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CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY | MONTREAL, CANADA

GNOSIS Journal of Philosophy

Volume XIV, Number I

2015

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EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Editor-in-Chief Deanne Beraldo

Managing Editor Jaysen Penney

Contributing Editor Sarah Charrouf

Reviewers Sean Boivin Sarah Charrouf Eben Hensby John S. Lee Erik Nelson Andrew Pollhammer Gabrielle Polce Adam Schipper Edward Taylor

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Le portrait de la métaphysique chez Heidegger dans Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique?​ ……...……………………………….…………..3 Tansy Etro­Beko

Collective Emotions in an Emotional Framework of Rationality…………….15 Dennis Papadopoulos

Moderate Moderation: The Mean of Excess …………………………………..35 Jamie C. O. Shaw

Is Mele’s Luck Problem Successful Against Libertarianism? ………………..48 Ricky Shum

Lucretius on the Finality of Death: The Problem of Self­Recollection ………60 Matthew Small

Ocularcentrism: Towards a Mastery of Life Over Death …………………….73 Isaac Yun­Qi Jiang

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Le portrait de la métaphysique chez Heidegger dans ​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique?

Tansy Etro­Beko

Abstract: ​ Au siècle dernier, le questionnement omniprésent concernant la valeur en termes non­religieux de la philosophie traditionnelle ou de la métaphysique, et ce par la phénoménologie, mena à une fourche analytique considérable: soit refonder cette philosophie classique autour du sujet, soit la déconstruire afin de la dissoudre en religion, littérature, etc.

Reconnu pour son écartement de tout contenu métaphysique du sujet transcendantal, M. Heidegger est réputé d’être un partisan du deuxième camp. Or, de liquider le contenu métaphysique du Dasein n’est pas pour autant de liquider la métaphysique entièrement. Cet article cherchera à démontrer qu’en réponse au ‘souci de la métaphysique du 20e siècle’, Heidegger propose, dans Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique, une réponse médiane à cette alternative entre recommencer et déconstruire. Pour ce faire, il nous faudra d’abord survoler le contenu du texte en question, puis y cerner et examiner le portrait de la métaphysique qu’Heidegger propose, pour enfin déterminer si ce portrait refonde ou déconstruit (ou déplace) la métaphysique​ .

Depuis au moins la Grèce antique, les philosophes cherchent à fonder la philosophie de manière scientifique et absolue. L’incapacité à achever cette tâche sans appuis religieux pousse e e la philosophie à prendre une envergure toute neuve aux 19​ et 20​ siècles. Dès lors, les

philosophes, analytiques comme continentaux, s’interrogent sur la valeur du discours philosophique. L’une des deux directions que prend cette interrogation est le recommencement de la philosophie, l'autre, sa déconstruction. Or, l’un des philosophes qui a emprunté successivement chacune de ces alternatives est l’élève d’E. Husserl (et héritier de sa chaire philosophique à l’Université de Fribourg­en­Brisgau), M. Heidegger. Suite aux années trente, la philosophie insigne d’Heidegger est réputée de déconstruire la phénoménologie husserlienne qu’elle commençât plutôt par radicaliser. Cet article tentera alors d’élucider laquelle des deux directions emprunte Heidegger dans son texte de 1929, ​ inspiré par sa conférence inaugurale à l’Université de Fribourg, Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique? Heidegger y tente­il de reléguer la philosophie ou d’en renouveler la fondation? Afin de répondre à cette question, nous chercherons

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4 d’abord à comprendre ce qu’explicite ce texte d’Heidegger. Par la suite, nous tenterons d’y dégager le portrait de la métaphysique ou de la philosophie traditionnelle qu’Heidegger y propose. Enfin, d’après nos découvertes, nous établirons laquelle des orientations emploie ce texte d’Heidegger, recommencer ou déconstruire la philosophie. Précisions, pour débuter, que le recommencement de la philosophie comprend toute tentative neuve de fonder la philosophie en science indubitable. Notamment, la reprise par Husserl en 1929 de l’épreuve cartésienne de fondation, dans ses ​ Méditations cartésiennes​ , offre un apport incontournable à toute interrogation subséquente de la philosophie sur elle­même, soit la phénoménologie. Plus précisément, la phénoménologie inaugurée par Husserl porte son analyse seulement sur les phénomènes en tant que phénomènes; contrairement à la métaphysique ou philosophie traditionnelle qui cherche à établir une ontologie ferme et fixe. Puis, la phénoménologie est dite incontournable parce que la direction alternative du questionnement sur la valeur du discours philosophique s’y appuie tout en s’y opposant; cette seconde avenue est la déconstruction du discours philosophique, sa dissolution dans la littérature, le témoignage, la religion, etc.

1. L’entreprise d’Heidegger dans ​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique?

À la question que pose son titre, Heidegger déclare que pour bien y répondre, la métaphysique doit se présenter d’elle­même. C’est­à­dire, Heidegger propose de commencer en se situant dans la métaphysique. Ce qui s’effectue, selon lui, en posant une question métaphysique. Heidegger précise qu’une enquête métaphysique comporte deux caractéristiques essentielles: « L’interrogation métaphysique doit nécessairement être posée dans son ensemble; chaque fois elle doit l’être comme naissant de la situation essentielle de la réalité­humaine 1

questionnante.» (42) Ainsi, suivant Heidegger, quelconque question métaphysique doit couvrir tout le domaine de la métaphysique et l’être qui se questionne doit en être l’origine. Alors, annonce Heidegger, par son examen de la question du néant, qui laisse à la métaphysique l’initiative d’apparaître ou de se donner, la réponse à sa question initiale sur la nature de la métaphysique se dégagera. ​ Heidegger, Martin,​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique? Suivi d’extraits sur l’être et le temps et d’une conférence sur Hölderlin​ , trad. Henry Corbin, Gallimard, Paris, c1951, p. 42 des pp. 41­69.

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5 Heidegger affirme ensuite que l’être qui se questionne sur la métaphysique est passionné par la connaissance et les sciences. Et malgré le délaissement de la recherche philosophique pour leur fondation commune, raison pourquoi les sciences demeurent uniquement entrelacés par l’organisation des domaines universitaires, toutes les pratiques scientifiques partagent trois caractéristiques importantes. Pour faire quelconque science, rapporte d’abord Heidegger, l’être qui se questionne doit choisir de se soumettre à l’étant tel qu’il se donne. Car les sciences, chacune à sa manière, travaillent à laisser se dévoiler l’essentiel de l’étant qu’elles étudient.

Aussi, suivant Heidegger, dans l’expérience scientifique, l’être qui se questionne fait irruption dans l’existence, permettant du même coup aux étants d’être. Ce n’est donc pas le cas que la recherche scientifique a affaire à l’autre. Tout étant, remarque Heidegger, l’autre, dépend de l’être qui se questionne pour éclore dans l’existence. Enfin, souligne Heidegger, les sciences avancent qu’il n’y a rien à l’extérieur de ce qui est: « La science veut Rien savoir du Néant. Mais tout aussi sûr est ceci : justement là où elle cherche à exprimer son essence propre, elle appelle le Néant à l’aide. Sur ce qu’elle rejette, elle élève une prétention. » (45) Alors suivant la science, le néant est ce qui n’est pas; à l'égard de ce néant, la science n’a aucun intérêt. Cette relation apparemment aporétique entre la science et le néant, jumelée à la nécessité en science d’avoir un être qui se questionne, suivant Heidegger, fait de la question du néant une question métaphysique.

Or, avant d’élaborer son interrogation sur le néant, Heidegger clarifie qu’afin de pouvoir confiner le néant à ce qui n’est pas, la science doit d’emblée en affirmer l’existence. Il en découle que la question de ce qu’est le néant est autant paradoxal ou hors des limites de la logique que l’est la pensée du néant comme pensée intentionnelle, comme pensée de quelque chose. Conformément aux lois de l’entendement, rappelle Heidegger, le néant est subordonné à l’opération logique de négation entant que négation de l’ensemble de l’étant. Pourtant, Heidegger pose l’hypothèse contraire : « ​ le Néant est originairement antérieur au ‘Non’ et à la négation​ . » (47) Donc, maintient Heidegger, pour être demandée, la question du néant ne peut guère se plier aux lois de la logique. Être ce qui n’est pas est un raisonnement vraisemblablement impossible pour la raison. Heidegger développe donc sa problématique sur le néant avec l’appui, même si également à l’encontre, du sens commun assigné au terme, où le néant est « la négation radicale

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6 de la totalité de l’étant. » (48) Pour Heidegger, puisque la question du néant se pose, le néant doit pouvoir être rencontré par l’être qui se questionne. Le néant, souligne­t­il, est réellement donné.

Selon Heidegger, uniquement l’expérience réelle du néant permet à l’être questionnant d’esquiver la contrainte formelle de la non­contradiction et d’apercevoir le néant.

Afin de discuter ce qu’est l’expérience de la négation de la totalité de l’étant, Heidegger discute ce qu’est l’expérience de la totalité de l’existant qui est dite niée par le néant. L’auteur précise que la saisie ou l'intellection de la totalité de l’existant est impossible en soi pour une réalité finie telle l’être humain. Tandis que la possibilité de se sentir au milieu de tout l’étant est rarement explorée, l’expérience de la totalité de l’étant n’est possible pour la réalité­humaine que comme la sensation d’être au centre de tout l’existant. Étant donné que la réalité humaine ordinaire ne cherche qu’à atteindre des existants particuliers en vu de tâche particulières. Seuls dans les cas où l’individu ressent un ennui ou un ravissement complet et véritable envers l’existence en entier, et non lorsqu’un étant quelconque nous ennuie ou nous emballe, explique Heidegger, la totalité de l’étant lui est­elle révélée. « La situation­affective (​ Befindlichkeit​ ) que nous fait sentir cette ​ tonalité (​ Stimmung​ ), non seulement nous dévoile chaque fois à sa manière l’étant en son ensemble, mais ce dévoilement – loin d’être un simple accident – est en même temps l’​ historial​ essentiel dans lequel se ​ réalise​ notre ​ réalité​ ­humaine. » (50)

De se sentir au milieu de l’existant obscurcit le néant. Et de manière analogue, il existe une « tonalité­affective » ou un état qui met la réalité­humaine en présence du néant, en présence de l’expérience de la négation de la totalité de l’étant. Seulement, l’expérience du néant n’en est pas une de négation, divulgue Heidegger; ressentir le néant procède plus exactement de la tonalité­affective spécifique qu’est l’angoisse.

L’angoisse(​ Unheimlichkeit​ ), élucide Heidegger, est différente de la crainte (​ Angst​ ). Elle ne se produit guère devant un étant déterminé telle la crainte. L’angoisse se ressent que devant et pour quelque chose d’essentiellement indéterminé. L’angoisse, explique Heidegger, opprime l’être qui la ressent par une indifférence envers la totalité de l’étant et même envers soi­même.

Dans cet état, l’ensemble de l’existant se tourne vers l’être angoissé, recule, et laisse se montrer ce rien qu’est le néant. La réalité­humaine qui fait l’expérience du néant par l’angoisse ne peut se raccrocher à rien pour s’affirmer comme ‘moi’, ajoute Heidegger. Elle se ressent comme un Gnosis 14.1 | 2015

7 individu indéterminé, comme un ‘on’, comme une simple présence humaine réalisée. De plus, cet ‘on’ ne peut rien dire de son expérience d’angoisse lorsqu’elle la vit. À ce moment, la totalité de l’existant a glissé ou reculé devant elle. Dans l’expérience réelle du néant, il n’y a rien dont l’être angoissé puisse parler. Dans l’angoisse, il n’y a plus d’étant dont dire quelque chose.; il n’y a que le néant. Par l’angoisse, le néant se dévoile comme le glissement de l’entièreté de l’existant, non comme un objet, un étant ou un acte de négation: « dans l’angoisse, le Néant se présente ​ d’un seul et même coup avec l’étant. (…) En vérité, le Néant se dénonce avec et dans l’étant, en tant que celui­ci nous échappe et glisse dans tout son ensemble. » (54) Le néant n’est donc que lorsque la totalité de l’étant recule devant l’être angoissé. Le néant est ce recul de l’ensemble de l’étant, non sa négation.

La réalité­humaine, poursuit Heidegger, est calmée mais repoussée par son expérience du néant. Le néant, étant le glissement de la totalité de l’étant, exerce sur l’être angoissé une fascination tant reposante que repoussante. Ce mouvement de répulsion clamant qui expulse tout l’étant, Heidegger le nomme le ‘néantir’ du néant. « L’essence de ce Néant qui néantit dès l’origine réside ​ en ce qu’il met tout d’abord la réalité­humaine (Dasein) devant l’étant comme tel.​ C’est uniquement en raison de la manifestation originelle du Néant que la réalité­humaine de l’homme peut aller vers​ l’étant et pénétrer ​ en​ lui.» (56)

Heidegger avance que le néant est la condition de possibilité de l’apparition de l’étant à la réalité­humaine: « C’est dans ​ l’être de l’étant que se produit le ​ néantir du Néant. » (57) Le néant forme l’horizon duquel l’être en quête transcende ou émerge comme étant et d’où cet être reçoit et perçoit tout autre étant. De cette manière, selon Heidegger, être et néant forment les deux côtés d’une même expérience; expérience essentielle à l’irruption de toute réalité­humaine dans l’existence et, subséquemment, à celle de tout étant qu’elle saisit.

D’une part, Heidegger reconnaît que l’angoisse, l’état qui provoque le recul de l’être de l’existant, ne peut perdurer indéfiniment. Même qu’elle est rare et éphémère, vu que d’ordinaire la réalité­humaine se détourne du néant afin de se préoccuper d’existants particuliers. De l’autre part, par contre, Heidegger constate que la rareté et la fugacité de l’angoisse n’empêchent aucunement que le néant néantisse sans cesse sans qu’on le réalise. Quoique son apparition soit restreinte, le néant est toujours là, à notre portée, grâce à l’angoisse. L’angoisse, néanmoins, ne Gnosis 14.1 | 2015

8 se provoque point à notre guise. Pour Heidegger, la finitude humaine nous en empêche. Pour cette raison, la réalité­humaine est une proie sans méfiance à l’égard de sa prédatrice en attente, l’angoisse: « L’angoisse est là. Elle sommeille seulement. » (61) La réalité­humaine ne peut qu’être surprise et saisie par la présence du néant que l’angoisse provoque soudainement.

Par ailleurs, une fois que la réalité­humaine, ayant fondamentalement une passion pour la connaissance, a éclôt de l’horizon du néant, le néant se fait le plus souvent manifeste chez elle de manière voilée ou détournée: « Que la réalité­humaine se trouve de part en part ​ transie par le comportement néantissant, voilà qui atteste la manifestation continuelle bien qu’obscurcie, du Néant que l’angoisse seule dévoile en son mode originel. » (57­8) Même si la négation est le mode de néantir le plus répandu, le refus, la privation, l’exécration, etc., en sont tout autant. La négation, clarifie Heidegger, doit être la négation de quelque chose de niable. Et puisque le néant permet à la totalité de l’étant d’être, il suit que la négation de tout étant dépend initialement du néant. L’hypothèse d’Heidegger, plus tôt peut­être hâtive, ici se confirme.

Puis, tel qu’Heidegger l’a préalablement énoncé, seule une compréhension du néant puisée dans une expérience vécue peut échapper aux apories de la logique. Même qu’en plus d’échapper aux obstacles de la logique, l’expérience du néant la détrône de son règne quasi incontesté en philosophie. « En même temps, la question du Néant traverse tout l’ensemble de la Métaphysique, pour autant qu’elle nous contraint au problème de l’origine de la négation, c’est­à­dire pour autant qu’elle nous amène, au fond, à décider de la souveraineté légitime de la ‘Logique’ en Métaphysique. » (65)

Vu que la question du néant se dépasse pour englober l’ensemble de l’étant et qu’elle émerge de la réalité­humaine qui se questionne de manière inhérente, elle est véritablement une question métaphysique. Mais, Heidegger montre non seulement que la question du néant est métaphysique. Il montre aussi, sans entrer dans des contradictions formelles, que le néant offre l’horizon d’existence à l’être de tous étants; l’être se présente qu’en surgissant du néant.

