification and comprehension rather than of [mere] assimilation or differentiation” (Zarrabi-Zadeh 2015: 290).

9.3.1  Mystagogical Literature and the Spiritual Journey Much contemporary literature on Christian “mysticism,” as well as much of the scholarship analyzing Descartes’ connection to historical meditative traditions, focuses on one particular characterization of the meditator’s spiritual itinerary involving three subsequent phases or “paths”—namely, those of purgation/purification (the via purgativa), illumination (the via illuminativa), and union with God (the via unitiva), with the latter sometimes characterized instead as contemplation of God in this life (the via contemplativa). Popularized by figures like Hugh of St. Victor and Bonaventure in the 12th and 13th centuries and continuing to find expression in many 16th- and 17th-century mystical texts,16 the history of this so-called triplici via in the Christian tradition can be traced as far back as Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, and Origen, though it clearly has strong Platonist and Neoplatonist roots (McGinn 1991). However, although it can provide some guidance with respect to reading Descartes’ Meditations in light of the Christian meditative genre, it also remains somewhat limited when viewed from the standpoint of mystagogy. To be sure, Christian writers like to have things in Trinitarian-sounding threes, and the threefold path was well-established in Christian devotional literature during Descartes’ time. However, the attempts of contemporary scholars to force mystagogical texts into this mold often serve to obscure as much as they reveal. Not only did many authors of mystagogical literature fail to explicitly divide their texts into three clear stages, but they also frequently preferred to speak 140

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of the spiritual journey as containing stages that did not neatly fit this schema. For example, in the Interior Castle Teresa of Avila speaks of seven “dwelling places” into which the spiritual wayfarer enters on her way to spiritual marriage with God. While there are purgative, illuminative, and unitive moments on this journey, the spiritual life does not simply follow from one stage to another. Moreover, she notes other possible routes the spiritual wayfarer may take: “In each of these [seven mansions] there are many others, below and above and to the sides, with lovely gardens and fountains and labyrinths […]” (Avila 1980: 452). Ignatius of Loyola, for his part, sticks roughly to two stages (purgation/purification and illumination/contemplation), neglecting the language of union altogether, even if his followers claimed the idea was implicit within the Exercises (Rubidge 1990: 31). In another twist, Wallach-Faller (2016) points to 14th-century Dominican sister books as reversing the order of the Triple Way, such that union or mystical experience precedes illumination and purification. Rossiter, too, points out the ways the early Royal Society inverted the hierarchy implicit in the Threefold Path of the vita activa as giving way to the vita contemplativa, an attempt to transform religion “into a practical and reasonable activity that essentially consists in a kind of natural religion, wherein we focus on what can be known about God and our duties through the natural light, understood in terms of an experimental approach to nature” (Rossiter 2019: 184). In any case, however many stages it encompasses, the spiritual itinerary is seldom viewed by mystagogical authors as linear. There can be significant overlap between the stages, and the progress of the spiritual wayfarer in many mystical texts is often characterized by relapses, sudden spurts forward, or by fleeting moments of unitive or ecstatic rapture followed by dark nights of the soul and feelings of abandonment or regress. In fact, even if experiential or contemplative union with God is considered the proverbial “climax” of the spiritual journey, and even if it is taken to be best reached via some sort of subjective purification and divine illumination, for many mystagogical authors, the unitive stage is not the end of the journey. So long as human beings remain essentially embodied, social creatures, the individual who has managed to become affectively united with, ontologically annihilated in, or intellectually absorbed in God nevertheless always returns to the world a changed creature—one whose view of the world is transformed and who, in turn, seeks to further reform the world in light of the insights they have won and in consonance with the divine will. This is significant because it underscores the fundamentally practical, moral, and social implications of the soul’s journey. The path of spiritual growth is not only (or even primarily) intellectual; it is as much a matter of a subject’s volitional orientation as it is their cognitive attunement. While this might seem to be a radical departure from the Cartesian project in the Meditations, we argue below that it is not. Descartes’ own project seems to have been more practical, moral, and social than commentators would prefer to acknowledge. Descartes himself is also known to have complained that people spent too much time on his metaphysics (see Conversation with Burman, Descartes 1991: 346, and the preface to the French edition of the Principles, Descartes 1985: 186). The scholarly overemphasis on the three-stage journey has led many commentators to more or less restrict their comparison between Descartes’ Meditations and earlier meditative traditions to the first three or four meditations. Indeed, once the meditator has purged their senses, won insights into the true nature of the self, and come to intellectually recognize the existence and nature of God as the source of our clear and distinct ideas, there is not much left for the three-stage meditator to do. Everything else is simply “gravy.”17 This ignores the fact that Descartes divides his Meditations into six metaphorical “days,” each of which he thinks “required individual attention” (Descartes 1984: 94).18 Ultimately, we think there is a better way to approach the structure of the Meditations than merely focusing on purgation, illumination, and union at the expense of 141

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the other aspects of the mystagogical genres. It is an approach that focuses on the more dynamic notions of turning and transformation.

9.3.2  Turning the Soul, Transforming the Self: The Meditations as Mystagogical Text The metaphor of turning has obvious roots in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, but it is also prominent in Augustine and many later Christian mystagogical texts that take up aspects of the Neoplatonist and Augustinian traditions. Indeed, the idea of the turning of the mind or soul in ways conducive to the acquisition of true knowledge and love of the divine (e.g., the Greek metanoia or Latin conversio) is a central theme in a significant portion of Christian mystagogical literature throughout the centuries, and Descartes would clearly have been aware of this.19 Roughly speaking, the idea is that, at least from an intellectual standpoint, one must first be “freed” from the deceptiveness of the world and “turned” toward the light, in order to have a clear “vision” of things as they really are. Although this roughly corresponds to the three-stage purgatio, illuminatio, contemplatio model, it is important to note that the Platonic metaphors of the soul’s being “turned,” “re-oriented,” or “re-formed” that ultimately acquire great religious and mystical significance in the Christian tradition are not first and foremost about religious or mystical experience but rather about education (Cary 2008: 11). Especially in Augustine’s hands, this educational aspect is not purely epistemic but fundamentally involves the will. Thus, the dynamic movement of turning and being turned becomes essentially tied to questions of activity versus passivity and to Christian ideas about sin, error, grace, and freedom. In high-to-late medieval mystagogical texts, especially those found in the Rheno-Flemish traditions, the Augustinian metaphor of turning takes on even more significance (Griffioen 2017; Kaffanke 2015). It is also prominent in Teresa of Avila’s work. Here, turning is no longer just one stage among three (or many), it is the fundamental movement that characterizes the dynamism of spiritual progress and the pursuit of wisdom in conformance with the divine will. It involves a re-orientation of the intellect and will, in order to effect a dynamic trans-formation of the whole self, one that cannot be accomplished by the individual alone. It thus involves a complicated dance of receptivity and activity on the part of the meditating subject, a dance that is not completed upon having arrived at divine illumination or union. The soul must always return to the world and engage with it as a transformed being, one who is ever aware of her dependence on the divine will but who nevertheless finds herself in a new position of genuine intellectual and volitional autonomy in alignment or attunement with that will. In this sense, Mercer is correct that a goal of spiritual meditation in these traditions is “a reorientation of the self so that the exercitant is prepared for illumination” (Mercer 2014: 33), but we disagree that “the main point of [such] spiritual exercises is to be illumined” (Mercer 2014: 38). The goal of such exercises is as practical as it is epistemic. It is thus about both wisdom and virtue, and it ultimately realizes their unity in the divine nature. When we direct our attention to the metaphors of turning and transformation, we can identify in the Meditations various mystagogical movements the meditator must make in relation to God that correspond to different kinds of transformation in the meditator. Some of these transformations fit neatly within the purgatio-illuminatio-unio triad. Others depart from contemporary analyses of the traditional Triple Way insofar as the culmination of the journey is understood as going beyond merely experiential or intellectual union: It involves a transformation of the whole person that has genuine consequences for the subject as both an epistemic and a moral agent in the world. It is thus worth walking briefly through the Meditations to explore a few of the movements 142

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and transformations the meditator is called upon to undertake and undergo that have parallels in medieval mystagogical literature.

9.3.2.1  Un-Formation: Turning Away, Spiritual Discernment, and the Method of Doubt In keeping with the literary meditative tradition, the Meditations adopt a first-person perspective (commonly referred to as “the meditator” in the scholarship), whose voice actually serves as the guide for the meditator proper, i.e., the reader. Early modern readers familiar with the meditative genre would have understood that they were not reading Descartes’ autobiographical confessions but were rather being asked to imaginatively identify with this first-personal voice as a spiritual or intellectual exercise. The First Meditation opens with the meditator becoming aware of the radical error in which he finds himself and the need to “demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations” (Descartes 1984: 17). This is not unusual for mystagogical texts. It represents the initial “spark” of conversion—the moment at which the soul is “awakened” from the comfort of its dogmatic or worldly “slumber” and thrown into confusion or spiritual turmoil. Here, the meditator, like many of the main figures in such texts, feels overwhelmed by the task at hand, and admits that he must reach a certain level of maturity before he can even begin to pursue such a monumental task. He then lays out the method of doubt by which he will accomplish this “demolition,” which the reader is implicitly encouraged to emulate. The movement emphasized in the rest of the First Meditation is one that involves the traditional purgative move of turning away from the world of the body and sensation—a movement that serves to “detach,” “unmake,” “de-image,” or “un-form” the soul from its customary attachments to false images that can deceive the intellect and distract the will. This movement parallels German Rhineland mystics like Eckhart, Suso, and Tauler who often speak here of entbilden, which can be translated as both “de-imaging” and “un-formation” (Griffioen 2017; 2022). In much mystagogical literature, this has to do with a Neoplatonist-influenced metaphysics according to which the material world of generation and corruption is more privative than substantive, more associated with non-being than being, such that remaining attached to it is devastatingly misleading, both epistemically (insofar as the soul mistakes it for the “most real”) and volitionally (insofar as the soul comes to desire these illusory and transitory “things” at the cost of that which is true, eternal, and abiding). Of course, Descartes’ approach does not require that the material world actually be nothing to warrant the demolition of the meditator’s opinions.20 In fact, it holds that the mere possibility of illusion and error is sufficient to warrant this kind of full-scale demolition-by-doubt. This last point also shows that the turning involved in the First Meditation goes beyond mere purgation. To be sure, the meditator spends most of the First Meditation imaginatively turning the reader away from the material world by considering the various possibilities of madness or mental illness, dreams or hallucinations, a deceptive God or an evil demon. Yet importantly, this is not merely a call to “purification:” It is also a call for the cultivation of discernment—a topic that, by Descartes’ time, had become especially pressing in mystagogical literature, given the rise in power of the Catholic Inquisition and the growing skepticism among Church authorities concerning bodily and sensory religious experience (including visions and auditions). It is here that Descartes perhaps owes his greatest debt to 16th- and 17th-century women mystics, who had developed considered responses to the various, often heavily-gendered treatises on the discernment of spirits. For prominent religious women like Teresa of Avila and Madame Acarie, much of their recognition and acceptance as intellectuals and spiritual or theological authorities depended 143

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on their ability to appeal to certain kinds of mystical experiences as the sources of their insight. But especially during the 16th and 17th centuries, such appeals came under intense scrutiny, representing as much a danger as a promise for such women. Inspired by misogynistic 15th-century tracts on discernment by figures like French theologian Jean Gerson (1363–1429), treatises on discernment often specifically called the veridicality of women’s religious experience into question. Both Teresa and Acarie therefore developed careful and elaborate criteria for discerning genuine, divinely inspired religious experiences from those caused by mental illness, hallucination, or demonic sources—thereby in essence, introducing sophisticated evidential considerations into religious epistemology and founding a theological tradition from which Descartes could take inspiration for his method of doubt.21 Such theologies of discernment, as well as the skeptical treatises that made them necessary, provided a wealth of material from which Descartes could draw inspiration when it came to strategies for un-forming his own meditators and providing them with a provisional method for discerning truth from error. Indeed, Descartes’ privilege in this respect allowed his meditator to at once play the roles of both Inquisitor and Inquisitee, the “devil’s advocate” and the potentially “demonically-influenced” defendant, without consequence—knowing “that no danger […] will result” and that he “cannot possibly go too far,” since the “task at hand does not involve action but merely the acquisition of knowledge” (Descartes 1984: 15). At the same time, this method of discernment represents the fundamental skill the meditator is asked, time and time again, to actively cultivate throughout each of the meditations. As in many mystagogical texts, this creates a tension between activity and passivity, productivity and receptivity, that will drive personal transformation.

9.3.2.2  In-Formation: Falling Back, Turning Inward, and “Natural” Illumination The tension between activity and passivity is on full display in the transition from the First to the Second Meditation. Despite the claim that there is no external action involved that could present a bodily danger to the meditator, the end of the First Meditation nevertheless indicates the “arduous” journey that lies before him and the “hard labour” that will be required. The language here indicates that the impediment to progress here is not merely one of ignorance but also—and perhaps even primarily—of will. The meditator must “make an effort to remember” the shakiness of what used to seem firm, to resist falling back into habit and custom, and to “turn my will in completely the opposite direction” (Descartes 1984: 15, our emphasis). Not only must he “stubbornly and firmly persist” and do what little is in his “power,” he must also be prepared to “toil” in the “inextricable darkness” in which he finds himself upon turning away from the senses and becoming un-formed through the act of doubting. Moreover, it is a vice, “laziness,” that lulls the meditator temporarily back into his comfortable slumber. Throughout the first two meditations, the meditator must constantly fight against falling back into his old opinions and belief-forming habits. In the beginning of the Second Meditation, he awakens to feelings of total disorientation and helplessness (“a deep whirlpool”), and he must thereby continue to “make an effort” to resist further backsliding and to engage in meditative repetition of his exercises of discernment in order to continue on his spiritual journey. That is, as with the spiritual exercises proffered in mystagogical texts, backsliding is assumed to be natural for the untrained mind; full un-formation requires sustained practice and effort. Yet the Archimedean point of orientation the meditator hopes to find upon having turned from the world is not one he can create with his own power. The volitional activity involved in turning away is thus predominantly put to use in cultivating awareness or openness—a kind of passive receptivity—to certain ideas that reveal themselves when the meditator is in the rightly “de-imaged” or “un-formed” state of 144

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mind. Here again, we see the tension between activity and passivity of Christian mystagogical literature on full display. Of course, every “turning away” is simultaneously a “turning toward,” and the complementary passive movement to the soul’s actively turning away from the world in such literature is its being simultaneously turned inward toward itself. When it ceases being deceived and distracted by the transient objects of the material world and the senses, the soul is finally able to clearly see its own nature, which in turn allows it to see reality in sharper relief. Indeed, in many mystagogical texts, divine illumination—which is brought about via a further movement, namely that of being turned toward God—is not possible if one does not first stand in the right epistemic and moral relations to both the external world and one’s own self. In this sense, the stages traditionally represented by the via purgativa and the via illuminativa ultimately represent one continuous, mutually reinforcing movement of “re-orientation” that simultaneously involves becoming actively un-formed and passively in-formed in the pursuit of “revolutionary” transformation. Viewed in this light, then, although the cogito is generally taken to mark a central event in the Meditations, in light of Christian mystagogy it is best understood merely as a moment of transition: The practiced and repeated efforts of the mind to turn itself away from the sensible enable a recognition of one’s self essentially as a thinking thing—a mental being in action. And this, in turn, enables one to better judge the nature of reality, at least with some practice, as we see in the imaginative exercises of the ball of wax and the men crossing the square. The Second Meditation, then, is ultimately a series of preparatory movements aimed at “stripping away” mere appearances and images from the things themselves—“tak[ing] the clothes off” and considering them “naked” (Descartes 1984: 22). This prepares the meditator to be properly turned toward God and “in-formed” by the grace of the divine—or, in Descartes’ case, the natural—“light.” The stripping metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle’s Physics (216b5) and appears throughout the mystagogical tradition. For example, in Benet’s Règle, he repeatedly uses the metaphor of “denuding” the spirit to refer to the purgation of images.22 Illumination proper, then, which is a largely passive event, really only occurs in the Third Meditation, and it is thus no accident that it is here that the language of the “natural light” becomes prominent. Prior to this meditation, the meditator was still absorbed in thoughts of the external world and his own self. By the end of the Second Meditation, he has come to see things more clearly, but he remains self-involved and not fully attuned toward what is higher and more perfect. In order to be able to securely understand the results of the sustained practice the meditator has now developed and the conclusions he has drawn from it, he must be turned toward God, which is a dynamic process that takes place over the course of the Third Meditation, and which involves him being illumined by the natural light. It is no accident that the language here is that of revelation, which represents a different kind of passivity than that involved in following one’s “natural” (or “blind”) impulses (Descartes 1984: 27). The former brings proverbial clarity, whereas the latter is prone to error.23 The meditator is now able to properly focus his attention on God for the first time and to begin the movement from passive in-formation to active contemplation. However, he importantly recognizes that, as a finite being, he cannot achieve straightforward union in the sense of an intellectual theosis—a “grasping” or “touching in thought” of the divine (Descartes 1984: 32)—at least not at this stage.24 “It is enough,” the meditator claims, that he can understand it by the illumination through the natural light. What the meditator learns in the Third Meditation, then, is something emphasized over and over again in mystagogical texts—namely, that the divine is somehow relevantly innate, internal to, or otherwise “stamped upon” the human being—that the self one has come to better understand via the turn inward is ultimately something that both 145

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bears the mark of the divine (i.e., is made imaginem dei) and is wholly dependent on it.25 This realization gives way to some of the most affectively charged language in the Meditations, in which the meditator decides “to pause […] and spend some time in the contemplation of God,” “to gaze with wonder and adoration on the beauty of this immense light,” and to experience for a while “the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life” (Descartes 1984: 36). In this sense, Descartes’ causal argument(s) in the Third Meditation should be viewed neither as careless and viciously circular nor as an attempt at a decisive “proof,” but rather as a means of helping the meditator adjust his intellectual and spiritual “lenses” and putting the latter in a position to enjoy the closest thing we can get to the beatific vision in this life.

9.3.2.3  Trans-Formation: Dark Nights, Human Freedom, and Ontological Arguments In passing from the Third to the Fourth Meditation, we already see a change in the meditator. He now has “no difficulty in turning [his] mind away from imaginable things and towards things that are objects of the intellect alone,” such that he thinks he can “see a way forward to the knowledge of other things” (Descartes 1984: 37) and a recovery of the world that he was forced to so strictly reject in earlier stages. Yet, as in many mystagogical texts—especially those of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross—spiritual progress of this kind is often followed by the so-called dark night of the soul. That is, although the soul is now properly turned toward God and has had a fleeting experience of the beatific vision, the meditator’s spiritual progress is followed by further doubt and a nagging feeling of helplessness, and the sense that God has turned away from the soul. As Dorothee Sölle puts it in her analysis of John of the Cross, “The step from meditative reflection to contemplative observation is also the step from activity to passivity. […] Contemplation renders us defenseless and delivers us into the dark night” (Sölle 2001: 146). Since Descartes’ meditator cannot remain in the state of contemplation, he is forced to “turn back” to himself, and this instills him with a renewed sense of doubt, one fundamentally tied to sin, error, and the persistent worry that the God who is no longer immediately present before the mind’s eye could be a deceiver. As Matthew Bagger points out, even though Descartes (or at least his meditator) appears to implicitly follow the view in Teresa and John (as well as Augustine) that the devil—or even an evil demon—“has the least sway over intellectual visions” and “cannot counterfeit an intellectual vision,” he can nevertheless “try to deceive or disquiet the soul concerning them,” especially when the individual’s “attention shifts from the reasons for the certainty and turns to other thoughts that can lead to doubt” (Bagger 2002: 214–215). Understood thusly, the worry in the Fourth Meditation is perhaps less about the possibility of what C.P. Ragland (2007) calls “an antimony of pure reason” (i.e., that reason could show that an omniperfect God both does and does not exist) and more about the meditator’s own dark-night doubts concerning the reliability of his faculties and the possibility that he might still be deceived.26 If we view the Meditations as following medieval mystagogical literature in being about making moral as well as epistemic progress, we might think that the meditator’s new-found awareness of God’s transcendence and his utter dependence on God has more firmly instilled in him the virtue of intellectual humility, such that even though he has become better in discernment, he now realizes just how deep the problem of error really is and how deeply he is mired in habits that perpetuate it. Humility is a virtue commonly invoked in mystagogical contexts by both male and female authors. Not only do the humility formulae in this body of literature serve to emphasize the creatureliness of the author over and against the awesomeness of the transcendent divine, it also provides them with the moral and spiritual “credentials” to speak with a degree of authority, 146

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since anyone claiming to speak on their own merit would likely have been viewed with suspicion or as exhibiting the deadly sin of pride (Van Dyke 2018; 2022). It is therefore necessary for the meditator to begin in the spirit of humility by exercising various possible theodical approaches to the problem of deception. The meditator starts with an approach smacking of skeptical theism and the idea that we cannot, in any genuine sense, grasp God’s reasons. He then moves on to a version of what we might call the “big-picture” view. This finally gives way to a more sophisticated theodical approach, namely to a kind of “free will defense.” The meditator here notes that he finds nothing else in him “which is so perfect and so great” (Descartes 1984: 39) as his will or capacity for free choice. It is noteworthy that it is the will, not the intellect, that is purported to be the respect in which we most closely resemble God, and Descartes’ remarks here may reveal a conciliatory attempt to address the de auxiliis controversy between the Dominicans and the Jesuits on free will (or perhaps a sly attempt to take the Jesuits to task for their claim that a form of indifference was essential for freedom).27 Whatever the case, in contrast to most free will defenses with which contemporary readers are familiar, it is unclear that on Descartes’ account the human capacity in question requires the ability to (actually or counterfactually) do otherwise: “In order to be free, there is no need for me to be inclined both ways […]. Neither divine grace nor natural knowledge ever diminishes freedom; on the contrary, they increase and strengthen it” (Descartes 1984: 40). In this sense, Descartes remains much more in the medieval mystagogical tradition than contemporary libertarian interpreters of his account of free will might like to admit. Genuine freedom, on this view, does not require being able to do otherwise, nor does it even require feeling as though one has open alternatives. So long as one is properly turned toward the divine in contemplation and illumined understanding, one would simply see “what was true and good” and “should never have to deliberate” (Descartes 1984: 40). True freedom is that which is wholly aligned with that which is most autonomous and free—namely, the divine will. Of course, given Descartes’ commitment to divine simplicity, God’s will is co-extensive with God’s knowledge. But given the non-coincidence of the will and the intellect in the human being, and the fact that we are easily distracted and turned away from the divine, will and intellect can and do come apart, such that “the will easily turns aside from what is true and good” (Descartes 1984: 41, our emphasis). The “source of my error and sin,” then, is a volitional problem, not merely an intellectual one—a matter of self-deception stemming from the individual’s inappropriate use of the will and failure to be aligned with divine purposes. For this reason, the Fourth Meditation culminates by again lauding the virtue of intellectual humility, this time with regard to our ability to virtuously suspend judgment when we cannot be sure that we are being appropriately illumined by the natural or divine light.28 The meditator is thus able to make genuine epistemic and moral progress, replacing his purgative method of doubt with the positive virtues of suspension and humility. Moreover, the security and confidence arising from the alignment of the will with divine purposes is sufficient to pull the meditator out of the dark night of epistemic and existential doubt that occasioned the need for theodicy. This transformation of the meditator’s whole person and the “escape from the doubts” and dark night into which he had fallen, primes him for the ultimate act of contemplation in the Fifth Meditation—one that will eventually prepare him for the return to the world emphasized in so many mystagogical texts. Not only is he now able to “turn his mental gaze” clearly and without distraction to abstract qualities and categories like extension, motion, and duration, but they present themselves to him as though they were remembered, not learned (an obvious callback to Plato’s theory of recollection). He can now simply “see” the true and immutable nature of things by reflecting. This, in turn, opens up the meditator to the ontological argument of the Fifth Meditation, which he admits has the prima facie “appearance of being a sophism” (Descartes 1984: 46), 147

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but which—so long as he “bring[s] forth the idea of God from the treasure house of [his] mind” and admits that existence is a perfection—fully compels assent and cannot be thought otherwise. Here, although the possibility of backsliding is yet again acknowledged, the meditator recognizes that he has made such progress over the course of the Meditations that the certainty in the propositions and ideas he has achieved there remains permissible, even when not directly turning his direct attention to their truth. The return to the world has thereby been paved.

9.3.2.4  Re-Formation: Returning to the World One of the most commonly ignored aspects of medieval mystagogical literature is its emphasis, not only on some sort of direct intellectual or affective experience of union with the divine, but also on the transformation and perfection of the human being insofar as she continues to live in the world as an embodied creature (Griffioen and Zahedi 2018). Certainly not all “mystics” depict the post-transformation relationship with the world in the same way. Hermits and anchorites like Julian of Norwich, for example, withdrew from the outside world. Others embarked upon or led pilgrimages, as in the case of Margery Kempe. In 17th-century France, Francis de Sales advocated “a process of letting Jesus ‘live’ in the heart through the practice of the little virtues, [e.g.,] humility, gentleness, patience, simplicity, cordiality, and charity. […] One lives not for oneself but lives in the ‘world’ by practicing radical, self-forgetful love of neighbor” (Wright 2013: 440–441). Bérulle focused on the idea inherited from Rheno-Flemish mystics like Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, and Johannes Tauler that conformity with the divine will is that at which the human being aims, and that this co-existence of the human and divine is best exemplified in the life of the incarnate Word or Christ, in whom we participate. These views also found inspiration in the 13th-century beguines Mechthild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete, who claimed in a more antinomian spirit that union with the divine moves the individual beyond morality and the virtues; still, the soul in alignment with God acts wholly virtuously upon her return to the world—not because morality demands it, but because such action simply “flows” through her from the divine will. Eckhart goes so far as to reverse the traditional reading of the Mary and Martha story in Luke 10 by claiming that Martha, who is busy with the housework, is spiritually superior to Mary, who sits enthralled at Christ’s feet. For Mary is still caught up in contemplation, whereas Martha has returned from her apprehension of the divine and now engages in all her activity in perfect detachment in accordance with the divine will. Certainly, the return to the world in Descartes Meditations looks quite different from these approaches. Yet the Sixth Meditation is not just an addendum “tacked on” to the exercises of the previous five, nor is it perplexing why Descartes undertakes an extended discussion of physiology.29 The meditator is now, through extended practice, in the right position to recover what he explicitly turned away from in the first two meditations—to become re-imaged and re-formed in light of both the certitude and the intellectual humility he has now achieved. Here yet again, we see worries about backsliding, but the meditator has become so practiced in his strict mental asceticism that he is able to take the reader quickly through his progress thus far. Given that he recognizes that God is not a deceiver and that he has good reason to think that sensory ideas are not transmitted directly from God (as perhaps with the angels), the meditator can now begin to trust his own nature. Indeed, he can now read off his own nature without fear of too much error and learn from what “nature teaches,” since that nature is now recognized to have a divine origin. At the same time, as he learned in the Fourth Meditation, he must continue to be on his guard against the will’s self-deceptively leading the intellect astray and pair his natural inclinations with the deliverances of reason (Cottingham 1986). In the end, with the meditator’s new-found 148

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humility and transformation, he concludes the Meditations with yet another acknowledgement of our vulnerability to error and “the weakness of our nature” (Descartes 1984: 62). If philosophia is ultimately the love and pursuit of wisdom, the Sixth Meditation represents the culmination of the kinds of exercises that prepare the individual to move forward as a practical, epistemic, and moral agent in the world—as well as to practice science—in the pursuit of true wisdom. This corresponds well to Descartes’ famous tree metaphor in the preface to the Principles of Philosophy: The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics, and morals. By ‘morals’ I understand the highest and most perfect moral system, which presupposes a complete knowledge of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of wisdom. (Descartes 1985: 186) The Meditations, then, have—in true mystagogical fashion—led the meditator by the hand through the “dark night” of the intellect to a renewed and justified trust in his own nature as wholly dependent on the divine, with a newfound sense of freedom and genuine autonomy in conformance with the divine will. He is now (literally) free to extend his own branches to the applied sciences and the good life and equipped with the tools to engage in these pursuits in ways that can themselves reorient, revolutionize, and ultimately re-form the modern world.

9.4 Conclusion We have so far offered a reconceptualization of Descartes’ Meditations, wherein the text is decidedly not a traditional “rationalist” treatise, merely aimed at introducing early modern Europe to a new way of approaching the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of a non-theistic science. Rather, we have argued that Descartes’ project in the Meditations is neither a radical departure from his late medieval predecessors nor merely a work of foundational metaphysics and epistemology. Instead, on our reading, the Meditations is a work grounded in a long history of mystagogical literature (a history of which we have provided evidence to believe he would have been acutely aware), aimed at transforming his readers in a comprehensive, holistic way. Our reading has a number of virtues. First, many perennial interpretive problems that have vexed philosophers simply disappear. The Meditations is an exquisitely crafted piece of writing where it seems not a single word is wasted. Yet there are myriad interpretations according to which Descartes either borrowed the rhetorical style from mystagogical literature and abandoned it half way (or two-thirds of the way, five-sixths of the way, or even half-way through the last meditation) or he merely wanted to “remind [his] audience that what he is doing is strictly within the bounds of orthodoxy: they do not draw in any way on the genre of devotional meditations for their content, or, indeed, for anything precise” (Gaukroger 1995: 336). Our reading avoids such ad hoc solutions and provides a unified understanding of the Meditations. Additionally, it strikes us as odd that so many scholars could simultaneously believe Descartes to be a singular genius who re-invented philosophy and that he could not recognize that he employed circular reasoning in his proof(s) of God’s existence (even when Arnauld pointed it out explicitly!). On our reading, there simply is no circle; Descartes was not offering a series of linear arguments intended to build to his conclusion. Instead, he employed the style of the confessional literature he expected his audience would know in order to aid them in the process of transforming themselves and their 149

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approach to the world. Moreover, our reading grounds the Meditations neatly in two of Descartes’ stated aims: he wanted the text to be adopted as a teaching tool at the Sorbonne (which ties it closely to its mystagogical predecessors), and he wanted it to be a transformative project with ultimately practical ends. The transformation the meditator experiences through the process of the Meditations leaves her in a better position to recognize the ultimate value of philosophical reflection: medicine, mechanics and morals (the so-called “fruit” of the tree of philosophy). Finally, our reading is consistent with and expands upon the vast literature offering narrower interpretations seeking to explain Descartes’ proclamation to Mersenne that the Meditations “contains all the principles of [his] physics” (Descartes 1991: 157). If the ultimate value of philosophical reflection is found in medicine, mechanics, and morals, then the transformed meditator is in a better position to appreciate not only the principles of physics but how the body works according to those very mechanical principles, and thereby to develop more effective medical treatments. In short, our interpretation builds and expands upon the narrowly scientific interpretations by situating the project in the appropriate historical and intellectual context. Attending to these features of the Meditations has clear implications for how we do research on Descartes and how we teach him to our students. No doubt, situating Descartes in context will force a change in our approach and might alter the way we think about his place in history, but our opportunities for intellectual transformation are not exhausted by considering Descartes in new ways. We have argued that much of the scholarship on mystagogical literature overemphasizes the moment of contemplation, union, or annihilation in the divine at the cost of ignoring the return to an embodied-but-transformed self. This aspect of our reading, too, has a number of virtues. First, we can return to medieval literature with fresh eyes and attend to aspects of the mystical journey that have been undervalued in the scholarly literature. Second, it ties philosophy back to its Socratic roots: The reason we care about epistemology and metaphysics is ultimately practical. We want to live well, not merely amass a number of disembodied facts about the fundamental nature of reality. The “return” in mystagogical literature is about living a better life, presumably one in line with the divine nature. Finally, our reading breaks down the barriers between the medieval and modern periods in Europe and encourages us to recognize the influence and reception of the spiritual literature that influenced canonical figures. The Meditations themselves were intended to be transformative, and we hope that work on the history of ideas may itself be transformed by viewing the transition from the late medieval to the early modern period as less of a caesura and more of a continuity.

Notes 1 Of course, the designation of both Suárez and Teresa as “late medieval” vs. “early modern” might itself betray some of the biases this paper is intended to combat. 2 Indeed, much mystagogical literature was intended to be used as a pedagogical tool, and the fact that Descartes seems to have intended, or at any rate wanted, the Sorbonne to adopt the Meditations as a textbook might indicate that he saw his own work in a similar way. Still, Descartes himself (not to mention many figures labeled “mystics” by contemporary scholars) would likely have preferred to avoid the characterization of his work as ‘mystical,’ given the increasingly pejorative connotations associated with the term in the late medieval and early modern period to designate those suspected of untoward religious enthusiasm, heresy, and witchcraft (Schmidt 2003). 3 For a full discussion of this meeting, see Gaukroger (1995: 183–186) and Williams (1989: 227). 4 One particularly powerful recounting can be found in Williams (1989: 33–35). The 1599 exorcism of Marthe Brossier played a surprisingly important role in the spiritual development of Bérulle, who at the time was only a minor ecclesiastic. He would later assist in a second exorcism for the same girl. This is noteworthy in part because it helps to challenge the overly scientific, carefully rationalist reading of this

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Via Transformativa: Reading Descartes’ Meditations as a Mystical Text period, as well as to highlight that someone who we argue below had a profound impact on Descartes was on the front lines of engagement with the “supernatural.” 5 For a careful discussion of the content, an interpretation of, and an account tying the dreams to Descartes’ Discourse on the Method, see Browne (1977); see also Gaukroger (1995: 106). 6 All references to Descartes’ writings, unless otherwise noted are taken from CSM I (Descartes 1985), CSM II (Descartes 1984), or CSMK (Descartes 1991). We discuss the significance of the metaphor of “turning” in greater depth below. The idea of divine inspiration being located in a “whirlwind” may also be a reference to Job 38. 7 For passing comments on their relationship, see Mercer (2017: n. 14) and Hatfield (1986: 48). For a more in-depth discussion of their relationship, see Gaukroger (1995: 183–186). 8 Below, we will make the case that Bérulle’s “encouragement” was more important, and carried more weight, than philosophers have heretofore conceded. 9 For a discussion of Benet’s commitment to this doctrine, see Emery (1984: 9–10). The nature of Descartes’ commitment to the doctrine of divine simplicity is itself a matter of some contention; it is pretty widely agreed that Descartes accepted a radical form of the doctrine, but what exactly the commitment was, and how it relates to his doctrine of creation is a vexed and fascinating issue. For more, see Walski (2003). 10 See Thompson (1989: 10). Thompson notes that two other major Oratorian authors, Jean-Jacque Olier, and John Eudes borrowed more heavily from de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal in their approach to mystagogical writings. This provides further evidence that the Oratorians were open to blending styles of mysticism. It is also worth noting that Benet saw his work as providing a “spiritual method which ‘contains’ and ‘comprehends’ all the others” (Emery 1984: 9). 11 See also Baillet (1693: 71–72). 12 In this sense, Bérulle’s request might be viewed as in line with the attempts of earlier mystagogical intellectuals such as Meister Eckhart, who attempted to reconcile natural philosophy with theology, claiming that “Moses, Christ and the Philosopher teach the same thing, differing only in the way they teach” (quoted in McGinn 1981: 27). 13 For further discussion of Descartes’ use of style, see Rorty (1986: 1–2). 14 See for example, First Replies (Descartes 1985: 85). 15 We do not subscribe to the “dissimulation hypothesis,” the view that Descartes was not sincere about the proofs of God’s existence, or about the appeal to Divine veracity to establish the reliability and truth of clear and distinct perception. On our view, Descartes was utilizing a familiar genre to advance his project in a way that was consistent with his own aims. Such a reading might be consistent with the dissimulation hypothesis, but we do not suppose it, nor does our view entail it. For further discussion of the dissimulation hypothesis, see Loeb (1986). 16 On some interpretations, this also includes Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (1548), Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle (1588), and Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), all of which have been claimed to be inspirations for Descartes’ Meditations. However, as we note below, this often involves an oversimplification of the text after the fact. 17 Nicolas Comtois suggests, for example, that “if we consider [the Meditations] this way, the Fifth and Sixth Meditations fall outside meditation, strictly speaking: Insofar as they do not correspond to any of the three ways, they must be considered mere treatises” (Comtois 2015: 123, our translation). 18 Whether the six-day division is “an embarrassing, presumptuous echo of the six days of Creation” (Rorty 1986: 10) or more closely corresponds to a six-stage meditative practice with which Descartes was familiar cannot be answered here. Rorty herself writes, “I know of no explanation of the rationale for the breaks in the meditational days, no explanation of why they do not always correspond to what might seem to be the natural standard psychological stages” and that “understanding the rationale of the form of each day would require an extended comparative study of the variations among the traditional meditations” (Rorty 1986: 20 n.6). Such a comparative study remains a task for future scholars. 19 On possible connections between Descartes’ use of the “turning of the mind” and the Platonic and Augustinian traditions, cf. Buckle (2007). Plato tends to use the terms strephein and perigôge for the words ‘turn’ and ‘turn around’. 20 Still, some of the meditator’s remarks in the Fourth Meditation about finding himself to be “something intermediate between […] supreme being and non-being” do at least smack of a Neoplatonist cosmology, even if it is employed in the epistemological service of explaining human error, as opposed to establishing a metaphysical hierarchy of being.

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Amber L. Griffioen and Kristopher G. Phillips 21 For an extremely informative and interesting discussion of the development of doctrines of discernment in the late medieval and early modern periods, see Sluhovsky (2007), especially Chapters 6 and 7. He also cites reports of Madame Acarie’s reputation for discerning charlatanism, where even trained scholars could not detect it, whereby “it became common in Paris, when trying to decide whether a visionary was genuine or fake, to send them first to be discerned by Acarie” (Sluhovsky 2007: 219). 22 On nakedness in Rhineland mystical texts, see Griffioen (2017; 2022). 23 See also Descartes’ letter to Silhon from the spring of 1648. Here Descartes specifically identifies intuitive knowledge of God with the beatific vision, stating: “Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the mind, by which it sees in the light of God whatever it pleases to show it by a direct impress of the divine clarity on our understanding, which in this is not considered as an agent but simply a receiver of the rays of divinity” (Descartes 1991: 331). 24 In a letter to Mersenne (27 May 1630), Descartes writes that under no circumstances are we able to “grasp” God’s nature because God is infinite but we are finite. Even though we are unable to wrap our minds around God, he employs the metaphor of a mountain. We cannot wrap our arms around such a large item, but this does not mean we cannot know the nature of the mountain; we can still touch it. Similarly, with regard to knowledge of God, “it is sufficient to touch it with one’s thought”(Descartes 1991: 25–26). 25 Compare, for example, Meister Eckhart’s metaphors of the “little castle” or “little spark” in the soul, as well as his extended discussions of the importance of “the birth of the Word in the soul” in his sermons. 26 Importantly, these approaches to the motivations for the Fourth Meditation are not incompatible with each other. We thus agree with Ragland that the theodicy Descartes provides here is neither unsystematic nor unmotivated (Ragland 2007: 128). 27 Descartes wrote to a correspondent in 1641 that his view on the will was consistent with that of Gibieuf 's in De libertate dei et creaturae, which was itself directed at the Jesuits and rejected the claim that indifference was essential for human freedom. At the same time, Descartes was heavily invested in winning Jesuit support for his work (especially at La Flèche), and may have seen his approach to freedom as a kind of “way out” of the various controversies concerning the will in which the Jesuits were engaged. (For more on this question, see Schmaltz 1999.) 28 While it is clear that scholars focus on the light of nature, Descartes does include what he calls “the light of grace” in some of his works, and both appear to be present in the finite mind. In cases where the light of grace is operating, we are to accept what is illuminated by it even when it conflicts with another proposition illuminated by the light of nature (see the Second Replies in Descartes 1984: 105, and Principles I.76 in Descartes 1985: 221). 29 For a concise summary of the reading wherein the Sixth Meditation devolves into digression when he turns to physiology, and the fascinating counter-proposal that Descartes was rather concerned to offer a “psycho-physiological theodicy,” see Wilson (2005: 67–69).

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Via Transformativa: Reading Descartes’ Meditations as a Mystical Text Cunning, David (2010). Argument and Persuasion in Descartes’ Meditations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Descartes, René (1984). The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. II. Translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, René (1985). The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. I. Translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, René (1991). The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. III. Translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, and A. Kenny Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Emery, Kent Jr (1984). Mysticism and the Coincidence of Opposites in Sixteenth- and SeventeenthCentury France. Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1), 3–23. Gaukroger, Stephen (1995). Descartes. An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Griffioen, Amber L. (2017). Ich wird dich also an griffen/Das du mir nit mugist entwichen. Göttliche Aktivität, seelisches Leiden und die Rolle der Autonomie in Christus und die minnende Seele. In: B. Göcke, R. Schneider (Eds.). Handelt Gott in der Welt? Neue Ansätze aus Theologie und Religionsphilosophie. Regensburg, Pustet. Griffioen, Amber L. (2022). Doing Public Philosophy in the Middle Ages? On the Philosophical Potential of Medieval Devotional Texts. Res Philosophica 99 (2), 241–274. Griffioen, Amber L./Zahedi, Mohammad Sadegh (2018). Medieval Christian and Islamic Mysticism and the Problem of a ‘Mystical Ethics’. In: T. Williams (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 280–305. Hart, Kevin (1991). The Trespass of the Sign. Deconstruction, Theology, and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hatfield, Gary (1986). The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises. In: Rorty A.O. Rorty (Ed.). Essays on Descartes’ Meditations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 45–80. Jantzen, Grace M (1997). Power, Gender and Ecstasy. Mysticism in Post/Modernity. Literature and Theology 11 (4), 385–402. Kaffanke, Jakobus (2015). Heinrich Seuses ‘geswinde kehr’ als ekstatische Konfession. Heinrich Seuse bei Martin Buber. In: J. Kaffanke (Ed.). Heinrich Seuse - Bruder Amandus. Berlin/Münster: LIT, 111–126. Keevak, Michael (1992). Descartes’ Dreams and Their Address for Philosophy. Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (3), 373–396. Loeb, Louis E. (1986). Is There Radical Dissimulation in Descartes’ Meditations? In: A. O. Rorty (Ed.). Essays on Descartes’ Meditations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 243–270. McGinn, Bernard (1981). Introduction. Theological Summary. In: Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense. Translated by E. Colledge and B. McGinn. New York: Paulist Press, 24–61. McGinn, Bernard (1991). The Foundations of Mysticism. Origins to the Fifth Century. New York: Crossroad Publishing. Mercer, Christia (2014). The Methodology of the Meditations. Tradition and Innovation. In: D. Cunning (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Descartes’ Meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 23–47. Mercer, Christia (2017). Descartes’ Debt to Teresa of Ávila, or Why We Should Work on Women in the History of Philosophy. Philosophical Studies 174 (10), 2539–2555. Ragland, C. P (2007). Descartes’s Theodicy. Religious Studies 43 (2), 125–144. Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg (1983). Experiments in Philosophic Genre: Descartes’ “Meditations”. Critical Inquiry 9 (3), 545–564. Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (1986). The Structure of Descartes’ Meditations. In: A.O. Rorty (Ed.). Essays on Descartes’ Meditations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1–20. Rossiter, Elliot (2019). From Experimental Natural Philosophy to Natural Religion. In: A. Vanzo, P. R. Anstey (Eds.). Experiment, Speculation, and Religion in Early Modern Philosophy. London: Routledge, 184–203. Rubidge, Bradley (1990). Descartes’s Meditations and Devotional Meditations. Journal of the History of Ideas 51 (1), 27–49. Sölle, Dorothee (2001). The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. Translated by B. Ruscheidt and M. Rumscheidt. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Schmaltz, Tad M. (1999). What Has Cartesianism to Do With Jansenism? Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1), 37–56.

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Amber L. Griffioen and Kristopher G. Phillips Schmidt, Leigh Eric (2003). The Making of Modern “Mysticism”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71 (2), 273–302. Sluhovsky, Moshe (2007). Believe Not Every Spirit. Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Thompson, William M. (Ed.) (1989). Bérulle and the French School. Selected Writings. Mahwah, N.J: Paulist Press. Underkuffler, Wilson (2020). Teresa, Descartes, and de Sales. The Art of Augustinian Meditation. Intellectual History Review 30 (4), 561–584. Van Dyke, Christina (2018). ‘Many Know Much but Do Not Know Themselves’. Self-Knowledge, Humility, and Perfection in the Medieval Affective Contemplative Tradition. Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics 14 (Consciousness and Self-Knowledge), 89–106. Van Dyke, Christina (2022). ‘Lewd, Feeble, and Frail’. Humility Formulae, Medieval Women, and Authority (forthcoming). Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 10. Vendler, Zeno (1989). Descartes’ Exercises. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (2), 193–224. Wallach-Faller, Marianne (2016). Ein mittelhochdeutsches Dominikanerinnen-Legendar des 14. Jahrhunderts als mystagogischer Text? In: K. Ruh (Ed.). Abendländische Mystik im Mittelalter. DFG-Symposion 1984. Stuttgart, J.B. Metzler, 388–401. Walski, Gregory (2003). The Cartesian God and the Eternal Truths. In: D. Garber, S. Nadler (Eds.). Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 23–44. Williams, Charles E (1989). The French Oratorians and Absolutism, 1611-1641. New York: Peter Lang. Wilson, Catherine (2005). What Is the Importance of Descartes’s Meditation Six? Philosophical Studies 76, 67–90. Wright, Wendy M. (2013). Seventeenth-Century French Mysticism. In: J. Lamm (Ed.). The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 437–451. Zarrabi-Zadeh, Saeed. (2015). Comparative Mysticism and the Problem of Interpretation: Rumi and Meister Eckhart. Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 26 (3) 287–306.

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10 SPINOZAN (TRANS) FORMATIONS Julie R. Klein

Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same, i.e., the laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another [ex unis formis in alias mutantur], are always and everywhere the same. (Spinoza, Preface to Ethics 3)1

Spinoza hardly uses the Latin word transformatio. It appears in the Cogitata Metaphysica, the appendix to Spinoza’s 1663 exposition of Cartesian philosophy, as part of what might best be called a critical lexicon of the prevailing philosophical vocabulary. Spinoza variously clarifies, modifies, and ultimately affirms or dismisses the words and ideas he examines. Transformatio refers to dramatic change that stops short of annihilation: By Change we understand here whatever variation there can be in a subject while the very essence of the subject remains intact [integra permanente ipsa essentia subjecti]; commonly the term is taken in an even broader sense, signifying the corruption of things, not an absolute corruption, but one which at the same time includes the generation following corruption, as when we say that peat is changed into ashes, or men into beasts. But Philosophers use a different term to denote this, viz. Transformation. Here, we are speaking only of that change in which there is no transformation of the subject [subjecti transformatio], as when we say that Peter has changed his color, or his ways. (CM II.4) Putting the definition to work, Spinoza finds that only God is absolutely immutable, changing neither by way of internal nor external factors, and he leaves only Peter and things of his kind subject to variations compatible or incompatible with their essences. If Peter changes color or changes his ways, or, to borrow other examples from the chapter, becomes ill, grows, experiences emotions, or makes choices, he remains himself. Transformation, in contrast, names the sort of change Spinoza dismisses: the radical destruction and reconstitution that occur when fuel becomes ash, or a human being becomes an animal. Early in the Ethics, Spinoza mocks the excesses of Ovidian metamorphoses in similar terms, pointing to “those who do not know the true causes of things,” and so DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-14

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“confuse everything and without any conflict of mind feign that both trees and men speak, imagine that men are formed both from stones and from seed, and that any form whatever is changed into any other” (E1p8s2). Thus, Spinoza delimits the philosophically interesting domain of change. In the spirit of Spinoza’s own appreciation of language as a socially and historically determinate imaginative phenomenon—a set of conventions used by some set of human beings to communicate—we could, on perfectly good Spinozan grounds, abandon transformatio to its settled meaning and so leave it to decidedly un-Spinozan ways of philosophizing. For reasons of close association, we would also need to renounce transfiguratio and so forego talk of de- and reconfiguration.2 Yet forma, a term Spinoza relates to essentia, ratio, and natura, seems a useful word, and perhaps de- and re-formation might be usefully supplemented by a revised conception of transformation. Why limit the ways of describing change, especially in view of the magnitude and variety of change among Peter and his human kind that Spinoza finds philosophically relevant? These concerns, together with the contemporary vitality of transformation as a philosophical idea, counsel against abandoning transformatio to its history. Spinoza himself is not averse to re-using philosophical terminology. On the contrary, re-interpretation and re-definition characterize so many of his works. We are not, moreover, limited to bringing implicit practices to light. We can rehabilitate transformatio according to the instructions Spinoza provides in connection with favor ( favor) and indignation (indignatio): I know that in their common usage, these words mean something else. But my purpose is to explain the nature of things, not the meaning of words. I intend to indicate these things by words whose usual meaning is not entirely opposed to the meaning with which I wish to use them (E3, Definitions of the Affects xx exp).3 If we take the expression “not entirely opposed” as an invitation to re-appropriation and conceptual revision, and we focus closely on the main goal, namely, explaining “the nature of things, not the meaning of words,” a cautious reappropriation of transformation seems possible.4 Philosophical conversation has to start somewhere, even if, in the end, it requires transformation in more than one sense. In what follows, I shall develop a Spinozan notion of transformation by considering constructive and destructive political change.

10.1  Things, Not Words If we are to follow Spinoza’s instruction to consider “the nature of things,” what are the things to which we must direct our attention? Spinoza presents nature as a unique, absolutely infinite substance from which or, better, in which an infinity of modes follows (E1p15–16). The various ways of interpreting the relation between substance and modes need not deter us here. It is enough simply to recognize that change is modal motion and to note Spinoza’s rejection of creation ex nihilo and absolute annihilation. Nature varies, and varies infinitely, such that things come to be and are changed into others. Nothing is created or absolutely destroyed. As in the Cogitata Metaphysica, we find Spinoza in the Ethics—which is, after all, an ethics—as well as in the political treatises most interested in changes pertaining to Peter and his kind. Like all things in nature, human beings are conative (E3p6): they strive to persevere in existing, and their paths through the world are a mixture of congenial and challenging, even harmful, encounters. Far from being imperia in imperiis, human beings are partes naturae (E3 Pref, TP I.7). Among the most important non-Ovidian changes Spinoza considers in the Ethics are transitions in human bodies, minds, and affects. Spinoza thinks that human knowing begins in 156

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corporeal experience and associates the body’s ability to undergo multiple affections—roughly, encounters with other things—with the mind’s ability to transition from a predominantly imaginative composition to a more rational constitution; intuitive knowing is yet a further transition. Conceived in terms of cognition, the first and pivotal change pertains to the transition from imaginative to rational knowing, which requires working through the prejudices that stymie our thinking. Chief among these are the ur-prejudice of a single, overarching, and wholly encompassing teleology and its misery-producing offspring, free will, the anthropomorphic God of popular piety, the imputation of a natural moral and aesthetic law, and theologicopoliticized domination (E1 Pref ). Precisely the mobilization of minds and bodies away from repetition of prejudice makes it possible to reconfigure our thinking through the common notions and so to strengthen our power of ordering and connecting ideas according to efficient causal relations (e.g. E2p29s, p40s1–2, 5p10). If we become more extensively rational, we may also experience scientia intuitiva (E5p28). This re-formation of the ways we think of ourselves and others reorganizes our affects and ways of life from passivity to activity (E5p40). In the register of affect, which refers both to changes in the body and to ideas of those changes (E3d3), becoming rational is manifest in transformations in our joy, sadness, and desire (E3p58). In ethics, becoming more active is the process of becoming more virtuous and more free. In politics, becoming more active enables us to join with others like ourselves in harmonious, mutually enhancing agreement (convenientia). Change in all of these ways and in all of these registers can be summed up as increases in our power to persevere in existing.5 Spinoza gives us ways of describing everything from minimal subsistence to human flourishing and ways of envisioning passages from one to the other. To aid our comprehension of these changes, all of which seem, in our sense, genuinely transformative, Spinoza offers a number of illustrative cases, among them the human body’s structure and capacities for growth and repair; the child who becomes rational and active through the assistance of supportive adults or dies without it (E5p39s); Adam’s assumption of animal affects, i.e., descent into becoming to some degree bestial (E4p68s); the death of a human body itself, de- and re-figured by incompatible, superior forces first as a corpse and then as another body (E4p39s); the failure of political ambition in hate (E3p31s) and the terrifying mob (E4p54s); and the pleasures of living wisely and virtuously (E4p45s, 5p42s), as well as the sage’s ways of navigating the challenges of living in what E5p39s calls “continuous change.” With the clear exception of death and the possible exception of Adam, these changes are not instances of radical becoming-other, but they are significant modifications in our ways of existing. With the exception, again, of death, neither increases nor decreases in human power are immune to reversal. Although, for example, Spinoza regards ignorance, sadness, and hate as a downward spiral of disempowerment, and although he regards the mind’s acquisition of reason and virtue as a self-reinforcing, expansive spiral of empowerment, neither occurs in isolation or at a causal remove from the rest of nature. Because Spinoza thinks that for every force in nature, there is a greater one (E4ax), every pattern or state that comes to be is continuously subject to alteration and reconfiguration. As will become clear below, Spinoza’s view of causation as involvement (E1ax4) and his claim that human beings are highly composite, singular things will complicate our understanding of these dynamics considerably. The centrality of change in Spinoza’s philosophy is equally apparent in the Theologico-Political Treatise and the Political Treatise. Any polity depends on processes of becoming: “Nature creates individuals, not nations, individuals who are distinguished into nations only by differences of languages, law, and accepted customs [mores].” Laws and mores explain the form or nature of the state, for only they “can lead a nation to its singular mentality, its singular character, 157

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and its particular prejudices [ingenium, singularem conditionem et denique singularia prejudicia]” (TTP XVII.93 G3:217). TP V.2 similarly holds that “Men aren’t born civil; they become civil.” Considered systematically, polities emerge from discipline and regulation, cultivation, and coordination; rational ideas, laws and institutions, affects, images and myths, shared rituals, and even geography and architecture produce common ways of living and commitments. As in the rest of nature, degeneration and destruction, too, are realities in politics. The TTP explores the historical corruption of biblical religion, culminating in the Reformation and its wars, the Arminian Controversy, and similar events. The primary example in the TTP is the Mosaic Republica Hebraeorum. Spinoza details Moses’ political skill as the founder of a republic of former slaves, examines the successes and struggles of the republic during Moses’ life and after his death. We see how the Mosaic Republic is assembled and the reasons why its citizens “so often failed to observe the law, why they were so often subjugated, and why, in the end, their state [imperium] could be made completely desolate.” Despite its artful beginnings, the Hebrew republic was ultimately riven by internal strife and overtaken by powers who replaced Mosaic law and culture (TTP XVII G3 217). Spinoza’s assessment of the duration of regimes in the TTP is general: no particular form of civic order is permanent or irrevocable (TTP XVII.12 G3 203).6 All organizations have their structures, their powers, their lives, and their fates. Looking to the TP, we see Spinoza considering the prospects of different state formations, be they monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic, for ensuring peaceful coexistence. Likewise, he carefully examines their distinctive vulnerabilities to corruption and degeneration. Spinoza’s prescriptions, particularly in the TP, for mitigation and prevention appropriate to each one are ingenious, intricate, and no doubt difficult to implement. Broadly speaking, regimes that comport with what reason teaches about human nature are more durable. At the most general level, reason shows that the raison d’être of the state is self-preservation. Regimes perceived to enhance it coalesce and persist; regimes perceived to disregard, or worse, violate it, disintegrate and pass away. The more citizens invest, affectively and practically, in the state, as opposed to judging it merely as the lesser of the evils, the stronger the state. Whatever the exact form of governance, reason teaches that regimes with rational, deliberative policy-making, accountability and restraint, and provision for internal critique and diversity of opinion are more durable; regimes without such processes lack the capacity for self-correction and are therefore more vulnerable to dissolution and replacement. Since human beings, both sovereigns and citizens, are incapable of always acting prudently, with respect for wisdom and virtue, and since nature itself does not “aim only at man’s true advantage and preservation” (TTP XVI.10 G3:191), states are always works-in-progress. As in the Ethics, the discourse of change in the TTP and TP is neither precisely demonstrative nor entirely narrative. Experience and history, presented through exemplary cases, augment our grasp of the universal axioms of politics and systematic causal consideration of nature in general and human nature in particular, in the investigation of political structure and alteration. This is true for individuals. In addition to Adam, Moses, Solomon, Christ, and Paul of Tarsus function as exemplary figures. And it is true of polities and states. Beyond ancient Israel and the Dutch Republic, Spinoza offers examples from Rome, Venice, Spain, France, England, Turkey, and so on. While rises, falls, and replacements of regimes are inevitable, nature’s infinite changes are, strictly speaking, incalculable in advance. Retrospective analysis provides exemplary cases but not guarantees. Retrospective analyses can illuminate how states form, how they persist, and how they fail, but each state finds itself at a distinctive moment in a distinct place. The Mosaic Republic had its moment; the Dutch Republic exists in another time and place and so with its own exigencies. 158

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10.2  Transformation Redefined Taking stock of Spinoza’s changing human beings and polities, we can conclude that a revised notion of transformation must refer to change that is durably re-arranging or re-orienting even if it is not permanent or irreversible, change that is defined by the patients as well as the agents, and change that is conceptualized in non-teleological terms. The critical requirement for a Spinozan idea of transformatio is thus that it be conceived naturalistically, as part of nature’s infinite variation, rather than as departure, separation, or, to use another trans-word, transcendence. Spinoza admits nothing outside or beyond nature, and he denies the idea of a single, overarching teleology within nature in favor of conceptualizing nature in terms of the infinite production and variation of the modes of substance. Any idiom of change relevant to human beings must therefore treat us as partes naturae, not imperia in imperio (E3Pref; TP I.7). As will become clear below, Spinoza’s conception of efficient causation as involvement (E1ax4) and his rejection of atomistic individuals in favor of composition will complicate our account of transformation by establishing that transformation lacks a single or stable point of origination. At both ends, in other words, origin and outcome, Spinozan transformation happens in medias res and so is, strictly speaking, causal but incalculably complex. If, in short, we set aside some old associations, and take care to consider Spinoza’s own examples, we can re-use—or, better, re-form and trans-form—the idea of transformation. Having elsewhere analyzed cognitive and affective change in largely non-political terms, I turn here to transformation as a political theme.7 Recent discussions have often associated the theme of political transformation in Spinoza with revolution. As scholars have shown, it turns out that Spinoza thinks revolutions are perfectly natural and, in fact, blames them on sovereign malpractice, but does not justify them in the kind of rights-language familiar from later discussions. It also turns out that Spinoza worries that revolutions rarely work out, amounting instead to changes in tyrannical personnel and intensifications of violence rather than useful transformations in governance and living. For this reason, he mainly counsels reform and obedience (TTP XVIII; TP V.7). Finally, it turns out that Spinoza is also cognizant of Polybius’ cyclical theory of history and Machiavelli’s view that regimes must periodically re-form themselves, rejuvenating themselves by revitalizing their basic structures.8 With our renovated notion of transformation in mind, my focus here is different. I consider Spinoza’s account of political formation as occurring in medias res. From this standpoint, there are isolated or pre-political individuals, and politics is subsumed within nature. Human beings always exist amidst other human beings and are always-already interacting with them, thereby generating order. Thus, would-be founders and sovereigns act in always-already formed situations; they are artisans, working with concrete actualities, namely, human beings already shaped in causal environments or networks and producing effects, not creators absolutely de novo. Nor is there some a- or post-political phase of life: “All men everywhere, whether Barbarians or civilized, combine their practices and form some sort of civil state [status aliquem civilem formant]” (TP I.7).9 Indeed, because “human beings by nature desire a civil state [statum civilem homines natura appetere],” “it can’t happen by nature that they’ll ever completely dissolve [penitus dissolvant] it” (TP VI.1). More simply put, Spinozan politics concerns only better and worse orders, not the existence per se of civic order. In the case of practical human affairs, in other words, there is always desire, and there is always order, but any given affective and political formation is historically constituted. They are also, as we shall see, relationally-constituted. Bodies assemble in determinate geographies and at determinate moments of time. They carry the imprints of bodies formed in other places and times, such that any person or polity exceeds itself through memory

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and projection, and they assemble in patterns—social relations, institutional forms, concrete actions—that are more or less comprehensive and more or less stable. Just as they come together, bodies—both personal and collective—can come apart and be reconfigured. Five core claims in Spinoza’s metaphysics and anthropology provide the framework for clarifying political formation and transformation: (1) Human beings are singular things, not participants in a universal nature; (2) like all singular things in nature, human beings strive to persevere in existing; (3) human beings are always-already socio-political and need one another to survive and flourish; (4) because nature expresses no single, overarching teleology, human unity and agreement are not given by nature and must instead be produced; and (5) politics, like human life, benefits from the guidance of reason but does not arise from, and cannot be conceived or sustained, in exclusively rational terms. In a concluding section, I consider one major implication of Spinoza’s view, namely, that politics is not merely transformative but actually repressive.

10.3  Sociality without Teleology: Relationality and Transindividuation Let us take the core claims in order. First, Spinoza conceives human beings as singular things. Second, all singular things strive to persevere in existing. This means that each human being expresses the power of God (or Substance or Nature) in certain and determinate ways (E1p25c), produces effects (E1p36), and, in the idiom of E3p6, strives to persevere in existing. Human beings are not unique in this regard. E3p6 formulates Spinoza’s conatus principle in universal terms, and TTP XVI, which pointedly analogizes human beings and fish, calls self-preservation the summa lex naturae.10 To clarify the idea of conative existence, we can say that to exist as a singular thing is to be active or powerful enough to maintain one’s characteristic essence—Spinoza also uses “natura,” “ratio,” and “forma” in similar ways—in and through encounters with others. Encounters with congenial others increase its power to persevere in existing; the absence of congenial others and/or encounters with hostile others decrease its power. For human beings, whose bodies and minds are complex enough to include self-awareness, these changes in power are experienced as joy, sadness, and desire, the three primary affects. Strictly speaking, Spinoza’s term “affect” (affectus) refers both to affections of the human body that alter its power to persist and to ideas of those affections and the changes they induce (E3d2, E3 Def of Affects II–III). What makes one human being distinct from another is in fact its nature and its natural history, which explain its corporeal and cognitive power and its affective constitution. Accordingly, Spinoza calls desire “the very essence of man,” including under it “any of a man’s strivings, impulses, appetites, and volitions, which vary as the man’s constitution varies” (E3 Def Affects Iexp). To the extent that we can appeal to “human nature” with Spinoza, we are appealing to a relatively thin account of the structures common to human beings, not to a universal nature that particulars instantiate or in which they participate, and to a fictional model he constructs for heuristic and hortatory purposes.11 Third, Spinoza thinks that human beings are inevitably and always-already social—and social in two senses. The first sense emerges from the Ethics 2 physics, the so-called “physical digression” that is actually essential for understanding the human mind as the idea of the human body (E2p11,13) and for understanding Spinoza’s three kinds of thinking (E2p40s2). In physics that follows E2p13, Spinoza characterizes extended singular things as individua. By definition, individuals are composite bodies united in a certain fixed or determinate pattern of motion (G2:99–100). In particular, the ratio of motion and rest gathers the assembled bodies as the communicating parts of an individual, affording it a forma or natura and explaining its persistence over time (E2lemm4–7). A human body, for example, maintains its characteristic ratio by replacing its 160

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parts, recovering from injuries or illnesses, augmenting its power, and maintaining its boundaries (E2post4). As quickly becomes clear, Spinozan individuals can be conceived at different scales, from the composite parts of the composite human body, to assemblies of human bodies, to the facies totius universi (E2lemm7s); composition obtains all the way down and all the way up. Letter XXXII makes this same point more memorably, analogizing the ways human beings exist in their part of the universe to the myopic life of a “worm in the blood.”12 With some philosophical effort, of course, we can become less myopic and appreciate the varying scales of individuation, comprehending what Letter XXXII calls the agreements and accommodations that characterize our own composition and our participation in other compositions. TTP IV.1 presents lex as the political equivalent of physical ratio: “The word ‘law’, taken without qualification, means that according to which each individual, or all or some members of the same species, act in one and the same fixed and determinate way [certa ac determinata ratione agunt]” (G3:57). TP X.9 echoes this claim, assigning law an organizing, constitutive role on the model of psychology: “laws are the soul of the state [anima imperii jura sunt].”13 From this perspective, it is easy to see why law is a leading candidate for the state’s quasi-mind (veluti mens) to which Spinoza so frequently refers in the TP.14 Any individual, at any scale, has an organizing, operating ratio. In a move that will prove particularly significant for politics, Spinoza leaves the door open to greater and lesser degrees of convenientia, such as in individuals whose internal diversity makes them integrated in some respects but not others. The human body is an exemplary case: the human Body (by 2post1) is composed of a great many individuals of different natures, and so (by 2ax1’), it can be affected in a great many different ways by one and the same body. And on the other hand, because one and the same thing can be affected in many ways, it will also be able to affect one and the same part of the body in many different ways. From this we can easily conceive that one and the same object can be the cause of many and contrary affects. (E3p17s) To take the full measure of Spinoza’s emphasis on the multifaceted, sometimes partial, and conflicting exposure of composite individuals to others, we must add the reminder that nature does not stand still. One and the same object may affect a human body differently on different occasions. “Vacillation” is Spinoza’s technical term for the discord and ambivalence that ensue from structural and temporal complexity (E3p17s).15 In the second sense, all human beings are born to and live amidst other human beings. From birth, we are dependent on other human beings for our survival and growth, and our life histories reflect our interactions with them. Just as Spinoza’s scalar notion of individuals works against the idea of ontologically discrete individuals, his development of our relational sociality works against any idea of pre-political individuals. In recent literature, Balibar’s description of imaginative and affective life as transindividual captures this second sense of sociality as relationality, that is, constitution by, with, and through others. According to Balibar, the structure of Spinozan imagination, and consequentially of affect, “is originally relational or transindividual: not only does it confront us with a picture of consciousness in which every relationship that ‘I’ can have with ‘Myself ’ is mediated by the Other (more precisely: an image of the Other), but it also shows that the life of imagination is a circular process of successive ‘identifications,’ where I recognize the Other from Myself, and Myself from the Other.”16 Spinoza cites a popular saying that “man is a god to man” (E4p35s). For our purposes here, one of its meanings is that we make one another in our “own” image. In Ethics 3, Spinoza analyzes bodily communication in affective life as 161

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imitation: “If we imagine a thing like us, toward which we have had no affect, to be affected with some affect, we are thereby affected with a like affect” (E3p27s). When, for example, I see someone like me affected with joy, I feel joy; by the same process, when I see someone like me affected by sadness, I acquire the sadness. In politics, indignatio is the umbrage we take when someone like us is mistreated by the authorities (TP IV.6; cf. E3 App xx). Once we take account of the variety across and within human bodies, imitation generates numerous extremely complex patterns. The workings of imitation are especially clear in the case of children, whose bodies are weak and highly impressionable. Far from reasoning and acting for themselves, very young children experience the world imaginatively and passively. In particular, they are easily and strongly affected by surrounding others, readily forming images and acquiring the affects of surrounding adults (E3p32s, E5p6s). Given the natural limitations of infancy, the opportunity to develop a body “capable of a great many things and related to a mind very much conscious of itself, of God, and of things” depends on beneficent, caring others. If they are attuned to a child’s constitution, and act in ways compatible with her nature, she will thrive (E5p39s). We “are born ignorant of the causes of things” (E1App G2:78)—“ignorant of everything” (TTP XVI.7 G3:190)—but can develop. Just as caregivers organize corporeal support and cognitive development, they organize the primary affects for children. Spinoza explains that parents follow prevailing customs as they join sadness and joy to children’s acts and thereby communicate primary ideas of right and wrong (E3 Definition of the Affects xxvii exp). This action is not merely private or even narrowly social as distinct from political. Parents inculcate what Spinoza identifies as the defining characteristic of a civil order, namely, a shared agreement about “what is good or what is evil” (E4p37s2 GII:238), i.e., a common ratio vivendi (TP III.3). Every human being, in short, is born into an extant affective and political order; everyone’s images, ideas, and affects are always-already more than their own, and even at later ages, human bodies remain impressionable and receptive. At the same time, because each human being, as a singular thing in nature, is to some degree active, imitation is not acquisition, or replication simpliciter. Even the extremely passive body of the child has its nature and so receives some impressions, resists others, and produces effects. From the first moment of life, then, and in each moment thereafter, each of us is continuously both affected by others and affecting others, such that what we think, feel, and do reflects our combined constitution and our encounters. The more determinate we become, the more our own constitution shapes our encounters with others, and the more impact we have on the affective scene or network in which we operate. Ethics 2 frames our imaginative awareness of these combinatory, communicative processes as, quite literally, con-fused, and so inadequate knowledge (e.g., E2p23), and envisions a path to adequate ideas and reason (E2p29s, E2p40s2). With E3d2, we can also say that human existence is marked by the passivity of being constituted by partial causes and by our efforts to become more active, that is, to surround ourselves and communicate with beneficial others. When Spinoza characterizes human self-knowledge as inadequate (E2p23), he means that there is no way to grasp the full causal story of our affections and no way to envision all of the effects to which we contribute as causes. To say that human beings are relationally constituted is thus to say that there is no single or discrete point of origination from which anyone’s history begins, and no single point or outcome it produces.17 Individuals acquire pasts not entirely their own and participate in the generation of futures not entirely their own. As the example of the child suggests, human lives can be sustained and indeed thrive only through increasing scales of coordination with others: “many more advantages than disadvantages” ensue from society. “By helping one another,” human beings “can provide themselves much more easily with what they require,” for “only by joining forces can [human beings] avoid the dangers that threaten on all sides” (E4p35s). Whatever our differences with our fellow human 162

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beings, human assistance is the best help in times of need (E4p70s). TTP V enumerates the advantages of a well-ordered polity in terms familiar to Hobbes. We must collaborate for everything from agriculture to industry, art, and science; “without an organized community” and “mutual assistance,” life is “wretched and almost brutal” (TTP V.18–20 G3:73; cf. XVI.13).18 TP II.15 sums up the perils of solitude and the benefits of cooperation concisely: “Men can hardly sustain their lives and cultivate their minds without mutual aid.” As a result, any human being’s desire to persevere in existence simultaneously involves the pursuit of well-being on a collective or public scale. In other words, because I seek my own well-being or welfare (salus), such as sustenance, security, and freedom, the Ciceronian maxim follows: “the people’s welfare [salus] is the highest law” (TP VII.5). Spinoza cites this same Ciceronian maxim at TTP XVI.35 to explain what it means to be a subject, that is, a citizen rather than a slave, in a rational and free republic (G3:195).19 His point is that only human beings who live according to the guidance of reason, whether they are themselves rational or merely act as if they are rational, have enough in common to produce mutuallybeneficial coordination: “Only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature” (E4p35). In the ideal case, human beings would agree entirely in nature: If, for example, two individuals of entirely the same nature are joined to one another, they compose an individual twice as powerful as each one. To man, then, there is nothing more useful than man. Man, I say, can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the Minds and Bodies of all would compose, as it were, one Mind and one Body; that all should strive together, as far as they can, to preserve their being [omnes simul, quantum possunt, suum esse conservare conentur]; and that all, together, should seek for themselves the common advantage of all. (E4p18s)20 In contrast, human connections constituted by imagination alone degenerate into the pursuit of private advantage and hence into conflict. Human beings “disagree in nature insofar as they are torn by affects, which are passions” (E3p33) and so are “often drawn in different directions” and “contrary to one another” even “while they require one another’s aid” (E4p37s2). Thus, even apparent imaginative unities will decompose. More generally, Spinoza argues that imaginative politics fails to accommodate human diversity. It does so by producing abstract, rather than concrete unities. E3p31s explains that ambition, the imaginative desire for others to affirm and follow our affects and way of life, dooms any order it proposes: “We see that each of us, by his nature, wants the others to live according to his temperament [ex ipsius ingenio]; when all alike want this, they are alike an obstacle to one another, and when all wish to be praised, or loved, by all, they hate one another” (E3p31s). In view of the imitation of affects, hate, which seeks the disempowerment and destruction of individuals like us (E3p39–40, 43), can never benefit us; imitation means that others’ pain afflicts us, such that sad affects are an expanding downward spiral (E4p45). The TP likewise emphasizes the harms of such common passions as anger, envy, and other forms of hate, all of which “by nature make human beings enemies [homines ex natura hostes]” (TP II.14–15). Here Spinoza’s fourth claim, namely, his rejection of a single, overarching, or all-encompassing teleology, comes to the fore. The end of the state is freedom (TTP: “Nature has no end set before it,” and “all final causes are fictions” (E1 App G2:80).21 The project of finding a common ratio vivendi is considerably complicated by Spinoza’s refusal to entertain the idea of an intrinsic metanarrative for human history, whether for singular human beings or for human collectivities. 163

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Absent teleology, human beings are not inevitably rational, in the sense that being affected would unfailingly eventuate in a robustly reasonable, and even intuitive, life. Nor are human beings social in the sense that their actual arrangements will unfold from natural design or inexorably proceed to a single form. Because imaginative variation and passive affects are as natural as reason and its active affects, conflicts among human beings and such non-ideal collectivities as states of perverse desire and terrified servitude are as natural as what Spinoza describes as genuine peace, namely collective empowerment (E4, TP V.4–6).22 As Spinoza puts the point in Ethics 4, “There is no singular thing in Nature that is more useful to man than a man who lives according to the guidance of reason” (4p35c), yet “it rarely happens that men live according to the guidance of reason. Instead their lives are so constituted that they are usually envious and burdensome to one another” (4p35s). TP VI.3 makes the same point: If human nature were so constituted that men desired most what is most useful, there’d be no need of skill to produce harmony and loyalty. But it’s evident that human nature isn’t at all like that. As a result, it’s been necessary to set up a state, so that everyone—both those who rule and those who are ruled—does what’s for the common well-being, whether they want to or not. That is, it’s been necessary to set it up so that everyone is compelled to live according to the prescription of reason, whether of his own accord, or by force, or by necessity. As the TP text emphasizes, rulers and those ruled are equally vulnerable. Prior to the transformative acquisition of reason and, with it, true virtue, our evaluative and normative language— terms such as “good” and “bad,” “useful” and “harmful”—name merely our passive affects, no matter our position.23 In the TTP, the despotic monarch appears as the malevolent inverse of the beneficent parent. Vain and greedy, this monarch hardly thrives. Worse yet, he harms citizens by inducing them to serve his ends. The effect is profoundly distorting: they fight “for slavery as they would for well being [salus]” and regard self-sacrifice honorable rather than shameful (Pref 10). “Wise or ignorant,” TTP III.18 informs us, all human beings seek self-preservation.24 Each and every conative human being has a causal history, according to which it is inflected.25 Assuming, in contrast, that reason takes hold, becoming more rational happens over time rather than instantaneously and happens in degrees rather than completely. Here we see Spinoza’s fifth claim, namely, that reason is advantageous but not sufficient for individual and communal self-preservation. As we saw, the causal complexity that constitutes human beings means that the mind cannot render all of the confused ideas of the body’s affections entirely clear and distinct (E5p4s, TP II.7). E5p10s insists that it is impossible for us “to have perfect knowledge of our affects” and recommends that we conceive and internalize “a correct principle of living, or sure maxims of life [rectam vivendi rationem, seu certa vitae dogmata concipere]” to provide support when, as frequently happens, our own rational powers fail. Spinoza’s language is political (ratio vivendi) and educational, even somewhat theological (dogmata). They will function, in other words, like laws, trustworthy instructions, or even authoritative commands, structuring and regulating our responses to affections. Faced with the forces of nature and “the common wrongs of men,” we can call on ideas of true usefulness, the benefits of mutual friendship and common society, the satisfaction resulting from a recta ratio vivendi, and the necessary laws of nature to ensure that hate “will occupy a very small part of the imagination” (E5p10s) and passions will constitute the smallest part of the mind (E5p20s). By affecting the imagination extensively (E5p20s), we mute its conflictual multiplicity and solidify its constructive order. In the same way, a common, reasonable ratio vivendi and appropriate supports can produce collective unity. 26 In the TTP, Spinoza’s discussion of the force of law epitomizes the distinction 164

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between being rational and relying on supports to act “as if ” one is rational. Where E5p10s and p20s point primarily to intra-psychic multiplicity and conflict produced by our inability to understand ourselves and our affects in a fully adequate manner, the TTP focuses on inter-human multiplicity and conflict. The TTP represents reason and the imagination through different characters, offering us Solomon as the archetypal philosopher, contemplating nature and ruling wisely, and Adam as the archetypal ignoramus, mistaking medical advice for monarchic demands. Spinoza thinks that human beings can feel the power of law either actively by affirming its necessity or utility on rational grounds, or passively by imagining its force as in terms of decrees that express the will or “pleasure and absolute command” of some “lawgiver or Prince,” such as the God the Hebrews (TP IV.27–30 G3:63–64), God’s representative Moses (TTP XVII.37 G3:207), or even the local potentate.27 In the same way, reason may teach us to want nothing for ourselves that we do not want for all people (E4p18s, E4p37), or the need for a common way of living can be transmitted in the image of a transfer of right (ius) and a covenant or contract with laws and enforcement mechanisms, whether with God or other people (TTP XVII.29–37 G3:206–207). The Israelites who escaped Egypt, and indeed all human beings before they acquire “reason and a true principle of living” are natural but not entirely incorrigible Adamites. Given the challenges of becoming rational and virtuous, “that ruler has the greatest authority who reigns over the hearts of his subjects” (TTP XVII.8 G3:202).28

10.4  Toward a Political Common Nature and Governing Order Coordinating multiple human beings to act as if they are rational and so to come into agreement is, to say the very least, no small challenge. The requisite ars ad concordiam et fidem (TP VI.3) is, to borrow a famous phrase from the Ethics, excellent but rare and difficult, such that partial agreements, fragile agreements, not to mention failures to come into or maintain agreement, are frequent.29 Nevertheless, we can see the outlines of Spinoza’s approach, which relies on finding some common or at least converging and sufficiently similar affect(s) or structure through which imaginatively and rationally-guided individuals could join. Even a minimal commonality would be a cause of an empowering convenientia that, by causing joy, would be stronger than the pull of sadness (E4p18) and thereby durable. Properly shepherded, this minimal agreement could expand, setting in motion, at least for some participants, a virtuous spiral of investment and action. Some individuals would become more rational; others would be enabled to act as if they were rational. It would of course be impossible to eliminate all natural variation, and so all friction, disconnection and disagreement, such sovereigns of whatever form, would inevitably rely not merely on persuasive appeal, but to some degree on threats and force as well. Were human beings constituted so that “they desired nothing except what true reason teaches them to desire, then of course a society could exist without laws” and imaginary means. Since “human nature is not constituted like that at all” (TTP V.20–21 G3:73), appeals to imagination, and when imaginative inducements fail, the use of threats and force, are the means of inducing citizens to act “as if ” (veluti or tanquam) they are rational. The shared affect or minimal notion of human nature, and hence the minimal medium of agreement in a common ratio vivendi, is all human beings’ desire for relief from fears related to self-preservation. Everyone, no matter their age, ignorance or rational sophistication, sanity or madness, prefers freedom from fear and can be moved on that basis: There’s no one who does not desire to live securely, and as far as possible, without fear. But this simply can’t happen so long as everyone is permitted to do whatever he likes, and 165

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reason is granted no more right than hatred and anger. There is no one who lives among hostilities, hatreds, anger and deceptions, who does not live anxiously, and who does not strive to avoid these things, as far as he can. (TTP XVI.12 G3:191) It is of course some distance from an initial calming of “hostilities, hatred, anger, and deceptions” to a community thoroughly imbued with justitia et charitas, but every polity must, as it were, start somewhere or establish some minimal threshold on which to build a ratio vivendi. Any common ratio vivendi thus begins with an appeal that recognizes the summa lex naturae, self-preservation, and any viable regime is measured by it. In TTP XVI.20, Spinoza argues that a contract or other arrangement among human beings “can have no force except by reason of its utility. If the utility is taken away, the contract is taken away with it, and remains null and void” (G3:192).30 At a minimum, then, any viable state must be seen as better for self-preservation than the alternatives. The more it attracts the affective and practical investment of its inhabitants rather than simply benefiting from their aversion to alternatives, the stronger it is.31 Most urgently, because Spinoza thinks no one can completely or irrevocably transfer their natural right to a sovereign (TTP XVII.1–3, TP VII.25), only regimes that assiduously and continuously persuade their citizens of utility are viable: “Both reason and experience teach, as clearly as can be, that the preservation of the state [imperii conservatio] depends chiefly on the loyalty of its subjects, on their virtue, and on their constancy of heart in carrying out commands” (TTP XVII.13 G3:203). Even a monarch “will be most his own master, when he’s most attentive to the well-being of the multitude” (TP VI.8). By the same logic of self-preservation, political malpractice—the failure to produce and sustain conviction about utility—results in weak political unity, whether in the first instance or in subsequent history, and disobedience. As TP III.9 notes, a commonwealth’s right and power “are diminished to the extent that it provides many people with reasons to conspire against it.” As we noted above, Spinoza blames rebellions on sovereigns’ failure to inculcate virtue and obedience in the citizenry. If a state hasn’t “hasn’t provided adequately for harmony, hasn’t set up its laws prudently enough, and so hasn’t obtained the absolute jus civitatis,” it invites rebellion and replacement (TP V.2). Reliance on, or failure to strengthen, weak civic bonds, laws and institutions that overlook, misdiagnose, or exacerbate of the causes of conflict, and failures to command or inspire obedience undermine the state’s stability and persistence. Given that self-preservation binds citizens to the state, the primary form of political malpractice is excessive reliance on fear, coercion, and violence. Repeating Seneca’s maxim that violent regimes do not last, Spinoza argues that human nature “does not allow itself to be absolutely compelled” (TTP V.22 G3:74, XVI.29 G3:194). Spinoza argues that violent regimes, among them those that police thought, undermine themselves by inciting the very fear and hatred that successful sovereignty should relieve. Thereby they produce a rebellious desire to see the sovereign suffer, even at considerable cost to the public’s natural interest in self-preservation: “however much evil it may bring them, they can’t help wanting all sorts of bad things to happen to him; when they can, they help to bring it about” (V.18–20). For this reason, Spinoza, like Machiavelli, advises ruling “more by benefits than by fear” (TTP IX.14). Spinoza’s warnings in the TP are equally stark. TP V.4 holds that Sovereigns who rely on terrified submission rule slaves and wastelands, not human habitations. TP VI.4 comments: “If slavery, barbarism, and being without protection are to be called peace, nothing is more wretched for men than peace…. Peace does not consist in the privation of war, but in a union or harmony of minds.”32 Other forms of political malpractice can similarly damage and even destroy sovereignty. TP IV expands the list of offensive governmental behavior by indicting rulers who believe they may 166

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violate the law, presume to reverse public affect, behave indecently, or otherwise flout public sensibilities, as well as rulers who slaughter, rob, and rape citizens.33 Because affects are social, harming one citizen or merely a small number can be formidably destabilizing. Fear easily turns into indignation, the imitative umbrage we take when we see others like us mistreated, and indignation turns “the civil order into a state of hostility” (TP IV.4).34 TP VII.27–29 re-emphasizes arrogance, and adds waste, profligacy, and governmental secrecy. Spinoza’s republicanism is evident in his disapproval of excess wealth and inequality; more generally, corruption emerges as a significant theme in his reflections on political behavior and design.35 Beyond these forms of sovereign malfeasance, both the TP and the TTP stress the causes of division, from the economic mismanagement implied in exempting the priestly class from self-support, to conflicts among citizens about ideas to the development of social factions and factionalized leadership. In the TTP, disputes in leadership, such as the doctrinal divergences of Christ’s Apostles or the split between executive and religious authority after the death of Moses, generate competing factions and sow competition; the history of Christian schisms and the history of battles between the kinds and priests of biblical times exhibit the pitfalls in abundant detail. TTP XVII.16 sums up the basic pattern of the downward affective slides due to bad governance: “Everyone knows how it goes—a disgust with the present, a craving to make fundamental changes, uncontrolled anger, a scorn for poverty—these affects lead men to wickedness. Everyone knows how much they fill and disturb men’s hearts” (G3:203).

10.5  Producing Order: Politics as Repressive Empowerment Although Spinoza advocates a politics of the common desire for security and explicitly warns sovereigns about excessive reliance on fear, coercion, and force, and although he laments servitude and lauds freedom, defending his model of civic production against suspicions of voluntary servitude by appeal to the claim that living ex ductu rationis is not merely preservative but actually empowering, it is nevertheless impossible to avoid recognizing that even the desirable Spinozan state, precisely in serving an end, is not only fictional, but repressive.36 Specifically, it represses— or, to put the point more mildly, moderates and shapes—the multiplicity of nature in the image of rationality in order to enhance human self-preservation. Spinozan theologico-politics is, to borrow a phrase from Foucault, a technology of governance and civic production, complete with a disciplinary apparatus.37 Even democracy, which Spinoza thinks most closely approximates nature in providing for variation and freedom (TTP XVI.36 G3:195), depends on persuasion by imaginative appeal—whether to inter-human contracts or to a collective covenant with the biblical God—and, in recalcitrant cases, threats and punishment. Spinoza himself is perfectly candid about the necessary reach of the theologico-political system. TTP XVII opens by announcing that “there will never be a supreme authority [postestas] who can get everything to happen just as he wishes” (TTP XVII.2 G3: 201), but quickly proceeds to argue that the state must therefore use every available means to motivate obedience: “If there is to be a state and a right over subjects, political authority must extend to everything that can bring men to decide to yield to it” (TTP XVII.7 G3: 202). Everything accessible to the state, in other words, must be suffused with ratio imperii, and for the state to have power, individuals must assume, internalize, and desire its ends and structures. Conceived in this broader sense, a civic ratio is also clearly a precursor to ideology in a modern sense: the ideas, affects, practices, and institutions that organize or produce a group and explain how its members experience the world and act in it.38 At the end of the TTP, where Spinoza presents the becoming-civil of a free, and therefore desirable and durable, republic as an encompassing process of re-forming patterns of mind, body, 167

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and affect: “The end of the Republic, I say, is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or automata, but to enable their minds and bodies to perform their functions safely, to enable them to use their reason freely, and not to clash with one another in hatred, anger, or deception, or deal inequitably with one another” (TTP XX.12 G3 241). While politics does not require that human beings become animals or machines, the viable state does require processes of cognitive, corporeal, and affective transformation that produce durable, mutually beneficial adherence to what reason recommends for human flourishing. States that cannot support the ongoing work of transformation or demand impossible transformations are subject to processes, however moderate or however radical, of de- and re-formation.

Notes 1 English citations of Spinoza are from Curley (1986, 2016), which I sometimes modify. Latin texts are from Gebhardt (1925) and Spinoza (1999, 2005, 2020). In Spinoza citations, E = Ethics (d = definition; ax = axiom; p = proposition; dem = demonstration; c = corollary; s = scholium; pref = preface; App = appendix); TTP = Theological-Political Treatise; TP = Political Treatise; L= Letter. G = Gebhardt’s Spinoza Opera (4 vol.). For convenience, I cite the TTP according to the paragraph numbers in Curley’s translation and the corresponding Gebhardt page. Although the new bilingual French-Latin edition replaces Gebhardt, Gebhardt’s pagination remains a common reference point. 2 Du Cange, Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis (first edition 1678) & Goclenius, Lexicon philosophicum quo tanquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur (1613; reprint Hildesheim, 1980). Both are available online. 3 Letter XXXII. Spinoza also calls the individual’s ratio motus et quietus its natura and its forma (E2Lemm4–7). 4 On redefinition in Spinoza, see Lærke (2014). 5 Strictly speaking, only thought and extension are attributes, and affects occur in both. I use “register” to avoid Spinoza’s ban on cross-attribute predication (E3p2s) and nonetheless capture this non-dualistic sameness or simultaneity. Human ideas are, in the first instance, ideas of the human body (E2p11, p1), and E4p8c emphasizes that affects are only conceptually distinct from ideas. 6 Thus, the Hebrew Commonwealth, which but for some fateful mistakes by Moses “could have been everlasting,” “had to perish” (TTP XVII.112 G3 220). More generally, democracies, which Spinoza thinks approach “most nearly the freedom nature concedes to everyone” (TTP XVI.36 GIII 195), prove “short-lived” and are liable to “frequent rebellion” (TP VI.4). TP X.9–10 suggests that a properly designed aristocracy would be nearly indestructible, but even good aristocratic design is subject to natural disasters and human errors. 7 Klein (2021); “How to Make Philosophers.” Forthcoming in Garber, M. Laerke, P.-F. Moreau, P. Totaro (ed.), Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 8 E.g. Rosenthal (2013), Sharp (2013), and Morfino (2013). 9 Letter L to Jarig Jelles shows Spinoza’s awareness of the magnitude of his disagreement with Hobbes. Spinoza’s relation to Hobbes is a longstanding subject of discussion. Two recent examples are Armstrong (2009) and Field (2020). 10 Cf. Letter LVIII, TTP XVI.5–16. E4p37s2 and 4p68s. 11 See Gatens (2009, 2020) and Rosenthal (2013). 12 Individuals thus generate, among other puzzles, problems about boundaries and perspectives. See Klein (2021) for discussion. 13 Curley translates imperium as state here. “Sovereign” or “sovereign authority” would be an alternative. 14 Other passages suggest the parallel as well, such as TTP III.16: “The only thing that distinguishes one nation from another,” Spinoza asserts, is “the social order and the laws under which they live and by which they are directed [ratione societatis et legum sub quibus vivunt et diringuntur]” (III.16/G3:47). Law also accounts for the persistence of the state: “a state can stand firm only if there are Laws by which each one is bound” (TTP III.20). E4p37s2 explicitly connects law and the power to persevere: “Society, maintained by laws and the power it has of preserving itself, is called a State, and those preserved by its law, Citizens [Societas, legibus, et potestate sese conservandi fermata, Civitas appelatur]” (E4p37s). Although the link between human individuals and political individuals seems clear enough, in fact the subject of considerable scholarly debate. The locus classicus is Matheron [1969] 1998: 330–354. Den Uyl 1983, Rice (1990), and Barbone (2002) reject Matheron’s position. Moreau (1994: 448–56) defends and

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Spinozan (Trans) Formations extends Matheron’s position. Matheron (2003) responds to his critics; the re-publication of the essay in Matheron (2011) and subsequently Matheron (2020a) address the different but not antithetical transindividuality thesis in Balibar (1997) and Balibar (2005). Other useful essays on the theme include Montag (2005), Santos Campos (2010), and Sharp (2017). 15 See also E3p51s and E4p60. 16 Balibar (1997: 26). The essay is reprinted in Balibar (2018/2020). It is accompanied by “Philosophies of the Transindividual: Spinoza, Marx, Freud,” which somewhat clarifies the obviously psychoanalytic tenor of his interpretation. Much remains to be said from Freudian and post-Freudian perspectives. The philosophical literature of transindividuation is by now quite extensive; see, e.g., Sharp (2011) and Read (2017). For a recent example that notes commonalities with group mind issues, see Ravven (2020). Finally, transindividuation is not the only paradigm for thinking about relationality in Spinoza’s philosophy. See Armstrong et al. 2019. 17 As Balibar emphasizes, Spinozan causation is complex modification: “‘to cause’ is an operation by which something modifies or modulates the way something else operates (or produces its effects). But the infinite connexion does not take the form of independent linear series, or genealogies of cause and effect.” Hence Spinozan causal connection is better understood as “an infinite network of singular modi, or existences, a dynamic unity of modulating/modulated activities” (1997: 14). Shein (2015) makes the same point in a different idiom. 18 Cf. E4p45s, where Spinoza explains that the wise require pleasant food and drink, physical exercise, natural beauty, and the arts: “For the human body is composed of great many parts of different natures, which constantly require new and varied nourishment, so that the whole body may be equally capable of all of things which can follow from its nature, and hence that the mind also may be equally capable of understanding many things.” 19 Spinoza’s admiration for this maxim from De Legibus is hardly unique. Hobbes cites it in chapter 30 of Leviathan. Locke puts it at the head of the Second Treatise. 20 Cf. E4 App7 and 12, as well as TP II.13. 21 Cf. TTP IV.1 (G3:57); XVI.10 (G3:191); XVI.59 (G3:199); TP II.7. Spinoza consistently contrasts civil or positive law, which depends on sovereign decree and prescribes a certain end, with the laws of nature, which are eternal and universal. 22 As Balibar (2005) notes, one of the clearest signs of the absence of teleology is the many ways human beings can assemble. A terrifying mob (E4p54, TTP XVII.103), a collection of people united “because of a common hope or a common fear, or because they long to avenge some common loss” (TP III.9, VI.1), a group of friends united by the pursuit of truth and virtue (TIE ¶13 G2:8, E5p10s), and a participatory assembly governed ex ductu rationis, deliberating rationally and deciding collectively and bindingly about its way of life (e.g. TTP XVI.29 G3:194) are all forms of human unification. 23 E4p8; 4p19, p37s2 (G2:238), and p60. E4p64 and 68 deny the relevance of good and evil to the free person and say that Spinoza prefers the less theologically and naturally law-laden language of usefulness (utilitas). 24 Cf. E3p9: “Both insofar as the mind has clear and distinct ideas, and insofar as it has confused ideas, it strives, for an indefinite duration, to persevere in its being, and it is conscious of this striving it has.” 25 Ordinary experience shows that some human beings strive to persevere by relying on rational knowledge, powerful models of virtuous behavior, and constructive relationships. Yet others strive in ways that seem compromised or even patently self-destructive; addiction would be a paradigmatic case. Many, in fact, exhibit both kinds of striving, in different ways or different respects. Any mind is an aggregate of ideas, not all of which are rational but rather imaginative, and hence not all of which are fully compatible. E3p51 and its scholium and E4p60 show that the same is true of bodies and affective constitutions. From this standpoint, we can see that striving to persevere in existing can be understood as the perpetuation of a determinate self and extant way of living, whatever the shape and direction. 26 Susan James has emphasized the positive role of imagination in shaping communities (e.g. James, 2012). Jo Van Cauter (2020) has made similar proposals about the use of religion to achieve rational ends by non-rational means, but also emphasizes the dangers of such a strategy. See also Rosenthal (1998). I would especially emphasize Spinoza’s exquisite sensitivity to the dangers of pseudo-rational and incompletely-rational politics. Self-delusion is endemic, and everyone is vulnerable to the way ambition, vanity, and greed can masquerade as and/or be presented as rationality. Along the same lines, it is crucial to emphasize that Spinoza sees the ars of politics as preeminently concrete, for it is only in practice that we can learn what is politically efficacious and desirable.

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Julie R. Klein 2 7 On Adam, cf. Letter XIX (G4 93–94). 28 Cf. TTP XIX.40 (G3: 235). 29 Cf. E4App xii–xiii on political practice as ars et vigilantia and TTP III.16, which clearly evokes Machiavelli. 30 TTP XVI.43 applies the principle to alliances among states (G3:196). 31 E4p18, E4p65, TTP XVI.15–16 (G3:191–92). Strictly speaking, it is impossible to agree in disempowerment, such that any bonds imputed to disempowering relations are limited by their imaginative, abstract character. 32 Cf. E4p66s. 33 Cf Machiavelli, Discourses III.29 and Prince XVII–III. 34 Here, we might bring Spinoza into conversation with Adam Smith on the role of indignation and resentment and with contemporary theorists of anger and politics. 35 See Schliesser (2021). 36 Cf. Dobbs-Weinstein (1999), who presents the conjunction of empowerment and repression as a constitutive paradox or tension; Ravven presents it as an irony (2020: 237). 37 E.g. Foucault (2008: 296) and Foucault (1991). 38 This theme is most closely associated with Althusser’s interpretation of Spinoza. For a recent discussion, see Sharp (2007).

Bibliography Armstrong, Aurelia. 2009. “Natural and Unnatural Communities: Spinoza Beyond Hobbes.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17(2): 279–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608780902761687. Armstrong, Aurelia, Keith Green, and Andrea Sangiacomo, eds. 2019. Spinoza and Relational Autonomy: Being With Others. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Balibar, Étienne. 1997. Spinoza : From Individuality to Transindividuality. Mededelingen Vanwege Het Spinozahuis. Eburon. . 1998. Spinoza and Politics. New York: Verso. . 2005. “Potentia Multitudinis, Quae Una Veluti Mente Ducitur : Spinoza on the Body Politic.” In Current Continental Theory and Modern Philosophy, edited by Stephen, H. Daniel. Northwestern University Press. . 2018. Spinoza politique. Le transindividual. Paris: Presses universitaires de France/Humensis. . Mark, G.E. Kelly., and Edinburgh (Eds.). 2020. Spinoza, the Transindividual. Translated by Edinburgh University Press. Barbone, Steven. 2002. “What Counts as an Individual for Spinoza?” In Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, edited by Olli Koistinen, and J. Biro, 89–108. New York: Oxford University Press. Campos, Andre Santos. 2010. “The Individuality of the State in Spinoza’s Political Philosophy.” Archiv Für Geschichte Der Philosophie 92(1): 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1515/AGPH.2010.001. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. 1999. “Rereading the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in Light of Benjamin’s ‘Theologico-Politico Fragment.” In Piety, Peace, and the Freedom to Philosophize, edited by Paul Bagley, Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Du Change, Charles du Fresne. Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis. Paris, 1678. 3 vol. Reprinted Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887. 10 vol. Field, Sandra Leonie. 2020. Potentia. Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the College de France, 1978–1979. Edited by Michel Senellart and translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador. . 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview With Michel Foucault. Edited by Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gatens, Moira. 2009. “Spinoza’s Disturbing Thesis: Power, Norms and Fiction in the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus.” History of Political Thought 30 (3): 455–68. . 2020. “Singularity, Similarity, and Exemplarity in Spinoza’s Philosophy.” Ethics and Education 15 (2): 200–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2020.1731660.

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Spinozan (Trans) Formations Goclenius, Rudolphus. Lexicon philosophicum quo tanquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur. Frankfurt: Musculus, 1613; reprint Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1980. James, Susan. 2012. Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, Julie R. 2021. “Spinozan Meditations on Life and Death.” In Life and Death in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Susan James, 125–56. New York: Oxford University Press. Lærke, Mogens. 2014. “Spinoza’s Language.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (3): 519–47. Matheron, Alexandre. 1988. Individu et Communauté Chez Spinoza. Nouvelle éd. Sens Commun. Editions de Minuit. . 2020a. “Is the State an Individual in Spinoza’s Sense.” In Politics, Ontology and Knowledge in Spinoza, edited by De Lucchese, Filippo, David Maruzzella, Gil Morejón, David Maruzzella, and Gil Morejón, 179–200. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. . 2020b. Politics, Ontology and Knowledge in Spinoza. Edited by De Lucchese, Filippo, Maruzzella David, Gil Morejón, Maruzzella David, and Morejón. Gil Spinoza Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Montag, W. 2005. “Who’s Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State.” South Atlantic Quarterly 104(4): 655–73. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-104-4-655. Moreau, Pierre-Francois. 1994. Spinoza: l’éxperience et l’éternite. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Ravven, Heidi M. 2019. “Spinoza’s Path from Imaginative Transindividuality to Intuitive Relational Autonomy: From Fusion, Confusion and Fragmentation to Moral Integrity.” In Spinoza and Relational Autonomy: Being With Others, edited by Aurelia Armstrong, Keith Green, and Andrea Sangiacomo, 98–114. Edinburgh University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvnjbh35.10. Read, Jason. 2017. The Politics of Transindividuality. New York: Haymarket Books. Rice, Lee C. 1990. “Individual and Community in Spinoza’s Social Psychology.” In Spinoza: Issues and Directions, edited by Edwin M. Curley and Pierre-François Moreau, 271–85. Leiden. Rosenthal, Michael A. 2013. “The Siren Song of Revolution: Spinoza on the Art of Political Change.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 34 (1): 111–32. . 1998. “Two Collective Action Problems in Spinoza’s Social Contract Theory.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 15(4): 389–409. Schliesser, Eric. 2021. “Spinoza and Economics.” In A Companion to Spinoza, edited by Yitzhak Y. Melamed, New York: Wiley. Sharp, Hasana. 2007. “The Force of Ideas in Spinoza.” Political Theory 35(6): 732–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0090591707307326. . 2011. Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 2013. “Violenta imperia nemo continuit diu.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 34 (1):133–148. . 2017. “Spinoza’s Commonwealth and the Anthropomorphic Illusion:.” Philosophy Today 61(4): 833–46. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday20171212183. Shein, Noa. 2015. “Causation and Determinate Existence of Finite Modes in Spinoza.” Archiv Für Geschichte Der Philosophie 97 (3): 334–57. . 1985–2016. The Collected Works of Spinoza. 2 vol. Edited and translated by Edwin, M. Curley. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. . 2005. Oeuvres V. Tractatus politicus = Traité politique. Edited by Pierre-François Moreau, Charles Ramond, and Alexandre Matheron. Epiméthée. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. . 2012. Oeuvres III. Traité théologico-politique Tractatus theologico-politicus. Edited by Akkerman, Fokke, Jacqueline Lagrée, and Pierre-François Moreau. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. . 2020. Oeuvres IV. Ethica. Ethique. Edited by Akkerman, Fokke, Piet Steenbakkers, and PierreFrançois Moreau. Van Cauter, Jo. 2020. “Spinoza on Revealed Religion and the Uses of Fear.” Journal of Early Modern Studies 9(1):99–120. https://doi.org/10.5840/jems2020914

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11 TRANSFORMATION AND ESSENCE (K’OJE’IK) IN THE K’ICHE’ MAYA POPOL VUH Alexus McLeod

In Maya metaphysics, illustrated here in the K’iche’ Maya text Popol Vuh, we find the view that beings can be wholly transformed in shape, mind, and other characteristics while retaining an essence (k’oje’ik) that maintains identity. On the other hand, a single being can also take on a new essence, which can even be shared with multiple things at the same time. Given that such essence is the basis of identity in Maya metaphysics, this seems to generate a number of problems concerning transformation and identity. In this chapter, I offer a reconstruction of the view of the kinds of change that allow for continuation or for substitution (k’ex) based on transference of essence. Looking to the K’iche’ Maya Popol Vuh, which presents a host of ideas from earlier Maya thought, I argue that k’oje’ik is ultimately identified with representative activity, which requires the recognition of actor and audience, and that transformation can be understood as the performance of different essences by distinct material or other aspects of the world, including persons, other animals, artifacts, and even images. Transformation of identity happens, according to the Maya view, through the performance of characteristic activity that represents the essence of pre-existing entities.

11.1  Maya Philosophy, the Popol Vuh and Transformation The K’iche Maya1 text Popol Vuh is perhaps the best known of all Maya texts, covering a host of philosophical, religious, and social topics at the core of Maya thought. It is one of the main sources of knowledge available to us for early Maya metaphysics before the period of Spanish colonization. Although the oldest received text of the Popol Vuh was written down in the first decade of the 18th century by the Spanish priest Francisco Ximénez (1666–1729), in a Romanized K’iche’ rather than the glyphic written system in use before Spanish contact, the text is based on earlier K’iche’ versions, and claims to recount earlier ideas.2 These ideas, according to the author(s) of the text, were becoming lost in the period of its writing because of the imposition of Spanish colonial thought, specifically Christianity.3 According to the text, the purpose of writing the Popol Vuh in Latinized K’iche’ was to preserve these native ideas. Not only were native glyphic texts increasingly disappearing during this period, but older ways of preserving the ideas of texts like the Popol Vuh, communal ritual performances, were increasingly difficult to stage given Spanish suppression of these performances. While Ximénez’s manuscript is the oldest we 172

DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-15

Transformation and Essence (K’oje’ik) in the K’iche’ Maya Popol Vuh

know of, scholars have argued that it is likely based on earlier written versions circulating in the community rather than on direct oral accounts from native K’iche’ speakers, also in Latin-script phonetic rendering of K’iche’. These texts, if they existed, almost certainly documented even earlier oral versions of the Popol Vuh, and possibly glyphic renderings of the epic. The fact that we do not have precolonial glyphic versions of the Popol Vuh is unsurprising, as the bark paper texts created in the region during previous periods have for the most part failed to survive, because of a combination of theft, suppression of native culture by the Spanish, and the lack of favorable climate conditions for the preservation of paper texts, given the largely humid and rainforest covered area of much of the Maya region. The few surviving precolonial glyphic paper books are from the Yucatán, which (coincidentally?) is the driest area of the Maya region. Transformation is at the heart of the Popol Vuh, specifically in the issues of personhood, personal identity, and identity more broadly. A number of key transformations take place in the text, illustrating a concept of substitution (k’ex), in which the essence (k’oje’ik)4 of one person can be embedded into another, such that two or more persons are manifest in the same activity The “embedding” involved here is that of multiple essences being manifested by a single action or entity. The broader view of personhood and transformation I refer to as “embedded identity” involves all of these concepts, and can be seen most clearly in the Popol Vuh among Maya texts. According to a classic Maya conception, the essence of a thing is its distinguishing, marking feature—that which makes a thing what it is. In the case of persons, essence is generally associated with both characteristic activity and attitude, as well as particular shape or descent. An essence is what picks out an individual as that individual, rather than as a representative of a particular type. Characteristic activity, then, while it is necessary to fix essence, is not sufficient. If my characteristic activity is studiousness and hesitancy, then one does not thereby attain my essence by being studious and hesitant. To act in this way would be to conform to the characteristic activity of a kind. Roles can be understood in this way. To be a scribe or a priest was to perform the characteristic activities associated with those roles—copying texts and presiding at communal rituals. Roles and character types are generally not discussed using the terminology of “essence” (k’oje’ik), however, which is reserved for that which is individuating. Below, through investigation of substitution and essence in the Popol Vuh, I consider the ways multiply bearable characteristics can be held and manifested by individuals, and how essences can be transferred and embedded.

11.2  Substitution (K’ex) as Transference of Essence In order to have an understanding of transformation, what transforms, and how this process takes place, there must be some concept of the thing that transforms. What, that is, undergoes change? If there is change without something that undergoes this change, then what we have is destruction and creation, rather than the alteration of a thing. On some views of metaphysics, all change amounts to continual destruction and creation, such that each change is not the change of something or the other, but a continual generation of new things into existence (or a continual recycling of old things into new things). Some versions of Buddhism maintain something like this, as do the 11th century CE Ash’ari school Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali and the 17thcentury Cartesian and Catholic priest Nicolas Malebranche after him.5 The view found in Maya texts and tradition seems to some extent to echo this, as creation and destruction are prominent in Maya accounts of change. At the same time, however, there is emphasis on essence as a concept of maintenance of identity, character, or identification of a thing through change. The idea here seems to be that despite the continual destruction and creation of things, new things can take 173

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the form of old ones through coming to be the old things, via substitution (k’ex). The sameness of these things identified with one another is understood as their possession of the same essence (k’oje’ik). It is this essence that underlies and endures through change. One of the interesting features of Maya views of change and essence, however, is that essences do not need to be continuous, either temporally or spatially. In fact, there need not be any aspect whatsoever of the physical nature of a thing that is continuous between two identical things. Some interesting features of the concept of essence in Maya views account for this. One of the most obvious features of our world is continual transformation. We witness birth and death, growth and decay, and the simple and more immediate changes of the rising and setting of the sun, movement from one place to another, and all sorts of smaller changes. Maya thought in general understands these transformations through the image of creation and destruction, death and rebirth. And often we find discussion of continuity through change in terms of the continued manifestation of essence through creation and destruction. The coming to be of one state requires the elimination, the sacrifice, of another. To move to place B is to leave place A. To build a house is to destroy a tree. To continue cell duplication in our body requires breakdown of nutrients from plants and animals. Change can be understood as continual creation and continual destruction. Maya thinkers pointed out the need for sacrifice (of all things) as part of this process of continual creation, as change can only happen through destruction and decomposition.6 The continuation of an essence, if all things are continually transforming, requires it to be enacted or manifested by different material, activities, and things in the world. There are constraints on just what can manifest a particular essence, mainly related to causal connection and generation from and by an essence. An individual human being generally possesses an essence (at least one), which distinguishes them as the individual person they are. Essences, we can say, are definitive of persons. In the Classic Maya case, this was thought to be so for human as well as nonhuman persons.7 It is central to the Popol Vuh, however, that essences can be transshipped— that distinct individuals can take on the essences of others. How can we make sense of this as transformation, rather than as symbiotic continuity of essence? The concepts of substitution and the idea of embedding of essence are crucial to understanding this. The essence of a thing, according to Classic Maya views, is connected to its function, in terms of its character and communal interaction. The act of substitution has the substituting thing taking on the identity of the substituted, such that this relationship itself becomes collapsed through the act of substitution itself—the formerly two entities become one. This fundamental transformation of two into one, however, does not entail a transformation of all of the properties of the substituting thing into properties once held by the substituted thing. When a performer takes on the identity of an ancestor or god, the performer, while becoming the ancestor or god, does not take on all of the properties of that ancestor or god as manifest in the earlier way. My grandparent may have been 5 feet tall while I am 5 feet 11 inches, for example. While I may substitute a grandparent, I do not become 5 feet tall, but remain 5 feet 11 inches. But the essence of the grandparent becomes manifest then in a person who is 5 feet 11 inches. Thus even though the substituting thing takes on the identity of the substituted thing, they do not take on all the earlier features of the substituted thing, any more than a future stage of a person has to have all of the same features as an earlier stage of a person (a person as a 2 year old has completely different physical characteristics than the same person at 30, for example, yet we call them identical persons). They do, however, take on certain features of the substituted thing—just those features (or at least those features) that are essential to the identity of the substituted thing. These fall under a number of headings, but in much of the discussion of substitution in Maya work there seem to 174

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be three main necessary features for manifestation of the essence: (1) familial descent, (2) performance of characteristic activities, and (3) communal acceptance of position. These conditions for substitution apply to non-human things in the world as well as humans, but the first condition will of course be different in the case of objects. Familial descent is a difficult case, as one of the views we find is that everything in the cosmos is ultimately interrelated in an essential way, and thus at some level of distance or other, everything is ancestrally related to everything else. Whether things that are more closely related to other things are better at or more likely to substitute those things is an open question, though in discussions of substitution we do most often see things that hold some fairly close level of causal relationship—an image of a person substituting the person, a person substituting an ancestor, a food item substituting part of a human body. The Popol Vuh shows us a number of examples of substitution, which we can look to for a better understanding of it. Some of these accounts of substitution are obvious and explicit, others less so. Most commonly in discussions of substitution we see the replacement of components of bodies with things that are functionally similar or visually similar, oftentimes to change the nature of the thing in question or to trick others. For example, the replacements involved in three cases from the Popol Vuh I discuss further below: the replacement of the heart of the maiden “Lady Blood” of the underworld with sap from a tree, the replacement of fire with a macaw tail during the hero twins’ tests in the underworld, and the replacement of the head of Hunahpu, one of the hero twins, with a gourd, among other such substitutions in the Popol Vuh. These substitutions serve various purposes, from deception, as in the case of the maiden’s heart or the macaw’s tail, to repair, as in the case of the head of Hunahpu. Certain item substitutions on the face of it seem to problematize the position of substitution as identity. Substitutions are sometimes made in the Popol Vuh to deceive. In one example, we find the hero twins in the underworld, subjected to tests by the lords of the underworld, which are specifically designed for them to fail. The lords of the underworld have summoned the hero twins and attempt to defeat them through a series of tests. In one of these tests, they give the twins a torch and give each of them a cigar, telling them that the next morning the torch and cigars must be given back to them. The idea of the lords of the underworld was that the hero twins would be unable to return the torch and cigars, because using the torch and the cigars would consume them, and there would be nothing to return. This would result in a defeat for the twins. The ingenuity of the twins enables them to get around this via substitution. The text reads: Ma k’u xkitzij ri chaj. Xa kaqaj u k’exwach xokik. Are’ u je’ kaqix. Keje’ ri’ chaj xkilo waranel. They did not light the torch, but instead used a substitute (k’ex). They used the tail of a macaw [to substitute the flame], and the night watchmen saw it as if it were burning.8 This is done so that the hero twins can appear to have a torch alight without actually being alight, thus being able to return it whole to the lords of the underworld the next morning. The suggestion here then seems to be that while the macaw’s tail looks like fire to the lords of the underworld, it is not actually fire. It is an illusion, a trick. If we think further about what happens in this story, however, it seems that the macaw tail and fireflies are more than illusion alone, in terms of being non-fire objects that are meant to mimic fire. It is key here that the defeat of the lords of the underworld and the success of the deception of the hero twins lies in successfully meeting the conditions of using the torch while at the same time being able to return it whole in the morning. Simply failing to light the torch and setting it aside would not have met these conditions. The use of the macaw’s tail, then, was not equivalent to merely failing to use the torch. 175

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In another case of substitution for the purposes of deception in the Popol Vuh, things are less clear. The god Tohil instructs the people to take deerskins as a substitute for him, in order to “conceal” or “hide” his face. The sacred bundle of deerskin used to represent Tohil is taken here as substitution, but also as manifestation of Tohil. The process of covering or concealing also at the same time is the process of making identical. When Tohil (or any other entity) becomes something not recognized by others as Tohil (or that entity), it is effectively covered, concealed, because it exists in this form as such, but goes without being known. If the sacred bundle did not carry Tohil’s identity, then the concealing would not work—just as in the case of the fire and the macaw’s tail, it would in effect have been a violation of the terms of the lords of the underworld that the twins light the torch and smoke the cigars while returning them in the morning. Part of the deception in the case of the hero twins story, and the reason the twins are taken to defeat the Xibalbans, is that the twins effectively created the belief in the Xibalbans that the torch and cigars were alight. The construction of this belief is crucial to understanding the actual situation. Numerous cases called substitution (k’ex) in the Popol Vuh are cases of deception. This deception, of course, requires a sameness that is inherent in the idea of substitution. We can turn to other sources, including oral tradition, for more on how substitution has been understood in Maya traditions.9 Robert Carlson writes of two different notions of change in southern Highland Maya thought (among the Tz’utujil Maya of Santiago AtitlAn). The concept of jal marks change through a lifetime, change of a single thing temporally and spatially connected over this change. It is “the change manifested by a thing as it evolves through its individual life cycle”.10 K’ex, on the other hand, seems to suggest something more like replacement or the exchange of one thing for another. Carlsen notes that Francisco Ximénez, the Spanish priest responsible for the transcription of the Popol Vuh into Latin script (along with a Spanish translation of the text), rendered k’ex as “transformation” and “to change one thing for another”.11 Susan Gillespie writes “k’ex is translated in early Yucatec, Cholan, Tzotzil, and [K’iche’] dictionaries in verb and noun forms referring to an exchange, trade, conversion, substitution, or succession of one thing for another”.12 Instances of k’ex are understood in contemporary K’iche’ Maya communities much the same as we find in the Popol Vuh, of something offered in place of or in exchange for something else. A number of highland Maya groups, including the K’iche’, use chickens in sacrifices in exchange (k’ex), just as infants and children were sometimes used as k’ex exchanges for others in sacrifices in the Classic Period.13 K’ex has come to be associated with sacrificial offering more generally as well14, an association we also find in the Popol Vuh. Numerous scholars have discussed naming conventions connected to the idea of k’ex, such as the idea of the replacement of a grandparent with a grandchild named after them.15 Such substitution is also understood in changing of roles, although the variety of uses and discussion of k’ex show that it is not limited to the notion of inhabiting of roles. It is not that two distinct things can perform or occupy a role at different times, but rather that the substituting thing takes on some more fundamental aspect of the substituted thing. In the case of persons, this is linked to the notion of a soul that can be transshipped, an essence identifying and definitive of not just a role, but a complete individual being. This can be associated with an individuating essence that, through k’ex, can transfer across time and space. Contemporary Maya explain this transfer in terms of soul transfer. Gillespie writes, concerning this sharing of essence between generations: In those instances in which the older person and the younger relative of the same name are both alive, they are thought to share the same vital essence; conversely, in some Maya societies infants are not given the name of a living family member because it is believed that they would thereby fully acquire the soul of the older person, causing that person’s death.16 176

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In the case of persons, k’ex is linked to identification of essence, and the making same of distinct things. I discuss this in other work in terms of “embedded identity”, which Susan Gillespie also discusses in terms of what she calls “extended personhood”, which can happen in the case of persons or other things in the world that can have essences.17 Classic Period texts and imagery also suggest this association of essences in k’ex, such as in the case of accession monuments of new rulers, associated with the rulers of the past.18 The concept of essence here is crucial, as it is this notion of shared essence that makes k’ex different from simply the occupation of different roles by distinct individuals. In instances of role change, such as one person succeeding to the presidency of an institution after another, we have two individuals who occupy the same role at different times. The sameness in this case is determined by the performance of the definitive role. In cases such as this one, a role cannot be occupied by two people at the same time, and can only be successively held. A role can be handed to another—one person steps down from the presidency and another person takes it up. What has been transferred here, in transferring of role, is a collection of responsibilities, powers, privileges, as well as titles, references, etc. The title “President of the United States” refers now to one person, and three years ago it referred to a different person. When we hold that the President of the United States has certain powers and privileges, those attach to the person currently holding the office, not previous or future office holders. From much of what has been said about k’ex so far, we might think there is little difference between such “substitution” and transferring of role. And indeed while role transferring is one way k’ex is sometimes understood, in Maya sources, k’ex involves a more fundamental transformation. This transformation involves the transference of essence. To understand just what this transformation consists of, and why it should be seen as embedding of identity rather than just transference of role (as Maya people do in fact see it, as discussed above), we have to look more closely at the concept of essence.

11.3  What Is Essence (K’oje’ik)? In the Popol Vuh, we find a number of references to and discussions of essence (k’oje’ik), in connection with the kind of substitution discussed above. Allen Christenson, in his translation of the Popol Vuh, translates it in different contexts as “existence”, “nature”, “essence”, “being”. In one of the most dramatic and well-known examples of the transference of essence in the Popol Vuh, the hero twins are birthed by an act of essence transference. After a struggle against the lords of death in the underworld (Xibalba), the brothers One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu were defeated and sacrificed, after which the severed head of One Hunahpu was placed in a tree by the lords of death. The tree bore fruit, large head-sized gourds associated with calabash fruit19, which become the substitution of the head of One Hunahpu. The text is explicit about this transformation and association of the calabash fruit with the head (and thus essence) of One Hunahpu, as we find: Ma k’u q’alaj chi ri u jolom Jun Junajpu. Xa junamatal chik ruk’ u each che’. Then the head of One Hunahpu was not clear, as it had become identical with the fruit of the tree.20 Prior to this, the passage mentions the essence (k’oje’ik) of the tree, which was understood as made great by the association of the tree with One Hunahpu. A daughter of some of the lords of the underworld approached the calabash tree/head of One Hunahpu after hearing about it from her father. She considered cutting down some of the fruit, and the substituted head of One 177

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Hunahpu addressed her, asking if she wanted the fruit. She agreed to it, and then the head of One Hunahpu spat into her hand, explaining to her that the saliva is his “sign”, and is associated with his essence (k’oje’ik). This act impregnated the girl of the underworld, who went on to give birth to the “hero twins” Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the central characters of the next part of the Popol Vuh. The head of One Hunahpu said to the girl of the underworld, after spitting into her hands: Xa retal mi xnuya’ chawe, ri nu chub’, Nu k’axaj. Are’ ri nu jolom mama b’I kachoko’n chi wi, xa b’aq maja b’i chi u chak. Xa we keje’ u jolom we qi nim ajaw, xa u tio’jil utz wi u wach. […] Are’ k’ut ta chikamik, chuxib’ij chi rib’ winaq rumal u baq’il. Keje’ k’ut xa u k’ajol, keje’ ri u chub’, u k’axaj, u k’oje’ik. We u k’ajol ajaw, we puch u k’ajol na’ol, aj ucha’n, xma chisach wi, chib’ek, chitz’aqatajik. Mawi chupel, ma pu ma’ixel, u wach ajaw, achij, na’ol, aj ucha’n. Xa xichikanajik u mi’al, u k’ajol. I merely give you my sign, my saliva, my spittle. My head no longer functions as such, but is now just a skull that doesn’t work. The head of a truly great lord has flesh on its face, but when he dies, people are frightened by his bones. His son then is like his saliva, his spittle, his essence. If his son becomes a lord, or a sage, or a master of speech, then he will not be lost, but he will survive, and be made complete. It is not extinguished or ruined, the face of the lord, the warrior, the master of speech. Rather, he remains, through his daughters and sons.21 Here, the saliva that issued from the “non-functional” head of One Hunahpu and caused the girl of the underworld to become pregnant—an image reminiscent of semen and its role in reproduction 22 —was understood as containing the essence (k’oje’ik) of One Hunahpu.23 This notion of essence is also captured by the concept of itz in Yucatec Maya, which similarly links essence with creative and potent sap-like substances, such as semen, dew, sap, milk, and other substances often used in ritual.24 The identification of One Hunahpu with the son here, and a person with their children more generally, comes through the transference of this essence, along with the conditions of the performance of a particular kind of activity by the child. When a child has the essence and the position of the parent, the parent is then said to “remain” through the child, even when, like One Hunahpu, the parent is no longer extant as such. Here, we find two conditions for the transference of essence—the transference of a “sign”, and the performance of characteristic activity on part of the entity to which the essence is transferred. Performance of the characteristic activity of some individual is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the possession of its essence and embedding of identity. The “sign” here seems to be related to biological descent, the continuation of One Hunahpu through procreation. We certainly find this view also in the discussions of naming conventions in the idea of a grandchild as substitution for the grandparent, as mentioned above. A related conception of the sign representing an individual thing (usually a person) is that of baah in Classic Mayan as well as contemporary Mayan languages. Houston and Stuart, following Proskouriakoff, proposed baah as “self ” or “person”, flagging a corresponding concept of the person, linked to the image, particularly the head or face.25 Houston and Stuart write: “as the locus of identity, the face or head establishes individual difference and serves logically as the recipient of reflexive action”.26 The head or face in particular as sign of the individual and association with the individual’s essence can be seen in the representation in the Popol Vuh of the head of One Hunahpu as both the essence and sign of One Hunahpu (as well as his brother Seven Hunahpu), and the calabash fruit that substitutes this head. A crucial part of the story here is the identity between One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu through the head in the calabash tree and its thoughts (discussed further below). We also see baah linked to the concept of essence in its connection with 178

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the transformations inherent in k’ex (substitution), of the transference of essence. Houston and Stuart write of the use of baah in the “impersonation” of gods by rulers in the Classic: Textual allusions to the ‘image’ or ‘self ’, ba(h), as part of this impersonation point directly to the transcendent merger of supernatural and human identity, to say nothing of further linkages with community deities. […] In this, Classic Maya practice resembles that of central Mexico, where rulers proposed their ‘likeness’ to a particular god.27 We see the head here as sign, as representation of the essence of a particular thing, associated with its self or person, what makes it what it is. This is clearly the imagery the Popol Vuh is drawing on, with the idea that this image, this sign, can be transferred from one individual to another (or numerous individuals). The head as associated with sign or identity is common in Classic Mayan glyphs more generally, where we find representations of head glyphs as representing persons, animals, and gods. The essence of these things is connected also to other aspects of the world, such as time and number most prominently. Numbers in Classic Mayan glyphs can be rendered in numerous ways, including in the “head variant” form, in which images of heads of particular gods indicate a number or time period, as well as full figure variants in which the entire body of the god in activity indicates the number or time period. Prudence Rice argues that this use of figures of the gods to represent number and time periods shows a dependence of these concepts on such “anthropomorphized supernatural forces or beings”.28 I think we can go even further than this and claim that the association of numbers and time periods with gods and other beings through head variants is intended to draw claims about identity, or the sharing of essence, between these things. Just as the head of One Hunahpu gives his sign, his essence (k’oje’ik), to his sons through the saliva given to the girl of the underworld, the head sign represents the essence of the figure associated with the number or time period in question. The transferability of this essence (of the gods, persons, or whatever else) to numerous different aspects of the world then also demonstrates the diffuse and fundamentally transformational nature of these things. If the gods can be identical with particular numbers or other aspects of the world, then the gods are also constituted by or manifest in these disparate aspects of the world. It is not that the gods are fundamentally associated with the bodies or forms they are understood as inhabiting and only secondarily in terms of number, time period, etc., but that the gods are manifest as these various things. Lynn Foster puts this well, writing that Maya gods “assume a number of separate aspects of manifestations that could be expressed in a number of different names, appearances, and qualities”.29 While we may see the sharing or continuing of essence from One Hunahpu to his children or from the gods to numbers as transference of essence from an original bearer of essence to some new and separate thing, when we understand the two relata as identical on the basis of their sharing of this essence, the picture becomes different. Instead, what we have here is one single entity, defined by the essence, undergoing transformation in terms of its manifestation as now in the form of One Hunahpu and then in the form of the Hero Twins, now in the form of an anthropomorphic god and then in the form of number. Neither form is foundational or prior, either temporally or metaphysically. That is, the number having the essence it does is no more dependent on the god than the god is on the number. Rather, both are dependent on the essence. This is one explanation for the nonlinear narrative structure of the Popol Vuh, in which we find characters appear in the narrative before their creation, or appear in different forms in different parts of the text.30 Essence here is what defines and determines a specific thing as that thing, while its other properties are not determinative of essence in the same way. For example, one’s 179

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physical shape may not be relevant in determining whether one manifests the essence of a substituted god in a ritual performance, but one’s voice or behavior will be. In other cases, sameness of physical shape may be enough to constitute transference of essence. Because essence is not determined by one feature but more often three, the essence of a thing can often become manifest where it was not before by some change in one of these features. For example, if a descendent of a particular ruler engages in the characteristic activity of the ruler and is recognized by the people as performing such activity, this descendent takes on the essence of and thus is the earlier ruler—the essence of the earlier ruler is manifested by the same activity that manifests the essence of the descendent. If one of these conditions fails to be met, however—say the community does not recognize the activity—then even though the other two are met, the descendent does not possess the essence of the original ruler, his essence is distinct, and that of the original ruler is not transferred or embedded. It is helpful here to look also at other instances of k’oje’ik (essence) in the Popol Vuh. In a passage where we find the lords of the underworld describing the Hero Twins, they say of the twins: “Jalan ki wach, jalan nay pu ki k’oje’ik [Their appearance is distinctive, and their essence is also distinctive]”.31 Here, the appearance is distinct from the essence, which seems to be a kind of behavioral or internal element of the twins, perhaps having to do with their character, characteristic activity, or roles. Another possible sense of k’oje’ik, which shows us further implications for understanding the link between continually transforming things in the world and a single ground-of-being, is that of “being” or “existence”. This translation of k’oje’ik is used by Allen Christenson for certain contexts of the term in the Popol Vuh. The being of a particular thing is dependent on its essence, since such a thing exists only insofar as it possesses a certain essence. Of course, there is much more to say here for Maya understandings of existence and essence. Borrowing from medieval European and Middle Eastern philosophers here, we can think of essence and existence, respectively, as what makes a thing what it is and the actualization or actualized state of a thing. The concept of k’oje’ik here seems to include both of these. There are no essences that are not at the same time actualized or existent, thus both of these senses that are distinguished by the medievals are combined in the Maya conception of essence. A view we find of the distinction in the medieval period is that it is maintained because of the idea that the essence of a thing in terms of its defining features and conditions for existence does not entail that such a thing actually exists in the world. On the view we find in the Popol Vuh and other Maya sources, this is not the case. Any essence entails existence, and the distinction between the two accepted by many medieval philosophers after the time of Ibn Sina is not found in Maya thought. In Maya views we find a link between essence and existence—any essence of necessity exists, as an imagined essence is either not an essence or is an essence of something that can be manifest via imagination. Part of the reason this can be is that essences are often not limited to certain kinds of entity, but have a far wider possibility of manifestation than we find in Greek and medieval traditions. The essence of an individual, for example, can be manifest in a thought or an image. The image of the head of a ruler or god, as the thought of such, can manifest the essence, such that the ruler or god in question is present. The very fact of an essence requires the existence of a particular thing corresponding to that essence, if not at the moment of consideration, then at some point. So what then would the Maya view be about things such as impossible essences? The thing such that it is a squared circle? Could such a thing exist? Or essences of things that do not exist, such as the pink elephant that flies, which presumably might become possible, but does not in fact exist? The view here is that these things do exist, insofar as their essences are manifest in, for example, thought or image. The squared circle could perhaps never be manifest 180

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in physical material, but it can and is manifest in thought, and the flying pink elephant likewise. If we build into the essence that these things are manifest in physical material, we are artificially narrowing essences in order to create the difficulty enabling us to separate essence and existence. We have an essence on the basis of what we have created through thinking (because we’ve never encountered a square circle or a flying pink elephant in life), an essence manifest in thought, and then considered the impossibility or non-existence of that essence as a material thing. We might say that (1) the essence is not of a material thing, even though we may try to stipulate this, as the essence was created via thought, from thought, and as thought; (2) a material thing might also manifest itself differently and in non-material ways. Just as a book can manifest itself as a thought, a physical image of a person can manifest itself as a mental image, and these can be understood as the same image (that is, manifesting the same essence), the essence of a purportedly material thing can manifest itself as thought. To say then that the physical, material square circle does not (and cannot) exist is false, insofar as the physical or material is part of that essence that manifests itself in our minds (in this case through our creation). Essences can and often are created by our minds—in fact, this may be the primary way essences are created. Indeed, if particular kinds of practice and recognition of the community is a condition for the manifestation of a particular essence, this entails that essences are in some way mind-dependent. This idea that humans have a role to play in the construction of the cosmos is common in Mesoamerican philosophy.32 The way we often find this role understood is in terms of ordering, a certain kind of conceptualization, distinguishing a thing from other things, given a chosen division between this and that. The Classic Mayan concept of tz’ak (completion, ordering) demonstrates something of this. As Timothy Knowlton and David Stuart both discuss, tz’ak was sometimes rendered in glyphic form as a paired set of other terms, representing conceptual oppositions, such as day/night, female/male, sky/earth, etc.33 The concept of tz’ak seems to have primarily been connected to calendrics and the succession of time periods and rulers, a kind of putting-into-order associated with the measurement of time, and also importantly the origination of the most well-known system of counting time of the Maya world, the Long Count calendar.34 The word is associated with ordering in terms of measurement, both in the case of the calendar, as well as counting, measuring land, or other acts of measurement or determination of aspects of the world. The ordering associated with tz’ak in this case is very much a human activity, and one we also find discussed in the Popol Vuh. In the Popol Vuh, we find a discussion of the gods in their attempts to create beings who will speak their names, who will thus “provide for and sustain” or “support” the gods. The gods engage in a number of failed attempts to create such beings, which cannot ultimately engage in the requisite ritual activity and are destroyed or reduced. Part of the required sustenance of the gods is their memory, which includes speaking of them, as well as establishing the days and the components of time, number, and other things in which the gods are manifest and represented, through transference of their essence. Essence here is manifest by the activity of humans—particularly the kind of ritual activity on which the gods rely, but at a more basic level the conceptual activity that is the basis of the various organizations and completions humans engage in. One of the things the gods require of the beings they create is that these beings “keep the days” (q’ijarisaj), which is connected to both establishment of calendrics and the honoring and sustenance of the gods.35 Because the non-human animals could not keep the days, their place and importance on earth was diminished, and because the wooden people could not keep the days, they were destroyed. We thus see the crucial role of human activity and imagination in the organization and completion of the cosmos. The gods and humans are in a relationship of mutual reliance and co-dependence. Part of the reason for this is that the gods are manifest in things through the 181

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expression of essences, via construction of signs, performance of characteristic activity, and other actions that lead to transference of essence. The act of substitution (k’ex) can be a willful human act. A substitution can (and commonly does) happen through impersonation or personification of a god or other entity through ritual performance, and the essence of the god becomes manifest in the activity of the human in such action.36 Guernsey writes: “hieroglyphic evidence indicates that Classic Maya rulers did more than rhetorically invoke the title of gods, or merely invite the deities to sanction their ritual performances, but actually merged their royal person with that of the invoked deity”.37 We see an example of merged essence in the Popol Vuh itself, just after the words of the head of One Hunahpu to the girl of the underworld impregnated by his saliva. One Hunahpu’s brother, Seven Hunahpu, had also been killed by the lords of the underworld along with One Hunahpu, but he was buried whole, along with the rest of One Hunahpu’s body. Only the head of One Hunahpu was placed in the calabash tree. Yet at the end of the story, the head comes to represent both One Hunahpu and his brother Seven Hunahpu. After the head impregnates and speaks to the girl, the text recounts: Xcha’ri u jolom Jun Junajpu, Wuqub’ Junajpu. Xa wi ki na’ol at xkib’ano. [This] said the head of One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu. Their thought was in carrying this out. Earlier in the passage, the head was spoken of as One Hunahpu alone, and in this final discussion of it before their disappearance from the story of the Popol Vuh, the head is understood as that of both brothers. Their thought is shared, represented by this head and its thoughts and intentions. The actions here of the one head, which is itself a sign, a substitution, of One Hunahpu, is also at the same time a sign and substitution of Seven Hunahpu, in that its actions and thought manifests the essence of both.38 The activities of a given individual or part of the world can, we have seen, manifest the essence of other things, and thus embed new identities in the individual. Multiple essences can be manifested by the same action at once, and essences can be gained and lost. One of the key and unique views we find in the Maya tradition is this notion of essential change allowing for the embedding of essences, or the merging of essences. The transformation discussed in Maya texts is not primarily that of essences that change their accidents, as we find in the Greek and Indian traditions, and Indo-European thought more generally, but of activity in the world that can variously and multiply manifest essences. This can happen in human as well as non-human forms—essences are never limited to the modes of expression in which we encounter them in any given instance. This seems to lend itself to a reading of Maya metaphysics, and those of systems throughout Mesoamerica (which are similar in this regard), as similar to a kind of “process metaphysics”. James Maffie has argued for a process view of Aztec metaphysics in his Aztec Philosophy.39 While a process metaphysics framework can certainly help us make sense of some of the differences between Mesoamerican views of essence and those more prevalent in Indo-European philosophical systems, Maya views of essence, transformation, and embedding cannot be completely captured by the notion of the primary nature of processes over substances, which is ultimately a foreign notion to Mesoamerica as much as its opposite. More properly, we can understand transformation in general as a relationship between essences and activity, where an essence is not understood either in process or substance terms. There are both activities and things, processes and substances, in Maya metaphysics, but there does not seem to be a hierarchical or reductive 182

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relationship between the two. We can understand things in terms of actions and vice versa. I have argued elsewhere40 that the best way to think of Maya metaphysics is correlative rather than reductive, a divergence from much of Western philosophical thought, but much better captured by looking at Mesoamerican thought through the framework of early Chinese metaphysics, which has much more powerful tools to help us understand this aspect of Maya and other Mesoamerican philosophical systems.

11.4  The Ground of All Transformation The particular forms of transformation we find in Maya thought, and the Popol Vuh specifically, are understood in terms of essence and the shifting manifestation of essence. Particular aspects of the world change in ways so as to bring essences into and out of manifestation, which might be multiply manifest in different places and across a variety of times, as well as in different activities and forms. Most fundamentally, transformation for the Classic Maya was understood as manifestation of different essences, in a pattern of continual creation and destruction, a kind of constant recycling and renewal of the essential material of the cosmos. The activities in which essences can be manifest are as broad as the possibilities for activity. Thus a god can be manifest as a glyphic image, a number, a period of time, a human being, or many other things and activities in the cosmos. These essences that are manifest, as they themselves are constructed from a preexistent being, are never completely new, but always a reemergence of something from the past or elsewhere in the world. As Stephen Houston says, of the Maya concept of substitution: “truly new things may not exist; their essence could be transshipped, however”.41 While I have focused here mainly on the connection between essence and substitution to explain a key feature of the transformation of persons and the transshipment of essence in the Popol Vuh, there is certainly much more to be said, on a more fundamental level, about change and manifestation of essence. The basis of transformation, that ground on which transformation takes place, can be understood as essence more broadly (perhaps an “essence of essences”), but essence in terms of a pre-conceptual, omnipresent, “ground of being”.42 This is a conception we find across traditions, in texts discussing transcendence and being from the early Daoist texts of China to the mystical theology and apophaticism of Pseudo Dionysius and Eriugena in the Christian West and Ibn Arabi in the Islamic world, and Advaita Vedanta in India (among many other traditions). This, along with a fuller account of the correlative metaphysics inherent in the Popol Vuh and other Maya texts and traditions, awaits future scholarship.

Notes 1 K’iche’ is one among many Maya languages, localized to the highland region of what is today southern Guatemala. The Maya region more generally, an area with a roughly shared related cultural and linguistic history, stretches from southern Mexico to Western Honduras and El Salvador, including all of Guatemala and Belize. 2 While the ideas of the Popol Vuh cannot be definitively dated, scenes from the story can be found in Maya imagery as far back as the Classic Period, and in regions other than that of the K’iche’, suggesting that the Popol Vuh was a pan-Maya story (Witschey 2015: 272). 3 Wa’e xchiqaz’ib’aj chupan chik u ch’abal Dios, pa christianoil chik. Xchiqelesaj, rumal maja b’I chik ilb’al re Popo Wuj… “This we write now in the midst of God and Christianity. We bring it forth because there is no longer the means of seeing the Popol Vuh” (trans. Christenson 2004: 3, modified). 4 Structurally, it is nearly the same as the concept of itz in Maya thought in the Yucatan, which I discuss extensively in McLeod (2018a) as well as McLeod (2018b). Here, I do not discuss itz as such since I’m staying close to the thought of the Popol Vuh, but most of what can be seen concerning k’oje’ik in K’iche’ contexts such as the Popol Vuh seems to hold in Yucatec and other Maya contexts.

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Alexus McLeod 5 The view of the Sarvastivada school of Buddhism on the momentariness of dharmas may come close to such a view. 6 See Sharer (1994: 522) and McLeod (2019). 7 Indeed, all things in the world can possess multiple essences as definitive. The Maya concept of the way, a spirit, has often been understood as a “co-essence”. See Houston and Stuart (1989). 8 See Christenson (2004: 131. Christenson trans., modified). 9 There is a continual question here concerning just how much we can rely on contemporary ideas offered by Maya people as a guide to views in the period of the writing of the Popol Vuh. These difficulties are structurally exactly the same as the worries about relying on the text of the Popol Vuh itself as a guide to understanding earlier Maya ideas from the Postclassic and Classic Periods. 10 Carlsen (1997: 50). 11 Carlsen (1997: 51). 12 Gillespie (2002: 72). 13 Scherer (2015: 142), Bunzel (1952), and Vogt (1992: 91). 14 Scherer (2015: 142). 15 See Gillespie (2002: 72), Carlsen and Prechtel (1991: 26), Guiteras-Holmes (1961: 110), Mondloch (1980), and Stross (1988: 35). 16 Gillespie (2002: 72) and Montagu and Hunt (1962: 144). 17 McLeod (2018a: 147–149) and Gillespie (2021). 18 Bassie-Sweet (2008: 10). 19 The story thus doubles as an explanation of the origins of the calabash tree as well as that of the origins of the Hero Twins. This is a common technique of the Popol Vuh—individual events serve as the explanation of the origin of numerous different things. This further illustrates a broader point made by the text (and in Maya thought more broadly) concerning the intrinsic interconnectedness of numerous aspects of the cosmos, and the identity between seemingly disparate things, in terms of their essences. 20 Christenson (2003: 79). 21 Popol Vuh, Christenson trans., modified (Christenson 2004: 82; Christenson 2003: 114). 22 A clear similarity discussed by a number of scholars, including Karen Bassie-Sweet, who writes: “for the K’iche’, the eating of fruit is a common metaphor for sexual intercourse, which suggests that Lady Blood was well aware of the consequences of her actions”. See Bassie-Sweet (2008: 152). 23 The story of the replacement of the head of Hunahpu with a gourd in the story of the Hero Twins in the underworld is reminiscent of this original story of the head of One Hunahpu as a fruit in the calabash tree early in the Popol Vuh. In the second case of substation we may have something like a double substitution—the gourd substitutes the head of Hunahpu, as well as the head of his father One Hunahpu. 24 McLeod (2018: 117). 25 Houston and Stuart (1998: 76) and Kremer and Uc Flores (1996: 81). 26 Houston and Stuart (1998: 77). 27 Houston and Stuart (1998: 81), Calnek (1988: 47–48), and Klein (1986: 153). 28 Rice (2019: 129). 29 Foster (2005: 164). 30 Though as Allen Christenson points out, following John Welch, this nonlinear structure is a common feature of premodern texts across cultures (Christenson 2003: 34; Welch 1981: 12). 31 Christenson, Popol Vuh: Literal Translation, 132. 32 James Maffie discusses this in the case of the Aztecs, writing: “humans are born with the moral responsibility for renewing the creator beings and hence the entire Fifth Age lifeway. Humans’ participation in the ongoing weaving, balancing, and regenerating of the cosmos is physically and morally imperative” Maffie (2019: 21). 33 Knowlton (2002) and Stuart (2003). 34 Pharo (2013: 41), Friedel, Schele, and Parker (1993: 416–417, n. 11). Pharo writes: “Tz’ak is applied in this context of giving calendar information. The term tz’ak has the relevant meanings of ‘change’; ‘succession’; ‘was put in order’; ‘was counted’; ‘was increased’; ‘accumulated’; ‘bring into existence’ or ‘measure a milpa’”. 35 Dennis Tedlock connects the “keeping of days” and calendrics directly to this story of the gods’ attempted creation of humans near the beginning of the Popol Vuh. He translates q’ijarisaj and as “keeping the days” while Christenson translates it as “worship”. More literally it does seem to refer to practice concerning the days (q’ij), but Christenson’s rendering also accurately represents aspects of this term,

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Transformation and Essence (K’oje’ik) in the K’iche’ Maya Popol Vuh as the daykeeping practice is connected to religious ideas we might refer to as worship. In English, of course, the term ‘worship’ has associations that do not hold in the Maya context. Christenson explains the connection of worship to daykeeping in his translation of the Popol Vuh in the following way: “Q’ijarisaj (to worship) is derived from the root q’ij (day or sun) in a transitive imperative verb form (cause to be). If such a word existed in English, it might be something like ‘dayify’ (to honor their day, perhaps through calendric ceremonies) or ‘sunify’ (to glorify the gods like the glory of the sun)” (Christenson 2003: 65). 36 Guernsey (2006: 87) and Houston and Stuart (1996: 299). 37 Houston and Stuart (1996: 87). 38 Christenson and Tedlock translate this passage very differently, parsing the K’iche’ differently. Both translations show us an expression of the shared essence of One and Seven Hunahpu here, but Tedlock’s more interpretive translation attempts to understand the text as providing us a reason for this shared essence. He translates the above passage: “…said the head of One and Seven Hunahpu—they were of one mind when they did it” (Tedlock 1996: 99). 39 Maffie (2013: 25–27). 40 See McLeod (2018a: 23, 40). 41 Houston (2014: 72). 42 Borrowing Paul Tillich’s phrase for the transcendent and foundational position of God, preconceptual and not understood as an object in the world, but rather as the precondition for objects and being in general.

Bibliography Bassie-Sweet, Karen. 2008. Maya Sacred Geography and the Creator Deities. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Bunzel, Ruth. 1952. Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Calnek, Edward. 1988. Highland Chiapas Before the Spanish Conquest. (Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation). Provo: Brigham Young University. Carlsen, Robert. 1997. The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town. Austin: University of Texas Press Carlsen, Robert and Martin Prechtel. 1991. “The Flowering of the Dead: An Interpretation of Highland Maya Culture”. Man 26: 23–42. Christenson, Allen. 2003. Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press (digital version at Mesoweb). Christenson, Allen. 2004. Popol Vuh: Literal Poetic Version, Translation and Transcription. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press (digital version at Mesoweb). Foster, Lynn. 2005. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedel, David, Linda Schele, and Joy Parker. 1993. Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path. New York: William Morrow. Gillespie, Susan. 2021. “The Extended Person in Maya Ontology”. Estudios Latinamericanos 41: 105–127. Gillespie, Susan. 2002. “Body and Soul Among the Maya: Keeping the Spirits in Place”. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 11(1): 67–78. Guernsey, Julia. 2006. Ritual and Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan Style Art. Austin: University of Texas Press. Guiteras-Holmes, Calixta. 1961. Perils of the Soul: The World View of a Tzotzil Indian. Glencoe: Free Press. Houston, Stephen. 2014. The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence. New Haven: Yale University Press. Houston, Stephen and David Stuart. 1989. “The Way Glyph: Evidence for Co-Essences Among the Classic Maya”. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, 30. Houston, Stephen and David Stuart. 1996. “Of God, Glyphs, and Kings: Divinity and Rulership Among the Classic Maya”. Antiquity 70: 289–312. Houston, Stephen and David Stuart. 1998. “The Ancient Maya Self: Personhood and Portraiture in the Classic Period”. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 33: 73–101. Klein, Cecelia. 1986. “Masking Empire: The Material Effects of Masks in Aztec Mexico”. Art History 9(2): 135–167.

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Alexus McLeod Knowlton, Timothy. 2002. “Diphrastic Kennings in Mayan Hieroglyphic Literature”. Mexicon 24(1): 9–14. Kremer, Jurgen and Fausto Uc Flores. 1996. “The Ritual Suicide of Maya Rulers”. in Macri and McHargue, eds., Eighth Palenque Round Table. San Francisco, CA: Pre-Colombian Art Research Institute. Maffie, James. 2013. Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Maffie, James. 2019. “Weaving the Good Life in a Living World: Reciprocity, Balance, and Nepantla in Aztec Ethics.” Science, Religion, and Culture 6(1): 15–25. McLeod, Alexus. 2018a. Philosophy of the Ancient Maya: Lords of Time. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. McLeod, Alexus. 2019. “Sacrifice: A Maya Conception of a Misunderstood and Underappreciated Component of Well-Being”. Science, Religion, and Culture 6(1): 34–41. McLeod, Alexus. 2018b. “Itz and The Descent of Kukulkan: Central Mexican Influences on Postclassic Maya Thought”. Parergon 35(2): 147–173. Mondloch, James. 1980. “K’E?S: QuichE Naming”. Journal of Mayan Linguistics 2: 9–25. Montagu, Roberta and Eva Hunt. 1962. “Nombre, autoridad y el sistema ed creencias en los altos de Chiapas”. Estudios de Cultura Maya 2: 141–147. Pharo, Lars. 2013. The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars. Leiden: Brill. Rice, Prudence. 2019. Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos: Middle Preclassic Lowland Maya Figurines, Ritual, and Time. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Scherer, Andrew. 2015. Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul. Austin: University of Texas Press. Sharer, Robert. 1994. The Ancient Maya, 6th ed. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Stross, Brian. 1988. “Seven Ingredients in Mesoamerican Ensoulment: Dedication and Termination in Tenejapa”. in Mock, ed. The Sowing and the Dawning: Termination, Dedication, and Transformation in the Archaeological and Ethnographic Record of Mesoamerica. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Stuart, David. 2003. “On the Paired Variants of TZ’AK”. http://www.Mesoweb.com/stuart/notes/ tzak.pdf Tedlock, Dennis. 1996. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. New York: Touchstone. Vogt, Evon. 1992. Tortillas for the Gods: A Symbolic Analysis of Zinacanteco Rituals. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Welch, John. 1981. Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis. Hildesheim: Gerstenberd Verlag. Witschey, Walter, ed. 2015. Encyclopedia of the Ancient Maya. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

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PART III

Transformation After the Copernican Revolution: Post-Kantian Philosophy

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

INTRODUCTION G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

In this third part, authors investigate philosophical conceptions of transformation that are informed by Immanuel Kant’s Copernican revolution. The 19th- and 20th-century post-Kantian philosophers analyze transformation, not only in terms of individual facts, like someone’s knowledge and values, and mental states, like beliefs and preferences, but also in terms of social conditions, like someone’s class and culture, and phenomenological situations, like mood and embodiment. Moreover, post-Kantian philosophers attend to the ways in which transformation alters, not only a person’s isolated standpoint on the world, but also the possibility of a shared or systematic standpoint on the world. Contributors to this part elucidate post-Kantian arguments for comprehending transformation within these broader concerns of sociality, phenomenology, and systematicity. The broader concerns in which post-Kantians comprehend transformation enable them to critically extend Kant’s pioneering analysis of the a priori conditions of the possibility of experience. For the post-Kantians who critically extend Kant’s analysis, a priori conditions are said to rest on a first principle, be material in nature, and have an embodied character. These elaborations on a priori conditions all confront their transformative potential. The contributions in this part trace the critical extension of Kantian analysis in this manner through the German idealist, Marxist, existentialist, Jewish, and phenomenological traditions. These contributions indicate how Kant’s method of analysis, although it avoids longstanding problems with skepticism and dogmatism, can be modified to account for undertheorized or neglected aspects of human experience. Joshua di Paolo analyzes the concept of radicalization in order to provide a philosophical account of this particular sort of transformation. He hypothesizes that radicalization is one’s transformation into a fanatic and argues that accounts of fanaticism found in John Locke, Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche fail to vindicate this hypothesis. G. Anthony Bruno shows how J.G. Fichte and F.W.J. Schelling take seriously Kant’s idea that philosophy depends on the self-transformation of a Copernican revolution, but investigate what makes this self-transformation possible and whether this self-transformation admits of different expressions. Bruno provides an account of Fichte’s and Schelling’s competing conceptions of self-transformation and their opposing interpretations of the claim that the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is. He then considers F.H. Jacobi’s challenges to these interpretations. DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-17

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Jaime Edwards shows how Karl Marx’s idea of historical materialism explains, not only the material conditions of human activity, but also the transformation of such conditions that thereby explains the passage of epochs of human activity. In order to defend Marx’s idea of historical materialism, he answers a persistent question, namely, how material conditions can genuinely foster rather than causally undermine the freedom that would be required for the transformation of class-level consciousness. Defending Marx’s idea allows Edwards to demonstrate the viability of a materialist extension of Kantian analysis. Sacha Golob juxtaposes Søren Kierkegaard’s and Martin Heidegger’s views of radical change in an individual’s commitments in order to demonstrate how they problematize the traditional philosophical role of activity and reason in explaining such change. Passion and mood take on a more prominent role in Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s work, respectively. According to Golob, this general shift toward the emotions enables these thinkers to overcome dualisms between activity and passivity or rationality and irrationality and thereby explain radical change in wider contexts that include fear, boredom, anxiety, guilt, and love. Benjamin Pollock presents Franz Rosenzweig’s spiritual self-transformation as a shift from world-denial to world-redemption. According to Pollock, Rosenzweig’s self-transformation allows him to reframe the reconciliation of self hood and worldliness as a divinely commanded task. Although this task shifts from a Christian to a Jewish characterization, it relies on a difficult combination of return and conversion that Pollock argues highlights the tension inherent in selftransformation narratives, namely, the tension between one’s past self and one’s new self. According to Kym Maclaren, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of embodiment is what makes him a philosopher of transformation, since he regards the body, not as a machine, but as a self-reorganizing movement in dialogue with the world. Moreover, the body’s improvised selfreorganizations are informed by, but also transform, its own material conditions. This, Maclaren argues, is why Merleau-Ponty holds that human bodies make possible the overcoming of their frameworks for life. However, she draws out the ambiguity of this overcoming by examining the ways in which human bodies undermine their own transformation by perpetuating life-reducing creations, the solution to which, she suggests, is to remain open to otherness and contingency.

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12 IS RADICALIZATION BECOMING A FANATIC? A HISTORICAL INQUIRY Joshua DiPaolo

12.1 Introduction What is radicalization? “Radicalization” is a concept in the “extremist web,” a web of analytically interrelated concepts connected to extremism, including “extremist,” “terrorism,” and “fanaticism,” among others. A religious terrorist has been defined as a fanatic who appeals to transcendent values to justify injuring those who do not share his values (Martinich 2000: 422). Radicalization has been defined as the process whereby people become extremists (Neumann 2013: 874). These definitions are fine as far as they go, but considering them immediately raises the questions What is a fanatic? and What is an extremist? If we want to understand these concepts, we must break out of this web by uncovering substantive definitions of these notions that extend beyond the structural relations they bear to other concepts inside the web. The concept “radicalization” has a short history. It gained prominence in both academic literature and popular press around the early 2000s, which suggests that its rise is linked to the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US and the growth of so-called homegrown terrorism (Neumann 2013; Sedgwick 2010). The concept has been employed for several purposes. First, in the security context, “radicalization” has been used to analyze and prevent threats to state or individual security (Sedgwick 2010). Second, it has become a familiar tool used in popular discourse to characterize, analyze, and criticize large-scale or highly visible transformations. Why, around 2014, did so many young people living in liberal democracies convert to Islam and try to join ISIS? What caused them to radicalize? On 6 January 2021, hundreds of Americans stormed the US Capitol building ostensibly to “stop the steal” of the 2020 presidential election. As more is learned about these domestic terrorists, their radicalization narratives are being presented to the public. Worrisome uses of the concept exist too. It has been employed, for example, to justify oppression and practices of mental reprogramming. In the name of preventing radicalization, China has detained an estimated 1 million Uyghur Muslims, allegedly “infected with extremist thoughts,” in “thought transformation” camps in Xinjiang for anywhere from months to years, forcing them to leave their families and jobs, with reports of torture and terrible living conditions in these facilities.1 This last example demonstrates the urgency of the need to clarify radicalization and related notions. The extremist web is a “hermeneutical hotspot”: an area of social life where powerful

DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-18

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people have a positive interest in preventing proper interpretation (Fricker 2007: 152). Not only are terms like “fanatic” or “extremist” often used as tools of abuse (Katsafanas 2019; Passmore 2003), the example from China shows that they can also be tools of oppression. Keeping these terms unclear is in the interest of the powerful, since obfuscation around the extremist web allows injustice to masquerade as preservation of the state or its allegedly legitimate ideals. But whether a state has the right to prevent the growth of extremism and radicalization within its borders depends on what extremism and radicalization are. By elucidating concepts in the extremist web, philosophers can help reduce injustice. We should avoid reinventing the wheel, though. A proper philosophical inquiry into the extremist web needs to look first to the history of philosophy. Because “radicalization” lacks a long history, a direct inquiry is unlikely to uncover accounts of radicalization. But this need not deter us. Radicalization is fundamentally a transformation, a significant change from one thing to another. The questions are: What kind of change? And have philosophers studied it? A natural first thought is that radicalization is a form of conversion, since radicalization and conversion are often linked in the same breath. Historical philosophers, including Augustine, Pascal, and Berkley, have discussed conversion, but the most detailed historical study of conversion conducted by a philosopher of which I’m aware comes from William James. James devotes two long chapters of his Varieties of Religious Experience to analyzing conversion, offering his own definition of religious conversion along the way. First, he defines the habitual centre of a subject’s personal energy as the “hot place in a man’s consciousness, the group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from which he works.” Then he writes: To say that a man is “converted” means…that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of his energy. (1985: 196) Will this definition help us understand radicalization? Immediately, we should note that radicalization is not religious in nature, so we must extend our attention beyond religious conversion and religious radicalization. The Jamesian definition could easily be generalized by dropping references to religion, but even with this change there are two problems with analyzing radicalization in terms of conversion. First, although some instances of radicalization involve conversion, these transformations differ in structure. Conversion is a sort of exchange. In Jamesian terms, conversion involves previously peripheral ideas becoming central, crowding out or replacing previously central ideas. Radicalization, however, can involve intensification without exchange. So, even if conversion and radicalization often co-occur, radicalization need not be conversion. Second, calling a transformation a conversion tells us nothing about its end-state. Conversion is neutral. Radicalization, though, is not. It is, roughly, the process of becoming an extremist. So, even if radicalization were a form of conversion, we would still need to distinguish it from other forms of conversion by characterizing its end-point. Setting conversion aside, we could simply say that radicalization is transforming into an extremist, but, again, what is an extremist? Unfortunately, as far as I know, historical philosophers have not analyzed extremism as such. Several historical philosophers have, however, offered accounts of fanaticism. Fanaticism and extremism may differ subtly, but they are similar enough to warrant investigating whether historical accounts of fanaticism can illuminate radicalization. This is the strategy I pursue here. I will examine the hypothesis that radicalization is transforming into a fanatic, or, more colloquially, radicalization is becoming a fanatic. Examining this hypothesis in 192

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light of different historical accounts of fanaticism will allow us to break out of the extremist web to assess substantive versions of this thought. The accounts of fanaticism I consider are drawn from Locke, Kant, and Nietzsche. Locke’s and Nietzsche’s accounts differ significantly from each other, while in Kant we find similarities to both accounts. In the end, I argue that none of these accounts, when plugged into our hypothesis, adequately captures radicalization. I will not argue that these accounts fail qua accounts of fanaticism; that is a separate question. Rather, I argue that the hypotheses that radicalization is becoming a Lockean, Kantian, or Nietzschean fanatic all fail. This does not entail that the more general hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a fanatic is false. It only entails that if fanaticism is what Locke, Kant, or Nietzsche says it is, then this hypothesis is false. Before proceeding, I should explain how I engage with historical sources. My purposes here are primarily philosophical. This chapter is part of a larger project that aims to advance our understanding of the extremist web. I engage with these historical thinkers because ignoring their work while attempting to advance our understanding of the extremist web would be philosophical malpractice. Philosophy does not begin in the present. But because I cannot dive deep into the scholarship here, I must rely on the excellent work already completed by those scholars who have done the deep dive. Thus, I will rely on interpretations of the historical works at least as much as the works themselves. This chapter is organized as follows. Section 12.2 describes paradigmatic cases of radicalization that will be used to assess different versions of our working hypothesis. Sections 12.3 and 12.4 develop and evaluate the different versions of this hypothesis derived from Locke’s, Kant’s, and Nietzsche’s accounts of fanaticism. Section 12.5 concludes the chapter.