Conséquemment, Heidegger dénonce l’omission de l’ancienne philosophie ou de la ‘métaphysique’ de questionner le néant, qu’elle définit comme ce qui est non­existant. Et, parallèlement, il critique sa négligence d’interroger l’être de fond en comble. Puis, étant comprise dans la question du néant, la réalité­humaine est également remise en question par cette Gnosis 14.1 | 2015

9 quête. Du néant, l’être des recherches scientifiques arrive à soi­même. C’est­à­dire que l’être humain, déterminé comme être pour la science, n’est possible que comme émergeant de et contenu par l’horizon que forme le néant. De ce fait, toute science est redevable au néant. La métaphysique, qui se discerne dans l’expérience humaine de l’être et du néant, ne saurait donc jamais se réduire à une science. Lorsqu’il est question de ce qui est, pour Heidegger, il est forcément question de ce qui est pour quelqu’un. Heidegger rédige : « la Métaphysique 2

com­pose la ‘nature de l’homme’. » (67) Pour lui, la métaphysique n’est compréhensible que comme inhérente à, et dépende de, la nature humaine.

2. Le portrait de la métaphysique dans ​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique?

Dans ​ Être et Temps (1927), Heidegger reprend la subjectivité transcendantale en phénoménologie afin d’en éliminer le contenu métaphysique. Il estime que la phénoménologie, suivant Husserl, doit cesser de se soucier du projet métaphysique de fonder la philosophie en science absolue. Elle doit plutôt s’occuper pleinement du projet proprement phénoménologique.

Soit, puisque la subjectivité transcendantale entreprend de manière inhérente des recherches scientifiques sur les phénomènes qui lui apparaissent, la phénoménologie doit dégager ou laisser se dégager la nature de la subjectivité à laquelle ces phénomènes apparaissent. Dans ​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique?​ , deux ans plus tard, Heidegger offre à ses lecteurs un portrait plus développé de la métaphysique à travers sa question sur l’essence du néant. Dans cet essai, Heidegger élabore une procédure pour laisser la métaphysique se phénoménaliser ou se montrer d’elle­même.

La méthode d’Heidegger consiste à élaborer puis répondre à une question métaphysique: «De cette seule manière, nous lui (la métaphysique) procurons la possibilité adéquate de se présenter elle­même. » (41) De la sorte, Heidegger présente la métaphysique non comme une chimère, mais comme une réalité à apercevoir, un phénomène. Une interrogation métaphysique est composée, développe Heidegger, de deux éléments. L’un est qu’elle doive traiter de

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Cette division du mot rehausse que la composition du verbe allemand “zugehören”, “appartenir à”, est d’un élément divisible “zu” et d’une racine “gehören” (et d’ailleurs,“com­poser” est distinct d’ “im­poser”, “ex­poser”, etc.)

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10 l’entièreté du domaine métaphysique; l’autre est qu’elle doive provenir d’un être questionnant.

Sur la nature d’une question métaphysique, Heidegger poursuit en comparant le rapport scientifique de l’être humain au monde à celui non scientifique. Il explique que l’avantage du premier, et de la posture de l’être questionnant qui l’accompagne, réside en son habileté à révéler les existants qui se montrent: « L’irruption qui fait éclore, c’est elle qui avant tout, suivant le mode qui est ​ sien​ , produit l’existant à lui­même. » (44) L’attitude et le rapport scientifiques au monde s’historialisent et laissent se dévoiler les étants avec la réalité­humaine qui fait irruption et se réalise. Donc, l’attitude et l’entreprise scientifiques permettent de développer des questions véritablement de nature métaphysique.

Au cours de son examen sur l’existence caractéristique de l’humanité, celle des poursuites scientifiques, Heidegger note que la science ne veut rien affirmer du néant, quoiqu’elle doive s’y appuyer pour se définir. Entendu que la science se détermine comme tendant à dévoiler l’être des existants qu’elle examine, elle s’oppose au néant qui n’est pas et dont elle ne sait rien. De plus, vu que toute pensée est intentionnelle, Heidegger remet en question la suprématie de la logique et de son principe primordial de non­contradiction. Ces derniers empêchent toute interrogation sur la nature du néant non­existant. Le néant, avance Heidegger, hormis toutes les objections de l’entendement, est. S’appuyant délicatement sur le sens commun employé pour désigner le néant, la négation complète de tout l’existant, Heidegger précise qu’il est vain de comprendre le néant sous les brides de la logique. Selon lui, toute négation dépend du néant pour s’opérer dans l’entendement. C’est donc l’expérience du néant qui s’avère fondamentale pour constater ce que la métaphysique chez Heidegger.

Heidegger établit ensuite que sans cesse, et qu’on le sache ou non, le néant expulse la totalité de l’étant, mais l’expérience du néant ne s’opère que dans un état d’angoisse: « Avec la tonalité­fondamentale de l’angoisse, nous avons rencontré ​ cet historial dans lequel se réalise la réalité­humaine; le Néant nous y est révélé, et à partir de là nous devons pouvoir interroger sur lui. » (54) Dans ce passage, Heidegger révèle que le néant se présente comme le siamois contraire du sentiment d’être au milieu de l’étant. Le néant est quand tout l’étant se retire.

Quoique que l’expérience du néant est momentanée et insolite, le néant étant ressenti dans l’angoisse exclusivement, le néant intervient au quotidien par la négation, le ‘non’, le nier, etc.

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11 Heidegger confirme ainsi que la logique ne puisse pas servir pour répondre à toute interrogation philosophique; notamment le duo de l’être et du néant y échappe.

Considérant que pour Heidegger: « La Métaphysique, c’est ​ l’interrogation qui dépasse l’étant sur lequel elle questionne, afin de le recouvrir ​ comme tel et dans son ensemble pour en actuer le concept. » (63) La métaphysique ne peut plus prononcer son discours traditionnel sur le néant. D’après lequel, rien ne se réalise du néant. Au contraire, le néant, une fois interrogé, provoque justement une interrogation sur l’être. L’être et le néant s’accompagnent toujours dans l’expérience. Ils forment le domaine de la métaphysique. « Être et Néant se com­posent réciproquement, non point parce que tous deux – envisagés par le concept hégélien de la Pensée – concordent dans leur indétermination et leur immédiateté, mais parce que ​ l’Être lui­même est ​ fini dans son essence et ne se révèle que dans la transcendance de la réalité­humaine qui, dans le Néant​ , émerge hors de l’étant.» (65)

Suivant Heidegger, le néant est l’horizon duquel l’être humain surgit pour être et duquel l’étant surgit afin de lui apparaître. En conséquence, la tradition philosophique, critique Heidegger, doit remettre en question ses décrets tant sur l’être que sur le néant. La métaphysique doit reconnaître l’apport crucial du néant à l’existence. Notre être comme chercheur dépend directement du néant qui permet aux étants de nous stupéfier.

En somme, selon Heidegger, le néant offre l’horizon d’existence tant à l’être questionnant qu’à l’étant qui lui apparaît. Puis, toute transcendance de l’étant du néant vers l’être nécessite un chercheur qui la vive. Ainsi, pour Heidegger, la métaphysique est essentielle à la réalisation de notre être. Heidegger déclare au sujet de la métaphysique: « elle est l’historial qui, fondement de la réalité­humaine, s’historialise comme réalité­humaine. (…) La philosophie – ce que nous appelons ainsi – n’est que la mise­en­marche de la Métaphysique, par laquelle elle accède à soi­même et à ses tâches ​ explicites​ . Et la philosophie ne se met en marche que par une ​ insertion spécifique de mon existence propre dans les possibilités fondamentales de la réalité­humaine en son ensemble. » (68­9)

Plutôt qu’une école philosophique ou une doctrine précise, la métaphysique est une réalisation humaine. Elle rassemble les transcendances vécues par une réalité­humaine. La métaphysique est donc le moment des expériences transcendantales accessibles indéfiniment par la réalité­humaine qui en fait le choix, mais sans prévisions quand elle s’y retrouve plongé.

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12 Heidegger termine son essai en affirmant qu’en philosophant, qu’en ayant l’attitude qui permet à l’être questionnant d’être au milieu des étants fuyant, la réalité humaine dégage la « question ​ fondamentale de la métaphysique, celle qui extorque le ​ Néant lui­même : Pourquoi, somme toute, y’a­t­il de l’étant plutôt que Rien? » (69) La métaphysique est donc réelle et essentielle à la réalité­humaine suivant ce texte d’Heidegger. Elle est une enquête subjective double, à la fois sur l’être et le néant. Par la métaphysique, la réalité­humaine se place auprès d’elle­même, de l’être et du néant.

3. Recommencer ou déconstruire dans ​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique?​

Dans cet essai d’Heidegger, la métaphysique est une réalité­humaine se réalisant par l’expérience de l’être et du néant. Mais, la métaphysique, dans cette étude, demeure­t­elle le projet de fonder la philosophie en science fondamentale ou non? C’est­à­dire, doit­elle être recommencée ou déconstruite? Et selon le cas, pourquoi et de quelle manière? Afin de répondre à ces questions, nous devons examiner comment la métaphysique d’Heidegger ratifie chacune de ces options.

Du côté d’un recommencement, la méthode mise en marche par Heidegger dans son enquête sur la métaphysique, soit à travers un approfondissement métaphysique sur le néant, montre d’emblée un effort par cet auteur de récupérer en phénoménologie le vocable de ‘la métaphysique’ plutôt que de l’éliminer. Or, la métaphysique, lorsqu’elle se montre d’elle­même, se dévoile à partir de l’être qui se ressent au milieu des étants. L’examen du néant par l’être humain qui effectue des recherches scientifiques lui dévoile un domaine plus originel que celui de la logique: la métaphysique. La métaphysique, chez Heidegger, se révèle comme la panoplie d’étants qui se présente ou se retire, selon les états fondamentaux de l’être délibérant. Provenant de, tout en fondant la réalité­humaine, la métaphysique se présente comme le fondement indubitable philosophique autant que scientifique. Ainsi, le travail de fondation se recommence avec cet essai d’Heidegger, mais la fondation est déplacée. De la fondation traditionnelle de la philosophie en science, Heidegger passe à fonder la métaphysique dans la réalité­humaine spécialement disposée.

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13 De la sorte, du côté de la déconstruction, ce texte d’Heidegger possède une importante qualité critique ou élément de déconstruction. Alors que chercher à fonder la philosophie en science définitive est la quête métaphysique classique, Heidegger reprend le mot ‘métaphysique’ tout en laissant à ce terme le soin de donner son sens. Puis, ce sens est radicalement autre que le sens traditionnel. Suite à son examen phénoménologique du néant, Heidegger atteste qu’il rejette la métaphysique traditionnelle qui néglige de poser pleinement les questions de l’être et du néant.

La métaphysique n’est plus la fondation de la philosophie en science absolue, parce que la métaphysique est plus originaire que la science. De ce fait, pour être possibles, la fondation et la justification scientifiques dépendent d’étants dévoilés par le néant: « C’est pourquoi la rigueur d’aucune science n’égale le sérieux de la Métaphysique. Et jamais la philosophie ne peut être mesurée à la mesure de l’Idée de la Science. » (68) Avec Heidegger, la métaphysique est la phénoménologie vitale: la métaphysique s’est dévoilée à être la phénoménologie fondamentale de et à la vie de tout être humain. Elle s’est exposée en l’exhibition de l’être et du néant par et pour la réalité­humaine.

Somme toute, ces points rassemblés nous amènent à conclure qu’Heidegger déconstruit et recommence l’effort traditionnel de fonder la philosophie en science absolue dans ​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique? Dans cet écrit, Heidegger recommence l’effort de fonder la philosophie de manière certaine. Toutefois, il l’érige de son ​ Dasein indubitable, et non sur le modèle d’une e science parfaite. Donc, en réponse à ce qui peut se nommer ‘le souci de la métaphysique au 20​

siècle’, nous remarquons chez Heidegger toutes deux des directions, recommencement et déconstruction. D’ailleurs, cet examen de la question métaphysique du néant nous laisse possiblement deviner pourquoi Heidegger a pu être tenté postérieurement par la dissolution complète de la philosophie en poésie ou en témoignage littéraire. Plus spécifiquement, si la réalité­humaine s’historialise suivant des états particuliers, le système d’Heidegger pourrait­il rencontrer des problèmes lorsqu’une tonalité­affective n’engendre pas l’expérience prévue ou encore si l’état ne réussit guère à en provoquer? Pour terminer, nous estimons qu’une recherche plus approfondie de la pensée d’Heidegger est incontournable pour saisir pleinement son (ses) portrait(s) de la métaphysique et répondre à cette dernière question.

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14 Bibliographie

HEIDEGGER, Martin, ​ Qu’est­ce que la métaphysique? Suivi d’extraits sur l’être et le temps et d’une conférence sur Hölderlin​ , trad. Henry Corbin, Gallimard, Paris, c1951, pp. 41­69 de 254.

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15

Collective Emotions in an Emotional Framework of Rationality 3

Dennis Papadopoulos

Abstract: ​ The aim of this project is to provide an argument in favour of the legitimacy of collective emotional claims in political discourse. In this paper I will distinguish appropriate and inappropriate collective emotion, and argue that collective emotional testimony should be considered meaningful when making collective decisions. This recommendation stands in contrast to prevailing dispassionate and alienated community deliberation processes. I suggest that the dispassionate method of collective decision­making is just as much a collective emotion, and is just as prone to bias. So when groups fail to act in ways which seem reasonable, some acknowledgement and attempt to modify their collective emotion may have a substantial role to play in developing more capable decision­making communities.

Collective emotion provides a basis for legitimizing the testimony of passionate individuals and groups. These testimonies provide an appraisal of a situation that implicitly includes what counts as important for an affected community. However, such testimonies may be challenged because they fail to meet a certain standard of conservative propriety, professional decorum, or rationality. While many protests and activist testimonies are not “proper”, I will argue that the collective emotions represented in their testimonies can contribute to rational debate by highlighting what is important. Further, I will argue that when we, together as a collective, dispassionately fail to recognize the importance of a situation, we behave according to a collective pattern which is just as emotional, and just as prone to bias, as the passionate collective emotions to which activists testify.

I begin the paper by explaining what a collective emotion is. I focus on two central elements in my conception of collective emotions: that they are not reducible to the sum of individual emotional states of members, and that individuals provide a testimony to collective 3

I would like to acknowledge the assistance from my supervisor Prof. Pablo Gilabert and the substantial feedback from Prof. J. Keeping. I’d also like to mention Prof. Matthias Fritsch and Prof. Andrea Falcon for their feedback on the proposal for this project, and Prof. David Morris for his research advice. I would like to thank Carleton University’s C.O.V.E. conference “Changing the World through Philosophy” for their insightful questions. I want to acknowledge useful criticism and editing notes from the editorial staff at Concordia University’s graduate philosophy journal ​ Gnosis​ , especially the Editor­in­chief Deanne Beraldo (BA). Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Anna Papadopoulou (PhD), David Balcarras (MA), Natashia Botelho (MA), Mehtaab Dawoodjee (BA), Shadi Afshar (BA), and Alison Cleverley for their helpful comments on this paper.

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16 emotions. To unpack both how an emotion can contribute to rational decisions and what qualifies 4

as an appropriate or inappropriate emotion, I look to Ronald de Sousa’s book ​ Emotional Truth.

De Sousa’s view is that individual emotions can be a deciding factor between what he calls 5

strategic and epistemic rationality when they are in conflict. Emotions can be authoritative in these contexts because they can appraise the significance of various options.

Against de Sousa, Jon Elster argues that individual emotions are not rational grounds. In his conception, emotions allow us to misrepresent what is rational or in our interest. This form of 6

7

error, while it has uses, is in principle not rational. I rebut this view, wherein emotional arbitration is a form of error, by framing apathetic reasoning as a particular affective disposition that has the same arbitrating effect as more passionate emotions and is liable to the same biases.

On this account, there is no non­emotional option and therefore no reason to prefer apathetic dispositions. That is, business­as­usual dispassion is still a form of collective emotion. To conclude, I briefly look at what being responsive to collective emotional states within a collective emotional framework of rationality looks like.