12.2  Paradigm Cases of Radicalization Radicalization can be initially characterized as a transformation from living a mundane life and believing mainstream ideas to adopting an extremist belief system and/or engaging in radical behavior. Often those who have radicalized start out living ordinary lives, then after being exposed to extremist ideas end up identifying with those ideas and enlisting in extremist movements, leading finally to violent self-sacrifice in the worst cases. A familiar case is the religiously inspired suicide vest-donning Jihadi. However, we should expand our gaze in several directions. Radicalization can be non-violent, secular, and even when religious, non-Islamic. In what follows, I appeal to three main cases to help us assess accounts of radicalization. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: Tsarnaev is, along with his deceased brother, one of the “Boston Marathon Bombers.” On April 15, 2013, they detonated pressure cooker bombs at the sight of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring nearly 300 others, allegedly out of anger directed against the US for killing Muslims in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. People who knew Dzhokhar were shocked at how out of character this behavior seemed. He was described as being, prior to the attack, popular, friendly, sweet, goofy, and as having a “heart of gold.”2 Some who radicalize have always seemed “off” to those who knew them. This was not Tsarnaev. He is, however, a contemporary classic: when many think of radicalization, they think of an ordinary person who commits a violent act of jihad after already having or developing links to Islam. 193

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To fill out the possibility space, I will describe two more radicalization cases. Dylann Roof: On June 17, 2015, at the age of 21, Dylann Roof killed nine AfricanAmericans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Motivated by White Nationalist fears of “white genocide,” he committed this act as “retaliation” for perceived offenses against white people. With no formal connection to White Nationalist or neoNazi networks, he radicalized by consuming white supremacist content online.3 Though Roof differs from Tsarnaev in many respects, I want to emphasize that his professed motives were secular rather than religious, inspired by his acceptance of white supremacist dogma. Like Tsarnaev, Roof was motivated by a perceived threat or injustice against “his people,” but no religious faith, transcendent authority, or organized religion played any role in his radicalization. Finally, consider Steve Drain. Steve Drain: Drain is a leading voice in the ever-offensive, hate-spewing homophobic Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). WBC espouses a literal interpretation of The Bible, ridiculing other Christians for their acceptance of contrary interpretations. Famously, they picket the funerals of fallen US soldiers, holding signs that read “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Hates Fags.” WBC thinks God allows US soldiers to die as punishment for the country’s tolerance of homosexuality and other “sins.” Unlike many of WBC’s members, Drain, a former philosophy graduate student, is unrelated to its founder, Fred Phelps. Rather, Drain joined WBC after setting out to make a documentary exposing the flaws in the church’s ideology. After interviewing members of the church, Drain ultimately agreed with its teachings and moved his family from Florida to Kansas to follow the church’s ways.4 Unlike Roof, Drain does think divine authority is on his side. But Drain’s radicalization deserves mention because the extremist ideology he radicalized into forbids violence. WBC is hateful, disrespectful, and obnoxious, but its bark is bigger than its bite. And while outsiders see the church’s actions as hateful, WBC interprets them as acts of love: they’re sharing hard truths to save sinners from condemnation. These three cases illuminate how expansive the space of radicalization is. Roof dropped out of high school, Tsarnaev was enrolled in college, and Drain attended graduate school. Roof was antisocial, while Drain was married with children and played in rock bands and Tsarnaev was popular with a heart of gold. Drain feels supported by divine authority, Roof ’s actions were racially-driven, not traceable to religious motives. While Tsarnaev’s and Drain’s radicalization both relate to religion, their religions—Islam and Christianity—differ. Tsarnaev and Drain were guided along their paths by direct contact with other extremists, while Roof had no contact with those who radicalized him. Roof and Tsarnaev acted in response to purported threats and violence against their in-group, while Drain allegedly acts to help his out-group. Tsarnaev and Roof committed horrific acts of violence, while Drain’s actions, though hurtful, are non-violent. Thus, those who have radicalized differ across many dimensions including levels of education, popularity and socialness, religiosity, inspiration or motive, relations to in-group and out-group members, and willingness to commit violence.5 It follows that many simple accounts of radicalization that may initially come to mind fail. Radicalization is not necessarily tied to violence, religious inspiration, threats against the ingroup, or particular religions or ideologies. This must be highlighted for two reasons. First, 194

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recognizing that many of our first thoughts on radicalization are overly simple motivates the search for more plausible accounts that reflect its complexity. Why search for an account that reflects this complexity? Why is it helpful or important to articulate a conception of radicalization that captures all three of our paradigm cases? Because, despite their differences, they share key similarities. After living ordinary, mainstream lives, these people turn toward the fringe. But they do not adopt just any fringe positions; their belief-systems and behaviors promote and exhibit (allegedly) righteous hostility that typically requires great self-sacrifice. Whether or not these cases constitute a natural kind, they do constitute a set of transformations worthy of study by anyone with an interest in understanding how to reduce or prevent them. To prevent or reduce such transformations, we need to know what they are. Casting our gaze narrowly to exclude certain of these transformations will not facilitate the achievement of those goals. Second, recognizing these facts about radicalization will help us assess our working hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a fanatic. I will assume that Tsarnaev’s, Roof ’s, and Drain’s cases are paradigmatic cases of radicalization, as they all involve people first living ordinary lives only to eventually come under the sway of extremism. With these cases in mind, we can start considering historical accounts of fanaticism.

12.3  Locke, Kant, and Radicalization Locke added “Of Enthusiasm” to the fourth and final edition of his Essay, making it one of only three chapters added to the Essay after its original publication (Boespflug and Pasnau, 2020). “Enthusiasm” as Locke was using the term is roughly equivalent to our “fanaticism” (Passmore 2003; Katsafanas 2019), and I will treat them as synonymous while discussing Locke’s views.6 As a Protestant, Locke was worried about religious enthusiasts, especially Quakers, treating their “ungrounded fancies,” especially ones contravening Christian texts, as if they were provided directly by God as a “foundation both for conduct and opinion” (Locke 1975: 4.19.3, p. 698). In other words, he worried about people basing their belief and action on their groundless certainty that they had experienced divine revelation. We can distinguish three steps that, for Locke, jointly constitute enthusiasm (Tabb 2019). First, the enthusiast finds in himself some “perswasions,” “conceits,” or “fancies,” some beliefs, thoughts, or ideas, accompanied by a feeling of certainty in their truth. Second, unable to attribute this feeling to ordinary grounds of assent and also guided by some affect other than love of truth, the enthusiast uses this feeling to justify his belief that the persuasion has been directly communicated to him by God. Finally, the enthusiast performs actions motivated by his belief that his persuasion is based in immediate divine authority. Thus, Locke writes: Immediate Revelation being a much easier way for Men to establish their Opinions, and regulate their Conduct, than the tedious and not always successful Labour of strict Reasoning, it is no wonder, that some have been very apt to pretend to Revelation and to perswade themselves, that they are under the peculiar guidance of Heaven in their Actions and Opinions, especially in those of them, which they cannot account for by the ordinary Methods of Knowledge, and Principles of Reason. Hence we see, that in all Ages, Men, in whom Melancholy has mixed with Devotion, or whose conceit of themselves has raised them into an Opinion of a greater familiarity with God, and a nearer admittance to his Favour than is afforded to others, have often flatter’d themselves with a perswasion of an immediate intercourse with the Deity, and frequent communications from the divine Spirit. (1975: 4.19.5, pp. 698–9) 195

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Immediately following this passage, Locke admits that divine revelation is possible (1975: 4.19.5, p. 699), but, for Locke, being justified in believing one has received divine revelation requires proof, such as a miracle, for example, Moses’s experience with the burning bush (Tabb 2019: 81–2). This is the primary source of the enthusiasts’ error, according to Locke: they leap from the feeling of certainty to the conclusion of immediate divine revelation without appropriate grounds for doing so and then perform “whatsoever odd Action they find in themselves a strong Inclination to do, that impulse is concluded to be a call or direction from Heaven, and must be obeyed; “tis a Commision from above, and they cannot err in executing it” (1975: 4.19.6, p. 699). Here Locke identifies purported infallibility as a consequence of the enthusiast’s attributing his fancies to divine revelation. Because his beliefs and inclinations come directly from God, they cannot be erroneous. For this reason, they are also impervious to reason: Reason is lost upon [enthusiasts], they are above it: they see the Light infused into their Understandings, and cannot be mistaken; ‘tis clear and visible there; like the Light of bright Sunshine, shews it self, and needs no other Proof, but its own Evidence: they feel the Hand of GOD moving them within, and the impulses of the Spirit, and cannot be mistaken in what they feel. Thus, they…are sure Reason hath nothing to do with what they see and feel in themselves: what they have a sensible Experience of admits no doubt, needs no probation. (Locke, 1975: 4.19.8, p. 700) In the end, Locke finds the enthusiast guilty of engaging in circular self-certifying reasoning: “It is a Revelation because they firmly believe it, and they believe it, because it is a Revelation” (1975: 4.19.6, p. 702). According to Locke, then, the fanatic is someone who believes and acts on the groundless opinion that he has received beliefs and inclinations, of which he feels certain, via direct communication with an infallible deity. As a result, the fanatic views these beliefs and inclinations as infallible and unbeholden to reason. Is radicalization becoming a Lockean fanatic? To become a Lockean fanatic, one must come to have beliefs accompanied by feelings of certainty the presence of which one must attribute to immediate divine revelation. Of our paradigmatic cases of radicalization, this picture may apply to Drain. Drain did not always picket the funerals of dead soldiers; he started doing this after joining the WBC, believing this was truly God’s will. As evidence of his devotion, we should note that he has excommunicated his daughter after she eventually refused to follow church edicts. Moreover, Locke speaks of enthusiasts’ odd conduct. Well, in addition to Drain’s truly offensive conduct, some of his behavior is downright odd. One of the picket signs he created reads “Bitch Burger” and includes a picture of a baby as the meat of a hamburger, meant to signify that eating a baby burger would be better than what people outside of the church do with babies (Theroux 2007). Since nowhere in the Bible does it say, “Create Bitch Burger signs and picket dead soldiers’ funerals,” one might infer from this behavior and his willingness to cast out his daughter that Drain not only feels certain that his inclinations are morally justified but also that this certainty derives from divine revelation. For all it may get correct about Drain, however, this account of radicalization has significant flaws. In Drain’s case, we do not know whether he thinks his inclinations and beliefs are derived directly from God. We do know he claims to believe that the Bible represents the literal word of God. But that doesn’t suffice to be a Lockean fanatic; after all, Locke shares this belief. And yet, we can confidently say that Drain radicalized without knowing whether he takes his certainty to 196

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derive from direct divine revelation. If he admitted that he doesn’t take himself to have direct revelation from God, we should not thereby revise our judgment that he radicalized. This suggests that taking oneself to have been inspired by immediate revelation from God is not necessary for radicalization. There are three additional problems with this account. First, radicalization does not entail certainty. Suppose Tsarnaev had doubts about whether bombing the Boston Marathon was a justifiable response to perceiving a massively unjust slaughter of Muslims. This does not imply that he did not radicalize. He went from a normal 20-year-old kid to a person who chose to bomb hundreds of innocent civilians. We can make sense of his behavior, and appropriately judge it radicalization, if we simply assume that he was confident enough that the bombing was justified. Second, not only does radicalization not entail believing one has experienced divine relation, neither does it entail any religious belief. Secular radicalization is possible. Roof ’s case demonstrates this: he acted without religious motivation or belief. Third, I doubt radicalization requires imperviousness to reason. Having beliefs that are impervious to reason presumably entails that reason would never lead one to change those beliefs (while they remain impervious to reason). But the converse does not hold: one might never change certain of one’s beliefs while being willing to subject those beliefs to rational critique. After all, you may already hold the beliefs favored by reason. Even if you don’t, you may maintain those beliefs in the face of rational critiques due to a mistake in reasoning. However, maintaining a belief in this circumstance does not entail that your acceptance of this belief is impervious to reason. Thus, even if radicalized agents cling tightly to their beliefs, those beliefs may be susceptible to reason’s influence. Whatever we think of Locke’s account, it does not sit well in an account of radicalization. It places necessary conditions on being a fanatic that are not necessary conditions on having radicalized. Radicalization is not becoming a Lockean fanatic. In Kant we can find accounts of theoretical fanaticism and practical fanaticism (Zuckert 2010). In this section, I discuss Kant’s theoretical fanaticism because it is similar to Locke’s account, though is different enough to merit independent examination. While treating Locke’s “enthusiasm” as synonymous with “fanaticism” is appropriate, Kant actually employs three distinct terms in this context: Fanatiker, Schwarmerei, and Enthusiasmus. On the difference between Schwarmerei and Enthusiasmus, Kant writes: Fanaticism [Schwarmerei] must always be distinguished from enthusiasm [Enthusiasmus]. The former believes itself to feel an immediate and extraordinary communion with a higher nature, the latter signifies the state of the mind which is inflamed beyond the appropriate degree by some principle, whether it be by the maxim of patriotic virtue, or of friendship, or of religion, without involving the illusion of a supernatural community. (2007, 2:251n) In his “Essay on the Maladies of the Head,” Kant sometimes speaks positively about enthusiasm: “Nothing great has ever been accomplished in the world without enthusiasm [Enthusiasmus]” (2007, 2:267). However: Things stand quite differently with the fanatic…The [fanatic] is properly a deranged person with presumed immediate inspiration and a great familiarity with the powers of the heavens. Human nature knows no more dangerous illusion. (ibid.) 197

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The distinction between fanaticism and enthusiasm notwithstanding, Kant’s remarks on fanaticism (Fanatiker, Schwarmerei) are similar to Locke’s, as both take the fanatic to conceive of himself as having immediate inspiration from a higher nature. But even if, like Locke, this is Kant’s paradigm case, unlike Locke he defines fanaticism not directly in terms of immediate inspiration but as the more general “delusion of being able to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility” (2002, 5:275). For Kant, those suffering from this delusion are guilty of self-contradiction. By claiming to see events or entities that transcend ordinary sensible experience, they claim to sense the supersensible, that is, to sense what cannot be sensed. This distinguishes Kant’s criticism of fanaticism from Locke’s. Recall, Locke criticizes the fanatic’s epistemic justification; he argued that although the fanatic’s belief that his persuasions were directly revealed to him by God could be true, the fanatic lacks adequate grounds for this belief. In contrast, Kant insists that the fanatic’s claims cannot be true (Zuckert 2010: 300–1). Does the hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a Kantian fanatic fare better than its Lockean counterpart? It does in several respects. First, it leaves room for secular radicalization. Whereas religion is central to Locke’s account of fanaticism, although claims about religious fanaticism can be derived from Kant’s account they are not essential to it. Kant would deny that the delusion of being able to sense the supersensible is identical to the delusion of believing oneself inspired by God; the latter delusion may be a form of the former, but one can have the former without having the latter. Second, I do not see in Kant any claim that fanatics must be certain of their beliefs. It’s natural to expect certainty from someone who presumes to be immediately inspired by the heavens, but his account leaves room for uncertainty. The issue of whether Kant views the fanatic as impervious to reason is less clear. He is committed to the idea that fanaticism consists in a rational error. But this does not answer our question. Fanaticism may consist in rational error, but, again, committing rational errors differs from being impervious to reason. Kant does not claim that fanatics lack the use of reason. When discussing the effects of “dreadful ills [that] encircle humankind,” he notes that while some ills completely “dethrone the mind (as happens in the deranged)” and some “take away the use of reason, as in the foolish,” still others “produce captivating semblances that fly about through the void, which lead those we call fanatics to rave with a certain show of reason” (2007, 15: 947). Zuckert (2010: 301) concludes that for Kant the fanatic’s mistake is not that he fails to employ reason, but that he does so wrongly. I’m not sure this is correct. While a faulty employment of reason may be the origin of his fanaticism, Kant’s remarks suggest that the fanatic’s use of “reason” is counterfeit. Fanatics rave with a certain show of reason and produce a captivating semblance of reason. Unlike the deranged, whose minds have been dethroned, or the foolish, who had their use of reason taken away, the fanatic still seems to possess reason, but his use of it is hollow. While this does not strictly imply that fanatical beliefs are impervious to reason, it certainly doesn’t reflect a high opinion of what we can expect from a fanatic’s employment of reason. This more ambivalent approach to the question of the fanatic’s relation to reason seems more appropriate in an account of radicalization. Is radicalization becoming a Kantian (theoretical) fanatic, then? Kant’s position fares better than Locke’s in an account of radicalization. Still, the core of Kant’s account is that the fanatic believes himself capable of seeing beyond the sensible, the paradigm example of which is extraordinary communion with a higher power. And I just don’t see this as a necessary condition on radicalization. At best, Drain’s and Tsarnaev’s cases meet this condition, but they may not and Roof ’s case doesn’t meet it either. So, we should reject the claim that radicalization is becoming a Kantian theoretical fanatic. 198

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12.4  Kant, Nietzsche, and Radicalization Uniting Locke’s and Kant’s accounts is the thought that fanaticism is an epistemic or rational defect. In contrast, Nietzsche’s and Kant’s account of (practical) fanaticism identify fanaticism with a specific form of desire, want, or need: fanaticism is a desire for passivity or a need for external regulation. To bring these accounts into focus, consider remarks by Adolf Eichmann, the leading architect of the Holocaust, quoted in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt (2006: 32) notes that before joining the Nazi party Eichmann had proved himself a “joiner” and she tells us that the date of Germany’s defeat in WWII was significant for him mainly because it meant thereafter he would live a leaderless existence. Eichmann laments: I sensed I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued to me, no pertinent ordinances would be there to consult. (ibid.) These odd remarks nicely express the sort of longing that constitutes, on Kant’s and especially Nietzsche’s views, the fanatic’s distinctive affective state. Imbued with agency, the loss over which Eichmann grieves in the wake of the Nazi party’s downfall, is that of external regulation: no more leaders, directives, or commands to follow. With nothing to direct him, he bemoans the fact that he must now choose his own path. Eichmann is an agent who resents his agency. Keep him in mind as we develop Kant’s and Nietzsche’s accounts. Kant’s central examples of fanatics were mystics, visionaries, and Buddhists. In fanatics, Kant sees a desire for passivity (Zuckert 2010: 309). Not only do fanatics claim to experience the supersensible, they want to have such experiences and strive “for a supposed interaction with God” (2009, 6: 174). Kant views fanaticism as the “moral death of reason” (2009, 6:175), which Zuckert (2010: 309) describes not merely as the subordination of reason to delusory feelings, but “the death of reason as action guiding.” Kant thinks the fanatic’s desire is dangerous because it is a desire for passivity, a desire not to act but to be in a state of pure receptivity (Zuckert 2010: 309–10). Buddhism is a “monstrous system,” in part, because it claims that the “highest good consists in nothing, that is, in the consciousness of feeling oneself swallowed up in the abyss of the Godhead by flowing together with it, and hence the annihilation of one’s own personality” (2001, 8:335). Zuckert (2010: 310) summarizes: “In order to attain union with God…the mystic detaches himself from his own rational personality, and aims at the abdication of agency…in favor of a state of feeling, of passivity” [my emphasis]. Nietzsche makes similar, though deeper and more damning remarks about the fanatic’s antagonism toward his own agency. According to Nietzsche, the fanatic needs to believe he possesses unconditional truth (Reginster 2003: 58). The content of the alleged truth matters much less, if at all, than its unconditionality. The belief that he possesses such truth is what sustains the fanatic. “Conviction,” Nietzsche (1968: A 54)7 writes, “is the backbone of the man of conviction.” This backbone metaphor pervades Nietzsche’s writing on fanaticism. Without a backbone, the body crumbles. Similarly, conviction is all that supports and holds together the fanatic; losing his conviction would “lead to crumbling and disintegration” (1966: BGE 30). The fanatic’s distinctive need, for Nietzsche, is a sign of weakness. How much one needs a faith in order to flourish, how much that is “firm” and that one does not want to be shaken because one clings to it, that is a measure of the degree of one’s strength (or, to put it more clearly, of one’s weakness). (1974: GS 347) 199

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Such weakness indicates a weak, diminished, collapsed, or diseased will: Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely – a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is actually what happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some “thou shalt.” (ibid.) An absence or weakness of will gives rise to a desire or need to be commanded—to be told what to do and think, and how to resolve inner conflict. When you lack the ability to decide what to do or think, and yet you need to possess unconditional truth, what emerges is a desire to outsource your agency. Thus, Nietzsche writes, fanaticism is: the only “strength of will” that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant – which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes a “believer.” (ibid.) In this passage, we see two symptoms of the fanatic’s weakness and his need for unconditional truth: narrowmindedness and willing slavery (Reginster 2003: 75). In a fanatic, rather than integrating with other perspectives and drives, a single point of view dominates the rest. Thus, the fanatic’s narrowmindedness is as follows: Not to see many things, not to be impartial in anything, to be party through and through, to view all values from a strict and necessary perspective – this alone is the condition under which such a man exists at all. (1968: A 54) Narrowmindedness is certainly something we typically associate with the fanatic. But, for Nietzsche, the fanatic’s inability to self-govern, and his corresponding voluntary slavery, is what truly sets him apart. The man of faith, the “believer” of every sort is necessarily a dependent man – such as cannot out of himself posit ends at all. The “believer” does not belong to himself, he can be only a means, he has to be used, he needs someone who will use him. … Belief of any kind is itself an expression of selflessness, of self-alienation… If one considers what need people have of an external regulation to constrain and steady them, how compulsion, slavery in the higher sense, is the sole and final condition under which the person of weaker will… can prosper; then one understands the nature of conviction. Conviction is the backbone of the man of conviction. (ibid.) 200

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Unable to set his own ends, the fanatic—the man of faith, the believer, the man of conviction— needs someone to do this for him. He must be used; otherwise, he cannot prosper. For Nietzsche, then, the fanatic is someone who needs, for the sake of self-preservation or selfconstitution, to believe he possesses unconditional truth. This need indicates a weak or “diseased” will. The fanatic cannot set his own ends. He needs to be commanded severely, to be told, unequivocally, what to do and think. Conviction, provided by external authorities, meets the fanatic’s needs. It provides him with (he believes) unconditional truth and unequivocal directives, thereby constituting and fortifying the fanatic’s self. Thus, on Nietzsche’s account, the fanatic’s very existence is bound up not with any particular conviction, but with the possession of conviction per se. There may appear to be something paradoxical in the ideas that fanatics abdicate their agency: we associate fanatics with fanatical action whereas a desire for passivity (Kant) and possessing a weak will (Nietzsche) might seem contrary to action. Any appearance of paradox here, however, is illusory. Insofar as Kantian and Nietzschean fanatics abdicate their agency, giving into “death of reason” or “hypnotism,” questioning whether their behaviors count as genuine actions may be appropriate. But far from being indolent sloths, these fanatics pursue ends; it’s just that these ends come from without rather than from within. With these accounts now on the table, what should we make of our working hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a fanatic? First, I want to credit Nietzsche, and to a lesser extent Kant, with anticipating so accurately the arresting feelings expressed by Eichmann. In the passages I’ve quoted, Nietzsche targets religious believers, but religious fanaticism is only one manifestation of the underlying condition of weakness inherent in the need to possess unconditional truth.8 And Eichmann’s lamentation about living a leaderless life would be taken by Nietzsche as a clear sign of his “diseased will”: unable to command himself, he urgently covets someone who will do the commanding for him. Thus, it seems Nietzsche’s account does draw our attention to an important and fascinating aspect of human experience. What would becoming a fanatic entail on these accounts? If being a fanatic, for Kant, is desiring passivity and aiming to abdicate his agency, then becoming a fanatic would, presumably, involve this desire and aim of growing in a person. Nietzsche tells us, if metaphorically, what the conditions for the growth of fanaticism are like. Buddhism and Christianity spread because of a “tremendous collapse and disease of the will” which gave rise to a demand for external regulation. Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. (1974: GS 347) Nietzsche claims that the growth of fanaticism correlated with a collapse and exhaustion of will, which led to an increased need to be commanded. Becoming a Nietzschean fanatic, then, involves a weakening or degradation of the will to the point of needing external regulation to have a unified self. Both accounts fare better than Locke’s and Kant’s (account of theoretical fanaticism), in at least two respects. Neither Kant’s nor Nietzsche’s account necessarily ties fanaticism to religion, so both allow for the possibility of secular radicalization. Neither do they tie fanaticism strictly to any source of belief (e.g., immediate revelation or sensing the supersensible). The questions of certainty and imperviousness to reason are more complicated. Because Kant’s account is less developed than Nietzsche’s, for the remainder of this section I’ll focus on Nietzsche’s account. 201

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Is the Nietzschean fanatic certain? It may seem obvious that Nietzsche would answer affirmatively. After all, the fanatic needs to believe he possesses unconditional truth. Without his conviction, he would crumble. So, Nietzsche may think the fanatic is certain of his convictions. If we build that into his account, then for reasons provided above radicalization would not require becoming a Nietzschean fanatic. But it’s not obvious that Nietzsche, especially in light of his other psychological commitments, must claim that fanatics are certain of their convictions. First, needing to believe one possesses unconditional truth is not the same as being certain that one actually does possess such truth. The need may be met, and one may be uncertain that it is. Or the need may be unmet, and one may have awareness of this. In this situation, the fanatic finds himself in the tragic position of knowing his deep psychological needs are unmet. As a result, he may experience a fracturing or crumbling of the self, leading him to try to recover an integrated self by devoting himself to a cause and taking fanatical action as a sort of “significance quest” (Kruglanski et al. 2019). Thus, awareness of his unmet need, rather than a certain conviction, may be what motivates the fanatic’s radical behavior. So, radicalization without certainty is consistent with Nietzschean fanaticism. Second, self-deception plays a major role in Nietzschean psychology in general, and in his account of fanaticism in particular. For Nietzsche, the fanatic is a wishful believer and a rationalizer. But if he believes he possesses unconditional truth, he cannot know this belief is based in wishful thinking or rationalization: “The believer is not free to have a conscience at all over the question ‘true’ and false’: to be honest on this point would mean his immediate destruction” (A 54). So, self-deception is built into the picture. For this reason, I don’t see why Nietzsche couldn’t claim that the fanatic often thinks his need is met and so thinks he has achieved certainty, while simply falling into self-deception on this point. In other words, Nietzsche can claim the fanatic thinks he’s certain while he’s not. If an agent has a deep self-constituting need that isn’t being met, it seems completely in line with Nietzsche’s views to claim that it’s possible, even likely, that this agent would trick himself into thinking this need is met. Thus, again, radicalization without certainty is consistent with Nietzschean fanaticism. Are Nietzschean fanatics impervious to reason? This is complicated. Reflecting on this question will lead to my objection to the claim that radicalization is becoming a Nietzschean fanatic. We began asking about imperviousness to reason because Lockean fanatics consciously eschew reason. But a rejection of reason, even a localized one, should not be built into our understanding of radicalization. It’s complicated whether Nietzschean fanatics are impervious to reason because if they do reject reason, they do so unconsciously while consciously engaging in at least a replica of reasoning—perhaps like the Kantian fanatic who “raves with a show of reason.” Fanatics are wishful believers and rationalizers who deceive themselves into thinking they prioritize truth and reason in their belief management. A fanatic demands certainty but “on account of the ardor of this demand [the fanatic] is easier and more negligent about the demonstration of this certainty” (GS 347). Indeed, the fanatic might not only ignore relevant evidence to protect his feeling of certainty, he might adjust his view of what counts as good evidence to do so (Reginster 2003: 61). So, the fanatic treats his convictions as fixed points, cares little about how well his grounds actually support those convictions, and will even revise his beliefs about evidential relations in order to maintain them. Reginster (ibid.) claims that, for Nietzsche, the man of conviction “proves to be impervious to epistemic reform.” Nevertheless, rather than consciously rejecting reason, outwardly he does play the evidence and reasons “game.” Are Nietzschean fanatics impervious to reason? Hard to say. This points to a problem for the hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a Nietzschean fanatic. My complaint is not that it’s false that people who radicalize are Nietzschean fanatics. They might be. 202

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Rather, my complaint is epistemic. Nietzsche’s account is a “deep psychological account” of fanaticism. It explains surface level psychological and physical behavior—like professions of faith or expressions of certain convictions—in terms of contrary psychological factors consciously inaccessible to the fanatic himself. Of course, the rare individual like Eichmann can self-consciously express almost exactly the frail condition Nietzsche attributes to all fanatics. But even Nietzsche would agree that not all fanatics or agents who have radicalized experience such self-awareness. And I suspect that if those who have radicalized do have the psychological makeup Nietzsche attributes to fanatics, uncovering it would require significant psychological therapy. In short, determining whether someone is a Nietzschean fanatic—or any other kind of fanatic marked by deep psychological features— takes a lot of psychological work. Determining whether someone has radicalized, on other hand, does not require this much or this kind of work. Did Tsarnaev, Roof, or Drain radicalize? Yes. Did they need to believe they possessed unconditional truth? Would their selves crumble without such a belief? Who knows? According to Nietzsche, even they may not know. This epistemic disconnect between radicalization and Nietzschean fanaticism provides sufficient reason to doubt whether the former should be analyzed in terms of the latter. This does not imply that radicalization contains no psychological component, or that we’re incapable of detecting psychological features in particular cases. With minimal background knowledge, we can glean various psychological properties from Tsarnaev’s, Roof ’s, and Drain’s behavior, such as a willingness to engage in hostile behavior out of devotion to a cause. But what unconscious needs they possess and how those needs, rather than their professed commitments, motivate them are questions we don’t need to answer to know that they have radicalized. Thus, though it may fare better than its competitors, we should ultimately reject the hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a Nietzschean fanatic.

12.5 Conclusion To make progress elucidating the extremism web, this chapter has scrutinized the hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a fanatic, examining four accounts of fanaticism offered by three historical figures, Locke, Kant, and Nietzsche. I hope that outlining these accounts in one setting contributes to a historical understanding of the extremist web. Recurring themes—certainty, revelation, the bounds of experience, reason, and the abdication of agency—are braided throughout these accounts, and I have tried to clarify where these figures do or can stand on these themes. My primary aim, however, was to inquire into whether these figures’ accounts of fanaticism could help analyze radicalization, a form of transformation currently undertheorized by philosophers. After evaluating the hypothesis that radicalization is becoming a fanatic by deriving lessons from actual paradigm cases of radicalization, in the end we should conclude that even if Locke, Kant, or Nietzsche correctly analyzes fanaticism, radicalization is not becoming a Lockean, Kantian, or Nietzschean fanatic.

Notes 1 NPR “China Detains Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims in ‘Training Centers’”; BBC: “Inside China’s ‘Thought Transformation’ Camps.” 2 See DiBlasio (2013). 3 See Ghansah (2017). 4 See Kendall (2011) and Theroux (2007). 5 When someone has radicalized there are often signs, but who will radicalize is not easily predictable: the thought that extremists are the downtrodden, the poor, the uneducated, or the outcasts of society does not withstand empirical scrutiny (Kruglanski et al. 2019: 66–7).

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Joshua DiPaolo 6 Kant used “enthusiasm” differently. More on this shortly. 7 Nietzschean texts are referenced as follows: A = The Antichrist, BGE = Beyond Good and Evil, GS = The Gay Science. 8 It’s the weakness and need, rather than any particular commitment fulfilling it, that constitute fanaticism for Nietzsche. A “scientific spirit,” too, can be a fanatic, if he is motivated by the “need for a faith, a support, backbone” (Reginster 2003: 65).

Bibliography Arendt, H. (2006) Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Penguin Books. Boespflug, M. & R. Pasnau. (2022) Enthusiasm. In Eds. J. G. Roth & S. Weinberg. The Lockean Mind. New York: Routledge. 554–563. DiBlasio, N. (2013) Details emerge on Boston suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. USA Today. https://www. usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/19/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-boston-bombing/2095953/. Accessed: April 3, 2021. Ghansah, R. (2017) A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof. GQ. https://www.gq.com/ story/dylann-roof-making-of-an-american-terrorist. Accessed: April 3, 2021. Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice. New York: Oxford University Press. Kant, I. (2007) Anthropology, History, and Education. Ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A.W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2002) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Ed. and trans. P. Guyer and E. Mathews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2001) Religion and Rational Theology. Ed. and trans. A.W. Wood and G. DiGiovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2009) Religion Within the Bounds of Reason. Trans. W. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett. Katsafanas, P. (2019) Fanaticism and Sacred Values. Philosopher’s Imprint 19: 1–20. Kendall, J. (2011) At Westboro Baptist Church, Steve Drain found religion but lost a daughter. The Pitch. https://www.thepitchkc.com/at-westboro-baptist-church-steve-drain-found-religion-but-lost-adaughter/ Accessed: April 3, 2021. Kruglanski, A., J. Belanger, R. Gunaratna (2019) The Three Pillars of Radicalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, W. (1985) Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Penguin Books. Locke, J. (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martinich, A.P. (2000) Religion, Fanaticism, and Liberalism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 71: 409–425. Neumann, P. (2013) The Trouble With Radicalization. International Affairs 89: 873–893. Nietzsche, F. (1966) Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage (1974) The Gay Science. Trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. (1968) The Anti-Christ. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin. Passmore, J. (2003) Fanaticism, Toleration, and Philosophy. Journal of Political Philosophy 11: 211–222. Reginster, B. (2003) What Is a Free Spirit? Nietzsche on Fanaticism. Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 85: 51–85. Sedgwick, M. (2010) The Concept of Radicalization as a Source of Confusion. Terrorism and Political Violence 22: 479–494. Tabb, K. (2019) Locke on Enthusiasm and the Association of Ideas. Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy IX. 75–104. Theroux, L. (2007) The Most Hated Family in America. BBC Documentary. Zuckert, R. (2010) Kant’s Account of Practical Fanaticism. In eds. B. Bruxvoort Lipscomb and J. Krueger, Kant’s Moral Metaphysics: God, Freedom, and Immortality. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 291–318.

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13 POST-KANTIAN IDEALISM AND SELF-TRANSFORMATION G. Anthony Bruno

What makes Immanuel Kant’s Copernican revolution Copernican and what makes it a revolution? The B-Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) proposes an “experiment” that “promises to metaphysics the secure course of a science”, viz., to assume, not that “all our cognition must conform to the objects”, which is an assumption that “[u]p to now” has “come to nothing”, but rather that “objects must conform to our cognition”. Kant compares this assumption to “the first thoughts of Copernicus”. Just as Copernicus discovers a shift in the nature of celestial bodies on the basis of a “hypothesis” about the orbital activity of the earth, so too Kant discovers a shift in the nature of natural bodies on the basis of an “analogous” hypothesis about the cognitive activity of the subject. Insofar as the subject contributes to cognition both the “representations of space and time” and “the elementary concepts of the understanding”, the object must “agree” with these representational elements and so must be cognizable, not as “a thing in itself ”, but rather as “an appearance”.1 Kant’s Copernican revolution is Copernican, then, because it turns from prioritizing the status of the object toward prioritizing the activity of the subject. The B-Preface also cites Copernicus’ theory as a “remarkable” example of sciences that “have become what they are now through a revolution brought about all at once”. Kant clarifies that the analogous revolution that he proposes for “the accepted procedure of metaphysics” is firstpersonal, since it amounts to a “transformation in our way of thinking” whereby the idea that “cognition reaches only appearances” serves as a “crosscheck” for our explanation of the possibility of cognition.2 This change of mind is not unlike what, in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), Kant calls a “change of heart”, viz., the “transformation” of our moral disposition whereby, through a “revolution” as opposed to a “gradual reform”, the “representation of duty” alone becomes our incentive to act.3 Such a change of heart results from judging, exclusively on the basis of consciousness of the moral law, that “[one] can do something because [one] is aware that [one] ought to do it and cognizes freedom within [oneself ]”, as Kant explains in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788).4 Moreover, a change of mind and a change of heart must be two aspects of one and the same revolution, given that, as Kant says in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), a “complete critique of reason” must transform our reason in both its theoretical and its practical uses.5 Kant’s Copernican revolution is a revolution, then, because it demands a transformation of oneself. DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-19

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While the idea that philosophy requires self-transformation is historically pervasive, it exerts considerable influence on the post-Kantians who first aim to systematize Kant’s idealism by grounding it on a first principle. In the 1790s, J.G. Fichte and F.W.J. Schelling offer competing accounts of the self-transformation that they regard as essential to positing a first principle. Their accounts raise two central questions. First, what makes this kind of self-transformation possible? Second, are there different possible expressions of philosophical self-transformation? In what follows, I will articulate the Fichtean and Schellingian answers to these central questions. For Fichte, at least during his Jena period, the one who summons me to posit a first principle makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has an exclusively idealist expression in that I can only genuinely posit the I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation depends on mutual recognition and vindicates precisely one philosophical system (Section 13.1). For Schelling, at least in his “Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism” (1795/96), a brute act of will makes possible my philosophical selftransformation, although the latter has either an idealist or a realist expression in that I can genuinely posit either the I or the not-I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation does not depend on mutual recognition and vindicates one of two possible philosophical systems (Section 13.2). Thus, whereas Fichtean self-transformation is recognitive and non-pluralistic, Schellingian self-transformation is pluralistic and non-recognitive. I conclude with a discussion of how F.H. Jacobi’s “Open Letter to Fichte” (1799) poses a challenge to Fichte’s and Schelling’s answers to the two central questions (Section 13.3).

13.1  The Kind of Philosophy One Chooses Fichte presents the Wissenschaftslehre as the “spirit” of transcendental idealism,6 which systematizes transcendental idealism by grounding it on a first principle, viz., the absolute freedom of reason or, equivalently, the I. In order to understand the self-transformation that he regards as essential to positing the I as a first principle, it is worth noting that, in coming to endorse idealism, Fichte undergoes his own philosophical self-transformation. In his 1807 Königsberg lectures, Fichte reports: “as a young man I was much more deeply rooted in the same Spinozism to which young people today, on far weaker grounds than those that I then repudiated, wish me to return”.7 Before formulating and defending a philosophy of freedom, Fichte was in fact a Spinozist or what he typically calls a “dogmatist”. This sheds light on his letter to F.A. Weisshuhn, August/September 1790, shortly after his conversion: “I have been living in a new world ever since reading the Critique of Practical Reason. Propositions that I thought could never be overturned have been overturned for me. Things have been proven to me which I thought could never be proven—for example, the concept of absolute freedom, the concept of duty, etc.—and I feel all the happier for it”.8 The seemingly irrefutable “[p]ropositions” are presumably to be found in Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics, according to which human freedom and hence moral duty are mere figments of the imagination. In a draft of a letter to H.N. Achelis, November 1790, Fichte all but characterizes his conversion as a Copernican revolution: The influence that [Kant’s] philosophy, especially its moral part (though this is unintelligible apart from a study of the Critique of Practical Reason), exercises upon one’s entire way of thinking is unbelievable—as is the revolution that it has occasioned in my own way of thinking in particular. I particularly owe it to you to confess that I now believe wholeheartedly in human freedom and realize full well that duty, virtue, and morality are all possible only if freedom is presupposed. I realized this truth very well before—perhaps I 206

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said as much to you—but I felt that the entire sequence of my inferences forced me to reject morality. It has, in addition, become quite obvious to me that very harmful consequences for society follow from the assumption that all human actions occur necessarily.9 What follows from “inferences” according to Spinoza’s definitions, axioms, and geometric method is the rejection of human freedom. Fichte comes to view this as a social nightmare in which one’s action is the effect of antecedent causes over which one has no control and for which one thus has no responsibility. He subsequently describes this “revolution” in thinking in “On Stimulating and Increasing the Pure Interest in Truth” (1795) as “the elevating consciousness that is expressed in the following words: ‘I was a machine, and I could have remained one. Motivated by myself and by means of my own strength, I have made myself into an autonomous being[’]”.10 Inspired by the practical aspect of Kant’s Copernican revolution, Fichte transforms his conception of himself from a Spinozistic “machine” into a morally dutiful and thus free subject. But what does this self-transformation involve? The answer lies in the nature of the dispute between idealism and dogmatism. In Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre (1797/98), Fichte asserts that philosophy’s first “task” is to posit the “explanatory ground” or first principle of experience.11 To this end, a philosopher must posit either the free activity of the “intellect”, i.e., the absolute freedom of reason or the I, or the substantial existence of the “thing in itself ”, i.e., the absolute existence of nature or the not-I. In positing the former, a philosopher endorses “idealism” and, in positing the latter, they endorse “dogmatism”.12 Fichte then argues that the dispute between idealism and dogmatism cannot be settled theoretically, i.e., on the basis of conceptual analysis: Neither of these two systems can directly refute the opposing one; for the dispute between them is a dispute concerning the first principle, i.e., concerning a principle that cannot be derived from any higher principle. If the first principle of either system is conceded, then it is able to refute the first principle of the other. Each denies everything included within the opposite system. They do not have a single point in common on the basis of which they might be able to achieve mutual understanding and be united with one another. Even when they appear to be in agreement concerning the words of some proposition, they understand these same words to mean two different things.13 This passage gives three reasons for why the idealism-dogmatism dispute is theoretically insoluble. First, each competing first principle is a derivational ground and so “cannot be derived” from any ground that might justify it. In other words, both the I and the not-I function as unmediated presuppositions.14 Second, each principle, if it is “conceded”, grounds a rigourous, comprehensive explanation of experience that rules out its opposing principle. Thus, the thing in itself is unthinkable on the presupposition of the freedom of the intellect and vice versa.15 Third, each principle renders an opposing system unintelligible, since words in one system that are repeated in the opposing system differ in “mean[ing]”. For example, an idealist recognizes nothing that a dogmatist means by the words “nature exists”, a dogmatist recognizes nothing that an idealist means by the words “humans act”, etc.16 Conceptual analysis thus cannot resolve the dispute between idealists and dogmatists. It shows only that they beg the question against each other, share no common ground with each other, and talk past each other.17 The dispute must therefore be resolved, not theoretically, but rather practically. For an idealist, this involves attaining consciousness of their freedom, which is a self-transformation whereby they turn from cognizing themselves as a given object, i.e., as a modification of nature or the 207

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not-I, to cognizing themselves as an active subject, i.e., as an expression of reason or the I. Fichte calls this consciousness “intellectual intuition”.18 On the one hand, consciousness of one’s freedom is intellectual. Otherwise it is sensible, in which case it passively receives something that is externally given and therefore fails to be a cognition of oneself as internally active. As Fichte says, consciousness of freedom “does not impose itself upon anyone”, but rather “depends upon [one’s] own self-activity”, i.e., upon “performing the act” through which freedom originates.19 On the other hand, consciousness of one’s freedom is intuitional. Otherwise it conceptually mediates its access to freedom, in which case freedom is not an unmediated presupposition and therefore fails to be a first principle. As Fichte says, consciousness of freedom is “the immediate consciousness that I act and of what I do when I act”.20 Resolving the dispute in idealism’s favour accordingly involves a revolution in thinking, viz., the self-transformation whereby one elevates the self of which one is conscious from an object to a subject, i.e., from a being to an acting. Fichte acknowledges that intellectual intuition constitutes a refutation of dogmatism “ for [idealists]”, not “ for [dogmatists]”.21 This is because idealism depends on “performing the act” through which the freedom of which it is conscious originates and therefore depends on the very “self-activity” whose existence a dogmatist denies in thought. If there is to be a genuinely universal refutation of dogmatism, then, a dogmatist must somehow conceal an incipient power of freedom through which they refute their own position in action. In order to demonstrate a dogmatist’s self-refutation, Fichte reminds us that positing a first principle is not a given feature of one’s being, but is rather a task for one’s doing, i.e., a way of living or performance in which one regards oneself as correct and for which one therefore regards oneself as responsible. In other words, positing is a normative activity, which depends on one’s freedom to conduct it and to do so properly. However, this presupposes that positing is “a free act of thinking”.22 Now, a dogmatist posits the not-I as a first principle. But since their first principle rules out the “free act” in which positing consists, their act of positing is a performative contradiction. Hence Fichte says in Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95) that a dogmatist who abstracts from the I in order to posit the not-I must “think unawares” of the I and so must “unwittingly subjoin in thought the very thing from which they have allegedly abstracted, and contradict themselves”.23 It is because a dogmatist unwittingly smuggles freedom into their act of positing that, as Fichte puts it in the Wissenschaftslehre Nova Methodo (1796/99), their philosophical position contains its own “cure” and “antidote”.24 Positing the not-I as a first principle betrays one’s I-hood. If dogmatism is self-refuting, then idealism is the only possible expression of the selftransformation that constitutes positing a first principle. As Fichte concludes, “[t]he only type of philosophy that remains possible is idealism”.25 This answers the second central question above. Let us turn now to the first central question concerning what makes this exclusively idealist selftransformation possible. In “Concerning the Difference Between the Spirit and the Letter Within Philosophy” (1794), Fichte says: just as we were ushered by birth into this material world, so philosophy seeks—by means of a total rebirth—to usher us into a new and higher world. (I am speaking here of transcendental philosophy, not of the ordinary sort of “popular philosophy”—which is not philosophy at all.) Our first birth inserted us into the series constituted by the specific characteristics of that which is represented; this second birth seeks to lift us into the series constituted by the specific characteristics of that which represents. The same difficulty that kept us from entering the first world also prevents us from entering this second one.26 208

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This passage contrasts our “first birth”, which affords us consciousness of objects, i.e., consciousness of empirical beings that are “represented”, with a “second birth” that “lift[s]” us into consciousness of freedom, i.e., consciousness of the active standpoint that “represents”.27 Fichte assigns this “total rebirth” to “transcendental philosophy”, i.e., to systematic transcendental idealism. This is because, as we have seen, it is idealism alone that properly tasks us with the selftransformative act of positing a first principle, our positing which involves consciousness of our freedom via intellectual intuition. Fichte describes this self-transformation in terms of one’s elevation from the “material world” to a “higher world”, i.e., from consciousness of our mere being to consciousness of our free acting. Crucially, the passage implies that both our initial emergence into the world of objects and our subsequent elevation into the world of freedom are conditioned by our relation to others. As Fichte says, “[t]he same difficulty that kept us from entering the first world also prevents us from entering this second one”. The “difficulty” that is involved in each birth is our need for another to occasion that birth. Hence Fichte explains that, for the possibility of our first birth, “parents” must summon us by creating our material existence, whereas, for the possibility of our second birth, a “teacher” must summon us by inviting our free response.28 The difficulty in each birth, viz., the difficulty of entering a new world, is overcome only when another summons us in the appropriate sense. There is, however, an important difference between these births. In one’s first birth, one’s dependence on another is not reciprocal. By contrast, in one’s second birth, one’s dependence on another is indeed reciprocal. Fichte can invite us, as he does in the Nova Methodo, to think of the wall, to think of ourselves thinking of the wall, and to become “immediately conscious” of the identity of “the thinker and the thought” in this second thought. By attaining this consciousness, we determine our thought and thereby exhibit the freedom of reason or the I. However, Fichte cannot perform this “instance of free acting” for us, on pain of contradiction.29 In other words, he cannot successfully serve as midwife for our second birth without our spontaneous response. Hence he says that “if one wants to communicate [idealism] to someone else, one has to ask the other person to perform the action in question”.30 Hence too, in the New Presentation, he says: “insofar as [one] is summoned to think of [oneself ], [one] is summoned to engage in a type of inner acting that depends upon [one’s] own self-activity”.31 Thus, insofar as consciousness of one’s freedom is a kind of philosophical self-transformation, it is made possible by a summons.32 This answers the first central question above. Addressing his students as a teacher, Fichte articulates the second-personal condition of converting to idealism: “We are fortunate if we possess philosophy ourselves, but we cannot give it away. All of our philosophical assertions are ‘bodies’ and nothing more. And we hand these bodies over to you in order to help you to develop philosophy out of and through your own self—not that you could not also do so without the help of these ‘bodies’”.33 A teacher gives a student no less, but no more, than the letter of philosophy, i.e., the audible “bodies” of its assertions or, “without the help of these”, the visual bodies of its writings. A student can study and memorize the letter of philosophy. But in order to “possess” philosophy themselves, they must exhibit its spirit, viz., by replying to a teacher’s summons to philosophize. Since to philosophize is to satisfy philosophy’s first task of positing the first principle of experience, which we saw is an inescapably “free act of thinking”, the student’s reply to their teacher must be free. Their reply will therefore necessarily exhibit the freedom of reason, i.e., they will necessarily demonstrate their I-hood. The only question is whether they do so with the good faith of an idealist’s intellectual intuition or with the bad faith of a dogmatist’s performative contradiction.34 We might wonder how a summons can condition the self-transformation that constitutes the positing of idealism’s first principle yet count among the derivative conditions of experience, 209

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i.e., the categories, that idealism deduces from this principle. In Foundations of Natural Right (1796), Fichte observes that since the object presupposes the subject’s freedom (for otherwise the subject’s freedom is impossible) and vice versa (for otherwise the subject’s freedom is unconstrained), each will presuppose the other “ad infinitum”. This regress, he argues, “can be cancelled only if it is assumed that the subject’s efficacy is synthetically unified with the object in one and the same moment”, viz., in an event that “leave[s] the subject in full possession of its freedom to be self-determining”. Fichte locates this event in another’s summons, which “call[s] upon [a subject] to resolve to exercise its efficacy”. 35 Your summons makes room for my freedom in a way that an object cannot, for it both limits me by inviting me to recognize your freedom and limits itself by inviting and thus recognizing my freedom. Moreover, by removing the regress that is produced by the subject-object relation, the concept of the summons counts as a category that makes experience possible and that is derivable from idealism’s first principle. But then it seems, paradoxically, that the summons both makes possible and follows from idealist self-transformation. We can avoid what seems like a paradox by observing three features of the double role of the summons. First, the summons plays a metaphilosophical role when it conditions one’s consciousness of freedom as such, whereas it plays a categorial role when it conditions one’s exercise of freedom with others. Second, the summons that conditions idealist self-transformation is a particular expression of the general kind of event that idealism subsequently deduces as a condition of exercising one’s freedom. Third, by deducing the summons with which it begins, idealism at least arguably derives its own basic condition and thereby at least arguably shows itself to be a self-justifying philosophical system.36 I conclude this section by pausing over Fichte’s famous dictum that “the kind of philosophy one chooses […] depends upon the kind of person one is”. 37 This dictum might be taken to imply that one can genuinely choose dogmatism, given a dogmatic personality, and hence that Fichte is a pluralist. However, since he regards dogmatism as self-refuting, he cannot be a pluralist. The dictum rather implies that one can either choose idealism or else fail to see that one’s own response to philosophy’s first task proves that idealism is the only choice. The kind of person one is thus has certain restrictions concerning the possibility of philosophical self-transformation. 38 Admittedly, Fichte argues that, in the absence of sufficient reasons that might theoretically resolve the idealism-dogmatism dispute, the “decision between these two systems is one that is determined by free choice”, the “basis” for which choice being one’s “inclination and interest”. However, he immediately clarifies that one’s “supreme interest and the foundation of all one’s other interests is one’s interest in oneself ”, where an idealist’s self-interest is intended to reflect her “absolute self-sufficiency” and a dogmatist’s self-interest is intended to reflect the “self-sufficiency of things”.39 However, a dogmatist’s self-interest unintentionally reflects her self-sufficiency, for, as we saw, she must regard her response to philosophy’s first task as correct and hence as an act for which she is responsible, which presupposes her freedom. Thus, although self-interest ultimately grounds one’s choice between idealism and dogmatism, this ground inescapably exhibits one’s freedom. As Fichte puts it: “I am only active. I cannot be driven from this position. This is the point where my philosophy becomes entirely independent of all arbitrary choice and becomes a product of iron necessity—to the extent, that is, that free reason can be subject to necessity; i.e., it becomes a product of practical necessity. I cannot go beyond this standpoint because I am not permitted to go beyond it”.40 I turn now to Schelling’s “Philosophical Letters”, whose main aim, he says, is “to make the freedom of minds known”.41 210

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13.2  The Kind of Philosophy One Lives By the time that Schelling publishes the “Philosophical Letters”, he is steeped Fichte’s early Jena work. Schelling sends “On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in General” (1794) to Fichte, who in return sends him fascicles of the Foundations, which then inspires Schelling’s “Of the I as Principle of Philosophy or On the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge” (1795). However, philosophical differences between the two idealists soon emerge. Like Fichte, Schelling recognizes the theoretical possibility of precisely two systems, viz., criticism and dogmatism, which he says “are nothing else than idealism and realism systematically conceived”, i.e., nothing else than the Wissenschaftslehre and Spinozism.42 Schelling explains that the dispute between criticism and dogmatism regarding the first principle of experience “must proceed from the very point from which the controversy of philosophy itself proceeded”, viz., the question of how we “come to egress from the absolute”, which he says Kant “expressed differently” in the first Critique as the question of how we “come to judge synthetically”.43 How are these questions synonymous expressions of the same problem? According to Schelling, “no controversy is possible about the absolute as such”, since in it “no laws are observed except the law of identity” and hence “none but analytic propositions are valid”. In other words, there is no philosophical “strife” regarding the absolute, for it consists in the identity of subject and predicate.44 Such strife accordingly assumes our “egress from the absolute”, in which case it assumes the difference between subject and predicate. But then our egress involves the use of synthetic propositions rather than merely analytic propositions. Thus, for the dispute between criticism and dogmatism to proceed from the question of how we egress from the absolute is precisely for it to proceed from the Kantian question of how we judge synthetically. As Schelling says, criticism and dogmatism disagree, “not about the question whether there are any synthetic judgments”, but rather about the “decidedly higher question” about the “principle” of the unity of synthetic judgment, i.e., the principle that makes synthetic judgment possible.45 Moreover, since this principle is none other than the first principle of experience, which is the realm in which we make synthetic judgments, we can say that the dispute between critics and dogmatists must proceed from the task of explaining the possibility of experience. Hence Schelling paraphrases the synonymous questions regarding our egress from the absolute and regarding the possibility of synthetic judgment with the question “why is there a realm of experience at all?”.46 Again like Fichte, Schelling denies the theoretical solubility of the criticism-dogmatism dispute, which he concludes “necessarily becomes practical”.47 Whereas Fichte concludes this on the basis of the inadequacy of conceptual analysis for resolving the dispute, Schelling concludes this on the basis of Kant’s argument in the first Critique that reason is theoretically “unable to realize the unconditioned” that conditions cognition, since the unconditioned cannot be given in any possible experience, and so “demands the act through which [the unconditioned] ought to be realized” and accordingly proceeds from the “domain of practical philosophy”.48 Unlike Fichte, however, Schelling holds that both criticism and dogmatism can practically resolve the dispute, i.e., the dispute is practically resolvable both by a system that begins from the free activity of reason or the I and by a system that begins from the substantial existence of nature or the not-I. As I will put the point, although Schelling himself endorses criticism, he diverges from Fichte by regarding both criticism and dogmatism as livable philosophical systems. In order to defend the possibility of a “consistent dogmatistic ethics”, Schelling claims that, “like any other ethics”, the “ethics of dogmatism” aims to solve “the problem of the existence of the world”. He explains that this is none other than “the problem of all philosophy”, viz.,

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the problem of the “transition from the non-finite to the finite”, which is yet another synonymous expression of the question of how we egress from the “non-finite” absolute toward the experience of the “finite” world.49 However, it is not yet clear why dogmatism’s response to this question is not only theoretically consistent, which Fichte concedes, but also practically consistent. Schelling clarifies that Spinoza’s is a “system of ethics” because it is intended, not as “an artifice, a mental play”, which he says Spinoza would find “loathsome”, but rather as something whose “purpose” is to be “lived”.50 Spinoza posits the first principle of dogmatism as an unconditioned condition that is “realiz[able]” through his own actions, which, if consistent with the propositions of the Ethics, will exhibit the causal necessity that governs every mode of nature. The realizability of a first principle and hence the livability of the system that rests on that principle is what Schelling calls “the practical dictum heeded by all philosophy”. It is to this practical dictum that he contends Spinoza “owed [his] solution” to the “problem of all philosophy”.51 Hence Schelling describes Spinoza as deciding “practically” that he is a mode of nature, asserts that Spinoza “has recourse to practical postulates”, and ascribes to Spinoza, not simply theoretical consistency, but also the practical characteristics of “calmness” and of a “serene spirit”.52 Hence too he claims that although criticism and dogmatism “differ in the spirit of the action” of practically realizing the unconditioned, the “action as such […] cannot in turn distinguish” these systems.53 In other words, critical and dogmatic realizations of the unconditioned are similar in kind qua “action[s]”, although they differ in degree of “spirit”, viz., by displaying moral vigour and serene calm, respectively. Both systems are in this respect livable. Both therefore offer practical solutions to their dispute. However, Schelling’s contention about the livability of dogmatism will not convince Fichte, who will insist, as he does in the New Presentation, that Spinoza “could not have been convinced of his own philosophy” because it “directly contradicts those convictions that Spinoza must necessarily have adopted in his everyday life, by virtue of which he had to consider himself to be free and self-sufficient”.54 I will now reconstruct a five-step argument from the “Philosophical Letters” that can support Schelling’s contention. First, Schelling claims that synthetic judgment has “two conditions”. It must be “preceded by an absolute unity”, viz., the origin in which subject and predicate are analytically identical and from which, as subjects, we must egress in order to judge synthetically about objects in experience. And it must “terminate in an absolute thesis”, viz., the ideal in which the experiential opposition between the judging subject and the judged object has been removed and thus “cease[s]”.55 Fichte arguably adheres to these two conditions in the New Presentation when he claims that the Wissenschaftslehre “commences” with “the I as an intellectual intuition”, which is the consciousness of the first principle on which experience rests, viz., the free activity that is constituted by the identity of the subject and the object, i.e., of “the thinker and the thought”, and “concludes” with “the I as an idea”, which represents the regulative ideal for which experience strives, viz., the perfect alignment of morality and the world.56 However, we will see that Schelling diverges from Fichte regarding the livability of intellectual intuition. Second, since we must posit a principle according to which synthetic judgment is possible, Schelling claims that we “must have worked our way up” to our starting point, for we “cannot get there by arguing”.57 We have seen why this is so. The dispute between criticism and dogmatism cannot be resolved by conceptual analysis, i.e., by “arguing” for either system on the basis of reasons. This is both because each system has equally sufficient reasons in its favour, given that each is rigourous and comprehensive, and because each system rests on an underivable ground,

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for which no reason can be given.58 Positing a first principle is thus an act of willing, not of reasoning.59 Hence Schelling says that “[w]e must be what we call ourselves theoretically”.60 So far, this agrees with Fichte’s position that the dispute is only practically resolvable. Third, since it is by an act of sheer will that one posits a first principle, Schelling claims that first principles are “nothing but proleptic assertions”, i.e., “original insuperable prejudices”. A first principle is “proleptic” in that no reason can be given for positing it and thus it is posited prior to any right that one could have for positing it. Hence Schelling says that a first principle is not “valid in and by [itself ]”, but rather is only valid “by our freedom”, i.e., by our initially and continuously striving to “be what we call ourselves”, whether as critics or as dogmatists.61 Positing a first principle is “prejudic[ial]”, moreover, in that it makes possible and thus precedes judgment, viz., the synthetic judgment by which we cognize objects in experience. Hence Schelling says that positing a first principle is not a cognition that is secured through judgment, but is rather a “practical decision”, viz., a wilful endorsement of or commitment to a philosophical system in which cognition is possible.62 But if positing a first principle is not cognitive, then it cannot consist in absolute cognition, whether of the I or of the not-I. As Schelling says, it is “groundless” to assert “an absolute in human knowledge”, i.e., an absolute cognition of the unconditioned condition or first principle of experience. We gain cognition only within the “realm of the conditioned”, i.e., within experience, whereas the unconditioned exceeds all possible experience.63 Fourth, since we cognize nothing by positing a first principle, Schelling claims that intellectual intuition cannot be the cognitive act it is purported to be. Indeed, he argues, intellectual intuition is not cognitive because it is not even livable: We awaken from intellectual intuition as from a state of death. We awaken through reflection, that is, through a forced return to ourselves. But no return is thinkable without resistance, no reflection without an object. We designate as alive an activity intent upon objects alone and as dead an activity losing itself in itself. […] [A]s long as intuition is intent upon objects, that is, as long as it is sensuous intuition, there is no danger of losing oneself. […] Should I maintain intellectual intuition I would cease to live; I would go “from time to eternity”.64 An activity is “dead” if it “los[es] itself ”, viz., by being absorbed into its object. Intellectual intuition is comparable to a “state of death” because it would involve one’s identification with reason or the I, in the case of critical intellectual intuition, or with nature or the not-I, in the case of dogmatic intellectual intuition. By contrast, the activity of experience is “alive” because while we “return to ourselves” in cognizing objects of experience, viz., by bringing cognitions under the unity of self-consciousness, this return is not “thinkable” without the “resistance” of objects whose existence is sensibly given to and thus independent of us. Hence Schelling says that whereas, in intellectual intuition, “I would cease to live”, in sensible intuition, there is no such “danger”.65 Intellectual intuition is accordingly unlivable. This is why Schelling associates both critical and dogmatic claims to intellectual intuition with “fanaticism”,66 a delusion to which Fichte and Spinoza equally fall prey and for which delusion Schelling coins the term “dogmaticism”.67 Fifth, since intellectual intuition is unlivable, Schelling concludes that positing a first principle can have “only a subjective value”.68 It is by an act of will that I decide to posit the I or the notI. My decision does not cognize an unconditioned condition, but rather exhibits the value that I wilfully invest in the philosophical system that rests on it. This value is subjective insofar as it

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expresses my initial and continuous endorsement of a system as a practical response to the problem of philosophy and thus as worth living. As Schelling puts it, “every system bears the stamp of individuality on the face of it” and the more that “individuality” partakes of a system, “the less it can claim universal validity”.69 My system demonstrates the value that I place in living with moral vigour, as a critic, or with serene calm, as a dogmatist. The longer I commit to living in this way, the more my system demonstrates a validity that is particular to me and perhaps also to us, but that is never “universal”. But if a system’s livability rests on no more than its subjective value, then, as Schelling contends against Fichte, dogmatism is livable just insofar as one values living a dogmatic life. This five-step argument reveals answers to the two central questions above. Regarding the question of what makes possible the philosophical self-transformation whereby one becomes a critic or a dogmatist, Schelling’s view is that this is made possible by an unprethinkable act of will. My decision to posit the I or the not-I as a first principle is thinkable. But it is not the result of a process of reasoning and so is not conditioned by a prior act of thought. Hence Schelling concludes the “Philosophical Letters” by stating that nature “reserve[s]” for the “worthy” a philosophy that “cannot be learned, recited like a litany, or contained in dead words”, but rather “is a symbol for the union of free spirits”.70 A philosophical system is not a fixed doctrine that must first be memorized and repeated, but is rather a way of life that must first be ventured. To live as a critic or a dogmatist is to be a “symbol” of freedom, i.e., to bear the mark of the activity of resolving to be what one calls oneself. While this agrees with Fichte’s view that a system is “not a lifeless household item one can put aside or pick up as one wishes”, but rather “is animated by the very soul of the who adopts it”,71 it does not ground a system’s adoption on the summons, but rather on one’s will alone.72 Regarding the question of whether there are different possible expressions of philosophical self-transformation, Schelling’s view in the “Philosophical Letters” is that there are two. Criticism and dogmatism are equally valid expressions of this self-transformation, since, as we saw, both are livable. Schelling makes his commitment to pluralism clear when he says that, “for a spirit who has made himself free and who owes his philosophy only to himself, nothing can be more unbearable than the despotism of narrow minds who cannot tolerate another system beside their own”.73 He does so again when he says that criticism and dogmatism each “can hold their own” as they approach “the ultimate goal” of judgment.74 He does so yet again when he says that dogmatism is refutable by one who “realizes” criticism “in oneself ” yet “irrefutable for him who is able to realize it practically”.75 Moreover, in opposition to Fichte’s identification of the Wissenschaftslehre with the spirit of Kant’s idealism, Schelling claims that the first Critique is “the genuine Wissenschaftslehre” precisely because it “cannot possibly put up one absolute principle in order to become a system (in the narrower sense of the word)”, but rather contains “the canon for all principles and systems”, from which he infers that it is “deplorable” to assign the “spirit” of the first Critique to “one system alone”.76 One can indeed pursue criticism as a system “in the narrower sense of the word”. But it is one of two narrowly construed systems whose common canon is derived from the first Critique, i.e., from the “genuine Wissenschaftslehre”, the spirit of which therefore cannot be restricted to either of that canon’s two expressions.77 Diverging from Fichte’s recognitive and non-pluralistic view of philosophical self-transformation in the Jena period, then, Schelling’s view of self-transformation in the “Philosophical Letters” is pluralistic and non-recognitive. Of course, Fichte and Schelling agree that positing the first principle of a philosophical system is not the theoretical result of a process of reasoning, but is rather the practical matter of deciding to live that system. We might worry that such a decision is problematically arbitrary. 214

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However, arbitrariness is only problematic within a system that provides a framework of reasons in which it can be objected that something happens for no reason and so violates what, according to that framework, counts as rational. But then a decision for such a system cannot be problematically arbitrary or irrational, but at most is arational. In other words, whereas the question of problematic arbitrariness is always internal to a system, the question of whether one wills to practically realize or live a system is always external to that system.78 This is why when, in the 1815 draft of the Ages of the World, Schelling says that “[e]verything must rest on the highest voluntarism”, his concern “is not freedom for a particular deed”, such as might be rational or irrational according to a particular system’s framework of reasons, but is rather the “absolute freedom” with which one wilfully, i.e., arationally, endorses or commits to a particular system.79 I conclude this section by noting that Schelling in fact anticipates by one year Fichte’s dictum that one’s chosen philosophy depends on one’s kind of person. We saw that, for Fichte, the dictum does not imply that one can choose dogmatism, but rather implies that one can either choose idealism or fail to see that idealism is one’s only choice. In the “Philosophical Letters”, Schelling prefigures this dictum when he says that the philosophical system that we choose “depends on the freedom of spirit which we have ourselves acquired”.80 This formulation of the dictum lacks reference to personality. However, as we saw, for Schelling, the critic and dogmatist do not differ in kind, since “action as such” cannot “distinguish” them. Rather, they differ in degree of “spirit” insofar as their respective systems bear the “stamp” of a distinctive “individuality”, i.e., insofar as their systems express a morally vigourous and a serenely calm personality, respectively. In other words, one’s chosen philosophy depends on one’s kind of person, where this implies, contra Fichte, that one can genuinely choose and genuinely live either criticism or dogmatism. Personality becomes a pivotal concept in Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809): no matter how high we place reason, we do not believe, for example, that anyone may be virtuous or a hero or generally a great human being on the basis of pure reason, indeed, not even, according to the familiar phrase, that the human race can be propagated by it. Only in personality is there life, and all personality rests on a dark ground that indeed must therefore be the ground of cognition as well.81 We can see in this passage the implicit suggestion that a philosophical system is a way of “life” that provides a framework in which practical and theoretical reasons, and hence “virtu[e]” and “cognition”, are possible. Schelling’s claim is that a livable system rests, not on reason, but rather on personality, where the expression of personality cannot be defined in exclusively idealist terms because it rests on a “dark ground”, viz., the unprethinkable primacy of the will.82 In particular, how one expresses one’s personality cannot be confined to the idealist terms of Fichte’s account of self-transformation, according to which idealist and dogmatic interests ultimately rest on an idealist self-interest that one either authentically expresses and affirms or inauthentically suppresses and evades. Thus, Schelling’s earlier formulation of the dictum diverges from Fichte’s later formulation by pluralistically acknowledging the livability of both criticism and dogmatism. I will now conclude by considering Jacobi’s interpretation of Fichte’s dictum and how it poses a challenge to Fichte’s and Schelling’s answers to the central questions regarding the possibility and the expressibility of philosophical self-transformation. 215

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13.3  The Kind of Philosophy One Inherits Jacobi concludes his “Open Letter to Fichte” by citing Fichte’s dictum: Every philosophy, without exception, is at some point marked by a miracle. Each has a particular site, its holy place, where its miracle appears and, being alone the true, makes all others superfluous. Taste and character determine to a large extent in which direction we shall look, towards one of these sites or another. You have aptly remarked on this yourself (on p. 25 of your New Presentation) where you say: “The kind of philosophy one chooses thus depends on the kind of person one is. For a philosophical system is not a lifeless household item one can put aside or pick up as one wishes; instead, it is animated by the very soul of the person who adopts it”. —You may well be surprised that I should quote this passage, and call it apt, for the surrounding context (pages 23 to 26) proclaims with biting wit your contempt, or at least your indifference, for my way of thinking, and a scarcely restrained ridicule. But for this reason I have thought of this passage with all the greater fondness, as an occasion to note that by writing this letter I have exhibited a strength of spirit at least not contemptible.83 Jacobi parses the dictum as stating that one’s chosen philosophy depends “without exception” on a “miracle” whose appearance is a “holy place” that consists “large[ly]” in one’s “[t]aste and character”, i.e., in the kind of person one is. He expects Fichte to be “surprised” that he approvingly quotes the dictum given its “surrounding context”, whose specified pagination contains Fichte’s argument above that, wittingly or not, idealistic self-interest grounds one’s decision to posit a first principle. Jacobi expects surprise because Fichte’s argument displays “indifference”, if not “ridicule” or “contempt”, for non-idealist positions, including Jacobi’s own realist position, from which he frequently attacks idealism.84 Nevertheless, he has undiminished “fondness” for the dictum because it indicates that his realism, no less than Fichte’s idealism, “exhibit[s] a strength of spirit”. In other words, Jacobi is fond of the dictum because he interprets it pluralistically such that one’s chosen philosophy depends on one’s kind of person, where this implies, contra Fichte, that one can genuinely choose against idealism. However, we will see that it also implies, contra Schelling, that one can genuinely choose against dogmatism. Jacobi’s realism is neither the Spinozistic dogmatism that Fichte regards as self-refuting nor the Spinozistic dogmatism that Schelling regards as livable. In Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn (1785), Jacobi claims: I love Spinoza, because he, more than any other philosopher, has led me to the perfect conviction that certain things admit of no explication: one must not therefore keep one’s eyes shut to them, but must take them as one finds them. I have no concept more intimate than that of the final cause; no conviction more vital than that I do what I think, and not, that I should think what I do. Truly therefore, I must assume a source of thought and action that remains completely inexplicable to me.85 Jacobi “love[s]” Spinoza’s view that things are explicable only if they have infinite efficient causes and otherwise are “inexplicable”, for it shows him where the spade of explication turns. In particular, it shows him that those things which are not efficiently caused are not objects of explication, but rather are objects of “faith”.86 Rather than “shut” his “eyes” to them, Jacobi “take[s]” them as he “finds” them, viz., as things his “conviction” in which is “vital”, i.e., 216

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life-sustaining. For example, as a “source of thought and action”, his freedom is inexplicable because it grounds explications of what he thinks and does. Without the “mystery of freedom”,87 such explications would represent a causal regress that rules out the possibility of his freedom. Jacobi’s realism is thus one that begins, not with the dogmatist’s not-I, but rather with the brute fact of freedom. However, Jacobi’s realism does not begin with the idealist’s I either, for he regards his conviction in the existence of a transcendent deity as equally vital as his conviction in freedom. He argues in his letter to Fichte that human freedom is “unfathomable because God’s being is necessarily unfathomable”, since otherwise human freedom would be a “supra-divine power”. As he puts it, “God is, and is outside me, a living, self-subsisting being, or I am God. There is no third”.88 Jacobi takes the first option and associates the second option with Fichte’s idealism, for which he coins the term “nihilism”.89 The personality to which Jacobi owes his philosophy is accordingly confined to neither idealist nor dogmatic terms, contra Schelling. It is instead defined by Jacobi’s historical situation. While he agrees that one’s philosophy must be livable, he adds that it must “originate” from one’s “history”. Hence he asks rhetorically: “can living philosophy ever be anything but history?”.90 It is only within some historical situation, e.g., the 1780s pantheism controversy, that criticism and dogmatism offer relevant and seemingly exclusive options for philosophical self-transformation. One’s chosen philosophy thus depends on one’s personality specifically insofar as the latter is historically conditioned, i.e., conditioned by an inherited historical situation. Moreover, since inherited historical situations endlessly vary, the possible expressions of one’s personality will also endlessly vary. The historical pluralism to which Jacobi is committed is thus broader than Schelling’s systematic pluralism in the “Philosophical Letters”. Jacobi’s historical pluralism poses a challenge to Fichte’s and Schelling’s answers to the two central questions. Regarding the possibility of philosophical self-transformation, Fichte faces the problem of whose summons, depending on historical patterns of exclusionary practices including the anti-Semitism to which Fichte contributed,91 is deemed worthy of response, while Schelling faces the problem of whose act of will, depending on historical patterns of social conformity including philosophy itself, is truly authentic. Regarding the expressibility of philosophical selftransformation, Fichte and Schelling both face the problem of whether defending idealism or dogmatism, at least given subsequent developments in philosophy, can avoid a despotic restriction of viable philosophical options. To be sure, Jacobi is equally vulnerable to these problems. Indeed, we perennially face the problems of exclusion, conformism, and despotism. This indicates that the significance both of Fichte and Schelling’s disagreement about philosophical self-transformation and of Jacobi’s challenge to their respective positions is not restricted to the German idealist tradition, but rather extends to the entire course of post-Kantian thought.92 By challenging Fichte’s project of articulating an idealism that is absolute and therefore without contrary, Schelling’s early pluralism prefigures existentialism’s reassessment of philosophy’s first principle as the demand that one chooses oneself, where this is a genuine choice between alternative ways of living. And by expanding the alternatives beyond idealism and dogmatism, Jacobi perhaps unwittingly confronts us with the abiding ambiguities of existentially committing to transforming oneself. Stanley Cavell articulates these ambiguities in “An Emerson Mood”: “To say ‘Follow me and you will be saved’, you must be sure you are of God. But to say ‘Follow in yourself what I follow in mine and you will be saved’, you merely have to be sure you are following yourself ”.93 Philosophical self-transformation struggles to decipher whom it follows.94 217

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Notes 1 Kant KrV Bxvi, xviii, xviii–n, xxvi. 2 Kant KrV Bxv–xvi, xxii–n, xx. 3 Kant AA 6: 47, 51. 4 Kant AA 5: 30. 5 Kant AA 4: 405. 6 Fichte SW I: 479. 7 Fichte GA II/10: 114, translated by Breazeale (2018: 105). 8 Fichte (1988: 357). 9 Fichte (1988: 360–1). 10 Fichte SW VIII: 352. 11 Fichte SW I: 423. 12 Fichte SW I: 425–6. 13 Fichte SW I: 429. 14 Cf. Fichte: “[e]very philosophy presupposes something that it does not demonstrate on the basis of which it explains and demonstrates everything else” (GA IV/2: 17). 15 Cf. Fichte: “By means of a correct inference from his own first principle […] the dogmatist transforms this fact [viz., the consciousness of freedom] into an illusion and a deception” (SW I: 430). 16 Cf. Fichte: “[dogmatists are not] aware that anything is lacking in their system, for the opposed world [of representations] is not present for them at all. […] Dogmatism starts with a being, which it considers to be something absolute; consequently, this is a system that can never go beyond being. Idealism is not in the least acquainted with any sort of being, considered as something that subsists for itself. In other words, dogmatism begins with necessity, and idealism begins with freedom. Hence they find themselves in two completely different worlds” (SW I: 439, 509n). 17 Cf. Balog (2012) on the theoretical insolubility of the dispute between physicalism and anti-physicalism. 18 For an account of the interlocking problems that motivate Fichte’s doctrine of intellectual intuition, see Bruno (2022a). 19 Fichte SW I: 429, 462–3. 20 Fichte SW I: 463. Cf.: “The I is identical with immediate consciousness” (GA IV/2: 33) 21 Fichte SW I: 510. 22 Fichte SW I: 425. 23 Fichte SW I: 97. Cf.: “in presupposing the thoroughgoing validity of the mechanism of cause and effect, [dogmatists] directly contradict themselves. What they say stands in contradiction with what they do; for, to the extent that they presuppose mechanism, they at the same time elevate themselves above it. Their own act of thinking of this relationship is an act that lies outside the realm of mechanical determinism. Mechanism cannot grasp itself, precisely because it is mechanism. Only a free consciousness is able to grasp itself ” (SW I: 509-10). 24 Fichte GA IV/2: 16. 25 Fichte SW I: 484. 26 Fichte (1988: 203). 27 Cf. Fichte (1988): “in transcendental philosophy what is reflected upon is the activity of representing (the representing subject)” (201). 28 Fichte (1988: 202–3, 207). 29 Fichte GA IV/2: 29, 38. 30 Fichte GA IV/2: 28. 31 Fichte SW I: 461–2. 32 Kemp (2015) defines radical self-transformation as the willful undermining of one’s foundational value and argues that it is heteronomous on the grounds that one’s will is only free if it conforms to one’s foundational value. This argument seems unable to account for Fichte’s early conversion from dogmatism to idealism, which is arguably a philosophical guise of radical self-transformation yet is not heteronomous. Nevertheless, Kemp and Iacovetti (2020) plausibly argue that, for Fichte, overcoming our “natural propensity toward dogmatism” (SW I: 484) by converting to idealism involves spontaneous choice as opposed to rational affirmation and acts of grace. However, given that Fichte regards a summons as a condition of the possibility of philosophical conversion, the latter appears to involve the spontaneity of both one who converts and one who summons conversion.

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Post-Kantian Idealism and Self-Transformation 3 3 Fichte (1988: 207). 34 See Fichte: “The Wissenschaftslehre will become universally comprehensible […] as soon as we begin to educate human beings for their own purposes and as instruments of their own will and not as soulless instruments for the use of others. Education of the whole person from earliest youth: this is the only way to propagate philosophy” (SW I: 507). 35 Fichte SW III: 32–3. 36 That idealism is arguably self-justifying might suggest, contra Fichte’s argument in the New Presentation, that it is theoretically superior to dogmatism. However, this feature of idealism is dialectically inert, for it rests on intellectual intuition and thus depends on its practical superiority to dogmatism. 37 Fichte SW I: 434. 38 In his letter to Reinhold, 22 April 1799, Fichte says that Jacobi’s “Open Letter” to him appears to harbour “the fanaticism of real life. It is this fanaticism which forbids him to abstract dispassionately and impartially from real life, even for the sake of experiment. […] I consider such apathy to be absolutely necessary if one is to understand transcendental philosophy completely, without being either angered by it or lured by it into despair. […] A philosopher’s philosophy is independent of his life, and his life is independent of his philosophy” (1988: 429). 39 Fichte SW I: 433. 40 Fichte SW I: 466–7. Fichte’s view that representing I-hood is a priori (since it both makes experience possible and cannot be imagined away) and intuitional (since it both is singular to the exclusion of dogmatism and grounds the space of reasons that contains all representations within it) is comparable to Kant’s view in the Transcendental Aesthetic that representing space and time is a priori and intuitional. 41 Schelling SW I/1: 292. 42 Schelling SW I/1: 302; cf. SW I/1: 211–2. 43 Schelling SW I/1: 294. Cf. Schelling’s “Of the I as First Principle of Philosophy or on the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge” (1795): “Even the author of the Critique of Pure Reason, in his attempt not only to arbitrate the dispute among philosophers but to resolve the antinomy in philosophy itself, did not know what else to do than to state the point at issue in an all-encompassing question, which he expressed as follows: How are synthetic judgements a priori possible? As will be shown in the course of this investigation, this question in its highest abstraction is none other than: How is it possible for the absolute I to step out of itself and oppose to itself a not-I?” (SW I/1: 175). 4 4 Schelling SW I/1: 293–4, 308. 45 Schelling SW I/1: 295. 46 Schelling SW I/1: 310. 47 Schelling SW I/1: 311. 48 Schelling SW I/1: 299. 49 Schelling SW I/1: 299, 313–4. 50 Schelling SW I/1: 305. 51 Schelling SW I/1: 315. 52 Schelling SW I/1: 300, 316. 53 Schelling SW I/1: 334. 54 Fichte SW I: 513. 55 Schelling SW I/1: 296–8. 56 Fichte SW I: 515. 57 Schelling SW I/1: 308. 58 Cf. Schelling: “If I may say it in the words of Jacobi, philosophy seeks to unveil and reveal that which is, so that the nature or spirit of philosophy cannot lie in any formula or letter; its highest topic must be what is immediate in man and present only to itself, and cannot be what is mediated by concepts and laboriously recapitulated in concepts. The aim of philosophy is no mere reform of its discipline but a complete reversal of its principles, that is, a revolution which one can view as the second possible revolution in its field. The first took place when the recognition of objects was set up as the principle of all knowledge” (SW I/1: 156). 59 Paul (2014) describes major life choices as transformative experiences in which we learn something radically new, which is epistemically transformative, or become radically different, which is personally transformative. She argues that although decision theory holds that the rationality of a major life choice depends on imaginatively projecting ourselves into a future in which we have taken that choice, imaginative projection cannot show us what it will be like to have taken that choice, given the latter’s

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G. Anthony Bruno epistemic and personal consequences, and so cannot help us to assign a subjective value to that choice, from which she infers that major life choices cannot be rational. Insofar as philosophical self-transformation is transformative in Paul’s sense, we might conclude that they are not rational, but are rather voluntary. Carel and Kidd (2020) argue that most transformative experiences are not chosen, but rather are involuntary, e.g., sustaining a severe injury, or non-voluntary, e.g., being imprisoned and tortured. 60 Schelling SW I/1: 308. 61 Schelling SW I/1: 312–3. We can compare philosophical self-transformation with large-scale transformative pursuits, e.g., becoming a parent or a music lover, which Callard (2016) describes as aspirational because they aim at values whose appreciation is initially lacking and so exhibit proleptic rationality. Such pursuits, not unlike what Schelling calls being or, we might say, becoming what we call ourselves, occur over an extended, if not an endless, period of time. It is because the rationality of transformative pursuits is proleptic that Callard denies, contra Paul (2014), that we need to ask whether the decision in their favour is rational. 62 Schelling SW I/1: 313. Despite some terminological inconsistency, Schelling’s conception of decision is comparable to what Chang (2013) describes as willing a reason: “When you will that some consideration is a reason, you ‘stipulate’ or ‘command’—by a sheer act of will—that it be a reason. Willing something to be a reason is willing—perhaps unconsciously and non-deliberately: Let this be a reason! It is not believing, wanting, hoping, deciding, or intending that something be a reason. Nor is it pretending that or simply treating something as if it is a reason. Willing something to be a reason is the activity of placing your will—your very agency—behind its being a reason” (93). Cf. Chang (2009). 63 Schelling SW I/1: 308–9. 64 Schelling SW I/1: 325. 65 Just prior to this passage, Schelling argues that “actuality” for us must be “restricted”, i.e., spatiotemporally limited (SW I/1: 324). This contrasts with the actuality that intellectual intuition represents, viz., the I or the not-I, which is not spatio-temporally limited. 66 Schelling SW I/1: 320, 326. Although Schelling ascribes fanaticism to claims to intellectual intuition, which purport to cognize the “absolute unity” with which judgment begins, he also ascribes it to claims that purport to cognize the “absolute thesis” at which judgment aims (327). While the first ascription targets Fichte and Spinoza alike, Fichte would support the second ascription insofar as he regards the ultimate goal of judgment as an unattainable and therefore merely regulative ideal. Cf. di Paolo in this volume on fanaticism in Kant and other modern thinkers. 67 Schelling SW I/1: 333. See Nieke (1972: 278–9). 68 Schelling SW I/1: 313. 69 Schelling SW I/1: 304. 70 Schelling SW I/1: 341. 71 Fichte SW I: 434. 72 See Kierkegaard (2009): “when Jacobi discovers to his horreur that Lessing is really a Spinozist, he speaks out of total conviction. He wants to sweep Lessing off his feet. Lessing replies: ‘Good, very good! I can use all of that, but I cannot do the same with it. Altogether I quite like your salto mortale, and I see how a man with a good head can lower his head in a somersault in this way to get going; take me along, if at all possible’. Here Lessing’s irony comes out superbly, aware as he presumably is that when you are to leap you must surely do it alone, and also be alone in properly understanding that it is an impossibility. One has to admire his urbanity and his liking for Jacobi, and the conversational skill that so politely says: ‘take me with you, if at all possible’” (86). 73 Schelling SW I/1: 306. 74 Schelling SW I/1: 331. 75 Schelling SW I/1: 339. 76 Schelling SW I/1: 301, 304–5. 77 Kemp and Iacovetti (2020) object to my pluralist reading of Schelling in Bruno (2014), Bruno (2016), and Bruno (2020a). I rebut their objection in Bruno (2022b). 78 Cf. the distinction between internal and external questions in Carnap (1950: 21–3, 35–6). 79 Schelling SW I/8: 304. Cf. “most people are frightened precisely by this abyssal freedom in the same way that they are frightened by the necessity to be utterly one thing or another” (304). 80 Schelling SW I/1: 308. 81 Schelling SW I/7: 413. 82 On the primacy of the will in Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations, see Bruno (2021).