1. What is a Collective Emotion?

1.1 Pettigrove and Parsons’ Analysis of Uses of ‘Collective Emotion’

I want to briefly specify what I mean by ‘collective emotion.’ Attempting to overcome some of the scepticism brought to mind when we imagine a collective as a mass of people 8

reduced to a single consciousness, Glenn Pettigrove and Nigel Parsons describe three plausible meanings of collective emotion. Sometimes we might use collective emotions to refer to an aggregate emotion. Pettigrove and Parsons explain that the aggregate use of ‘collective emotion’ “will ascribe an emotion to a collective if a significant number of its members feel a particular

Ronald de Sousa, ​ Emotional truth​ , (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Ibid. 6­8.

6 Jon Elster, ​ Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions, ​ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 332, 370.

7 Ibid. 403­404.

8 Glenn Pettigrove, and Nigel Parsons, “Shame: a Case Study of Collective Emotion,” In ​ Social Theory and Practice 38, no. 3, (2012): 504­530.

4 5

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17 9

way.” This happens when we say something like “they are angry” and mean “each, or most, of those people is angry”. Pettigrove and Parsons criticize this model, claiming “it overlooks the 10

way being ‘in this together’ affects the emotional experiences of group members.”

This shortcoming is rectified in part by what Pettigrove and Parsons call the ‘simple structural view’, which is based on group­choice theory in philosophy of law. This view suggests that collective emotions are “something that supervenes on the emotions of the group’s 11

individual members but is not easily reduced to the individuals’ emotions.” This view accounts for the non­reducibility of some collective emotions. This allows us to claim that, in some cases, aggregate emotions do not constitute collective emotions, and sometimes a collective emotion will not imply an aggregate emotion. This view has been elaborated in collective intentions literature.

The third view of collective emotion is the ‘network model,’ which comes from sociological and social psychological literature. Building on the simple structural model, the network model explains the role of interaction between individuals constituting the contagious quality of collective emotion. Pettigrove and Parsons introduce the network model by explaining: “When these various social dimensions of emotion – causal, expressive, interpretative, normative– are combined, what we shall call a ​ network conception of collective emotion 12

emerges.” The network approach often builds on the observation by emotion theorists that there is a socially constructed element in how our emotions come to be instantiated and expressed. I understand collective emotions on the network conception, following John Protevi’s account.

However, I do not take the network conception to exclude simple structural models. Rather, I find the simple structural model very useful for teasing apart the distinct nature of the collective level of analysis, while the network approach is better at identifying collective emotional phenomenon in experience and observed social behaviors.

9

Ibid. 506.

Ibid. 506.

11 Ibid. 507.

12 Ibid. 510.

10

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18 1.2 Protevi’s Embodied Network Conception of Collective Emotion

13

John Protevi’s network conception builds on Manuel Delanda’s reading of Deleuze’s concept of a body­politic by setting it into a dynamic systems model. Protevi defines collective emotions as the affective experience of a body­politic understood as an embodied nexus of 14

embedded and interrelated individuals. He argues that a collective emotion is an emergent 15

property belonging to collectives. This emergentist perspective is justified through a dynamic systems model of collective emotion that takes a collective emotion to be a pattern of stable 16

behaviour constituted by social interactions. This pattern is produced by a tendency for the 17

group’s behaviour to self­organize towards certain specified attractor points or norms. The 18

pattern will break down and reconfigure itself if a threshold of deviation is met. A threshold point can be understood as a necessary condition to form a new and ​ contagious ​ behaviour pattern. This model explains collective emotions as a contagious, self­replicating pattern, emerging from social interactions, which line up with certain thresholds of normal group behaviour.

To help clarify what constitutes a body­politic, Protevi draws an analogy between 19

“bodies politic” and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘​ habitus.’ It is worth explaining ​ habitus if only to emphasize that the emergent patterns of collective behaviour Protevi is describing are not chance occurrences. Instead, they are something into which we are recursively drawn. Collective emotions are types of habit­forming processes. When these processes are disrupted, it contributes to crossing the threshold towards a new pattern of habit­formation. On Bourdieu’s account, the collective, understood as having a ​ habitus​ , can attribute meanings informed by situational 20

features. On my interpretation, the thresholds and attractors, which Protevi discusses, amount to

Manuel Delanda, ​ a New Philosophy of Society, ​ (London, UK: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006).

John Protevi, ​ Political Affect Connecting the Social and Somatic​ , (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 2009). 37.

15 Ibid. 7.

16 Ibid. 9.

17 Ibid. 5.

18 Ibid. 7.

19 Ibid. 32,198.

20 Pierre Bourdieu, ​ Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste​ , Trans, Richard Nice, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). (Originally published 1979). 101.

13 14

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19 the meanings that collectives give to their situations.

In my argument for a framework of rationality that includes collective emotions, I will focus on this ability of a collective to attribute importance to some ends and not others, based on a collective emotional appraisal of the situation. With this in mind, I take a critical look at our (too) often individualistic understanding of what counts as rational in discourse about political and community decisions.

2. Non­Reducibility and Testimony of Collective Emotions

In order to properly limit my discussion I will explain precisely in what sense a collective emotion is ​ emotional​ . I will describe two important aspects of a collective emotion. To help establish the ​ collective nature of collective emotions, I will look at Margaret Gilbert’s structural account of collective emotions emphasizing commitment and mutual obligation, intrinsic to the process of reaffirming and replicating the collective emotion. We also need to recognize that insofar as collective emotions are experienced, community members can testify to them, bringing them into political discourse. I will look at Katie Stockdale and Peg Birmingham’s accounts of testimony to clarify this point.

2.1 Gilbert’s Structural Account of Collective Emotion as a Commitment

Gilbert’s view of collective emotions builds on her work in collective intentions 21

literature. According to Gilbert, at the core of a collective emotion is a joint commitment to 22

hold that collective emotion. Gilbert argues that “all those involved must express their readiness, in conditions of common knowledge, ​ together to commit them all in some particular 23

way.” The concurrent expression of readiness to be jointly committed is taken as sufficient for there to be joint commitment. This is distinct from individuals all coincidentally feeling the same way, because of the mutual understanding that they are committed to hold a feeling ​ together​ .

Margaret Gilbert, “Shared Intention and Personal Intentions,” In ​ Philosophical Studies1​ 44 (2009). 167­187.

Margaret Gilbert, “How we feel,” In ​ Collective Emotions​ , Ed. Christian von Scheve, and Mikko Salmela, 17­31, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (2014). 23.

23 Ibid. 24.

21 22

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20 This sufficient condition can be met through implicit agreement. If a collective emotion is defined by shared meanings that act as attractor points to produce the larger patterns of collective emotion, participating in these shared meanings can serve as the readiness to be committed to feel a certain way alongside others. By accepting these meanings, we are committed to share in collective emotions resulting from those meanings just because we belong to the social body that maintains those meanings.

This commitment is the foundation for Gilbert’s obligation criterion, explained as: “the fact that the [jointly committed parties] have the standing to rebuke one another for behaviour 24

that is not in the spirit of the collective emotion.” Having expressed the willingness to feel something together each individual can be held accountable for behaving accordingly. This is Gilbert’s basic case, and it would tend to work well for a small group making an explicit expression to each other.

Gilbert’s obligation criterion is a structural component of collective emotion. It is not the case that just because a collective emotion exists we have a morally salient reason to conform. I will argue that collective emotions provide an evaluation of

what a community finds

meaningful. In some cases, the expression of just how important some meanings are to a community is belittled, undermined, or dismissed because of a bias against collective emotions. I interpret this bias as the inappropriate application of the obligation to express a cold, alienated emotion in professional circumstances.

I am especially interested in cases like the ​ Occupy Wall Street movement where the end that protesters were cooperating towards was an expression of discontent, without a uniform set of demands or a specific body responsible for meeting them. In this case ‘collective’ does not refer only to the activists. Rather, they are providing a testimony of the collective emotion that represents tensions within a larger system of collaborating individuals, characterized as the “99%”. Insofar as we make it public that we believe our complacency is contributing to an unjust and disadvantageous system with which we are dissatisfied, we are not necessarily agreeing to do something about it; rather, we are agreeing to sympathize with changing that system. Even those who were not protesting are implicated in the real and existing outrage at the unjust

24

Ibid. 22.

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21 distribution of wealth. Protesters and other representatives of collective emotions are not the exclusive body holding the collective emotion. This example is meant to show that a collective emotion is not a particular thing that we “create” to do work. Like reasons, collective emotions are found and presented, and the cooperative social life that gives rise to them is not a specific organization of political bodies. Rather, it is an always already cooperating and expressive public—one with already existing spaces of common knowledge and norms of expression that say something about the context of that body­politic.

2.2 Stockdale’s and Birmingham’s Accounts of Testifying to Collective Emotion

Stockdale argues that collective emotions, specifically collective resentment as it appears in the ​ Idle No More movement, should be respected when these emotions are presented as an 25

appraisal of a collective situation. She considers the case of indigenous and settler Canadians’ mutual collective resentment. In this case, each group is alienated from the other because of tensions concerning a history of abuse on one side and frustration with repeated failure to satisfy indigenous Canadians on the other. Stockdale explains: Collective resentment is resentment that is felt and expressed by individuals in response to a perceived threat to a collective to which they belong. In collective resentment, the reasons for resentment are reasons for a ​ collective, not an individual 26 victim of mistreatment.

The emotional element involved here concerns feelings experienced by virtue of belonging to a particular group, and these feelings are an apprehension of our struggle alongside other members of our group. Stockdale argues that there must be an open recognition of each narrative, including recognizing the abuse and oppression thatfosters much of the collective resentment and 27

recognizing that perceived threats to settler society are not appropriately construed. These feelings cannot be brushed aside; they are integral to the formation of a more productive and mutually understanding discourse.

On Stockdale’s account, collective emotions are structurally different from individual Katie Stockdale, “Collective Resentment,” In ​ Social Theory and Practice​ 39, no. 3, (2013): 502­503.

Ibid. 507.

27 Ibid. 521.

25 26

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22 emotions; they bear witness to the significance of something for a group. Not only do events have significance because we encounter them in our experience, but since our experiences are shared, courses of action have significance to collectives because the collective itself has a history and interests. Therefore, when group members offer a testimony about the collective emotional importance of something for the group, then as a group with a history and interests, they are giving a reason to choose one course of action over another.

Testimony to collective experience is discussed by Birmingham. She is concerned that “the best way to destroy factual truths is to reduce them to so many opinions that can then be 28

easily dismissed as ‘just another opinion’ open to dispute, contest, and interpretation.” I share this concern insofar as emotional significance of a group can be dismissed on the ground that it is the idiosyncrasy of a single group member. This is why it is important to recognize that collective emotions are not an amalgamation of individual emotions. Birmingham argues that 29

“factual truth requires witnesses to establish the fact of its appearance.” Likewise, collective emotion requires the fact that it occurs to be testified to. Therefore, when an expression of collective emotion enters a discourse, it will enter as a testimony to a factual truth, and not as the spirit of the discourse itself. Birmingham offers an important additional cautionary point on considering testimony: A distinction must be made between testimonies that provide material evidence for factual reality – first order narratives – and second order narratives that rely on this material evidence for their accounts, accounts that are judged in part on the basis of 30 their fidelity to the factual record.

This distinction is significant to the establishment of what counts as a testimony of collective emotion. The second order accounts given as examples in this paper are not testimonies of collective emotion. The testimony will always be a first order account, in the terms of “we feel” rather than “they feel”.

Thus far, I have provided accounts of collective emotions as a shared, affectively salient pattern based on common struggles, projects, and experiences thatare premised on collectively

28

Peg Birmingham, “Elated Citizenry: Deception and the Democratic Task of Bearing Witness,” In ​ Research in Phenomenology ​ 38, no. 2 (2008): 202.

29 Ibid. 203.

30 Ibid. 214.

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23 established evaluation of contexts, meanings, and histories. For the purpose of this paper, I will take collective emotion to mean: ​ a systematically reinforced emotion an individual has based on their membership in a group​ . This assumes a conception of emotions as an informative disposition thatprovides an appraisal of a situation.

People can individually feel differently than they collectively feel, and their collective emotion can refer to meaningful commitments, distresses, resentments, fears and so forth. I will argue that we should recognize these collective structures, welcoming their expression, responding to their outpouring, and mobilizing their self­organizing power. We should overcome the imposition of inappropriate collective alienation because this is a collective emotion in its own right, one which resists passionate collective expression, and takes for granted that a cold disposition indicates rationality.

3. An Emotional Framework of Rationality

I want to set my argument that collective emotions are informative in a context provided

by Marion Barnes, who explicitly recommends passionate politics. She argues that responsiveness to emotions is necessary for what she calls ‘deliberative democracy’ or ‘participatory policy­making.’ This involves practices wherein political decision makers enter 31

into a dialogue with community members. She explains that in these dialogues, “the onus on managing emotions thus rests with the service users or citizens taking part; officials can invoke 32

institutional rules and norms to define what is acceptable in contexts they control.” These rules are a failure from Barnes’ perspective because they undermine trust. The officials seem “like they are ‘going through the motions’, that they do not ‘really care’ about the issues in any 33

significant sense.” In order for a democratic forum to adequately represent the public, the forum must be responsive to the emotional outcry, outrage, compassion, generosity, or life of the communities they represent. I argue this is because these emotions indicate what is meaningful to

31

Marion Barnes, “Passionate Participation: Emotional Experiences and Expressions in Deliberative Forums,” In Politics and the Emotions, ​ Ed.​ ​ Simon Thompson, and Paul Hoggett, 4­40, (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012). 24.

32 Ibid. 33.

33 Ibid. 25.

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24 those communities. When individuals are barred from expressing emotion, it excludes the possibility that their emotional appraisal of a situation counts as a testimony to the experience of the community. Barnes recommends a principle of responsiveness to establish the trust necessary 34

for this kind of discourse. In my view, Barnes does not go far enough. Dispassionate forums fail to acknowledge the implicit biases to which dispassion, as a collective emotional state, is subject. As a result, I will recommend that we look at the alienating exclusion of emotion as an unjustified exclusion of ​ reasons​ to prefer different accounts of what is rational.

3.1 De Sousa’s Emotional Framework of Rationality

In ​ Emotional Truth​ , de Sousa argues that emotions have a role to play in the reasoning of individuals. He discusses two interpretations of ​ akrasia​ , intending to clarify what counts as a violation of rationality. The first interpretation construes ​ akrasia as moral failing. In this case, de Sousa argues that ​ akrasia is a violation of what he terms ‘strategic rationality’, which he defines 35

as: rationality “which aims at maximizing the likelihood of success in action.” The second 36

interpretation takes ​ akrasia to be a violation of a rationality that“aims to maximize true belief.”

He calls this framework ‘epistemic rationality’. These two frameworks of rationality clash 37

whenever “a belief is both more likely to lead to good consequences and less likely to be true,” or vice versa. To resolve conflicts like this, de Sousa proposes a third ​ emotional framework. In this framework an emotional attitude of ‘caring’ provides a “perception of value” with which we 38

can appraise the appropriateness of either strategic or epistemic frameworks of rationality.

This leaves us with a model reminiscent of Aristotle’s treatment of the passions in Eudemian Ethics. On Aristotle’s view, the ends we pursue are determined by states of character, 39

and virtuous ends are determined by a virtuous character. These states of character govern how 40

41

much we enjoy or endure pleasure and pain, including the pleasures and pains of the passions.

34

Ibid. 36.

Ronald de Sousa, ​ Emotional truth​ , (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011). 6.

36 Ibid. 6.

37 Ibid. 7.

38 Ibid. 8.

39 Aristotle, ​ Eudemian Ethics,​ Trans, Anthony Kenny (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011). 36, 1227b 33­40.

40 Ibid. 35, 1227b 8­11.

35

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25 Thus, virtue occurs when passions are balanced under virtuous character so that we can identify the best ends to direct our efforts towards. By contrast, intellectual virtues govern only whether 42

or not the means to obtain those ends are correct. This means that Aristotle recognized that passion is involved in directing us towards the proper ends. Traditional intellectual virtues involved in strategic and epistemic rationality only concern how to accomplish those ends. By excluding passion from the discourse we implicitly prefer indifferent emotional positions, which direct us towards certain ends that may not be best. Instead, some balance of passions is needed to isolate that for which we should strive and struggle, even if emotions are not likely to be informative in how we should accomplish those ends. To elaborate on how emotions can contribute to selecting our ends, I look to de Sousa’s emotional framework of rationality.