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Post-Kantian Idealism and Self-Transformation 8 3 Jacobi (1994: 526–7); quotation from Fichte modified and cited from SW I: 434. 84 On Jacobi’s attack on transcendental idealism, see Bruno (2020b). 85 Jacobi (1994: 193). 86 Jacobi (1994: 230). Cf. Jacobi’s love for Spinoza with his love for the idealist, stated at the beginning of David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism (1787): “an idealist, basing himself on this distinction [between assertions of identity and assertions of existence], can compel me to concede that my conviction about the existence of real things outside me is only a matter of faith. But then, as a realist, I am forced to say that all knowledge derives exclusively from faith, for things must be given to me before I am in a position to enquire about relations” (1994: 256). 87 See Jacobi (1994: 519). 88 Jacobi (1994: 523–4). 89 Jacobi (1994: 519). 90 Jacobi (1994: 239). 91 See Franks (2016). 92 See Nietzsche (2002): “I have gradually come to realize what every great philosophy so far has been: a confession of faith on the part of its author, and a type of involuntary and unself-conscious memoir[.] […] [T]here is absolutely nothing impersonal about the philosopher; and in particular his morals bear decided and decisive witness to who he is—which means, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand with respect to each other” (8–9). 93 Cavell (2003: 32). 94 Thanks to Naomi Fisher, David Suarez, and Justin Vlasits for helpful comments on this chapter.

Bibliography Balog, Katalin (2012). “In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (1): 1–23. Breazeale, Daniel (2018). “Fichte’s Spinoza: ‘Common Standpoint’, ‘Essential Opposition’, and ‘Hidden Treasure’” in International YeGerman of German Idealism 14: 103–38. Bruno, G. Anthony (2014). “Freedom and Pluralism in Schelling’s Critique of Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre” in Idealistic Studies 43 (1/2): 71–86. Bruno, G. Anthony (2016). “‘As From a State of Death’: Schelling’s Idealism as Mortalism” in Comparative and Continental Philosophy 8, 3: 1–14. Bruno, G. Anthony (2020a). “Schelling’s Philosophical Letters on Doctrine and Critique” in Critique in German Philosophy: From Kant to Critical Theory, eds. M. del Rosario Acosta López, and C.J. McQuillan. Albany: SUNY Press. Bruno, G. Anthony (2020b). “Jacobi’s Dare: McDowell, Meillassoux, and Consistent Idealism” in Idealism, Relativism and Realism: New Essays on Objectivity Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide, eds. D. Finkelde, and P. Livingstone. Berlin: de Gruyter. Bruno, G. Anthony (2021). “Schelling on the Unconditioned Condition of the World” in Schellings Freiheitsschrift: Methode, System, Kritik, eds. T. Buchheim, T. Frisch, and N.C. Wachsmann. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Bruno, G. Anthony (2022a). “From Being to Acting: Kant and Fichte on Intellectual Intuition” in British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (4): 762–83. Bruno, G. Anthony (2022b). “Review of Reason and Conversion in Kierkegaard and the German Idealists, Ryan S. Kemp and Christopher Iacovetti” in Kantian Review 27 (1): 169–73. Callard, Agnes (2016). “Proleptic Reasons” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, ed. R. Shafer-Landau. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carel, Havi and Ian James Kidd (2020). “Expanding Transformative Experience” in” in European Journal of Philosophy 28 (1): 1–15. Carnap, Rudolph (1950). “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” in Revue internationale de philosophie 4 (11): 20–40. Cavell, Stanley (2003). An Emerson Mood” in Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chang, Ruth (2009). “Voluntarist Reasons and the Sources of Normativity” in Reasons for Action, eds. D. Sobel, and S. Wall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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G. Anthony Bruno Chang, Ruth (2013). “Commitments, Reasons, and the Will” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 8, ed. R. Shafer-Landau. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fichte, J.G. (1965). Sämmtliche Werke [SW], ed. I.H. Fichte. Berlin: de Gruyter. Fichte, J.G. (1988). Early Philosophical Writings, trs. D. Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Fichte, J.G. (1994). Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings, trs. D. Breazeale. Indianapolis: Hackett. Fichte, J.G. (1998). Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) Nova Methodo, trs. D. Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Fichte, J.G. (2000). Foundations of Natural Right, trs. M. Bauer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fichte, J.G. (2021). Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Related Writings (1794–95), trs. D. Breazeale. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fichte, J.G. (1962–2012). J.G. Fichte: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften [GA], ed. R. Lauth, H. Jacobs and H. Gliwitzky. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-holzboog. Franks, Paul (2016). “Fichte’s Kabbalistic Realism: Summons as ẓ im ẓ um” in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, ed. G. Gottlieb. Cambridge University Press. Jacobi, F.H. (1994). The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill, trs. G. di Giovanni. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1900). Kants gesammelte Schriften [AA, Except for Critique of Pure Reason, Cited in A/B Pagination for 1781/1787 Editions]. Berlin: de Gruyter. Kant, Immanuel (1996). Practical Philosophy, trs. and ed. M.J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1998a). Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason and Other Writings, trs. and ed. A.W. Wood and G. di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1998). Critique of Pure Reason, trs. P. Guyer and A.W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemp, Ryan S (2015). “The Self-Transformation Puzzle: On the Possibility of Radical Self-Transformation” in Res Philosophica 92 (2): 389–417. Kemp, Ryan S. and Christopher Iacovetti (2020). Reason and Conversion in Kierkegaard and the German Idealists. London: Routledge. Kierkegaard, Søren (2009). “Truth, Subjectivity and Communication” in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ed. and trs. A. Hannay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nieke, Wolfgang (1972). “Dogmatismus” in Historisches Wörterbuch Der Philosophie, Band 2, ed. J. Ritter, K. Gründer, and G. Gabriel: 278–9. Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co Nietzsche, Friedrich (2002). Beyond Good and Evil, trs. J. Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paul, L.A (2014). Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schelling, F.W.J. (1856–1861). Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schellings Sämmtliche Werke [SW], ed. K.F.A. Schelling. Stuttgart: Cotta. Schelling, F.W.J. (2000). Ages of the World (1815), trs. J.M. Wirth. Albany: SUNY Press. Schelling, F.W.J. (1980). The Unconditioned in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays 1794–1796, trs. F. Marti. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

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14 MARX ON SOCIAL STRUCTURE, IDEOLOGY, AND HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATION Jaime Edwards

14.1 Introduction A theory of transformation animated Marx’s thinking throughout his decades-long career. His core idea, historical materialism, is distinctive both for the way that it grounds conscious human activity in practical material conditions (hence the theory’s materialism) and the way it explains shifts from one epoch to the next in virtue of transformations of these conditions (hence its historicism). Thus, historical materialism purports to explain a society’s social structure and its mental production at a particular moment, as well as societal transformations over time. While Marx’s account has been profoundly influential, substantial criticisms of it persist, particularly aimed at its materialist component: How exactly are material conditions supposed to shape conscious activity? Why not think the causal relationship is exactly the reverse and that we should explain material conditions in terms of conscious activity instead? Does Marx’s view commit him to a form of determinism that is both philosophically untenable and even in tension with his own project, which seems at least in part to be one of working-class consciousnessraising? Absent compelling answers to these concerns, his attempt to explain historical transformation in terms of the development of basic material conditions rather than the development of social and political ideas will seem implausible. It is the task of this chapter to address these concerns. I will argue that Marx proposes a provocative yet defensible thesis that prevailing material conditions shape and constrain our thought, particularly our social and political thinking. Our ideas about the way things should and must be are favorably oriented toward the way things currently happen to be, and unorthodox thoughts that do emerge struggle to gain traction because those who manage the circulation of ideas work to suppress them.

14.2  Marx’s Account of Social Structure and Ideology Marx begins his analysis with “real” people working to satisfy their basic needs (securing food, clothing, and shelter) and creating new needs in the process (CW 5: 31). Every historical epoch has a specific mode of production. This mode is constituted both by the current “forces of production” (the available raw materials, current technologies, and technical skills) and by a division DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-20

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of labor best suited to maximize these particular forces that determine who will do what and under which conditions (CW 5: 53). Each mode of production in turn gives rise to a legal and political structure, as well as to the society’s economic, political, moral, and cultural ideas, which serve to support the mode of production itself. In this way, Marx traces the prevailing ideas of each epoch back to its practical activity, a fact that often escapes first-person conscious thought, which can “flatter” itself that it is free from such workaday concerns (CW 5: 45). Things do change, and occasionally in dramatic ways. The impetus for major social transformations, according to Marx, occurs when the economic structure begins to impede rather than complement the ever-developing productive forces. At such moments, those better positioned to maximize these productive forces seize the historical opportunity, thereby also revolutionizing the corresponding legal and political structures and the character of the society’s thought more generally. Marx’s historical materialism is animated by classes and their conflicts: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles […] oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (CW 6: 482). Prevailing economic systems sort individuals into different groups whose members are similarly situated with respect to realizing their material interests. However, this is not a society characterized by social cooperation among equals for mutual advantage, as we might hope. Rather, groups acting in pursuit of their self-interests inevitably find themselves in conflict. Those economically best positioned attain ruling class status, monopolizing political power, either through governing directly or through controlling the political figures who rule nominally, and then leveraging this power to ensure and enhance their own economic position. The others either toil away unaware of the extent to which class dynamics shape their lives, or they develop class consciousness—recognizing their position in the class struggle, fighting for gains where possible, and challenging the ruling class itself if and when they are fortunate enough to find themselves in the right position vis-à-vis the prevailing economic structure at an opportune historical moment. However, the great obstacle to the development of class consciousness is ideology. Marx claims that most moral, religious, political, and economic thought is ideological, which we will see amounts to saying that such thought consists largely of beliefs that have been systematically distorted by prevailing social circumstances and which function to support the interests of the ruling class by rationalizing the status quo arrangement that benefits them. Marx’s first sustained discussion of the topic occurs in the German Ideology. This work critiques the Young Hegelians, the leftwing philosophers whose criticisms had recently scandalized Europe and exerted an enormous influence on Marx himself, but whose idealist tendencies he now found theoretically misguided and an obstacle to social and political progress. Marx begins by articulating a paradigmatic Young Hegelian thought: “Hitherto men have always formed wrong ideas about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relations according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. […] They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations. Let us liberate them from the chimeras, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under the yoke of which they are pining away” (CW 5: 23). So far, so good. However, the Young Hegelian solution to this phenomenon is to encourage people to think differently. They are to abandon their superstitious beliefs and finally see themselves aright. The Young Hegelians share the same principle conviction: “[They] consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas […] as the real chains of men” and consequently take it to be “evident that [they] have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness” (CW 5: 30). Marx rejects this thought, and he warns that the change both he and they desire will not be realized simply by encouraging 224

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people to reinterpret the world through a different philosophical lens: “they themselves are opposing nothing but phrases to these phrases, and […] are in no way combating the real existing world when they are combating solely the phrases of this world” (ibid.). The attempt to change the world by changing its thinking yet without addressing the material conditions that give rise to this thought in the first place is a hopelessly ineffectual endeavor rooted in their idealism. Marx treats the term “idealism” both in the traditional sense, as an ontological claim that the universe is constituted by minds, as well as in a somewhat looser fashion. He had recently critiqued Hegel as an idealist in the traditional sense. The protagonist of Hegel’s philosophy is Geist (spirit or mind), the self-conscious and self-determining subject who posits the objects and institutions of the world in its quest for self-realization. Accordingly, the chief explanatory factor and proper object of study is Geist itself, not that to which it gives rise and of which it remains essentially a property. However, typically when Marx criticizes theorists for being idealists, he is not critiquing their ontological commitments regarding the fundamental nature of reality; instead, the charge is that they treat ideas as things that can be studied independently of the social contexts that gave rise to them, as well as granting ideas explanatory pride of place in their accounts of social transformation—a view which Charles Mills has helpfully labeled “sociological idealism” (Mills 1999). Marx emphasizes that he is not concerned with theoretical beliefs in general, but instead with our understanding of how social structures are constituted and transform over time, writing, for example, that “natural science, does not concern us here […W]e will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it” (CW 5: 29). On these grounds Marx criticizes the Young Hegelians generally, and Feuerbach in particular, the theorist who strove most explicitly to develop a materialist philosophy but failed to carry this through with respect to history. This conception of idealism in the sociological sense underwrites Marx’s claim to find idealism in theorists of all kinds, not only in Hegel’s philosophical heirs who have yet to free themselves from his idealism: “There is no specific difference between German idealism and the ideology of all the other nations. The latter too regards the world as dominated by ideas, ideas and concepts as the determining principles” (CW 5: 24). It also underwrites Marx’s claim that ideologists “give a sort of theoretical independence” to “the conditions of existence of the ruling class” by expressing them in legal and moral theories that appear independent of the conditions that gave rise to them, noting, “here, as in general with ideologists […] they inevitably put the thing upside-down and regard their ideology both as the creative force and as the aim of all social relations, whereas it is only an expression and symptom of these relations” (CW 5: 419–20). In other words, idealism in the sociological sense affects any sort of theorizing that considers ideas about human relations independently of the social conditions that give rise to them, and which accords these ideas explanatory significance with respect to social transformation. Philosophy is guilty, but so too religion, which explains the human world as a creation of the supernatural realm instead of the reverse, as well as the “superannuated idealism” of legal and political thinking “which considers the actual jurisprudence as the basis of our economical state, instead of seeing that our economical state is the basis and source of our jurisprudence”, and so on (CW 43: 490). Why do social theorists almost universally succumb to this sort of idealism? Again, idealism in the sociological sense involves both a failure to recognize the origins of one’s thinking and an overestimation of its influence on social transformation. Marx suggests the first failure stems from a theorist’s diminished contact with the basic material conditions resulting from the division of labor. The latter failure, the overestimation of causal power, Marx attributes to a bias resulting from professional preoccupation. Ideologists in general make the mistake of believing 225

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that ideas govern social reality, and the ideologists working within each particular “ideological subdivision” come to view social reality as largely governed by their areas of specialty. The cleric believes that social reality is ultimately governed by spiritual forces, legal theoreticians believe it is the law, and the same with ethicists, metaphysicians, economists, political theorists, and so on. The role of theorists is the systemization of thoughts with respect to their domain, and this “exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers” encourages the valorization of their particular domain of research (CW 5: 446–7). This is “why the ideologists turn everything upside-down”—that is, why they imagine the explanatory relationship between material conditions and theoretical ideas to be the reverse of what it is— “Everyone believes his craft to be the true one [and] illusions regarding the connection between their craft and reality are the more likely to be cherished by them […] The judge, for example, applies the code, he therefore regards legislation as the real, active driving force” (CW 5: 92). This is an illusion owing to social position, and Marx’s suggestion is that it can be explained both as a result of what we would now call a cognitive bias (a theorist overestimates the significance their particular specialty plays in the world because of the significance it plays in their own life) as well as what we would now call a motivational bias (a theorist comes to “cherish” their role and desires it to have a greater significance than it truly does). This idealism is not only illusory but also functions to bolster the prevailing social structures and the norms to which these give rise. Both Marx and the Young Hegelians criticized Hegel’s idealism on these grounds. Hegel claims that “the History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom” (Hegel 1988: 22) and that the state is the means through which history actualizes this freedom. “The state”, Hegel writes, is the divine idea as it exists on earth” (Hegel 1988: 42) and “the march of God in the world” (Hegel 1991: 279). To many, including Marx and the Young Hegelians, it seemed that Hegel was claiming that God’s march had reached its final destination at the Prussian state of his own day, and they read his famous dictum, “What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational” (Hegel 1991: 20), as an ode to its arrival. The Young Hegelians rejected Hegel’s glorification of the prevailing social order and turned to outspoken criticism of it. Marx notes that they were “received by the German public with horror and awe” and viewed themselves as radical social critics unleashing “world-shattering danger and criminal ruthlessness” on society (CW 5: 23). However, Marx argues that the idealism at the core of their thinking ensured their criticisms would be ineffective. In failing to address the material relations that are the source of social domination, the Young Hegelian philosophy does nothing to combat it. In fact, it does worse than nothing, since it distracts attention away from the actual means of doing so. “The Young-Hegelian ideologists”, Marx concludes, “in spite of their allegedly ‘world-shattering’ phrases, are the staunchest conservatives […T]hey are in no way combating the real existing world when they are combating solely the phrases of this world” (CW 5: 30). Contrary to their self-understanding and intentions, their projects contribute to bolstering the prevailing social order. After the German Ideology, Marx extends his use of the concept beyond a critique of idealism specifically to what we can call a critique of idealization (or valorization) that serves as an apologia for the prevailing social structures. These cases still involve false beliefs, which have been distorted by various biases affecting those who originally theorize them, and which serve to support or sustain the prevailing social structures. However, in the extended sense of ideology, the epistemic and genetic faults are no longer traced exclusively to idealism per se. Marx’s writings on politics are a rich source of this extended reading. Traces of it are already apparent in his earliest reflections on the French Revolution, yet it becomes more explicit in 226

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his responses to the unfolding political events of the 1840s and 1850s. Here he offers a broader application of the concept of “ideology” than that described thus far. In The Class Struggles, for example, Marx describes the partisan valorization of factional ideas as ideological. He speaks of “the ambitious intrigues and ideological demands of the revolutionary faction of the bourgeoisie” (CW 10: 85); he claims that the republican faction of the bourgeoisie wrote “its ideal basic features [into] the constitution”, but that the royalist faction then stripped “the constitution of [these] ideological trimmings” so that these ideals could not be appealed to in the regime’s subsequent “subjugation of the proletariat” (CW 10: 68); he observes that when members of the Assembly were faced with surrendering either their power or their ideals, “the respectable republicans surrendered the exaltation of their ideology more cheaply than the worldly enjoyment of governmental power” (CW 10: 90); he claims that Louis Philippe worked to conceal the fact that his government was merely a front for bourgeois interests, an effort which included avoiding appointing financers to public positions, since keeping up appearances required that “in his ministries the privileged interests had to bear ideologically disinterested names”, though the subsequent regime was unconcerned with such obfuscation, and “in place of the names of the saints it put the bourgeois proper names of the dominant class interests” (CW 10: 114); and so on. Throughout these works we have a similar indication that Marx treats ideology as an idealization of class interests, rather than as idealism specifically. This extended sense of ideology appears throughout his later economic writings as well. In Capital, for instance, Marx claims that the capitalist seeks to conquer economic markets both home and abroad. In foreign markets, the capitalist “has at his back the power of the mother country”, and so is able to simply “clear out of his way by force” those who oppose them. However, at home the capitalist is better served by winning people over with ideas, and he does so by employing “the sycophant of capital, the political economist” to proclaim the legitimacy of the capitalist’s aims, which the economist does “with all the more anxious zeal and all the greater unction, the more loudly the facts cry out in the face of his ideology” (CW 35: 752). Marx continues to highlight the symbiotic relationship between the “capitalist and his ideological representative, the political economist” throughout his later writings (CW 35: 573). At the heart of his critique is the idea that the theorizing of the economists “corresponds to the interests of the ruling classes by proclaiming the physical necessity and eternal justification of their sources of revenue and elevating them to a dogma” (CW 37: 817). So, what sorts of ideas do ideologists promote that support the interests of the dominant class? There are several types that Marx identifies. First, ideologists can explicitly support the ruling class by advocating ideas that glorify the system generally. For instance, during the French Revolution, the bourgeoisie enlisted the other classes in opposition to the monarchy, representing their particular interests as everyone’s interests, as ascendant classes typically do. However, once the new class consolidates its power, it tends to emancipate only its own members: the Bourgeoise, for instance, “emancipates the whole of society but only provided the whole of society is in the same situation as this class, for example, possesses money and education or can acquire them at will” (CW 3: 184). Once an ascendant class gains dominance, the primary task of the ideologist is to encourage the belief that the new ruling class continues to represent everyone’s interest by promulgating rhetoric that obscures the fact that life for most under the new regime is not so very different from how it was before. Second, ideologists can support the ruling class by explaining away endemic injustices or training people to accept these. The economist and clergyman Thomas Malthus, for instance, did not deny that some lived in opulence while most endured lives of miserable toil. However, he provided theories that explained the necessity of maintaining the status quo. First, he argued 227

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that the demand for luxury items by the unproductive classes (landlords, financiers, etc.) was the real motor of the economy, therefore a society’s economic health required protecting the standing of these classes. Second, he argued that any relief offered to the poor only led to an increase in the population, which would undermine any benefits this relief initially provided, and so there is ultimately nothing one can do to help. Marx considered Malthus a “bought advocate” (CW 31: 350) who provided “a new justification for the poverty of the producers of wealth, a new apology for the exploiters of labour […] a sycophantic service” for the ruling class (CW 31: 347). Third, ideologists can support ruling-class interests by unintentionally incorporating rulingclass-supporting ideas into their own theorizing. Marx faults both Adam Smith and David Ricardo, two thinkers he otherwise respects tremendously, for having done so (CW 37: 817). His central criticism was that both thinkers took it for granted that the capitalist system was the highest expression of the form of social organization that had always characterized human activity (CW 35: 14; CW 32: 243–4). This was manifest in several ways. At its foundation was a picture of natural man as a self-interested free-trader, which Marx considered an illusion of 18th Century imagination (CW 28: 17–18). Similarly, they failed to recognize wage labor and commodity production as recent forms of economic organization distinct from prior forms of production and trade that they only superficially resembled (CW 34: 406–7). This resulted in a failure to grasp the exploitation distinctive of capitalism and to underestimate the significance of the class conflict emerging in response to it (CW 35: 14). In short, Marx’s charge is that the classical economists read capitalism into human nature itself. Their work aimed to understand it, as well as to improve what it did best (efficient production), but they treated its harsher commitments (the inevitability of triumphant winners and immiserated losers) as inherent features characteristic of social life generally. Consequently, their “conception is, on the whole, in the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie” (CW 31: 348). Fourth, ideologists can support ruling class interests by promoting ineffective means of addressing social problems that they themselves recognize and aim to resolve. Marx’s criticism of the Young Hegelians for undermining the emancipatory outcomes that they desired by fixating on changing people’s ideas instead of their circumstances is a case in point. Fifth, something that Marx himself does not emphasize, but which some later thinkers in the Marxist tradition have, is that the ideologists can support ruling class interests by focusing on issues that distract attention away from more serious matters. Marcuse, for instance, criticized Ordinary Language philosophers of fixating on trivial things—knowing whether or not one has reached the correct description of the taste of pineapple, for instance, rather than confronting the fact that the holocaust had just occurred and the atomic age was now dawning (Marcuse 2013: 184–5). So, why do ideologists promote these false doctrines that support and sustain the prevailing social structures and benefit the interests of the ruling class in charge? Again, it is important to emphasize that Marx typically imputes insincerity neither to the ideologists nor the class they represent in regarding their particular interests as the general interests: “One must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within which alone modern society can be saved” (CW 11: 130). Ideology is typically delusion, not deception. But what accounts for this delusion? Broadly speaking, Marx offers five sources of ideological belief. The first three stem from what we would now call cognitive errors, whereby the sincere theorist responds too uncritically to things as they seem. 228

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First, their theories involve overgeneralizations based on things as they appear. The theorist’s “reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post festum with the results of the process of development ready to hand before him”, at which point things have “already acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life” (CW 35: 86). The appearance of the isolated individual desperate to get by under capitalism is presumed to evince the egoism and competition characteristic of human nature, their twelvehour days at the factory appear to exemplify an innate “propensity to truck and barter”, the rights that appear conducive to structuring current social relations are presumed to be natural rights conducive to social life universally, and so on (CW 3: 167). Second, theorists take it for granted that the familiar problems are the most important ones, and that the received ways of approaching these problems are the most apt. Consequently, they inevitably fail to recognize new issues that emerge (Ricardo’s failure to grasp the significance of the class conflict emerging around him, for instance), or they lack the resources to address them (CW 11: 130–1), while also tending to close their minds off to those who would challenge their presuppositions (CW 32: 158). Third, theorists too uncritically accept the testimony of other theorists. They “take[] every epoch at its word and believe[] that everything it says and imagines about itself is true” (CW 5: 62). This results in an ideological echo-chamber that increasingly amplifies and reinforces the apparent legitimacy of the prevailing social structures. The sorts of cognitive errors characteristic of the three sources outlined above are often the focus of Marx’s critiques. However, he also notes cases where the motivations of the theorists are the source of error. The fourth source of ideological belief is one of motivated reasoning, whereby the theorist evaluates evidence and argumentation in a way that enables them to reach their desired conclusion, though without necessarily realizing desire’s corrupting influence. For example, when bourgeois theorists confront a phenomenon that serves the capitalists while harming the working class, they desire a theory that shows this phenomenon to be inevitable, and therefore something to be accepted rather than overcome—a theory that “silences his conscience, makes hardheartedness into a moral duty and the consequences of society into the consequences of nature, and finally gives him the opportunity to watch the destruction of the proletariat by starvation as calmly as other natural events without bestirring himself ” (CW 6: 433–4). Similarly, Marx observes that the political economist, motivated both by a desire to quiet his conscience and to resolve theoretical headaches, attempts to theorize away the tensions in the economic system that he promotes: “the desire to convince oneself of the nonexistence of contradictions, is at the same time the expression of a pious wish that the contradictions, which are really present, should not exist” (CW 32: 149). Here the theorist is subject to the sorts of cognitive dissonance reduction strategies characteristic of much-motivated bias and their theorizing aimed more at reaching a desired outcome than discovering the truth. The fifth source of ideological thought is the sort of deliberate bad-faith apologia offered by Malthus and his economic heirs. The source is again motivational, though in this case the theorist is perfectly cognizant of this fact. The aim is to provoke belief in others, whether or not the theorist shares this belief (or the grounds of it). Malthus’s singular aim was to bolster the dominant classes, and he appealed to scientific principles when these seemed to serve this goal, and quickly abandoned them when they threatened to undermine it (CW 31: 349–50). As the bourgeoisie “conquered political power”, Malthus’s economic heirs increasingly worked to bolster this new arrangement: “It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or 229

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that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prizefighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic” (CW 35: 15). However, it is one thing to explain why theorists who tend to benefit from the prevailing social structures develop theories that support and sustain it; it is another to explain why those in non-dominant positions would ever come to accept these ideas. Marx’s central thought is quite straightforward. In addition to experiencing the world filtered through the very same sorts of biases that affect the ideologists themselves, members of society are also subject to a constant barrage of elite messaging: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas […] The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it […They rule] as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age. (CW 5: 59) The ruling class exerts influence on all of the institutions that formulate and promote ideas throughout the society—the media, political parties, advocacy groups, universities, the church, and so on—either through ownership, membership, patronage, or their power to sanction. This influences who is admitted into these institutions, the ideas that they consider, and the ideas that they circulate. Marx takes it for granted, not unreasonably, that even those in non-dominant positions will largely imbibe the messages that surround them from birth onwards. Moreover, it is not just that those in non-dominant positions accept the beliefs that are constantly broadcast at them, but these beliefs also influence how they subsequently process the world around them, which has the perverse consequence of reinforcing these beliefs. The story Marx tells in Capital of Mr. Moneybags is cautionary in this respect. We meet Mr. Moneybags, our capitalist, and his new hire as they negotiate the terms of their agreement. This scene appears to be a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity […] are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. (CW 35: 186) But, of course, all of this conceals what is in fact coercion on pain of starvation, which only appears to be a mutually beneficial agreement among equals. This transaction, however, would never have appeared as such to anyone not already inundated with capitalist messaging. Having adopted these values previously, and having been primed to see economic exchanges as embodying them, enables one to interpret this particular exchange in the wildly deranged manner Marx parodies. This is true for bourgeois observers of such transactions, but it is equally true for the worker, who if they come to adopt these values, will be deluded into idealizing their own subjection instead of recognizing it as such.

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14.3  Contemporary Support for Marx’s Account We have seen that, according to Marx, ideological belief typically originates with theorists (ideologists) whose work is distorted by various status-quo-favoring biases that subsequently function to support the interests of the ruling class by rationalizing the status quo arrangements that benefit them. These biases will affect theorists and laypeople alike, which helps both the creation and reception of ideological ideas. We can call this the “bottom-up” account of ideology. Moreover, the ruling class controls the channels through which a society’s key social ideas are disseminated. We can call this the “top-down” account. The two accounts are viciously complementary. The bottom-up account explains why so many system-justifying moral, political, and religious ideas come into being in the first place; the top-down account explains how the dominant group manages their wider circulation throughout society in a self-serving fashion—promoting those beliefs that are most amenable to its aims while marginalizing any stray unorthodox beliefs that happen to emerge. Taking these in reverse order, I now turn to a quick sketch of some of the contemporary support for Marx’s view. What are we to make of the top-down aspect of Marx’s account—that there is a class that has monopolized both political power (the power to secure the political outcomes it favors) and ideological power (the production and dissemination of the society’s core social and political ideas)? One can question whether there really is such a thing as a ruling class or whether instead power is divided among a number of competing institutions and interest groups or perhaps evenly distributed among the citizenry as the democratic ideal would have it. While these questions remain contentious, it is quite clear that contemporary work in political science is shifting in favor of the sort of elite theory of power that Marx proposed. Thomas Piketty has argued that increasing inequality is an inherent feature of unchecked capitalism, and he warns, “the risk of a drift towards oligarchy is real and gives little reason for optimism about where the United States is headed” (Piketty 2017: 662). Jeffrey Winters has argued that the United States is already best characterized as an oligarchy dominated by “actors who command and control massive concentrations of material resources that can be deployed to defend or enhance their personal wealth or exclusive social position” (Winters 2011: 6). Martin Gilens, comparing a massive collection of decades of surveys into people’s policy preferences against whether or not these policies were subsequently enacted, argues that elite monopolization of US politics is a long-standing reality: “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence” (Gilens and Page 2014: 565). Moreover, in addition to monopolizing political control, it is clear that policymakers and corporations work very hard to shape public opinion, employing the channels that they own and operate to promote the messages that benefit them. A century of research indicates that they have proved extremely effective in doing so. Walter Lippmann’s (1922) Public Opinion argued elites have a nearly unlimited ability to shape public thinking in a way that suits their interests, a fact he called “the manufacture of consent”. He argued that the average citizen lacks the time, interest, and expertise to inform themselves directly on most social and political issues, and so depends on political elites and the media for their information. These elites decide which issues to present, and do so in a way that is easy to comprehend and react to, reducing complex issues to yes-or-no positions or translating them into emotionally effective symbolic principles. This general line of thought has found a great amount of support since. The seminal recent work in this area is John Zaller’s The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, which concludes that most citizens “pay too little

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attention to public affairs to be able to respond critically to the political communications they encounter; rather, they are blown about by whatever current of information manages to develop the greatest intensity. The minority of citizens who are highly attentive to public affairs are scarcely more critical, instead responding to new issues mainly on the basis of the partisanship and ideology of the elite sources of the messages” (Zaller 1992: 311). As Lipmann suggested, it seems that on most public policy issues, the positions are articulated and packaged by active political elites, and these ideas are passed down to the public. The most politically attentive members of society, instead of being the most politically astute, actually prove to be the ones who adopt these handed-down positions most faithfully. Ideology, however, is not simply the propaganda a deceitful ruling class feeds the masses in order to manipulate them. The “bottom-up” aspect of Marx’s account traced the origins of ideological belief back to (typically) sincere theorists working under conditions that systematically distort their thinking. However, this thought faces two objections: first, could it really be the case that even sincere ideologists, who are typically purported to be experts in their relative fields (ethicists, economists, etc.), are so frequently, even systematically, mistaken in the claims they make? Second, even if they are, why would these resulting false claims tend to serve as support for the status quo rather than having varied and unpredictable effects? Here again, subsequent research has been kind to Marx. Canvassing many of the central findings of the social-psychological tradition, we find that both experts and non-experts alike are subject to pervasive cognitive and motivated biases that undermine their judgments in quite profound ways. Moreover, these biases are not only pervasive but directional, tending to distort beliefs in ways that systematically favor the status quo, which in turn supports the underlying economic structures, as well as those who benefit most from these arrangements. The tradition of cognitive bias research is most closely associated with the work of Kahneman and Tversky, whose central claim, which has now become a central tenet of contemporary work on human judgment, is that our judgments are typically made using heuristics—automatic and simplifying mental shortcuts that focus our attention on certain features of a situation while ignoring others. While these heuristics can expedite cognitive processing, they also lead to significant and systematic errors in our judgments. Considered separately, these various biases reveal curious vices that undermine our ability to judge accurately; taken together, they demonstrate myopia that affects our theorizing more generally—a pronounced tendency to orient our thinking around the information that is directly before us, and in ways that confirm rather than challenges it, while resisting subsequent epistemic updating and revision. Moreover, these cognitive biases that favor ready-to-hand information will simultaneously favor the status quo, since status quo ideas and expectations constitute the majority of ready-to-hand information (Eidelman and Crandall 2009). There are roughly two varieties of cognitive biases. The first is what we can call order-ofinformation biases. These are manifest in the variety of ways in which the information we receive first and/or our prior beliefs exert a disproportionate influence on the information we subsequently encounter. So, for example, our initial impressions of a stimulus significantly influence how we process new information about it, anchoring our initial judgments in a way that proves difficult to revise (Asch 1946; Jones, et al 1968); people maintain beliefs based on initial information, even after that early information has been totally discredited (Nisbett and Ross 1980); prior expectations, especially those based on stereotypes, lead people to imagine correlations between variables that do not actually exist (Hamilton and Rose 1980), as well as to overlook significant correlations that do (Sanbonmatsu, Akimoto, and Gibson 1994); and, in predictive judgments, the initial consideration of a possible outcome substantially inhibits the subsequent generation of alternatives (Kahneman and Tversky 1982). 232

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A related set of cognitive biases are availability biases, which are manifest in the variety of ways that information at hand exerts too great an influence on judgments, while less readily accessible information is neglected altogether: information that is salient and frequently encountered is more readily brought to mind, resulting in overestimations in likelihood and/or frequency judgments (Tversky and Kahneman 1973; Kuran and Sunstein 1999); people are insensitive to the importance of missing information—unaware of the relevance of non-occurrences to estimations of covariation, and confident in judgments made on the basis of evidence known to be weak and one-sided (Ross 1977); people engage in counterfactual thinking only when confronted with surprising disruptions from their routines and expectations, and, even when provoked to do so, they almost exclusively consider only the most easily imagined alternatives (Kahneman and Tversky 1982; Hitchcock 2011); people overestimate the extent to which others share their beliefs and opinions, while often denigrating those who do not (Ross, Greene, and House 1977); finally, repeated exposure to something heightens one’s evaluation of it (Bornstein 1989), as does simply being told that it is the status quo option (Eidelman and Crandall 2012). As with order-of-information biases, these availability biases systematically favor the status quo, since the status quo is almost by definition that which will be most available. Readily available alternatives may go unnoticed and counterfactual possibilities unimagined. There will be a presumption that status quo norms are more widely held than is the case, while those holding alternative views will be dismissed in advance as unreasonable. The status quo will benefit from the favorability that frequent exposure brings, as well as from it merely being identified as the way things are or have been. Compounding the influence of these cognitive biases, motivated biases often favor the status in pronounced ways. Francis Bacon, the great early expositor of bias, observed: “The human understanding is not composed of dry light, but is subject to influence from the will and emotions, a fact that creates fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true” (Bacon 2000: 44). Motivated reasoning is the process of evaluating evidence and argumentation in a way that enables one to reach a desired conclusion. The most obvious way in which motivation can affect judgment is by establishing the desired outcome as the hypothesis, and then working to confirm this hypothesis through asymmetrical testing of confirming and disconfirming evidence. This has helpfully been characterized as the difference between asking, “Can I believe this?” of evidence supporting the desired conclusion, and “Must I believe this?” of evidence contrary to it (Gilovich 1991). Consequently, we can work ourselves into believing all sorts of things we wish to be true. Desires are diverse, of course, and not all desires capable of inducing motivated reasoning will favor the status quo. However, some do and in pronounced ways. A rich body of research connecting motivated reasoning with status quo supporting conclusions developed from Lerner’s just world research. Just world theory posits that people are motivated to believe that the world is a fair place where people get what they deserve: “We (humans) do not believe that things just happen in our world; there is a pattern to events which conveys not only a sense of orderliness or predictability, but also the compelling experience of appropriateness expressed in the typically implicit judgment, Yes, that is the way it should be” (Lerner 1980: vii). Lerner found that people respond to injustice with a variety of strategies aimed at restoring a sense of order. In the best cases, they respond by trying to right the injustice—intervening, offering restitution, etc. However, people also employ a number of alternative strategies: denying the injustice or psychologically and/or physically withdrawing from the scene of it; reinterpreting the cause, paradigmatically, by blaming the victim’s behavior; denigrating the victim’s character so that they seem deserving of the injustice; and reconstructing the injustice in order to minimize it, for example, by focusing on 233

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the good consequences of otherwise bad events. Lerner argued that this theory helped to explain the puzzling fact that people denigrate victims in concrete situations, as well as assent to norms, policies, and regimes that consistently inflict suffering on blameless people. This research has been supported and extended in the subsequent decades (Hafer and Bègue 2005; Jost 2020), finding that most people evidence holding just world beliefs at least implicitly: people avoid exposure to cases of injustice (Pancer 1988), and reinterpret injustice so as to minimize it ( Jost and Banaji 1994), as Lerner suggested. And, of course, people denigrate: poverty is attributed to character and behavior (Campbell, Carr, and McLachlen 2001); the elderly are blamed for their poor health and finances (Bègue and Bastounis 2003); refugees are blamed for their plight (Montada 1998), as are victims of natural disasters (Napier, Mandisodza, Andersen, Jost 2006); racial groups are denigrated (Neville, et al 2000), as are those suffering from chronic illness (Correia and Vala 2003), and victims of sexual harassment (De Judicibus and McCabe 2001), and so on. Conversely, belief in a just world also correlates with post-hoc rationalizations of unfair advantages enjoyed by oneself and by others (Smith 1985; Ellard and Bates 1990). Finally, research after Lerner has more thoroughly examined various stimuli that heighten expressions of support for the status quo, finding that threats to the system (Ullrich and Cohrs 2007), perceived system inevitability (Kay, Jimenez, and Jost 2002), and system dependence (van der Toorn, et al 2011, 2015) do so in pronounced ways. In short, people are motivated to believe that the groups, institutions, and communities to which they belong (or are required to abide) are fair and legitimate. This holds for laypeople and social and political theorists alike. Of course, desiring does not make it so, and the just world motivation drives one to rationalize away cases of inequity and suffering instead of acknowledging and addressing them. It is also true that the motivation to support the status quo is not omnipotent and omnipresent: people profess outrage and things can change over time. What this bias demonstrates, however, is a pronounced tendency by the overwhelming majority of people to over-rationalize the status quo up until the moment that change appears inevitable, at which point attitudes can rapidly shift, as Marx argued.

14.4 Transformation? What if Marx is right? What if psychological needs and social circumstances tend to orient the thinking of theorists and laypeople alike in a way that produces status quo-justifying ideas (as the bottom-up account suggests) and what if there is in fact a ruling class that has the resources to select and promote the ideas that best serve their interests (as the top-down account suggests)? Instead of transformation, doesn’t this emphasize the inevitability of stasis instead? Here I will conclude with some potentially good news and some potentially bad. The potentially good news first. Marx himself was unshakably optimistic. Productive capacity increases over time and so too the means of satisfying human needs. It is true that one class typically wrests control from the others and that as a result the society is steeped for a time in the ideological thought that sustains it. However, with hard work and material conditions permitting, the prevailing ideological thinking can be confronted, critiqued, and rejected, and emancipatory transformation becomes possible. Transformation is possible in periods where the economic structure begins to impede the ever-developing productive forces and an alternative social arrangement begins to suggest itself. Marx regards his own time as such a moment. Capitalism is simultaneously immiserating its working-class while also achieving a level of material productivity that makes this immiseration completely and obviously unnecessary. As this process reaches completion and capitalism 234

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has “rendered the great mass of humanity ‘propertyless’, and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture,” the tension between what is possible and what is actual becomes palpable and compels the oppressed classes to take control in an act of transformation that emancipates them from both those who have exploited them and the material hardships they endured as a result (CW 5: 48). Transformation can be stymied for a time by ideology, which can obscure that another way is now possible and preferable. Marx’s project is precisely one of disabusing his readers of these system-justifying beliefs in order to hasten progress, pointing out the ways in which “law, morality, religion are…so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests” (CW 6: 494–5). Again, this is hard work that is only possible at certain moments: “the history of mankind is like paleontology. Owing to a certain judicial blindness, even the best minds fail to see, on principle, what lies in front of their noses. Later, when the time has come, we are surprised that there are traces everywhere of what we failed to see” (CW 42: 557). Yet, Marx does not doubt that these obstacles to truth can be overcome and he frequently notes with delight the way in which previous illusions dissipate, giving way to a “truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced mind, and only denied by those, whose interest it is to hedge other people in a fool’s paradise” (CW 20: 9). Early in his career, Marx wrote about the purpose of philosophy as follows: “The task of history… is to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms” (CW 3: 176). Although his views developed throughout his life, he remained always a tireless unmasker. Now for the potentially bad news. Perhaps Marx was correct that we are steeped in ideological thinking, but perhaps he was wrong to believe we could ever think our way past it and that the oppressed members of society would ever rise up. This was first the worry, and then increasingly the conviction, of those who developed Marx’s account of ideology in the 20th Century, as they confronted the rise of fascism and totalitarianism on one hand and stultifying consumerism on the other (the latter which they deemed not so very different from the former as most imagined). The sort of emancipatory revolution Marx anticipated never occurred, and these theorists turned their attention to diagnosing why not. While Marx’s account of ideology was primarily concerned with dubious beliefs about social and political matters, Western Marxists extended this to include all of the ways in which a person’s values and desires are shaped, their attention directed, and their conformity to prevailing norms secured. This expanded account was also a much more pessimistic one, increasingly conceiving of society as a “social totality” determining virtually every aspect of a person’s life and impossible to think one’s way out of. This trajectory begins with Gramsci’s theorizing the failure of European workers to revolt, which he attributes to the capitalist hegemony over the ideological domain, a domain that exerts a greater inhibiting influence than had been previously realized (Gramsci 1971). This thought reaches what is perhaps its high-water mark in the writings of the Frankfurt School, as they observe that workers not only fail to revolt but actively embrace and identify with, along with everyone else, the capitalist or fascist states that dominate them. Adorno, in contrast to Marx’s own optimism for critical thought, writes that the role of theorizing is essentially that of futile protest: [Philosophy is] thought’s powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence…Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose 235

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violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation […] In a world that has been thoroughly permeated by the structures of the social order, a world that so overpowers every individual that scarcely any option remains but to accept it on its own terms, such naiveté reproduces itself incessantly and disastrously. (Adorno 2005: 10–2) A similar thought animates Althusser’s influential writings on what he calls the ideological state apparatus, where he argues that ideology is not simply a complex of false beliefs which one might unfortunately adopt, but it is a totalizing power that creates and controls people, shaping them into the sorts of subjects suitable to the needs of the prevailing economic structure and ensuring that they maintain their usefulness to it (Althusser, 2008). There is, on such accounts, no escape from ideology, and thus little hope for emancipatory transformation. As economic elites increasingly enjoy the unprecedented social benefits of capitalism while everyone else increasingly suffers its economic and environmental fallout, our century will likely settle this optimist versus pessimist dispute over whether significant transformation of our current situation is possible.

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15 KIERKEGAARD AND HEIDEGGER ON “PATHOSFILLED TRANSITION” Sacha Golob

But the persons whose souls do not know this depression are those whose souls have no presentiment of a metamorphosis. ( Judge William, Either/Or, Part II; EO II: 190)

Kierkegaard and Heidegger both place fundamental emphasis on the possibility of personal transformation, that is, a radical change in an individual’s commitments and self-understanding. I argue that juxtaposing them can illuminate some key dynamics in post-Hegelian debates over such change, its limits, conditions, and the forms it can and should take. I concentrate on what Kierkegaard calls “pathos-filled transition”, a transformation in which a specific emotion, broadly construed, plays a central role. The idea that emotions, pathe, are central to individual development and transformation is evidently an ancient one. Aristotelian virtue, for example, foregrounds the careful cultivation of affective response. It is a cultivation in which action and reason have a clear priority: for Aristotle, we become virtuous by doing virtuous acts, and, in achieving virtue, the pathe accept reason’s authority, as a servant does their master’s.1 By the modern period, these assumptions and others, such as Aristotle’s focus on the education of the young, have been problematized. The result is a complex and ambiguous picture, one in which the balance between active and passive transformation or between praise-worthy and pathological emotions is frequently blurred. As we will see, in both their points of agreement and disagreement, Kierkegaard and Heidegger exemplify that modern shift in how we understand transformation. Before proceeding, a few introductory remarks, textually and conceptually. My principal focus is Kierkegaard’s 1843 Either/Or and Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time. I say “Kierkegaard’s”, but, of course, there is the immediate complexity of pseudonymous authorship which has no parallel in Heidegger’s work: Being and Time, whilst a markedly syncretic text and obviously massively complex exegetically, operates with a single authorial voice throughout, Heidegger’s own. In contrast, Either/Or operates at multiple removes: officially a collection of papers found by chance by a pseudonymous editor, it embeds a series of narratorial voices, one within another as “in a Chinese-box puzzle” (EO I: 9). At its heart is a contrast between a set of documents from “A” defending an “aesthetic” stance on life and letters from “B”, later identified as Judge 238

DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-21

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William, to “A”, urging him to transform his life, and to live “ethically” (EO I: 13). One of my central concerns will be the contrast between this possible transformation and those mapped by Heidegger, particularly in his anxiety-ridden vision of authenticity. With respect to Kierkegaard, I will follow the standard procedure of attributing views to the various pseudonymous authors, where they exist, for the obvious reason that it is open how much his views coincide with those of A or Judge William or Climacus or etc. With respect to Heidegger, I focus primarily on the “early Heidegger”, that is, on his work up to the mid-1930s, but one consequence of my approach is to highlight continuities between his early work and his later writings. I side-step textual complexities when not directly relevant. For example, I ignore the difference Heidegger sometimes draws between two terms for “Being”, “Sein” and “Seyn”, and his technical term “Dasein” can be read harmlessly here as “human existence”. I spoke of “transformation in which a specific emotion, broadly construed, plays a central role”. Let me say immediately that “emotion” is a rough term, but not, I think, a misleading one for current purposes. Both Kierkegaard and pseudonyms such as Climacus equate “pathos” with “passion” [Lidenskab] (CUP: 33, JP III: 427). Heidegger equates “pathos”, particularly in an Aristotelian context, with his own conception of mood [Stimmung] (compare BT: 137–8 and Ga18: 262–3).2 In both cases, there is clear overlap with what we could call “emotions”. Heidegger, for example, focuses on fear, boredom, and anxiety; Climacus gives “guilt-consciousness” and “love” as paradigm examples of pathe.3 One project would be to drill down on the general structure of these mental states: what exactly separates a mood from a feeling from an emotion from an affect? But that is not my aim here. Instead, I want to examine how Kierkegaard and Heidegger use specific forms of emotion as vehicles for personal transformation. I begin by identifying some underlying communalities in their approaches: both seek to problematise dualisms between active and passive transformation and between rational and irrational transformation. I then analyse two cases: the relationship between the Aesthete A and Judge William in Parts I and II of Either/Or and that between the inauthentic and authentic in Divisions I and II of Being and Time. In both the key “pathos” is one which is now largely medicalised, namely melancholy or depression [Tungsind] in Either/Or, and anxiety [Angst] in Being and Time.4 Examining the comparative roles of these emotions can tell us a significant amount about the scope and limits of the philosophy of transformation in post-Hegelian European thought.

15.1  Active/Passive and Rational/Irrational Transformation Both Kierkegaard and Heidegger consistently seek to analyse cases of deep personal change, encompassing an individual’s values, affects, self-understanding, and choices. It will be helpful to begin by highlighting some of the relevant commonalities. First, I take the issue of active and passive transformation. As Anti-Climacus observes, radical or “qualitative” personal transformation is not like growing “teeth, a beard”, something which can occur independent of the subject’s engagement: I can grow a beard in a coma (SuD: 58). This is because a shift in how I evaluate things, what commitments I make, is necessary: transformation must be something I do in a relatively thick sense. But, the more radical the change, the less likely it is that my prior self had sufficient resources to initiate it: instead, it becomes natural to appeal to some “external” intervention, some Pauline moment, either in divine form or via a life event. Transformation becomes something that happens to me. Clearly, we need some account of how these active and passive dynamics inter-relate. Both Kierkegaard and Heidegger were extremely familiar with this question in a theological context. 239

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They were equally hostile to crude Pelagianism, that is, the idea that we can earn salvation via our own intrinsic resources, and to its simplistic contrary, what Kierkegaard called a “fatalistic election by grace” ( JP IV: 352).5 The challenge is thus to find some more sophisticated model for the active and passive dimensions of personal transformation. To see how this plays out, consider their common trope of the “leap” [Spring, Sprung]. Kierkegaard famously asks whether such a leap is necessary for qualitative or radical change. As he puts it in a journal entry from 1842–3: “Can there be a transition from quantitative qualification to a qualitative one without a leap? And does not the whole of life rest in that?” ( JP I: 110) A text with obvious Heideggerian relevance, 1844’s Concept of Anxiety, likewise observes that the “new is brought about through the leap” (CoA: 85). Heidegger himself appeals to the very same trope, particularly as he grapples with passivity in the middle period. It is a central category in the Contributions which appeals variously to “a leap” to another beginning, “the leap into Being [Seyn]” insofar as one “creates in thinking” and to philosophy itself as “leaping ahead into the utmost possible decision” (Ga65: 228, 11, 44). I chose this motif because it exemplifies the struggle in both writers to avoid a voluntarism on which radical transformation is a matter of will. There are moments when they may appear to flirt with such a model. Kierkegaard, for example, talks of a leap or “transition to the infinite” which can be “achieved by everyone if he wills it” since “it takes only courage” ( JP III: 2339). But it is clear that what he has in mind is more complex than simple resolve: even Climacus rejects voluntarism in favour of an almost Heideggerian emphasis on “the great instant of resignation”, and the “unutterable sighs of prayer incommensurate with the muscular” (CUP: 345, 77). Kierkegaard’s separation from his pseudonyms, of course, allow one to potentially push the point still further, with Rae relegating the very idea of a “leap” to a “Climacean category”, a best attempt by a non-Christian to reconstruct a process that they do not fully understand.6 Heidegger obviously lacks the technique of pseudonymous distance. Instead, he must work through the same problem at a linguistic level, trying to bend the voluntarist vocabulary of the leap back against itself. Most obviously, he stresses that how far we can leap depends on where we stand and what run up we have (Ga5: 329): in terms of Being and Time, will is constrained by facticity. He also attempts to rework even “decision” [Entscheidung] as a quasi-passive notion, rendering it as “De-cision” [Ent-Scheidung], a state of no longer being cut off [nicht abgeschieden von] from Being” (Ga54: 111).7 Such de-cision is founded not on “resolve” [Beschluss] but “stillness” which in turn is linked to receptivity and submission (Ga65: 101). Thinking, Heidegger’s highest mode of transformation, is thus ultimately “obedient [gehorsam] to the voice of Being” (Ga9: 311). In tracing the development of the leap motif, we see both authors attempting to escape any simple choice between active and passive models of transformation.8 By extension, this creates a natural point of attack if you think they lapsed back into that dualism. Habermas, for example, famously complained that Heidegger had oscillated from an early “decisionism” to the “submissiveness of an equally empty readiness for subjugation”.9 The second commonality I want to highlight concerns the rationality of a given transformation. There is of course a vast literature on Kierkegaard and “irrationalism”, but my interest is specifically in “pathos-filled transitions”. Consider this, for example: If I really have a conviction (and this is a determination of spirit in the direction of spirit) then to me my conviction is higher than reasons; it is actually the conviction which sustains the reasons, not the reasons which sustain the conviction […] “Reasons” can lay an egg no more than a rooster can […] and no matter how much intercourse they have with 240

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each other they never beget or bear a conviction. A conviction arises elsewhere. This is what I […] have meant with the problem: “on the distinction between a pathos-filled and a dialectical transition”. ( JP III: 3608) The key is how conviction can “sustain” reasons without thereby undermining them, reducing them to instrumental or even merely “motivated” reasoning As Ferreira notes, Kierkegaard’s analysis of pathos-filled change makes direct reference to “what Aristotle called an enthymeme”, that is, a form of rhetorical syllogism ( JP III: 20).10 Elsewhere he tells us that even pathos-filled transition has its “dialectic”, albeit “not, please note, a dialectic by which it is made sophistically relative (this is mediation)” (CUP: 439). Kierkegaard’s point is that pathe must be open to assessment and criticism. In short, there is a normativity of affect: “it is just as questionable, precisely as questionable, to be pathos-filled and earnest in the wrong place as it is to laugh in the wrong place” (CUP: 439). Thus, whilst pathos-filled transitions circumvent theoretical models of rationality, such as Hegel’s “mediation”, they are not “simply lovely feeling, totally formless or arbitrary”.11 They transcend any simple rational/irrational distinction. Turning to Heidegger the picture is similar. He warns against what he calls “‘logic’”, a set of misguided commitments whose current dominance he links to Hegel but whose roots he traces as far as Plato (Ga3: 243). But from this “it does not of course follow that a problem of the irrational” is all that remains (Ga3: 285). Rather, the task is to articulate an alternate account of transformation out of the inadequate self-understanding that Heidegger, both early and late, believes plagues modern society. To do that, he argues we need to focus on the role of emotions, particularly “fundamental moods” (Grundstimmung) and, as in Kierkegaard, there is a clear normativity in play. For example, Heidegger argues that the Platonic or Aristotelian notions of wonder led to a misguided focus on entities and should be replaced by alternatives, for example, Verhaltenheit (“reservedness”), which make us attentive to Being (Ga65: 11).12 We now have a little background in place: in stressing the role of emotion in individual transformation, both Kierkegaard and Heidegger simultaneously attempt to move beyond the traditional categories through which such processes have been understood.

15.2 Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety Before turning to the texts, I want to explain a path not taken. Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety (1844), attributed to the pseudonymous Vigilius Haufniensis, might seem a natural focus since it appeals to the same mood as Being and Time. This, of course, is no coincidence and Heidegger evidently owes a greater debt to that work than he acknowledges in three evasive footnotes which present Kierkegaard as groping towards merely ontic versions of Heidegger’s own arguments (BT: 190, iv; 235, vi).13 Many of the key themes for Heidegger’s, and indeed Sartre’s, treatment of anxiety are undoubtedly present in Kierkegaard’s early work: its link to nothingness (CoA: 41–4), to boredom (CoA: 132–3), and to the “dizziness of freedom” (CoA: 61). There are also obvious continuities between Haufniensis’ account and A’s situation in Either/Or. As Kierkegaard observes: “Anxiety has here the same meaning as depression [Tungsind] at a much later point, when freedom, having passed through the imperfect forms of its history, in the profoundest sense will come to itself” (CoA: 42–3). However, The Concept of Anxiety makes fundamental appeal to a theological apparatus that is hard to set in any fruitful dialogue with Heidegger. One obvious example is that Haufniensis distinguishes “subjective” and “objective” anxiety, with the latter pertaining to the whole of creation, including its non-human aspects (CoA: 57–8). This is almost unintelligible from a 241

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Heideggerian point of view, on which even non-human animals, let alone inanimate objects, lack a relationship to Being and to the anxiety that flows from that relationship (Ga27: 192; Ga29/30: 397, 416, 450). The worry here is not that Kierkegaard’s concepts need to be scrubbed of their religious context prior to engagement with Heidegger, although that creates obvious exegetical concerns: after all, Heidegger himself does exactly that in ontologizing notions such as a Dasein’s fall (BT: 176). It is that the religious context generates concepts, such as “objective anxiety” which are brutely alien to Heidegger’s framework and thus to a profitable exchange with it. This is one reason for the decision to focus on Either/Or instead. The other, as I hope to now show, is that the symmetries and asymmetries in the shift from A to Judge William and from the inauthentic to the authentic are particularly revealing.14

15.3  Pathos-Filled Transition in Either/Or and Being and Time I will begin with some salient aspects of the possible transition mapped in Either/Or. First, the aesthete A repeatedly tells us that he suffers from depression. Its phenomenology is defined by a leaden lack of affect and an attendant sense that nothing matters, that it is all “utterly meaningless” (EO I: 35). Here is A himself: “If I were offered all the glories of the world or all the torments of the world, one would move me no more than the other; I would not turn over to the other side either to attain or to avoid” (EO I: 37). Cappelørn neatly glosses this as: “a state of mind that considers everything to be equally valuable, and therefore equally worthless, since reality is experienced as meaningless”.15 This naturally links to both death and to a boredom become profound weariness. Here again is A himself: The only thing I see is emptiness, the only thing I live on is emptiness, the only thing I move in is emptiness. I do not even suffer pain […] Pain itself has lost its refreshment for me. I am dying death […] My soul is like the Dead Sea, over which no bird is able to fly; when it has come midway, it sinks down, exhausted, to death and destruction. (EO I: 37) Elsewhere, he talks of living “as one already dead” (EO I: 42): the one affective constant is a misery “dreadful, not to be endured” (EO I: 24). He muses on accidental death or suicide as ways out (EO I: 31; 37). Second, A’s depression is identified by Judge William as a key point of leverage in his campaign to persuade A to change his ways. As William sees it, “every aesthetic life” is ultimately misery—but what separates A from cruder aesthetes such as Don Juan is his awareness of that fact (EO II: 192).16 Given this, A has reason to escape by transitioning to the ethical: “[w]hen one knows this, and you certainly know it, then a higher form of existence is an imperative requirement” (EO II: 192). In this sense, the experience of depression is at least a necessary condition on the transformation out of aesthetic life. “But the persons whose souls do not know this depression are those whose souls have no presentiment of a metamorphosis. I have nothing to do with them here, because I am writing only about and to you” (EO II: 190). I say “at least a necessary condition” since elsewhere Judge William is more conscious of the fragility of the move, appealing to a distinction between “depression” and “despair” [ fortvivelse], concerned that A might forestall the slide to the latter and remain stuck in the former. You see, my young friend, this life is despair; if you conceal it from others, you cannot conceal it from yourself that it is despair. And yet in another sense this life is not despair. You are too light-minded [letsindig] to despair, and you are too heavy-minded [tungsindig] 242

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not to come in contact with despair. You are like a woman in labor, and yet you are continually holding off the moment and continually remain in pain […]. Her attempt to halt the process of nature would be futile, but your attempt is certainly possible. (EO II: 206) This is not the place to address Kierkegaard’s own understanding of the depression/despair distinction, but Judge William is worried that A might avoid a “rock bottom” experience which would motivate a transition to the ethical; for example, through the kind of elaborate diversion seen in the “Rotation of Crops”. Nevertheless, he clearly regards A’s position as ultimately untenable. He thus immediately follows the pregnancy remark with a sketch of aesthetic existence, “the smiles of languid women”, “loafing your life away in the glittering wretchedness of social gatherings”, that ends with this exhortation: “But if you cannot do that, if you do not want to do that—and that you neither can nor will—then pull yourself together, stifle every rebellious thought that would have the audacity to commit high treason against your better nature” (EO II: 207). Note the modalities here: A, conscious of his own misery, “neither can nor will” ultimately remain within it. Judge William is on hand to offer some practical prescriptions, launching into an excursion on marriage: “I am a married man” (EO II: 207). Yet making the transition to the ethical will still require—and one sees here the complex interplay of active and passive flagged in §1—not only A’s awareness of his own situation, nor just William’s intervention, but ultimately an “act that takes all the power and earnestness and concentration of the soul” (EO II: 208). MacIntyre famously claimed that Either/Or presented “no rational grounds for choice between either position”, A or that of the Judge, something which “destroys the whole tradition of a rational moral culture”.17 Post-MacIntyrean commentary has been largely devoted to rejecting this. Commentators have sought to explain why A is in despair and why a shift to the ethical is at least the first step in resolving that.18 Some, Compaijen is perhaps the most detailed example, have sought to spell out Judge William’s leverage in terms of the internal/external reasons debate. The key claim is that depression supplies an internal reason, in broadly the sense defined by Bernard Williams, for A to make the transition to ethical life. Could A, by deliberating to the best of his ability, reach the conclusion that his desire to be rid of his depression is fulfilled in the choice to embrace ethical life? […] My argument implies that any aesthete sufficiently like A has reason to embrace ethical life. That is, any agent who, suffering from a depression that is related to aesthetic life, desires to overcome this depression and could reach the conclusion that that desire will be fulfilled in adopting the ethical life-view, has reason to embrace ethical life. MacIntyre’s charge of irrationality has thereby been debunked […] there is internal reason for some, but not all aesthetes to live ethically.19 With this, we are now ready to turn to Heidegger and the comparison between depression in Either/Or and anxiety in Being and Time. Let’s begin with the immediate similarities. Heideggerian anxiety takes both incipient and full-blown forms (BT: 185–6, 189). The latter is the focus of Heidegger’s analysis and here we see immediate parallels with A’s self-descriptions. It consists in an experience of a loss of meaning: our world “collapses”, our life and goals are reduced to “utter insignificance” (BT: 186–7). Our plans, friends, work, all appear irrelevant, inert: “the ‘world’ can offer nothing more, and 243

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neither can […] others” (BT: 187).20 As Dreyfus and Rubin put it, “all meaning and mattering slip away”, while Blattner glosses it as a “condition in which nothing matters”.21 The same could evidently apply to A: I don’t feel like doing anything. I don’t feel like riding—the motion is too powerful; I don’t feel like walking—it is too tiring; I don’t feel like lying down, for either I would have to stay down, and I don’t feel like doing that, or I would have to get up again, and I don’t feel like doing that, either. Summa Summarum: I don’t feel like doing anything. (EO I: 20) Indeed, Blattner directly equates Heideggerian anxiety with depression: What […] Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard call a “hopelessness”, “intense boredom” “living under a dark cloud”, and which clinicians call “flat affect”: and “anhedonia” are symptoms of a depressive disorder. In such a condition, one withdraws into isolation, loses interest in the world around one, stops taking pleasure in everyday life, loses motivation to carry on. Heidegger’s descriptions of what he calls “anxiety” fit this model quite well: the world “has nothing to offer” and neither do others; one cannot understand oneself anymore; one feels uncanny and not-at-home.22 There are very similar parallels in A’s talk of excruciating boredom: this mirrors Heidegger’s 1929/30 lectures which align it with anxiety. Here is his description of it: “We are sitting, for example, in the tasteless station of some lonely minor railway. It is four hours until the next train arrives. We do have a book in our rucksack, though—shall we read? No. Or think through a problem, some question? We are unable to” (Ga29/30: 140). This echoes the deep lassitude that A describes. There are also obviously close links between Heideggerian anxiety and death (BT: 266): recall A’s description of his state as a “living death”. But rather than digress into the exegetical complexities of what exactly Heidegger means by “Tod”, I can rest here with the key point: there are striking phenomenological symmetries between A’s state and anxiety in Being and Time. There are, however, also crucial differences. Most immediately, it is central to readings such as Rudd’s or Compaijen’s that A’s experience is a function of his distinctive worldview, one not shared even by all other aesthetes. By extension, it is central to their readings that Judge William offers some kind of solution to this depression, unmasking it as a consequence of a warped approach to life. These assumptions mirror the epistolary structure of the text: Judge William wants to motivate a change in A’s behaviour. In Compaijen’s language, he is seeking to provide A with internal reasons to advance to the ethical. If we compare Heidegger, several points stand out. First, Heidegger presents anxiety as a function of the ontological conditions of agency: it makes manifest who we all really are. This explains its methodological centrality. “[We] must seek for one of the most far reaching and most primordial possibilities—one that lies in Dasein itself […] As a [mood] which will satisfy these methodological requirements, the phenomenon of anxiety will be made basic for our analysis” (BT: 182). In contrast, Either/Or, especially in post-MacIntyrean readings, links depression not just to aestheticism, but to A’s specific version of it. It is meant to dissipate or at least be radically ameliorated with ethical life: “as soon as this movement has occurred, the depression is essentially canceled”, Judge William promises (EO II: 189). This makes perfect sense if an escape from depression is intended to motivate A’s transition and solve MacIntyre’s charge of irrationalism.23 In contrast for 244

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Heidegger, those who minimize anxiety by suppressing its outbreaks are still ontologically defined by it and tacitly controlled by it, insofar as they are constantly fleeing from it (BT: 185–6). In sum, Heideggerian anxiety is a function of our common ontology, not any specific worldview. Second, not only is anxiety inescapable, authentic agents are actually marked by a heighted engagement with it: they are “ready for it”, rather than attempting to choke it back (BT: 260, 296). Again, this contrasts with Either/Or: the pathos-filled transition from A to Judge William is one of transcending or escaping depression. This is mirrored in the text’s argumentative structure. Heidegger makes no attempt to present authenticity as attractive to the inauthentic on their own terms: for example, there is no suggestion, as in post-MacIntyrean Kierkegaard commentary, that someone can avoid this terrible mood if they make the transition. By extension, since there is no attempt to provide internal reasons for the transition from inauthenticity to authenticity, there is no need for an elaboration of the first-person perspective of the inauthentic, in the way in which Either/Or Part I does for the aesthete. Third, Heidegger and Judge William agree that anxiety or depression reflects a felt inability to be “at home in the world” (EO II: 190; BT: 189). But they disagree over whether this is a deep ontological insight or a consequence of a mistaken life path: for Heidegger, the “‘not-at-home’ must be conceived as the more primordial phenomenon”, a “disclosure” or true reflection of our existence, whereas for William, here very much a Hegelian, it is a symptom of breaking off the dialectic too soon (BT: 189; EO II: 190). Exegetically, this opens the way for what one might call a Heideggerian “counter-reading” of Either/Or. William presents A as depressed because of his aesthetic approach. But, if the phenomenology of anxiety and depression reflect genuine insight, the direction may be quite the opposite: A may have to resort to aestheticism because he is depressed, that is, because he recognises a genuine lack of value in the social options urged on him. This is how A himself presents it: as legitimate alienation from a world in which the high point is “to become a [civil] councilor” (EO I: 34). This meshes well with Furtak’s suggestion that A’s issue is “a lofty conception of human dignity’ rather than a need to “grow up”.24 I began by noting certain parallelism between two hugely influential analyses of pathos-filled transition: that from A to Judge William in Either/Or and from inauthenticity to authenticity in Being and Time. We can now also see a number of structural differences.

15.4  Implications for a Philosophy of Transformation The task now is to evaluate some of the philosophical implications of these results. Let me begin with the general issue: What are the wider implications of thinking of personal transformation in terms of a “pathos-filled transition”? First, you will need a substantive account of the normativity governing the relevant emotions. This goes back to Kierkegaard’s observation that it is “just as questionable, precisely as questionable, to be pathos-filled and earnest in the wrong place as it is to laugh in the wrong place” (CUP: 525). But it is broader than that: the issue is not just when to laugh, but why laughter, say, should be seen as key to the relevant transformation and indeed why laughter construed in a particular way (Dionysiac, cynical, ironic, etc.). One way to dramatize this is to note that Being and Time places central methodological weight on an emotion regarded by many, including Judge William, as pathological, almost delusional. Second, assuming we cannot control our emotions in the same way we can control our will, we will need an account of how agents enter and remain in the relevant affective state. Heidegger is especially concerned by this, wondering how to formulate and support the “strange or almost insane demand” that we should become open to boredom (Ga29/30: 118). 245

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Third, any philosophical account of “pathos-filled transition” will need to take a position on treatments of the same emotion in other disciplines. Both Kierkegaard and Heidegger provide philosophical explanations for emotions which wider society views “medically-therapeutically: And it goes without saying, mit Pulver und mit Pillen and then with enemas!” (CoA: 121). Heidegger, in line with his distinction between ontic first order sciences and ontological inquiry, is particularly sceptical of medicine’s ability to set the conceptual framework for such analyses (BT: 247). Suppose now we tighten the focus a little: What can these results tell us about the role of pathos-filled transition within post-Kantian European thought specifically? First, as one sees in both Kierkegaard and Heidegger, the post-Kantian discussion of personal transformation focuses overwhelmingly on adults; in marked contrast to the Aristotelian tradition, where the prime locus is the education of young people. This has a number of important implications. One is an increased emphasis on what Annas called the “jolt and shock” that might force an adult with an already developed value system into a radically different framework.25 In Heidegger’s case, this takes the form of anxiety’s sudden collapse of meaning: what Withy called “a crisis of the everyday”.26 In Judge William’s case, it requires a minutely calibrated epistolary intervention. Second, and closely related, the discussion of pathos-filled transformation in adults must be equally a discussion of the suppression of such emotions. Both A and inauthentic Heideggerian agents are highly skilled at managing their moods, through “Rotation of Crops”, on the one hand, and submersion in busy-work on the other. Ironically, one of Heidegger’s examples of such “mood management” is scholarly debate on his own treatment of Kierkegaard: he complains that this serves to derail the existential debates raised by Being and Time, forcing it down a merely exegetical cul-de-sac (Ga94: 74; see also 39). One case illustrates just how broad the fallout from this second issue is: a key fault line in post-Kantian philosophy is whether social roles constitute such emotional evasion. From a Heideggerian point of view, Judge William’s position looks a great deal like that of the inauthentic, who have fled anxiety into the “‘at-home’ of publicness”, the stability and security of the everyday world of “the anyone” [das Man] where one simply “is what one does […] One is a shoemaker, tailor, teacher, banker” (BT: 189; Ga20: 336). Read like this, Either/Or Part II is a story of cowardice rather than maturation. By extension, A’s refusal to become “a plain John Anyman, a tiny little cog in the machine” would have some ontological legitimacy (EO II: 298). This line of thought culminates in Sartre’s waiter example, in which a refusal to face up to anxiety drives an almost parodic attempt to submerge oneself in a social role. Yet one can also see the difficulty with this line of thought, a difficulty which Judge William illustrates with his pastor example: what type of social engagement is possible if one valorizes such alienation? Even if A fulfils all the duties of a pastor, “speak[s] with more insight and seemingly with more experience about being a pastor than many a one who has been pastor for twenty years”, insofar as he insists on retaining a distance between himself and the role, he “nevertheless did not become a pastor” (EO II: 165). On the one hand, the modern self is defined by an ability to step back from any and all social roles: a distancing that MacIntyre famously claimed was simply incoherent in Homeric Greece.27 On the other hand, most post-Kantians are unwilling to appeal to any non-socially conditioned telos. The subject thus seems unable either to fully embrace the roles before it or to find an alternative to them. In A’s case the result is the “living death” he describes; in Heidegger’s the challenge is to explain how Dasein can live both anxiously and yet “resolutely”, making concrete choices in a world that it sees as alien, “not-at-home”, to some significant degree (BT: 297). 246

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Third, a focus on pathos-filled transition as the key mode of personal transformation immediately raises problems regarding philosophical writing. Most obviously, in rejecting traditional reason-led models of personal development, both authors seek a form of communication, be it poetic, pseudonymous, or “indirect”, that will not distort or ossify the emotions they seek to describe. Furthermore, there will be a complex relation between first-personal accounts of the relevant emotions, with A and Heidegger providing detailed phenomenologies, and the subsequent theoretical analyses of such states. For example, Heidegger simultaneously privileges anxiety and yet cannot ultimately, on pain of decisionism, take at face value its presentation of the world as meaningless.28 Finally, much of the discussion around Kierkegaard and Heidegger focuses on the various teloi in play: the merits of an authentic life or a religious one or an ethical one. But it is equally important to focus on the starting points of the various transformations. Suppose, as Davenport does, one reads Judge William not as defending any particular life, but articulating basic conditions on agency that A fails to meet: for example, the possession of second order volitions.29 This neutralises the “Heideggerian” move above on which A’s dismissal of the ethical might be a justified response to the bourgeois framework William offers. The price is that William’s attacks become incredibly narrow, applying only to A and invalid against other aesthetes, for example those with a second order principle of hedonism. Similarly with Heidegger, a huge amount will rest on how exactly we characterise not just authenticity but inauthenticity: options range from denying inauthentic agents any of the apparatus of agency, to claiming that they cannot fully commit to goals, to claiming that they can fully commit but only to the wrong things.30 In a Kierkegaardian context, the situation is of course further complicated by other authors’ treatment of Judge William; particularly Climacus’ contention that “The ethicist in Either/Or” must themselves remain in despair (CUP: 216). As I noted, the idea that emotions, pathe, are central to individual development and transformation is evidently an ancient one. What we see illustrated in Kierkegaard and Heidegger are key features of the modern re-imagining of that view. It is a re-imagining in which some shifts are straightforward: for example, the move away from the young, malleable learners of the Aristotelian tradition towards mature agents who will need to be shocked, wooed or argued out of engrained patterns of thought and habit. Other changes are more complex and ambiguous: the relationship between active and passive transformation and between praise-worthy and pathological emotions is profoundly blurred. I hope it is now clear how, in both their points of agreement and disagreement, Kierkegaard and Heidegger exemplify that modern transformation in how we understand transformation.31

Notes 1 Aristotle (1985: 1103a26-b2; 1138b11). 2 For insightful discussion of the Aristotelian links, see Withy (2015). 3 For example, “to love is straightforward pathos” (CUP: 364). 4 I follow the Hongs in using “depression” for Tungsind as it is the nearest current equivalent for the phenomenology which A describes. It is, however, useful to bear “melancholy” in mind precisely for its somewhat archaic overtones—one of the points touched on by William is the contemporary fashionability of the state. Cappelørn (2008) makes a complex case for “spleen”, but I agree with Hannay that the term “possesses so many and even contradictory meanings in current English that it says nothing definite” (Hannay 2008: 150). 5 Heidegger is particularly opposed to Pelagianism because he links it to the Cartesian privileging of the subject, claiming that the cogito amounts to a in “an extreme pelagianism of theoretical knowing” (Ga17: 226).

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Sacha Golob 6 Rae (1997: 118n31). 7 I capitalise “Being” primarily for readability: discussion of what Heidegger means by either Sein or Seyn, and how inflationary those notions are, is beyond this piece. 8 The point holds all the more if, with Rae, one is suspicious of the very idea of a leap (Rae 1997). 9 Habermas (1987: 152–3). 10 Ferreira (1998: 221). 11 Ferreira (1998: 222). 12 For sophisticated discussion of this idea in later Heidegger especially, see Engelland (2017: 183–94). 13 Caputo goes so far as to suggest that Being and Time differs “principally in terms of the degree to which Heidegger has formalized and articulated Kierkegaard’s ontology in a more systematic, professional manner” (Caputo 1987: 82-3). This goes too far in neglecting neglects the extensive influence which Kant, amongst others, on Heidegger’s account of finitude and temporality: even if he were a mere systematiser, Heidegger must be treated as a uniquely syncretic one. 14 I discuss William’s brief digression into the language of Haufniensis below. 15 Cappelørn (2008: 133). 16 I use “misery” here as a blanket term covering “depression” and “despair”: I address William’s understanding of that difference in a moment. 17 Macintyre (1981: 41). 18 Davenport and Rudd (2001) is the locus classicus. 19 Compaijen (2018: 207, 211, 226). 20 For current purposes, I equate “Dasein” with “human being”: I discuss the details in Golob (2014: 201–2). 21 Dreyfus and Rubin (1991: 332) and Blattner (1999: 80). 22 Blattner (2013: 142). 23 Admittedly, there is one line in which William abruptly lapses into the language of Haufniensis, conceding that “a little depression” is present in every life due to “hereditary sin” (EO II: 190). But this jibes so little with his broader argument that Hannay excised it from his edition of Either/Or on the grounds that “to me the interpolation seemed out of character” (Hannay 2008: 150). 24 Furtak (2005: 82–3). 25 Annas (1993: 55). 26 Withy (2012: 196). 27 Macintyre (1981: 126). 28 For discussion of the various Heideggerian responses to this worry, see Golob (2017). 29 Davenport (2001: 92). 30 For detailed discussion of these options see Golob (forthcoming).

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Editors for very helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Bibliography Abbreviations: Kierkegaard CoA CUP EO I EO II JP

The Concept of Anxiety. Ed./trans. R. Thomte and A. Anderson (Princeton, Princeton University Press 1980) Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Ed./trans. H.V. Hong and E.A. Hong (Princeton, Princeton University Press 1992) Either/Or: Part One. Ed./trans. H.V. Hong and E.A. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) Either/Or: Part Two. Ed./trans. H.V. Hong and E.A. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers: Volumes 1–6. Eds./trans.

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H.V. SuD

Hong and E.A. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967–1978). The Sickness unto Death. Eds./trans. H.V. Hong and E.A. Hong (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983).

Abbreviations: Heidegger References are to the standard Gesamtausgabe edition (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975–; abbreviated as Ga), with the exception of BT, where I use the standard text (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1957). Where I have used a specific translation, I list it below: since all show the Gesamtausgabe pagination marginally I have not given both.BT Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1957); Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) Ga3 Ga5 Ga17 Ga18

Ga20 Ga27 Ga29/30

Ga54 Ga65 Ga94

Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1998) Holzwege (1977) Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung (2006) Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie (2002); Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. R. Metcalf and M. Tanzer (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2009) Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (1979); History of the Concept of Time, trans. T. Kisiel (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1992) Einleitung in die Philosophie (1996) Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (1983); The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, trans. W. McNeill and N. Walker (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1995) Parmenides (1982); Parmenides, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1992). Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1989); Überlegungen II-VI (Schwarze Hefte 1931–1938) (2014)

Annas, J (1993). The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aristotle (1985). Nicomachean Ethics, trs. I. Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett. Blattner, W (1999). Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2013). Heidegger’s Being and Time. London: Bloomsbury. Cappelørn, N (2008). “Spleen Essentially Canceled—Yet a Little Spleen Retained” in Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard, edited by E. Mooney. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Caputo, J (1987). Radical Hermeneutics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Compaijen, R. (2018). Kierkegaard, Macintyre, Williams, and the Internal Point of View. Davenport, J (2001). “The Meaning of Kierkegaard’s Choice Between the Aesthetic and the Ethical: A Response to Macintyre” in Kierkegaard after MacIntyre, edited by J. Davenport and A. Rudd. Chicago: Open Court. Davenport, J. and A. Rudd (2001). Kierkegaard After Macintyre. Chicago: Open Court. Dreyfus, H. and J. Rubin (1991). Being-in-the-World. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Engelland, Chad (2017). Heidegger’s Shadow: Kant, Husserl, and the Transcendental Turn. Ferreira, M. Jamie (1998). “Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, edited by A. Hannay and G. Marino. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Sacha Golob Furtak, R (2005). Wisdom in Love: Kierkegaard and the Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Golob, S (2017). “Methodological Anxiety: Heidegger on Moods and Emotions” in Thinking About the Emotions: A Philosophical History, edited by A. Cohen and R. Stern. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (forthcoming). “What Does Authenticity Do in Being and Time?” Cambridge Critical Guide to Being and Time, edited by Wendland, A. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Habermas, J (1987). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, Mass: MIT. Hannay, A (2008). “Kierkegaard on Melancholy and Despair” in Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard, edited by E. Mooney. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Macintyre, A (1981). After Virtue. London: Duckworth. Rae, M (1997). Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation. Oxford: Clarendon. Withy, K (2012). “The Methodological Role of Angst in Being and Time” in Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology 43: 195–211. (2015). “Owned Emotions: Affective Excellence in Heidegger on Aristotle” in Heidegger, Authenticity and the Self, edited by McManus, D. London: Routledge.

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16 WORLD HISTORY IN A DICTIONARY Franz Rosenzweig on Teshuva, Metanoia, and Umkehr Benjamin Pollock You have forgotten who you are, and so forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become. […] Remember who you are. (Mufasa 1994)1

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else. (Bob Dylan 1997)2

In the summer of 1913, Franz Rosenzweig underwent a crisis which transformed him personally, spiritually, and philosophically. In the years prior, Rosenzweig’s skepticism regarding the world, and concomitant belief in the possibility of an individual relationship with God, had led him to advocate a position according to which securing his self hood, and its redemptive relation to the divine, required a denial of the world. But an all-night conversation on 7 July 1913 with his cousin Rudolf Ehrenberg and friend Eugen Rosenstock—both Christians of Jewish descent— and perhaps the experience of community with others in the world through that conversation, led him to rethink the redeemability of the world and, subsequently, to commit himself to a metaphysical view, to a religious way of life, and to a narrative of self-transformation that identified the redemptive reconciliation of self hood and worldliness as the human being’s highest—and divinely commanded—task. The significance Rosenzweig assigned to his own transformative experience and to the insights he reached through it can be gathered from the book he came to write in its wake, The Star of Redemption, which offers a philosophical-theological account of the tension between self and world, and of the divinely summoned self-transformation demanded of persons in order to enter upon the course of redemptive reconciliation. But now which narrative of self-transformation, and which religious way of life, did Rosenzweig commit to in the wake of his personal crisis? The answer Rosenzweig would have given to this question would have depended on when you asked him. For during the first months after his transformative night-conversation, Rosenzweig was convinced that it is only in Christian redemptive activity in the world that self and world can find reconciliation. But he then later DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-22

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concluded that Christians will only act to redeem the world so long as Jews anticipate, in the context of religious practice, the redemption which Christians strive to actualize. That conclusion eventuated in Rosenzweig’s return to Jewish life and practice.3 Rosenzweig announced his return to Judaism in a letter to Ehrenberg from 31 October 1913, setting off another interreligious exchange, in the course of which—on 4 November 1913—he made a curious claim about inter-religious translation: The Church turns the apparent “stubbornness [of Jews]” into rejection by God. But seen from our perspective, it is of course totally different. For us, our “stubbornness” counts as loyalty, and our “deviation from God”, since it is deviation and not an original distance from God (“Adam’s” sin!), is only healed through return, and not through transformation. That the concept of penance [Buße], rendered in Hebrew through “Rückkehr”, “Umkehr”, “Wiederkehr”, thus that this Hebrew word “Teschubah” is μετάνοια in the New Testament, that is one of the points where world history is captured in the dictionary.4 The theme of Rosenzweig’s comment, on the surface, is the relationship between religious narratives, on the one hand, and the translation of terms, or the difference in meaning of like terms, across such narratives, on the other. The same stubbornness already attributed to the Jewish people in the Bible, and later associated with insistence on maintaining a Jewish way of life in the face of Christian good news, comes to have a different meaning within Christian and Jewish narratives, respectively. This is because it is framed, in the Christian narrative, within a story about the Jewish rejection of Christ, and in the Jewish narrative, within a story about the struggle to remain loyal to a divinely commanded way of life in the face of worldly temptations and suffering. Moreover, Rosenzweig suggests, because the Jewish narrative conceives of distance from the divine to be not original, but rather the result of having gone astray from an original intimacy, the kind of self-transformation required to overcome that distance is understood to be an act of return to an original self which stood in intimate relation to God, a return to who I was and was always supposed to be. This is to be contrasted with an act of conversion, which would allow me to become a new person, and thereby to begin a life of intimacy with God, one no longer burdened by a former condition of distance. Rosenzweig suggests that the translation of a term in the Hebrew Bible designating the first of these paths of self-transformation by a term in the Greek/Christian Bible designating the latter, i.e., the translation of “Teshuva”—indicating a turning-back, a turning-around, or a starting-again—by Metanoia, indicating a changing of one’s Nous, exemplifies just how historically significant such translation of terms can be.5 Return and conversion appear to be opposites: when it comes to becoming who you are, there is no greater difference than between becoming a wholly new self and returning to be the self one always and originally has been. But in addressing the question of the relation between the narrative contexts from which and into which these terms are translated, Rosenzweig suggests that Teshuva and Metanoia, return and conversion, are paths of self-formation which stand in a relation of translation one to the other. What returning to one’s original self is in the Jewish narrative is best captured by what becoming a new self is in the Christian. Rosenzweig implies, moreover, that this translatability is precisely what is at stake in his own personal case. For what Rosenzweig is trying to explain to his cousin is how he could now identify the very transformative experience he underwent through the conversation of 7 July 1913 as an experience of return, when he had for a time understood it as a conversion. To do so, Rosenzweig has to translate the self-transformation he experienced and now rewrite it within a Jewish rather than a Christian narrative. 252

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In Rosenzweig’s later writings, translation comes to be understood as serving a redemptive function. Translation, for Rosenzweig, is the bringing of the discourse of another into one’s own discourse, and thereby broadening one’s own discourse and oneself, where the horizon of such translation is a unified and redemptive “language of humanity”.6 Rosenzweig views the difference between languages as a difference that allows for the redemptive actualization of unity in difference; and he views translation as that act whereby the ultimate “language of humanity” is approached within each and every language (through the incorporation of its others). But differences between languages are also a sign of the unredeemedness of our present condition, a sign that redemption is a task for us to actualize, a task we take upon ourselves, in fact, in the moment of self-transformation that Rosenzweig identifies, alternatively, as conversion or return. Rosenzweig speaks in the letter not only of Teshuva and Metanoia, but also of “Buße”, penance, which he identifies as the concept which is conveyed in the Hebrew “Teshuva”, then translated as “Metanoia”. Such an identification may imply Rosenzweig understands there to be a shared penitential structure to both Teshuva and Metanoia which manifests itself differently—for reasons that would have to be explained—in return and conversion, respectively. Now, the term “Buße” doesn’t appear in The Star. But in The Star, revelation, the human being’s personal relationship with the divine, draws the human being into a process of confession, self-judgment, and reconciliation comparable to “penance”, and it is indeed through this process that the human being actualizes herself as an “I”. Moreover, The Star suggests Teshuva and Metanoia are manifestations of a shared structure of transformation in a more fundamental sense. There is arguably no term more methodologically important in The Star than “Umkehr”. The Star depicts all beings (divine, worldly, personal) as passing from elemental potentiality to actuality, by entering into relations with their others; but in the process of entering into such relations and of becoming actual, every being must undergo an “Umkehr” or “Umkehrung”, a reversal of those qualities which defined it in its isolated, elemental form.7 So that when the human self is actualized—becomes an “I”—through revelation, in the Star, the self is merely undergoing its own version of an “Umkehr” all beings are claimed to have to undergo as they step from potentiality to actuality through reciprocal relations. In what follows, I want to explore Rosenzweig’s account of Teshuva and Metanoia as translatable, complementary paths of self-transformation. This will demand, first of all, inquiring into the structure of the “Umkehr” the self undergoes in revelation, a structure Rosenzweig implies is shared by both. I will then ask both how the specific terms “Metanoia” and “Teshuva” stand to this more fundamental structure of self-transformation, and how they stand to one another, i.e., what it means for them to be translations of one another. If Teshuva and Metanoia are alternative actualizations of the shared structure of self-formation presented in revelation, we should ask why such a structure articulates itself in just these two ways. I will suggest, by way of answer, that the different directions in which Teshuva and Metanoia pull highlight a tension inherent to self-transformation narratives, the tension between one’s past self and one’s new self, or—as Rosenzweig formulates it—between one’s worldly existence and one’s selfhood. But sometimes Teshuva and Metanoia are presented in the Star as the two sole basic forms through which the human being can come to confirm the ultimate redemptive truth of “the All” within her way of life, two forms whose complementarity somehow advances humanity toward redemptive unity. In such cases we should ask: what does it mean to translate an experience from the narrative of one way of life to another? What might cases, in which the translation of a term in one narrative yields something like its opposite in another narrative, teach us about the limits of translation and, consequently, mutual understanding? What role can translation play—and that of Teshuva to Metanoia in particular—in what Rosenzweig understands to be the human being’s fragile advance toward redemption? *** 253

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Rosenzweig’s account of revelation in the Star draws heavily on Biblical as well as Jewish and Christian spiritual literature and Rosenzweig describes revelation in such terms as, for example, divine command, divine love, and divine calling-by-name, issuing in the beloved soul’s confession of sin and reciprocation of divine love. The language is a good deal more theological than is customary in philosophical discourse. But what is at stake in Rosenzweig’s theologically formulated discussion is how the human being is awakened to self hood and actualizes herself as an “I”, and how, having become such a new self, she negotiates her relationship to her past existence. What then is the structure of transformation through which you become who you are? Rosenzweig’s account of revelation suggests such transformation entails the following steps: 1) a (loving-commanding) summons from an exemplary (i.e., divine) other; 2) a reflection upon one’s past self from the standpoint of this relationship to an exemplary other that results in shame and a wish to negate one’s past worldly existence; 3) a transformation of judgment regarding one’s past, allowing for its incorporation within the present self ’s narrative unity; 4) an opening up of that narrative unity into the future in such a way that the self ’s concern for itself becomes inseparable from its concern for (the redemption of ) others. I will explore each step as Rosenzweig presents it in The Star, in turn. I will then stress which aspects of this account of transformation are shared by narratives of Teshuva and Metanoia, but also the point in this shared account at which there is pressure to split into the two directions in which Teshuva and Metanoia pull. Traditionally understood, of course, both Teshuva and Metanoia are paths of self-transformation oriented by a (new or renewed) relation to the divine. As I’ve mentioned, on Rosenzweig’s account, all beings must enter into relations with their others in order to actualize themselves. So when God summons the human being in revelation in the Star, God gets something in the deal: for God requires recognition from others in order to actualize God’s own self.8 Because God’s summoning of the human being to self hood is part of a relation in which God attains divine self hood, when God summons the human being in revelation, God not only identifies the potential for self hood within the human being, thereby helping to draw it out; God also models for the human being the kind of self hood, and the relational path to that self hood, to which the human being should aspire. God here serves the role of the ultimate exemplar, calling on the human being to actualize herself through her relations with others, and modeling the path of that self-actualization. Revelation only becomes a process in which the human being actualizes herself, when the human being begins to internalize the standard or perspective of divine self hood. Indeed, part of what Rosenzweig means by describing revelation as a relationship of love is that it is the kind of relationship to an exemplary other that makes such internalization possible.9 This internalization of the divine standard leads the human being to recognize her own capacity for self-actualization; but it also leads her to feel shame with respect to who she has been up to the moment of the divine summons. This feeling of shame, and how it develops as the human being internalizes the divine standard in revelation, plays a crucial role in the human being’s selfactualization. Rosenzweig describes the two-sided reflection that ensues when the self compares its past identity to the standard it newly internalizes, as follows: It is sweet to admit that one loves-in-return and that in the future wants to be nothing but loved. But it is hard to admit that one was without love in the past. And indeed love would not be that which is shocking, seizing, wrenching, if the shocked, seized, wrenched soul were not conscious of having been up to this moment un-shocked, and un-seized. A shock was thus first necessary so that the self could become beloved soul. And the soul is ashamed of her past self, and that she had not broken the spell in which she lay by her own power. 254

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That is the shame that sets itself before the mouth of the beloved who wants to confess. It must confess its past and still present weakness, if it wishes to confess its already present and future bliss. And so the soul to whom God calls out his command of love, is ashamed of herself […and] answers: “I have sinned”.10 Becoming an actualized self through the loving summons of God is “shocking, seizing, wrenching” for the self. But such feelings of transformation are only felt on the background of having not been so transformed, or of not having transformed oneself, prior to that summons from without. The bliss experienced at becoming “beloved soul”, i.e., a new self who has accepted the standard of the beloved exemplar, is thus accompanied, according to Rosenzweig, by a feeling of shame.11 This shame is directed at the fact that the self “had not broken the spell in which she lay by her own power”, that is to say, did not recognize the self she had the potential to become, and did not actualize that potential, independent of her relationship to this exemplary other. Not yet having become the self she had the potential to be is identified, by Rosenzweig, with being trapped in a state of objectivity or worldliness.12 And so, Rosenzweig suggests, the first stage of shame is its being directed at one’s objectified prior self precisely as past self, as the thingly self one was, issuing in an attempt to negate that prior self. “‘I have sinned’”, Rosenzweig writes, “means ‘I was a sinner’”. By relegating one’s failure to attain one’s higher self hood to a past self, Rosenzweig suggests, the self summoned by God “dismisses shame. In that she speaks thus, back purely into the past, she purifies the present from past weakness”.13 The experience of shame is here initially mollified by delimiting its application to a past self from which the present self, who has internalized the standard of the divine exemplar, can claim to have separated. Actualizing one’s self here initially seems to require divorce from one’s worldly past, in order to become a wholly new person. But Rosenzweig finds such an attempted relegation of one’s shame onto a past self to be either dishonest or one-sided (i.e., rejecting one’s objectivity for one’s subjectivity), and in any case not productive in the actualization of one’s I-hood. And so, he suggests the process of becoming one’s new self demands not rejecting but rather incorporating one’s past, it demands—to use Jonathan Lear’s formulation—“accepting” or “assuming responsibility” for one’s past rather than simply “holding oneself responsible for it”, and thereby relating to one’s past in the first rather than third-person.14 Rosenzweig speaks of this advance as a transition from confessing “I have sinned” to confessing “I am a sinner”. He writes: Only now, where he, despite the fact that he has dismissed past weakness, all the same still confesses to be a sinner, shame abates from him. Yes, that his confession is dared in the present, is the sign that it has overcome shame. So long as it still remained in the past, it did not yet have the courage to express itself fully and trustingly, it could still doubt the answer which would come to it […]. Only in that she dares herself out of the confession of the past into the confessing of the present, doubt falls away from her. In that she confesses her sinfullness as still present sinfullness and not as “sins” done, she is certain of the answer, so certain that she no longer needs to hear the answer aloud. She hears it within herself. She doesn’t need God to purify her from her sins, but rather in view of His love, she purifies herself. In the same moment where shame abates from her and she submits herself in free present confession, she is certain of divine love, as certain as if God Himself had spoken that “I forgive” in her ear for which she longed before, when she confessed to Him the sins of the past. Now she no longer needs this formal absolution, she is free of her burden the moment she dared to take it all on her shoulders. […] Not out of God, but rather out of her own mouth comes this certainty.15 255

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Rosenzweig describes this key moment in becoming an actualized self as the moment in which one accepts one’s not-having-yet achieved that higher form of self hood as part of one’s present subjectivity. Confession does work here, permitting me to assume a first-person present relationship to my not-yet-achieved self hood. That failure to achieve is no longer an objectified past, weighing the self down, it is no longer “‘sins’ done”, but rather a “still-present sinfulness”, a recognition that one’s higher self is still to be achieved.16 Rosenzweig suggests accepting responsibility in the present for not yet having achieved my higher self requires courage and trust, trust perhaps in God, but trust especially in the reconcilability of who one has been and who one aspires to be. Rosenzweig claims that “shame abates” in the declaration: “I am a sinner”. But I take it Rosenzweig is pointing here to a shade of shame itself which—as James Conant has highlighted— Nietzsche describes as a condition which love for an exemplar has the power to awaken in a person, in which “one is ashamed of oneself without any accompanying feeling of distress”.17 Conant reads Nietzsche as suggesting that “when one experiences this sort of shame, it is the sign that one is on the path to self-overcoming—that one has entered that ‘condition of intrepid self-knowledge’ that enables one to attain the right sort of ‘discriminating and self-contemptuous view’ of one’s (present) self, thus filling one with ‘the desire to look beyond’ one’s present self and to seek ‘a higher self as yet still concealed’ from one”.18 Shame abates, doubt falls away for the becoming self who confesses to be a sinner in the present, for Rosenzweig, because assuming such a first-person relationship to one’s sinfulness already marks a step toward overcoming: “she is free of her burden the moment she has dared to take it all on her shoulders”. Indeed, confession of present sinfulness is an expression of the aspiring self ’s identification with the internalized standard of the divine exemplar, even if he has not yet fully lived up to that standard.19 Rosenzweig suggests accepting responsibility for one’s not yet having achieved one’s higher self brings about a kind of reconciliation between the divine standard the self has internalized and one’s not yet having achieved that standard, such that the human being no longer requires God for such reconciliation. It attains “certainty” regarding its own relation to the divine standard it has internalized through its own forgiving of itself. The reconciliation between the divine standard the self has internalized and one’s not yet having achieved that standard results in a change in judgment regarding one’s past. One’s past nature neither defines one’s self in its entirety—as it might have done before the divine summons—nor is it relegated to a past sinful self from which one has broken completely, as the awakening to one’s actualizable self first seemed to require. Rather, one’s past, worldly existence comes to be seen as that which prepared the path to one’s becoming an “I”. In the theological terms of the Star, Rosenzweig claims that creation comes to be understood as promising that which finds (initial) fulfillment in revelation, and thus that the human being’s existence in the world prior to becoming the self he now is must be understood as having prepared the way for becoming this new self.20 In the light of the experienced miracle of revelation a past preparing and providentially foreseeing [vorsehend] this miracle becomes visible. The creation which becomes visible in revelation is the creation of revelation. Only at this spot, where the experiential, present character of revelation is inalterably fixed, only here may it receive a past, but here it now also must.21 My experience of revelation “receives a past”, according to Rosenzweig, “the creation of revelation”, once I am able to take up my prior existence as preparing the way for, and as fulfilled in my becoming, an actualized self. To say my existence in the world is the product of creation 256

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is to say the divine summons that awakens the self in revelation was preceded by a prior relation between God and the world. Thus although this divine summons tears the self out of its prior condition, it at once fulfils that past. The transformation through which I become myself is to be understood as the fulfillment of a prior relationship. Becoming this new self is thus at once a discovery of who I was meant to be all along. By coming to view one’s prior existence in the world as fulfilled through one’s transformation into an actualized self, one may be said to bring together one’s past worldly existence and one’s present self hood into a narrative unity. The coherence and integrity of the self I become will then reflect itself in the kind of story I am able to tell about myself. On Rosenzweig’s account, the narrative of each individual self who awakens through the divine summons in revelation opens up into a future shared by all other selves, all of whom emerge from the process of self-formation with their own respective narratives. Now, insofar as the God who summons me to self hood is depicted, in the Star, as summoning each and every human being, in turn, to self hood, the divine perspective which I internalize through revelation also tasks me with reconciling my narrative with those of all others. Rosenzweig writes that the individual whose self has been awakened through the summons of divine love longs for the expansion of that love, “which no longer grows in the I and You, but is rather […] grounded in view of all the world”.22 That is to say, the self longs for the recognition of his own self hood, and his own narrative, by all others in the world. Rosenzweig speaks of this process of integrating one’s own narrative within a unifying community of all selves as redemptive, and he suggests the self ’s comportment toward the future is defined by her responsibility for forging such a community: The kingdom of brotherliness after which the soul longs […] this bond of a beyond-thenatural, wholly personally-felt and yet wholly worldly existing community, can no longer be founded for her by the love of the lover. […] Should this longing be fulfilled, the beloved soul would have to step beyond the magic circle of belovedness, forget the lover and open her own mouth, no longer to answer, but rather to her own word.23 Even in awakening to self hood in revelation, the self here experiences a gap between this achieved self hood and an ultimate self-actualization that cannot be separated from participation in and creation of the ultimate community of all selves in the world, a wholly personal “and yet wholly worldly existing community”. But the single comprehensive narrative within which the narratives of all individual selves find their recognized place, Rosenzweig claims, is God’s alone. Daring to situate one’s own narrative within that master narrative demands, in Rosenzweig’s words, “the courage to find ourselves present in the truth, the courage to say our Truly in the middle of the truth”.24 Having sketched Rosenzweig’s account of the transformation the human being undergoes in becoming an actual self through revelation, I want to draw some tentative conclusions regarding what this sketch might teach us about Teshuva and Metanoia. Rosenzweig’s account of revelation can teach us what is shared by narratives of transformative experience as different as those of return and conversion 25; but it also indicates for us where we find the pressure for these narratives to split apart in opposite directions. What Teshuva and Metanoia share, I think, is what Rosenzweig referred to in his letter of 4 November 1913, as “the concept of Buße”, rendered by Teshuva in the Hebrew Bible and translated thereafter as Metanoia, i.e., the self-transformation brought about through self-criticism and confession in the presence of God, and the reconciliation with (the internalized standard of ) God that transformation makes possible. The internalization of an 257

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ideal standard that follows upon the human being’s entry into a relationship with the ideal exemplar, the shame felt when one’s worldly life up to that point is measured against such a standard, the wish to negate one’s past self, even the acceptance of one’s present sinfulness as evidence of one’s having taken up exemplary self hood as one’s own higher identity—these stages are crucial to both narratives of return and of conversion. But we also find, in Rosenzweig’s account, that considerable effort must be exerted in order to bring one’s past existence together with the self one strives to actualize within a single narrative whole. Indeed, before I succeed in incorporating my past and present self within a single narrative whole, I am inclined to relegate my failure to achieve (my higher) self hood onto a past self and to divorce from it. Marya Schechtman’s “narrative self-constitution view requires”, she writes, that a person have a self-conception that coheres to produce a well-defined character. It should be obvious that this narrative can be intelligible to almost any degree. At one extreme there is the ideal (which no one actually attains) of perfect intelligibility—a life story in which every aspect coheres with every other. At the other extreme there is a random sequence of experiences that have little, if any, relation to one another. In between lie many possibilities.26 I suggest we think about the split of self-formation narratives into narratives of return, on the one hand, and conversion, on the other, as a response to the challenge transformative experiences pose to narrative coherence. The more transformative such an experience is,27 the more difficult it will be to hold together before and after, such that “before” can be understood as having prepared for and as finding fulfillment in what comes after. Patrick Riley identifies this tension, inherent to conversion narratives, as “the paradox of conversion”; he suggests it is both what leads converts to write autobiographies, and what undermines their attempts to tell a coherent story: Conversion invariably threatens to cut the thread of intelligibility it would interlace with all the strands of our life story. […] Conversion is the moment that motivates autobiographical production and provides a structure for a narrative of the self. Yet it also implies the self ’s dissolution into alterity. If conversion legitimates narrative retrospection by offering a unitary, even teleological framework in which to cast the subject’s history, it also threatens to expel the self from its textual edifice.28 Rosenzweig is sensitive to just this tension within narratives of self-transformation. In a note in his “Paralipomena” from 1916, he too refers to this tension as a paradox: The fundamental paradox of revelation is that the human being is summoned to abandon his nature, and is summoned to do so by the God who is Himself the creator of that nature. In this already consists the double myth of the original sin of man and the descent of God (the one necessarily a pre-historical myth, the other a historical). This connection of the pre-historical and historical myth generates the characteristic feature of revelation: the pathos of the moment. Stoic natural law […] doesn’t have this. The lex Dei is eternal and corresponds quintessentially to the nature of the human being. The ‫[ תורת ה׳‬Torah of God] is ‫[ חיים‬Life] and demands a choice between ‫[ חיים‬Life] and ‫[ מוות‬Death].29 In revelation, Rosenzweig writes, the human being is “summoned to abandon his nature”, to transcend his created existence in order to actualize his self hood, but is summoned to do so by 258

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the very “God who is the creator of this nature”. This paradox is expressed in the twin myths of the original sin of the primordial human being and of the “descent of God” in revelation (at Sinai or Golgotha). The former is “pre-historical”, insofar as it roots both the possibility of human freedom vis-à-vis God and the need for human transcendence of worldly nature in divinely created human nature itself; whereas the latter is “historical” insofar as it points to a divine intervention into the world God created at a moment that initiates a historical process through which the world’s nature is transcended. Rosenzweig suggests that this paradoxical synthesis of a divinely created human nature and a divine command to overcome that very nature in time forges the decisive character of human experience: “the pathos of the moment”. What a person decides to do in the moment of being summoned to self hood matters, Rosenzweig implies, because such decisions are not predetermined by human nature, and because—occurring as they do within the flow of time—they present opportunities for self-formation that will not return. On the other hand, were these opportunities not at the same time still grounded in the worldly nature out of which they emerge, they would not be moments, points in a shared narrative of development, but rather isolated, non-temporal experiences of transcendence.30 By designating the account of revelation he wishes to advocate as a paradox, Rosenzweig acknowledges that while only the thinking together of one’s nature and self hood (of creation and revelation) allows for a coherent narrative account of the self in the world, there is significant pressure to pull these two apart, and to claim either that 1) the self hood which the human being is to achieve through revelation was already predetermined in human nature in creation, and hence no actual transformation happens in revelation, but I merely discover who I always was; or that 2) the self hood which the human being achieves through revelation is indeed a new achievement; but this means I find myself alienated not only from my past, but from the world and from God as the world’s creator (with appropriate theological consequences).31 Narratives of Teshuva and Metanoia develop out of the more basic structure of the transformation the human being undergoes in actualizing her self, I suggest, out of the difficulty in abiding with “the fundamental paradox of revelation”, or out of the difficulty inherent to creating a narrative identity by conceiving of one’s past self as preparation for the self one aspires to actualize. Instead of so abiding, Jewish narratives tend to present self-transformation as a return to, or a recollection of the self one always was; while Christian narratives tend to present selftransformation as the death of one’s past self and one’s concomitant rebirth as a new person. I’ve noted that on Rosenzweig’s view, translation is the means of advancing toward redemptive unity in difference; but the fact we must translate between languages and narratives is, at once, evidence of our present, unredeemed condition. The narrative I tell of transformation through which I have become who I am is always expressed in an existing language, within an existing narrative. Given this unredeemed character of our language, perhaps it is to be expected that our narratives of self-transformation be one-sided. In actual relationships with actual exemplars awakening persons to self hood within actual communities of speakers, the integration of worldliness and self hood doesn’t work so smoothly. And we’ve seen there are two ways to be one-sided in self-transformation, either by telling that story as one of the rediscovery of one’s nature, or as one of the creation of an altogether new self. In describing the way an individual affirms the reconcilability of her own narrative within the developing master narrative of redemption, Rosenzweig writes, “one’s own is confirmed into eternal truth: birth and rebirth, position and mission, already-found Here and decisive Now of life. […] It is just a question of which. […] Twofold is thus the possibility of confirming the truth”.32 These two possibilities for confirming truth, either within one’s birth and position in the world, or in the decisive moment of one’s rebirth, are narratives of revelation which pull, I’ve 259

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suggested, to one side or the other, i.e., to the side of presenting the self achieved through revelation as already there originally in the human being’s natural existence, or to the side of presenting that self as wholly new and divorced from its worldly past. These are, according to Rosenzweig, precisely the Jewish path of return and the Christian path of conversion. Twofold was the possibility […]. The place in which the human being already found himself, the stand where he stood, could lie within himself, he could carry his kind around with him as something created for him, in the secret of his birth, as an inner home. […] It is just the reverse for the Christian. One day, in his own life, the miracle of rebirth happens to him—as individual.33 The foci of Jewish and Christian life are birth and rebirth, worldly existence and decisive experience, respectively. According to the Jewish narrative, says Rosenzweig, the Jew carries what he is around within him in his very existence—he is Jew by birth—and so doesn’t ever in fact become a Jew. Rosenzweig takes this position to the extreme, claiming that the Jew doesn’t undergo any decisive, transformative experience in order to become a Jewish self. Rather, if he experiences such a transformation what he has in fact undergone is a return to—a reliving of—the original divine revelation to Abraham: If man carries his inner home thus, his inner stand with him, so the decisive moment, […] his rebirth, […] must lie before his own life. The rebirth of the Jew […] is not his personal rebirth, but rather the transformative creation of his people to freedom in the divine covenant of revelation. The people, and he in it—not he personally as individual—experienced at that time a second birth. Abraham the patriarch, and he the individual only in Abraham’s loins, heard the call of God and answered it with his “Here I am”. The individual from now on is born a Jew. He doesn’t need to become one in some decisive moment of his individual life. The decisive moment, the great Now, the miracle of rebirth lies before the individual life.34 The Jewish narrative so swallows up the transformative experience of becoming a self within that self ’s original nature, according to Rosenzweig, that it conceives of any actual experiences of the sort as the reliving of transformative experiences within the Jewish people’s mythical past. The “here I am” which the self speaks within the revelatory dialogue in order to express the actualization of his self hood, is projected back into the Biblical Abraham’s response to divine revelation. It is the individual Jew’s only insofar as he was somehow already there “in Abraham’s loins”. One does not become a Jew in a transformative experience, but rather discovers the self one has always been. To undergo Teshuva, on Rosenzweig’s account, is to remember who you are. On the other hand, the Christian, according to Rosenzweig, is all becoming: “Christianus fit, non nascitur. He carries in himself this beginning of his having-become Christian, out of which originate ever new beginnings for him, a whole chain of beginnings. But otherwise, he carries nothing in himself. He ‘is’ never a Christian”.35 The Christian is all conversion, all transformative experience. He has no being other than becoming, other than the moments of new beginning which he experiences and brings about in others. I change during the course of a day. Rosenzweig suggests the entirety of the fraught relationship between Jews and Christians can be captured in this opposition between being and becoming, birth and rebirth, return and conversion: Such a contrary relationship of Here and Now, birth and rebirth now determines the whole further opposition that holds between Jewish and Christian life, each and every time. Christian life begins with rebirth. Birth lies at first outside of him. Thus he must 260

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seek to undergird birth for his rebirth. He must move birth out of the stall in Bethlehem into his own heart. Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem and did he not also become in you, you would still be lost. This whole Here still outside, this whole world of naturalness, is to be drawn into the series of Christian-becomings begun with the great Now of rebirth. Christian life leads the Christian into the outside. […] Just the reverse with Jewish life. There birth, the wholly natural Here, natural individuality, the unpartable being-part-of-the-world, is already there, and this broad and full existence is to be led into the narrow point in time of the rebirth, a leading that becomes a leading back, because rebirth lies unthinkably long before one’s own individual birth. For the displacing of the one-time common birth into one’s own reborn heart, there enters here a re-experiencing of the one-time common rebirth, for the making-present of the past thus a leading back of the present into the past. Each one should know that the Eternal led him himself out of Egypt. The present Here is brought into the great Now of recalled experience. So as the Christian way becomes expression and externalization and the radiating-through of the outermost, Jewish life becomes recollection and internalization and glowing through the innermost.36 Because Christian life is all becoming, and being lies ever beyond the Christian individual, it is a life of expansion and externalization; a life of seeking to create a new world that will undergird the Christian experience of new self hood, of redemptive action aimed at realizing that new world. On the other hand, because Jewish life is all being and no becoming, Jewish experience is always recollection, internalization, contraction, the reliving of the formative events of a people which already anticipates, within the cycle of its liturgical year, what redemption will bring. If return and conversion are two one-sided responses to the fragility of the narrative unity of past and new self, awoken in the transformative experience of revelation, I’d like to suggest that the key to grasping what Rosenzweig means by saying that conversion is the translation of return is the reversal in the relation of being and becoming between the two. The Jewish narrative of return incorporates becoming within its being, swallows up the new self hood achieved through transformative experience within its prior existence; hence its myth of a primordial revelation that is recollected and relived. The Christian translation of this return is to have no being but that which serves as the horizon for one’s becoming through a life of conversion, a worldly nature that must be achieved as future grounding for one’s ever newly achieved self. We might say conversion just is a return in which one’s nature is projected into the future, while return just is a conversion whose transformative achievement is projected into the past. There is thus indeed a way each incorporates the other within itself, for all that they are opposites. It is in this sense that Rosenzweig would have us understand Teshuva and Metanoia as translations of one another. In the letter from 4 November 1913, Rosenzweig describes the translation of Teshuva as Metanoia as “one of those points where world history is captured in the dictionary”—this because the Christian translation of the life of return into a life of conversion did indeed transform the world. Rosenzweig was convinced that translation would yet have redemptive consequences. I’ve noted Rosenzweig assigns translation a redemptive function: it allows one to expand one’s own language to include the discourse of others, and the mutual expansion of every language through its translational relationship to other languages advances toward the ultimate goal of a “language of humanity”. Be that goal as lofty as it may be, if we take seriously the difference of narratives across which translation takes place in Rosenzweig’s account, the kind of mutual understanding a single “language of humanity” is supposed to represent for us appears so remote 261

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as to make us question how actual translation could achieve it. How can I understand you if translating your life path into my own narrative demands such a total reversal? If return becomes conversion? If “stubbornness” comes to indicate damnation rather than chosenness? Rosenzweig sees no conflict between his view that Jews and Christians will live in enmity for all time, and his view that their rivalrous complementarity will have redemptive consequences: that the way the Jew models what the world will be in redemption through the life of return, and the way Christians translate that model of return into a life of expansive conversion will lead to a redemptive unity of difference. I don’t know how that model of complementarity could be translated into terms we could accept into our narratives today.

Notes 1 Retrieved from https://lionking.org/scripts/Script.html#mufasa 2 Gates (1997). 3 Pollock (2014). 4 BT 1: 142. 5 Neither the notion that becoming my true or higher self involves a recognition that I am lost and must turn away from this lost state and embark on a path of self-discovery, nor the question of whether such a path leads me back to the self I truly and originally am or transforms me into a wholly new self, are unique to the Jewish and Christian traditions, of course. There is a vast philosophical and religious literature that is pertinent here which I can’t rehearse. But see especially Foucault (2005) and Hadot (1995). Limits of space also prevents me from addressing the long legacy of scholarship on the gradual development of the concept of metanoia out of Biblical Teshuva, much of which wears its Christian supersessionism on its sleeve (perhaps most famously summed up in Wellhausen’s quip that “Metanoia ist unjüdisch” [Schönfeld (1970) cited in Stroumsa (1999)]) the classic source in this regard is the entry on Metanoia in Kittel (1938). For a recent study of the development of rabbinic Teshuva out of the Biblical, see Lambert (2016). 6 Rosenzweig (1988: 122–23)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 120). 7 The need for such reversals to capture the actualization (“the birth into the revealed”) of those elemental forms of God, world, and self which were conceived elementally in the first part of the Star, is asserted by Rosenzweig at the end of that first part, Rosenzweig (1988: 97)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 98). On the methodological importance of the Umkehr in the Star, see Pollock (2009), chapters 3–4. Rosenzweig was surely influenced by Schelling’s use of the term. In the Weltalter fragment, a central influence on Rosenzweig’s thinking, “Umkehr” names the relationship between “Yes” and “No” potencies within the Godhead. In Schelling’s later thought, one of his standard lines in criticizing Hegelian dialectic is to claim Hegelian negation fails to account for the leap from the realm of thought to that of actuality. Schelling points to the way Hegel uses the same kind of negation to account both for differences between determinations of thought and for the difference between thought as a whole and actuality, even though the latter is clearly a difference of a very different kind. According to Schelling, such a difference as that between thought and actuality could only be understood if one recognized the reversal (Umkehrung) thought must undergo in order to present actuality. See, e.g., Schelling (1993: 132), and Schelling (1861: 572). 8 See Rosenzweig (1988: 196)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 190). 9 Compare Jonathan Lear’s account of how the self becomes aware of itself as an “I” just as it becomes aware of its “Ideal-I”, through a process that includes the internalization of models of self hood provided to it by loving parents, in Lear (1999: 166). 10 Rosenzweig (1988: 200)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 194). 11 Cf. Wollheim (1999: 220): “To have the requisite motivational force to activate something that we can acknowledge as morality broadly conceived, shame must be experienced in relation to an internal figure […] with whom the person identifies”. 12 Rosenzweig writes that only the divine calling of the self by name “cuts off every path of objectification for the human being” and that “in the personal name a breach has been set into the firm wall of thingness. What has a personal name, can no longer be thing”, Rosenzweig (1988: 196)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 189–90). 13 Rosenzweig (1988: 200)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 194).

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World History in a Dictionary 14 Cf. Lear (1999: 65–6). 15 Rosenzweig (1988: 201)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 195). 16 Contemporary literature on shame might describe this move as a development from a feeling of “guilt”—associated with particular actions performed—to that of shame, associated with the whole self, and thus indicative of who the self seeks to become. See, e.g., Williams (2008: 90). See also Morgan (2008: 5). 17 Nietzsche (1997: 163). 18 Conant (2000: 204–5). 19 Consider as a backdrop to this insight, Kant’s formulation: “the lowering of pretensions to moral selfesteem—that is, humiliation on the sensible side—is an elevation of the moral—that is, practical— esteem for the law itself on the intellectual side” (Kant 1900: 5: 79). 20 Compare Sluhovsky (2017: 105), on the development of general confession in early-modern Catholicism. 21 Rosenzweig (1988: 203–4)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 197). 22 Rosenzweig (1988: 228)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 219). 23 Rosenzweig (1988: 228)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 219–20). 24 Rosenzweig (1988: 436)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 415). 25 In a letter to Hans Ehrenberg, July 6, 1919—in response to arguments to the effect that The Star should be understood as a Christian book, Rosenzweig explains he meant for the account of revelation to hold for both Jewish and Christian narratives, but that he may have cut corners: “I wanted to present what was common to the two there, and if despite this it is Judaized, so I had just the impertinence to want to correct Christianity here a little Jewishly”, in Rosenzweig (1979: 636). 26 Schechtman (1997: 97). 27 Cf. Paul (2016: 49). 28 Riley (2004: 8–9). 29 Rosenzweig (1984: 81–2). 30 I have previously offered this interpretation of this passage in Pollock (2014: 92). 31 For what Rosenzweig understood to be Marcionistic tendencies from which Christianity never fully frees itself, see Pollock (2014). On conversion as an opting for one path of life that entails the rejection of one’s former life, see, e.g., Ullman-Margalit (2017: 72). 32 Rosenzweig (1988: 438)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 416–7). 33 Rosenzweig (1988: 440–1)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 418–9). 34 Rosenzweig (1988: 440)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 418). 35 Rosenzweig (1988: 441)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 419). 36 Rosenzweig (1988: 441–2)/ Rosenzweig (2005: 420).

Bibliography Conant, James (2000). “Nietzsche’s Perfectionism: A Reading of Schopenhauer as Educator,” Nietzsche’s PostMoralism: Essays on Nietzsche’s Prelude to Philosophy’s Future, edited by Richard Schacht. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, Michel (2005). The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Translated by Graham Burchell. Picador. Gates, David (1997). “Dylan Revisited,” Newsweek. October 5, 1997. Retrieved from https://www.newsweek.com/dylan-revisited-174056 Hadot, Pierre (1995). “Reflections on the Idea of the ‘Cultivation of the Self,” Philosophy as a Way of Life. Translated by Michael Chase and edited by Arnold Ira Davidson. Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell. Kant, Immanuel (1900). Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Kants gesammelte Schriften, Volume 5, edited by Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: Georg Reimer/Walter de Gruyter. Kittel, Gerhard (1938). Theologische Wörterbuch zum neuen Testament. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Lambert, David (2016). How Redemption Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lear, Jonathan (1999). Love and Its Place in Nature. 2nd Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Morgan, Michael (2008). On Shame. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1997). “Schopenhauer as Educator,” Untimely Meditations. Translated by Richard Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paul, Laurie Ann (2016). Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Benjamin Pollock Pollock, Benjamin (2009). Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Pollock, Benjamin (2014). Franz Rosenzweig’s Conversions: World Denial and World Redemption. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Riley, Patrick (2004). Character and Conversion in Autobiography: Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and Sartre. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Rosenzweig, Franz (1916). “Paralipomena.” Franz Rosenzweig Collection, AR 3001 (Manuscript in Series II, Subseries III:D, Box 2, Folder 40). New York. Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History. Rosenzweig, Franz (1979). Der Mensch und sein Werk, Gesammelte Schriften Volume 1. Briefe und Tagebücher, edited by Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann. Two volumes. Haag. Nijhoff/ Springer. Rosenzweig, Franz (1984). “Paralipomena,” Der Mensch und sein Werk, Gesammelte Schriften. Volume 3. Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken. Haag. Nijhoff/Springer. Rosenzweig, Franz (1988). Der Stern der Erlösung. Suhrkamp. [endnotes cite Stern] Rosenzweig, Franz (2002). Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy. Edited by Inken Rühle and Reinhold Mayer. Tübingen. Bilam Verlag. Rosenzweig, Franz (2005). The Star of Redemption. Translated by Barbara Galli. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press [endnotes cite Star. Although translations are my own, I cite the relevant page of the Galli translation]. Schechtman, Marya (1997). The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1993). Philosophie der Offenbarung 1841/42. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1861). Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Sämtliche Werke I/10, edited by Karl Friedrich August Schelling. Stuttgart: Cotta’sche Verlag. Schönfeld, Hans Gottfried (1970). Metanoia: ein Beitrag zum Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti. Heidelberg. Dissertation. Sluhovsky, Moshe (2017). Becoming a New Self: Practices of Belief in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stroumsa, Guy (1999). “From Repentance to Penance in Early Christianity: Tertullian’s De Paenitentia in Context,” Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions, edited by Jan Assmann and Guy Stroumsa. Leiden: Brill. Ullman-Margalit, Edna (2017). “Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting,” Normal Rationality: Decisions and Social Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 68–79. Williams, Bernard (2008). Shame and Necessity. 2nd Edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Wollheim, Richard (1999). The Thread of Life. 2nd Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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17 MERLEAU-PONTY, THE IMPROVISATORY BODY, AND HUMANS AS REVOLUTIONARY ANIMALS Kym Maclaren Merleau-Ponty is, pre-eminently, the philosopher of embodiment. His understanding of embodiment makes him, however, just as much a philosopher of transformation. For, as I propose in this chapter, Merleau-Ponty shows us that the animal body is not a physiological machine, but a selfreorganizing movement of existence in dialogue with the world; and we human animals are nothing other than a particular—historical, expressive, and revolutionary—form of this embodied process. We will start by seeing, in Section 17.1, how animal bodies are self-reorganizing powers. Evident even at the level of basic reflexes and perception, we find that animal bodies improvise not only new forms of movement, but also new organs of sense. These improvisations, we will note, are both informed by, and transformative of, the material contingencies of the body. In Section 17.2, we will turn to human animals in particular. Here, through an elucidation of habit and the expressive possibilities of embodiment, I aim to elucidate Merleau-Ponty’s claim that “what defines [humans] is not the capacity to create a second nature—economic, social or cultural— beyond biological nature; it is rather the capacity of going beyond created structures in order to create others” (1963: 175). Humans, in other words, are historical creatures whose establishment of new institutions of life (a transformation of self, body, and world) makes possible their own overcoming. We are powers of revolution; we inaugurate new terms or frameworks for our lives that, by means of the very material practices birthed within that framework, enable the transformation of that framework and the institution of a new one. Such revolutions, however, are not inevitable. In Section 17.3, we will consider why the transformative process that we are is inherently ambiguous and can undermine its own transformations, issuing in mere repetitions and even an ever-tightening and entangling—life-reducing—devolution of the creative process that we can be. What, then, is required for revolutionary transformations—for transformations, on my definition, that inaugurate new terms of life which increase rather than decrease freedom?1 What is necessary is not personal reflection, better planning, or stronger will power. Rather, revolutionary transformation requires that the vague existential question, or indeterminate seeking or groping, which we inevitably are and live, engage in forms of repetition that simultaneously open us to otherness and contingency. Thereby, we can be educated by what outstrips us, by what exceeds our current framework of meaning. This education, which takes place at an existential level, in the form of our life, is the revolutionary form of transformation that frees.

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17.1  Animal Bodies as Improvisatory Bodies In The Structure of Behavior, Merleau-Ponty mounts a sustained argument against mechanistic physiological and behaviourist conceptions of animal bodies. Drawing upon experiments and observations produced by Gestalt scientists, Merleau-Ponty shows us that animal behaviour is not mechanistic in the sense of a linear set of physiological causes and effects wherein one physiological event triggers the next, which triggers a further one, etc.; nor is it, as the behaviourists suppose, a matter of a conditioned stimulus coming to be externally (mechanically) associated with a conditioned response. Rather, animal behaviour is the enactment of a certain organization of the organism (a “form” or “structure”) that responds to and resolves a tension arising in the animal’s engagement with reality. Where some event has thrown the animal-milieu relation out of equilibrium, the animal body reorganizes its own anatomical and existing behavioural possibilities so as to produce a new equilibrium. A few examples will help to elucidate. [Reader’s discretion advised: some of these experiments would presumably not pass an ethics review in our current age, and the treatment of animals involved is disturbing.] First, the ocular fixation reflex (Merleau-Ponty 1963: 38–9). In a dark environment, when a light appears, eyes move reflexively to focus on the light. One might imagine that this is a preprogrammed mechanism: light stimulus on the right activates nerves and muscles that turn the eye to the right. Merleau-Ponty notes, however, an experiment on monkeys in which scientist Marina attached the internal muscles of the eye to the nerve fibres that normally govern the external muscles, and the external muscles to the nerve fibres that normally govern the internal muscles (Figures 17.1 and 17.2 symbolize, respectively, the natural eye and the eye with the muscles reattached). The expectation, if ocular fixation is a mechanically produced reflex, is that a light on the right would, under the condition of reattachment, make the eye turn to the left, and away from the light (i.e., a light on the right would contract muscle M1, which in Figure 17.1 would move the eye to the right, but in Figure 17.2, after the reattachment of the muscles, would move it to the left).

Figure 17.1 

Figure 17.2 

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Yet, in fact, the monkey’s eyes still turned towards and fixated on the light. This reveals that the “reflex” behaviour is not in fact governed by pre-programmed mechanics; instead it is a bodily process of resolving a problem set by the animal-milieu relation. In this case, the problem is “something to be seen” and the body reorganizes its functioning—”improvises” (1963: 40) a new functioning—in order to respond to and resolve it. Merleau-Ponty provides another striking example of animal behavioural improvisation where even the cerebral conditions of normal movement are removed, and still the animal’s body reorganizes itself in order to fulfil its project (1963: 40). After a partial excision of the appropriate cerebral region, a creature (a rat?) can no longer seize its food with its right paw, and substitutes its left paw. When that left paw is amputated, the animal begins to use its right paw again. If the partial excision of the cerebral region is completed, the animal can nevertheless still use its right paw when the situation makes it imperative (when, for instance, the food is located outside the cage, and must be reached for). Here, we can see how the functioning of the animal body is not dictated by pre-established causal chains of nervous activation and cerebral “processing,” but rather reworks itself so as to resolve the vital problem posed, with the bodily resources available. This example again highlights for us how an organism’s physiological constitution is not pre-set and unleashed through causally deterministic chains of reactions. Rather, the physiological “conditions” of a behaviour (e.g., this limb, these neural connections) become the conditions they are through the behavioural solution. Provisionally, one might say that, instead of physiological events causing a certain behaviour, a required behavioural solution determines what functions as physiological conditions. The whole determines the parts, rather than the parts linking together to produce the whole. But reversing the direction of determination (from parts to whole, in causal determination, to whole to parts in functional determination) does not do full justice to what is happening here. To see what more we need to say, consider one more set of scientific observations. In hemianopsia, a person has in each eye only half a retina capable of evoking luminous sensations. If vision were produced simply by stimuli acting on sensors and setting off causal chains of nervous activity, then one would expect that this would result in only half of a visual field. But in fact, the person with hemianopsia reports only seeing poorly. And closer observation reveals that this is because each eyeball has reorganized itself—both in terms of muscular functioning and by developing a new pseudo-fovea that makes it sensitive to light and colours where it was not formerly so. Muscularly, the eyeball rotates so as to put its still intact half retina at the centre. But, now, formerly peripheral and less sensitive retinal elements are at the centre, and these develop better visual acuity than they formerly had, while also enabling the perception of colours to which, in a normal subject, they are insensitive (1963: 40–1). Here, we see even more clearly how the organism, faced with a vital need to see as best it can, creates new organs within itself to resolve as effectively as possible this problem. Thus far, it seems like a whole (the resolution of the problem of seeing as clearly as possible) determines the parts (creating a pseudo-fovea). But note that the organism cannot, of course, create new organs ex nihilo or from just any basis; it must rely on physiological resources that are open to certain kinds of new determination. Only a relatively insensitive peripheral part of the retina can be re-purposed as the central fovea; the body could presumably not change olfactory nerves, for instance, into a new pseudo-fovea. Thus, the reorganization of the body requires a kind of indeterminate inclination within the elements to be reorganized; it cannot achieve the new reorganization without realizing within those elements nascent material possibilities (that is to say, possibilities that are not predetermined, and already set, but towards which the material elements have a certain openness). In this way, then, the whole (the new organization of the 267

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body) is dependent upon the parts (the retinal elements), while also constituting them as the parts they are, or have become (the retinal elements as new fovea). This is a relation that Merleau-Ponty, following Husserl, calls Fundierung, or founding (2012: 128). Though Merleau-Ponty introduces this concept most explicitly in another context, we can rephrase what he says to show its fittingness in this instance. In Fundierung, he says: the [bodily organization that realizes the best vision possible] does not depend on [retinal elements] as its ground because [retinal elements are] its cause, but because [retinal elements are] this gift of nature that [the bodily form] had to make use of beyond all expectations, to which it had to give a radically new sense and upon which nevertheless it depended….2 In other words, vison is “founded” upon the retinal elements; but the retinal elements are given their function and part in the whole only in the establishment of them as foundations. The founding occurs in this circular co-determination, and not in the retinal elements as predetermined givens acting unilaterally as the foundation of vision. It is perhaps worth reiterating that this restructuration of the body, and creative improvisation of a new sensory organ, are not transformations guided by intellect or intelligence. They take place unbeknownst to the see-er. But, as we have seen, they cannot be merely mechanistic processes, either. Instead, we must acknowledge the body, the organism, as a kind of living project, seeking to resolve problems that are set for it by the interactive pressures of (a) its biological needs to perceive, move, eat, reproduce, interact—in short, to survive; (b) what is to be perceived or pursued in the environment; and (c) the somewhat open, still-to-be determined resources offered by its muscles, nerve tissues, and anatomy (for the latter, cf. Deleuze and Guattari’s “body without organs,” 1983: 8, and chapter 2). Merleau-Ponty draws an analogy with the drop of oil in water, which realizes a form—namely a spherical shape—by virtue of balancing the stresses of the external pressures of the water and its internal pressures to take up space. The organism, similarly, transforms itself so as to realize a new equilibrium with its vital milieu. But, as we have noted with the concept of Fundierung, in the organism, this new equilibrium is enacted in a manner that both relies on the contingencies of the body’s anatomical givens, and takes these up and transforms them, such that they play a new and necessary role. There is, as Merleau-Ponty will argue in various ways throughout his Phenomenology of Perception, a “movement of existence” that “is the change of contingency into necessity through the act of taking up” (2012: 174).

17.2  Human Embodiment: Habit, Expression, and Revolution 17.2.1  The Habit Body The movement of existence, which we embodied beings are, can dilate or expand itself by the incorporation of new appendages into our biological body. Here, we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s central concept of the habit-body. A car, a bicycle, the blind person’s cane, a computer, a musical instrument,… each of these can come to be incorporated into our bodies through habit. They become, as it were, new anatomical resources, and in being taken up and made a part of our bodily organization, they realize new forms of movement, new worlds of perception, and new modes of expression. Habit, here, is not to be understood as an automatic, pre-programmed, and blind response; habit is rather the establishment of a new frame of reference, in the context of which meanings of things in the world are transformed, and novel forms of behaviour both enabled and solicited. 268

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Indeed, far from being a mechanical reflex, habit is a new form of attunement that allows us to respond in ways that address the singularity and uniqueness of this situation. To learn to ride a bicycle, for instance, is to develop a new body—one that balances on a thin line of rubber, turns by leaning or by redirecting one’s front end, and is propelled by alternating circular movements on the right and left, each circle characterized by resistance and follow-through. To fully inhabit that bicycle-body is to sense and perceive the world differently: that gravel that was unremarkable when we were pedestrians now appears as quagmire, and we feel the gravel where our tires meet it, shifting and circumventing our movement. The narrow space between this car and the curb appears immediately as impassable, without our having explicitly to compare our handlebar or pedal width with that of the opening. The doors of parked cars and the streetcar tracks, which are typically unnoticed when walking or driving, now become charged zones of threat. And to have mastered bike-riding, to have developed the bike-riding habit-body or hexis, is to be able to take on novel situations and still “hit the mean”—to use Aristotle’s language (2002, esp. Bk II, chs. 1–2 and 8). Though I have never encountered exactly this angle of turn, at exactly this speed, it appears immediately to me as calling for this degree of tilt, and without thinking about it, and certainly without making any calculations, I lean in just so, outside leg long, wheels in line, inside pedal up enough to clear the pavement. Taken more slowly, this very same corner would call for a different configuration of my bike-body—with no lean, and a turn of my front end. No formula tells me at what speed this different behaviour is called for, and there is no threshold speed, in any case, since many factors play in—the windspeed and direction, the natural balance of this bike, the load that I’m carrying, my nervousness, the traction of the road surface, etc. The mathematical calculations would be intensely complex, and yet even an athletic four year old cyclist who has never done math can navigate this corner masterfully. What we are seeing here is in one sense simply the same thing we saw in hemianopsia: the problem presented (corner-to-turn) is resolved by the body reorganizing itself in terms of the problem and its own bike-body anatomical resources. It is not given in advance what the function of each leg-foot-pedal element is; these anatomical contingencies have an indefinite, unreflected upon range of still indeterminate possibilities, and their role is assigned to them by the whole behaviour that is itself dependent upon them. Cornering at low speeds, each leg-footpedal is a crucial propellor that keeps the bike going forward through the resistance created by its turning front wheel; at high speeds, each leg-foot-pedal ceases to be a propellor, and becomes a lateral balancing weight. And each role is dictated by the overall form of behaviour that resolves the problem set. In another sense, however, something new has come into view. For this founding relation between contingent bodily resources and the behavioural whole that determines them takes place by virtue of the establishment of a new body—the bike-body—and the new perceptual world that has accompanied it and that now guides it. In the biological body, we see the capacity to improvise new bodily organizations in order to solve problems set by the perceived milieu and our own vital interests. But here, we see the ability to go beyond the biological body, to institute a new body, a cyborg body (flesh and technology) (cf. Haraway 1991: ch. 8), and to play out the same kinds of improvisations within that cyborg body in relation to the new interests, desires, and perceptions to which it gives rise. Here, we have not just transformed organs within the body; here we have a transformation of the body itself (the inauguration of a new bike-body) and of the world it encounters, which give rise to new problems and solutions. Is this, then, what defines human embodiment—this unreflective, lived process or “movement of existence” that originates from our body, and not only transforms the organization of our own given body, but creates new bodies—cyborg bodies and a second nature—which open 269

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up new perceptions, new actions, new desires, and new worlds? But other primates can ride bicycles, too. And some animals, at least, extend and transform their bodily capacities through tools that they create. Chimpanzees can fashion rods for reaching further; beavers create canals that allow them to carry heavy logs. We are often tempted to think of culture and economics as structures of human embodiment instituted through material practices, transforming who and how we are. But other animals, too, seem to have culture and economics (Pryor 1981; Whiten 2011). The continuities between human and non-human animals are far greater than our tradition has typically recognized; improvisation and transformation are found throughout and the creation of second natures among at least some. Is there, then, a form of transformation that is specific to, and might define, the human realm? Let us recall Merleau-Ponty’s assertion that “what defines [the hu]man is not the capacity to create a second nature—economic, social, or cultural—beyond biological nature; it is rather the capacity of going beyond created structures in order to create others.” This definition of the human—as essentially historical, engaged in a developmental movement—differs substantially from a long tradition of locating the human difference in reason, conceived as an intellectual ability separate from embodiment. Yes, it is noteworthy that humans have a capacity for math, science, technology, the arts, and the humanities—a capacity that is unlike anything we have yet to see in animals. But these human accomplishments need not be understood primarily as the result of intellectual reflection; they can instead be understood as traditions that we are born into, and that—precisely by virtue of being of them—we transform. We are historical beings, which is to say revolutionary beings: history—both personal and public—is the institution of new structural forms of life which both grow out of, and challenge and rework, prior structural forms of life. This process is an embodied process, on Merleau-Ponty’s account, and its origin lies not in a separable “mental” capacity for reasoning, but in a certain form of embodiment. Ultimately, as we will see in the next section, what makes us historical and revolutionary beings (and what enables our intellectual pursuits, like math, science, philosophy—with their own revolutions)3 is that we are a form of embodiment with the capacity for expressive transpositions.

17.2.2  Human Embodiment as Transposition and Expression We have made a case that all animals—human and non-human—are involved in an embodied dialectic with the environment, according to Merleau-Ponty. They are, in other words, attuned to meaningful affordances offered by the world, and their behaviour responds meaningfully, and improvisationally, if need be, to these meaningful affordances. If there is something “to be reached for and eaten,” for instance, and the usual bodily resources are impeded or absent, the animal body reorganizes itself in order to realize the meaningful relations of “reaching” and “eating.” This is not a matter of absolute sensory properties causing mechanical responses, to which meanings are then added. Meanings, rather, are primary in this dialectic4 —both motivating and being realized in the successful behaviour. But the form that these meanings can take, and the corresponding form of the embodied dialectic, differs for different animals. Merleau-Ponty differentiates three such forms, based on scientific findings: syncretic (characteristic of animals like frogs), amovable (characteristic of many animals like chickens, rats and chimpanzees), and symbolic (characteristic of humans). To elucidate the human symbolic form of embodied dialectic, in its difference from chimpanzee behaviour, we will consider Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of studies by Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler. What we find, I propose, is that the human embodied dialectic realizes the capacity to perceive autonomous structures (entities, that is, that transcend our own immediate situations and projects) capable of expressing themselves in infinite 270

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ways—and that this comes with our ability virtually to transpose ourselves into those structures, to inhabit them on their terms, and to bring them to expression in new ways by realizing new possibilities only indeterminately or nascently afforded by them. Such transposition and expression are a function of our embodiment, and this form of embodied dialectic makes us historical, and capable of “going beyond created structures to create others.” Chimpanzees use tools. As Köhler observes, they can use boxes as stools to reach food hanging up high. They can use a rod to draw a piece of fruit outside their cage to within reach. They can even construct a tool by inserting a thinner rod into a wider one, in order to produce a longer stick (Merleau-Ponty 1963: 114–20). But careful observation seems to reveal an important difference between their tool-use and ours: chimpanzees, it seems, can see the possibilities of these tools only if the situation helps to suggest them and if there are no other structurations of the situation already at work. Thus, the chimp who has used a box before as a reaching-tool does not recognize the box in its instrument-for-reaching possibilities if another chimp is sitting on it; the box-as-seat and the box-as-instrument are two distinct and alternative objects in the behavior of the chimpanzee and not two aspects of an identical thing. In other words, the animal cannot at each moment adopt a point of view with regard to objects which is chosen at its discretion; rather the object appears clothed with a “vector,” invested with a “functional value” which depends on the effective composition of the field. (Merleau-Ponty 1963: 116–7) The chimpanzee’s behaviour reveals that the thing which it sees is not a self-same thing or object that expresses itself in multiple possible ways, in and through a plurality of perspectives, profiles, or “aspects.” It is not a thing that has properties which are constant across those perspectives; the thing’s properties are rather a function of the particular situation, which is itself centred around the chimpanzee. Even those situation-dependent properties experienced by the chimpanzee seem, however, to be vague, or indeterminate—at least when it comes to building, or placing one structure on top of another in a stable manner (“statics”). A chimp who stands on a box in order to reach a piece of fruit, but finds it is too short will go get another box. But instead of placing that second box firmly upon the first, the chimp will typically wave it uncertainly over the first box, and under the fruit. The first box does not present itself as a possible firm base for the second unless the chimp happens by accident to bring them into contact. And even then, the chimp seems to lack “insight” into what makes it stable, so that if the second box sits atop a piece of batten on the first, and rocks slightly but is stable, the chimp will typically recommence its efforts. If, however, the second box appears stable because it is sitting flat but only partially on the first box, the chimp will try to climb it despite the fact that the chimp’s weight on the unsupported part of the second box will make it tumble (Merleau-Ponty 1963: 116; Köhler 1925: 156). As Köhler says, one observes something similar in the behaviour of the human toddler; but by about three years of age, the toddler has developed insight and can build smoothly and quickly, whereas the chimp continues to rely on a process of groping and discovering happy accidents (and its own amazing ability to compensate for instability with its bodily sinuosity) to establish and use a climbable structure: But while human children, as they grow up to about three years, already begin to develop the simplest of these naïve principles of the physics of equilibrium, the chimpanzee does not seem to make any essential progress in this direction, even when he has plenty 271

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of opportunity to practise. For, although his uncertainty in the sphere of spatial forms and gravity soon no longer discourages him so much, such that he would give up all effort in the face of the conglomeration of boxes, nevertheless, after success with the method has strengthened his confidence, his gaily-undertaken work remains as much “mere trying” as at the beginning: a turning, pulling, twisting, dumping of the higher box onto the lower. (Köhler 1925: 155, translation modified) Here, we see in a quite literal, physical sense, how humans are able to take up created structures (boxes) as the basis for new structures, but chimpanzees are not. The chimpanzee, we might say, has the vague sense that the second box can help access the fruit. But using the first box as a ground or base for the second is quite a different thing than using the earth floor as ground for the first box. In the latter case, one merely needs to drag the first box along the floor; but in order to stack the boxes stably, one needs to grasp perceptually their possibilities of interrelation. And this, it seems, is a different kind of perceiving. The chimp only discovers those possibilities of relation through happy chance, and in a manner that secures no insight, establishes no enduring realization, for future endeavours.5 Why is this so? How is the seeing that leads to human insight different? Merleau-Ponty suggests, through his reading of another experiment, that what the chimpanzee lacks is the ability to “transpose” itself into the independent thing—to inhabit, as it were, the independent thing on its terms, according to its possibilities for self-expression through relation to otherness. A piece of fruit is placed in a box of three vertical sides, facing away from the chimpanzee. The chimpanzee is not able to figure out that, using its stick, it must push the fruit away from itself in order ultimately to bring it towards itself (Figure 17.3). And yet, if the chimpanzee is put in a three-sided box and the fruit where the chimpanzee originally was (Figure 17.4), it can take itself through the detour to get to the fruit. Thus, though the chimp experiences its own body as “a concrete unity capable of entering into a multiplicity of relations without losing itself ” it does not experience the thing as such a

Figure 17.3 

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Figure 17.4 

concrete unity, and it cannot transpose itself into the place of the fruit in order to see how the fruit must make the detour. Says Merleau-Ponty: Arranging that a detour to an object be made is to trace by our very gesture the symbol of the movement which we would have to make if we were in its place; […] The animal cannot put itself [virtually] in the place of the moveable thing and see itself [in its actual place] as the goal. It cannot vary the points of view, just as it cannot recognize something in different perspectives [i.e., in different structurations of the field] as the same thing. […] What is really lacking in the animal is the symbolic behaviour which it would have to possess in order to find an invariant in the external object, under the diversity of its aspects, comparable to the immediately given invariant of the body proper and in order to treat, reciprocally, its own body as an object among objects. (Merleau-Ponty 1963: 118) This notion of transposition is key to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology and phenomenology. Human experience is, in its most actualized form, characterized by it.6 We are not simply subjects over here encountering alien objects over there. We can perceive things as independent objects only because we inhabit them—because we virtually move into their place (even as we are also here), seeing from their point of view, as it were, according to their possibilities and on their terms (this is one way of elucidating Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the chiasm or intertwining, articulated especially in his later ontology (1968, see esp. ch. 4)). For the typical human, then, perceiving a thing is like reading a good book which draws us into its world, orients us according to its way of making sense, and has us assuming its possibilities. It is not a matter of passively receiving the imprint of, for example, a retinal image, or actively attributing a meaning or concept; it is rather a matter of approaching things with the unformulated, existential, embodied question “what is your way of being?” and following the answers provided by its material ways of revealing itself. Thus, one senses the softness of velvet only by following the directions that it, itself suggests, not poking it or squeezing it, but stroking it with the grain; a squid, on the other hand, calls for a poke or a squeeze, and not a stroke, to bring to expression its jelly-like being. We “interrogate” 273

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a thing “according to its own wishes,” says Merleau-Ponty, such that in vision, for example, “one cannot say if it is the look or if it is the things that command” (1968: 133). And through that interrogation, we discover the inner structure that is expressed in and through its material showings. Our behaviour is “symbolic” then, because we encounter not brute sensible properties (colour, hardness, etc.) but material aspects that realize an inner structure, an autonomous way of being, which we can grasp if we just follow along with their directives. To be sure, we also bring the thing to expression in our own style, informed by our own history and future projects: a tree becomes determinately perceived differently for a lumberjack than for an artist, and differently for a Renaissance painter than for an Impressionist. But there is always also an answerability to the tree’s reality, a taking up of its imperatives, an orientation by its own terms, by virtue of which it takes its stand as an independent object with its own, inexhaustible, possibilities of relation which far exceed those made most manifest by our projects, our past, or the current structuration of the situation. Thus, though the painter inevitably paints in her own style, she does so by transposing herself into, and bringing to expression nascent directions of meaning inhabiting the thing itself. Cézanne therefore speaks of “germinating” with the countryside: “‘The landscape thinks itself in me,’ he said, ‘and I am its consciousness’” (1964a: 17). It is this ability to transpose ourselves virtually into a thing, and to assume its terms, which allows us, as humans, to stack boxes stably, reliably, with insight. We need to see each box not simply as a step in our project, on the way to the fruit, but as its own point of orientation, with its own virtual possibilities (beyond those affordances that a current project of reaching for fruit might reveal in it). We need to step into its cuboid way of being, its particular voluminosity and points of strength and stability, in order to feel its possibilities for supporting or resting on another. We need to anchor ourselves in the bottom box, assume it as a new ground—with limits and possible relations unlike those of the earth-ground—in order to see in its terms possibilities for relation with other boxes (also virtually inhabited by us). Attuned to and by the independent reality of each, we are able to intuit possible stable relations between them, different ways in which each might express its boxiness in relation to each other.7 We are, in other words, able to bring this box’s being to perceptual expression in new ways such that, though the meaning of cuboid stability, and the possibility of stable stacking are in fact inaugurated (whereas they were not clearly, determinately accessible to chimps) they nonetheless seem retrospectively to have been meanings and possibilities residing in the boxes all along, inherent in them. This, as we will see, is Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of expression: expression is the process of revealing new meaning in things that, in fact, required our transposition into things and our following out of their still indeterminate possibilities in order to allow the meaning to come into its determinacy—but where that meaning, once set out, seems to have been there all along in the thing itself, eternally true (see, e.g., 2012: 188–90, 408–13; 1964a: 17–21). To clarify this relation between transposition and expression, and to see how it leads to learning and transformation, it might help to turn to an exemplary site of them: our intersubjectivity. Transposition finds its fullest realization in our ability to recognize other selves as other—in our ability to take up others’ points of view, see in terms of their perspectives, and feel ourselves as an object for them. Never does this “coexistence” with the other entail a complete inhabitation of the other’s perspective, however (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 372–6); the other is always a source of initiative and a historical trajectory different from our own. As a result, though we can for a time come to see things through her eyes and be drawn into her ways of making sense of the world, the historical depths that inform her perspective, and her correlative capacity to learn and transform, entail that she can always reveal new and unexpected dimensions of her perspective 274

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which surprise us, and reconfigure our sense of who she is and how to make sense of the world. There is, in other words, simultaneously coexistence and divergence between ourselves and others, in our transposition into their perspectives. This coexistence and divergence, however, propels our expression, and thus our learning and development. Consider how these are at work in MerleauPonty’s description of conversation. In dialogue, Merleau-Ponty says, We are, for each other, collaborators in perfect reciprocity: our perspectives slip into each other, we coexist through a single world. I am freed from myself in the present dialogue; even though the other’s thoughts are certainly his own, since I do not form them, I nonetheless grasp them as soon as they are born or I even anticipate them. And even the objection raised by my interlocutor draws from me thoughts I did not know I possessed, such that if I lend him thoughts, he makes me think in return. (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 370–1, some punctuation added) In other words, we are able to think further in dialogue, to come to new realizations and insights, because two things are the case. First, we coexist with the other, inhabit their perspective, transpose ourselves into what they are saying. But second, our simultaneous and inevitable divergence from them (or theirs from us) allows each of us to follow out and take further—bring to expression—nascent possibilities that initially are unnoticed by the other, yet, once revealed, are co-recognized as belonging to the matter at hand. This same transposition and expression, and the learning and development they entail, are at work in our perception of things (and in the arts which augment and aid in our perception of things). To perceive something humanly is to identify it as a “this” or a “that”—it is to go beyond the question of how the thing figures in our own projects and to ask what it is in itself. There is no thought at work here; rather it is at the level of sensation that we transpose ourselves into, and seek to make sense of things, attuning ourselves to their nascent virtual possibilities, and working to expressively bring them into a determinacy, to resolve the question of the perceptual unity or identity of the thing. Our perception thus involves what Merleau-Ponty calls a “tacit thesis” (2012: 54, translation altered), established through expression: this thesis is a lived, embodied, and provisional perceptual answer about what that thing is—about how it will show itself in the future, in different, and even unexpected, situations. But precisely because our transposition into and expression of things is always situated, shaped by our own possibilities, and because the thing is its own reality and diverges from ours, our tacit thesis can be partial, skewed: it is merely our best hypothesis, our best current way of bringing the thing to expression, through the sensemaking resources available to us. And thus, the thing can reveal to us the inadequacy of this thesis, and call for its revision. In other words, it is precisely because of our transposition into, and answerability to, the thing that it can produce challenges to our tacit perceptual theses, and call for their overcoming, for new expressions of the inner reality of the thing (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 358–60; 1968: 41–2). In answering to the thing on its own terms, in other words, we can find ourselves inhabiting meaning potentials that exceed the thesis we have enacted. Something else slips in, challenging our current expressions of sense, and motivating an overcoming of them, a new expression of what that thing is—an expression that reconfigures, retroactively, what it is that the thing has been all along. A chimp, for instance, may be perceived as a stupid, merely instinctive animal; but time spent with the chimp in different situations (as Köhler and Goodall have done) can introduce challenges to this perceptual thesis and call for a revision of it, such that we come to perceive the intelligence in movements and gestures (even past ones) that heretofore seemed mechanical, repetitive, dumb. 275

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The particular form of human perception then—this intertwining by which we transpose ourselves into, and bring to expression the nascent and virtual possibilities of, things—allows us both to establish a provisional operative and tacit thesis about what each thing is in itself, and to learn, to be challenged by things and to revise and reconfigure our sense of what they are. This process of learning, of overcoming and reworking a past form of perception, is a historical process. We establish, in an embodied, perceptual manner, a way of making sense of things; and then that established sense shows itself to be inadequate, to be exceeded by directions of meaning of which it cannot make sense, and these motivate the overturning of that prior sense, and the institution of a new way of making sense. Our capacities for transposition and expression, then, make us historical beings. Let us turn now to explore this historicity further, and hopefully to further illuminate the sense in which we are the animals who have the “capacity of going beyond created structures in order to create others.”

17.2.3  Humans as Historical and Revolutionary Animals In Section 17.1, we considered transformations that animal bodies effect, within themselves, in order to pursue their basic biological projects. In Section 17.2.1, we noted that bodies themselves can be transformed into new bodies, cyborg bodies. By Section 17.2.2, we were noticing ways in which the form of human perception motivates transformations in our perceptions, and thus a historical development in our perceptions of the world. Merleau-Ponty is well known for thematizing such perceptual transformations through his accounts of language and art, in their expressive capacities. Artistic expression, he argues, does not merely provide a copy or reminder of reality: it rather allows us to perceive reality in a new way, with a new significance that reconfigures that reality. Focussing on the writer, he says, her expression makes the signification exist as a thing at the very heart of the text, it brings it to life in an organism of words, it installs this signification in the writer or the reader like a new sense organ, and it opens a new field or a new dimension to our experience. (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 188) Artistic expression develops new sense organs in us, and allows us to experience in further dimensions. It reveals to us what was not seen before, but what, once seen, appears to have been there all along, endemic to reality. Artistic expression can provide, then, a kind of education, a becoming, a historical development for individuals. Most of us spend insufficient time with art, however, and are moved only momentarily by it; we do not, by virtue of it, undergo a thorough transformation in our habitual ways of perceiving and acting. Let us consider, then, what is involved in that more thoroughgoing transformation—one that affects our everyday ways of life, produces a revolution in the basic frameworks of our lives, or the very terms in which things make sense. I will call this form of transformation “existential”: it is the kind of transformation wherein we have the experience (though sometimes only retrospectively) of a whole new world opening up, a new historical period in our own lives being established. It is this kind of transformation that makes us historical beings. And, though it is not often thematized, I believe Merleau-Ponty offers us significant resources for thinking it. History, in the sense we intend here, is not merely a series of changing actors in roles—this president and then that, and then that… or, at the personal level, this girlfriend and this job, and then that new job, and that spouse, etc. For we can have all those changing actors and roles, and yet nothing really changes: America remains capitalist, imperialist, racist, and I am simply 276

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repeating the same forms of relationships and interpersonal dysfunctions over and over again, with new people. History in the sense we intend here means the development of turning points, where new frameworks of life crystallize, and then, with time, are themselves overcome. History happens when a feudal and aristocratic structuring of the world is transcended by a world that orients itself in democratic terms, or when my personal repetition and perpetuation of heterosexual patriarchal norms gives way to a new form of life that challenges these. Whereas the embodied transformations that non-human animals effect happen within a relatively stable framework of biological meaning (which changes only on an evolutionary scale, through millions of years), human animals experience transformations not just within a framework, but of those frameworks themselves. Within a lifetime, and on both a personal and a societal level, we can undergo revolutions in our ways of life. Considering these transformations, we will see how, in the context of the existential questions that we are, one framework of sense, one structure or “institution” by which we live, can both motivate and be overcome by another; we will see how we go “beyond created structures in order to create others.” We will note, furthermore, how this most fundamentally takes place below the level of planning and will, through contingency and embodied sense-making. All animals are existential questions: as we saw in section one, a bodily being lives (i.e., does not articulate propositionally, but rather enacts) the question “how can this tension arising in my experience be resolved?” The question is shaped by the animal’s material resources (the rat’s amputated limb and altered brain creates the question “how to move in order to get that food?”); the answer is behavioural, and, through the Fundierung relation we discussed, is both informed by and determines the function of those material resources. We can now augment this picture by adding in the role of culture: the existential questions that we bodily beings live and resolve are shaped not only by our anatomical and environmental resources, but also by others’ material practices. Those material practices, as enactments of an orientation towards and making sense of the world, draw us into that orientation, and shape how things show up for us. Like our anatomical givens, they are conditions for resolving the problems set by our encounter with the world. Culture functions even in the non-human world, as we have noted: it is by observing their fellows’ material practices that chimpanzees are initiated into cultural traditions of nut-cracking or termite-fishing, coming to see rocks in their pounding possibilities, nuts in their cracking possibilities, and twigs in their fishing-pole possibilities (Whiten 2011). For the human infant, though her innate biological capacities motivate approaching things first through mouth-explorations, her cultural world transforms this. She learns through others’ material practices, for instance, that books are not in fact to be mouthed, but to be looked at and listened to (and that books themselves thereby attune us to new realities and allow new realms of meaning to emerge).8 Our discussion of transposition, above, helps suggest how the cultural mediation of the world might differ, however, in chimps and humans. In human material practices, we are oriented towards things not just in terms of how they fit into our existing projects and situations; we also transpose ourselves into them and see in terms of the virtual and nascent possibilities they have beyond our existing projects and situations—and thus in terms of what they can be in relation to others, which retroactively determines what they are, in themselves.9 Our perceptual resolution of a thing thus takes the form of a tacit thesis that is simultaneously a claim about what that thing is beyond our own cultural and personal situation, and informed by our cultural and personal situation. Thus, on the one hand, our cultural situation limits our experience of things and otherness: in a sexist and heterosexist culture, for instance, we typically have a limited sense of what is possible for those who are (i.e., have become) women. But, on the other hand, that culture also gives us 277

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particular material involvements with women, and in these involvements we may be confronted with the ways that women transcend our perceptual theses and thus exceed and can challenge our cultural viewpoint. Thus, Merleau-Ponty speaks of the human form of life or “the human dialectic” as fundamentally ambiguous: the human dialectic is ambiguous: it is first manifested by the social or cultural structures, the appearance of which it brings about and in which it imprisons itself. But its use-objects and its cultural objects would not be what they are if the activity which brings about their appearance did not also have as its meaning to reject them and to surpass them. (Merleau-Ponty 1963: 176) In other words, our culturally inherited ways of making sense of the world, embodied in our material practices, are both imprisoning and liberating. Consider, for instance, the tendency of heteronormative patriarchal culture to perpetuate itself and imprison us within its orientation. The material practices of this culture include heterosexual marriage, childcare performed primarily by women, world-altering decisions performed primarily by men, heterosexual public displays of affection, advertising and manufacturing practices that set codes of gendered adornment, practices of sexualized adornment for women, etc. And they tend to give rise, within perceptual experience, to the tacit theses that women are subordinate to men, responsible primarily for caring for others, sexual objects, less rational, poorer leaders than men, etc. To be engaged in these practices, and surrounded by them, is to be drawn into these tacit theses. Even if we intellectually disavow such claims, still we often find ourselves at the level of perception and behaviour operating in terms of them. Just as one can try to get out of sexist relationships, only to find oneself repeating the pattern again with a new partner, so, too, one can attempt to bring about fairer conditions for women, only to find that one’s efforts are still poisoned by those tacit theses. This cultural structure is thus imprisoning. And yet, insofar as our culturally mediated dealings are with real women, and our human perception transposes us into those realities which exceed our cultural resources for making sense, we can also be led beyond this prison, freed up from it, in an expressive transformation of its terms. Inhabiting one’s own culture can, through the material practices that it involves, produce tensions and questions, regressions and anticipations, that ultimately propel its own overcoming, and the creation of new cultural organizations—new structures or institutions—with their correspondingly transformed material practices. Our cultural life can thus liberate as much as it can imprison. For, the material practices we perpetuate may, in their contingency, mean more than we know. For example, in the very practices by which a woman seeks her husband’s love, and assumes the position of supporter, caregiver, and the deferent, inessential, and subordinate sex, she may encounter challenges to that institution. At a community drop-in play centre, with child in hand, she might witness the creativity and essentiality of women’s culturally subordinated caring work. With another mother’s struggle with an eating disorder, and a third’s passive-aggressive manner, she might feel, tacitly a kinship—the kinship of those who do not feel they have a right to take up space, and who compensate in underhanded attempts to gain some control. In the community activist endeavours that arise from their conversations, she might garner a sense of new, womanly, forms of leadership. And in the friendships that form in and through these projects and shared daily time, she might encounter new forms of intimacy and solidarity. In these ways, by a “molecular process” (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 471), by a series of “shifts or slippages” (476), “something else slips in,” and this woman experiences “the polarization of a life toward a determinate-indeterminate goal of which it has no representation and that it only recognizes at 278

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the moment the goal is reached” (472). That is, initially, what her interactions with other women produce is merely a sense of dis-ease, of tension, of “something must change”; there is not yet a clear goal. But a new form of life is indeed in preparation here, making itself felt as much in the woman’s regressions into deferential and subordinate behaviour as in her experiments with taking a lead. Given this preparation, everything might change in the declaration of another woman’s love for her, in another woman’s story of coming out as queer, or even in witnessing a young girl’s powerful speech; some such contingent event can crystallize what is latent in the tensions of this woman’s heteronormative, patriarchal life (471), and give rise to a new realization and a new resolution. “Realization is not what was foreseen, but all the same what was wanted” (Merleau-Ponty 2010: 38). This lived process of the establishment of a new way of life, or a new framework for making sense of things, is what Merleau-Ponty calls “institution”: In exchange for what we had imagined, life gives us something else, and something else that was secretly wanted, not fortuitous. (Merleau-Ponty 2010: 38) [S]omething more slips in (39). The idea of institution is precisely the foundation of a personal history on the basis of contingency (36). Institution [means] establishment in an experience … of dimensions… in relation to which a whole series of other experiences will make sense and will make a sequel, a history (8–9). Here, then, we see a form of transformation and liberation that comes not from an agent willing change, but from “beneath the level of the ‘will’” (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 166), in and through our material practices themselves. The limitations of the cultural orientation embodied in these practices are made to be felt in the contingencies of the woman’s experience, by the realities she encounters through these practices, in the ways that these exceed the sense-making framework of the current cultural orientation. The process of transformation is an expressive one: nascent possibilities, still indeterminate directions of sense within the situation, are felt, lived, until ultimately they crystallize in a new realization or resolution, which presents itself as a truth that was there all along (perhaps “I need not be subordinate; I can lead and take care” or “we women can make a difference” or “I actually desire women”). But the work of expression is not undertaken purposefully, as an artist undertakes it; it is rather lived through, by virtue of the existential question that we enact in every action we take (“how do I make sense of my life?”), and the realities that we transpose ourselves into, simply through taking up the situation that presents itself, and acting. The transformation in question, then, has involved “going beyond created structures [this sexist, heterosexist cultural framework] in order to create others.” The material practices required by that already existing structure of culture engage us with a reality that outstrips that structuration and that can therefore challenge it. The challenge comes not all at once, for, we can only play out these material practices insofar as we have truly transposed ourselves into them, and see and act in terms of them. Inhabiting the institution or structure that dictates these material practices, we tend to reproduce this institution and to interpret any resistance in terms that disarm and dismiss that resistance. In this way our cultural institutions tend to imprison us, and lead us to repeat them. But in these very repetitions, by shifts and slippages, something else can make itself felt. A process of expressive creation can be set in motion. 279

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I have said that the expressive creation of new structures of life, new structures of sense-making is, importantly, not an intellectually driven creation, planned out and then realized. Indeed, our intellectual plans for change are often relatively ineffective or even self-undermining, for (unless they have realized the importance and means of doing so) they do not manage to transform our most basic embodied ways of making sense of the world. We remain imprisoned within those assumptions. Let me add that it is not even really possible to see, from within this familiar framework, what the overcoming of this framework would be; any imagining of the goal that we seek is contaminated by, limited by, the framework that we currently inhabit. It is only in the lived overcoming of this framework, and the institution of a new form of life, that we really become clear that “this is what I was seeking all along.” If we are conscious of a goal at all, before that, it is seen only through a glass darkly. And the clarity comes by virtue of living out the very material practices that imprison us. Thus, to rephrase Merleau-Ponty, “the cultural activity which brings about the appearance of cultural objects and use-objects has also as its meaning to reject them and to surpass them.”