3.2 Appropriate Appraisal

Emotions themselves are checked against whether or not they are appropriate to a 43

situation. In de Sousa’s framework, emotions appraise a situation by comparing it to a 44

paradigm scenario that designates appropriate ways of reacting to certain types of objects. For de Sousa, there are two conditions required for an emotion to be appropriate. Emotions serve as an ​ appropriate appraisal of a situation when: (i) the object of the emotion is not an illusion, and (ii) the apparent object of the emotion is also the object that brought up the emotion in the 45

individual. For example, in order for me to be appropriately angry with someone for an insult, and to have that anger count as a rational appraisal, it must be the case that the person in question did in fact insult me, and that the anger arose in response to that insult and not as displaced aggravation for another event.

To set this in a collective context, consider anger directed at an oppressive other­group.

In this situation, it will only be appropriate if that anger is directed at the oppressor for the oppression. It will be inappropriate if the collective being oppressed directs its anger at another party as a scapegoat. It will also be inappropriate if the oppressed collective is angry with the 41

Ibid. 18, 1220b 14.

Ibid. 75, 1138b 19­20.

43 Ibid. 20, 71­73.

44 Ibid. 34.

45 Ibid. 30, 57­58.

42

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26 oppressor group for some action they took that alleviates pressures on the oppressed. Both of these situations are cases of illusion about the nature of the situation leading to a misdirected emotional disposition.

4. Emotions as Non­Rational Bias

Against this view, Elster argues that when individuals’ emotions change what is rational 46

in a situation, they often serve as a self­deceiving bias. Elster argues that individual emotions bias preferences towards under (or over) investment in information gathering prior to making a 47

decision. Individual emotions may allow for adaptive reactions involving underinvestment in 48

information gathering. The sudden fright from seeing a non­poisonous snake is an example of such adaptation. Such a view problematically assumes that there are non­emotional states that are more “rational.” In Elster’s terminology, there are states that are neither transmutated nor 49

misrepresented by passion. From this perspective passion is a force for a potentially adaptive, biased construal of a situation in contrast to a more objective, non­emotional point of view.

4.1 Apparent Irrationality of Pettigrove and Parsons’ exploration of Collective Shame

To explain how this criticism can get traction in collective emotional situations, I want to revisit Pettigrove and Parsons’ account of collective emotion mentioned at the beginning of this paper. In Pettigrove and Parsons’ discussion of collective shame, Palestinians feel a collective 50

shame caused by the oppression from Israel. The shame serves to exaggerate the distinction between the two groups, creating a false polarization, setting each group up as the enemy of the other. The collective emotion is transmutating into the belief that these groups have an interest in not cooperating. This would not seem true by looking at preferences alone; after all, peace, calm, Jon Elster, ​ Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions, ​ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 332.

47 Jon Elster, “Emotional Choice and Rational Choice,” In ​ The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion,​ Ed. Peter Goldie,​ ​ 263­282, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010). 277.

48 Ibid. 278.

49 Jon Elster, ​ Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions, ​ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 332.

50 Glenn Pettigrove, and Nigel Parsons, “Shame: a Case Study of Collective Emotion,” In ​ Social Theory and Practice 38, no. 3, (2012): 515­517.

46

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27 and trust would be preferable for all involved. A history of oppression and violence have embittered these groups and entrenched collective mistrust. Furthermore, these emotions are appropriate. For de Sousa, emotions must have an existing object that is also the cause of that 51

feeling. In the case of the Palestinian collective shame, it really is the existing oppression by Israel that offends, and this causes the ongoing disposition towards mistrust.

In this example of regional mistrust, it can seem as though the collective emotion is getting in the way of rational political deliberation. This lends some support to the idea that emotions are acting as a form of bias. In this case, there is a regional bias being supported by the collective emotion. I want to argue that these collective emotions are not irrational. Mistrust, by definition, suggests a lack of a needed trust. Trust, as a collective affective pattern, is not a lack of shame, but the presence of care, responsiveness, and authentic expression of decisions that can break with consistency or strategy in meaningful ways.

To support this view, I must establish that when the options are emotionally salient then it does not seem like a non­emotional intervening principle could bring about a decision that does not have affective affiliations. This means that distinguishing between a purely rational principle and an emotionally highlighted one may be a trickier business than is viable, considering that groups already have emotions that signify the relative importance of situations.

4.2 Contrasting Colombetti’s Model of Emotion with Elster’s Conception

If an emotionally highlighted system of rationality is not clearly distinguished from a non­emotional one, then a non­emotional conception of rational decision­making rests on the wholesale exclusion of emotion. Once emotions are introduced to the equation, ignoring them is only another emotional position; typically a “cold” disposition. Giovanna Colombetti’s account stands in contrast to the structural assumptions made about emotions by theorists like Elster who assume that emotional processes are somehow distinct from other mental processes. Concerning individual emotions, Colombetti argues that the emotion is not a “quick and dirty” shortcut for 52

decision­making. Instead, emotions are a product of the interconnected nature of mental Ronald de Sousa, ​ Emotional truth​ , (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011). 57­58.

Giovanna Colombetti, “Complexity as a New Framework for Emotion Theories,” In ​ Logic and Philosophy of Science​ 1, no. 1, (2003): 5.

51 52

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28 53

processes. Her account of emotion criticizes the modular and hierarchical conception of 54

brain­processes.

While collectives do not have a brain, compartmentalized or otherwise, they can be subject to an over­compartmentalization. When we divide a collective’s decision­making processes into fragmented bureaucratic offices, or further fragmented collections of individual decisions, we miss the interconnected effects of individual decisions. Protevi argues that 55

interconnectivity of a collective forms the body politic capable of emotion. This model aligns much better with Colombetti’s account than Elster’s. So, when officials dismiss emotional testimonies from a political discourse, they are treating emotions as a separate component and not the interconnected nexus of behaviour patterns that it is.

5. Collective Alienation is a Collective Emotion

The exclusion of emotion itself takes a particular emotional position relative to the passionate position it resists. Concerning collective emotions, this pattern of coordinating interconnected behaviour constitutes a stern and affectively cold disposition. We might call this ‘collective alienation’, and it has its own biases. This situation, as it has effectively dominated corporate and government bodies, seems to favour quantifiable profit over other values such as the environment and human welfare. It bears the same marks of non­rational emotional effects 56

Elster attributes to passionate emotional states. In some cases, it results in an over­investment of information when it is slow to act to urgent situations. At other times, it has an under­investment when these bodies­politic pursue short term economic gains at enormous environmental costs. This makes “calm, cool, and collected” collective emotional states liable to result in the self­deceptive ‘transmutation’ of one’s own interests; just as how Elster sees more 57

passionate states.

53

Ibid. 13.

Ibid. 6.

55 John Protevi, ​ Political Affect Connecting the Social and Somatic​ , (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 2009). 33.

56 Jon Elster, “Emotional Choice and Rational Choice,” In ​ The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion,​ Ed. Peter Goldie,​ ​ 263­282, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010). 277.

57 Jon Elster, ​ Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions, ​ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 322, 355­358.

54

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29

5.1 Collective Alienation is Often Inappropriate

There is no unilateral reason to suggest collective alienation is always inappropriate.

Taken as an “appraisal,” just about any emotion can have its appropriate place. Perhaps in our lives as academics or employees, individuation through a collective emotion of alienation associated with professionalism might be appropriate. In our society, however, collective alienation is often found in inappropriate roles.

If I am to take Elster’s criticism of emotions as bias seriously, then both dispassionate and passionate emotional realities can bias the kinds of decisions that we make because either disposition can frame what counts as “important” differently. When we encounter emotionally salient problems, there is something to reconcile, something which should not be dismissed. This is because dismissing or suppressing emotional testimony is just imposing the collective emotion that dominates the institution onto the collective being dismissed. It is not elevating the discourse above emotion. On this account, I can concede to Elster that emotions do bring in biases.

However, the dismissal of emotional testimony presented either in protest or participatory discussion is likely an inappropriate emotion. The indifference in those cases is not an appraisal of the situation at hand; it does not respond to ­ nor care about ­ the facts or significances being testified to. As a result, the “non­emotional” biases are not only biased to emphasize some considerations over others, but that emphasis is also being misplaced.

Once a passionate collective emotional testimony enters into dialogue, calm, cool, and collected dispositions take on an emotional character as something not­passionate. This means that when testimony of collective emotions enters a discussion, it colors the whole discourse in emotional terms. So statements that condemn or dismiss appropriate feelings are misguided because the very same condemnation can be made of the dispassionate disposition.

6. Ways Forward

I want to end this discussion by considering what the recognition of collective alienation as a collective emotion means. In order to reconcile political problems in an emotionally Gnosis 14.1 | 2015

30 responsive way, three types of opportunities avail themselves. First, we can attempt to address how some collective emotions are not appropriate. When this is the case, Stockdale argues that 58

we should abandon them and come to terms with a more appropriate appraisal of the situation.

Second, we might attempt to change an unfavorable collective emotion through rituals, like state 59

apologies. However, Pettigrove suggests that public apologies are often dissatisfying.

Resolving long standing disputes is not simply a matter of expressing the appropriate emotions, it is a matter of negotiation within and among the groups in question.

Daniel Bar­Tal, Eran Halperin, and Joseph de Rivera explain that there are collective 60

‘rituals’ that can “foster the reconciliation needed for a culture of peace.” They suggest that these include acknowledging wrongs, which might include both admitting inappropriate emotions, and issuing apologies (even if they are less than adequate). Bar­Tal et al. adds that we 61

also need some way of “marrying truth and mercy, justice and peace.” This is more interesting and hints at a third method: ​ recognizing the socially interconnected nexus of behaviours that gives rise to these collective emotions in the first place.

When we present a testimony or coordinate an activist motion, we can include a collective emotional framework of rationality in two ways. First, when we organize we can be responsive to the emotions of those we are organizing. James Jasper explains that activist groups 62

are formed through a network of personal relationships, not just interested persons. Forging these personal relationships provides the affective infrastructure to trust each other, and overcome divisive emotions. Deborah Gould explains that when we try to form and maintain these emotional relationships we also need to recognize the dynamic emotional state of the 63

community we are forming. You cannot always assert hope, acceptance, or peace among 64

despairing and alienated people, but you can mobilize people on account of a collective despair.

Katie Stockdale, “Collective Resentment,” In ​ Social Theory and Practice​ 39, no. 3, (2013): 521.

Glenn Pettigrove, “Hannah Arendt and collective forgiving,” In ​ Journal of social philosophy​ 37 no. 4​ ,​ (2006): 496.

60 Daniel Bar­ Tal, Eran Halperin, and Joseph de Rivera, “Collective Emotions in Conflict Situations: Societal implications,” In ​ Journal of Social Issues ​ 63, no. 2 (2007): 456.

61 Ibid. 456.

62 Jasper, James M, “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and Around Social Movements,” In ​ Sociological Forum ​ 13, no. 3, (1998): 417­418.

63 Deborah Gould, Political Despair, In ​ Politics and the Emotions, ​ Ed. Simon Thompson, and Paul Hoggett, 95­40, (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012). 105.

64 Ibid. 110.

58 59

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31 This recognizes the shared collective condition we experience, and that helps to form the necessary network of commitments. Saying “we have political despair” allows people to proclaim “I am together with you,” and those people can feel understood by that group breaking out of the alienated, dispassionate status quo.

This in turn leads to the second way to implement the responsive approach to acknowledging collective emotions, which is to recognize that the collective emotion is something performed and embodied in the world. When a collective emotion is inappropriate, the emotionally rational response would be to refuse to participate in it, to set up a new commitment for people to join with. Eva Simms provides a simple case of this, which I find promising. She explains that a community collectively developed the habit of treating a green space poorly, leaving garbage in it, fearing it, and avoiding it. Simms states: “In the consciousness of the community these abandoned places become strange and alien places.

65

Because they are no longer used and known neighbours look at them with fear and suspicion.”

The way to change the community’s destructive collective appraisal of the space was to show love for the green space, to haul garbage out of it, to territorialize it again. Once clean, the attitude of the community unsurprisingly changed to value the green space they previously 66

considered a liability. This simple story gives me hope that the way to shake inappropriate collective emotions is just through the ‘ritual’ of refusing to participate in them, and that includes refusing to participate in the rampant collective apathy. Of course, the way to change a complex attitude like settler resentment into something more understanding ­ in such a way that it can become ​ contagious ­ is not going to be as simple, and I have no answers in practical terms.

Perhaps in light of contagion as a goal, we should consider rituals like public apology important, not because they can satisfy an appropriate discontent, but because they can erode something inappropriate.

In conclusion, when present, collective emotion indicates what is significant to the collective. Failure to account for this leaves us assuming an alternate, but still emotional, perspective; even if we only assume the calm, cool, and collected emotional position. If that 65

Simms, Eva­Maria, “The Invisibility of Nature: Garbage, Play­forts and the Deterritorialization of Urban Nature Spaces,” In ​ The Experience of Nature:​ ​ Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment,​ Ed. D, A, Valkoch and F, Castrillion, 237­250, (New York, NY: Springer Science and Business Media, 2014). 241.

66 Ibid. 242.

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32 position conflicts with the collective emotion to which members testify, then the discourse is misjudging the significance of the matters at hand. This could be a failure to recognize legitimate resentment or shame, a failure to mobilize on the emotions actually present in a collective, and therefore a failure to respond authentically to the reality of a community. Following a collective emotional framework of rationality, then, means being responsive to what is important for a collective. Productive change can be made when we recognize what is important to us collectively and we stand up for it.

Works Cited

Bar­ Tal, Daniel, Eran Halperin, and Joseph de Rivera. “Collective Emotions in Conflict Situations: Societal implications.” In ​ Journal of Social Issues ​ 63, no. 2 (2007): 441­460.

Barnes, Marion. “Passionate Participation: Emotional Experiences and Expressions in Deliberative Forums.” In ​ Politics and the Emotions. ​ Edited by ​ Simon Thompson, and Paul Hoggett, 24­40. (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012).

Birmingham, Peg. “Elated citizenry: Deception and the democratic task of bearing witness.” In ​ Research in phenomenology ​ 38, no. 2 (2008): 198­215.

Bourdieu, Pierre. ​ Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste​ . Translated by Richard Nice. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). (Originally published 1979).

Colombetti, Giovanna. “Complexity as a New Framework for Emotion Theories.” In ​ Logic and Philosophy of Science​ 1, no. 1. (2003): 1­16.

De Sousa, Ronald. ​ Emotional truth​ . (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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33 Delanda, Manuel. ​ a New Philosophy of Society. ​ (London, UK: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006).

Elster, Jon. “Emotional Choice and Rational Choice.” In ​ The Oxford handbook of philosophy of emotion. Edited by Peter Goldie, ​ 263­282. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Elster, Jon. ​ Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions. ​ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Gilbert, Margaret. “How we feel.” In ​ Collective Emotions​ . Edited by Christian von Scheve, and Mikko Salmela, 17­31. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (2014).

Gilbert, Margaret. “Shared Intention and Personal Intentions.” In ​ Philosophical Studies​ 144 (2009): 167­187.

Gould, Deborah. Political Despair. In ​ Politics and the Emotions. ​ Edited by Simon Thompson, and Paul Hoggett, 95­40. (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012).

Jasper, James M. “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and Around Social Movements.” In ​ Sociological Forum ​ 13, no. 3. (1998): 397­424.

Pettigrove, Glenn and Nigel Parsons. “Shame: a Case Study of Collective Emotion.” In ​ Social Theory and Practice​ 38, no. 3. (2012): 504­530.

Pettigrove, Glenn. “Hannah Arendt and collective forgiving.” In ​ Journal of social philosophy​ 37 no. 4​ .​ (2006): 483­500.

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34 Protevi, John. ​ Political Affect Connecting the Social and Somatic​ . (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 2009).

Simms, Eva­Maria. “The Invisibility of Nature: Garbage, Play­forts and the Deterritorialization of Urban Nature Spaces.” In ​ The Experience of Nature: ​ Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment. Edited by D. A. Valkoch and F. Castrillion, 237­250. (New York, NY: Springer Science and Business Media, 2014).

Stockdale, Katie. “Collective Resentment.” In ​ Social Theory and Practice​ 39, no. 3. (2013): 501­ 521.

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35

Moderate Moderation: The Mean of Excess Jamie C. O. Shaw

Abstract ​ Bernard Williams notes how Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, or the view that one should always pursue the mean between excess and deficiency, is an implicit endorsement of a depressingly conservative approach to life. As such, the ‘good life’ in Aristotle’s thought is bereft of existential vibrancy and colour leaving it as an unattractive theory of how we ought to live.