17.3  Revolution Is Not Inevitable: Closing vs. Opening Trajectories We are, then, revolutionary beings, transforming not just our own bodies to inhabit and give expression to a certain framework, but through our embodiments, transforming those very frameworks themselves. This is what accounts for historical development within human life—whether it be an individual history of overcoming, for example, heteronormative patriarchal structures, or a collective history of overcoming, for instance, feudal forms of organization for more democratic, liberal, capitalist forms of organization. Where chimpanzees may successfully transform their bodies into bike-bodies, assimilating the bike into their chimp projects of play, and action, pursuit and flight, we are capable of becoming-other, of inhabiting and giving expression to realities that outstrip our own, that demand new terms and a transformed ground. Such revolution is not inevitable however. The problem is that something else slips in, and challenges an existing institution or structure only by virtue of contingent encounters with otherness, with something that outstrips that institution and thus motivates its overcoming. But the various ways in which we give expression to cultural institutions—our material practices—can be more or less self-enclosing, can make us more or less exposed and open to those contingencies that might challenge us. We can see this at work in heteronormative patriarchal culture. I have proposed a story, described a trajectory, where a woman’s very expression of that culture leads her into material practices of meeting with other women caregivers, and thus exposes her to realities that are not accounted for by the heteronormative patriarchal structuration of life. But we might easily imagine material practices within a heteronormative patriarchal situation that enclose a woman within that situation and deny her the kinds of exposures and contingent experiences that found an overthrowing of that heteronormative patriarchal form of life.10 A husband might express his dominant position through a dismissiveness of people and activities that transcend their family unit; and he might express his need for care and support in a manner that requires devotion to, and the upholding and defending, of his views. The daily material practices for sustaining this family unit (in the form of housework, meal preparation, home renovations, shared leisure time, etc.) might, moreover, rule out having time for engagements with others beyond the family. The family unit thereby becomes closed in on itself, with little opportunity for encountering a reality that outstrips its terms, and potentially challenges it. Such are the dynamics of an abusive relationship: the relationship holds the abused captive not by virtue of some physical containment, but by expressing the dominant-deferent, leader-caregiver structure in ways that rule out 280

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challenges.11 This is just an extreme of a whole continuum that—by virtue of the “ambiguity of the human dialectic”—ranges from imprisonment, self-enclosedness and stagnant repetitions to openness, productive repetitions, and self-overcoming. Even if a life can become increasingly closed in on itself, and unlikely to undergo transformation, however, no one is ever totally lost, completely imprisoned. Merleau-Ponty describes a hysteric who, in a hysterical fit, becomes increasingly shut up in this fit: He scarcely hears any longer, he scarcely sees any longer, and he has almost become this spastic and breathless existence struggling on a bed…. For every moment that goes by, freedom degrades and becomes less likely. (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 166) And yet, the patient can come out of even this state of intensely degraded freedom because the way out of this prison is not through an act of free will, a simple choosing to be otherwise. Rather, says Merleau-Ponty, “the symptom and the recovery are worked out at a deeper level …. The return to the real world… is made possible by merely impersonal functions.” The patient is not freed from his hysteria by some simple cognitive realization and choice; rather, exhaustion and sleep can give some temporary leeway (compare “hitting bottom” in Bateson 1972), and ultimately a liberating transformation for this individual grows out of an alteration of his being, slowly realized in his relationship with the doctor, and “the change of existence that results from this friendship” (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 166). This, then, is true of the majority of, and the most existential of, our transformations: they are effected not by a human will and design, but rather by the changes of existence founded in our own daily material practices. If, then, we seek to cultivate more liberating transformations in ourselves, others, and our cultures, the way towards such transformations is not primarily by strong wills and careful planning—for any plans will always still be addled by, and a repetition of, those very institutions that we seek to transform: “Personal life, expression, understanding, and history advance obliquely and not straight towards ends or concepts. What one too deliberately seeks, he does not find” (Merleau-Ponty 1964b: 83). The way towards such transformations is rather by ensuring as best we can that our material practices open us up to, more than they close us off from, otherness. For it is in our contingent encounters with otherness that we are exposed to realities that outstrip us, and educate us into new ways of being.

Notes 1 All transformations, on my account, will be ambiguous, resulting in both imprisoning and liberating tendencies. Nonetheless, we can distinguish between (a) transformations that result in greater freedom by virtue of overcoming a felt constraint and enabling further growth and transformation, and (b) transformations that overcome a felt constraint only by undermining further development. The former is what I am calling revolutionary. 2 The original explanation of Fundierung is introduced in the context of arguing that the patient Schneider’s inability to categorize things (his symbolic function) is not caused by his visual deficiency, but is nonetheless founded on it: “the symbolic function does not depend on vision as its ground because vision is its cause, but because vision is this gift of nature that Spirit had to make use of beyond all expectations, to which it had to give a radically new sense and upon which nevertheless it depended, not merely in order to become embodied, but even in order to exist at all.” 3 For Merleau-Ponty’s account of math as founded on embodiment, see 2012: 403–8 (illuminated by Hass 2008: ch. 6); and for science as an elaboration of perception’s own questioning and answering, see, e.g., 56–7.

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Kym Maclaren 4 Chickens, for instance, can be trained to go to food under a darker gray rather than a lighter gray colour. But experimentation shows that it is not the absolute colour of gray that they are responding to, but rather the meaningful relation “darker than,” so that when new grays are introduced, they will always choose the darker shade rather than returning to the particular colour at which they were being fed (Merleau-Ponty 1963: 106). 5 Köhler says of the chimp: “Almost everything arising as ‘questions of statics’ during building operations, [it] does not solve with insight, but by trying around blindly. And there can be no more striking contrast than that between genuine solutions arrived at suddenly and in one sequence, and the blind groping about with one box on the other, which is the procedure of construction when no lucky chance (like those described above) brings box on box, surface to surface” (1925: 154). 6 Even human ways of being that are not fully actualized in this sense, and do not take this form (e.g., in childhood, some mental illness, autism, and developmental delays), are human by virtue of being characterized by an alteration or anticipation of this transposition of subject into object, and not by the same kind of structuration of experience that we find in the forms of intelligence belonging to other animals. (Though what chimpanzees, for instance, have been able to learn keeps evolving, and we cannot rule out that—especially with the scaffolding provided them by human interactions and experimental conditions—they may eventually arrive at this human form of structuration of experience.) 7 It is this capacity for transposition that, according to Merleau-Ponty, enables our practice of geometry, and our geometrical insights (2012: 403–8). But it is also easy to see how this capacity for transposition enables technological insights and development. Chimpanzees can ride bikes, but we can make bikes; and this is because we can grasp the inner principles and possibilities of wheels, cranks, metal, bridging frames, etc. 8 I am indebted to Susan Bredlau for this example. 9 This idea that what a thing is is established in and through its possible couplings with other things shares much in common with the ontology worked out in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus (1983). It is an ontology of becoming and development, insofar as these couplings do not just reveal something that was already determinately there, but produce a new determinate way of it being or becoming itself. Cf. Morris (2018) and Beith (2018). 10 Similar demonstrations of self-enclosing forms of life can be found in Russon (2009: 79–82) and Beauvoir (2011: 7–10). 11 This self-enclosing effect is well documented in Chen et al. (2016).

Bibliography Aristotle (2002). Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J. Sachs. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Publishing. Bateson, G (1972). “The Cybernetics of Self: a Theory of Alcoholism.” In Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books. Beauvoir, S. (2011). The Second Sex, trans. C. Borde and S. Malovany-Chevalier. New York: Vintage Books. Beith, D (2018). The Birth of Sense: Generative Passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy. Athens: Ohio University Press. Chen, C-I, J. Dulani and Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha L. (eds.) (2016). The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. Chico, CA: AK Press. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H. R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, D (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Hass, L (2008). Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Köhler, W. (1925). The Mentality of Apes, trans. E. Winter. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception, trans. D. Landes. New York: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2010). Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the Collège de France (1954–1955), trans. L. Lawlor and H. Massey. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible, ed. C Lefort, trans. A. Lingis. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964a). “Cézanne’s Doubt.” In Sense and Nonsense, trans. H.L. Dreyfus and P.A. Dreyfus. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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Merleau-Ponty, the Improvisatory Body, and Humans as Revolutionary Animals Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964b). “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence.” in Signs, trans. R.C. McCleary. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963). The Structure of Behavior, trans. A. Fisher. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Morris, D (2018). Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press. Pryor, F L (1981). “A Survey of the Economic Systems of Wild Chimpanzees and Baboons” in Journal of Economic Issues, 15 (1): 33–59. Russon, J (2009). Bearing Witness to Epiphany: Persons, Things, and the Nature of Erotic Life. Albany: SUNY Press. Whiten, A (2011). “The Scope of Culture in Chimpanzees, Humans, and Ancestral Apes” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 366: 997–1007.

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PART IV

Treatises, Pregnancies, Psychedelics, and Epiphanies: Twentieth-Century Philosophy

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

INTRODUCTION G. Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits

In this fourth part, authors trace the past century’s myriad philosophical investigations into transformation. The 20th century opens philosophical inquiry to cases of transformation, transformative experience, and conversion that cut across subdisciplines including philosophy of logic, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of law. Contributors to this part address the complicated questions that arise when we confront our capacity for transformation in contexts that bear on the possibility of logical theory, an understanding of choice, the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, the nature of epiphany, and the legal status of pregnancy. In the past century, there is no shortage of expertise in subdisciplinal and interdisciplinary domains of research that affords philosophical tools for dealing with perhaps unexpected instances of transformation. For example, Hans Sluga argues that the question of how to read Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus leads us to ask, not just whether it advances a logical theory or rather shows that such theories are impossible, but also whether the treatise’s wartime composition itself exhibits a transformation in the author. Sluga suggests that this approach allows us to see in the treatise a practice of the deliberate and constant self-transformation of thought. Irina Schumski addresses the question of how one can decide to have children for the first time, given the problem of the transformatively different perspectives between oneself prior to and oneself following this decision. She offers a Deweyan solution to this problem, arguing, against L.A. Paul and Richard Pettigrew, that the rationality of choice depends on the values of the choice outcomes that are composed of our possible future selves and that evaluating these outcomes must give the doxastic attitudes of our possible future selves a hearing. Adam Bradley proposes an account of the psychological mechanism of psychedelic therapy, according to which such therapy works by inducing a transformative shift in subjects, namely, a sudden, large-scale change in their set of positively or negatively felt attitudes. Insofar as an addict has a problematic set of affective attitudes toward their drug of choice, psychedelic therapy can treat addiction by reconfiguring these attitudes in the transformative sense. Bradley argues, with Paul and against Christopher Letheby, that this reconfiguration can enable an addict to feel, not merely think, that they should stop taking their drug of choice. Regarding the nature of an epiphany, Sophie Grace Chappell observes that epiphanies can be described in terms of grace. Epiphanies in this sense are insights that are given immediately, DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-25

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without explanation, like conclusions without arguments. Such givens are typically motivating, in that they empower us to do what we previously could not. Chappell suggests that this character of epiphanies explains why such an experience produces in us a mood of gratitude, a mood that changes how we see the world as a whole. Suki Finn, Jill Marshall, Anna Pathe-Smith, and Victoria Adkins explore the transformation of pregnancy both in philosophy and in UK legal practice. The authors present pregnancy’s historically gendered aspects, offer a feminist legal-theoretic critique of its transformative character, and consider the pregnant body’s transformation from private to public and its changes in autonomy relative to the fetus, mental health, and medical technology. They thereby aim to develop a multi-disciplinary understanding of the transformation that pregnancy has had, is in itself, and makes possible.

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18 A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM HAS THE FORM: I DON’T KNOW MY WAY ABOUT Wittgenstein on the Road Hans Sluga 18.1 “In this work more than in any other it is worth looking at apparently solved questions again and again from new sides as unsolved,” Ludwig Wittgenstein jotted in his philosophical notebook in November of 1914. “Don’t get stuck with what you once wrote. Think always of a fresh beginning, as if nothing had as yet happened” (p. 30).1 The First World War had been raging for some months; Wittgenstein was serving as an outlook on an Austrian gunboat; but he was determined to continue the work in logic and philosophy he had been doing before the war with Bertrand Russell at Cambridge. To affirm that determination he had begun a new notebook on August 22 after being inducted into the Austro-Hungarian army. “Logic must take care of itself ” had been its opening sentence as if to say that nothing would distract him from pursuing its study. “Will I be able to work now?” he had asked himself anxiously on the first page of the private diary he attached to his philosophical notebook.2 It turned out that he could do so even under heavy bombardment. “Canons shook the boat as they fired near us at night. Worked much and with success,” he recorded on December 6.3 The first sentence of his new war-time notebook was to be Wittgenstein’s manifesto for the following years. It expressed, as he wrote, “a singularly profound and significant insight” (p. 2). But spelling this out proved more difficult than he had expected. Progress was slow and he feared that “the redeeming word has not yet been spoken.”4 As long as that was the case, he could only go over the same ground again and again. His most vexing problem at the start was that of the logical form of the proposition of which Russell had spoken. His own views on the topic were still far from settled. “Do any of the forms exist at all that Russell and I were always talking about,” he asked himself (pp. 2–3). And so it went with questions but no definitive answers. Some fifteen years later, Friedrich Waismann was trying to pin down Wittgenstein’s thinking for an expository book he was hoping to write. Wittgenstein had by then achieved some fame with his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, composed as the war was ending and published in 1922 with Russell’s effusive introduction. Back in Austria, the members of the Vienna Circle treated the work as a revelation. But their attempts to get its author to explain the book to them met with little success. Waismann was one of the few Wittgenstein agreed to talk to. But those conversions proved often frustrating. “He has the wonderful gift of always seeing things as if for DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-26

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the first time,” Waismann noted. “He always follows the inspiration of the moment and tears down what he has previously sketched out.”5 After ten years of almost complete philosophical silence, Wittgenstein’s thinking had just entered a newly volatile phase. In 1930, he returned to Cambridge to sort out what he now thought to be missing in his earlier work. He began to lecture on the themes of the Tractatus, but the book struck him increasingly as a piece of unbearable dogmatism. That conclusion sparked new investigations which led him on exhausting new journeys, “criss-cross over a wide field of thought,” in which “the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions and new sketches made,” as he wrote later in the preface to his Philosophical Investigations. Many of these sketches, he added, “were badly drawn or lacking in character, marked by all the defects of a weak draughtsman. And when they were rejected, a number of half-way decent ones were left, which then had to be arranged.”6 This is how the new book was composed. It was a collection of remarks, no more than “an album.” Wittgenstein never quite finished his Philosophical Investigations. Its initial parts were firm enough in his mind, but he was unsure about how to complete the book. In 1948, he began to look at the issues once again in new ways. His steps were hesitant; he found himself going back over the same ground again and again. At the end, he confided to yet another notebook: “I do philosophy now like an old woman who is always mislaying something and having to look for it again: now her spectacles, now her keys.” 7

18.2 There emerges from all this the picture of a restless thinker, constantly revisiting what he has previously thought, constantly on the road. Waismann, who had initially heard of Wittgenstein as the author of the Tractatus, had expected a very different person. The book consisted of apodictic statements put forth with a minimal amount of argument and formulated in an often hieratic style. Its aura of absolute certainty was reenforced, moreover, by the numbering of its propositions that Wittgenstein had adopted from Principia Mathematica, Russell and Whitehead’s majestic logical treatise. The Tractatus presented itself thus to the unwary reader as a work of a strict logical order and the author as someone endowed with unconditional truths. That was, however, a piece of fiction. The book was, in fact, largely composed by extracting diverse propositions from earlier writings and each one of those propositions had originally been immersed in doubts and questions. The Tractatus was, in this respect, just like Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, more of “an album” of sketches made on an extended intellectual journey than a tightly constructed treatise. We can see this clearly when we turn from the book to the source of its propositions in Wittgenstein’s war-time notebooks. There were probably seven of them to begin with. Only three of them have survived.8 But we can, even so, reconstruct some of Wittgenstein’s course of thinking from the beginning of the First World War to January 1917. What we find is the record of an intricate back and forth on a wide range of philosophical topics. There are continuous small shifts of perspective as well as major breaks in his reasoning. The Tractatus is a precipitate of this course of development. In order to understand its highly condensed formulations, we must take note of its varied and unstable subsoil and the long, treacherous journey that preceded its composition.

18.3 Wittgenstein’s philosophical journey had begun when he read Arthur Schopenhauer’s great treatise The World as Will and Representation at the age of 16. It appears that his first philosophy became, in his own words, “a Schopenhauerian epistemological idealism.”9 He had, however, 290

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found no opportunity to explore those ideas further as a student; he was, instead, forced to take up the study of engineering at the insistence of his father. But that had not stilled his philosophical mindset. The practical issues of engineering alerted him to questions concerning mathematics. Why was it possible to predict physical effects through mere calculation? A fellow student, drew his attention to Russell’s 1903 book The Principles of Mathematics and that book was to change the course of his life. It was not, however, Russell’s own thinking that initially struck him. What drew his attention was rather a 22-page appendix in which Russell had described the logical and mathematical doctrines of Gottlob Frege. We can be sure that Wittgenstein had never heard of Frege before – neither in Vienna nor in England where he had gone to pursue his study of engineering. While Russell was already an internationally recognized figure, Frege was still largely unknown and certainly so to English-speaking philosophers. Russell’s appendix was the first text to draw the attention of an international philosophical audience to Frege and his new logic. Impulsively, Wittgenstein now decided to visit Frege at Jena and his meetings left him impressed with both the man and the way he thought. He was later to tell von Wright that Frege’s conceptual realism had, in fact, made him abandon his earlier Schopenhauerian views.10 And when he presented Frege with some of his unformed thoughts on mathematics, Frege, as he put it later, wiped the floor with him. We have to assume that as a result of his visit, Wittgenstein also began to read Frege’s writings. We can see, in any case, that he became eventually familiar with all of Frege’s major works though it is impossible to tell when that was. But we can be confident in concluding that this encounter inspired in him an entirely new concern with logic. Frege who felt old and worn out by this time, advised Wittgenstein to go back to England and work on logic with Russell. When he arrived in Cambridge, he had thus already undergone a number of changes in his philosophical trajectory from his early attachment to Schopenhauer, through a somewhat unformed enthusiasm for the philosophy of mathematics, to a newly awakened interest in logic. But by 1911, when Wittgenstein appeared in Cambridge, Russell was no longer doing new work in logic. Principia Mathematica, his great achievement in this field, had been finished in 1908 and was in the process of being published. Russell was interested now in applying his logic to other and broader philosophical issues. He was returning, in particular to the atomistic metaphysics that he had first spelled out in his Principles of Mathematics eight years earlier. Russell had come to that metaphysical doctrine in the late 1890s as a result of his break with F. H. Bradley’s monistic idealism. On Russell’s new view, ultimate reality was not a single, integrated whole – Bradley’s “One” – but consisted of a multiplicity of separate and irreducible elements. His view was, as he later put it, “that you can get down in theory, if not in practice, to ultimate simples out of which the world is built, and that those simples have a kind of reality not belonging to anything else.”11 But he was still uncertain about the exact nature of those simples. Were they concepts and judgments, as Moore had once maintained? Were they particulars or universals or, perhaps, both? Could they be spatial points or even sense data? When Wittgenstein arrived in Cambridge in 1911, he found Russell at work on a theory of knowledge that was to settle the issue. Russell’s tool for achieving that end was, in particular, his new theory of denoting, what he called his theory of descriptions, which he hoped would allow him to distinguish between merely apparent objects that could be analyzed away and objects resistant to further analysis, the ultimate components of reality. This is not what had brought Wittgenstein to Cambridge. He was, rather, sharply focused on logic itself. “Logic is still in the melting pot,” he wrote brazenly to his mentor in 1912 within a year of having embarked on his philosophical studies. He was sure that it “must turn out to be a totally different kind than any other science.”12 As far as Wittgenstein was concerned, Russell’s 291

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logic still lacked the required unity and simplicity. In logic, he wrote later on in the Tractatus, simplicity was the sign of correctness. In June 1913, he informed Russell accordingly: “One of the consequences of my ideas will – I think – be that the whole of logic follows from one proposition only.”13 His efforts to improve on Russell’s logic took shape in two sets of notes, one written for Russell in 1913 and the other dictated to G. E. Moore a year later.14 Fundamental in them was his rejection of both Frege’s and Russell’s account of propositions. “Frege said ‘propositions are names’, Russell said ‘propositions correspond to complexes’. Both are false; and especially false is the statement ‘propositions are names of complexes’,” he wrote in the first set of notes (p. 97). The distinctive characteristic of propositions, according to Wittgenstein, was, rather, that they had two poles in that they could be either true or false. And this bi-polarity of the proposition he expected to be the unifying principle of logic. It justified truth-functional logic, it suggested a diagrammatic representation of their relations, and eventually their depiction in a system of truth-tables. But that still left Wittgenstein wrestling with the question how the logic of general propositions could be explained in this manner. Wittgenstein’s notes for Russell and Moore were suggestive, but they did not make a conclusive case for a newly unified and simplified science of logic. But Russell was happy to leave the matter in Wittgenstein’s hands. When one of Wittgenstein’s sisters came to visit, Russell confided in her that he expected the next great development in logic to be achieved by her brother. Privately, though, he grumbled that Wittgenstein’s fierce preoccupation with the technical problems of logic would make him a narrow specialist, unable to face the philosophical problems that Russell considered to be more important.

18.4 That fear proved, however, unwarranted. Under Russell’s influence, Wittgenstein’s attention soon turned back to questions of metaphysics. We can consider this a sign of a shift in Wittgenstein’s philosophical trajectory. In order to soothe Russell’s anxieties, he wrote to him in his 1913 notes that “philosophy consists of logic and metaphysics. Logic is its base” (p. 106). Metaphysics was after all the goal, but not the speculative metaphysics of Schopenhauer. The new metaphysics would be constructed on the basis of logic. It would be a pluralistic metaphysics of the sort Russell had in mind, not the monism of Schopenhauer, for whom the world attention was soon beginning to turn his attention back, was ultimately a single unified force or will. But having agreed with Russell in this respect, Wittgenstein added three caveats in his 1913 notes that must have given Russell some pause. He wrote: “In philosophy there are no deductions; it is purely descriptive. Philosophy gives no picture of reality. Philosophy can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigation” (p. 106). These posed, in effect, a direct challenge to Russell who assumed that logical atomism would provide us precisely with a deductive and scientific picture of reality. It is far from clear how Wittgenstein thought to reconcile his new belief that philosophy consists of logic and metaphysics with these three propositions. He certainly held consistently that philosophy was not a science and in this respect he was surely at odds with Russell. Wittgenstein’s two other propositions were even more of a challenge. How could philosophy be concerned with metaphysics while also being purely descriptive and how could a metaphysical theory not give a picture of reality? He was not to make anything more of these pronouncements until later. It was only in the 1930s when the Tractatus system had broken down that he came back to the idea of philosophy as a purely descriptive undertaking. But at that point he also rejected the pursuit of metaphysics as illusory. The thought that philosophy might not be able to spell out a metaphysical picture of reality became clear to him, however, already in the course of his war-time reflections. The notebooks reveal, in fact, two more steps of transition in 292

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Wittgenstein’s thinking: the first being a new engagement with Russell’s style of logical atomism and the second a turning away from it. To get a sense of Wittgenstein’s initial commitment to the metaphysics of logical atomism we must look beyond the writings we have from his time with Russell. Many of those have unfortunately disappeared.15 The main evidence for Wittgenstein’s attachment to an atomistic metaphysics at that time comes from a note Russell appended to his “Lectures on Logical Atomism,” which he delivered and published in The Monist in 1918. The note says that those lectures “are very largely concerned with explaining certain ideas which I learned from my friend and former student Ludwig Wittgenstein. I have had no opportunity of knowing his views since August, 1914, and I do not even know whether he is alive or dead.”16 We should not assume that Wittgenstein would have agreed with all the details of Russell’s exposition, but the note leaves no doubt that Wittgenstein subscribed at the time to the principles of logical atomism. It is in this light then that we must approach Wittgenstein’s war-time notebooks. In the notes he had written for his mentor in 1913, he had highlighted various disagreements and laid out how he intended to go beyond Russell’s views in logic. The war-time notebooks continue along the same line of inquiry. From the start, Wittgenstein objects to Russell’s appeal to self-evidence as a means for settling questions about logical structure and the nature of the simple objects. “Russell would say ‘Yes! That’s self-evident,’” he writes, but Wittgenstein considers this to be laughable (p. 3). Russell had, in fact, devoted a whole chapter of his Theory of Knowledge to defend his reliance on self-evidence, but Wittgenstein sniffed that the appeal to self-evidence “is and always was wholly deceptive” (p. 4). Logical atomism could not be justified in that way. The doctrine needed sifting and clarification. In contrast to Russell – and, in fact, in contrast to all the earlier atomists – Wittgenstein recognized the profound challenges the doctrine raises. The doctrine could not be justified through observation; that would never deliver “ultimate constituents.” Some kind of logical analysis was called for. That raised, however, immediately two sets of questions. The first concerned the logic to be used in the process of analysis, and the other the outcome of the analysis, the determination of the sought-after simples. Wittgenstein’s notebooks show him to be working tenaciously on these interconnected issues. As for the logic, Wittgenstein asked himself at the start of his notebooks what logical structures the process of analysis could discover. Hence, his preoccupation with the logical form of propositions. How could one be sure that one had given the right analysis of a proposition? And how could one determine that the analysis was complete? Wittgenstein struggled hard over these questions. There were seemingly insurmountable difficulties with negative propositions and likewise with the generalized ones. The notebooks contain, in consequence, repeated reminders such as: “In all these considerations I am somewhere making some sort of FUNDAMENTAL MISTAKE” (p. 10). Russell had naively assumed that one could read the structure of reality off from the logical form of our propositions. But he had given no satisfactory account of how this was to be done. In his Theory of Knowledge he had said only that the particular type of proposition of the form “A is similar to B” that it is true “when there is a complex composed of A and B and similarity.”17 Wittgenstein had at first agreed with this, writing in his 1913 notes: “The form of a proposition has meaning in the following way… I say that if an x stands in the relation R to a y the sign ‘xRy’ is to be called true to the fact and otherwise false. This is a definition of sense” (p. 91). But that was certainly no definition. Both Russell and Wittgenstein were considering only particular relational propositions. They soon moved on, however, to a more considered view, if we can trust the lectures on the philosophy of logical atomism Russell delivered in 1918. Their view was, in Russell’s words, that “in a logically correct symbolism there will always be a certain fundamental identity of structure between a fact and the symbol for it …and the complexity of the 293

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symbol corresponds very closely with the complexity of the facts symbolized by it.”18 But this was not yet enough in Wittgenstein’s eyes. Early on in his war-time notebook he continued to express uncertainty over “the logical identity of sign and signified” (p. 3). We must, perhaps, think of a proposition as a model in which “a world is as it were put together experimentally.” Or, better still, we must think of it as a picture (p. 7). But was that satisfactory? “On the one hand my theory of logical depiction seems to be the only possible one, on the other there seems to be an insoluble contradiction in it” (p. 17). It is not obvious what contradiction Wittgenstein had in mind. It seems to have involved generalized propositions. His dissatisfaction with the “theory of logical depiction” is, any case, evident. One of its problems is that there are different ways or methods of representation. And: “The method of depiction must be completely determinate before we can at all compare reality with the proposition to see whether it is true or false” (p. 25). That answer created, however, problems of its own. Would one not have to be able to identify both the structure of the proposition and that of the fact in order to see whether they were one and the same? The logical atomists assumed, however, that one could read the structure of reality off from that of the fully analyzed proposition. That was the whole strategy of their position. But what would guarantee that the structure of the proposition was a clue to that of the facts? Considerations of this kind led Wittgenstein, in turn, to ones concerning the supposed elements of reality. Like Russell, he kept going back and forth over the possibilities. Were they sense-data? Could they be universals? Were they spatial points? Was it obvious that logical analysis would eventually lead to simple, unanalyzable elements? Or could the analysis go on ad infinitum? And so on. In the end he came to ask himself whether logic could even tell us in principle what they were. Perhaps it could assure us only that there were such but without identifying the atoms themselves. He was certainly ready to assume that “the world has a fixed structure” (p. 62). This was equivalent, he thought, to saying that our words have definite sense since “the demand for simple things is the demand for definiteness of sense” (p. 60). One could then conclude that there were ultimate constituents of reality, “simple objects,” without having to specify their exact nature. Wittgenstein was thus prepared to go along with the transcendental argument that Leibniz had used in his Monadology to argue for the existence of simples. In short: There had to be simples because there were complexes.19 In June 1915, he concluded: “It seems that the idea of the simple is already to be found contained in that of the complex and in the idea of analysis, and in such a way that we come to the idea quite apart from any examples of simple objects, or of propositions which mention them, and we realize the existence of the simple object – a priori – as a logical necessity” (p. 60).

18.5 That went, of course, far beyond Russell’s way of thinking. Russell had always expected it to be possible to identify the simple objects. His whole project of logical analysis was, in fact, designed to bring that identification about. Wittgenstein’s conclusion was, nonetheless, still within the framework of atomistic metaphysics, but now gave it a more severely abstract and formalistic character. But his notebooks also show that he was beginning to veer away from Russell’s program in a more determined fashion. The first indication of this had come on May 23, 1915, when he had written: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (p. 49). Nothing in the preceding pages of his notebook had prepared that statement. There had been no talk before of the limits of language or the limits of the world. And while he had repeatedly written about language and the world, he had never spoken before of “my language” and “my world.” As if to comment on his statement, 294

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Wittgenstein added the same day: “I have long been conscious that it would be possible for me to write a book: What kind of world I have come upon” (p. 49).20 He had discovered, so it seems, that the world he had been writing about was, in fact, his world and that the very notion of world contained a subjective component. He would express this thought most succinctly later on in the Tractatus writing; “The world is my world.”21 But from where did this new thought come? Had it just sprung up in his head from nowhere? Its most likely source are Fritz Mauthner’s Contributions to a Critique of Language, published in Vienna in 1901, a book with which he was certainly familiar by 1914. Mauthner had been a student of Ernst Mach who had turned to literature rather than philosophy for a living. He became a highly influential and feared theater critic in Berlin but published at the same time a series of books on philosophical and other topics. His sprawling, three volume Critique of Language was meant to point out the limits of language. On Mauthner’s view, language was a practical instrument completely unfit to deliver an adequate metaphysical view of the world. A Pyrrhonian skeptic, he quoted Sextus Empiricus in his book saying that we must eventually throw away the ladder of language after we have climbed up on it. Wittgenstein was, in turn, to borrow that metaphor from Mauthner’s book and insert it into the coda of the Tractatus. Mauthner held, moreover, that “language” was a fiction, that there were really only idiolects, my and your language. Wittgenstein not only drew on such ideas but also included Mauthner’s name in the small number of carefully selected names he chose to mention in the Tractatus. That reference to him does not, however, do justice to the significance Mauthner was to have for Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus we read only that all philosophy is indeed a critique of language “though not in Mauthner’s sense.” The passage gives credit, instead, to Russell’s method of logical analysis as a means for “showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.”22 Mauthner’s kind of critique of language anticipates, however, significant features of Wittgenstein’s later thinking about language. The proposition that the world is my world should also remind us of Schopenhauer whose first sentence in The World as Will and Representation was that the world is my representation. That Wittgenstein was also thinking of Schopenhauer on May 23 becomes clear from some further and even more astonishing propositions he adds to his notebook that day. We read: “There really is only one world soul, which I in my own case name my soul and as which alone I comprehend what I name the souls of others.”23 This remark, he goes on, provides a key for deciding to what extent solipsism is a truth. And he concludes, still on May 23, that in the book of the world there would be talk of my body, but not of a subject, and this would show that in a philosophically significant sense there is no such thing as the individual subject (p. 50). Here we are truly far away from Russell’s philosophical project. With Mauthner and Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein has returned to thoughts coming from his Viennese background. Schopenhauer did not actually use the term “world soul” (though Mauthner did), but his way of thinking about “the mind,” “the subject,” or “self ” has affinities with that idea. The concept of the world soul goes back all the way to Pre-Socratic philosophy and the assumption that the cosmos is ensouled and not just material, that we can speak accordingly of a psyche kosmou of which our individual souls are mere facets. Schopenhauer, like these Pre-Socratic thinkers rejected the idea of there being individual selves in a metaphysically relevant sense. The individuation of human souls was for him only a fact in our representation of the world. The target of Wittgenstein’s thoughts on this matter must have been Russell’s understanding of logical atomism. Russell’s Theory of Knowledge of 1913 had begun with an analysis “of the simplest and most pervading aspect of experience” which he called “acquaintance” (p. 5). His belief was that acquaintance can put us in contact with the ultimate constituents of reality which, 295

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he thought at this point to be sense-data. Russell went on to say that “there is a certain unity, important to realize but hard to analyze, in ‘my present experience’ [and] we might suppose that ‘my present experience’ might be defined as all the experiences which ‘I’ have ‘now’” (p. 8). But the I is not an object of acquaintance; we must define it rather in terms of the notion of my present experience. But Russell had by 1914 advanced from this view to the conclusion that the I or subject was a simple constituent of reality. How else was one to argue for the unity of experience and the unity of judgment? This, he thought, did not commit him to the assumption that there was a persistent “Cartesian” I, only to a momentarily existing self. This is what he was to lay out in 1918 in his Lectures on Logical Atomism. Russell claimed, of course, that what he said in those lectures fully conformed to Wittgenstein’s views. In that he was certainly mistaken. But he was probably right in thinking that Wittgenstein was familiar with the views expressed in those lectures. This gives us reasons to conclude that his remarks on the “the subject” on May 23 were meant to be a direct attack on Russell and a sign that Wittgenstein felt no longer committed to Russell’s kind of logical atomism. The impression that he was becoming increasingly critical of Russell’s atomistic metaphysics is reenforced by a further entry into the notebook the very next day, May 24, when he writes: “The urge towards the mystical stems from the non-satisfaction of our wishes by science. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered our problem is still not touched at all. Of course in that case there are no questions any more, and that is the answer” (p. 51). Russell’s attempt to construct a scientific metaphysics is thus in vain. No metaphysics can, in fact, touch on “our problem.” There remains no question that could be answered by any kind of metaphysical theory. In his Introduction to the Tractatus, Russell would later dismiss such speculative thoughts with the words: “Mr. Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said.”24 This caustic remark provoked Wittgenstein, in turn, to accuse Russell of not having understood his book. He threatened initially that his book could not be published with Russell’s introduction and he gave in only because he realized that his book would never see daylight without it. May 23, 1915 marks thus a first major break with Russell and his way of doing philosophy even though its full implications may not have been obvious to Wittgenstein at the time, since he turns immediately back from his speculative remarks on the subject to reflections on the nature of the simple objects – almost, as if nothing unusual had been said. But how solid was this apparent recommitment to the atomist program? Where was he moving to at this point? We have unfortunately no record of the course of Wittgenstein’s thinking between June 2015 and April 2016 since the notebooks covering that period are now lost. But it is clear from the third notebook in our possession that a year later he has not yet given up completely on logical atomism. That notebook begins on April 15 with further reflections on simple objects and the form of the proposition. But his words echo now what he had said the previous year about the subjective character of our thinking about them. That first day he writes: “We can foresee only what we ourselves construct. But then where is the concept of the simple object still to be found?” (p. 71). Since he assumes that simple objects are not directly accessible to us, our claim that there are such comes to a prediction that logical analysis will ultimately deliver them. But if we can foresee only what we ourselves construct, then our account of the simple objects will depend on our construction. He goes on to speak similarly of the construction of simple functions and since such functions determine the form of the propositions in which they occur, it now appears that the forms of propositions we can identify must also be relative to what we are able to construct. The realistic picture of logical atomism seems to have given way here to a constructivist one. But the issue is not yet completely settled. A year earlier he had already 296

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entertained the possibility that one might need to distinguish between what is simple for us and what is simple absolutely speaking. Could it not be that when we speak of an ordinary object, such as the watch on the table, we treat it, in effect, as logically simple? Even so, there may still be absolute simples in addition. What if our construction is somehow determined by what is out there? In that case, it may still be possible to give a definite and “objective” answer to the question of the simple objects and the logical forms of the proposition. Toward the end of the notebook, on November 11, Wittgenstein gets back to this point once more when he writes that it must be possible “to set up the general form of the proposition, because the possible forms of propositions must be a priori” (p. 89). On May 6, he comments critically once more on Russell’s scientistic view of the world: “The whole world view of the moderns is grounded in this illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of the natural phenomena. We thus stop with the ‘laws of nature’ as something inviolable just as the ancients did with God and fate. And both are right and wrong. The old ones are, however, clearer in that they acknowledge a clear endpoint, whereas it appears in the new system, as if everything was grounded” (p. 72). This renewed critique of scientism expresses at once reservations about Russell’s worldview and draws fresh attention to Schopenhauer and Mauthner who both question the explanatory power of science.

18.6 But all this comes to an abrupt end on May 11, 1916, and after a month of complete silence we find ourselves on June 11 in completely new territory. The problems of atomism have been wiped off the table. Instead, we read: “What do I know about God and the purpose of life?” (p. 72). These two topics prove to be intimately linked. “To believe in God means that life has a sense,” he writes shortly later (p. 74). We can, in fact, call the meaning of life by the name of God. We can also identify God with fate and even with the world. Prayer he says is “thinking of the meaning of life.” These considerations initiate a whole series of further thoughts on the world and our place in it, on good and evil, and the nature of the will. As he pursues these themes still other topics make their appearance: the human self, idealism, and solipsism; ethics and art; happiness, death, and suicide. The tightly argued examination of logical atomism in the earlier pages of his notebooks has been abandoned and we face, instead, a wild array of bewildering new thoughts. “Yes,” he writes, “my work has expanded from the foundations of logic to the essence of the world” (p. 79). In contrast to the previous moment in May 1915 when he had turned from the problems of logical atomism to reflections about the world being my world only to return shortly to his preoccupation with atomistic metaphysics, these new reflections continue for several months, interspersed with only occasional glances back at his previous concern with the atomist program. Finally, on November 21, the current of speculative thought starts to run dry except for some final thoughts on suicide, original sin, and the nature of ethics. While we don’t know what had occasioned the disruption of his train of thought in May 1915, we do know what triggered this one. On May 6, five days before Wittgenstein asks his disturbing question about God and the purpose of life, his private diary records that he feels in imminent danger of losing his life. How can one find inner peace in this situation? He answers himself: “Only by living in a way that pleases God. Only in this way is it possible to bear life.”25 He adds on May 10: “I am doing well now due to the grace of God. […] He will not abandon me in this danger.” On May 16: “I am sleeping today under infantry fire and will likely perish. God be with me. I surrender my soul to the Lord.” 26 Worse was to come. In June, the Russians launched a major attack on the Austrian forces in the so-called “Brusilov offensive.” Thousands 297

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of Austrian soldiers lost their lives, many become Russian prisoners of war. Wittgenstein’s own unit is directly engaged in this deadly battle which lasts until the middle of August. He is certain that he will not survive. On July 29 he writes: “I was shot at yesterday. Was scared. I was afraid of death. I have such a wish now to go on living. And it is difficult to renounce life…”27 His thoughts in this period are often feverish and obscure – as he realizes. “Here I am still making crude mistakes. No doubt about that.” he notes on July 29 (p. 78). “I am conscious of the complete unclarity of all these sentences” (p. 79). They are driven by existential anxieties rather than logic. Only some of them will make it into the Tractatus. His reflections on God do not, but those on the meaning of life will become essential for the coda of his book. The “world” will also remain a topic of concern in it and that in two ways. The world is all that is the case, as the first sentence of his book will say, and as such a matter of logic. But ethics also demands that we see the world in the right way, as the end of the book will declare. “Ethics does not treat of the world,” he writes in his notebook. It is, rather, “the condition of the world, just like logic” (p. 77). We don’t have to look far to find the inspiration for this picture. We can find it once again in Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation. But what is the right way to look at the world? The question leads Wittgenstein to pose two others. What is the place of the subject, the I, the self in relation to the world? And where do we find good and evil? As to the first question, he reaffirms that what we call “the world” is only “my world.” Or as he puts it provocatively: “The world and life are one” (p. 77). Death is therefore not an event or fact in the world. In death the world ceases to be. But what makes the world my world? What is the subject? “The representing subject is surely mere illusion,” he writes. But: there is still the I or self to be considered as distinct from the Russellian subject. “The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious” (p. 80). The I is mysterious because we never confront it as an object. I am in the world, he notes, in the way my eye is in my visual field. The perceiving eye is, in fact, not part of the visual field. It is what makes the visual field possible. In the same way the I is not part of the world but makes my world possible. It makes its appearance “through the world’s being my world” (p. 80). That I is, however, not the individual self, but the “one world soul” of which he had said a year earlier that it manifests itself as that “which I in my own case call my soul” (p. 49). While the representing subject is a mere illusion, “the willing subject exists” (p. 80). But the will must not be conceived as a causal power by which the individual can affect events in the world. For “the world is independent of my will” (p. 73). Standing apart from the world, the will can only define an attitude to the world as a whole. It can lead us to reject or accept the world for what it is. With this we have entered the domain of value, or of ethics and aesthetics. To accept the world for what it is means to be happy, and happiness is what we should strive to attain. The happy life is one lived in accord with the world. It is in this state that we grasp the meaning of life. “Is this not the reason why human beings to whom after many doubts the meaning of life has become clear, cannot then say in what that meaning consists” (p. 74). The problems of life find their solution in their disappearance. No metaphysical theory can help us here. Ethics is certainly not concerned with advancing such a theory; it does not assert propositions or promulgate rules. It is, in fact, clear that” ethics cannot be expressed in words” (p. 78). Ethics, he says, is thus “transcendent” – or, rather, “transcendental,” as he will phrase it in the Tractatus. It is a way of seeing the world from outside as a whole sub specie aeternitatis. And this is, at the same time, the aesthetic way of seeing things. “The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis, and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics” (p. 83). Ethics is the aesthetics of the world. The claim that ethics cannot be put into words puts Wittgenstein on the path to an even more radical conclusion. He had previously talked of logical limits to what can be said. What 298

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do I know when I understand a proposition but do not know whether it is true or false, he had asked himself in 1914. And he had replied to that question: “At this point I am again trying to express something that cannot be expressed” (p. 31). That had been, in fact, yet another thought embedded in the first, introductory sentence of his war-time notebook. That logic must take care of itself meant among other things that “all we have to do [and, in fact, all we can do] is to look and see how it does it” (p. 11). But Wittgenstein’s conclusion that ethics, too, cannot be put into words, adds a new dimension to those earlier considerations. Since logic and ethics form the arc on which Wittgenstein’s philosophical thinking in this period moves, he is made to conclude: “The correct method would be to say nothing, except what can be said, i.e., what belongs to natural science, i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy” (p. 94). And with this conclusion, the break with Russell has become complete. The entire project of logical atomism has been consigned now to what cannot be said and is therefore without sense. Wittgenstein’s thinking has broken through all the earlier layers in which it had been confined and confronts the task of philosophy now in a profoundly new way. It will take him the rest of his life, though, to discover the consequences of this revelation.

18.7 But his thoughts in the summer and fall of 1916 were not yet the end of the road he had been traveling since the beginning of the war. The year before he had written to Russell: “I have recently done much work and, I believe, with good result. I am now busy bringing the whole thing together and writing it down in the form of a treatise.”28 That treatise was still to be written even a year later. Wittgenstein did not get around to that concluding task until the summer of 1918. The war-time notebooks in our possession end unfortunately in January of the preceding year. It is thus impossible for us to track the course of Wittgenstein’s thinking to the moment when he actually sat down to work on completing the text of the Tractatus. The assumption is that by then he had two more notebooks to work with. It is plausible to think that whatever he wrote in that period was more or less like the earlier notebooks, that he continued to record individual thoughts on various topics and put them down as they struck him. Those lost notes may have covered much of the same ground as the notebooks we have and are likely to have displayed the same kind of back-and-forth in his thinking. There was, no doubt, also additional new material in them. Some passages in the Tractatus have no precedents in the existing notebooks. One striking example is the discussion of mathematics in the Tractatus. Was that part of the book based on notes he made between the end of 1916 and the middle of 1918? We can be fairly certain, however, that he did not set down a systematic treatise in this period. All he had, when he finally began to write the Tractatus, were scattered notes from which he quickly excerpted his text. That should, in fact, be evident from the look of the finished product. When he started the composition of his book in the summer of 1918, Wittgenstein was on a temporary leave from the war front. Time was short and he was determined to bring the work to an end. There was no other option for him than to draw on what he had written earlier. He relied for this purpose on all the notes he had made in the previous five years and selected from them what he found suitable. That was no easy task, since his thinking had changed so much in those years and in so many different directions. His ambition was, surely, to present a single coherent whole. In putting it together and selecting from what he had, he must have sought to clarify and unify what he wanted to say. But how far did he succeed in this? How far could he have succeeded, given that his thinking had moved across such a wide arc from the foundations of logic, through Russell’s atomism, to Schopenhauer’s ethics and Mauthner’s critique of language? 299

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While the formal presentation, the sustained voice of certainty, and the rhetorical pull of the propositions suggest a unitary system of ideas, it is far from clear that Wittgenstein has succeeded in producing any such thing. Seen against the backdrop of the war-time notebooks, the text looks rather as if it was describing a course of thinking that has led Wittgenstein from his initial commitment to logical atomism to the concluding call to overcome its propositions in order to see the world in the right way. We will then come to recognize that the book has a narrative structure, that it tells a story, that it is the record of the philosophical journey Wittgenstein has undertaken in the previous years. Interpreters tend to look at the Tractatus in another way. They see it as an attempt to describe a single theoretical position. In dealing with parts of the text that do not fit this assumption they operate with a “principle of charity” that allows them to set aside bits of the text or to “interpret” them until they are reconciled with the presumed theory. The result has been that some have taken it to be a straightforward contribution to the philosophy of logical atomism; others have considered it to be contribution to logic and the theory of meaning. For yet other interpreters, the Tractatus offers a straightforward lesson in skepticism. And there are finally those for whom it is nothing but an essay on ethics. Each one of those interpretations has had to ignore, reject, or downplay parts of the text that don’t fit its account. In the case of the most “resolute” readings of the Tractatus large swaths of the text, almost everything in it, are dismissed as simply nonsensical. The first sentence of the book is said to be sheer nonsense and Wittgenstein’s apparent assertion is declared to be a piece of irony. But if he meant it as such, why is the irony not recognizable? There are, after all, ways to make irony explicit. Why did he not begin the Tractatus with the words: “Some philosophers want to assert such things as ‘The world is everything that is the case,” I want to show that such statements are, in fact, nonsensical”? Why the apparent obfuscation? The fact is that the book is an exercise in philosophical thinking that takes us over uncharted territories. It exemplifies what philosophy is like when one crosses such territories and tries to decipher their maps. Wittgenstein’s hope in the Tractatus was that after this exercise one might be able to leave philosophy alone. He writes in it that philosophy is “not a doctrine but a practice. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.”29 We might take this to mean that philosophy is meant to produce propositions that can serve as elucidations of other propositions. But we can also read the sentence to be saying that the whole process of philosophy, from its initial metaphysical certainties to its final sobering conclusions, is an elucidatory process, that it is a depiction of the entire course of thinking from the first to the last sentence of the Tractatus that provides the sought for elucidation. At the time of writing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein seems to have assumed that one could go through this process once and the work of philosophy would be done. That was an error as he eventually came to see. When he spoke to members of the Vienna Circle in 1929, he got once again entangled in the problems of logical atomism. He went back to the idea that propositions are pictures of states of affairs. But he allowed now that they might be “incomplete pictures” that captured only some features of what they depicted. No identity of sign and signified had to be assumed. The form of the elementary proposition could, moreover, not be determined once and for all by logic. It could be determined only in an empirical fashion. “It is simply ridiculous to believe that we can do here with the usual forms of ordinary language, with subject-predicate, with two-place relations, and so on.”30 Objects were simply “equivalent elements of the representation”; they might be represented, for instance, by the equations of physics. But after his return to Cambridge, when he began to think more systematically about the lessons to be dawn form the Tractatus, he quickly gave up on such speculations. There was no more talk of simple objects. In his lectures, he never once referred to such simples. Instead, he said now that both he and Russell had been confused about what logical analysis could deliver, “thinking 300

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that further work at logic would show us the elements […]. Russell had no right to say that the result of analysis would be 2-term, 3-term relations, etc. […] I was wrong in supposing that it had any sense to talk of [the] result of [a] final analysis.”31 They had both been misled by relying on an idea of analysis derived from natural science. “To analyze water is to find out something new about water. […] In philosophy we know all we need to know at the start, we don’t need to know any new facts.”32 That doesn’t mean that he had given up altogether on the pluralism that had been integral to the atomistic viewpoint. But his pluralistic outlook now took a different, non-metaphysical form. How many kinds of sentences are there, he asked in his Philosophical Investigations. “There are countless kinds, countless different kinds of use of all the things we call ‘sign’, ‘words’, sentences’.”33 There are numerous kinds of language-games. There are multiple worldviews, he said in later notes, each with its own internal logic. And there are even multiple kinds of mathematics. His entanglement with logical atomism had also cured him of the wish to look for any single, unifying philosophical theory. Looking back at the Tractatus in 1932, he told his students: “Philosophical trouble is essentially this: You seem to see a system, yet [the] facts don’t seem to fit it; & you don’t know which to give up. Near it looks like a stump, then like a man. Then again […].” His experience with the atomist program made him give up on the traditional understanding of philosophy as aiming at the construction of a theory. He now thought that this kind of theorizing was due to philosophers being blinded by the method of science which had tempted them “to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness.”34 That traditional kind of philosophizing he now considered to be dead and what was left of it was dispersed in different places. In his own work he was concerned only with some of what was left. With a new modesty he declared: “One might say that the subject we are dealing with is one of the heirs of the subject which used to be called ‘philosophy’.”35 In an illuminating metaphor he suggested that the only kind of philosophy that was now possible was like arranging books on a bookshelf. The goal was to achieve a transparent order but there was no ideal, absolute, final arrangement. He tried several formulas for characterizing the task of this new philosophizing. Philosophy, he said, was purely descriptive. Its goal was to describe the different ways we speak and think. It was phenomenological in trying to present a perspicuous overview of our grammar. It was therapeutic somewhat in the way Freud’s psychoanalysis was, relieving us of our perplexities. It was meant to liberate us from ways of thinking that entrapped our minds like flies in a fly-bottle. Philosophy was, in fact, a continuous battle against the bewitchment of our mind by language. We were bound to find ourselves again and again not knowing our way about. There could be no end to these entanglements. We were bound to remain on the road.

Notes 1 Page references are to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914–1916, edited by G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe; 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979. Translations modified (Text also referred to hereafter as NB). 2 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Geheime Tagebücher 1914–1916, edited by Wilhelm Baum, Turia & Kant, Vienna 1991: 13 (Hereafter referred to as GT). 3 GT: 49. 4 GT: 45. 5 Brian McGuinness, “Vorwort,” in Friedrich Waismann: Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis, edited by B. F. McGuinness, Basic Blackwell, Oxford 1967: 26. 6 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2009: 3.

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Hans Sluga 7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, Harper & Row, New York 1972: 70. 8 G. H. von Wright, “The Origin of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus,” in C. G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein. Sources and Perspectives, Cornell U. P., Ithaca, New York 1979: 103. 9 G. H. von Wright, “A Biographical Sketch,” in Normal Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein. A Memoir, new edition, Oxford U.P., Oxford 1984: 6. 10 Ibid. 11 Bertrand Russell, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,” in Russell, Logic and Knowledge. Essays 1901–1950, edited by Robert Charles Marsh, George Allen & Unwin, London 1956: 270. 12 Letter to Russell of June 12, 1912, NB: 120. 13 Letter to Russell of October 30, 1913, NB: 123. 14 Published as appendix I and II in NB. 15 v. Wright, “The Origin of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”, loc. cit., p.106. 16 Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” in Russell, Logic and Knowledge. Essays 1901–1950, edited by Robert Charles Marsh, George Allen & Unwin, London 156: 177. 17 Bertrand Russell, Theory of Knowledge. The 1913 Manuscript, edited by Elizabeth Ramsden Eames, Routledge, New York and London 1992: 149. 18 Russell, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomismn,” 275. 19 Leibniz, Monadology 1–3. 20 Note the changed translation. 21 Wittgenstein, Tractatus 5.62. 22 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.0031. 23 Note another emendation of the published translation. The word “vorzüglich” which I have translated “in my own case” presents particular difficulties. It might also have been translated as “particularly,” but the published translation’s “for preference” is certainly misleading. 24 Bertrand Russell, “Introduction,” in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1922: 22. 25 GT: 70. 26 GT: 71. 27 GT: 74. 28 Georg Henrik von Wright, “The Origin of the Tractatus,” in v. Wright, Wittgenstein, Blackwell, Oxford 1982: 70. 29 Tractatus, 4.112. 30 Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis: 42. 31 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933. From the Notes of G. E. Moore, edited by David G. Stern, Brian Rogers, and Gabriel Citron, Cambridge U.P., Cambridge 2016: 253. 32 Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933: 88. 33 Philosophical Investigations, 23. 34 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, Harper & Row, New York 1960: 18. 35 The Blue and Brown Books: 28.

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19 A DEWEYAN PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSFORMATIVE CHOICE Irina Schumski

Imagine you face an important choice: whether to have children. You expect that having a child will change you as a person. It will change what you desire and enjoy, what you fear and loath, and what you value and care about most. In fact, let’s say that, unlike real prospective parents, you know exactly how undergoing this experience will change you, and what being a parent and doing parenty things, e.g., changing nappies and holding your baby, will be like for your transformed future self, and how this differs from what it would be like for your present self. Still, you might wonder: How am I supposed to make this choice if my assessment of this possible future depends entirely on whose perspective I adopt, that of my present self or that of my transformed future self? Following Laurie Paul (2014, 2015a,b), I will call this problem the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice. Although, thanks to Paul and others, there has been something of a discussion of this problem in recent years (e.g., Bykvist 2006; Ullmann-Margalit 2006; Chang 2015; Pettigrew 2015, 2019), there is no agreement on how to solve it, nor even on how to properly formulate it. My aim in this chapter is to weigh in on this debate from a Deweyan perspective, which, as I hope to show, has much to offer to those grappling with this issue. As an educator and social reformer, John Dewey was a passionate advocate of a conscious and proactive approach toward the possibility of changing our conative natures. His extensive body of work is therefore a rich source of insights on the question of how to think about, decide on, and direct such change. In this chapter, I must limit myself to articulating two of these insights. The first pertains to the best-known formulation of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice, namely, Paul’s. With Dewey and against Paul, I’ll argue that the conative attitudes of our possible future selves should be viewed as part of the outcomes on whose values the rationality of our choices depends. The second insight pertains to an impressively argued solution to this problem that was recently put forward by Richard Pettigrew (2019). With Dewey and against Pettigrew, I’ll argue that, when evaluating outcomes for the purposes of decision-making, we should give the doxastic attitudes of our possible future selves a hearing, and not their conative attitudes a vote. I’ll proceed as follows. In Section 19.1, I will introduce Paul’s formulation of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice. In Section 19.2, I will show that this formulation is based on a misconception by arguing for the First Deweyan Insight. In Section 19.3, I’ll outline Pettigrew’s formulation of and solution to the problem. I will first observe that, prima facie, he seems to DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-27

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respect the First Deweyan Insight but then I will show that this agreement is merely apparent. Finally, in Section 19.4, I will show how invoking Dewey’s objectivism against Pettigrew’s attack on objectivism leads to the Second Deweyan Insight.

19.1  Paul on the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice According to what is still a sort of orthodoxy in normative decision theory, we ought to choose rationally and choosing rationally is a matter of maximizing expected value. In more formal terms, given

• a set of possible acts, A, • a set of possible states of the world, S, • the agent’s credence function, P, which represents her doxastic attitudes toward or the probability that she assigns to the states in S being the actual state of the world under the supposition that she performs the acts in A, and • the agent’s utility function, U, which represents her conative attitudes toward or the value that she assigns to being in the states in S having performed the acts in A, the expected utilities of the acts in A are given by: V(a) =

∑P(s a)U(a & s) s ∈S

On the orthodox account, we ought to choose the act or one of the acts in A for which V(a) is maximal. This is the Maximize Expected Utility Rule or MEU Rule, for short. Now, in order to understand how the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice arises, it is vital to appreciate why choosing in accordance with the MEU Rule is thought to be rational. Simply put, it is because the relevant doxastic and conative attitudes, i.e., the agent’s assigning a comparatively high probability to a given act having a comparatively valuable outcome, are thought to justify their choosing this act over others. So, basically, the MEU Rule specifies how justificatory force is transmitted from attitudes to acts. Given that this is so, choosing in accordance with the MEU Rule can only be regarded as rational if the relevant attitudes possess justificatory force, meaning: if there is a rational basis for them.1 Imagine I was hypnotized into believing that a very unlikely event is highly probable, say, or into desiring a very painful injury; with attitudes like these as inputs, choosing in accordance with the MEU Rule will not result in rational choices. So, in cases where we have no rational basis for forming the relevant attitudes, i.e., for assigning probabilities and/or values or setting credences and/or utilities, we cannot use the MEU Rule to make a rational choice, and it’s an open question what, if anything, we can and should use instead. The Problem of Personally Transformative Choice arises in a subset of the cases where we seem to have no rational basis for assigning values to or setting utilities for the possible outcomes of a possible act, namely (as the name suggests) cases of personally transformative choice.2 Personally transformative choices are choices for or against undergoing what Paul refers to as personally transformative experiences: experiences which change our conative attitudes significantly and therefore transform our point of view and identity, e.g., having a child (Paul 2014: 16). Paul points out that, even if we knew how such an experience would change our conative attitudes and thus whether and how much our transformed future self would value the possible 304

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outcomes of our choice3 —if we knew, e.g., that, unlike our present self, our transformed future self wouldn’t mind staying up all night to care for a sick child—it’s not clear which value we should assign to these outcomes for the purposes of decision-making. Should we go by the conative attitudes of our present self or those of our transformed future self, who will do the actual staying up and caring? That is, should we base our choice to have or not have a child and other choices like this on the values or utilities of the former self or on those of the latter? On Paul’s view, neither of these options amounts to a rational way of assigning values or setting utilities for the purposes of decision-making. After all, it is odd to think that my acting one way rather than another could be justified by the conative attitudes of anyone other than those of my present self, but ignoring the perspective of my transformed future self does not seem rational either. Thus, Paul concludes that, unless we find some other, more satisfactory option,4 cases of personally transformative choice will be cases where we cannot use the tools of orthodox normative decision theory, specifically the MEU Rule, to choose rationally. This is Paul’s formulation of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice (e.g., Paul 2014: 49).

19.2  The First Deweyan Insight I will now criticize Paul’s formulation of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice from a Deweyan perspective. More specifically, I will argue that, on Dewey’s view, this formulation rests on a very common misconception of the outcomes on whose values the rationality of our choices depends. I want to begin by sketching a Deweyan account of rational choice. For Dewey, the need for deliberation and rational decision-making arises when action on the basis of (relatively)5 unreflective conative attitudes—or, in Dewey’s terms, impulsive or habitual valuings—meets with an environment in which it is blocked or misfires (HNC: 127–8, 132–3).6 To illustrate, think of a person who is in the habit of staying up late. She likes staying up late. But her new job requires an early start. In this new environment, her acting on this habitual liking misfires: it produces unwanted consequences such as constant fatigue, lack of concentration, and a bad mood. Dewey calls this sort of conflict or disharmony or mismatch between an agent’s unreflective conative attitudes and her environment an “indeterminate situation”. It’s a situation that is in some way “disturbed, troubled, […] [and] full of conflicting tendencies” (L: 109). By acknowledging that there is a problem, the agent converts the indeterminate situation into what Dewey calls a “problematic situation” (L: 111) and, in so doing, triggers deliberation and enters normative space. Now her choices can be assessed as right or wrong, as rational or irrational. The aim of deliberation is to determine which possible act will most successfully resolve the problematic situation and reinstate the most complete unity or harmony or match between the agent’s conative attitudes and her environment (LJP: 15–8, HNC: 132–5, L: 163–4). To this end, the agent must analyze the problem by reviewing the facts of the case, develop ideas for its solution, and assess these ideas based on the projected consequences of acting on them (L: 112–22, 172–6). That is to say, she must form beliefs about her problematic situation and, on this basis, assign probabilities to its being resolved and harmony reinstated to such and such an extent under the supposition that this or that possible act is performed. If an attempted solution fails, deliberation must resume. The agent may then revise her beliefs about the problematic situation and/or reassess other solutions available to her. Our protagonist, for instance, might begin by examining why she is moody. Initially, she might suspect her hormones and go to see a doctor. When that doesn’t solve her problem, she might revisit the facts of the case and begin to see the connection between her bad mood, her constant fatigue, and her lack of sleep. Based on this evidence, 305

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it seems that she should assign a comparatively high probability to the world being such that any of the following two acts would have outcomes that resolve the problem to a comparatively high degree: a) getting used to and learning to appreciate early nights or b) quitting her new job. If she is rational, she will choose the act or one of the acts with maximal expected problem-solving value. This, then, is Dewey’s account of rational choice in a nutshell: choosing rationally is a matter of maximizing expected problem-solving value.7 With this in mind, we can turn our attention to the bearers of problem-solving value. As mentioned above, the problematic situation is essentially a mismatch between two things: some of the agent’s unreflective conative attitudes (e.g., habitual valuings), or aspects of the self, and parts of her environment, or aspects of the world. Now, generally speaking, if we want to correct a mismatch between two things, A and B, we can make changes to either one or both: we can change A to fit B or B to fit A or both A and B to fit each other. Similarly, it would seem that a problematic situation could be resolved by making changes to the self or the world or both. Of course, sometimes it may not be in our power to do anything at all about A or B, either because of contingent features of the case or because of the kind of thing that A or B is. If our conative attitudes were the kind of thing that it was, in principle, impossible for us to change, if we had no control over them at all, then the only way to correct a mismatch between our conative selves and the world around us would consist in changing parts of the world. In this case, the expected problem-solving value of an act would equal the probability-weighted average of the problemsolving values of all its possible worldly outcomes. In fact, when reading the current literature in normative decision theory, one may get the impression (though it is a false impression) that this is exactly what people believe: that we have no control over our conative attitudes, not even indirect causal control.8 In this regard, the literature on transformative experience is a welcome exception. Paul and her critics are clear that we can change our conative attitudes, at least occasionally, by choosing to undergo a personally transformative experience. But even they tend to frame personal transformation as an aspect of the experience we merely foresee, not one that we choose. Here Dewey goes further. His well-documented interest in education (see e.g., TSS, HWT, DE, Mayhew and Edwards 1966) testifies to his firm belief in the malleability of our conative attitudes and the feasibility of controlling the processes by which they are shaped. Unlike many proponents of a desire-based psychology, Dewey makes a point of distinguishing different kinds of what he calls “valuings” (TV: 195) or “affective-motor” attitudes (TV: 202) on the basis of whether and how they are acquired. The only innate valuings he recognizes are impulses: nonpurposive tendencies to move, such as reflexes and instincts (HNC: 65). And of these he says: “any impulse may become organized into almost any disposition according to the way it interacts with [its social] surroundings” (HNC: 69; my emphasis). All other species of valuings—habits, desires, tastes, and interests—are acquired and, as such, by and large products of individual and collective human activity.9 This means that, as rational agents, we can exert considerable control over our own valuings. We can work on changing our habits. We can decide on and implement solutions to our problematic situations with a view to having the experience of the (hopefully positive) consequences transform our desires and interests (as in the case of the night owl, who may decide on and implement an early night regime with a view to having her dislike of early nights be transformed by the experience of better moods) (TV: 217–9).10 And we can engage in activities which refine our tastes (as when we make the effort to re-read and interpret a poem with a view to discovering new meanings, which make us like it more than we did before) (VORC: 95–6). Of course, there are limits, sometimes narrow limits. Dewey is well aware of the natural, social, and epistemic constraints that our control over our conative attitudes is subject to: we 306

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cannot get rid of our knee-jerk reflex, say, or unlearn to want to sleep, or bring ourselves to stop caring about any and all societal pressures. Our old habits may be too ingrained for change and we may not know our psychology well enough to engineer specific likings or tastes. But notice that our control over the world is subject to all the same kinds of constraints: natural, social, and epistemic. So there is no distinctive lack of control over our conative selves, as compared to the world around us. For these reasons, Dewey would insist that, in any given problematic situation, it is an open question whether and to what extent we can change the relevant aspects of the self and/or the world and which combination of changes promises to most successfully resolve the problem and to reinstate the most complete unity or harmony or match. Thus, in deliberating, we must evaluate combinations of worldly and self-related outcomes. They are the bearers of problem-solving value. They are the outcomes on whose values the rationality of our choices depends, not worldly outcomes on their own, as a very common misconception has it. This First Deweyan Insight (as I will call it) bears on how we should understand and formulate the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice: pace Paul, the problem isn’t really how to accommodate the conative attitudes of our transformed future self at all because deliberation already takes them into account as part of the combinational outcome to be evaluated (as part of the object of evaluation). The problem is rather how to evaluate this outcome or determine its problem-solving value, and, as we will see in what follows, this involves deciding whether, at this point, the transformed future self should enter a second time (as part of the subject of evaluation).

19.3  Pettigrew on Aggregating Conative Attitudes Actually, a quick look at recent contributions to the current debate on transformative experience suggests that this debate did not need any help from Dewey to reach what I called the First Deweyan Insight. I am thinking, more specifically, of Pettigrew’s new book Choosing for Changing Selves, where he provides a detailed treatment of and his own solution to the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice.11 In this section, I will first provide a rough outline of his formulation of and solution to the problem and explain why, at first, it seems that he respects the First Deweyan Insight. Then I will supply the motivation for his solution and fill in all the details, at which point the differences between his position and Dewey’s will become apparent. This will set the stage for a Deweyan critique of Pettigrew’s solution in Section 19.4. Pettigrew’s crucial but easily overlooked first step toward solving the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice is reformulating it. Instead of stopping at Paul’s observation that, as decision-makers who face a personally transformative choice, we are torn between the diverging conative attitudes of our present and future selves, he goes further and distinguishes between our local sets of conative attitudes or utility functions, meaning those of our time-slice selves, i.e., our different selves at different times, and our global (or decision-making) set of conative attitudes or utility function, which is defined in normative terms, namely as the one that we should use for the purpose of decision-making—the one that delivers the sought-after rationally founded values for transformative outcomes. With this distinction in hand, the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice can be reformulated as follows: How do we get from a multitude of local sets of conative attitudes or utility functions to the global set or function, which yields rationally founded values for transformative outcomes, thus enabling us to make our personally transformative choice rationally (Pettigrew 2019: 18)? The distinction seems to already get us some of the way toward the First Deweyan Insight because, by elevating the decision-making self above the plurality of time-slice selves, it prompts 307

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the idea that the conative attitudes of my futures selves might be among the things my decisionmaking self must look at and evaluate when making her decision. And this impression appears to be confirmed by certain aspects of Pettigrew’s solution (recall that, for now, I am purposely highlighting points of real or apparent agreement with Dewey). Consider, first, how Pettigrew’s solution requires him to also reformulate the decision problem, that is, the formal model of the decisions to be made (Pettigrew 2019: 73–5). Compared to the formal model that I cited at the outset of Section 19.1, his includes a set of possible states of the world that are more fine-grained, specifying both how the world around us changes over time and how our utility function changes over time.12 Since these states of the world, combined with possible acts, would usually constitute the outcomes evaluated in deliberation, Pettigrew’s adaptation of the decision problem seems to indicate that, like Dewey, he believes that, as decision-makers, we evaluate both how the world and how the self will change as a result of our choice. Next, let’s look at the solution itself. Implicit in Pettigrew’s normative definition of the global utility function is a decision rule: we ought to choose the act or one of the acts with maximal expected global utility. Of course, the all-important question is how the global utility of a possible outcome is calculated. So how does the decision-making self evaluate these apparently combinational outcomes made up of worldly outcomes and self-related outcomes? Prima facie, this seems to be another point of agreement with Dewey because the answer seems to be: based on how well the two sides match, where this is construed, more specifically, as the extent to which the consecutive time-slice selves value the evolving world around them (Pettigrew 2019: 75–6). Yet, as we shall see, this agreement is merely apparent. To understand why, we need to take a step back and examine how Pettigrew motivates his solution, which is very different from Dewey’s problem-solving motivation indeed. The main motivation for Pettigrew’s solution is rooted in the observation that normative decision theorists seem to have a comparatively easy time dealing with the doxastic analogue of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice, namely: changes in our doxastic attitudes or credence function (Pettigrew 2019: 29–30). Here, too, we could ask whose probabilities or credences we should use to make our decision, those of our present self or those of our doxastically transformed future self. But, in this case, there is a natural answer: we should use those of our present self and that is, roughly speaking, because “we demand of our current credences that they already take our […] future credences into account in a satisfactory way” (Pettigrew 2019: 30, see also 29–44). To put a bit more flesh on the bones of this idea,13 let us consider an example of a situation that is prima facie analogous to the situation of someone facing a personally transformative choice. Imagine you are sent a link to an anti-vax article about COVID-19 vaccines and must decide whether to click on it. Having read scientific studies and consulted government websites, you are currently disposed to assign a high probability to the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. But, knowing yourself quite well, you anticipate that reading the anti-vax article would change your attitude toward its safety and effectiveness such that your future self would assign a lower probability to its safety and effectiveness. The question is: Whose credences should you use to decide whether to click on the link, your present credences or those of the future self who did click and read the article? Or maybe you should take a vote? What is the rational thing to do here? The natural answer is that you should first update your present credences by incorporating the information about your possible future credences in accordance with your beliefs about the epistemic standing of the relevant future self (so as to ensure that your present credences are rationally responsive to new evidence) and then you should use these updated present credences to make your decision. For instance, if you trust scientists and governments and distrust anti-vaxxers, you 308

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should treat the information about the credences of your future self who clicked and read the article as having no evidential value and, instead of bringing your present credences in line with theirs, treat your present credences as up to date and use them to make your decision. Pettigrew uses this natural solution to the doxastic analogue of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice as a foil to motivate his very different solution to the original problem (Pettigrew 2019: 44–7, 49–50, 75–6). His argument proceeds by analogy with a group decision. Imagine I am a member of a group who has to make a decision on behalf of the group. Imagine, first, that we all share the same utilities but have different credences. In this case, if I update my credences in light of everyone else’s in the manner described above and use the updated credences to decide, then, Pettigrew would argue, no one can accuse me of unfairness because I have done my best to accomplish our shared doxastic goal of getting at the truth about the world. By contrast, if we all shared the same credences but had different utilities, then I ought not to make the decision on behalf of the group in this way—that is to say, I ought not to make the incorporation of information about others’ utilities conditional on my beliefs about the worthiness of their values—because: In this case, you [a fellow group member] might very well accuse me of unfairness. I have failed to treat you justly. And the reason is that I have not given appropriate weight to your values […]. (Pettigrew 2019: 46) Carrying this over to the allegedly analogous case of making a decision on behalf of one’s different selves, Pettigrew writes: What is true of such group decision-making is also true when I make decisions on behalf of my [various] selves. My current credences are my best attempt to formulate credences that achieve the doxastic goal I share with my […] possible future selves. They give sufficient consideration to the doxastic states of those other selves, since they use the information they have about those other states in order to try to make themselves as good as possible from the point of view of our shared doxastic goal. My […] possible future selves have no cause for complaint. (Pettigrew 2019: 46) However, in Pettigrew’s opinion, they would have cause for complaint if I did not give any more weight than this to their diverging utilities. From this, Pettigrew concludes that, as far as utilities are concerned, we should give each time-slice self a voice or, less metaphorically, that we should treat the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice as an attitude aggregation problem, which we solve by finding the best way to aggregate the conative attitudes of all our time-slice selves (Pettigrew 2019: 49–50). With this in mind, we are ready to fill in the remaining details of Pettigrew’s solution and appreciate how much it differs from Dewey’s. I already mentioned his distinction between local and global sets of conative attitudes and utility functions and his strategy of fine-graining the possible states of the world. In more formal terms, Pettigrew takes a state of the world s in S to be determined by three components: the possible world that is actual in s, ws, the agent’s credence functions at times t1 to t n14 in s, Ps,1 … Ps,n, and the agent’s utility functions at times t1 to t n in s, Us,1 … Us,n. Therefore, a possible state can be represented as: s = 〈ws, Ps,1 … Ps,n, Us,1 … Us,n〉. Now, as we said above, the heart of our problem is how to calculate the global utility of a possible 309

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outcome, UG(a & s). In line with his conception of this problem as an attitude aggregation problem, Pettigrew argues that it should be calculated by averaging the time-slice selves’ utilities for being in the relevant possible world, i.e., by averaging the local utilities of the worldly aspect of a possible outcome (a & s), Us,1(a & ws) to Us,n(a & ws). More specifically, he holds that UG(a & s) is a weighted average of the latter: n

U G (a & s) = ∑α s,i U s,i (a & w s ) i =1

(On Pettigrew’s view, the weights depend on the degree of connectedness between the relevant local self and the present self, but I will ignore this aspect of his solution, as it doesn’t affect my points.) Thus, the decision rule that we ought to use for personally transformative choices is to maximize: n

V(a) = ∑Pp (s a )U G (a & s) = ∑Pp (s a )∑α s,i U s,i (a & w s )15 s ∈S

s ∈S

i =1

This is Pettigrew’s solution to the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice (or rather, his schema for a solution, which becomes a specific solution when supplemented with his view on how to set the weights, i.e., his degree-of-connectedness proposal). By now, it should be clear that, contrary to any Dewey-induced appearances, Pettigrew’s decision-making self doesn’t evaluate combinational outcomes based on how well the self-related and worldly outcomes match, and that is true even if we ignore the weights (α) and understand “match” to mean how much the relevant time-slice self likes the world around her. Because, for Pettigrew, a global utility does not represent what we thought it represented, namely: how much the decision-making self values a combinational outcome made up of a series of time-slice selves paired with their respective time-slices of the relevant possible world. Instead, it represents the result of a vote among all these time-slice selves on how much they value the whole relevant possible world, i.e., the worldly aspect of the combinational outcome. So Pettigrew’s solution doesn’t heed the First Deweyan Insight after all, and that makes sense, given the motivation for it. Because, below the surface, Pettigrew’s formulation of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice is actually akin to Paul’s. As he sees it, agents facing such a choice are torn between multiple competing perspectives on or multiple sets of conative attitudes toward possible ways the world could go and, since choosing one over the others seems unfair, he opts for aggregating them.