This paper aims to show how this characterization is a misrepresentation and demonstrate how such existential concerns can be addressed within an Aristotelian framework. I will accomplish this by demonstrating how Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘Dionysian spirit’, understood as a state of spiritual intoxication, can be reconciled with Aristotle’s framework. While the Dionysian spirit is prima facie incompatible with this framework, since it explicitly values irrational self­experimentation through the expression of instincts as opposed to rational reflection, I will argue that it can be accommodated in Aristotle’s account by analyzing the common role of ‘health’ in both accounts. This reconciliation not only enriches Aristotle’s ethics, but also clarifies interpretive difficulties with what the doctrine of the mean entails.

Bernard Williams claims of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean that it “oscillates between an unhelpful analytic model…and a substantively depressing doctrine in favour of moderation” (Williams, 1985: 36). Motivated by the existential richness of Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of human flourishing, Williams worries that the doctrine of the mean results in a life that is bereft of existential vibrancy and colour. I calm this worry by arguing that Nietzsche’s analysis of human flourishing, with a specific emphasis on the Dionysian spirit, is compatible with Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean and his conception of the good life. While the Dionysian spirit is characterized as a form of excess which is ​ prima facie ​ incongruent with the doctrine of the mean, a closer examination of what the mean and its relationship to the good life is will show that this is not the case.

This paper begins by outlining what Nietzsche calls the ‘Dionysian spirit’ and why it ought to be valued in a conception of the good life. I then outline Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean with an emphasis on the role of the good life in its characterization. While this will reveal many parallels between the two theories, I close by delineating the ways in which the two theories are and are not compatible. More specifically, I argue that even though the Dionysian spirit does not Gnosis 14.1 | 2015

36 straightforwardly follow the ‘right reason’ qualification of the doctrine of the mean, it is not completely excluded from Aristotle’s conception of human flourishing. This synthesis gains further support from showing the common role of health in both theories of a flourishing human life.

1. The Value of Excess

If the doctrine of the mean (DM) is an endorsement of a good life that is lived conservatively, cautiously, and without adventure then it is not an attractive one. While the nuances of Aristotle’s theory explored in this paper will show that this is not Aristotle’s stance, there remains the worry that there is no sufficient room for the virtuous person to act excessively or frivolously on occasion. In this section, I will outline what is meant here by ‘excess’ and develop this notion along the lines of Nietzsche’s conception of the Dionysian spirit (DS). This will be further developed by elaborating on why excess ought to be valued in a conception of the good life.

1.1: Excessive Action and the Dionysian Spirit

Before delving into Nietzsche’s remarks on the DS, I want to draw a distinction between acting excessively and ​ acting in an excessive spirit​ . The former notion is understood through an external evaluation of an agent’s actions (i.e. she drank ​ too much wine) while the latter is understood as the manner in which an agent approaches a given situation. While the two may overlap (an excessive spirit may lead an agent to drink too much wine), this is not necessarily so.

There are many different reasons for or spirits in which an agent may act excessively, and one may act in an excessive spirit but not act excessively. Since Aristotle’s conception of the good 67

life requires both the right spirit and the right action, it must be able to accommodate a plausible view of each.

67

Here, ‘spirit’ could be cashed out in terms of pleasure and one’s emotional life. I will go into further detail on this later in this paper.

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37 In ​ The Birth of Tragedy​ , Nietzsche invokes the ancient Greek dichotomy between the Apollonian and the Dionysian and seeks to reaffirm the status of the latter. He accuses the history of Western philosophy and culture for privileging the Apollonian, understood as a sort of 68

stiff sobriety of logical order, at the expense of our more creative and primordial impulses.

While I will not discuss this dichotomy at length, Nietzsche’s affirmation of the Dionysian is useful for understanding what is meant by an ‘excessive spirit’ and why it is valuable for human 69

flourishing (which is understood as self­mastery or self­realization). Nietzsche relies heavily on the metaphor of intoxication to describe the DS. While it is not wholly irrational, it is not controlled or directed by rational considerations either. This spirit “burst[s] forth from nature herself [as] energies in which nature’s art impulses are satisfied in the most immediate and direct way” (Nietzsche, 2000: 38). It is not ‘forward looking’ in the sense that it is not calculative but 70

an immediate and largely emotional ​ ​ assessment ​ of the situation.

71

The Dionysian agent is not acting ‘emotionally’ in the conventional sense (i.e. emotions as random occurrences that happen within the body) since emotions, on Nietzsche’s account, are 72

evaluative ​ and describe the world to the agent and report the agent’s inner state. This provides the agent with an instinctual and non­linguistic ​ sense ​ of their emotional makeup. This makes them productive for a deeper understanding of the self and its relationship to the world.

Furthermore, there is, importantly, an ​ excess ​ of artistic or creative energy which is unleashed in the DS. Nietzsche writes that neither “reflection, no[r] true knowledge… outweighs any motive for action…in the Dionysian man” (Nietzsche, 1968: 59­60). This excess is not motivated by the rationally salient features of a given situation, but a physiological phenomenon which is a vital part of what it is to be human. As such, the DS is not something that is, strictly speaking, chosen, but rather allowed to be expressed. This means that the DS is not the sort of phenomena that can

68

Primordial is understood in raw naturalistic terms here.

The notion of self­mastery (or self­realization) has many parallels to Aristotle’s views of flourishing since both require character building. A discussion of the similarities and differences between the two positions can be found in Christine Daigle (2006).

70 Nietzsche uses the term ‘emotions’ fairly interchangeably with ‘passions’ or ‘feelings.’

71 While Nietzsche himself may be uncomfortable with the terminology of ‘agency’ here, I will continue to use the term for ease of expression.

72 The DS should not be construed as providing evaluative ​ judgments s​ ince they do not provide any explicit content to the agent.

69

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38 be rationally compartmentalized or consigned to a specific situation. It is rather something which 73

is allowed to flourish, potentially at the expense of one’s ‘better’ judgments.

1.2: The Value of Excess

Now that I have briefly discussed what the DS is, I will argue that this spirit is a valuable part of human flourishing and therefore must accommodated in an attractive theory of the good life. There are a variety of ways in which the DS can be shown to be instrumentally valuable.

First, excessive focus on rational calculation ​ at the expense of emotional outbursts has been shown to have negative effects on one’s mental and physical health (Bayne and Fernandez, 2009: 74

10). Since health is an important feature of the good life, the DS ought to be valued in this respect. Furthermore, the occasional Dionysian episode can expand an agent’s emotional and spiritual palette, allowing for a broader perspective and a more nuanced ability to reason. This would be extremely important, as the ability to recognize and act on the right reasons would benefit from a healthy amount of DS. However, this characterization only provides a superficial account of why Nietzsche values the DS. A more thorough analysis of Nietzsche’s position shows how he values the DS at a much deeper level, making it not simply an incidental feature of living well, but a fundamental constituent.

Nietzsche understands the human condition as a constant tension between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. He writes that “[b]oth drives, so different from each other, go side by side, mostly in open discord and opposition, always provoking each other to new, stronger births, in order to perpetuate in themselves the struggle of opposites…until, finally, by a wonderful act of Hellenic 'will,' they seem to pair up” (Nietzsche, 2000: 33). In order to flourish, both sides must be cultivated in order to contribute to the health of the individual. This means that the DS is not merely instrumentally valuable, but intrinsically valuable as a part of what constitutes the life of a human being. While I do not want to fully endorse Nietzsche’s stronger claims about the human condition, I do want to emphasize how important the DS is. The repression of the Here I simply mean judgments that are made in a calm and calculated manner.

These studies in the cognitive sciences are closely aligned with Nietzsche’s views that the repression of emotions and the Dionysian spirit are detrimental to the health (which is understood in both physiological and existential terms) of individuals.

73 74

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39 75

Dionysian leads to an individual’s “corpselike and ghostly… ‘healthy­mindedness’ ​ ” when compared to “the glowing life of the Dionysian revellers [who] roar past them” (37). It is the willing acceptance and harnessing of this spirit which allows for a life of joy and colour rather than dry tastelessness. Furthermore, the DS is not just valuable insofar as emotions are valuable in general, but the ​ excessive amount ​ of these emotions can also be valuable. This is because the DS reveals something about how we evaluate the world and who we are. They reveal how we truly feel about our environment or the world, they reveal what our character is in a wide variety of situations, and they reveal our emotional and rational limits as agents and what kind of person we ​ could ​ be. The DS provides room for personal experimentation where we explore the scope of who we could possibly be and clues as to how we can create ourselves. By restraining this spirit to the ‘proper amount’, we restrain ourselves from coming to understand our own self and its relationship to the world. This understanding is crucial for how we perceive and construct ourselves and is therefore valuable for human flourishing. This provides us with strong existential reasons to include the DS in a conception of human flourishing.

2. The Doctrine of the Mean

While Aristotle and Nietzsche’s depictions of human flourishing and their general philosophies differ in places, there are a few ways in which both sets of insights can be seen as harmonious with each other. Aristotle discusses the importance of pleasure and the emotions in 76

the good life at length which is prominently on display in Nietzsche’s Dionysian episodes.

However, the details of this reconciliation are not as straightforward given Aristotle’s formulation of the DM. In this section, I will outline Aristotle’s DM and its relationship to the good life.

75

Here, Nietzsche is mocking the Apollonian ideal of health which simply involves an agent being physically healthy and of a ‘sound mind’ (i.e. rational).

76 These discussions are found most prominently in Book VII, chapters 11­14 and Book X, chapters 1­5.

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40 2.1: The Formulation of the Doctrine

Aristotle argues that virtues are means between the two opposite vices of excess and deficiency. He states that “we should observe that [healthy] states naturally tend to be ruined by excess and deficiency…[f]or both excessive and deficient exercise ruin bodily strength, and, similarly, too much or too little eating or drinking ruins health, whereas the proportionate amount produces, increases, and preserves it” (1104a 12­18). Already we can see a strong parallel between Nietzsche and Aristotle as virtuous action is aimed towards health. In this sense, virtue is understood in teleological terms with the production and preservation of the well­being of the agent as its goal. Aristotle further elaborates that this mean is both a mean of action and feeling.

Not only must one act generously, but one must feel the right amount of the right emotions that come along with the action to be virtuous. Furthermore, Aristotle argues that the mean is not easy to find but it is exceedingly difficult (that is it takes a great deal of habituation) to act “to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right ends, and in the right way” (1109a 28­29). This makes the mean more amenable to particular features of certain situations rather than an abstract and detached view of the mean.

As Susan Meyer has argued, Aristotle does not endorse a view of ‘the mean’ ​ tout court​ , but that “the mean is always ‘relative to’ a goal” (Meyer, 2008: 68). The mean of an action or feeling is determined by the salient features of the situation. The right reason, amount, end, and 77

so forth are discernible through ​ practical wisdom and not through abstract formal principles.

This implies that “in speaking of the mean relative to us Aristotle wishes to direct us away from an arithmetical mean towards a proportionate one” (Leighton, 1995: 27). The mean of an action or feeling is the mean relative to the situation in which the agent finds themselves. J.O. Urmson spells this out by using the example of getting moderately angry at someone who is trivially rude to him and at someone who tortures his wife (Urmson, 1973: 225). Being moderately angry in either situation would not be an appropriate response. What counts as excessive or deficient amounts of anger is relative to the situation. This shows how Aristotle’s DM does not entail the

77

By ‘formal principles’ I mean principles that are sufficiently abstract such that they are not able to grasp the particularities of every possible scenario or, as Urmson put it, “merely part of a Kant­like architectonic” (Urmson, 1973: 223).

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41 absurd conclusion that the virtuous person is emotionally monotone across all situations which confront them. Different situations require different emotional responses in different proportions.

This shows how a wide range of emotions is possible for the virtuous person due to the variety of situations which they are confronted with. However, the status of the DS in an Aristotelian framework is still ambiguous. This is because the DS is not a direct response to a situation, but a creative and spontaneous ‘burst’ of natural and artistic energies which may or may not be warranted. This leaves us with the difficulty that what the good life ​ as a whole ​ demands of us and what ​ particular situations ​ demand of us can conflict. That is to say that a DS may never be warranted by a particular situation but it is still necessary for the good life as a whole. In the next section, I will delve into the distinction between the demands of the good life and the demands of a particular situation in more detail to find room for the DS within Aristotle’s framework.

2.2: The Means of Situations and the Good Life

A part of understanding the relationship between the good life and the DM involves clarifying what is meant by a ‘situation.’ Not every relevant feature of the situation is in its immediate features. Long­term considerations which are not directly salient to the particular situation must still be deliberated. For example, perhaps I tell a joke which is offensive to those who hear it. While the ​ immediate ​ situation may result in this form of excess being a vice, the fact that the joke was offensive may have some long term value. Perhaps I learn more about my company my gauging their reaction; perhaps the offensiveness of the joke provokes future introspections of various kinds, and so forth. The joke may be unwarranted when considering only the immediate circumstances, but its long term effects may be such that they are warranted.

In order to understand what it is for something to be valuable in the long term, an investigation into the role of the good life in Aristotle’s DM must be given.

Urmson and Meyer both interpret the DM to include a disposition to act too ​ often ​ or less often than one should. Meyer depicts the mean as not just a mean with regards to particular actions and emotions but about “be[ing] disposed to engage in feelings and actions…more often

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42 or less often than one should” (Meyer, 2008: 66). Urmson, in a similar fashion, distinguishes between a doctrine of moderation and the DM. He spells this out with the following example:

Let us suppose that I were to hold that one should rarely drink alcohol, but that when one did one should make a real night of it, while you held that a regular daily glass of wine was in order but one should never take much. Presumably your view is more in line with the doctrine of moderation than mine (Urmson, 1973: 225­6).

The doctrine of moderation is what Williams fears; a doctrine which demands a depressingly conservative approach to life. The DM, on the other hand, is used as a way to describe the 78

character of the virtuous person. The virtuous person is in a state of excellence which Aristotle characterizes as a ‘settled state’ (​ hexis​ ) since their ​ disposition ​ is to act virtuously in accord with the mean. The virtuous person is thus able to understand ‘the mean’ in a broader sense. This interpretation allows for more wiggle room since long term consequences can be accounted for by broadening the notion of a ‘situation.’ This means that if an action or emotion contributes to the good life as a whole, then it can be considered virtuous. This demonstrates the role of the good life when discerning the mean construed in the broader sense. In order to properly understand how to act in particular situations and in general, one must be considerate of the good life and how the particular situations contribute (or don’t contribute) to the good life.

While this depiction of the DM is more flexible than if it were understood as purely dependent of the immediate situation, the DS discussed in section 1 still does not have a robust place in an Aristotelian conception of the mean and the good life. The final section of this paper will be devoted to reconciling the deeper features of the DS with Aristotle’s framework.

3. The Dionysian and the Good Life

As I have already discussed, the DS is not a purely rational or chosen phenomenon.

Rather, it is physiological and the suppression of it results in the inhibition of an individual’s self­understanding, which is of significant importance for one’s ability to flourish. In this sense, the DS is not the kind of phenomenon that follows from ‘the right reason’ in a straightforward Urmson argues more deeply that the doctrine of the mean can be used as a ​ differentia ​ between the six states of character one can have on his reading of Aristotle. I will not elaborate on this project any further in this paper.

78

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43 79

sense. For this reason, making room for the DS is a somewhat awkward fit. However, as I will argue in this section, this conception of the DM allows for enough room for the DS so that Nietzsche’s insights can be retained without abandoning Aristotle’s larger project.

3.1: The Dionysian Spirit and ‘the Right Reason’

Aristotle understands the virtues as means that are deliberately chosen and acted upon. If an emotion or action comes about by some accident, then it does not count as virtuous. This deliberation involves practical wisdom which, among other things, requires a contemplation of the good life. The DS, since it is described as a natural impulse, seems incidental to the deliberative process. However, a closer look at how Nietzsche conceives of the Dionysian and why he values it shows that the nuances of this view make the story more complicated. As such, a re­examination of the conceptual resources provided in sections 1 and 2 will show how a synthesis of the DS and Aristotle’s process of deliberation is possible.

The DS is not purely rational, but it is not purely irrational either. The DS is a way of coming to understand the self and the world since bodily feelings and emotions are evaluations of the world. As Erika Kerruish argues, Nietzsche “assigns a vital role to emotions in his account of the formation of the self through the interpretation of bodily sensations…[a]s a consequence, he neither advocates a suppression of emotions nor a blind following of them” (Kerruish, 2009: 80

1). While the DS may not be chosen or deliberative, it can be ​ harnessed ​ and used productively which requires a deliberate and reasoned process of willing. The reason why the DS is considered excessive is because it isn’t properly responding to the rationally salient features of the situation; the reason the ​ excess itself ​ is valuable is because its expression allows the agent to 79

This is also due, in part, to the large differences between Nietzsche and Aristotle’s conceptions of human nature (i.e. the will to power and the rational animal respectively). I will not address this larger discussion in this paper.

Even if you don’t address the details of the different conceptions, it would be good to state in­text why the fact that their conceptions of human nature are different does not prevent us from comparing, and combining, their own conceptions.

80 This characterization is a bit simplistic. The Dionysian spirit can be cultivated and transformed throughout life and is ‘chosen’ in this sense. This is similar to Aristotle’s process of habituation though this process is less of a ‘rational’ one and more artistic. However, the instinctual DS that appears ​ in the moment ​ is not chosen; it is simply a physiological process which is felt by the agent.

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44 81

better know herself. This shows that even though the DS is not caused by any particular reason, reason is still active in it, albeit in an opaque and fuzzy manner.

This process of coming to know oneself and the world is not exactly the same as Aristotle’s process of habituation, but it is not conceptually excluded from Aristotle’s picture either. While the DS is not excessive in accordance with the ‘right reason’ in a strict sense, there is still a right person, place and time in how it is harnessed and expressed. This is shown in Nietzsche’s distinction between the Dionysian Greek and the Dionysian barbarian. The former was a participant in Greek festivals where “the most savage natural instincts were unleashed 82

[yet] the Greeks were apparently perfectly insulated and guarded against the feverish excitements of those festivals” (ibid) while the latter was a blind following of one’s inner passions. The DS understood in terms of the Dionysian Greek (the spirit Nietzsche values) is more closely aligned with Aristotle’s DM than the Dionysian barbarian. While the DS may not be consciously deliberated on, this does not entail that it is to become rampant or be constantly 83

active. It is harnessed for the purposes of pursuing one’s greater health and flourishing. Since Aristotle is more charitably interpreted as conceiving of the mean of actions and feelings in terms of the good life, the DS can thus be accommodated. While the DS may not directly be in accord with the ‘right reason’, it can still be valuable within an Aristotelian framework. The excess of the DS can be included in the good life even though it is not demanded by any particular situation.

Thus far, I have shown how the DS can be made sense of within an Aristotelian framework (even if not perfectly). However, more needs to be said about how Nietzsche’s views on health are constructive within Aristotle’s conception of the good life before this fit can be persuasive. In this next section, I will demonstrate that Nietzsche’s conception of health and its role in flourishing is sufficiently similar to Aristotle’s views and thus rendering them compatible with each other.

81

This means that some degree of rational reflection on the excess of the DS is necessary to have an understanding of one’s self.

82 Nietzsche’s metaphor of a ‘fever’ here refers back to his views on health and sickness. Since the Dionysian spirit is productive for health, the insulation of the Greeks against ‘feverish excitements’ demonstrated their proper harnessing of the Dionysian spirit.

83 Nietzsche’s discussion of Greek festivals suggests that there is a best time and place for the expression of the Dionysian spirit. However, the Dionysian spirit is not exclusively relegated to being expressed in festivals.

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45 3.2 The Good Life and Nietzschean Health

Aristotle includes health as an essential feature of the good life. Health is an external 84

good and “happiness evidently needs external goods to be added…since we cannot, or cannot easily, do fine action if we lack the resources” (1099a 30­32). Furthermore, health is “needed as [an] antecedently existing condition that make[s] possible the full exercise of the happy man's virtuous qualities of mind and character” (Cooper, 1985: 189). While Aristotle and Nietzsche’s 85

understanding of what constitutes health differ in certain ways, they both understand health as being necessary for human flourishing. Furthermore, both Aristotle and Nietzsche understand the importance of pleasure and the emotions and the role they play in constituting a healthy person.

The good life, for Aristotle, ​ requires ​ pleasure and proportionate emotions and this presupposes a certain standard of health. Unlike the Stoics, Aristotle argues that those who maintain that “we are happy when we are broken on the wheel, or fall into terrible misfortunes, provided that we are good… are talking nonsense” (1153b 19­21). Aristotle does not view emotions or pleasure as something that must be repressed, ignored, or downplayed (insofar as they are proportionate to the mean). Conversely, Aristotle makes them prominent features of the good life and a life without them would be incomplete. Because ​ eudemonia ​ requires completeness of this sort, a healthy set of emotions and pleasures are necessary to flourish.

As previously discussed, Nietzsche views a healthy individual as one who can fill their lives with joy and colour. This is to say that one takes pleasure in the world that one lives in and 86

this is necessary for one to flourish. Nietzsche criticizes the Stoics on similar grounds as Aristotle; he argues that “the good man is…the passionate man who is master of his passions [which] distinguishes Nietzsche from the Stoic” (Kaufmann, 2013: 280). The passions, properly

84

John Cooper distinguishes between a narrow and a broad sense of what count as external goods and health belongs to the broad sense (Cooper, 1985: 177).

85 For example, Nietzsche understands health and flourishing in ​ both ​ physiological terms and existential terms. This is seen in his characterization of people who follow slave morality as suffering from a kind of sickness. While Aristotle would not agree that one is ‘sick’ because they did not have a rich emotional life, he would agree that insofar as such an emotional life helps one reason (which Nietzsche believes it does) it is necessary for the good life. Furthermore, ​ contra ​ the Stoics, Aristotle and Nietzsche both recognize how physiological health is essential for the good life.

86 This theme is also active in Nietzsche’s discussion of ​ amor fati ​ in which one learns to love the world they inhabit (see Anthony Kronman (1995) for a further discussion of this).

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46 harnessed, are necessary for someone to flourish. The repression of the passions and the DS leads to unhappiness and these are grounds for which the DS must be harnessed and not suppressed. This ties together both views of health. A healthy person takes pleasure in their actions and life and this pleasure is of the body. If the body is not healthy, then one cannot flourish on either account of the good life. While the details of Aristotle and Nietzsche’s views on health and how to attain it forbid a complete amalgamation of their accounts, the similarities between their views is sufficient for allowing room for a DS within an Aristotelian framework.

4. Concluding Remarks

Those who believe that Aristotle’s ethics are bereft of existential vibrancy and colour, then, have nothing to fear. Despite the contrast in styles, Nietzsche’s analysis of the Dionysian spirit can be made compatible with the doctrine of the mean. Aristotle’s approach, while heavily rational in one sense allows room for the emotional and spiritual experimentation necessary for human development. While Aristotle and Nietzsche are not total allies, aspects of each of their views can be assimilated into a plausible and potentially fruitful ethical framework.

Works Cited

Aristotle. (1999). ​ Nicomachean Ethics translated by Terrence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

Bayne, T. & Fernandez, J. (2009) ​ Delusion and Self Deception: Affective and Motivational Influences on Belief Formation​ . New York: Psychology Press.

Cooper, John. (1985). “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune.” ​ The Philosophical Review​ , 94: 174­196.

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47 Daigle, Christine (2006). “Nietzsche: Virtue Ethics …Virtue Politics?” ​ Journal of Nietzsche Studies​ , 32: 1­21.

Kerruish, Erika. (2009). “Interpreting Feeling: Nietzsche on the Emotions and the Self” ​ Minerva​ , 13: 1­27.

Kaufmann, Walter. (2013). ​ Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist​ . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kronmann, Anthony. (1995). “Amor Fati (The Love of Fate).” ​ The University of Toronto Law Journal​ , 45: 163­178.

Leighton, Stephen. (1995). “The Mean Relative to Us”, ​ Apeiron​ , 25: 67­78.

Meyer, Susan. (2008). ​ Ancient Ethics: A Critical Introduction​ . New York: Routledge.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. (2000). “The Birth of Tragedy” in ​ Basic ​ Writings of Nietzsche​ . New York: Random House.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1967). ​ The​ ​ Case of Wagner​ . New York: Vintage Press.

Urmson, J.O. (1973). “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean”, ​ American Philosophical Quarterly​ , 10: 223­230.

Williams, Bernard. (1985). ​ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy​ . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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48

Is Mele’s Luck Problem Successful Against Libertarianism?

Ricky Shum

Abstract: ​ The Libertarian theory of free will argues that if an agent were to be held morally responsible for a choice, he must have been able to choose otherwise in an absolute sense. In other words, he could have definitely produced a different action if he had so willed. However, the Luck Problem contends that there is no possibility of positing some fact about the agent as the explanation for why he chose choice X over choice Y, because he could have just as well chosen choice Y over choice X. Hence, this means that the choice chosen was more a matter of luck than a “responsibly­made” decision for which the agent could and should be held accountable. Many contemporary philosophers take this Luck Problem to argue that libertarianism is false. More specifically, according to Alfred Mele, the so­called Luck Problem arises for libertarians because libertarianism requires that some of the links in the causal histories of free and responsible actions be indeterministic; hence, if this view is true, then for any world in which some agent performs a free action at a certain time, there will be another possible world with the exact same past and laws of nature up to that precise time in which the agent does something different – namely, not the same action. However, what could possibly account for the difference between these worlds? Mele suggests that the answer is “nothing,” then he goes on to argue that the difference is just a matter of luck, and such luck precludes freedom and moral responsibility. In this paper, the author will argue against Mele’s formulation of the Luck Problem which targets libertarianism. Furthermore, the author will provide a better conception of “luck” that could help to make the argument more successful.

The traditional libertarian theory of free will argues that if an agent is morally responsible for a choice, he must have been able to choose otherwise in an absolute sense; a different choice could have been chosen and enacted freely if he had so willed. In other words, he could have definitely produced a different action if he had so willed. However, the Luck Problem contends that there is no possibility of positing some fact about the agent as the explanation for why he chose choice X over choice Y, because he could just as well have chosen choice Y over choice X. Hence, this means that the choice was more a matter of luck than a responsibly­made decision for which the agent could and should be held accountable. Many contemporary philosophers take this Luck Problem to be good evidence that libertarianism is false. In this paper, I am going to argue against the concept of “cross­world differences” built­in as the definition of “luck” in Alfred Mele’s version of the Luck Problem aimed at libertarians. I am also going to offer a more

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49 plausible definition of “luck” that will strengthen the formulation of the problem, thus, ​ if ascriptions of luck are relativistic, then Mele's argument is undermined.

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According to Mele, the so­called Luck Problem arises for libertarians because libertarianism requires that some of the links in the causal history of free and responsible actions be indeterministic. In his formulation of the problem, he supposes that everything, up to the moment the agent makes a decision, is negligible in explaining the problem. The past, prior to whichever choice an agent makes, is irrelevant since all things would be the same up to that point in time: In my formulation of the worry about luck, everything that is explanatorily relevant to, for example, an agent’s exercising his agent­causal power at t in deciding to ​ A is presupposed; for the entire history of the world up to ​ t and the world’s laws of nature are presupposed. (And why does my formulation presuppose all that?

Because conventional libertarians hold that being a free agent entails performing basically free actions and, at least, that an agent performs a basically free action ​ A at ​ t only if in a possible world with the same past until ​ t and the same laws of nature he does not ​ A​ at ​ t​ ). (Mele 2006, 73)

In addition, Mele denies the claim that “the agent’s ​ A​ ­ing" is just a matter of luck because he recognizes that indeterminism does not imply randomness. Rather, what is actually simply a matter of luck is “the central difference at ​ t between the actual world, in which the agent [does] A​ …then, and worlds with the same past and laws in which he does not ​ A then” (Mele 2007, 197).

In short, he is saying that the action itself is not a matter of luck; rather, if an action is undetermined, then for any world in which some agent performs a free action at a certain time, there will be another possible world with the exact same past and laws of nature up to that precise time in which the agent does something different. This is where the concept of “cross­world differences” comes in. Since there is supposedly at least one possible world in which the agent does something “different,” one could make a comparison between the two worlds, the actual one and the possible one. Since all things are held to be consistent in the past until the point in time at which an action is chosen and performed, what could possibly account for the difference between the outcomes in these worlds? If the answer is “nothing,” Mele then 87

It is worth noting that “luck” here, within the free will debate, does not exactly align with that of the “moral luck” debate. There are people who claim that luck need not undermine responsibility in the former debate, whereas the latter debates whether or not luck can be legitimately factored into ascriptions of moral responsibility. Simply put, the "moral luck" argument has to do with whether an agent's moral responsibility could be dismissed because her misconduct seems to be outside of her direct control. The "Luck Problem" for libertarians here debates whether an agent could be held morally accountable for her decisions at all.

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50 goes on to suggest that the difference is just a matter of luck, and such luck precludes freedom 88

and moral responsibility. However, do these hypothetical “possible worlds” really render undetermined decisions“matters of luck” and thereby call moral responsibility into question?

The problem with “luck,” according to Mele, is that it undermines “control.” He writes, Agent’s control is the yardstick by which the bearing of luck on their freedom and moral responsibility is measured. When luck (good or bad) is problematic, that is because it seems significantly to impede agent’s control over themselves or to highlight important gaps or shortcomings in such control. It may seem that to the extent that it is causally open whether or not, for example, an agent intends in accordance with his considered judgment about what it is best to do, he lacks some control over what he intends, and it may be claimed that a positive deterministic connection between considered best judgment and intention would be more conducive to freedom and moral responsibility. (Mele 2006, 7)

For the sake of clear terminology, I will define “control” as the degree to which an agent has the ability to affect, alter, or interfere with a decision. Furthermore, “agential control” will be defined as “the ability of an agent to bring about a decision on his own.” Agential control is the foundation of libertarianism since the Libertarian theory of free will holds that an agent is able to choose any choice he wants in order to be held morally accountable; hence, the Luck Problem challenges this ability to a huge degree.

The formulation of Mele’s version of the Luck Problem appears to be problematic at a first glance. It seems like “luck” here is defined as the disparity between the actual world and the many other possible worlds regarding the agent making a choice and the many alternative choices, respectively. But why don’t we only take reality into consideration as the agent in this world genuinely exercises his control in bringing about his desired choice? Why do we want to make assessments to the other possible worlds in which different choices are chosen and forcefully name such differences as inexplicable “luck?” The central concept of luck and the unclear discussion of agential control posed by Mele are questioned by Neal Tognazzini: For one thing, Mele always applies the concept to ​ cross­world differences. ​ But this usage rather startlingly liberates the term ‘luck’ from any of the intuitive 88

There are two main versions of the “possible worlds” account: possibilist realism and actual representationism. A possibilist realist says that the alternative possible worlds are as real as ours. For example, philosopher David Lewis holds that these “possible worlds” really do exist and are out there. An actualist representationist says that all a “possible world” is is just a mutually consistent set of propositions about a world; it is a representation that we can make in the actual world; it is a “possibility.” It turns out that neither of these views will add to the plausibility of the formulation of Mele’s Luck Problem.

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51 connotations it had to begin with: intuitively, ​ events ​ are the sorts of things that can be matters of luck. And if I find out that a particular action is just a matter of luck, then I will naturally worry about whether the agent exercised the sort of control necessary for freedom and moral responsibility. But when I’m told that ​ cross­world differences ​ are the candidates for being matters of luck, the connection to worries about freedom and moral responsibility is no longer evident. For instance, why think that lucky cross­world differences diminish agential control? Mele never quite nails down the concept and, as a result, one is never sure whether one is being persuaded by Mele, or, instead, by one’s own pretheoretical intuitions. A more explicit discussion of the concept would have been a great help. (Tognazzini, 2)

Tognazzini is saying that if an action is a matter of luck, then perhaps the agent was not given the freedom to exercise his ability to control and thereby perform an action of his very own willing.