19.4  The Second Deweyan Insight My aim in this final section is to adduce a number of Deweyan arguments against the motivation for Pettigrew’s solution and the solution itself. Specifically, I will argue for the Second Deweyan Insight, which supplements the first. The First Deweyan Insight is that, since the relevant outcomes are combinational, it is appropriate for the perspective of the transformed future self, specifically its conative perspective, to be part of the object of evaluation. The Second Deweyan Insight is that, since problem-solving value is objective value, the appropriate way for the perspective of the transformed future self to be part of the subject of evaluation is not by way of its conative 310

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perspective receiving a vote but by way of its doxastic perspective receiving a hearing. To make this case, I will defend what I will call Dewey’s Sophisticated Objectivism against Pettigrew’s objections and worries. Let’s recall Dewey’s view of deliberation as directed at resolving problematic situations, which I have outlined in Section 19.2. Even from this brief outline we can gather that there is a sense in which Dewey can be called an objectivist about value. Sometimes, “objectivism” is taken to denote the thesis that values are objective in the sense that they are not in any way dependent on the conative attitudes of subjects, and “subjectivism” the denial of this thesis. As we will see, Dewey is not an objectivist in this sense (see also LJP: 46–9, HNC: 204–5). But Dewey does think that whether and to what extent the combinational outcome of my action will resolve the problematic situation I am in and how complete a match it will reinstate is an objective matter. And this means that, for him, the (problem-solving) value of this outcome is an objective matter, too—a matter that my conative attitudes toward this outcome can get right or wrong. So, Dewey is an objectivist in the sense that he takes values (e.g., the value of an outcome) to not be constituted by or fully grounded in the conative attitudes of subjects (e.g., the agent’s valuing the outcome).16 Recall our night owl from Section 19.2: she habitually prefers outcomes involving late nights to outcomes involving early nights, but that doesn’t make it the case that the former have more (problem-solving) value than the latter. The question of whether and in what sense values are objective or subjective matters for our purposes because, as Pettigrew himself admits (Pettigrew 2019: 46), an objectivist would and should reject his claim that, as decision-makers, we ought to give our possible future selves a vote and that we would treat them unfairly if we didn’t. Yet, of course, Pettigrew doesn’t want to be an objectivist. Before we review his arguments against objectivism and discuss whether Dewey’s version might escape them, we need to understand what Pettigrew means when he speaks of objectivism and why he thinks that, for an objectivist, giving one’s possible future selves a vote is not the way to go (Pettigrew 2019: 28–30, 44–7). Although Pettigrew does not offer a definition, he seems to think of objectivism as the view that values are objective in the sense that they are not in any way dependent on the conative attitudes of subjects, nor sensitive to any other differences between subjects (more on this in a moment). Of course, for objectivists like this, maximizing expected value means maximizing expected objective value. For this reason, they need to reinterpret the agent’s utility function as representing not the agent’s conative attitudes toward possible outcomes (which don’t bear on and aren’t necessarily responsive to objective values) but her doxastic attitudes toward these outcomes having this or that objective value. To put it in more formal terms: on this view, an agent’s subjective utility for an outcome would be given by an average of the objective utilities this outcome might have, weighted by the agent’s credences that it has them: U(a & s) = ∑P(OU gives objective utilities a )OU(a & s) OU

Naturally, proponents of this sort of objectivism would be inclined to treat the personal transformation that Paul is so worried about as a change not in conative attitudes but rather in doxastic attitudes about objective values (or else they just wouldn’t worry about it because it wouldn’t threaten the possibility of rational decision-making). The objectivist version of the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice is therefore the problem of not knowing whose doxastic attitudes about objective values to go by or whose credences about objective utilities to use when making one’s choice, those of one’s present self or those of one’s doxastically transformed future 311

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self (Pettigrew 2019: 29). With this reformulation of the problem in mind, it is easy to guess which solution Pettigrew recommends. Since this is just another doxastic analogue of Paul’s original problem, much like the one we encountered in Section 19.3, the natural solution is, again, to go by the doxastic attitudes or use the credences of the present self because the latter is meant to already have given its possible future selves a hearing and taken on board whatever information she regarded as worthy. Yet, while Pettigrew recommends this solution to objectivists and describes it as “beguiling in its simplicity” (Pettigrew 2019: 46), he himself rejects it, because, to him, the underlying objectivism seems “extremely implausible” (Pettigrew 2019: 47); so implausible, indeed, that his argument against it only takes up half a page. His main objection is that objectivism “posits too many […] facts [about what is valuable]”. Specifically, [it] claims not only that the world’s annihilation is less valuable than damage to my finger, but also that there is an objective fact whether self-determination is better than conformity, whether a life spent amongst nature is better than one spent amongst books, whether studying particle physics is more valuable than playing in a band, whether health is more important than education, and so on. (Pettigrew 2019: 47) Simply put, his worry is this: objectivists are committed to there being “a single true objective utility function” and that is absurd (Pettigrew 2019: 47). My aim, in what follows, is to disarm this objection. In fact, I want to show that Dewey’s objectivism is uniquely well suited to dispel this worry and other common worries about objectivism. I want to begin with some observations concerning the objectivist’s alleged commitment to one true utility function. First, and this is not yet a distinctively Deweyan point: something may be objectively good or best for someone, without being good or best for everyone (e.g., choosing a certain profession might be objectively good for someone with a certain talent, but bad for someone who lacks that talent). Second, and here we get into more Deweyan territory: something may be objectively good or best for someone in a given (natural, social, or political) environment, without being good or best for them in other environments. And third, something may be objectively good or best for someone in a given environment at a given time, without being good or best for them at other times. That is to say, objective values can be agent-sensitive, environment-sensitive, and time-sensitive, and no less objective for being so. In fact, Dewey insists that values are tied to specific contexts in these ways, and that is what we should expect, given that he identifies the value of things with their potential to solve specific problems. Thus, he says: In all inquiry, […] what is proposed as a conclusion (the end-in-view in that inquiry) is evaluated as to its worth in the ground of its ability to resolve the problem presented by the conditions under investigation. There is no a priori standard for determining the value of a proposed solution in concrete cases. […] Ends-in-view are appraised or valued as good or bad on the ground of their serviceability in the direction of behavior dealing with states of affairs found to be objectionable because of some lack or conflict in them. (TV: 232–3) So, even though Dewey is an objectivist, he is certainly not committed to there being one true objective utility function to which all our subjective utility functions aspire.17 He can agree with Pettigrew’s eminently reasonable view that there is no general fact as to whether, say, a life spent 312

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amongst nature is better than a life spent amongst books. For certain people in certain places and circles at certain times of their life it may be; for others, the reverse may be the case. I think these remarks suffice to dispel Pettigrew’s official objection to objectivism, but there is another common worry implicit in his portrayal of objectivism that I want to touch on as well. According to Pettigrew, objectivists regard all “the components of an individual’s conative state—her subjective values, desires, likes and dislikes—[as] simply shadows cast by certain of her doxastic states—in particular, her credences concerning what is objectively valuable” (Pettigrew 2019: 28). Though Pettigrew doesn’t clarify what this shadow metaphor is meant to convey, it could be interpreted as highlighting the worry that, in an objectivist framework, conative attitudes are normatively epiphenomenal: that they are influenced or even produced by our doxastic attitudes about objective values, mirroring the latter in more or less distorted ways, but that they should not influence these doxastic attitudes in return because conative attitudes have no significance for what is objectively good for us, and hence for what is rational or right for us to do. To dispel this implicit concern, we can help ourselves to another Deweyan distinction: the distinction between valuings and value judgments (LJP: 23–8, TV: 202–20). “Valuings” or “affective-motor attitudes” are Dewey’s terms for conative attitudes. They are tendencies to move toward this or that object or act in this or that way, usually accompanied by feelings. Valuings may be unreflective, as in the case of impulsive or habitual valuings, or they may be reflective, i.e., shaped or produced by reflection and judgment and involving an articulate understanding of what is being valued and why (the latter are affective-ideational-motor attitudes). For Dewey, desires (or ends-in-view) are reflective in this sense, as are interests and cultivated tastes (TV: 220–6, VEK: 13–5). The term “value judgment”, by contrast, refers to a doxastic act: to the act of forming a doxastic attitude concerning whether one ought to have a certain valuing-attitude toward something (LJP: 29–30, TV: 208–12). Now, as Pettigrew would predict, Dewey’s objectivism leads him to the view that the rational way of assigning values to outcomes—the way that yields appropriate inputs for the purposes of rational decision-making in accordance with the MEU Rule—is to assign the values that our present self rationally judges and believes these outcomes to objectively have (after considering all the evidence, including whatever insight possible future selves might possess). Yet, contrary to what Pettigrew’s metaphor suggests, Dewey doesn’t think that objective values are entirely independent of our valuings, so that our doxastic attitudes about objective values should ignore them. Since, on Dewey’s account, value judgments are essentially practical or action-guiding and thus inextricably bound up with deliberation in response to problematic situations, we can use our night owl example from Section 19.2 to understand why, for him, value judgments ought to take account of our valuings. The night owl’s problem is a conflict or tension between her habitual liking for late nights and the demands of her new job, which manifests in fatigue, bad moods, etc. Let’s assume that she realizes this and figures that getting used to and learning to cherish early nights is the most promising solution to her predicament. She would then conclude her deliberations by judging: “Early nights are good”. Instead of recording her present valuings (she does not like early nights), this judgment prescribes valuings which, if acted upon by enforcing an early night regime, are expected to resolve the conflict and reinstate harmony. This expectation is based on the prediction that the experience of the positive consequences of this regime—more energy, good moods—will transform her initial valuings and bring her to cherish early nights, or at least to no longer mind them too much. If she couldn’t count on this personal transformation, if she knew, say, that an early night regime will only lead to a shift from bad moods due to fatigue to even worse moods due to fear of missing out, then her value judgment would be false in that acting on it would not maximize expected problem-solving value. 313

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This example illustrates that, while Dewey is an objectivist in the sense that he doesn’t take values to be constituted by or fully grounded in what we currently like or desire or have a taste for, which means that he doesn’t accord any normative authority to our present valuings, he does think that (objective) values depend on what we can and cannot bring ourselves to like or desire or have a taste for, and hence that our value judgments ought to take this into account. For, on Dewey’s view, the value of an envisaged scenario is its problem-solving value or match value, and the match between an agent and her environment cannot be very good if her valuings are wildly at odds with what she gets. On reflection, this approach to incorporating valuings seems eminently plausible since our present likings, especially unreflective likings instilled in us as children, may fail to align with our reflective conception of the good life (for us, over time, across changing environments). By responding to Pettigrew’s objections and worries, I have provided an outline of what I have praisingly called Dewey’s “Sophisticated Objectivism”. If my defense of this position was successful, I have shown how to take proper account of the perspectives of our possible future selves without giving them a vote on how to evaluate possible worldly outcomes. As far as these future selves’ value judgments/doxastic attitudes about objective value are concerned, I would agree with Pettigrew: our present self should give them a hearing and update its doxastic attitudes on them, i.e., defer to or ignore them, depending on how she assesses their epistemic standing (whether she regards them as enlightened or brainwashed, say). As for their valuings/ conative attitudes, I have suggested that they should come in as part of what constitutes an objectively valuable—that is, problem-solving—outcome. In this way, all the attitudes of our possible future selves are given their proper place in deliberation. No one is being ignored or treated unfairly. In fact, we can now appreciate why giving our possible future selves a vote is not just unnecessary but also inappropriate: their valuings and value judgments might be just as mistaken, just as much the result of manipulation, short-sightedness, and flawed sensibilities as the present valuings we might be taking pains to overcome. The upshot of all this is the Second Deweyan Insight: The appropriate way for our transformed future self to take part in evaluating outcomes is not by way of its conative self receiving a vote but by way of its doxastic self receiving a hearing.

19.5 Conclusion In this chapter, I have advanced the debate on the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice by articulating two Deweyan insights, one pertaining to the correct formulation of the problem, and one pertaining to its solution. First, I argued against Paul that, since the conative perspective of our transformed future self is part of the combinational outcomes that are being evaluated, there is no reason to worry that this perspective will drop out unless it’s involved in the process of evaluating. This is the First Deweyan Insight. Second, I argued against Pettigrew that, since problem-solving value is objective value, the appropriate way for the perspective of our transformed future self to be involved in the process of evaluating is not by way of its conative perspective receiving a vote but by way of its doxastic perspective receiving a hearing. This is the Second Deweyan Insight. I hope that, in arguing for the latter, I have also managed to give a rough indication of how Dewey’s Sophisticated Objectivism might help to reconcile subjectivism and objectivism by accommodating the concerns that animate each: the concern for objectivity in the realm of value, on the one hand, and the concern that the subject with her very own point of view, her desires and likings, should be given pride of place. I should note, however, that my argument in this 314

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chapter has left open an important and difficult question for future research: the question of what Dewey considers to be a good match between an agent and her environment. Certainly, we cannot settle for the simple answer that a match is good to the extent that the environment conforms to the agent’s present conative attitudes, i.e., satisfies her wishes, likings, and desires. Instead, answering this question will require a thorough examination of Dewey’s concept of growth and its relation to social, political, and moral considerations.18

Notes 1 Strictly speaking, this holds only if we presuppose what Lara Buchak refers to as the “realist” interpretation of normative decision theory, rather than the “constructivist” interpretation (Buchak 2013). On the constructivist interpretation, preferences over acts are regarded as more fundamental than credences and utilities; the latter are basically “reverse-engineered” from the former. This means that, if a preference ordering counts as rational—and it does as soon as it satisfies some fairly minimal formal conditions—then so do the credences and utilities derived from it. The question of whether there is a rational basis for setting the credences and utilities in this way does not arise. On the realist interpretation, credences and utilities are regarded as more fundamental than preferences over acts. This means that preference orderings and the corresponding choices count as rational only if the credences and utilities they are based on do, i.e., if there is a rational basis for latter. 2 This is one of two overlapping subsets of such cases that Paul discusses. The other one are cases of epistemically transformative choice. Epistemically transformative choices are choices for or against undergoing epistemically transformative experiences: experiences which we have never had before and of which we cannot know what they are like without having had them, e.g., tasting a new fruit (Paul 2014: 10–1). These cases give rise to the Problem of Epistemically Transformative Choice: the problem that, without knowing what an experience is like, we have no rational basis for assigning a value to or setting a utility for the outcome of undergoing it. On Paul’s view, most personally transformative choices are also epistemically transformative (though not vice versa), which means that it is rare for the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice to appear alone (see n. 3 for more details). Apart from Paul’s cases, there are also other cases where we seem to lack a rational basis for assigning values or setting utilities, e.g., cases where our conative attitudes are indeterminate or epistemically inaccessible (in the latter cases, there may well be a rational basis for the attitudes themselves but not for assigning values or setting utilities in the context of deliberation and decision-making (see Schulz 2020)). 3 Of course, as Paul also points out, we do not actually know this. We know neither what the experience of being a parent is like (for, in addition to being personally transformative, it is also epistemically transformative (see n. 2)) nor how undergoing this experience would change our conative attitudes, i.e., how much our transformed future self would value the various aspects of this experience. Even without the Problem of Personally Transformative Choice, each of these epistemic problems—call them the Problem of Epistemically Transformative Choice and the Epistemic Problem of Personally Transformative Choice—would suffice to rob us of a rational basis for assigning values or setting utilities for the purposes of deciding whether to have a child. But I’ll set them aside. 4 Paul herself does believe that there is a more satisfactory option. For her solution, see (Paul 2014: 113–20). 5 I say “relatively” because, on Dewey’s view, adults—unlike babies—have very few, if any, conative attitudes that are completely unreflective in the sense of not involving any understanding of what is being valued and why. 6 All references to Dewey’s texts are to the pagination of The Collected Works of John Dewey, edited by Jo Ann Boydston and consisting of The Early Works (EW), The Middle Works (MW), and The Later Works (LW). I will abbreviate the titles of his works as follows: TSS: The School and Society (1899) (MW, vol. 1), HWT: How We Think (1910) (MW, vol. 6), LJP: “The Logic of Judgments of Practice” (1915) (MW, vol. 8), DE: Democracy and Education (1916) (MW, vol. 9), VEK: “Valuation and Experimental Knowledge” (1922) (MW, vol. 13), HNC: Human Nature and Conduct (1922) (MW, vol. 14), VORC: “Value, Objective Reference, and Criticism” (1925) (LW, vol. 2), L: Logic (1938) (LW, vol. 12), TV: Theory of Valuation (1939) (LW, vol. 13). 7 What I call “problem-solving value” could also be called “harmony value” or “match value”. The better the match between the agent’s conative attitudes and her environment, the higher this value.

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Irina Schumski Unfortunately, in this paper, I must leave open what “good match” means in this context. See Section 19.5 for a brief remark on this point. 8 To clarify: there is in fact relatively broad agreement that, while we don’t have direct voluntary control over our conative attitudes (we cannot create or destroy desires at will, for example), we do have some indirect causal control over them (we can strengthen or weaken desires by indulging or not indulging them, for example). Yet, despite the fact that most contemporary decision theorists share in this mild optimism regarding the possibility of exerting control over our conative attitudes, their theories usually ignore this possibility and take conative attitudes as a given that the agent has to put up with. In this sense, they treat conative attitudes as if we couldn’t control them at all. Thanks to Benjamin Kiesewetter for pushing me to clarify this point. 9 The claim that desires are acquired may seem particularly controversial. Dewey uses a nice example to make it more plausible: “[Think of ] the first cries of a baby ... They are constituents of a larger organic condition. They are facts of organic behavior and are not in any sense whatever ... expressions [of desires]. They may, however, be taken by other persons as signs of an organic state, and, so taken, ... they evoke certain responsive forms of behavior in these other persons. A baby cries. The mother takes the cry as a sign the baby is hungry ... and so acts to change the organic condition inferred to exist by [feeding it]. Then, as the baby matures, it becomes aware of the connection that exists between a certain cry, the activity evoked, and the consequences produced in response to it. The cry ... is now made in order to evoke the activity and in order to experience the consequences of that activity” (TV: 197–8). A desire for food has emerged, whereas, beforehand, there was only discomfort without an object or end-in-view. 10 See Section 19.4 for more details on how this works. 11 He refers to it as the “problem of choosing for changing selves” (Pettigrew 2019: xiv). 12 In fact, as we will see later, these states also specify how our credence function changes over time. But this won’t make a difference to the substance of the solution. 13 What I will say in what follows is a very short and crude summary of Pettigrew’s thoughts on the subject, which he arrives at after discussing sections of a large and complex literature dealing, i.a., with the Reflection Principle (Pettigrew 2019: 30–44). I take the liberty of simplifying this issue because the details don’t affect my points. 14 I will follow Pettigrew in assuming that the number of moments and hence selves in all states in S is the same. 15 “Pp” is the present credence function. 16 Humeans are subjectivists in something like this sense. They regard final values as subjective in the sense that they take the final value of an object to be constituted by or fully grounded in the agent’s valuing this object as a final end. (Even Humeans agree that instrumental values aren’t subjective in this sense. For, if an agent’s valuing an object as a means to some end is based on a false means-end-belief, the object needn’t have instrumental value.) Dewey, on the other hand, is very clear that, even our valuing of things as final ends does not make the things in question valuable (TV: 214). 17 Strictly speaking, Dewey could accept that there is one true objective utility function if it was a function from outcomes involving sufficiently fine-grained states of the world: states like “Hannah eats ice cream at time t1 in environment e1” rather than states like “Everyone around the world eats ice cream three times a week”. But this possibility is not what Pettigrew takes issue with, so we can ignore it. Thanks to Alexander Dinges for bringing this to my attention. 18 Many thanks to Jochen Bojanowski, Eugen Pissarskoi, Tobias Wilsch, the participants of the reading group “New Methods for Applied Ethics” at the University of Tübingen, the participants of Moritz Schulz’s Research Colloquium at the TU Dresden, and the participants of the Philosophy Research Seminar at the New College of the Humanities for helpful pointers and discussions, and to the editors of the present volume for their comments and suggestions.

Bibliography Buchak, L., (2013). Risk and Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bykvist, K., (2006). “Prudence for Changing Selves.” Utilitas. 18, 264–83. Chang, R., (2015). “Transformative Choices.” Res Philosophica. 92, 237–82. Dewey, J., (1967). The Early Works, 1882–1898, J. A. Boydston (ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

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A Deweyan Perspective on Transformative Choice Dewey, J., (1976). The Middle Works, 1899–1924, J. A. Boydston (ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J., (1981). The Later Works, 1925–1953, J. A. Boydston (ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Mayhew, K. C. and Edwards, A. C., (1966). The Dewey School: The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago 1896–1903. New York, NY: Atherton Press. Paul, L. A., (2014). Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paul, L. A., (2015a). “Précis of Transformative Experience” and “Transformative Experience: Replies to Pettigrew, Barnes and Campbell.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 91, 760–5, 794–813. Paul, L. A., (2015b). “What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting” and “Transformative Choice: Discussion and Replies.” Res Philosophica. 92, 149–70, 473–545. Pettigrew, R., (2015). “Transformative Experience and Decision Theory.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 91, 766–74. Pettigrew, R., (2019). Choosing for Changing Selves. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schulz, M., (2020). “Uncertain Preferences in Rational Decision.” Inquiry. 63, 605–27. Ullmann-Margalit, E., (2006). “Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement. 58, 157–72.

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20 PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY AS AFFECTIVE TRANSFORMATION Adam Bradley

20.1 Introduction Since their introduction to mainstream culture and medicine in the middle of the 20th century, psychedelic substances have been investigated for their therapeutic potential. In this research, compounds such as psilocybin, the precursor to the active ingredient in ‘magic mushrooms’, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), a synthetic psychedelic discovered by chemist Albert Hofmann, and DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine), the primary active ingredient in ayahuasca, have shown promise in treating a range of conditions, including addiction, depression, and anxiety (Mithoefer, Grob, and Brewerton 2016). The use of psychedelics in a therapeutic context takes different forms. In psycholytic therapy, moderate to low doses of psychedelic drugs are administered in the context of a traditional form of psychotherapy, with the goal of enhancing the psychotherapy through the use of these mind-altering substances. In psychedelic therapy, large doses of psychedelics are administered in order to produce a powerful psychedelic experience (Vollenweider and Kometer 2010: 645). Therapists primarily play the role of ‘trip guides’, helping subjects draw out insights from their psychedelic trip. Subjects often receive ordinary talk therapy before and after the psychedelic trip, but the emphasis is on leading subjects to have an epiphanic experience while under the influence of the drug. My focus in this essay will be on psychedelic therapy, since this form of treatment has received the most attention and shown the most promise. A number of early studies found remarkable benefits from psychedelic therapy. For instance, Grof and colleagues found that administration of LSD to terminal cancer patients caused ‘a very wide range of improvement of various parameters of emotional distress (such as depression, anxiety, tension, insomnia, and restricted social communication), through relief of pain to changes in attitude toward impending and inevitable death’ (Grof et al. 1973: 142). However, these early studies faced methodological concerns, and the entire field of research became disreputable and legally fraught during the backlash against the 1960s counterculture (Pollan 2018: Chapter 3). As a result, the findings of these studies were largely forgotten, the flame of psychedelic therapy kept alight by a relatively small number of practitioners working at the edge of psychiatry.1 In recent years the tide has turned back again, and we are currently living through a period of intense research into the therapeutic value of psychedelic drugs (Santos and Hallak 2020). This research brings the rigor of contemporary medicine to bear on the topic. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the results reported in the early decades have been confirmed by this newer

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work. For instance, Griffiths et al. (2016) found that psilocybin reduces the degree of depression and anxiety in terminal cancer patients, confirming Grof ’s earlier result. And Garcia-Romeu and colleagues found that psilocybin reduces the rate of nicotine addiction (Garcia-Romeu, Griffiths, and Johnson 2014), partially confirming earlier studies on the ability of psychedelics to treat addiction. Bolstered by these findings, larger and more rigorous studies are being conducted to enable us to determine the true potential of psychedelics for the treatment of psychological disorders. These results are interesting not just because they promise us new tools in the fight against costly and disruptive psychological and psychiatric conditions (Whiteford et al. 2013). In addition, they promise to reshape our understanding of mental disorder and its treatment. Of course, administering drugs to treat mental illness is not a new idea, and many psychopharmaceuticals have demonstrated substantial benefits as treatments for mental disorders (Cipriani et al. 2018). But what is potentially revolutionary here is the manner in which psychedelic drugs exert their influence, namely through the production of a powerful ‘mystical experience’ in subjects (Letheby 2015; Yaden and Griffiths 2021).2 An ordinary anti-depressant such as an SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) is usually taken for long periods of time and can take weeks to produce any noticeable effect (Taylor et al. 2006). In psychedelic therapy, by contrast, subjects take a large dose of a psychedelic drug on only a few occasions, or even only once (Griffiths et al. 2016: 1182). This often produces immediate and enduring benefits. So, psychedelics are not merely a new class of psychopharmaceutical but, apparently, one that works in a distinctive way. In this chapter, I propose an account of the psychological mechanism of psychedelic therapy. Psychedelic therapy works, I claim, by inducing an affective shift in subjects, or a sudden and largescale change in the subject’s set of valenced attitudes, where valenced attitudes are attitudes with a felt positive or negative dimension. These attitudes include emotions, but also states such as valuing, desiring, and so on. An addict, for instance, has a problematic set of affective attitudes directed toward their drug of choice: they crave it, they feel empty without it, they feel satisfied after consuming it, and so on. On this proposal, psychedelic therapy treats addiction by re-configuring these affective attitudes. Before, the addict’s feelings (I want this drug) were out of step with their considered judgment (this drug is bad for me; I should stop using it). But as a result of ingesting a psychedelic drug and undergoing a powerful psychedelic experience, the subject undergoes a sudden shift in these fixed attitudes. While under the influence of psilocybin, a subject may come to finally feel, rather than merely think, that they should stop drinking alcohol. As a result of this shift, the subject’s affective state now matches their thoughts, enabling the subject to give up their addiction. Here’s the outline. First, I provide some background on psychedelic drugs, psychedelic therapy, and the notion of a transformative experience, drawing in particular on L.A. Paul’s work. I then take up the issue of whether these experiences play a genuinely causal role, concurring with Letheby that they do. Next, I articulate Christopher Letheby’s own proposal for the psychological mechanism by which these drugs operate: ego dissolution. In the following section I argue that my own proposal, on which affective therapy works by means of inducting an affective shift, is superior to the ego dissolution account, while acknowledging that they overlap to some degree. I end with some remarks about the role of affect in determining what Paul calls a subject’s point-of-view or perspective.

20.2  Psychedelic Drugs and Psychedelic Therapy Psychedelic drugs have been used by humans for millennia. Despite their widespread use throughout human civilization, systematic research into their potential as psychopharmaceuticals only really came to prominence in the middle of the 20th century. A representative example of this early research is work using LSD to treat alcoholism. In Canada, researchers Humphry

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Osmond and Abram Hoffer began using LSD to treat alcohol addiction (Dyck 2005: 382; Pollan 2018: 146–52). In particular, they employed the method of psychedelic therapy: ‘giving alcoholism patients a single intense therapy session culminating with a megadose of LSD’ (Dyck 2005: 382). This work culminated in Sven Jensen’s publication of the first controlled trial testing LSD as a treatment for alcoholism ( Jensen 1962; Dyck 2005: 382). Despite promising case reports and studies, this line of research soon fizzled out without lasting effects on the treatment of alcoholism. As medical historian Erika Dyck summarizes: Ultimately, these LSD experiments failed for two reasons, one scientific and the other cultural. First, in the 1950s and early 1960s, the scientific parameters of clinical trials shifted to necessitate randomized controlled trials, which the Saskatchewan researchers had failed to construct. Second, as LSD became increasingly associated with student riots, antiwar demonstrations, and the counterculture, governments intervened to criminalize the drug, restricting and then terminating formal medical research into its potential therapeutic effects. (Dyck 2005: 381) It is in light of this historical context that current research on psychedelic therapy must be understood. By adopting modern methods of experimental design and carefully avoiding the cultural baggage associated with LSD, contemporary research on psychedelic therapy promises to break into the medical mainstream in a way that its progenitor research did not. Alongside the history of research of psychedelics by establishment science is a conceptual history. Early researchers and advocates needed a conceptual category for these new (to them at least) and strange drugs. This led to what we would now call ‘conceptual engineering’: an attempt to fashion an adequate concept to characterize these drugs and the experiences they generate (Cappelen and Plunkett 2020). Though not generally carried out by academic philosophers— who, at the time, were not particularly focused on psychedelics—this work was clearly philosophical in character.3 Early on, these drugs were characterized as psychotomimetics—drugs that mimic the effects of psychosis—and hallucinogens—drugs that produce hallucinations (Pollan 2018: 18–9; 145). While not entirely inaccurate, these conceptualizations were found to be inapt. Psychedelic experience is not a form of psychosis, and hallucinations are not an essential element of psychedelic experience (Pollan 2018: 153–4; 18). The term that came to predominate—and which we now use—is psychedelic, which means roughly ‘mind-manifesting’ in Greek. Psychedelic drugs (‘psychedelics’) are thus drugs that induce psychedelic experiences. Obviously, this characterization raises the question of what a psychedelic experience—a ‘mind-manifesting experience’—is.4 While a detailed characterization of psychedelic experience is beyond the scope of this chapter, a brief examination is necessary to fix ideas. To get some sense of the character of psychedelic experience, it is essential to look at first-person reports. The online database Erowid contains many first-person accounts of subjects ingesting a wide range of psychedelic drugs.5 The following subjective report of an LSD trip is representative: The visuals started to get stronger and stronger, if I would rest my eyes on the other side of the park, the lawn started to create ripples and horizontally and at the same time started to zoom in and out constantly. The interesting part was, the second I used my will power to concentrate I could still have formal-logical thinking. At one point a girl came around and asked for directions and I was amazed how easily I could still focus on that. I started to be flooded by deep feelings of love, for myself, my friend, the people around me and all of existence, I could sense that my ego was something I could let go of but I felt I would only 320

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allow that to a certain extent. I can imagine on higher doses (> 150 mcg) you don’t have that choice anymore. We were lying there in the park, as if it was Garden of Eden. Life seemed so abundant. Time had kind of lost its use and I was very grateful for my life. There was a deep trust that everything is fine as it is and that this process of constant creation of the universe will never end. That gave me a certain peace. My breathing felt so amazing. […] I let my belly pop out entirely. I realized how much I keep it in. I’m quite slim, so there are no aesthetic reasons behind that, I just realized I keep it in because of shame in my everyday life. I allowed it to pop out like a melon. Such a liberation. My breathing felt as if a whole galaxy of things being created while inhaling and letting go and dissolve again while exhaling. At this point my feeling of love and grace just flooded me and I thought: “If I can only take a bit from that in my day to day I will leave this trip as a rich man”. (Erowid 2020) In this passage one finds themes common in reports of psychedelic trips: perceptual effects such as visual distortions, an altered emotional state, characterized here by feelings of gratitude, love, and inner peace, the beginnings of ‘ego dissolution’, or a diminished or absent felt sense of self, and feelings of connectedness or oneness with the universe (Studerus, Gamma, and Vollenweider 2010). These subjective reports are broadly similar across the set of drugs known as ‘classical psychedelics’. This category includes LSD, DMT, and psilocybin. In addition to their similar phenomenological effects, these drugs also share a physiological mechanism, namely that they modify the brain’s serotonin processing system in a similar way. More specifically, these drugs are all 5-HT2A receptor agonists, that is, drugs that activate the serotonin receptor 5-HT2A (serotonin is 5-HT—5-hydroxytryptamine) (Smith et al. 1998). Because of their phenomenological and physiological similarity, it is natural to co-classify these drugs. In this chapter, when I refer to psychedelic drugs I am referring to this class of drugs, although other substances such as the stimulant MDMA (3-4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) and the dissociative anesthetic ketamine, which have a similar profile of effects and are also being studied for their therapeutic potential, are also sometimes referred to as ‘psychedelics’. If one has never had a psychedelic experience, one might feel a little shortchanged by descriptions like the one given above. After all, it is fair to wonder: what exactly is a feeling of oneness with the universe or a loss of the sense of self? The issue here is that psychedelic experiences are a paradigmatic case of what L.A. Paul calls transformative experience (Paul 2014). For Paul, experiences can be transformative in two senses: they can be epistemically transformative or personally transformative. Epistemically transformative experiences provide one with knowledge that one couldn’t have had unless one has had an experience of a given type: Until I taste the fruit of a durian, there’s something I can’t know—and that something is what it’s like to taste a durian. When I taste it for the first time, by becoming acquainted with this taste, I’ll undergo an epistemically transformative experience, and gain new knowledge, the knowledge of what it’s like to taste a durian. (Paul 2014: 15) Here Paul gives a relatively mundane example of an epistemically transformative experience, namely tasting a new type of fruit, which is essential for gaining knowledge of its taste. But epistemically transformative experiences can be profound. A religious conversion, for instance, might involve a feeling of awe that one has never encountered before, and which cannot be conveyed to anyone else who has not felt it. 321

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A different category of transformative experience ‘change[s] what you care about or what kind of person you take yourself to be’ (Paul, 2014: 16). These are personally transformative experiences: If an experience changes you enough to substantially change your point of view, thus substantially revising your core preferences or revising how you experience being yourself, it is a personally transformative experience. (16) Some experiences that we have profoundly alter our sense of self or our perspective on the world. Having a child or undergoing a religious conversion is plausibly personally transformative in this sense. One is transformed by such experiences into a new type of person with different priorities and perspectives. As Paul emphasizes, these are crosscutting distinctions: eating durian fruit may be epistemically transformative, producing a taste experience in you unlike any you have ever had, but unless that taste experience is really something else, it is unlikely to fundamentally alter your perspective on life. At the same time, familiar, non-epistemically transformative experiences might change your life profoundly. For instance, falling in love for a second time might not be epistemically transformative, since it might feel a lot like falling in love for the first time, but it may nevertheless fundamentally alter your perspective on the world and what’s valuable in it. We will follow Paul in stipulatively using the term ‘transformative experience’ simpliciter to mean experiences that are both epistemically and personally transformative. With this terminology in hand, we can see that psychedelic experiences in naive subjects are almost invariably epistemically transformative: one’s first psychedelic trip is likely going to be qualitatively different from any other experience one has had before. Still, for many who have them, these experiences are novel, interesting, pleasant (or unpleasant), but not necessarily perspective-shaping or life-altering. An experience characterized by an increased feeling of alertness, a heightened positive mood, and mild visual distortions is unlikely to produce a profound reorientation of one’s life, and so is unlikely to count as personally transformative. But psychedelic experiences, especially those produced by larger doses of psychedelic drugs, have the potential to generate experiences which induce profound personal transformations. Consider the following subjective report from a subject taking a large dose of psilocybin: At the depths of this delirium I conceived that I was either dying or, most bizarrely, that I was already dead. All points of secure attachment to a trustworthy sense of reality had fallen away. Why not think that I am dead? And if this dying, I thought, then so be it. How can I say no to this? At this point, at the greatest depth of the experience, I felt all my organizing categories of opposition—dreaming and wakefulness, life and death, inside and outside, self and other—collapse into each other… Reality appeared to fold in on itself, to implode in a kind of ecstatic catastrophe of logic. Yet in the midst of this hallucinatory hurricane I was having a weird experience of ultra-sublimity. And I remember repeating to myself again and again, “Nothing matters, nothing matters any more. I see the point! Nothing matters at all!” (Pollan 2018: 68) This passage reveals a number of features common to intense psychedelic experiences: the apparent revelation of profound metaphysical truths and the transcendent feeling of sublimity. 322

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From the subject’s description of these experiences, it is easy to see how this could be a transformative experience. Indeed, it is common for subjects who take relatively high doses of psychedelics to have experiences that they rate as among the most meaningful of their lives (Griffiths 2008). Psychedelic experiences like those just described are sometimes? called mystical experiences. Though the term is less than ideal, suggesting as it does some sort of supernatural or spiritual connotation, it denotes a well-defined type of psychedelic experience. Researchers have developed psychometric tools for measuring mystical experiences, in particular the Mystical Experience Questionnaires (MEQ30) (Barrett, Johnson, and Griffiths 2015). These questionnaires ask subjects a range of questions with the goal of assessing whether they have had a mystical experience. The MEQ30, for instance, asks subjects to rate statements such as Experience of oneness in relation to an ‘inner world’ within and Sense of being ‘outside of’ time, beyond past and future on a 6-point scale from 0 (‘none, not at all’) to 5 (‘more than ever before in my life’) (2015, 1186). Barrett, Johnson, and Griffiths (2015) have found the MEQ30 reliably measures mystical experience, providing researchers with a validated psychometric tool to study this phenomenon. It is mystical experiences of this type which are liable to be genuinely transformative. For these experiences do not merely acquaint subjects with new qualities, but also seem to reveal profound lessons about the self, the world, and the subject’s place in it. As the study mentioned earlier indicates, subjects routinely rate these mystical experiences as among the most meaningful of their lives. It is no surprise, then, that such experiences seem to play a key role in psychedelic therapy.

20.3  The Causal Efficacy of Psychedelic Therapy We have seen that psychedelic drugs reliably induce powerful and transformative mystical experiences in subjects. Moreover, there is compelling reason to think that these mystical experiences are essential to the efficacy of psychedelic therapy. Yaden and Griffiths (2021) cite an array of data suggesting that mystical experiences in particular are the key variable in the efficacy of psychedelic therapy. Chris Letheby (2015) has similarly argued that psychedelic experience is causally efficacious in psychedelic therapy on the grounds that subjects reliably report such a transformation, that interventions that produce similar experiences such as meditation also produce similar benefits, that (as mentioned earlier) psychedelic mystical experience seems to be essential to the efficacy of psychedelic therapy, and that neuroimaging studies point to a causal role for psychedelic experience. Of course, these data do not necessarily prove a causal relationship. It is always possible that positive therapeutic outcomes and mystical experiences both have a common cause. Yet there is good reason to think that there is a genuinely causal relationship here. It is important, to emphasize that the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic-induced mystical experiences are not solely the result of the drug itself. In these studies, psychedelics are administered as a part of a broader program of psychological treatment, and efforts are taken to prepare subjects for their psychedelic trip. These preparations undoubtedly influence the psychedelic experience and prime the therapeutic response. It is a well-known feature of psychedelic drugs that they are highly influenced by ‘set and setting’—the subject’s state of mind and the context in which they are taking the drug (Hartogsohn 2017). Merely taking a psychedelic drug all on its own is unlikely to have the same therapeutic effects. After all, many alcoholics and cigarette smokers take psychedelics, yet few of them quit spontaneously as a result. What is making the difference is the subjects’ intention to derive a benefit from the psychedelic trip and the support system that enables this to occur. 323

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Let us take it as granted, then, that the presence of a mystical experience in the context of psychedelic therapy is the key causal variable determining whether the subject derives a therapeutic benefit. It is one thing to know that such a general causal claim holds. It is another to understand the psychological mechanism in virtue of which this general causal claim holds true (Campbell 2020). After all, we have seen that psychedelic experiences are complex, highly variable, and often unlike anything the subject has experienced before. It is a difficult task, then, to understand just what it is about psychedelic experience that confers such powerful therapeutic benefits. We have seen evidence that mystical experiences in particular, rather than any other aspect of psychedelic experience, is key to unlocking the benefits of psychedelic drugs. But mystical experience is itself a variegated category. The MEQ30, for instance, rates mystical experiences according to four factors: mystical (‘an authoritative sense of unity or connectedness accompanied by feelings of reverence’) (Yaden and Griffiths 2021: 569), positive mood (‘positively valenced feelings such as love or peace’) (569), transcendence of time and space (‘alterations to the sense of both time and space’) (569), and ineffability (‘difficulty putting the experience into words’) (569). With such internal complexity to these experiences, it is not at all clear just what aspects of them are causal. This issue is highly relevant, since knowing which aspect of psychedelic mystical experience is key may aid in the development and refinement of psychedelic drugs and therapies. Already some researchers are seeking to design drugs which are chemically similar to psychedelics but which lack their characteristic subjective effects (Cameron et al. 2021). These researchers tend to think of the powerful psychoactive effects of psychedelics—their ‘hallucinogenic’ character—as a negative side effect of such drugs. We have seen evidence that mystical experience is itself a key causal variable in psychedelic therapy. But a middle-ground solution may be possible. If one aspect of mystical experience in particular is causally relevant, perhaps drugs could be developed that specifically target this aspect of experience. Such drugs might be easier to administer, better tolerated, or more likely to gain acceptance in the medical community or in society in general. But exploring this possibility requires a more precise understanding of what it is about psychedelic mystical experience that generates its therapeutic value.

20.4  The Ego Dissolution Account One prominent proposal for the psychological mechanism of psychedelic therapy is the experience of ego dissolution, or the loss of a felt sense of self. This phenomenon is one of the most striking aspects of subjective reports of psychedelic mystical experiences. It is common for subjects who have ingested large doses of psychedelic drugs to report feeling as if they do not exist or that they have in some way become one with the universe. The following passage, taken from Pollan (2018), is representative: I could feel my body dissolving, beginning with my feet, until it all disappeared but the left side of my jaw. It was really unpleasant; I could count only a few teeth left and the bottom part of my jaw. I knew that if that went away I would be gone. Then I remembered what they told me, that whenever you encounter anything scary, go toward it. So instead of being afraid of dying I got curious about what was going on. I was no longer trying to avoid dying. Instead of recoiling from the experience, I began to interrogate it. And with that, the whole situation dissolved into this pleasant floaty feeling, and I became the music for a while. (Pollan 2018: 65–6) 324

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Impressed by these reports, and influenced by his own experience with psychedelic drugs, Pollan speculates that these experiences of ego dissolution are the key to the therapeutic value of psychedelic drugs: Of all the phenomenological effects that people on psychedelics report, the dissolution of the ego seems to me by far the most important and the most therapeutic. I found little consensus on terminology among the researchers I interviewed, but when I unpack their metaphors and vocabularies—whether spiritual, humanistic, psychoanalytic, or neurological—it is finally the loss of ego or self (what Jung called “psychic death”) they’re suggesting is the key psychological driver of the experience. It is this that gives us the mystical experience, the death rehearsal process, the overview effect, the notion of a mental reboot, the making of new meanings, and the experience of awe. (389) Why, though, would an experience of ego dissolution be causally relevant to beneficial outcomes in psychedelic therapy? That is, why would the experience of ego dissolution be apt to cause subjects to give up a harmful addiction or develop a resolute attitude in the face of death? The underpinnings of such a story are provided by Chris Letheby and Philip Gerrans (2017) and in subsequent work by Letheby (2021). The account is complex, and so the description I give of it will be schematic, but roughly speaking, Letheby and Gerrans appeal to a neuropsychological theory on which the sense of self arises out of the operation of a ‘self-model’ generated by the brain. The self, on this theory, is an entity posited by processes in the brain in order to unify otherwise-disparate pieces of information. What unites these pieces of information is that they are, in fact, self-related—they pertain, in some way, to the subject themselves. But there is a difference between some information being self-related and being represented as self-related. The brain, in order to keep track of and unify various sources of information that are, in fact, selfrelated constructs a self-model in order to represent these different phenomena as self-related. And it is the operation of this self-model which gives rise to our ego or sense of self. In short, we experience ourselves as a simple enduring entity not because we are such a thing, but because we represent ourselves as being such a thing, since that idealization is useful in organizing our mental economy. According to Letheby and Gerrans ‘psychedelics target mechanisms on which self-binding depends’ (2) and that as a result ‘[p]sychedelic experience degrades these binding processes, enabling subjects to experience cognition not bound by self-models’ (2). Psychedelic drugs, in other words, deactivate the usually operative self-model. How does this story help us understand why ego dissolution might be therapeutically useful? One explanation proceeds by means of the notion of identification. To focus on the example of addiction, Hanna Pickard has recently argued that a significant factor in perpetuating addiction is the addict’s self-identification as an addict. As she puts it, ‘[i]f you can’t see yourself on the other side of the road from addiction to recovery, then crossing over to a drug-free life represents an existential threat. If you are not an addict, then who would you be?’ (Pickard 2020: 2–3). Pickard is claiming, in other words, that part of what makes addiction so tenacious is that addicts form a conception of themselves as addicts, so that quitting a drug amounts to losing their own identity. Ego dissolution, then, slots in as a way of breaking down the influence of this self-identification in reinforcing addictive patterns of behavior. Put another way, ego dissolution allows subjects to recreate themselves in a new image, as non-addicts. If this is at least partly correct as an explanation of addiction, then it is not hard to see how ego dissolution, at least as theorized by Letheby and Gerrans, might alleviate addiction or treat other 325

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psychological conditions. If part of one’s ‘self-model’ is that one is addict, that one does the things that addicts do, and so on, then resetting this self-model may enable the subject to reorganize their self-conception, freeing themselves from the rigid patterns of thought and behavior that have become enmeshed with their sense of self.

20.5  Affective Transformation In this section I provide a different account of the psychological mechanism by which psychedelic therapy operates. The proposal I develop here is that psychedelic therapy works in virtue of producing what I call an affective shift in a subject, or a large, sudden, and lasting change in the subject’s overall affective state, or their total set of affective attitudes at a given time.6 I argue that this account better explains the efficacy of psychedelic therapy than does the ego dissolution account, since while a certain sort of affective shift is both necessary and sufficient for therapeutic benefit, ego dissolution is neither necessary nor sufficient. As a result, affective shifts are a better candidate for the psychological mechanism of psychedelic therapy. By affect I mean the positive or negative (pleasant or unpleasant) felt character of experience. Affective states include, as paradigmatic instances, the emotions, but are hardly limited to them. Bodily sensations such as pain are loci of affect, and indeed pain is standardly characterized as having both sensory/discriminatory and affective/motivational dimensions (Price 2000). Perceptual episodes too can be affectively laden. Think of looking over the cliffs of Big Sur, listening to Penderecki’s harrowing Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, or smelling some rotting fruit. Indeed, it is plausible that affect can accompany or be a component of any conscious state of mind, though I will not try to argue for this claim here. For purposes of this discussion I am putting aside certain important questions about the nature of affect. For instance, there is a live debate whether affective states are inherently representational or not. My proposal is neutral on this debate, and so I won’t be assuming one thing or another as to whether affective states necessarily involve a representational dimension. I am, though, assuming that affect is not necessarily conceptual. Affect certainly can accompany conceptual states. If you learn that your friend is a low-down thief, that could be an awful experience. But affect also accompanies states, such as hunger, that do not appear to be conceptually structured, and so I will not suppose that conceptual structure is essential to affect. Affect, as I have characterized it, is an element of conscious experience. As such, it strictly speaking only belongs to conscious states. A memory that is not being tokened, and so is not part of a subject’s awareness at a given time, does not have affect at that time. We can treat dormant states of mind, though, as possessing a latent affective character, namely the affective character they would give rise to if they were conscious. In this derivative sense, therefore, we can speak of a latent memory having an affective character. A subject’s total or overall affective state at a time is just the set of the subject’s active (currently conscious) and dormant (potentially conscious) individual affective states. Currently felt anger partly comprises a subject’s total affective states, but so do latent memories, ambient moods, and long-standing resentments. An affective shift is a certain type of change in a subject’s total affective state, namely a large, sudden, and lasting one. Affective shifts are large in that they influence a considerable portion of a subject’s total affective state, with the notion of a ‘considerable portion’ being left intentionally vague. Coming to peace with a minor slight in one’s past, for instance, does not constitute an affective shift, whereas undergoing a religious conversion and dedicating one’s life to charity does. Affective shifts are sudden in that they take effect quickly. A years-long development of appreciation for the grace and subtlety of NBA basketball would not count, for instance.7 326

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Finally, affective shifts are lasting in that they endure beyond a single experiential episode. For instance, two different subjects may feel a profound sense of joy and oneness with the universe while undergoing a psychedelic trip, but this may constitute an affective shift for one subject but not the other if this experience produces lasting changes in the affective state of the one but not the other. I look to affect and to affective shifts in order to explain the causal mechanism of psychedelic therapy in large part because the disorders that psychedelic therapy treats all have an affective dimension: they either consist in the subject simply having negative feelings, such as in depression, or consist in the subject having a pattern of positive and negative feelings which tend to produce misery and impair normal functioning, as in the case of addiction. The addict, roughly speaking, likes, or at least wants, their drug of choice to a very high degree (Berridge, Robinson, and Aldridge 2009). This can manifest in terms of pleasant affective states (relief when withdrawal ends, say) or unpleasant states (longing for a drug). But what is constitutive of addiction is that one’s overall affective state drives one toward using a given substance when such use is (or is regarded by one as) detrimental to one’s well-being. So, while these disorders may manifest, outwardly, as disorders of behavior, the maladaptive behaviors brought about by depression or addiction have an affective source. They are the result of the subject having a total affective state that drives them to think, feel, and act in inappropriate ways toward some substance. Psychedelic therapy works, I contend, by producing an affective shift that reconfigures the subject’s maladaptive overall affective state into one which is more in line with the subject’s broader goals and desires. The subject has other affective states, which are in some way incompatible with the subject’s current addiction or psychological issue. For instance, an addict may have the goal of restoring their relationships with their friends and family that is precluded by their ongoing addiction. The frustration of this goal has all sorts of negative affective consequences, such as feelings of guilt and shame, and the fruition of it would have all sorts of positive affective consequences, such as feelings of redemption and love. But in order to avoid these costs and gain these benefits, the subject must reconstitute their affective stance toward their drug of choice, which is having (or is regarded by them as having) an overall negative impact on their goals, desires, and overall affective state. When it is effective, psychedelic produces a targeted shift in the subject’s overall affective state, changing it in ways that are systematically responsive to the subject’s goals, desires, and other affective states. Roughly speaking, we can think of the situation as involving a conflict between that subset of the subject’s total affective state which drives them to use and the rest of the subject’s goals, desires, and other affective states, which are hampered by the addict’s relationship with drugs. What the subject wants and needs is to bring their overall affective state into harmony, and they know the way to do this: get rid of the affective attitudes that are driving the addiction. But this is easier said than done, since one cannot easily away one’s desires, feelings, or preferences. Psychedelic therapy is a solution to this problem because it puts subjects into an experiential state in which their affective attitudes are suddenly labile, open to change. It is crucial that psychedelic therapy does not just produce random changes in the subject’s total affective state. If it did so, it would be just as likely to create or worsen psychological problems as treat them. Instead, psychedelic therapy is sensitive to the subject’s broader aims, values, and attitudes, in particular those driving them to seek treatment. This is plausibly due to the fact that psychedelic experience is highly context- and expectation-driven. It is well-known that ‘set and setting’—the subject’s mental state and the environment in which they are consuming the drug—is highly influential in psychedelic experience. It is no surprise, then, that a subject’s goal of treating their addition or depression may influence the course of their psychedelic experience and therapy. 327

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There is substantial scientific evidence that psychedelic experience has a significant affective component, making plausible the idea that an affective transformation is responsible for the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic therapy. For instance, in a review article from several years ago Vollenweider and Kometer argue that ‘psychedelics modulate neural circuits that have been implicated in mood and affective disorders, and can reduce the clinical symptoms of these disorders’ (Vollenweider and Kometer 2010: 642). In particular, they produce evidence that psychedelics modify the activity of ‘serotonin and glutamate systems in the prefrontal cortex’ (645) which are ‘implicated in the pathophysiology of mood disorders’ (647). While such physiological changes may occur in the absence of psychedelic experience, Vollenweider and Kometer note evidence that psychedelic mystical experience is a key variable in therapeutic outcome, indicating a role for affective experience (648). Griffiths (2008) found that ‘[c]ompared with methylphenidate [an active placebo], the psilocybin session experience produced significant increases in ratings of positive attitudes, mood, social effects and behaviour when rated retrospectively at both 2 months and at the 14-month follow up’ (625). The questionnaires administered asked about a number of affect-related dimensions of experience: ‘Deeply felt positive mood’, ‘Positive attitudes about life and/or self ’, ‘Positive mood changes’, experiences of personal meaningfulness and ‘sense of well-being or life satisfaction’. Compared with those receiving the placebo, subjects receiving psilocybin displayed significantly greater scores on these dimensions. For instance, after 14 months, less than 25% of the control group indicated ‘increased current personal well-being or life satisfaction’, compared to roughly 60% of the treatment group. These results suggest that psychedelics are able to produce lasting affective changes in subjects. There is also accumulating evidence that psychedelics are effective in treating affective disorders directly, most notably clinical depression. For instance, Carhart-Harris and colleagues (2021) found, in a phase 2 trial comparing the efficacy of psilocybin with the SSRI escitalopram, that there was no significant difference in efficacy detected between the two drugs. Given the limited size and scope of the study, this result must be taken as tentative. But since SSRIs have been found to be generally effective as treatments for depression, this is a promising result (Cipriani et al. 2018). Finally, I want to briefly discuss a related proposal due to Ido Hartogsohn, who has argued that the mechanism of psychedelic therapy is the ‘meaning enhancing’ character of psychedelic experience (Hartogsohn 2018). I do not dispute either that psychedelic drugs produce experiences of enhanced meaning or that such meaning enhancement plays a role in psychedelic therapy. What I do say is that enhanced meaning is not an independent variable from affect, and indeed that affect is the more fundamental variable. Precisely what enables subjects to find new meaning in the world is a basic change in their affective situation. ‘Meaning’ in Hartogsohn’s sense is not blank semantic value, but significance, finding something valuable first-personally. This, in turn, is mediated by affect. Indeed, some have gone so far as to claim that affective experience affords the perception of at least certain sorts of value ( Johnston 2001). To sum up, phenomenological, neurological, psychophysical, and clinical findings all point to a role for affect in psychedelic experience and psychedelic therapy. Since the conditions which psychedelic therapy is used to treat at least partially consist in maladaptive affective responses to items or situations, these findings are unsurprising. It is too early to declare that we have a complete understanding of the psychological mechanism of psychedelic therapy, but it is highly plausible that psychedelic drugs’ ability to reorganize subjects’ affective states—to produce targeted affective shifts in them—is the key property that imbues them with therapeutic value. 328

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20.6  Affective Shift vs. Ego Dissolution Having now outlined my proposal, I am in a position to say how it differs from the ego dissolution account and why I think it is better supported by the existing evidence. The basic point I want to make is that while an affective shift seems both necessary and sufficient in order to account for the benefits of psychedelic therapy, ego dissolution seems neither necessary nor sufficient. So affective transformation, rather than ego dissolution, is a more plausible candidate for the psychological mechanism of psychedelic therapy. Ego dissolution, while a common feature of psychedelic experience, is not strictly necessary for it to result in therapeutic benefits. Most measures find that the benefits of psychedelic therapy correlate with a broader category of ‘mystical experience’, which a diminished sense of self is a part of. But the data do not support the contention that ego dissolution occurs whenever psychedelic therapy results in therapeutic benefits. Indeed, while in this chapter I have focused on classic psychedelics, it is telling that MDMA, a drug that produces subjective effects somewhat similar to psychedelics, looks to be highly effective at treating PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) (Mitchell et al. 2021). Ego dissolution is not a standard feature of MDMA experience, even in large doses. MDMA is, however, widely recognized as a drug with powerful affective effects. Indeed, the drug is often labeled an ‘empathogen’, or drug that produces feelings of empathy, love, etc., which is why it has earned the street name ‘ecstasy’. The therapeutic benefits of MDMA make perfect sense on the affective transformation account but are not explained at all by the ego dissolution account. At the same time, an experience of ego dissolution is hardly sufficient for therapeutic benefit. As has been noted many people take psychedelics, even in very high doses, and do not suddenly cure their psychological problems. This is plausibly because these experiences occur without the appropriate ‘set and setting’. But this means that, at minimum, more must be going on than just the phenomenon of ego dissolution. And an affective transformation of the sort I have articulated seems to be just what needs to be added to the story to produce the observed effects of psychedelic therapy. Having made these points, I do want to make a significant concession to the ego dissolution account. This concession is that for all I have argued, ego dissolution and affective transformation may happen, as a matter of empirical psychology, to often co-occur. It is possible, even plausible, that the psychedelic experiences that are most likely to induce the appropriate sort of affective transformation in subjects are those that involve ego dissolution. So, I should not be read as claiming that ego dissolution is not at all relevant in psychedelic therapy. My claim is just that it is not the key causal variable, since it is neither necessary nor sufficient for therapeutic benefit. That’s consistent with it being an important causal variable in what is surely a complex web of them.

20.7 Conclusion To conclude, I want to return to Paul’s characterization of a personally transformative experience as, in part, an experience in which your core preferences are changed. It is easy to see that the sorts of experiences we have been looking at in this chapter constitute personally transformative experiences on this criterion. After undergoing psychedelic therapy, many subjects find their preferences radically changed and seemingly improved. But these changes in the subject’s preferences are not brute or mysterious. One could imagine taking a pill which simply re-oriented one’s preferences: when you wake up the next day, suddenly you don’t want to smoke anymore, 329

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or you’re a big fan of opera. But such a change would be entirely exogenous from one’s firstperson perspective. In a certain sense, you would be transformed without undergoing a transformation. Psychedelics are not such a pill and so psychedelic transformation does not have this character. In psychedelic therapy, the change in preference constitutive of personal transformation is mediated by experiences with a powerful affective component. This is no accident, since one’s preferences are at least partly constituted by one’s overall affective state. Desiring x or preferring y to z are attitudes that are integrated into a subject’s entire affective state, and so are sensitive to changes in it. This suggests that our notion of a subject’s perspective or point-of-view should include not just their beliefs and preferences narrowly construed, but their entire affective disposition. A subject’s tendency to feel positively or negatively about different things or in different situations is part of their perspective or point-of-view on the world, since it conditions the nature of their reactions to it. Once this idea is taken on board, it is no surprise that substances which have the power to bring about powerful affective experiences and changes can be personally transformative for the subjects who take them.

Notes 1 For an engaging account of this history, see Michael Pollan’s recent book How to Change Your Mind (2018). 2 Though see Olson (2021) for a dissenting voice. 3 One noteworthy exception here is H.H. Price, a well-known philosopher of perception who published a description of a mescaline trip (Price 1963). 4 For a detailed examination of the notion of psychedelic experience see Aidan Lyon’s forthcoming book (Lyon n.d.). 5 Of course there is some risk in relying on anonymous, unedited reports. But given the illicit nature of many of these substances, repositories like Erowid are invaluable resources for first-personal data. 6 For a different use of the term ‘affective shift’, see Mitchell (2021). 7 Obviously one is free to define a term for such gradual changes. And of course whether a change is ‘sudden’ and ‘gradual’ is often a matter of degree.

References Barrett, Frederick S., Matthew W. Johnson and Roland R. Griffiths (2015). “Validation of the Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire in Experimental Sessions With Psilocybin” in Journal of Psychopharmacology 29 (11): 1182–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881115609019 Berridge, Kent C., Terry E. Robinson and J. Wayne Aldridge (2009). “Dissecting Components of Reward: ‘Liking’, ‘Wanting’, and Learning” in Current Opinion in Pharmacology 9 (1): 65–73. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.coph.2008.12.014 Cameron, Lindsay P., Robert J. Tombari, Ju Lu, Alexander J. Pell, Zefan Q. Hurley, Yann Ehinger and Maxemiliano V. Vargas, et al. (2021). “A Non-Hallucinogenic Psychedelic Analog With Therapeutic Potential” in Nature 589 (7842): 474–79. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3008-z Campbell, John (2020). Causation in Psychology. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Cappelen, H. and D. Plunkett. (2020). “A Guided Tour of Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics.” In H. Cappelen, D. Plunkett, & A. Burgess (Eds.), Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics. New York, USA: OUP. Carhart-Harris, Robin, Bruna Giribaldi, Rosalind Watts, Michelle Baker-Jones, Ashleigh MurphyBeiner, Roberta Murphy, Jonny Martell, Allan Blemings, David Erritzoe and David J Nutt (2021). “Trial of Psilocybin Versus Escitalopram for Depression” in The New England Journal of Medicine. https:// doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994 Cipriani, Andrea, Toshi A. Furukawa, Georgia Salanti, Anna Chaimani, Lauren Z. Atkinson, Yusuke Ogawa and Stefan Leucht, et al. (2018). “Comparative Efficacy and Acceptability of 21 Antidepressant Drugs for the Acute Treatment of Adults With Major Depressive Disorder: a Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis” in The Lancet 391 (10128): 1357–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(17)32802-7

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Psychedelic Therapy as Affective Transformation Dyck, Erika. “Flashback: Psychiatric Experimentation with LSD in Historical Perspective.” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 50, no. 7 ( June 2005): 381–88. doi:10.1177/070674370505000703. Erowid (2020). “The Thunder Within.” https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=114573 Garcia-Romeu, Albert, Roland R. Griffiths and Matthew W. Johnson (2014). “Psilocybin-Occasioned Mystical Experiences in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction” in Current Drug Abuse Reviews 7 (3): 157–64. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874473708666150107121331 Griffiths, Roland R., Matthew W. Johnson, Michael A. Carducci, Annie Umbricht, William A. Richards, Brian D. Richards, Mary P. Cosimano and Margaret A. Klinedinst (2016). “Psilocybin Produces Substantial and Sustained Decreases in Depression and Anxiety in Patients With Life-Threatening Cancer: A Randomized Double-Blind Trial” in Journal of Psychopharmacology 30 (12): 1181–97. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0269881116675513 Griffiths, R. R. (2008). “Mystical-Type Experiences Occasioned by Psilocybin Mediate the Attribution of Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance 14 Months Later” in Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22 (6): 621–32. Grof, S., L. E. Goodman, W. A. Richards and A. A. Kurland (1973). “LSD Assisted Psychotherapy in Patients With Terminal Cancer” in International Pharmacopsychiatry 8 (3): 129–44. https://doi.org/ 10.1159/000467984 Hartogsohn, Ido (2017). “Constructing Drug Effects: A History of Set and Setting” in Drug Science, Policy and Law 3: 205032451668332. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050324516683325 (2018). “The Meaning-Enhancing Properties of Psychedelics and Their Mediator Role in Psychedelic Therapy, Spirituality, and Creativity” in Frontiers in Neuroscience 12 (MAR): 10–14. https://doi. org/10.3389/fnins.2018.00129 Jensen, Sven (1962). “A Treatment Program for Alcoholics in a Mental Hospital” in The Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 23: 4–5. Johnston, Mark (2001). “The Authority of Affect” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1): 181–214. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00097.x Letheby, Chris (2015). “The Philosophy of Psychedelic Transformation” in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 22 (9–10): 170–93. (2021). Philosophy of Psychedelics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Letheby, Chris and Philip Gerrans (2017). “Self Unbound: Ego Dissolution in Psychedelic Experience” in Neuroscience of Consciousness 2017 (1): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/nix016 Lyon, Aidan (n.d.). Psychedelic Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, Jennifer M., Michael Bogenschutz, Alia Lilienstein, Charlotte Harrison, Sarah Kleiman, Kelly Parker-Guilbert and Marcela Ot’alora G, et al. (2021). “MDMA-Assisted Therapy for Severe PTSD: a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Phase 3 Study” in Nature Medicine 27 (6): 1025–33. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01336-3 Mitchell, Jonathan (2021). “Affective Shifts: Mood, Emotion and Well-Being” in Synthese. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11229-021-03312-3 Mithoefer, Michael C., Charles S. Grob and Timothy D. Brewerton (2016). “Novel Psychopharmacological Therapies for Psychiatric Disorders: Psilocybin and MDMA” in The Lancet Psychiatry 3 (5): 481–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00576-3 Olson, David E. (2021). “The Subjective Effects of Psychedelics May Not Be Necessary for Their Enduring Therapeutic Effects” in ACS Pharmacology and Translational Science 4 (2): 563–67. https://doi. org/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00192 Paul, L.A. (2014). Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pickard, Hanna (2020). “Addiction and the Self ” in Nous, no. December 2019: 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/ nous.12328 Pollan, Michael (2018). How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. Penguin. Price, Donald D. (2000). “Psychological and Neural Mechanisms of the Affective Dimension of Pain” in Science 288 (5472): 1769–72. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.288.5472.1769 Price, H. H. (1963). “A Mescaline Experience” in Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 58: 1. Santos, Rafael Guimarães dos and Jaime Eduardo Cecilio Hallak (2020). “Therapeutic Use of Serotoninergic Hallucinogens: A Review of the Evidence and of the Biological and Psychological Mechanisms” in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 108: 423–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev. 2019.12.001

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21 EPIPHANIES A Brief and Partial History, with Particular Reference to James Joyce Sophie-Grace Chappell

21.1 What is an epiphany? When people who aren’t academic philosophers ask me what I do, and I tell them that my current research project is about epiphanies, a surprisingly high percentage of them know immediately what I’m talking about. That percentage rises further if I drop the technical and religious-sounding term “epiphany”, and talk about “wow-moments” and “aha-moments” and “eureka moments” and “peak experiences”1 instead. The testimony of those around me, at any rate, is that such experiences are a very common part of people’s lives. So we can (begin to) explain what an epiphany is by ostension—by saying “an experience like that”, and pointing the inquirer to examples. Like this one, from my own life: I woke up this morning in an attic room in the Goodenough Club in Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury. I opened the window and looked blearily out. My first impression was vague green and vague cold. Then the cold resolved itself into a delightful cool breeze on a sunny London morning, and the green resolved itself into the tall mature plane trees in the private garden in the middle of that deserted Georgian space. I was four flights up yet my eye-level seemed to be little more than half-way up the great planes, and from root to leaf-tip these huge trees were swaying gently in the wind like giant living creatures that secretly dance. The top of a red crane visible in the distance above them was swaying too. I felt like I was on board a tall ship in full sail; I felt like everything I was looking at was charged with life. Yet I have walked across Mecklenburgh Square a dozen or twenty times, and never even noticed the trees before.2 We might loosely say that an epiphany is a moment that makes us glad to be alive. Or we might ask “What are the great small pleasures of your life?” and see what people have to say about that. I asked this question on Facebook recently3 and got 276 responses, many of them from friends who are not philosophers and don’t know my academic work. This casts interesting light on how readily people understand the notion of an epiphany—or perhaps, in this case, of DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-29

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a micro-epiphany—and on how very widespread and frequent such experiences are. (My friends’ examples of “great small pleasures” included “listening to gorse peapod pop in the sun”, “folding clean laundry”, “the taste of a really good strawberry”, “reading in bed”, and “peeling a ripe conker”. In some recent discussions, I have seen the term “glimmers” used to mean pretty well exactly what I mean by “micro-epiphanies”.) However, this sort of informal approach gives us aphorisms and anecdotes, not a proper philosophical account. If we want to get a bit more formal, for example by finding a verbal definition of “epiphany”, we might be satisfied with some (at any rate) of what the American dictionary Merriam-Webster has to say: epiphany

plural epiphanies

1 capitalized: January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ 2: an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being 3a (1): a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2): an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking (3): an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure 3b: a revealing scene or moment (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary online, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epiphany) Epiphanies in the sense I’m concerned with are covered mainly by (3a) and (3b) of this dictionary entry. (2) will be relevant also, at any rate if the “appearance or manifestation” of the “divine being” is, well, epiphanic. We may note immediately two striking points of contact between the study of epiphanies and the topic of religion. The first is that another—and rather differently loaded—way to talk about epiphanies might be to talk about graces, in one sense that that word has sometimes had.4 Like graces, epiphanies are just given, perhaps mysteriously, perhaps in a way that could even seem “unfair”. An epiphany typically comes not by argument or deduction, but by our directly and immediately seeing or otherwise experiencing it. Epiphanies are not conclusions, they are free—gratis—gifts or presents; perhaps with a pun on “presents” too, since they are also moments of vividly experienced present-ness or attentive awareness, in which, as we sometimes say, time seems to stand still. Epiphanies are insights and/or experiences that—at least metaphorically—we are given. At least metaphorically; if we are Christians or similar theists, we may well say that this giving is literal (whatever “literal” might mean as applied to God). Since I am a Christian, that is roughly what I would say myself. But no one will need to take the “giving” talk as the theist naturally takes it, in order to make sense of this chapter: “the concept of grace can readily be secularised” (Murdoch 1970: 63). Here is a further analogy with the religious discourse of grace that might give us ethicists particular reason to take an interest in epiphanies: the way in which these revelations affect us is typically motivating, empowering. What they empower us to do is not only the right thing, but the right thing in the right way and for the right reasons. Epiphanies are visions or insights whose impact on us is usually forceful enough to be creative, and to create many things. One of 334

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those things is capacity, and facility, for action that would not have been possible without them: action that is (to use an overworked word accurately for once) inspired by the epiphanies, and/or action that arises out of gratitude for the epiphanies. For, further, gratitude is one of the moods that epiphanies most typically produce in us. Coming back to gladness to be alive, one thinks of Bertrand Russell’s alleged quip that “The trouble with being an atheist is that you have nobody to thank for a beautiful spring morning”.5 This capacity for joy, and a corresponding facility to do things, on the basis of epiphanies received, that would otherwise have been undoable, both looks and feels like an important kind of freedom. Compare St Paul’s wonderful remark that “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3.17).6 In sum the word “grace” fits my purposes in at least five ways. (At least five: there may be others.) In theology, grace is insight given, perhaps mysteriously and unaccountably, and free gift, and empowering force in the recipient, and thankfulness for these, and a kind of beauty that flowers in the recipient’s modes and manners (her epitêdeumata: see Plato, Symposium 210c) as a result of the gift’s effects upon her as it seeps (or sweeps) into her psyche and sets her free from the wearily well-worn patterns of compulsive action. One way to put what I mean when I say that I am not using grace in an “exclusively religious sense” is that these five points express what grace is in theology, because this is what grace is anywhere. Her thinking about the notion of grace moves Iris Murdoch too towards something like the present notion of an epiphany, though the notion of “moral illuminations or pictures” that she mentions at Murdoch 1992: 335 has something to do, also, with the deeply connected notion of an icon, and again with the connected idea of “special” or “holy” places: There are moral illuminations or pictures which remain vividly in the memory, playing a protective or guiding role: moral refuges, perpetual starting-points, the sort of thing that St Paul had in mind in Philippians 4.87 […] Buddhists speak of “taking refuge”. Such points or places of spiritual power may be indicated by a tradition, suggested by work or subjects of study, emerge from personal crises or relationships, be gradually established or come suddenly: through familiarity with a good person or a sacred text, a sense of renewal in a particular place, a sudden vision in art or nature, joy experienced as pure, witnessing a virtuous action, a patient suffering, an absence of resentment, humble service, persistent heroism, innumerable things in family life […] We are turning here to an inexhaustible and familiar field of human resources. Every individual has a collection of such things which might be indicated by [names like] refuges, lights, visions, deep sources, pure sources, protections, strongholds, footholds, icons, starting points, sacraments, pearls of great price. Our moral consciousness is full of such imagery, kinaesthetic, visual, literary, traditional, verbal and non-verbal […].

21.2 Consider also the very word “epiphany”. The word has a long religious pedigree, even though the religious sense is not the oldest sense attested for the word. In its long and eventful historical career the word “epiphany”—originally the Greek ἐπιφάνεια—has meant many things. In most contexts in surviving classical Greek literature, the core meaning of ἐπιφάνεια and its principal cognates (the adjective ἐπιφανής and the verb ἐπιφαίνω) has to do with appearance. Possibly the oldest attestation of the word is in fragment DK 68 B155 of Democritus (c.460–370 BC), who speaks of the ἐπιφάνειαι of an object as its surfaces or visible aspects. The usage is echoed in 335

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Aristotle (384–322 BC), Categories 5a2, Metaphysics 1002a4, and indeed in Euclid (c.340–260 BC), whose fifth definition at the beginning of his First Book is of ἐπιφάνεια, “plane surface”. More often by the Hellenistic period, ἐπιφάνεια has come to mean “(usually sudden) appearance”. In Polybius (204–125 BC), for example, alongside the older meaning of “surface” (Histories 4.70.9), dawn can be “the ἐπιφάνεια of the day” (Histories 3.94.3), and when a hostile army comes into sight, that can be “the ἐπιφάνεια of the enemy” (Histories 1.54.2). From an early date in classical Greece, ἐπιφάνεια also means “appearance or revelation of the divine”: the Chersonese inscription (3rd century BC) attests this meaning (“epiphanies of Athena”—see Clio 16.204), as do Plutarch (46–120 AD), Themistocles 30, and Strabo (64 BC-24 AD), Histories 8.6.15. Between 215 BC and 71 AD at least eleven Levantine rulers styled themselves Epiphanes, “The Revealed One”, a title that the Jews heard as blasphemous, as meaning “God revealed”, and which is perhaps one of the blasphemies that John the Divine has in mind in Revelation 13. These “pagan” connotations, together with a felt need to stress the uniqueness of the Christian theophany, may help to explain why the word ἐπιφάνεια and its cognates were not more quickly appropriated by the early Christians: why, for example, the word is so strikingly absent from the Gospels, even though the Gospels (especially John) at times approach the condition of being pretty much a list of Christocentric epiphanies, and why Revelation is called an ἀποκάλυψις (an unveiling) rather than an ἐπιφάνεια. If, as Clement (150–215 AD) claims in Stromateis 3, there really was a Gnostic teacher of sexual liberty called Epiphanes, that too will have served to deter the orthodox from using the word. In fact, ἐπιφάνεια occurs in only four closely associated places in the New Testament, and in all of them it means what theologians today mean by parousia: 1 Tim 6.14, 2 Tim 1.9–10, 2 Thess 2.8, Titus 2.13. The emergence in the Western Church of a festival called Epiphany, centring on the unveiling of God Incarnate “to the nations” represented by the Magi, seems to have been relatively late and decidedly gradual. (In Orthodox Christianity to this day, the Epiphany remains a celebration of other events in the story of Jesus’ life, beside the visitation of the Magi, that are taken to have a revelatory resonance: in particular his Baptism and the Transfiguration.) Despite tantalising hints in Clement, Stromateis 1.21.45, there is no clear evidence that such a festival existed anywhere before 361 AD (see Ammianus Marcellinus, Histories XXI, ii)—and when it did first exist, it is not clear whether it was separate from the celebration of the Nativity, or was rather seen, at least in the West, as an “oriental” rival to Christmas. (St Augustine’s Sermon 202, PL v.38 p.1033, which cannot be from earlier than 391 AD, rather hints at the second possibility.) The word “epiphany” appeared in Middle English in about the 13th century, as an inheritance from church Latin, and referring strictly to the festival and not to any individual or subjective “revelations”. Julian of Norwich (c. 1342–1417) has a succession of revelatory religious experiences, but she is typical of her time in not calling them “epiphanies” but simply “shewings”. In a later time Blaise Pascal’s (1623–1662) nuit de feu, an intense experience of the presence and goodness of God (8.2.7), is never called an épiphanie by him or any of his contemporaries. Even in the Romantic era, say from 1770 to 1870, when there is a new aesthetic, philosophical, and psychological interest in the power of extremes of experience— for example, of the sublime—to ground and justify changes in our view of the world, the word “epiphany”, even though it seems tailor-made for naming such extremes, still does not yet make its comeback. In a famous passage about the moments in our lives when our minds “are nourished and invisibly repaired” by experiences of profound beauty and sublimity in the world, William Wordsworth’s (1770–1850) name for such experiences is simply “spots of time” (Prelude 12.208). 336

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For a definition of “epiphany” that is more customised to my present purposes we can say this: An epiphany is an overwhelming existentially significant manifestation of value in experience, often sudden and surprising, which feeds the psyche, which feels like it “comes from outside”—it is something given, relative to which I am a passive perceiver—which teaches us something new, which “takes us out of ourselves”, and to which there is a natural and correct response. (At least one; possibly more.) Often the correct response is love, often it is pity, or again creativity.8 It might also be anger or reverence or awe or a hunger to put things right—a hunger for justice; or many other things. It may be something that leads directly to action or new knowledge, but it may also be something that prompts further contemplation or reflection; or other responses again.9 This is my own definition. We should note at once that according to it, epiphany is a focal-case concept (Owen 1960). There are clear and central cases of epiphanies. But there are also less clear and less central cases, which we might still want to call epiphanies; or there again, might not. Nothing much turns on where exactly we draw the boundaries around the proper use of the term “epiphany”. The central territory of the concept is not threatened by minor demarcation disputes about its borders. There are certainly grey areas, and they certainly have their interest. There are equally certainly non-grey areas: for instance, the black ones and the white ones. And those are my main concern here. True, there are no non-stipulative necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s being an epiphany, and the epiphanic fades out, around its edges, into relatively unexciting or small-scale phenomena like the merely striking or surprising moment. There are no non-stipulative necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s being a mountain, either, and the category of the mountainous typically fades out around its edges into literally small-scale phenomena. That does not stop the geologist from studying mountains, nor the alpinist from climbing them.

21.3 The writer who first uses “epiphany” in its modern sense, in the sense that the word now has in academic literary studies, and in the sense in which I am using it, as a name for such moments of peak experience, is James Joyce (1882–1941). Or at any rate, it is from Joyce’s writing that the modern sense of “epiphany”, meaning roughly “moment of illumination”, seems to have arisen. What Joyce himself meant by the term is, in fact, not altogether obvious. Though of course that is no barrier to our using the word “epiphany” either to mean just “a moment of illumination”, or in the more fully specified sense of my definition above, or both. In Joyce’s fragmentary autobiographical work Stephen Hero, the prototype of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,10 he writes this: A young lady was standing on the steps of one of those brown brick houses which seem the very incarnation of Irish paralysis. A young gentleman was leaning on the rusty railings of the area. Stephen as he passed on his quest heard the following fragment of colloquy out of which he received an impression keen enough to afflict his sensitiveness very severely. The Young Lady—(drawling discreetly) …O, yes …I was… at the … cha… pel… The Young Gentleman—(inaudibly)… I … (again inaudibly)… I … The Young Lady—(softly) …O …but you’re …ve … ry …wick … ed. 337

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This triviality made him think of collecting many such moments together in a book of epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. ( Joyce 1944: 216) Joyce did indeed make such a “book of epiphanies”, and in it we have forty further examples of epiphanies in Joyce’s sense (there were perhaps another thirty that have not survived). This collection of epiphanies was compiled by Joyce in 1898–1904, but was not published in his lifetime; it now appears in Ellmann and Litz (1991: 157–200). When we read these forty epiphanies through—as also when we consider the lovers on the steps above—we are likely to conclude that not all of them are obviously “illuminations” in any sense at all; or at least not in any large way.11 Certainly some of the epiphanies read as if a poet had begun to write a very short poem by drafting, in prose, what he intends to be the literal discursive sense of the poem that he intends. Thus some of the better-shaped of them read like prose-poems, in which a slender ray of light is directed on some small moment or event. So, for instance, with (2, 3), (28), (34), (39). Indeed as a prose-poem (30) in particular, which comes close to rhyming, and which is evidently about the painful Irish theme of emigration, seems a rather fine example of the genre: The spell of arms and voices—the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces, and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say, We are alone; —come. And the voices say with them, We are your people. And the air is thick with their company as they call to me their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth. Ellmann and Litz (1991: 157–200) However, not all forty epiphanies seem to be prose-poems in anything like this sense. (1) is simply a childish sound-play or word-play on “apologise”/“pull out his eyes”; (10) seems to be about the sarcastic downgrading of someone’s writing from “poetry” to “verse”; (12) appears to poke fun at a nervous young Irishwoman, Hanna Sheehy, for being able to name no German poet except Goethe. Some others, such as (17), (18), (19), or (38) or (40), simply record quite trivial dialogues, and it is quite unclear what it is about those dialogues that drew Joyce’s interest or is supposed to draw ours, or how we might find them to be “spiritual manifestations”. (Like some background details in the pictures of Renoir, these dialogues seem to give us “the commonplace”, but no obvious transfiguration of the commonplace.) So far, then, so unclear—and perhaps unsurprisingly so. Joyce as we know calls himself Dedalus, and Dedalus is of course a riddler. There is a certain studied inexplicitness about much of Joyce’s writing, including “the book of epiphanies” that actually resulted in a publication from the resolution recorded in Stephen Hero, namely Dubliners (complete by 1905, unpublished until 1914). Joyce’s lack of explicitness is partly a tendency to prefer showing to telling to such an extent that the reader is often not too sure what he is being shown; and it is partly, perhaps, Joyce’s fastidious (perhaps over-fastidious) anti-Victorian rejection of sentimentality. Joyce said that one of the reasons why he replaced Stephen Hero with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and was so reluctant to publish the earlier version, is that Stephen Hero “gave too much away”: a remark that itself gives at least some things away. 338

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Talking of giving things away, it may be that epiphanies, for Joyce, were often something like Freudian slips: Joyce’s brother Stanislaus saw the epiphanies as something more like records of Freudian slips [than “spiritual manifestations”]. Writing after Joyce’s death, Stanislaus claimed the epiphanies were ironical observations of slips, errors and gestures by which people betrayed the very things they were most careful to conceal. Oliver St John Gogarty, a friend of Joyce’s and one of the models for the character Buck Mulligan in Ulysses, thought that Fr Darlington of University College had told Joyce that epiphany meant ‘showing forth,’ and that an epiphany was a showing forth of the mind in which one gave oneself away. (Unsigned blog-post for 3 November 2012, previously available at https://jamesjoyce.ie/epiphanies/) It seems non-accidental that “a sudden spiritual manifestation” and “a showing forth of the mind” are less than exact expressions. In particular, “a spiritual manifestation” might mean either “a manifestation of the spiritual”, that is, of a mysterious but objective realm, or “a manifestation of the spirit”, that is, of the subjective contents of a person’s own psyche. Joyce’s ambiguity about this seems deliberate. Nor is it obvious at first sight, from the Stephen Hero dialogue between the Young Lady and the Young Gentleman, what exactly it was about the whispered exchange that so captured Stephen Dedalus’ attention. Joyce tells us, in the quotation above, that epiphanies are “the most delicate and evanescent of moments”. So we can guess if we like that that exchange had an enchantingly romantic air, a captivating hint of impropriety; but that will be a guess, and no more. Still, despite all this studied ambiguity, Joyce does also give a theoretical account of what goes on in the experiences that he calls epiphanies in Stephen Hero. There is, as we shall see, a serious question about whether we should take this account at face value; still, it is interesting to consider it. This is how Joyce has Stephen Dedalus present the view: He told Cranly that the clock of the Ballast Office was capable of an epiphany. Cranly questioned the inscrutable dial of the Ballast Office with his no less inscrutable countenance: -Yes, said Stephen. I will pass it time after time, allude to it, refer to it, catch a glimpse of it. It is only an item in the catalogue of Dublin’s street furniture. Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany. -What? -Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised. It is just in this epiphany that I find the third, the supreme quality of beauty. ( Joyce 1944: 216–7) The bovine Cranly has little enough idea what Stephen is saying to him. But Joyce’s readers— perhaps under an implicit challenge to prove themselves better than bovine—may begin to get the idea by this point. They may see connections with, for example, William Blake’s famous idea of seeing “a world in a grain of sand”.12 It is important to what Stephen is saying that even the most banal or workaday object can be “epiphanised”, made cause for, or into, an epiphany: even the clock of the Dublin Harbour Ballast Office. (It is also important that epiphany is centrally 339

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about, not textures, say, or propositions, but objects: I say a little more about this objectual focus in Knowing What To Do, Ch. 11.) In essence, Dedalus is telling us that epiphany is focus, clear and fully precise seeing. Compare Iris Murdoch’s proposal (1970: 36–7) to introduce into our moral thinking the idea of attention, or looking […] I can only [make the moral choices that so interest most moral philosophers] within the world I can see, in the moral sense of ‘see’ which implies that clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort.