This lack of freedom is therefore problematic when bringing moral responsibility into the picture. However, even if we grant the “lucky cross­world differences” to be existent, that still would not diminish the agential control in the willing of a free choice into reality. In addition, “cross­worlds” are problematic when making moral assessments. If duplicates of reality up to the time of the action, the so­called “possible worlds,” mirror every possible action other than the one the agent actually performs in the real world, and if one were to compare the differences, analyze the disparity in a serious manner, and conclude that the inexplicable dissimilarities result in the preclusion of moral responsibility, then the agent would be a morally “good and bad” person at all times (or just not a moral agent at all), which sounds nonsensical. In cases where the agent is confronting a morally significant choice, he is always neutral because his doing the good 89

in this world entails his doing the bad in the alternative world, and vice versa ​ . In a possibilist realist’s view, it is then the evaluation of one’s many choices across the possible worlds (the evaluation of the ​ cross­world ​ differences) that makes every agent to always be neutral, since all of these assessments will produce a single evaluation of the agent’s possible choices and

89

An objection might be made here regarding the “identity” of the agent when talking about alternative worlds. For instance, there is the agent, and then a “counter­part” of the agent in the alternative world. One could insist that they are not truly the same person. However, if this is true, then comparing the differences about the decision chosen across the worlds and calling it luck would not even make sense, since that would be like “comparing apples with oranges,” metaphorically. So, an assumption needs to be made about Mele’s formulation of the problem such that on top of holding everything about the past to be the same up to the point in time in which a choice is chosen freely, he also needs to take the identities of the cross­world people to be, in fact, the same person. Namely, the person in reality making decision “X” and the counter­part making decision “not X” are “one” agent that is ontologically equivalent. Otherwise, it would sound absurd to compare two different agents’ actions and pronounce the differences as luck.

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52 character. This sounds absurd. If everyone is a morally good and a morally bad person due to the consideration of all the possible actions one could choose, then moral judgments will be utterly incoherent. It seems like this is the case if it is precisely the difference between the actual world and the many other possible worlds that constitutes a choice’s being “a matter of luck”, and then one might as well morally assess the character of the agent in all of the available possible worlds when taking these worlds into consideration.

In an actualist representationist’s view, a possible world is a representation of a world that is consistent with reality. However, being a possibility implies a hypothetical world that is distinguishable from reality. Hence, in no way should it alter moral judgment in the actual world and undermine moral responsibility. Consider the following: people often think back and imagine what they could have done differently in the past. First, this thought process is only possible now that the situation in mind is in the past. This assessment of the past only makes sense because the action in question had been chosen and was enacted. The reassessment might be due to regret or even just curiosity, but it does not in any way alter the appropriate legal and moral judgment. For example, Peter, being a choleric person, is regretting hitting Matt, and concurrently, Matt is also curious as to how the whole scenario would have ensued if he hadn't told a lie in the first place. With a compunctious feeling, Peter reassesses his hitting Matt, which placed him in a great deal of trouble and Matt in a great deal of pain. He acknowledges that he should not have initiated violence, which only led to more problems. He realizes that he should have resolved their issues more civilly and peacefully. Nevertheless, this reevaluation in hindsight certainly does not change the fact that Peter brought about a violent and reprehensible action, that is, throwing a punch, and he is in no way excused of his moral responsibility even though he has now come to enlightenment. The same goes for Matt when he is also thinking retrospectively: he lied, and that act is something he has undoubtedly committed.

Now, let’s compare the illustration with Mele’s formulation of the Luck Problem in the perspective of an actualist representationist. While the illustration is not aimed at relating to determinism in any way, it gives us a glimpse of how an agent's very personal choice will lead to a certain moral assessment (in this case, an undesirable one), how the agent realizes he could have chosen and acted differently, and that even deferring to those alternatives will not

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53 undermine the moral responsibility in the present moment. First, regret requires the event to be of the past. Similarly, in order to say that an agent’s free choice is due to luck, it is also required that the decision has already been made. Next, when one regrets, it implies the agent acknowledges that there were other possibilities in which he could have done otherwise, or that the situation could have turned out differently if he would have chosen an alternative action. In parallel, Mele’s luck couldn’t arise unless there is a chance of the agent performing “not X” in a possible world where the agent really commits action “X” in the real world. Lastly, when one regrets and considers the alternative actions that could have been chosen, he is still subject to moral judgment. He is certainly not immune to moral responsibility simply because he acknowledges that the assessment of his character could have turned out differently had he considered other possible actions at the time of the incident. Analogously, in order for Mele to talk about “cross­world differences,” there has to exist at least one alternative that an agent could have chosen freely in order to make a comparison. However, merely considering all of these other possibilities cannot change the fact that the agent had made a choice in the actual world.

Just as regret cannot change the consequences of one’s action, despite the existence of cross­world differences, an agent is still subject to moral assessment given his chosen action in the actual world. When one makes a reassessment of a situation where one would have done differently, and when one considers all the possible worlds other than that of reality, in no way is the reevaluation going to liberate one from responsibility in the present real world. Perhaps reassessing one’s actions through a guilty conscience could benefit an agent’s temper or personality in the future, and the agent may be able to utilize this experience to guide his future actions. However, the reassessment does not lead to an absolution. Moreover, if luck is defined as the difference between the actual world and all the possible worlds of the other alternatives in which the agent could perform, implying a consideration of all the possibilities and a comparison of those with that of actuality, this interpretation does not lead to a cogent argument for the randomness of an agent making a free choice deliberately, and thereby dismissing moral responsibility. As we cannot excuse agents from moral judgment even when they regret what they have done in the past, compared to all the other alternatives in which they could have done differently, in the same light, the so­called cross world differences cannot provide an escape

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54 route for "the free choice" an agent makes in reality from the appropriate moral assessment because the decision can only be evaluated “retrospectively.” Furthermore, this is the only way that Mele can effectively make his case of "possible worlds." Thus, despite the fact that Mele does not explicitly spell out whether he is using “possible worlds” in the possibilist realist view or the actualist representationist view, as long as he relies on the assessment of decision­making based on alternative possible worlds and insists such differences to be based on luck, then it shall not matter which of the two views he is holding. In either case,, the Luck Problem posed by Mele is not persuasive.

Mele’s vague definition of luck and the natural tendency for one to search for a better understanding of luck is summarized by Laura Ekstrom: One concern with the book is that Mele gives insufficient attention to the notion of luck itself. Mele anticipates the critique and calls it “a common defensive tactic” to “question the meaning of a troublesome objection’s key terms.” But surely it is reasonable to seek an understanding of what it is for a ​ cross­world difference, rather than an event, to be a matter of luck. If we apply Duncan Pritchard’s modal account to an indeterministic agent’s formation of preference, or her decision to act, or her overt act, then to call any one of these a lucky event is in part just to make precise what a libertarian means in saying that the preference or decision or act could have been otherwise. Here is a harmless sense of luck, not one that is obviously pejorative or problematic. At one point, Mele suggests that a cross­world difference­ and perhaps, by implication, any fact or state of affairs– is a matter of luck if nothing accounts for it. But we need a different understanding than this to make sense of Mele’s talk of “remote deterministic luck” in the debate over compatibilism, since on determinism, one can in theory give a full account of one’s circumstances, constitution, thoughts, and actions; further, in theory there may be an account for the actual world’s being the way it is rather than its being a different way. (Ekstrom, 73)

In a more recent article, it seems like Mele is aware of the issue raised by "luck" in his problem of present luck. He changed the word "luck" to "continuation" and hence the problem is now presented as "the continuation problem." He explains: The problem is very similar to what I elsewhere called the problem of present luck, but it is presented here in such a way to not raise worries about the meaning of "luck" and the nature of contrastive explanation, worries that I take to be largely irrelevant to the problem of present luck for typical libertarians. (Mele 2013, 255)

Mele changes the labeling from "luck" to "continuation" because many critics ponder about the meaning and the nature of "luck." Moreover, libertarians might indeed think about possible Gnosis 14.1 | 2015

55 worlds allowing for different continuations but only based on an agent's actual choice as opposed to possible choices that are not actualized. At any rate, the change in words does not create a substantial difference in Mele's point, as different continuations need not necessarily undermine control and responsibility for libertarians. In fact, suppose Mele had not used the ordinary word "luck" but had just cited "factor X" as the thing that destroys responsibility and that libertarians cannot avoid. Will this make for a more convincing argument? The answer is no. This suggestion of renaming the "luck" issue as a "factor X" issue would be wrong since the whole problem trades on the thought that luck undermines control and responsibility. In other words, Mele could not just choose a different name because he needs to make the case that everyone ought to see that "factor X" undermines control and responsibility. In order to have "factor X" be a problem for libertarians, "factor X" has to stand for something that undermines control. Presumably, luck does just that, but if Mele instead calls it "factor X," then libertarians could argue that "factor X" is not in conflict with control and responsibility. One must be able to show that being able to do otherwise introduces something of luck or of chance. However, that would ultimately bring us back to the problem that "luck" poses.

So, which conception of luck could help make the Luck Problem successful? First, “luck” if understood as “chance” in the mathematical sense, namely, probability, might still be unsatisfying when dealing with decision­making. Probability proposes a statistical system and hence does not offer a complete explanation. It implies only that at any particular juncture, it is possible that any one of a finite number of outcomes in the sample space (the set of all possible outcomes) could occur. Each possible outcome would be associated with its own probability of happening. If that particular event or choice were to be repeated many times within the same scenario, ceteris paribus​ , we could predict that the frequency of each decision would be in proportion to its probability. However, in reality, there is no repetition – the moment calling for a free choice or a decision occurs only once. This merely chancy definition of luck says absolutely nothing about how the particular choice is made on that particular occasion. This is when agential control comes in – it is due to the agent’s will that the selected choice comes about, and the choice is made freely and entirely by the agent. Within the same context of how luck is defined, in the eyes of a libertarian, we could imagine listing all the possible worlds where the

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56 agent is to choose each choice available to her. Let us suppose that all those possibilities are equally likely at the moment of the decision. Even if one of the many possibilities then occurs by luck or by chance, a proponent of libertarianism could argue that there is still a gap in the explanation concerning who the ultimate decision­maker is – who actualized the action?

Intuitively, luck in this context could not be a being or a force that would predetermine and bring 90

about an occurrence to the agent in the libertarian view of a nondeterministic world. Hence, just as before, the answer would be the agent’s ability to make a free choice – her willing actualized and led to the desired choice, but not by an inexplicable propensity of probability that brought about the choice.

On the other hand, if luck is defined as “events beyond an agent’s control in the perspective of the agent” then, universal truths aside, luck would always exist in a relativistic nature (relative to the agent). In other words, whether an individual is a hard determinist, a soft determinist, or a libertarian, as long as there are questions or uncertainties, ­­ therefore predictions to be made about unexpected events that could possibly occur in the future ­­ then the concept of luck is a problem. Even in a theistic world, there remain uncertainties about how the future might look. Statements like “good luck” and “God bless you” could have very similar meanings in this setting. Hence, the relativistic conception of luck (actual luck or the appearance of luck to the human beings) is still very much alive even in this context.

The proceeding examples will be used to demonstrate more concretely the relativistic nature of luck. Beware that luck being relative is not something Mele had expressed in his argument, and hence the conception of luck discussed as follows goes beyond the formulation of "Mele's Luck Problem."

First, in economics, “game theory” studies the strategic behaviors and interactions among many different firms or individuals. In a simple two­player game, assuming each player knows 90

In many Asian cultures, the idea of luck is quite different than the perception of “lady­luck” of the Western world (though there are certainly some who also believe luck to be related to a supernatural god of some sort). For example, in the Chinese tradition, most think of luck to be a force that is supernaturally attached to a person’s aura at all times. Furthermore, human actions could affect and alter luck in various degrees. For instance, they believe that by cursing or being cursed at, negative emotions and pessimistic feelings, or even superstitions such as inappropriate or dark (black) clothing could interfere with a person’s aura, thereby changing the luck associated with it.

Consequently, this leads to a negative energy that brings about bad luck which results in undesired and unpleasant occurrences. Similarly, other superstitious acts can also conjure up good luck to follow upon one’s aura. A further discussion of this personal and superstitious form of luck in general is beyond the scope of this paper.

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57 her own payoffs from playing every strategy available (the free choices) to herself, the player (an agent) could observe her opponent’s actions from the past to form probabilistic beliefs on what that opponent might do in the next period (the future round) and thereby form an expectation and produce a best­response in reaction to that prediction. The player might even “update” her beliefs by using a mathematical formula known as “Bayes’ Rule,” which calculates the current probability of an event given prior probabilities of actualized actions dealing with the same event. This mathematical formula is used in order to best counteract whatever initial but imprecise probabilistic expectation is made about the opponent, in order to maximize her very own chance in reaching the best possible outcome in her favor. However, a probabilistic perspective regarding the opponent’s strategic behavior only applies in the eyes of the beholder.

Similarly, the opponent’s decisions might also be uncertain at the beginning of the game just like the aforementioned player. So, he also calculates the payoffs corresponding to his available strategies given his very own expectation on the opposing player, based on the past actions that the other player has taken previously in the game. It’s important to note that they are both pursuing a common goal while using the same methodology since the start of the game: to maximize one’s own payoff and to do so by rationally utilizing the observations made in the past. In the end, upon the moment of the decision­making process, it is not, at that exact point in time, a probabilistic decision or a chance event anymore – it has been actualized and has become certain. Neither player is going to regard the other’s exercising his or her free choice as being based upon luck. At most, a player might say he is unlucky that his opponent chose freely a strategy associated with a lower probability according to his expectation, while he indeed tried his best to predict and counteract, but has resulted in failure. In sum, “luck” is relative to the individual's perception of the outcome associated with his or her free choice, though the actualization of the decision in and of itself is probably never seen as being lucky or unlucky. It almost never makes sense to consider an intentional action a matter of chance, as long as the agent was fully capable in bringing the act about upon his or her own free will; that is, agential control was exercised. Though the consequences related with the choice, intended or unintended, are typically the subject of such assessment.

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58 Let’s consider one more example. Most card games played in a casino would be a good illustration to demonstrate the relativistic nature of luck. For instance, consider the game of Black Jack. A player is given two cards to start the game and has the right to choose freely if she wants additional cards to be dealt toward her hand given a revealed card and one face down card of the dealer. Her objective is to reach the sum of 21, or below, so long as her total is greater than that of the dealer. Assume the casino designates the use of six decks of cards. One can certainly calculate the probability of winning and losing throughout the whole game, perhaps by a skill called card counting. A player is probably going to only play at a particular juncture of the game.

Subjectively speaking, when things become undesirable and the player loses six consecutive hands, she is going to complain that she is subject to bad luck. Objectively speaking, the deck has already been shuffled and cards that are dealt seem to be set in stone from the beginning of the game, given that the rules and the payoffs are robust such that the house is merely relying on a natural advantage already built into the rules. This is another representation of how luck, 91

thought of as undermining the agent’s control, is relative to the individual.

In conclusion, when luck is considered with a relativistic nature, then f​ rom the perspective of the outsider it might seem that Mele's Luck Problem is successful against the libertarian​ . In other words, from an outsider’s point of view, an agent’s making of a decision seems to be due to luck, while the agent is really using a personal agential control that is unique to the individual in the making of a decision and thereby actualizing a choice freely. This form of luck is a problem for control only from the perspective of other people but not from that of the agent himself. The agent still possesses total control. This version of luck can be applied to not just libertarians but determinists as well. Perhaps, in the determinist’s point of view, it is when an agent truly pursues choice X, but due to a mysterious external force he instead makes choice Y,

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Mele also discusses objective probabilities (Mele 2013, 242). However, even if he proposes probabilities, the problem remains to depend on relativistic perspectives. In other words, just because there might be, or granted if there are indeed objective probabilities regarding one's choice, say a 80% tendency to not steal and a 20% tendency to steal, in the agent's perspective, only one choice is to be realized. Perhaps from an outsider's point of view, say, a "probability scientist," he or she might suspend judgment on the agent's character assessment and debate about the likelihood of the actualized action versus other possible ones, and thus also debate whether or not that realized action truly reflected the agent's character. But in the eyes of the agent himself, the actualized action had occurred in reality and that's exactly where the agent's judgment about his very own faultiness in his morality and character begins. The agent is not going to buy into the alleged objective probabilities within himself, even if they exist, in saying that "I am really 80% a good person and 20% a bad person," which doesn't sound convincing anyway.

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59 and is thus considered “unlucky.” Similarly, it is when an agent chooses choice X and with little time and effort, but still achieves the actualization of choice X, the occurrence is then looked upon as being “lucky.”