21.4 There is a further point that Stephen makes in this passage (a point in which I do not follow him, because the point takes us too far for my liking towards straightforward aestheticism): namely, the point that there is a constitutive connection between epiphany and beauty. What he says about this, a couple of paragraphs later, draws very directly on Aquinas’ three-part definition (or perhaps we should more loosely say “account”) of beauty at Summa Theologiae 1a.39.8:13 You know what Aquinas says: The three things requisite for beauty are, integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance. Some day I will expand that sentence into a treatise… ( Joyce 1944: 217) In fact, in the words that immediately follow, Stephen already comes close to producing, or at least to epitomising, this treatise; as far as I know, as close as James Joyce ever came. Stephen continues: Consider the performance of your own mind when confronted with any object, hypothetically beautiful. Your mind to apprehend that object divides the entire universe into two parts, the object, and the void which is not the object. To apprehend it you must lift it away from everything else: and then you perceive that it is one integral thing, that is a thing. You recognise its integrity […] That is the first quality of beauty: it is declared in a simple sudden synthesis of the faculty which apprehends. ( Joyce 1944: 217) The moment of epiphany is very often defined as such, at least partly, by its contrast with the stretches of unepiphanic time that surround it. Likewise in Dedalus’ description here, the object of epiphany (as it is going to be, though at this point in his account it isn’t yet) is defined by its contrast with the expanses of unepiphanic existents that surround it. That void may, of course, be no more than a function of the attention that is involved in epiphany, or the experience of epiphany; it is familiar how attending closely to one thing can make everything else around it almost invisible to us. At any rate it seems clear that it makes more sense to read Dedalus’ words here as phenomenology rather than as metaphysics. He doesn’t mean that everything around the epiphanic object really is formless void; he means that this is how it is bound to seem during the first of the three stages that bring us to epiphany. Writing this in about 1905, Joyce could not have been thinking of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ writings on “instress” and “inscape”, not at least as we have them, because these were unpublished until Humphrey House’s edition of 1937. However, if not of Hopkins’ writings, he could certainly have been thinking of Hopkins’ ideas. Hopkins was Professor of Greek at University College Dublin from 1884 till his death in 1889, and Joyce was a student at University College Dublin from 1901 to 1904, so it is quite likely that Joyce came across Hopkins’ views, at least 340

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second-hand, in lectures or classes or discussions such as those we have already seen he was having with Fr Darlington of University College. In any case, even if there was no direct line of influence from Hopkins to Joyce, the parallel between their ideas is a natural one for us to draw. Hopkins’ idea was that God’s creative action involved pressing form into matter (this pressing is instress), with the result that the matter becomes shaped by that form (this being-shaped is inscape).14 For Hopkins, we can understand artistic vision and epiphanic experience as either the detection of inscape in this sense, or indeed as the imposition of inscape upon what is already so instressed as to be “readable” in this way. Now Hopkins, of course, claimed Scotus as his authority for these ideas; but it is obvious from Joyce’s just-quoted remarks how easily Hopkins (or Scotus) could have derived a very similar idea from Aquinas. The “recognition of an object’s integrity” in a “simple sudden synthesis” of understanding or apprehension seems to be very close indeed to what Hopkins means when he talks of inscape (or of discerning inscape). But this is, as I’ve been saying, only the first of three stages that Dedalus distinguishes in the process that leads to epiphany. The first stage, as Dedalus has just told us, is a synthesis. The second stage, which he describes next, is an analysis (l.c.): What then? Analysis then. The mind considers the object in whole and in part, in relation to itself and to other objects, examines the balance of its parts, contemplates the form of the object, traverses every cranny of the structure. So the mind receives the impression of the symmetry of the object. The mind recognises that the object is in the strict sense of the word, a thing, a definitely constituted entity. You see? Cranly of course doesn’t see, but we, Joyce’s readers, perhaps do. In the first phase of the kind of attention that Dedalus is describing, the experience of beauty, the mind grasps the object together, as a unity: this is what Aquinas calls integritas sive perfectio, “unity or completeness” as I think we should probably translate it here. In this the second phase it grasps how that unity is composed—by analysing it or taking it apart, as a painter might study anatomy to learn how to depict the human body: by learning to see how its parts contribute to its unity. This is what Aquinas calls debita proportio sive consonantia, “due proportion or coherence”. What about the third, for which Aquinas’ word is claritas? Dedalus goes on: …For a long time I couldn’t make out what Aquinas meant. He uses a figurative word (a very unusual thing for him) but I have solved it. Claritas is quidditas. After the analysis which discovers the second quality the mind makes the only logically possible synthesis and discovers the third quality. This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany. ( Joyce 1944: 216–8) In the first phase of Dedalus’ dialectic of the experience of beauty we grasp that some thing is a thing; in the second phase, how the thing that it is, is composed; and in the third, that it is this thing. Or to put it another way: first we see its simplicity; then we see its complexity; then we see 341

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the rightness of its being the very thing it is. And this third phase, says Dedalus, “is the moment which I call epiphany”.

21.5 How should we take this complex neo-Thomistic theory of epiphanies? Various considerations immediately suggest the answer “Not at face value”. For one thing, given Joyce’s personal beliefs about religion, he is, to put it mildly, not the most obvious author to look to as a purveyor of Aquinas’ philosophy. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the final version of what Joyce was trying to do in Stephen Hero, and it includes both a later version of this neo-Thomist theory of beauty (Joyce 1916: 229 ff.) and also a fierce and graphic sermon on hell (Joyce 1916: 136 ff.). Though only the former is asserted by Dedalus (the latter is of course a priest preaching), there is no particular reason to see the theory of beauty as representing Joyce’s own views any more than there is the sermon on hell. For another, Joyce’s own main example of an epiphany in Stephen Hero obviously does not fit the pattern that Dedalus expounds here, no more than (as already pointed out) do many of the forty epiphanies in Joyce’s own collection. With the whispering couple on the brown house’s steps, what is the movement through integritas and consonantia to claritas? There is, apparently, none, and it is hard to see how there could possibly be meant to be; apart from anything else, the dialectic that Dedalus describes is a pattern made for objects, not events. The same applies to Dubliners, if Dubliners is indeed a book of epiphanies—which, among other descriptions, does seem right. Dubliners may well be said to collect “sudden spiritual manifestations”, often too of a very delicate and evanescent sort; but it is far from obvious that what it collects has anything like the three-part structure that Dedalus is describing. Thus, I suspect, the truth about the neo-Thomist theory that Stephen Dedalus offers in both Stephen Hero and Portrait is that, like much else in the two books, it is offered mainly as part of a portrait of Joyce’s own younger mind at work. Not, of course, that its philosophical (or literary) interest depends entirely on Joyce’s intentions in presenting it. But it does seem important to the assessment of the neo-Thomist theory that Joyce sees it as something that he has outgrown, something that could not be right just as he presents it, any more than the sermon on hell could be. Perhaps part of the reason why is simply because it is a theory: the neo-Thomist tripartite account of beauty is very neat and very scholarly, but the only way to make it even look like it could have any very general application is to distort the phenomena. And that, if I may put words into his mouth, is something that Joyce is no keener to do than I am. It also seems important that Joyce is constantly presenting us, both in these books and in Dubliners and indeed throughout his writing, with what he takes to be epiphanies that are not distortions of the phenomena. These, as already suggested, are epiphanies that count as such in the much wider and looser sense that they count as “sudden spiritual manifestations” that are also “the most delicate and evanescent of things”. One example of such delicacy and evanescence is the gleam of the coin in Corley’s hand at the end of “Two Gallants” ( Joyce 1914: 70). Another, with which I close this discussion, is the night-time snow that, so unusually, is “general over all Ireland” in the subtly rhapsodic lines, and the “slow swoon”, that come at the end of “The Dead”. And this at any rate is unquestionably an epiphany, not only in Joyce’s sense—whatever that may have been—but in my own: A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the 342

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newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. ( Joyce 1914)

Notes 1 As the psychologist Abraham Maslow called them, in one of the books that shaped the 1960s (Maslow 1964). Sarah Broadie reminds me that another important book from a much earlier time, that I have not been able to track down, is Ecstasy by Marghanita Laski (1905). 2 Here I am quoting my own description, written in a Facebook post on June 6 2015. For more about the trees of Mecklenburgh Square see http://mecklenburghsquaregarden.org.uk/trees/. For more about plane trees and epiphanies see Phaedrus 230b. 3 On my timeline on 22 August 2020. Thanks to all contributors, and for the examples that I list to Martin Hind, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, Thalia Chappell, Hasen Joseph Khudairi, and Sandrine Berges. 4 Aldous Huxley too speaks of grace: “Words like Grace and Transfiguration came to my mind, and this of course was what, among other things, they stood for” (Huxley 1954: 11); “To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness—to be aware of it and yet to remain in a condition to survive as an animal, to think and feel as a human being, to resort whenever expedient to systematic reasoning. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves. Meanwhile, however, there are gratuitous graces in the form of partial and fleeting realisations” (Huxley 1954: 50). 5 I know of no hard evidence that Russell actually said this. Christina Rossetti did express the same basic idea in her own very different way: “Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank”. But in its usual irritating way, the internet just gives me their two remarks and no credible citations. 6 Though in fact it was conversation with a Buddhist friend, Peter Conradi, that made me see this connection properly; my thanks to Peter for a number of conversations without which I could not have written this. 7 “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” A favourite Bible-verse of Murdoch’s, quoted also in The Sovereignty of Good. 8 To my mind these are the three great virtues, perhaps alongside receptivity or attention, and a capacity for joy. 9 How is what I call epiphany related to what Kant calls (experience of ) the sublime? Not all that closely. I make nothing like Kant’s technical distinction, borrowed from Burke, between the sublime and the beautiful; both can be epiphanic, and so can other things too. But sometimes Kant does talk of the experience of the sublime as an experience of elevation (his usual word for “the sublime” is das Erhaben, literally “the elevated”). And elevation clearly is a notion in the same ball-park as epiphany. But for better or for worse, I have next to nothing to say about Kant in this essay. 10 Stephen Hero was written 1904–1906, but only published posthumously in 1944; Portrait was published in 1916. 11 But with Joyce’s conversation on the steps, compare this, from Keats: “Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel” ( John Keats, letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 February–3 May 1819, quoted in Cordner and Gleeson 2016: 63). 12 William Blake, “Auguries of innocence”, lines 1–4: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour”. I could

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Sophie-Grace Chappell have written this paper a different but equally viable way, by building it around Blake’s marvellously epiphanic works in both poetry and painting. Another time, maybe. 13 Aquinas’ actual words are: Nam ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur. Primo quidem, integritas sive perfectio: quae enim diminuta sunt, hoc ipso turpia sunt. Et debita proportio sive consonantia. Et iterum claritas, unde quae habent colorem nitidum, pulchra esse dicuntur. (“Because for beauty three things are required. First, unity or completeness; for wherever things are impaired, they are just for that reason uglier. Secondly, due proportion or coherence. And thirdly, distinctness, clarity—whence things that are bright-coloured are said to be beautiful.”) 14 Huxley (1954: 25, 27) uses the word “inscape” roughly as if it meant “inner landscape”. Whether Huxley’s use is an independent coinage, or whether he supposes, improbably, that he is using the word in Hopkins’ sense, I am unsure.

Bibliography Chappell, Timothy and Sophie Grace Chappell (2014). Knowing What To Do. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cordner, Christopher and Andrew Gleeson (2016). “Cora Diamond on the Moral Imagination”, Nordic Wittgenstein Review. House, Humphry ed. ( 1937). The Note-Books and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins. London: Faber. Huxley, Aldous (1954). The Doors of Perception. London: Penguin. Joyce, James (1914). Dubliners. London: Grant Richards. Joyce, James (1916). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Huebsch. Joyce, James (1939). Finnegans Wake. London: Faber. Joyce, James (1944). Stephen Hero [1903–1905]. London: Jonathan Cape. Joyce, James (1991). James Joyce: Poems and Shorter Writings, eds. Richard Ellmann and Walton Litz, London: Faber. Joyce, James (2012). Ulysses [1922]. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laski, Marghanita (1905). Ecstasy. New York: Tarcher. Maslow, Abraham (1964). Religion, Value, and Peak Experiences. New York: Penguin. Murdoch, Iris (1992). The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Murdoch, Iris (1992). Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Chatto & Windus. Murdoch, Iris (1997). The Sovereignty of Good in Existentialists and Mystics, ed. Peter Conradi. London: Penguin. Owen, G.E.L. (1960). “Logic and Metaphysics in Some Earlier Works of Aristotle” in Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century, eds. I. Düring and G.E.L. Owen. Studia graeca et latina gothoburgensia, XI, Götenborg.

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22 PREGNANCY Transformations in Philosophy and Legal Practice Suki Finn, Jill Marshall, Anna Pathe-Smith, and Victoria Adkins

22.1 Introduction In this chapter, we explore the transformation of pregnancy in philosophy and in legal practice in the United Kingdom through a number of areas: the gendered aspects of pregnancy (Section 22.2) and how this has transformed historically (Section 22.3); the understanding of pregnancy itself as a transformative experience (Section 22.4), which we critique via feminist legal theory (Section 22.5); the transformation of the pregnant body from the private to the public (Section 22.6); the transformation of the pregnant person’s autonomy, agency, and control (Section 22.7) via considerations of their capacity (Section 22.8), their foetus (Section 22.9), and their mental health (Section 22.10); and finally the transformation of (the concept of ) pregnancy through the advancements and interventions of medicine and technology (in Section 22.11). In bringing together these various strands, we aim to develop a multi-disciplinary understanding of the transformation that pregnancy is, that pregnancy makes, and that pregnancy has had historically, in philosophy and law in the United Kingdom.

22.2  Pregnancy and Gender Pregnancy is overwhelmingly women’s work. But not all who are pregnant identify as women or mothers. As such, in this chapter we use the terms “pregnant person” or “gestator” as more inclusive terms in order to avoid gendered and social connotations, and to not overlook trans men and non-binary people who experience pregnancy.1 Nevertheless, many cultural issues regarding pregnancy are heavily gendered, and much of the language used reflects that.2 Relatedly, O’Donovan and Marshall have argued for a conceptual distinction between the person who gives birth and “mother”. They proposed the term “birthgiver”.3 In our analysis here, we draw on this work to explore how a conceptual distinction between the pregnant person and mother can transform understandings in both philosophy and law about the meaning of pregnancy. The starting assumption legally is that the best person to bring up a child is, in judicial words, “the natural parent” provided that the child’s moral and physical health are not endangered.4 This is a gendered issue: voluntary relinquishment is seen as “unwomanly”,5 an act of self-betrayal, a woman divided against herself who ought to behave differently, namely, more “authentically” DOI: 10.4324/9781003056409-30

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in keeping with their identity, which is now inextricably linked to being pregnant.6 The rare and only very recent developments now legally recognising men as capable of being pregnant and giving birth demonstrate the gendered nature of pregnancy, for, in law, the pregnant person and the mother are conflated. This was confirmed in the legal decision of TT7 which restates that the birthgiver is legal “mother” and must be registered as such, regardless of their legal gender. This demonstrates an ideology of motherhood, an ideology that we will critique against the backdrop of the historical transformation of the agency, autonomy, and control that the gestator has during their pregnancy and beyond.

22.3  Historical Perspectives Pregnancy is legally regulated and protected with medical policies, philosophies, ethics, and social and cultural attitudes, which have long and intertwining roots. As such, philosophy, law, and medicine worked as mutually reinforcing narratives, which is evidenced historically.8 In the seventeenth century, “preformation” was a scientific theory, which stated that male gametes contained the whole of a future person (originally described as “animalcules”). The reproductive role of the female was understood to be entirely that of an incubator, an environment in which a future child would grow separate from (though inside) the gestator.9 This idea in some way traces back to the philosophy of Aristotle10 and is still to this current century reflected in the philosophical literature.11 Back in the seventeenth century, primogeniture (the passing of wealth and property from father to first born son) was not merely a legal construct, but one that was seen to have “scientific” grounding. The female’s role in reproduction was exclusively that of providing a gestating environment, not a partner in the provision of DNA (which, of course, had yet to be discovered) or legal identity.12 When considered alongside the marriage contract, which obliged a wife to provide (for) her husband’s children,13 we see that pregnancy in the 1600s is difficult to understand as the act of an autonomous female. Any child born in wedlock would be the lawful progeny of its father only, as “confirmed” by science, and any child born out of wedlock was the lawful progeny of no-one. Fox’s recent work on eighteenth century experiences of pregnancy and childbirth uncovers further “scientific reasoning” behind patriarchal influences.14 For example, theories included the notion that the female should be happy, cheerful, and moderate in order to conceive, and that too much sexual activity would destroy the chances of maintaining a foetus in the womb. A full pregnancy and birth of a healthy child therefore demonstrated good moral behaviour. Alternatively, an unhealthy child would be seen as evidence of bad female behaviour. We see here the foundations of contemporary assumptions that “good mothers” are “model women”, authentically living in accordance with their destiny and inherent identity. Women who did not conform to this ideal were considered “monstrous”,15 and as Kingma and Woollard argue, we still encounter a “heavily gendered cultural ideal of motherhood”, which we can trace back through this long history of control over the female body.16 In the nineteenth century, a strong legislative momentum in all areas of law developed. The enactment of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 was a landmark in the legislative agenda for many reasons. In particular, it made abortion a criminal offence and this law remains on the statute books today. Such legislative enthusiasm continued into the twentieth century. Acts of Parliament became more specifically targeted at pregnant women and new mothers. Notably, the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 and the Infanticide Act 1938 emphasise the protection of the foetus and neonate, and, in 1967, the Abortion Act created defences to the termination of pregnancy. Current legislation17 covers an ever-broadening range of reproductive issues such as 346

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technological and medical advances, and, as a result, the last 50 years or so have transformed who can be pregnant, how they can behave, and what choices they have during and after pregnancy.

22.4  Pregnancy as a Transformative Experience In the paper “What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting”, L.A. Paul18 argued that you cannot rationally choose to become a parent on the basis of what you think being a parent might be like for you because becoming a parent for the first time is what Paul describes as a “transformative experience”. Whilst Paul’s paper predominantly refers to the experience of “becoming a parent” quite broadly, there are of course lots of different parts of the process that this could encapsulate. Woollard19 focuses on the experience of being pregnant, arguing that pregnancy is a transformative experience in the way that Paul describes. In this chapter, we too will focus on pregnancy, and will analyse what Paul and Woollard mean in taking pregnancy to be a transformative experience, critiquing what might be concluded as a resulting lack of autonomy in decision-making about pregnancy. “Transformative experience” is a philosophical term of art, defined by Paul as an experience that is both epistemically transformative and personally transformative (which again are terms of art). An epistemically transformative experience is one that Paul describes as one that “teaches you something you could not have learned without having that kind of experience”.20 Then, as a result of having the experience, “[your] knowledge of what [it] is like, and thus [your] point of view, changes”.21 So, an epistemic transformation transforms your knowledge. A transformative experience, however, also transforms you personally. A personally transformative experience is one that, according to Paul, “may change your personal phenomenology in deep and far-reaching ways”22 such that you yourself are transformed. The experience “radically changes what it is like to be you, perhaps by replacing your core preferences with very different ones”.23 Ullmann-Margalit had argued prior to Paul that “in these instances a person’s inner core of beliefs and desires does not simply gradually evolve but undergoes, instead, an abrupt transformation”.24 Experiences that encapsulate such transformation pose a problem regarding how we ordinarily may choose to undergo an experience, as they present “choices that straddle two discontinuous personalities with two different rationality bases”.25 As such, one cannot rationally choose to have a transformative experience on the basis of what one thinks it might be like. Having children and being pregnant (as Paul and Woollard argue, respectively) are examples of these transformative experiences, since they meet the conditions of being epistemically and personally transformative.26 In terms of the epistemic transformation of what you know, they say that the experience “is not projectable”,27 as the experience is unknown and cannot be known prior to having the experience itself. And once it is known through the experience, it will radically change your point of view amongst other aspects of you personally, such that you also undergo personal transformation.28 As a result of being both epistemically and personally transformative, the argument goes that one cannot rationally choose to become pregnant or have children via considering what the experiences would be like, for one cannot know what the experience is like, nor what one’s future self is like. This arguably puts some pressure on those who want to maintain the decision-making capacities of those who become pregnant, and it is this that we will be responding to. If one cannot rationally choose to become pregnant or have a child based on what it is like, then can one rationally choose what happens to oneself once one is pregnant or has a child? We do not argue against the theories of transformative experience, but rather consider a broader understanding of what it means for pregnancy to be considered transformative. It may not be just becoming 347

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pregnant that is transformative, but what becomes of the pregnant person too in their social context. We will describe the transformation pregnancy has (in practice) on a person’s autonomy, agency, and control over their body, recognising that whilst this is contingent and descriptive of how things happen to be, they need not and ought not be the case. The epistemic power and personal choice to become pregnant, stay pregnant, or end a pregnancy, must be restored to the pregnant person themselves.

22.5  Legal Feminist Critique The starting point in law, at least in liberal democracies governed by the rule of law, is that we have rights over our own body. Put negatively, this body is not to be touched without our consent. Legally, unwanted touching is, at least, assault and can be rape. Put positively, the law assumes we are in control of our body and so have a right to stop others touching us. This biological body has legal rights and obligations, and they generally attach to the legal person bounded by that body. In the liberal legal tradition (though hotly debated in philosophy), it is this body in which the mind resides, and it is in the mind where rational decisions take place. In legal thought, law privileges this person, the one in their so-called “right mind”, deemed capable of making choices in life, and planning for their future in ways that are deemed reasonable and rational, or otherwise, with attendant responsibilities.29 This is an individualised human, a person who is detached, unencumbered from circumstances, family, abstracted from place and time, independent and self-sufficient. This is the normative framing of the person of law and in much Western philosophy. In Locke’s vision of rights, ownership over our bodies starts from the subjective experience of one’s own body and what we choose to do with it.30 The importance of bodily autonomy is also present in other historical philosophers’ works. Kant explains that no human should be used as a means or object of another,31 whilst Mill’s paramountcy of individual choice and consent makes clear that unless we harm others, it is not the law’s business to interfere in our life choices.32 This traditional liberal representation of the human person is the starting point for the legal principles of bodily autonomy, privacy, and individual choice enshrined in legal systems. This includes the importance of non-invasion and non-intrusion into our private lives, including our bodies, without our consent. Communitarians33 and cultural (or ethic of care) feminist legal theorists34 critique this version of the person represented in law. Communitarians describe this abstracted human as “atomised” and “unencumbered” from our bodies, our situations, and society.35 Many feminists highlight the gendered nature of this person and explain that it causes problems for those bodies which do not fit into the norm of the detached, independent, decontextualised person of the law, and that includes pregnant (and women’s) bodies. They argue that it is empirically impossible and untrue to say persons are detached, independent, unencumbered. Further, even if this presents a normative view of the person, not meant to be sociologically or empirically realistic, it is not attractive as a standard to be achieved and should be changed. Writing in the 1980s, West analyses the view of the human represented in legal theory. She maps out liberal legalism’s view of the human and states that this correlates to the radical feminist view of the human. They both, says West, assume that individuals are essentially separate from one another. For radical feminism, harm to women is caused by unwanted intrusion, particularly by a foetus (which radical legal feminist MacKinnon describes as “more like a parasite than a part”36), and by unwanted sexual contact.

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In common with liberal legal theory, human subjects are presented as craving a sense of noninterference from others. What is valued is an autonomous individual, one who is free because they are independently separate from others, can be left alone to choose and enjoy their own lifestyles, and to exercise voluntary choices through the satisfaction of subjective desires and preferences. This is what West names the “separation thesis”, the “official story” of legal theory. In contrast, the “unofficial story” of legal theory is presented by cultural feminists and critical legal scholars: what is craved instead is connection, care, sharing, interdependence, and attachment, both materially and existentially. Even if maximisation of self-welfare as the motivations for actions is true of men, cultural feminism argues this is not true for women. West sets out four recurring ways this is not accurate for women who are connected, materially and existentially, to others: through the biologically based activities of pregnancy, menstruation, breast feeding, and heterosexual intercourse. On this account, because of the sense of connection felt by women, women’s lives are not autonomous in the way which may be true for men. The legal system and legal language therefore fails women. The law fails to represent women’s sense of connection, fear of separation, fear of lack of intimacy, and women’s sharing and caring experiences. The law fails to view harms in the same way that women view harms. This is a view that therefore does not want to uphold the autonomous individual as an aspiration. Being pregnant does not fit with this version of the person. If this autonomous individual is the norm, those pregnant will never meet the norm and always be disadvantaged. It must be possible to have control over one’s own body and things that happen within it or to it, without needing to hold onto atomistic versions of autonomy. Other feminist legal theorists are keen to stress the importance of relationships and interdependence in developing the capacity for agency. Autonomy does not have to mean isolation: it is formed and exists because of relationships that provide support and guidance.37 As such, pregnancy is not (or should not be) in conflict with the pregnant person’s autonomy. Decisions to become and remain pregnant must (or ought to) be viewed as matters of choice and agency, contra what one might conclude from the transformativity of the experience. Yet, in practice, once pregnant we do see a shift, philosophically and legally, with respect to the autonomy the pregnant person can exercise over their body, and it is this transformation that we will now explore.

22.6  Transformation from Private to Public A primary theme in feminist literature is analysis of the different spheres of the public and private.38 Women are said to be generally assigned to the latter, the bodily and domestic sphere of the home and family, which requires women as wives and mothers in the family.39 This is echoed historically since at least the times of Socrates, who compared himself to a midwife helping others to birth their ideas: “[M]y art of midwifery is just like theirs in most respects. The difference is that I attend to men and not women, and that I watch over the labour of their souls, not of their bodies”.40 Here we see a sharp distinction between the public sphere of philosophy (occupied by men and the mind) and the private sphere of the family (occupied by women and the body), and the contradictory placement of pregnancy across the divide. Once known to be pregnant, there appear to be two transformations that are in tension with each other. First, behaviour is expected to conform to stereotypes of the good (pregnant) woman with visions of homely private bliss away from the marketplace,41 yet, second, the state has much more control over a pregnant person’s life (with other members of the public, like the midwife, “attending” to them and much more legal regulation of their bodies).

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This division is political, illustrating the perceived shortcomings of political systems, particularly liberalism, which is claimed to create and rely upon it, detrimentally affecting women’s lack of choices in ways of living our lives. An ideology of motherhood plays an important role in viewing women as somehow separate, meaning deviant or different, and “other” in comparison to “normal” citizens (where the man is “neutral” and, in Beauvoir’s terms, the woman is the “second sex”42): this is especially evident when pregnant and becoming a mother, although most literature fails to distinguish the two.43 This affects women’s autonomy because they are not seen as persons in their own right, with choices to make about ways of being and living, including (and especially so) during their pregnancies. Known pregnancy invokes state intervention, transforming the classical representation of the individual in the private sphere making their own choices to the public sphere regulated by law. The private person with rights over their own body becomes state property (or at least someone for whom there must be state involvement in the pregnancy process). Such involvement may be well-meaning, wanted, and supportive: nurses, medical profession, welfare provisions in the form of medical treatment, so forth. It may, however, be unwanted and intrusive: effectively policing pregnancy, with bodily surveillance. The pregnant person gets transformed from a private individual as an autonomous agent with rights over their own body into public property who is expected to act in specific ways and make decisions about their body, which contravenes individual agency and autonomy. Pregnancy, which should be sovereign to the private space of the pregnant person, becomes a public experience influenced by several (f )actors, as we will now evidence through examples of case law.

22.7  The Principle of Bodily Autonomy in Medical Law UK case law has firmly defended the rights of those of sound mind to determine what shall be done with their bodies. In Airedale NHS Trust v Bland, Lord Goff confirmed “the principle of selfdetermination requires that respect must be given to the wishes of the patient”44 and those wishes are respected even if they are to result in the individual’s death.45 A refusal of medical treatment by a person of sound mind must be respected irrespective of whether such a decision is “rational, irrational, unknown or even non-existent”.46 Additionally, the principles of self-determination and autonomy form the guiding philosophy of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA 2005), which governs decision-making for those who lack capacity. An overriding principle of the Act is that every person must be assumed to have capacity unless established otherwise.47 With the provision of appointing a Lasting Power of Attorney48 or preparing an advance directive,49 individuals are empowered to exercise their desires and wishes after the point at which they have lost capacity. The principle of autonomy has also become more evident in the relationship between doctors and patients. Cases surrounding issues of medical negligence and failure to disclose risks were largely determined by the views of medical professionals,50 emphasising a “doctor knows best” approach. However, the courts began to move away from a blind reliance on the views of medical experts and became open to questioning illogical evidence.51 The centralising of patient autonomy was then firmly established in the case of Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board.52 As such, the principle of bodily autonomy is a key pillar in medical law. However, as we shall show in the following sections, this is often overruled in practice when it comes to considerations of capacity (Section 22.8), considerations of the foetus (Section 22.9), and considerations of mental health (Section 22.10).

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22.8  Considerations of Capacity Despite the theoretical universality of the principles of autonomy and agency, in practice, these are not fully upheld for pregnant persons. Pregnancy is first delineated from the general legal position that competent individuals are free to refuse medical treatment in Re T (Adult: Refusal of Treatment).53 This case concerned the refusal of a blood transfusion. However, in confirming that those with capacity have an absolute right to refuse medical treatment, Lord Donaldson stated that “the only possible qualification is a case in which the choice may lead to the death of a viable foetus”.54 This remark left open the possibility that a pregnant person refusing medical treatment may have their decision (and thereby their bodily autonomy) overridden for the benefit of a foetus. Such a case came to fruition in Re S (Adult: Refusal of Treatment),55 when S refused to undergo a caesarean section at full term. In finding that doctors could perform the caesarean despite S’s refusal, there was no assessment of her capacity and the decision was heavily weighted towards saving the life of the foetus.56 These cases suggest that in being pregnant, an individual’s autonomy to refuse medical treatment is compromised. In cases that followed, capacity assessments were undertaken, but were criticised for rendering pregnant persons as “a new class of incompetent adults”.57 In Norfolk and Norwich Healthcare (NHS) Trust v W, a pregnant woman was considered unable to exercise capacity due to the “acute emotional stress and physical pain”58 associated with labour. This created a presumption that anyone in labour did not have the capacity to refuse medical treatment. In the relatively rare case that a pregnant person lacks capacity, decisions will be made on their behalf by the courts, with a highly significant, if not leading, role for expert medical evidence. Under s4 MCA 2005, those decisions should be made in the pregnant person’s best interests, as they are the person upon whom the decision focuses. That said, the foetus has emerged as a central consideration in the application of the best interest’s test. This is not in itself inherently morally objectionable, but it does raise legal difficulties in the further enforcement of normative ideals, presented as objective decision-making. One such norm is the attachment of the welfare of the pregnant person to the delivery of a healthy child, and the assumption that a caring social motherhood will follow, to the benefit of the mother. This is a recurrent theme across the case law, as seen in Re MB (Adult: Medical Treatment);59 Re L (Patient: Non-Consensual Treatment);60 Re AA;61 in the matter of P;62 and Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v AA.63 In Norfolk and Norwich v W.64 Johnson J went so far as to say he wished to protect W from future feelings of guilt, which he imagined would follow, should W’s refusal of treatment be accepted. These cases are complex and involve a wide spectrum of what it means to “lack capacity”. In Re MB, MB’s needle phobia prevented her from accepting anaesthesia, which would enable a caesarean section. Elsewhere, in Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust v O,65 O wished for the Court to declare her without capacity, so that she could receive medical treatment despite her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which caused her to refuse the necessary obstetric care. In contrast, W in Norfolk and Norwich v W did not recognise her pregnancy, despite being fully dilated. In such a case, to tie the welfare of a vulnerable patient to the safe delivery of a child and the promise of future motherhood seems at best wishful thinking and at worst a transformation of a gestator into a public good, rather than a private person with potentially considerable healthcare needs. The same end of an enforced caesarean section would have been possible to reach by alternative means, such as a stronger appeal to the risk to W’s own life or a wish to spare W the considerable distress of going through labour whilst also in denial of the pregnancy. As can be seen in these cases, the foetus has become central to the decisions made about pregnant person’s bodies and it is to this heightened status of the foetus that we now turn.

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22.9  Considerations of the Foetus It is hotly debated in philosophy and law as to whether the foetus meets certain conditions to qualify as a “person”.66 Despite there being no consensus on this, in practice, some have emphasised the transformation of the foetus to “super subject”,67 which places the foetus beyond “person” and beyond “second patient”68 and thereby beyond the pregnant person. This demonstrates the widening gap between the perceived importance of the foetus and the importance of the pregnant person and the rights they enjoy. This point is well put by Purdy, who describes pregnant persons as “second-class citizens who are tacitly excluded from supposedly universal rights whenever convenient,”69 which is perhaps both true relative to the “first-class” status of the foetus and true objectively within society and legal practice more generally. It is important to note that the foetus is not a legal person in its own right, though it is protected by law in some regards.70 For example, under Section 58 of the Offences Against the Persons Act 1861, the administration of drugs or use of instruments to procure a miscarriage is proscribed. In order for a pregnant person to obtain an abortion, they must seek the approval of two registered medical practitioners.71 Whilst the courts have confirmed that a foetus is not a person and does not have legal personality,72 they have conceded that the foetus is a “unique organism” 73 and (quite unhelpfully) that it is “not nothing”.74 What this overlooks, however, is that regardless of the uniqueness of the organism, and regardless of its potential status as a person, it is quite literally within and of another organism—a person—namely, the gestator.75 Furthermore, if we were to understand the foetus as being a part of the gestator, as Kingma has recently argued, then flanking considerations of the foetus as opposed to considerations of the pregnant person no longer makes sense.76 Judicial findings of a lack of capacity, linked to the health of the foetus in many of these cases, can be interpreted as being driven by an underlying assumption of what a “good” mother would do. For example, in Rochdale Healthcare NHS Trust v C, the judge implied that any woman willing to accept her own death and that of the foetus could not possibly have capacity.77 On appeal, when it was found that a pregnant woman had been subjected to unlawful detention and treatment, her refusal of a caesarean section was still described as “unusual and unreasonable”.78 This presents an ideal of the good pregnant mother: an abstracted idealised version of a gestator, one who should behave in a particular way for her own good and for the good of the foetus. Rather than the decision-making remaining within the remit of the pregnant person’s wants and desires, decisions are subject to external normative ideals. This is particularly evident when the state intervenes due to considerations of mental health or the mental state of the pregnant person, which we will now consider in more detail.

22.10  Considerations of Mental Health Mechanisms by which public and state interest can be exercised over pregnant persons include the use of the mental capacity law (as discussed in Section 22.8) and mental health law as we will now describe. The extent to which these legal powers may be used can, in more extreme instances, go so far as physical restraint or even a deprivation of liberty.79 The physical integrity of the person is protected by law through the principle of consent, and this remains, officially, the case for the pregnant person. However, the extent to which this is true in practice alters when the discussion is framed around the brain or the mind of the pregnant person.80 Historically, law has given credibility to the popular notion of the “hysterical woman”.81 This narrative found particularly fruitful ground in the context of women’s reproductive lives. An 352

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example of this prejudice against pregnant women receiving legitimacy in statute can be found in the Mental Deficiency Act 1913 (for which at that time it was legally impossible and more-or-less unthinkable for men to be pregnant). Under s2(b)(vi), “feeble-minded”82 unmarried women who gave birth whilst also receiving poor relief were to be confined to an asylum. Local authorities at the time could take the co-existence of these facts as proof enough of “feeble-minded” mental status.83 Whilst the views of state and society have changed dramatically in many respects since 1913, the intermingling of perceptions of mental health and mental capacity with how pregnancy ought to be conducted remain.84 The use of the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended by the Mental Health Act 2007) (MHA 1983) and the MCA 2005, show that the law no longer uses terms such as “feeble-mindedness” to describe pregnant persons who are brought within state control. However, treatment for long-term psychiatric care has, in the case of those who are pregnant, been extended so far as to include enforced caesarean sections and obstetric care.85 Law controls many persons on the basis of their mental state. However, the way it treats those who are pregnant is especially worthy of consideration because mental health law is used to control their physical treatment, in a way which does not apply to other persons who are detained under the MHA 1983 or lack capacity under the MCA 2005. For example, in Tameside and Glossop v CH86 and NHS Trust 1, NHS Trust 2 v FG,87 pregnant women were forced to receive a caesarean section, on the grounds of their psychiatric condition, using MHA 1983. They therefore lose the protection of the right to refuse medical care under the MCA 2005, at a time when they may yet have capacity to do so. This is because detention under the MHA 1983 does not necessarily mean that a person lacks capacity. An individual can suffer from a psychiatric condition, whilst also being able to hold, and act upon, legitimate values as to how they wish to live. The pregnant person who receives enforced obstetric care via detention under the MHA 1983 is therefore transformed, in law, from an individual who needs psychiatric care to one who also needs physical care. Again, it is not inherently the outcome which is the problem here, but the means by which law achieves that outcome. Recall Lady Hale in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board (2015): “Gone are the days when it was thought that, on becoming pregnant, a woman lost, not only her capacity, but also her right to act as a genuinely autonomous human being”.88 Here, Lady Hale indicates that there was a time when pregnancy did transform a woman in this way. Prima facie, this is no longer true. However, the complicated contemporary use of mental health and mental capacity law outlined above suggests that some pregnant persons may still be vulnerable to this transformation in law.

22.11  Transformations through Medicine and Technology As we have seen, our concept of pregnancy transforms and differs with respect to time and place. An emerging site of transformation is within the technological realm of medicine, which not only transforms what pregnancy can be like, but further transforms the agency that the pregnant person has over their body through the involvement of external factors such as medical professionals and technological interventions. Before the advance of reproductive technologies, particularly prenatal tests and ultrasound scans, the pregnant person was the main information provider in relation to how the pregnancy was progressing.89 It was their description of bodily sensations and symptoms which would lead doctors to determine whether and which treatment was necessary. However, as technology advanced, pregnant persons became reliant on medical professionals to interpret the results of tests and scans.90 Rather than relying on their own bodies, pregnant persons sought assurance of foetal 353

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health through these technologies91 and, as a result, the doctor’s presence during the pregnancy became more pronounced. This has led to what has become known as the “medicalisation of pregnancy”,92 which follows on from a long history of women’s reproductive processes firstly falling outside of the medical domain to then being classified itself as disease.93 As Young has described it, pregnancy becomes “an objective, observable process coming under scientific scrutiny…as a ‘condition’ in which the pregnant person must ‘take care of herself ’”.94 But care-taking implies a level of agency, which, as Young goes on to point out, is diminished as a result of “the control over knowledge about the pregnancy and birth process that the physician has through instruments”.95 Therefore, rather than individuals expressing their full agency during their pregnancy, their experience and decision-making are moulded by the interpretation of test results by doctors, and thereby the management of their pregnancy is influenced strongly by or, in some cases, even delegated to others.96 Sometimes these outside interventions are called for in the name of the health of the pregnant person, whose pregnancy becomes medicalised. Romanis et al. have detailed how the reproductive system has, throughout history, been subject to “outside interference”, causing the womb to become centred as the cause of “female ills”.97 As a result, we have seen huge advancements in assisted-reproductive technologies that seek to “free” the female population from the “ills” of pregnancy by outsourcing reproduction to machines. In addition, evolving practices such as in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) mean that even the conception of pregnancies can be managed by technology and medical practitioners. Doctors and specialists therefore become key to the reproductive journey from its very beginning. At the conclusion of a pregnancy, midwives and obstetricians are often heavily involved in childbirth and, in unfortunate cases where the infant is born prematurely, neonatologists play a key role in ensuring the survival of the resulting child. We can then see quite easily how the advancement of medical technology in the reproductive sphere has encouraged pregnancy to become a joint enterprise between the pregnant person and their healthcare professionals. The progression of ultrasound technology in particular has resulted in the foetus becoming more visibly present during gestation, leading to the foetus being considered as a second patient, separate from its embodiment within the pregnant person.98 Indeed, rather than the foetus being seen as a foetus (as opposed to, say, the baby that the foetus may in some sense become), ultrasounds are presented as the “baby’s first picture”.99 An effect (or arguably also a purpose) of these sonograms is to “see through” the pregnant person’s body so that they can “hardly be seen at all”.100 Sandelowski argues this manifests in “minimizing pregnant women’s special relationship to the fetus while maximizing their responsibility for fetal health and well-being”.101 Prior to ultrasounds, there was no such public “access” to the foetus, which remained private and unique to the pregnant person, and historically this inaccessibility contributed to “rampant speculation about women and their pregnancies”.102 As Romanis et al. describe: “From classical times, the womb garnered suspicion and fear amongst “medical men”, theologians and ordinary people partly because it was obscured from their view”.103 Twentieth-century advances in medical technology brought the womb into view, but this did not end the suspicion that pregnant persons faced, rather it served the narrative of suspicion and resolved it by taking the pregnancy into the medical practitioner’s hands.104 Furthermore, this “increased public presence of the foetus”105 contributed to shaping the public discussion of abortion106 in the late twentieth century, resulting in further control over the pregnant person’s body. If twentieth-century technology, which grants visual access to the womb, has allowed interference with the agency and autonomy of the pregnant person, what will be the impact of our more recent technology, namely, “ectogenesis”, which seeks to replicate the womb entirely? 354

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It has been claimed by some that ectogenesis, particularly in its fullest form, will free women from the tyranny of their pregnancies and grant them the freedoms enjoyed by men.107 But how do these narratives correlate with those who argue against the heavy involvement of healthcare professionals in natural pregnancies? Whilst the medicalisation of pregnancy has resulted in the involvement of healthcare professionals now being considered the “norm”, it is noteworthy that the success of technology such as ectogenesis, whether it be full or partial, will depend on the involvement of large teams of healthcare professionals and specialists. In order for individuals to enjoy the apparent freedoms associated with ectogenesis, the responsibility for the foetus during its gestation must therefore be transferred to those managing the technology. As a result, it seems that in gaining one type of autonomy (the freedom from gestation), individuals would be sacrificing the autonomy relating to the care of their foetus. Is this what liberation looks like? Or rather does this technology represent a new form of control in allowing medical institutions further power over the reproductive processes? This analysis suggests, then, that we should be wary of heralding technology as the route towards liberation, given its propensity towards the “exacerbation of maternal-fetal conflict and medical hegemony over women’s choices”108 and the “pathologisation of aspects of female physiology”,109 which lead to the “labelling of the female body as a source of danger and an ‘imperfect’ site of gestation”.110 It is oppressive to women and pregnant persons to limit the autonomy, agency, and control that they are afforded and, as we have shown, advancements in technology have contributed (amongst other things) to limiting it further.

22.12 Conclusion We have provided a historical account of the transformation of pregnancy through philosophical theory and legal practice. What has remained seemingly consistent, though, is the lack of rights the pregnant person can enjoy. Whilst it may manifest differently across time and place, unfortunately “patriarchy has not dissolved and neither have the traditional stereotypes of pregnancy and maternity”.111 Misogynistic attitudes persist, and this is reflected in the continual degrading of the gestator (and gestation) which is reinforced by certain philosophical theorising and technological advancement. We must therefore be cautious in making philosophical claims about the epistemic transformation in pregnancy, given the epistemic (and other) injustices already faced by pregnant people.112 We have recognised that there are transformations that occur because of pregnancy, but we have argued that there ought not be with respect to the pregnant person’s autonomy, agency, and control over their bodies. Through an analysis of legal cases, we can see that the practice falls out of line with the theory regarding how pregnant people are treated. But perhaps it is both the theory and the practice that need to change so as to bring them in line. How we theorise about pregnancy is intertwined with our cultural views, our technological advancements, and our medical and legal practices, requiring multi-disciplinary study for a more holistic overview. In this chapter, we hope to have contributed to this endeavour in bringing some such strands together, regarding the transformation that pregnancy is, that pregnancy makes, and that pregnancy has had historically, in philosophy, and legal practice.

Notes 1 See Finn and Isaac (2021) and Kingma and Woollard (forthcoming) where it is explained more fully. See also MacDonald (2016) for an account of transgender pregnancy. 2 For example, we refer to the maternal-foetal conflict even though the relevant party may not identify as “maternal”, and this may be so even if identifying as female. And we use the term “foetus” to denote

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Suki Finn, Jill Marshall, Anna Pathe-Smith, and Victoria Adkins both foetuses and embryos at any stage of pregnancy in order to stay neutral on whether it meets certain metaphysical and scientific conditions to be regarded as a baby. This too follows the terminology used by Finn and Isaac (2021) and Kingma and Woollard (forthcoming). 3 Building on Ruddick (1989), see O’Donovan and Marshall (2006). 4 Re KD A Minor Access Principles 1988 2 FLR 139 per Lord Templeman at para 141. 5 O’Donovan (2002). 6 Marshall (2008). 7 R (TT) v Registrar General for England and Wales v AIRE Centre [2019] 3 WLR 1195; R (McConnell and YY) v Registrar General for England and Wales [2020] EWCA Civ 559. 8 See Smart (1989). 9 As Baron (2019) notes, our historical evidence or data is limited: “The historical record, of course, reflects the views of those who were politically and structurally dominant; we know comparatively little about women’s views of pregnancy during Antiquity and the Middle Ages” (493). 10 For Aristotle, the foetus “behaves like seeds sown in the ground… [its] growth … supplied through the umbilicus in the same way that the plant’s growth is supplied through its roots” (Connell 2016: 129) – though Connell has recently changed view on this. 11 Kingma (2019) argues that the recent version of this idea “is contingent on particular historically situated social developments and often on gendered and classed power-structures” (614). 12 See also Katz-Rothman (1994) who states: “The perception of the fetus as a person separate from the mother draws its roots from patriarchal ideology, and can be documented at least as far back as the early use of the microscope to see the homunculus” (105). 13 See Romanis et al. (2021: 821). See also v R.R. 1 AC 599, H.L. 1991. 14 Fox (2022). 15 “From classical times, theologians and physicians declared barren women to be monstrous” (Romanis et al. 2021: 821). 16 Kingma and Woollard (forthcoming). See also Hays (1998), Bueskens (2018), Kukla (2005), and Mullin (2005). 17 See, for example, Adoption and Children Act 2002; Congenital Diseases (Civil Liability) Act 1976; Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990; Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008; Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001; Human Tissue Act 2004; Surrogacy Act 1985. 18 Paul (2015). 19 Woollard (2021). 20 Paul (2015: 476). 21 Paul (2014: 16). 22 Paul (2015: 156). 23 Paul (2015: 156). 24 Ullmann-Margalit (2006: 159). 25 Ullmann-Margalit (2006: 167). 26 Though Paul (2015) concedes that “[T]he claim that having a child is epistemically transformative does not entail that it is also personally transformative: for most people, it is. For some people, it isn’t” (fn.21 p.161). 27 Paul (2015: 155). 28 Paul (2015: 156–157). 29 Rousseau (1974). 30 Locke (1988). 31 Kant (1988). 32 Mill (1991). 33 Taylor (1992) and Sandel (1998). 34 West (1988). 35 Taylor (1992) and Sandel (1998). See also analysis by Frazer and Lacey (1993). 36 MacKinnon (1991: 1314). 37 See Nedelsky (1989), MacKenzie and Stoljar (2000), and Jackson (2001). 38 See analysis in O’Donovan and Marshall (2006), O’Donovan (1985), Pateman (1988), Olsen (1995), and Lacey (1998). 39 Okin (1979, 1989). 40 Plato (1997: 167). 41 Olsen (1995).

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Pregnancy: Transformations in Philosophy and Legal Practice 4 2 De Beauvoir (2015). 43 See O’Donovan and Marshall (2006). 4 4 [1993] AC 789, 864. 45 Re T (Adult: Refusal of Treatment) [1993] Fam 95 120–121. For an example of how this principle has been upheld, see Re B (Adult: Refusal of Treatment) [2002] EWHC 429 (Fam). 46 Re T (Adult: Refusal of Treatment) [1993] Fam 95, 102. 47 MCA 2005 s 1(2). 48 MCA 2005 s 9. 49 MCA 2005 s 24. 50 Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] WLR 582. 51 Bolitho v City & Hackney Health Authority [1997] 3 WLR 1151. 52 [2015] UKSC 11 [108] 53 [1993] Fam 95. 54 [1993] Fam 102. 55 [1992] 3 WLR 806. 56 [1992] 3 WLR 807; at para C the judge places emphasis on the caesarean being the only means of saving the life of the unborn child. 57 Wei (2016). 58 Norfolk and Norwich Healthcare (NHS) Trust v W [1996] 2 FLR 613, 616; see also Rochdale Healthcare NHS Trust v C [1997] 1 FCR 274. 59 [1997] 2 FCR 541. 60 [1997] 2 FLR 837. 61 [2012] EWHC 4378 (CoP). 62 [2013] EWHC 4541 (CoP). 63 [2014] EWHC 123 (Fam). 64 [1996] 2 FLR 613. 65 [2003] 1 FLR 824. 66 This is most clearly evident in the abortion debates where the moral status of the foetus as a person is questioned. See, for example, Marquis (1989), Tooley (1972), and Boonin (2003: Chapters 2 and 3). 67 Bordo (1993: 88). 68 See Chervenak and McCullough (1996). 69 Purdy (1990: 289). 70 For example, via the Abortion Act 1967, HEFAs etc. 71 Abortion Act 1967, s1. Amongst other things the provisions include that the pregnancy has not surpassed 24 weeks and continuing with the pregnancy would cause injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant individual. 72 Paton v British Pregnancy Advisory Service Trustees and Another [1978] 3 WLR 687, 279. 73 Attorney General’s Reference (No. 3 of 1994) [1998] AC 245, 256. 74 St. George’s Healthcare N.H.S. Trust v S; R v Collins and Others [1999] Fam 26, 45. 75 “Literally, if not conceptually, the pregnant woman incorporates the fetus, so direct medical access to the fetal patient is as remote as ever” (Mattingly 1992: 16). 76 Kingma (2019). 77 Rochdale (n 11) 275. 78 St. George’s Healthcare N.H.S. Trust v S; R v Collins and Others [1999] Fam 26, 56. 79 See NHS 1, NHS 2 v FG (2014) for the first time this was formally identified as a category, which also gives an indication of numbers. 80 The use of mental health and mental capacity law also features in medical interventions for nonpregnant persons, but the means by which this happens is highly specific and, we would argue, underexplored for pregnant persons. 81 As Romanis et al. (2021) state: “Once human dissection showed plainly that wombs were not apt literally to suffocate or wander around the body, Victorian doctors recast the womb as the cause of hysteria. The womb disordered the female brain. We hear a great deal about ‘baby brain’ today and cognitive impairment in the menopause” (822). See also Abbott (1993). 82 “Feeble-minded persons” are defined by the Act at s1(c) as “persons in whose case there exists from birth or from an early age mental defectiveness not amounting to imbecility, yet so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or for the protection of others…”.

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Suki Finn, Jill Marshall, Anna Pathe-Smith, and Victoria Adkins 83 Zedner (1991: 275). 84 Bartlett and Sandland (2014: 16). 85 Tameside and Glossop v CH [1996] 1 FLR 762; St Georges Healthcare NHS Trust v S [1998] £WLR 936; NHS Trust 1, NHS Trust 2 v FG [2014] EWCOP 30. 86 Tameside and Glossop v CH [1996] 1 FLR 762. 87 NHS Trust 1, NHS Trust 2 v FG [2014] EWCOP 30. 88 Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11. 89 Jackson (2001: 126–128). 90 Adkins (2020: 239–240). 91 Harpel (2008) and Hammer and Burton-Jeangros (2013). 92 Holm (2009). 93 “Indeed, by the mid-19th century, at least in Victorian England and America, being female itself was symptomatic of disease” (Young 1984: 55). 94 Young (1984: 45). 95 Young (1984: 46). 96 Adkins (2020). 97 Romanis et al. (2021: 820–821). 98 Jackson (2001). 99 Mitchell (2001). 100 Sandelowski (1994: 240). 101 Sandelowski (1994: 231). 102 Romanis et al. (2021: 822). 103 Romanis et al. (2021: 820). 104 Romanis et al. (2021: 822). 105 Hartouni (1998: 131). 106 See Baron (2019: 495). 107 See, for example, Smajdor (2012), Kendal (2015), MacKay (2020), and Cavaliere (2020). Most notably, Firestone (1974) declared the processes of pregnancy and birth “barbaric” (198), and concluded that full ectogenesis (although she did not call it by this name) was a necessary, though not sufficient, part of the solution. See Finn and Isaac (2021) for arguments against this. 108 Romanis et al. (2021: 820). 109 Romanis et al. (2021: 822). 110 Romanis et al. (2021: 820). 111 Oliver (2010: 761). 112 Barnes (2021) argues that pregnancy as epistemically transformative can be a matter of epistemic injustice.

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INDEX

Note: Page references with “n” endnotes. Abhidharma 51–53; ontology 53; philosophical program 62n12; teachings 52 Abortion Act (1967) 346, 357n71 absurdity 46n3; and irony 39; and justification 38–39; relinquish aspects of the everyday 39; and stepping back 38; and transformation 39 Achelis, H.N. 206 active/passive transformation 239–241 affect (affectus) 156–157, 160, 162–163, 167; active 164; passive 164 affections 24, 84, 157, 160, 162, 164; non-rational 85; sensations 85 affective shift 319, 326; vs. ego dissolution 329; targeted 328 affective state 326; fanatic’s distinctive 199; total or overall 326–327 affective transformation 326–328; psychedelic therapy as 318–330 aggregating conative attitudes 307–310 Airedale NHS Trust v Bland 350 al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr 107; On the Perfect State and Political Regime 107 Al-Ghazali 173 Allegory of the Cave 142 Althusser, Louis 170n38, 236 American Pragmatism 56; see also Dewey, John; animal bodies: as improvisatory bodies 266–268; as self-reorganizing powers 265; animality 109–112; and elective love 113; human 115; role in human transformation 105; animals: historical 276–280; revolutionary 276–280

antimony of pure reason 146 Anti-Oedipus (Deleuze and Guattari) 282n9 anti-philosophy 73–74 apprehension 82, 85, 87–89, 111–113; Avicenna on 110; of the divine 148; and love (ʿišq) 110 Aquinas, Thomas 340–342, 344n13 Arendt, Hannah 199; Eichmann in Jerusalem 199 Aristotle 3, 67, 70, 73, 81, 82, 85, 106, 120, 145, 238, 241, 269, 336, 356n10; epistemic transformation 20–30; on experience 23; learning by doing 25–26; personal transformation 20–30; power psychology 109; De anima 106; Metaphysics 25, 32n20, 106; Nicomachean Ethics 82, 114; Physics (Aristotle) 145; Protrepticus 67, 70 Aṭṭhakavagga 51–52, 53, 55 Augustine of Hippo 134, 136, 140, 142, 192 Avicenna 105–108, 115–116; account of love 103; animality 109–112; human essence 112–115; use of išq 107; Book of the Soul (Kitāb al-nafs) 111; Epistle on Love (Risāla f ī l-ʿišq) 105–108, 115–116; Pointers and Reminders (al-Išārāt wa-l-tanbihāt) (Avicenna) 107 Aztec metaphysics 182 Bacon, Francis 233 Bagger, Matthew 146 Baillet, Adrien 135, 138 Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de 139 Baron, Teresa 356n9 Barrett, Frederick S. 323 Beaucousin, Dom 138

361

Index Benet of Canfield 134, 138; Règle de Perfection 138 Berkeley, George 192 Bertolacci, Amos 110 Bérulle, Pierre de 134–136; style of meditation 138–140; ties to mystagogical traditions 137–138; Discours de l’état et des grandeurs de Jésus 137 Blondell, Ruby 9 bodies: animal 266–268; habit 268–270; improvisatory 266–268 Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust v O 351 Bonaventure 140 Boston Marathon bombing 197 Bradley, F. H. 291 Broadie, Sarah 343n1 Browne, Alice 135 Buchak, Lara 315n1 Buddha 49, 61n10; four noble truths 61n3; on self-transformation 50; teachings 53–54; on ‘thirsting’ (taṇhā) 50 Buddhism 173, 201; Indian 49, 51; Mahāyāna 53, 56, 62n18; no-self teaching 50–52

desired entities/events/states-of-affairs (bhava-taṇhā) 50 Dewey, John 303, 306–307, 311, 314; Sophisticated Objectivism 311, 314 dialegesthai 8, 15n4 dialogue: exploring/regulating one’s temperament 13–14; as logical tool 5–6; suitable characters and successful engagement 7–13 discernment: in mystagogical literature 143; spiritual 143–144 discursive justice 10 divine illumination 127–128, 141–142, 145 DMT 318, 321 Dodds, E. R. 88 dogmata 66–67, 72–73, 75, 164 Drain, Steve 194–195 Dreyfus, H. 244 Dyck, Erika 320 early Buddhism, and no-self teaching 50–52 Eckhart, Meister 148 ego dissolution 319, 321; account 324–326; affective shift vs. 329 Ehrenberg, Rudolf 251 Eichmann, Adolf 199 Either/Or (Kierkegaard) 238, 241; pathos-filled transition in 242–245 elective love (ʿišq iḫtiyārī) 105, 111–112 Ellmann, Richard 338 embedded identity 173, 177 emptiness 4; Nāgārjuna on 49, 53–55; as theory 59–61; as therapy 59–61 emptiness of emptiness (śūnyatā-śūnyatā) 56 emulative imitation 28–29 enthusiasm 29, 44, 135, 195, 197–198, 346 Enthusiasmus 197 Epicurus 67, 69–71; Letter to Menoeceus 67; particular protreptic in 69–70 epiphanies 333–343, 343n9; as focal-case concept 337; plural 334–343 epistemic transformation 20–30; 321–322 as active cultivation 25–26; as completion 24–25; model of hexis 24–25; see also transformation errors (viparyāsa) 53 essence (k’oje’ik) 177–183 Euclid 67, 336; Elements 67 Eustachius a Sancto Paulo 133 everyday mysticism 138 experience: anticipating, of our future selves 26–30; Aristotle on 23; mystical (see mystical experience); ordinary 81, 83, 88, 169n25; transformative (see transformative experience) explicit argumentation 10, 12

Callard, Agnes 31n9, 32n21, 220n61 Callicles 9, 11, 13–14 Carel, Havi 219–220n59 Carhart-Harris, Robin 328 Carlson, Robert 176 Cartesian philosophy 155 Cavell, Stanley 217 cessation (nirodha) 49–51, 53 Chinese metaphysics 183 Christenson, Allen 177, 180, 185n38 Christianity 172, 194, 201, 263; Christian mysticism 140; theophany 336 “Climacean category” 240 Communitarians 348 Conant, James 256 conative attitudes 307–310 conatus 106, 160 Cruickshank, John 137 Culbreth, Andrew 3 Cunning, David 134, 139 Democritus 335 de Sales, Francis 134, 136, 137, 148 Descartes, René 133–150; intellectual context 135–140; and Oratorians 136–137; style of meditation 138–140; theological context 135–140; Discourse on the Method 139; Meditations on First Philosophy 104, 133–150; and medieval mystagogical traditions 140–149; as mystagogical text 142–149; overview 133–135; Principles of Philosophy 149

362

Index expression 189, 203; artistic 276; human embodiment as 270–276; idealist or realist 206; perceptual 274; of philosophical self-transformation 206, 214 “extended personhood” 177 external activity: nous (intelligence) 87, 91; The One (to hen) 90–91; of soul 83–84 extremists 191, 194, 203n5

“ground of being” 180, 183 Guernsey, Julia 182 Guigo II 125, 129; Ladder for Monks 125, 129 “guilt-consciousness” 239 Guo Xiang 46n4 Habermas, Jürgen 240 habit body 268–270 Hadewijch 120–124; active receptivity via spiritual practices 122–123; individual mystical transformation 123–124; mystical experiences 121–122 Hampson, Margaret 28–29 Harris, Stephen 56 Hatfield, Gary 136 Hebrew Bible 252, 257 Heidegger, Martin 190; active/passive transformation 239–241; on anxiety 243–245; “mood management” 246; and Pelagianism 247n5; rational/irrational transformation 239–241; technique of pseudonymous distance 240; Being and Time 238, 241; pathos-filled transition in 242–245 henōsis 92 historical animals, humans as 276–280 Hoffer, Abram 320 Hofmann, Albert 318 Holocaust 199 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 340–341 Houston, Stephen 178–179, 183 Hugh of St. Victor 140 human embodiment: expression 268–280; habit body 268–270; revolution 268–280; as transposition and expression 270–276 human freedom 137–138, 146–148, 206–207 humans: as historical animals 276–280; as revolutionary animals 276–280 humility: defined 146; intellectual 146–148; spirit of 147 Huxley, Aldous 343n4, 344n14 “hypnotism” 201 hypostases 81, 106

falling back 144–146 familial descent 175 fanaticism 192, 195; “deep psychological account” of 203; theoretical 197; Fanatiker 197–198 “fancies” 195 “feeble-mindedness” 353, 357n82 Ferreira, M. Jamie 241 Fichte, J.G. 189, 206; Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre 207, 212, 219n36; “Concerning the Difference Between the Spirit and the Letter Within Philosophy” 208; Foundations of Natural Right 210; Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre 208; Wissenschaftslehre Nova Methodo 206, 208–9, 211, 212. First Cause, love for 105, 107–108, 113, 115 foetus, and pregnancy 352 Foster, Lynn 179 Frede, Michael 8 Frege, Gottlob 291 French Revolution 226 friendship 8–9, 13–14, 15n12, 16n15, 164, 278 Fundierung 268, 277, 281n2 Galen of Pergamon 66–67, 72; on sects 74; On Demonstration 74 Gautama, Siddhārtha see Buddha Geist (spirit or mind) 225 gender and pregnancy 345–346 general protreptic 67, 68–69, 75, 78n24 Gerrans, Philip 325 Gerson, Jean 94n9, 144 Gertrude the Great 127 Gibieuf, Guillaume 136–137; De Libertate Dei et Creaturae 137 Gilens, Martin 231 Gillespie, Susan 176, 177 Glaucon 12, 14, 68 Goethe, J.W. von 338 goodness 15n7, 90, 105, 108–110, 114 Gorgias 7, 9–10 Gramsci, Antonio 235 Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v AA 351 Greek and Indian traditions 182 Griffiths, Roland R. 323, 328 Grof, S., L. E. Goodman 318–319

Iacovetti, Christopher 218n32, 220n77 Iamblichus 67, 71, 78n24, 93n7; Exhortation to Philosophy 67 ideology 223–230 Ignatius of Loyola 141 improvisatory bodies 266–268; animal bodies as 266–268 Indian Buddhism 49, 51; see also Buddhism, Mahāyāna Infanticide Act 1938 346 Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 346 intellectual humility 146–148

363

Index intellectual theosis 145 internal activity: nous (intelligence) 87–89, 91; The One (to hen) 91–93; of soul 84–86 internal dialogue 7–8 intersubjectivity 274 intuitive knowledge 152n23 in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) 354 irony 3–4, 35–36, 60–61, 63n32; and absurdity 39; Nāgārjuna and 55–59; Nagel on 45; Socratic 58 irrationalism 240, 244 Islam 191, 193–194 itz (Yucatec Maya) 178

legal feminist critique 348–349 Leibniz, G.W. Monadology 294 Leigh, Fiona 8 Lerner, M. J. 233–234 Letheby, Christopher 319, 323, 325 Leunissen, Mariska 28 Lippmann, Walter 231 Litz, Walton 338 Locke, John 189; and Kant 195–198; and radicalization 195–198 logical atomism 296–297 love (ʿišq): in animal souls 103; and apprehension 110; Avicenna’s account of 103; elective 105, 111–112; for First Cause 105; as metaphysical principle of perfection 106–109; natural 111 LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) 318–321 Lucian of Samosata 4, 66–67, 71–72; anti-philosophy 73–74; on sects 73–74; Hermotimus, or On Sects 71–72, 73–74

Jacobi, F.H. 206, 219n58; Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn 216; David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism ( Jacobi) 221n86; “Open Letter to Fichte” 206, 216 jal 176 James, William 192; Varieties of Religious Experience 192 Johnson, Matthew W. 323 Joyce, James 333–343; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 338, 342; Stephen Hero 337, 338, 342, 343n10 Julian of Norwich 148, 336

MacIntyre, Alasdair 243, 246 Madame Acarie 134, 143–144 Maffie, James 182; Aztec Philosophy (Maffie) 182 Mahāyāna 52, 53, 56, 62n18; see also Buddhism Malebranche, Nicolas 173 Malthus, Thomas 227–229 Marcuse, Herbert 228 Marguerite d’Oingt 120, 124–127; active receptivity via spiritual practices 125–126; communal significance of mystical transformation 126–127; mystical experiences 124–125 Marshall, Jill 345 Marx, Karl 190; account of social structure and ideology 223–230; contemporary support for Marx’s account 231–234; on ideology 223–230; on social structure 223–230; transformation 234–236; Capital 227, 230; The Class Struggles 227; German Ideology 224, 226 Maslow, Abraham 343n1 mastery: and transformation 42–44; Zhuangzi 42–45 Mauthner, Fritz 295–297; Contributions to a Critique of Language 295 Maximize Expected Utility Rule 304–305, 313 Maya philosophy: and Popol Vuh 172–173; and transformation 172–173; Classic Period 176, 183n2, 184n9; texts and imagery 177; Metaphysics 172, 182 McCabe, M.M. 6, 10 MDMA (3-4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) 321, 329

Kahneman, Daniel 232 Kant, Immanuel 189, 343n9; Copernican revolution 189; fanatics 201; and Locke 195–198; and Nietzsche 199–203; and radicalization 195–203; “Essay on the Maladies of the Head” 197; Critique of Practical Reason (Kant) 205–206; Critique of Pure Reason 205, 219n43; Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 205; Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason 205 Katz-Rothman, Barbara 356n12 Kemp, Ryan S. 218n32, 220n77 Kempe, Margery 148 Kidd, Ian James 219–220n59 Kierkegaard, Søren 190; active/passive and rational/irrational transformation 239– 241; The Concept of Anxiety 241–242 Kingma, Elselijn 346, 352, 356n11 knowledge (jñāna) 9, 13, 15n7, 53; feigned 58; intuitive 152n23; ordinary 67; phenomenal 20; scientific 23 Knowlton, Timothy 181 Köhler, Wolfgang 270–271 k’oje’ik 180 Kometer, Michael 328 Lai, Karyn 3 Lear, Jonathan 262n9

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Index Mechthild of Hackeborn 120, 127–130, 131n4; active receptivity via spiritual practices 128–129; communal significance of mystical transformation 129–130; mystical experience 127–128; Book of Special Grace, 129 Mechthild of Magdeburg 127, 148 “medicalisation of pregnancy” 354 medical law, and principle of bodily autonomy 350 medicine and technology: pregnancy 353–355; transformations through 353–355 meditation: Bérulle style of 138–140; Cartesian 135; Descartes style of 138–140 Menn, Stephen 74 Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA 2005) 350 Mental Deficiency Act 1913 353 mental health: law 352–353; pregnancy 352–353 Mental Health Act 1983 353 Mental Health Act 2007 353 mental obstructions (cittāvaraṇa) 53 Mercer, Christia 137, 138 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 190; animal behavioural improvisation 267; animal bodies as improvisatory bodies 266–268; closing vs. opening trajectories 280–281; human embodiment 268–280; “molecular process” 278–279; ocular fixation reflex 266; revolution as not inevitable 280–281; “tacit thesis” 275; “the human dialectic” 278; Phenomenology of Perception 268; The Structure of Behavior 266 Mesoamerican philosophy 181, see also Maya Philosophy Metanoia 252–254, 257–261, 262n5 method of doubt 143–144 Mills, Charles 225 The Monist 293 Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board 350, 353 Moore, G. E. 292 Moses 119, 158, 165, 167 motivated reasoning 229, 233, 241 Murdoch, Iris 13, 335, 340 mystagogical text 140; Christian 142; Meditations on First Philosophy as 142–149 mystagogical traditions: and Bérulle 137–138; defined 133–134; and Meditations on First Philosophy 140–149 mystical experience 323; Hadewijch 121–122; Marguerite d’Oingt 124–125; Mechthild of Hackeborn 127–128; and mystical transformations 130; transformation via 119–130; Mystical Experience Questionnaires (MEQ30) 323–324; mystical transformations 119–120; and

mystical experience 130; mysticism 107, 119, 134; Christian 140; everyday 138; mystics 130, 143, 148, 150n2 Nāgārjuna: doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) 49; on emptiness 49, 53–55; feigned knowledge 58; as master of irony 55–59; Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā 53–54 Nagel, Thomas 3, 35–36, 45; “The Absurd” 35, 37–38; on philosophical absurdity 35 natural illumination 144–146 natural love (ʿišq ṭabīʿī) 111 Neoplatonism 86, 94n9 “new religious enthusiasm” 137 NHS Trust 1, NHS Trust 2 v FG 353 Nietzsche, Friedrich 189; and Kant 199–203; and radicalization 199–203 Nietzschean fanatics 193, 201–203 noble eightfold path (ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga) 50 noēsis 85, 87, 89 non-rational feelings 85–86 Norfolk and Norwich Healthcare (NHS) Trust v W 351 normativity 241, 245 nous (intelligence) 85–89; external activity 87, 91; internal activity 87–89, 91 O’Donovan, Katherine 345 Offences Against the Person Act 1861 346 The One (to hen) 89–90; external activity 90–91; internal activity 91–93 One Hunahpu 177–179, 182 ontological arguments 146–148 Osmond, Humphry 319–320 Pāli canon: ego 49–50; thirsting 50; Vinaya division 49; Pāli Vinaya corpus 61n2 parakolouthesis 82 particular protreptic: Letter to Menoeceus 69–70; problem of 71–73 Pascal, Blaise 192, 336 pathos-filled transitions 240, 246–247; in Being and Time 242–245; in Either/Or 242–245 ‘The Path Sutta’ (Paṭipadā Sutta) 50 Paul, L.A. 3, 20–21, 30, 67, 69, 219n59, 287, 319, 347, 356n26; on Problem of Personally Transformative Choice 304–305; Transformative Experience 20; “What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting” 347 Pelagianism 247n5 Penderecki, Krzysztof, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima 326. personally transformative experiences 321–322; personal transformation 20–30; as active cultivation 25–26; as completion 24–25; model of hexis 24–25; see also transformation

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Index perspective: adopting, of virtuous person 28–29; anticipating, of our future selves 26–30 Pettigrew, Richard 287, 303; on aggregating conative attitudes 307–310; Choosing for Changing Selves 307 philosophical absurdity 35 philosophy: choice of 206–210; one inherits 216–217; one lives 211–215 philosophy of transformation 245–247 Plato 5–6, 13, 67, 68–69, 73, 86, 142; internal dialogue 7–8; on love 107; self-cultivation 80–83; general protreptic in 68–69, 75; Apology 5; Euthydemus 67; Euthyphro 13; Laches 11; Phaedo 92; Republic 29, 67, 74; Symposium 107; Theaetetus 10 pleonexia 9 Plotinus 106; nous (intelligence) 85–89; The One (to hen) 89–93; ordinary experience 83; psyche (psychē) 83–86; self-transformation 80–83 political malpractice 166–167 politics: indignatio 162; Marx’s writings on 226– 227; as repressive empowerment 167–168; Spinozan 159 Polus 8, 11 Popol Vuh (K’iche’ Maya text) 104; and Maya philosophy 172–173; and transformation 172–173 Porete, Marguerite 148 post-Kantian idealism 205–217 Prajñāpāramitā 52–55 pregnancy 345–355; considerations of capacity 351; considerations of foetus 352; considerations of mental health 352–353; and gender 345–346; historical perspectives 346–347; legal feminist critique 348–349; principle of bodily autonomy in medical law 350; transformation from private to public 349– 350; transformations through medicine and technology 353–355; as transformative experience 347–348 pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) 354 principle of bodily autonomy in medical law 350 Problem of Personally Transformative Choice: Deweyan perspective on 303–315; Paul on 304–305 “problem-solving value” 315n7 process metaphysics 182 proper existence (wuǧūd ḫāṣṣ) 110 Proskouriakoff, Tat’yana 178 Protagoras 8, 71 protreptic philosophy 66 psyche (psychē) 83–86; external activity of soul 83–84; internal activity of soul 84–86 psychedelic drugs 319–323 psychedelic experiences 323

psychedelic-induced mystical experiences 323 psychedelic therapy 318; affective shift vs. ego dissolution 329; affective transformation 326–328; as affective transformation 318–330; causal efficacy of 323–324; ego dissolution account 324–326; and psychedelic drugs 319–323 psychological discontinuity 22 psycholytic therapy 318 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 329 Public Opinion (Lippmann) 231 Pure Good 105, 108, 110, 112, 114 Quakers 195 Qur’an 119 radicalization: and Kant 195–198, 199–203; and Locke 195–198; and Nietzsche 199–203; overview 191–193; paradigm cases of 193–195 Ragland, C.P. 146 Re AA; in the matter of P 351 realism 61; conceptual 291; default semantics 61; Jacobi’s 216–217; semantic 59–60 Reeve, C.D.C. 12 Re L (Patient: Non-Consensual Treatment) 351 Re MB (Adult: Medical Treatment) 351 repressive empowerment 167–168 Re S (Adult: Refusal of Treatment) 350 Re T (Adult: Refusal of Treatment) 350 revolution: closing vs. opening trajectories 280–281; not inevitable 280–281 revolutionary animals, humans as 276–280 Rheno-Flemish tradition 138, 142 Ricardo, David 228 Riley, Patrick 258 Rochdale Healthcare NHS Trust v C 352 Roof, Dylann 194–195 Rorty, Amélie 134, 139 Rorty, Richard 58–59 Rosenstock, Eugen 251 Rosenzweig, Franz 190, 251; Metanoia 252–254, 257–261, 262n5; on Teshuva 252–261; on Umkehr 251–253; “Paralipomena” 258; The Star of Redemption 251, 253 Rubidge, Bradley 138 Rubin, J. 244 Russell, Bertrand “Lectures on Logical Atomism” 293, 296; The Principles of Mathematics 291; Principia Mathematica 290, 291; Theory of Knowledge 293–294, 296 Schechtman, Marya 258 Schelling, F.W.J. 189, 206; Ages of the World 215; “Of the I as Principle of Philosophy

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Index or On the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge” 211; “On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in General” 211; Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom 215, 290, 301; “Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism” 206, 210, 211, 214, 215, 217 Schopenhauer, Arthur 291; The World as Will and Representation 291, 295, 298 Schwarmerei 197–198 sects 66–77; Galen on 74; Lucian of Samosata 73–74; philosophical 73; Sextus Empiricus on 72–73, 75–76 self (attan) 50; Aristotle on 24–25; -preservation 166; transformation ( see self-transformation) self-conception 20, 23, 326 self-cultivation: and Plotinus 80–83; transformation as 80–93 self hood 50, 82, 85 self-transformation 20, 22, 52, 205–217; Buddha on 50; human essence as 112–115; Plotinus’ depiction of 80–83; radical 218n32; ways of 67, see also Transformation, Transformative Experience semantic realism 59–60 sensations 82, 85, 267, 326, 353 Seven Hunahpu 177–179, 182 Sextus Empiricus 4, 66–67; on sects 72–73, 75–76 Sheehy, Hanna 338 shifei views 40–41, 47n15 Siderits, Mark 56; Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons 56 Smith, Adam 228 social structure 223–230 Socrates 5–6, 14–15, 57, 63n32, 67, 68–69, 71–72, 81, 83; on dialogue and their suitable characters 7–13; intellectualism of 6 Soul (psychē) 82; external activity of 83–84; internal activity of 84–86; non-rational affections (pathē) of 84; turning the 142–149 Spinoza, Baruch 106, 155–168, 206; forma 156; human knowing 156–157; on Ovidian metamorphoses 155–156; redefinition of transformatio 159–160; relationality 160– 165; transindividuation 160–165; Ethics (Spinoza) 155–158, 165, 206; TheologicoPolitical Treatise 157–158 Spinozism 206, 211, 216 spiritual attainments (prāptitva) 53 spiritual discernment 143–144 stepping back 35; and absurdity 38; life after 44–45; in philosophy 36–37; process in Zhuangzi 41–42

Stuart, David 178–179, 181 Suárez, Francisco 133 substitution (k’ex) as transference of essence 173–177 suffering (dukkha) 49 Sufism 107 “superannuated idealism” 225 superfluity (muʿaṭṭal) 109–110 Suso, Henry 148 Tameside and Glossop v CH 353 Tauler, Johannes 148 Tedlock, Dennis 184n35, 185n38 temperament 13–14 Teresa of Avila 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143–144; Interior Castle 141 Teshuva 252–261 Theologia Germanica 138 Tillemans, Tom 59–60 transcendental philosophy 206, 209 transference of essence: substitution (k’ex) as 173–177 transformatio 155–168; defined 155; redefined 159–160 transformation: and absurdity 39; active/passive 239–241; cultivation and completion model of 23–26; ground of all 183; implications for philosophy of 245–247; learning-by-doing model of 25–26; learning from others model of 29–30; and Marx 234–236; and mastery 42–44; and Maya philosophy 172–173; possibility of 109–112; from private to public 349–350; rational/irrational 239–241; revelation and replacement model of transformation 21–23; as self-cultivation 80–93; through medicine and technology 353–355; via mystical experience 119–130; vs ordinary experiences 81, 83, 88, 169n25; Zhuangzi 42–44 transformative experience 3–4, 69, 257–258, 260, 321; defined 347; epistemic 321, 347; Paul on 20–22, 30, 67–68, 321, 347; personal 304, 306, 322, 329, 347; positive 66; pregnancy as 347–348; as revelations 21–23 transindividuation 160–165 transposition and human embodiment 270–276 triplici via 140 Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar 193, 194–195 turning: away 143–144; inward 144–146; as metaphor 142; the soul 142–149 Tversky, Amos 232 Ullmann-Margalit, Edna 20 ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya) 51, 54

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Index Wittgenstein, Ludwig 289–301; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 287, 289, 299–300 Woollard, Fiona 346, 347 Wordsworth, William 336 world history 251–262

Umkehr 251–253 Underkuffler, Wilson 138–139 Uyghur Muslims 191 Vaibhāṣika Sarvāstivāda 51 van Dyke, Christina 103 Vendler, Zeno 138 Verhaltenheit (“reservedness”) 241 Vienna Circle 301 Voaden, Rosalynn 127 Vollenweider, Franz X. 328

Ximénez, Francisco 172, 176 Yaden, David B. 323 Young Hegelians 224–228 Zaller, John 231; The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion 231 Zarrabi-Zadeh, Saeed 140 Zhuangzi 35–36, 40–41; mastery 42–45; process of stepping back in 41–42; transformation 42–44 Zuckert, R. 198–199

Waismann, Friedrich 290 Wallach-Faller, Marianne 141 Wang Ni 46n9 Weisshuhn, F.A. 206 Williams, Bernard 243 Winters, Jeffrey 231

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