Works Cited

Ekstrom, Laura W. ​ Free Will and Luck By: Mele, Alfred R. Reviewed by: Ekstrom, Laura W.

Philosophical Books, 49(1), 71­73, 3 p. Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 2008.

Mele, Alfred R. ​ Free Will and Luck.​ New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Free Will and Luck.​ Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, 10:2, 195­210. July 2007.

Moral Responsibility and the Continuation Problem. ​ Philosophical Studies 162, 237­255. 2013.

Tognazzini, Neal A. ​ Free Will and Luck By: Mele, Alfred R. Reviewed by: Tognazzini, Neal A. Philosophical Review, 118(2), 259­261, 3 p. Oxford: Oxford University Press, April 2009.

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60

Lucretius on the Finality of Death: The Problem of Self­Recollection Matthew Small

A good deal of the literature on Lucretius’ discussion of death has tended to dwell, ahistorically, upon the soundness of his symmetry argument, with most of the controversy centering around the question of whether pre­vital and post­mortem states of nonexistence are really symmetrical. I recommend taking a more historical approach by focusing on the consistency of Lucretius’ argument that death is permanent. In his defense of this claim, Lucretius entertains hypothetical scenarios wherein the soul is able to persist and continue perceiving in the absence of the body, and wherein the entire aggregate of the body and the soul might be restored and resume perceiving after death. In both cases, he denies that the perceiving being in question would be the same person who existed prior to the dissociation of the body and the soul. From Lucretius’ justification of this claim, we can derive two theses concerning the relation between personal­identity and the union of the body and the soul. The weaker thesis treats self­recollection as a criterion for personal­identity. The stronger thesis treats the continuity of self­recollection as a criterion for personal­identity. I will argue that, whereas the weaker criterion is explicable in terms of the Epicurean theory of memory, the stronger criterion is not. And since the weaker criterion is compatible with the notion of genuine post­mortem resurrection, it follows that Lucretius’ claim that death is permanent is inconsistent with the Epicurean theory of memory. Consistency would require Lucretius to acknowledge the possibility that ‘we’ might be restored and resume perceiving after death. But this conclusion undermines the entire point of the symmetry argument (that we ought not to fear death), since it entails the possibility that “we” will awake to further pain after death. Thus, regardless of whether or not we as modern readers find the symmetry argument to be persuasive, it may turn out that the author of this argument was never really entitled to make use of it.

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61 1. The Symmetry Argument: Motivating an Historical Approach

In the ​ De Rerum Natura, Lucretius argues that pre­vital and post­mortem states of non­existence are symmetrical, and that since nobody considers pre­vital nonexistence to be an evil, we ought to adopt a similar attitude with respect to post­mortem nonexistence. This argument has generated a good deal of recent discussion; some commentators (e.g., Nagel and Kaufman) have criticized Lucretius’ symmetry argument, while others (e.g., Rosenbaum and Pettigrove) have defended it.

Against Lucretius, Thomas Nagel (1970) argues that pre­vital and post­mortem states are asymmetrical, since death can be characterized as a deprivation of possible goods, whereas birth cannot. The idea here is that death closes off a person’s access to many goods, which they might have enjoyed, had they died at a later time. Birth, on the other hand, cannot be said to cut off access to possible goods that might have been experienced if the person had been born at an earlier time. This asymmetry occurs, according to Nagel, because personal­identity is more closely linked to the time of one’s birth than to the time of one’s death: “…anyone born substantially earlier than he was would have been someone else.” (Nagel, 79) Stephen E. Rosenbaum (1989) takes issue with Nagel’s asymmetry claim, arguing that birth, coming when it does rather than earlier in time, can indeed be construed as a deprivation of possible goods. He defends this view by denying Nagel’s suggestion that it would be logically impossible for one and the same person to have had a different temporal beginning than they in fact had. Personal­identity, on Rosenbaum’s view, depends less on the time of one’s birth than on one’s genetic origin. And because it is logically possible for the sperm and egg out of which one is composed to have existed and fused earlier than they did, there is no logical reason why a person could not have come into existence earlier than they did: Since it is logically possible that a person’s genetic beginning occur at some earlier time, even that it occur centuries earlier, it is logically possible that a person come into being at some earlier time, granting for the sake of argument that a person’s genetic origin is essential to the person’s identity. (Rosenbaum, 363)

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62 Frederik Kaufman (1996) comes to Nagel’s defense, arguing that it is not a person’s genetic origin that is essential to their identity, but rather their psychological makeup. This, he says, could not have come into existence earlier than it did: …it is not possible for a person in the psychological sense to exist earlier than in fact he or she did because a psychological continuum which, by hypothesis, starts earlier, would be a sufficiently different set of memories and experiences, and hence be a different psychological self. (Kaufman, 309)

Kaufman’s designation of psychological makeup as the relevant factor for discussing one’s concern about post­mortem states is challenged by Glen Pettigrove (2002), who argues that psychological features are insufficient to account for the complete range of concerns that people have about death: …it is not self­evident that ‘concern about death is a concern that the psychological continuum that constitutes my personal conscious existence will be extinguished forever.’ Kaufman may find this position compelling, but his is only one among a host of competing voices. (Pettigrove, 410)

As examples of such alternative voices, Pettigrove cites cases in which people are known to take comfort in concepts of continued existence which do not entail the continuity of psychological awareness.

Now, this is undeniably a fascinating discussion, especially for anyone confronting their own anxiety at the prospect of death. However, it needs to be pointed out that it is also, for the most part, an ahistorical discussion. That is to say, its participants treat the symmetry argument in virtual isolation from the Epicurean worldview that provided its original context, taking little 92

to no account of the peculiarities of Epicurean physics or psychology. It seems to me that greater sensitivity to these historical details will reveal a serious problem facing Lucretius, which has so far gone unnoticed. In particular, there exists an inconsistency between Lucretius’ conviction that death is permanent—which is intended to reinforce the conclusion of the symmetry argument, that we ought not to fear death—and the Epicurean theory of memory. In order to remove this inconsistency, Lucretius would have concede that it is possible for a person to be restored following their death. But because this concession would entail the possibility that 92

Kaufman comes the closest to approaching the problem from an historical standpoint, since he at least acknowledges that continuity of psychological awareness is also emphasized by Lucretius, as a criterion for personal­survival.

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63 one might awake to further pain after dying, it conflicts with the claim that we ought not to fear death. And so it would seem that the intention of the symmetry argument—to alleviate one’s fear of death—is seriously undermined by Lucretius’ prior philosophical commitments with respect to the mechanics of memory.

Before unpacking this inconsistency between Lucretius’ position on the permanence of death and the Epicurean theory of memory, I will review the basic rationale behind the Epicurean conviction that one ought not to fear death, as well as the reasoning behind Lucretius’ supplementary argument that death is permanent.

2. The Epicurean Position on Death

The Epicurean argument on the subject of death can be summarized in the following passage, from Epicurus’ ​ Letter to Menoeceus​ : “…death is nothing to us. For all good and evil lie in sensation, whereas death is the absence of sensation” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 149).

Implicit in the first premise of this argument (that all good and evil lie in sensation) is the 93

view that the proper object of fear is pain. The second premise (that death is the absence of pain) is derived from Epicurus’ remarks concerning sensation from his ​ Letter to Herodotus​ .

Following his definition of the soul as a body composed of exceedingly fine atoms , which are 94

diffused throughout the rest of the aggregate, Epicurus goes on to remark that although the soul possesses the greater share of the responsibility for sensation, “…it would not be in possession of this if it were not contained in some way by the rest of the aggregate” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 65). Similarly, he says, “…when the soul has been separated from it, the rest of the aggregate does not have sensation” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 65). Thus, it appears that Epicurus regards sensation as an accidental by­product of the mutual interaction (or ‘co­affection’) of the soul and the rest of the aggregate (i.e. the body), which therefore could not occur if the union of body and soul were to be disrupted.

With this explanation in mind, we are now in a position to grasp the rationale behind Epicurus’ assertion that “death is the absence of sensation.” Since the occurrence of sensation 93

i.e., Evil What we would normally call body, contrasted with an incorporeal soul.

94

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64 depends upon the union of the soul and the rest of the aggregate, and since death entails the disruption of this union, it follows that death entails the cessation of sensation. From here, we need only consider the fact that pain is a facet of sensation in order to grasp the implication that death entails the cessation of pain. And since pain is the proper object of fear (as the first premise implies), it follows that there is nothing for us to fear in death—hence, Epicurus’ conclusion that that “death is nothing to us.”

3. Lucretius on the Finality of Death

Lucretius’ commentary on the subject of death contains a number of arguments intended to reinforce Epicurus’ conclusion that there is nothing in death that warrants our anxiety.

However, his approach is somewhat different from Epicurus’. Rather than insisting upon the cessation of sensation at the moment of death, Lucretius entertains hypothetical scenarios in which (i) sensation continues uninterrupted after the death of the body, and in which (ii) sensation is resumed following an eventual reconstitution of the body and the soul.

Lucretius imagines (i) as a scenario in which the soul is capable of persisting independently of the body and receiving sensory­impressions. This scenario must be hypothetical for Lucretius as it involves a suspension of both (E­1) the Epicurean principle that 95

the soul is dependent upon the body to prevent it from dispersing and being destroyed, and (E­2) the Epicurean principle that sensation is the result of the co­affection of the soul and the 96

body.

He imagines (ii) as a scenario in which, after our death, the same primary particles that we now consist of come to be rearranged in the exact same order as they are now. This is an extension of an inference which Lucretius draws from the Epicurean principles (E­3) that the 97

98

past is infinite, ​ and (E­4) that atoms are always in motion: In his ​ Letter to Herodotus​ , Epicurus says that, were it not for its being contained within the denser aggregate of the body, the soul would disperse and would be destroyed on account of the unsurpassed fineness and mobility of its atoms. Hence, “…when the whole aggregate disintegrates the soul is dispersed and no longer has the same powers, or its motions.” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 66) 96 Explained above, in section 2.

97 This can, I think, be derived from Epicurus’ claim, from his ​ Letter to Herodotus​ , that “…the totality of things is infinite.” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 44) 95

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65 For when you look back at the entire past span of measureless time, and then reflect how various are the motions of matter, you could easily believe that the same primary particles of which we now consist have often in the past been arranged in the same order as now. (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 151)

Lucretius argues that the conjunction of (E­3) and (E­4) makes it probable that our atoms will come to be arranged in the same order as now many times in the future, by the same token that it entails that they have been so arranged many times in the past. And if the entire aggregate of body and soul comes to be reconstituted in the same configuration as now, then the accidental attribute of sensation (resulting from the co­affection of the soul and the body) will also be restored.

Now, despite entertaining both of these hypothetical scenarios, Lucretius still does not think that their possibility should cause us any anxiety. This is, according to Lucretius, because although scenarios (i) and (ii) would entail either the continuation or the restoration of sensation (and thus, the possibility of pain) after death, neither would really amount to a continuation or a restoration of ‘us’. It would, in effect, be someone else who experiences these future pains.

In the case of scenario (i), Lucretius argues that the continuation of sentience in the absence of the body would not amount to a continuation of sensation for ‘us,’ because personal­identity (like sensation) also requires the co­affection of the soul and the body: Even if the nature of our mind and the power of our spirit do have sensation after they are torn from our bodies, that is still nothing to us, who are constituted by the conjunction of body and spirit. (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 151)

In the case of scenario (ii), Lucretius argues that none of the many past instances of the configuration of our atoms, nor any of the possible future instances, really did or will constitute instances of ‘us,’ because each pair of consecutive instances is interposed by a discontinuity of 99

self­recollection: …supposing that after our death the passage of time will bring our matter back together and reconstitute it in its present arrangement, and the light of life will be restored to us, even that eventuality would be of no concern to us, once our self­recollection was interrupted. (Long & Sedley, 151) In his​ Letter to Herodotus​ , Epicurus claims that “The atoms move continuously for ever, some separating a great distance from each other, others keeping up their vibration on the spot whenever they happen to get trapped by their interlinking or imprisoned by atoms which link up.” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 46) 99 That is to say that during the intervening period, during which the set of atoms in question does not form a person, there is no self­recollection, because there is nobody to engage in self­recollection.

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66

4. Two Theses on Selfhood and the Soul­Body Union

It seems to me that Lucretius’ emphasis on the link between personal­identity and self­recollection in his response to scenario (ii) can serve to illuminate the claim, from his response to scenario (i), that ‘we’ are the conjunction of our bodies and souls. The idea would be that, even if it were possible for the soul to persist and engage in perception following its dissociation from the body, this would still not amount to a continuation of ‘us’ ​ because the dissociation of our souls from our bodies constitutes a cessation of self­recollection.

Hence, Lucretius’ responses to (i) and (ii) yield weak and strong versions (respectively) of a position on the relation between personal­identity and the soul’s union with the body: (a) Weak Thesis: ​ Personal­identity depends upon self­recollection, which depends upon the soul’s interaction with the rest of the aggregate. (b) Strong Thesis​ : ​ Personal­identity depends upon the ​ continuity of self­recollection, which depends upon the continuity of the soul’s interaction with the rest of the aggregate.

The weak version asserts that self­recollection (and thus, personal­identity) cannot occur while 100

the soul is isolated from the body. But it allows, implicitly, that self­recollection (and thus, personal­identity) might be restored along with the union of body and soul. The strong version asserts that personal­identity is irrevocably lost at the moment of soul­body dissociation; that even the hypothetical restoration of the union between the soul and the body (and of self­recollection along with it) would not amount to a revival of the original agent.

These two theses will form the basis of our inquiry concerning the consistency of Lucretius’ position on the finality of death with the Epicurean theory of memory. Before commencing this inquiry, however, it will be necessary to come to a better understanding of what is meant by “self­recollection.”

100

i.e., By omission.

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67 5. Defining Self­Recollection

For Lucretius, the notion of self­recollection must be a function of the general Epicurean theory of memory. In order to establish a plausible Lucretian definition of self­recollection, then, we must first take a look at the Epicurean theory of memory.

It is important to understand that the Epicurean conception of memory does not entail the buildup or storage of images in the mind; rather, it is the mind’s repeated penetration by images (i.e., thin layers of atoms, resembling the objects from which they have been shed) that persist independently of both the mind and the body. As Lucretius notes, “…everywhere at every time every image is ready on the spot: so great is the speed and availability of things.” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 75) Moreover, memory seems to be primarily an active function, requiring the willed effort of the individual. Lucretius argues that, “…because they [images] are so delicate the mind can only see sharply those of them which it strains to see. Hence the remainder all perish, beyond those for which the mind has prepared itself.” (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 76) However, there must also be a less prominent passive facet to memory, as indicated by our recollections in dream states (which, as Lucretius acknowledges, are more prone to error than memories that occur in a waking state).

As to how and why the faculty of memory is dependent upon the soul’s integration with the body, it seems to me that we may plausibly ascribe to Lucretius something like the following view (courtesy of Diogenes of Oenoanda): What is viewed by the eyesight is inherited by the soul, and after the impingement of the original images passages are opened up in us in such a way that, even when the objects which we originally saw are no longer present, our mind admits 101 likenesses of the original objects. (qtd. in Long & Sedley, 76)

Here, the body plays an indispensable role in the repeated reception of memory­images, as it is by way of bodily passages that memory­images are enabled to enter into and affect the mind.

101

Although this passage is not taken directly from Lucretius, it seems to me that the only other way of explaining his insistence that self­recollection is terminated at death would be by appeal to the principle that the body contributes ​ indirectly​ to the mind’s reception of images, by preventing it from dispersing. However, this is clearly not what is primarily at issue for Lucretius since, as we have seen, he has voluntarily suspended this principle, and maintains that self­recollection would nonetheless cease with the mind’s dissociation from the body, even if the mind were capable of subsisting independently.

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68 Presumably, then, if the body were no longer present, then external memory­images would lack the passageways necessary for gaining access to the mind.

With the Epicurean theory of memory in mind, we are now in a position to make an educated guess as to what, precisely, Lucretius intends by “self­recollection.” The most plausible Lucretian definition of self­recollection would be: ​ ready access to a certain sufficient 102

number or combination of previously imprinted images​ . ​ And with this definition in place, we may now proceed to test Lucretius’ position on the finality of death for consistency with the Epicurean theory of memory.

6. Assessing Lucretius’ Stance of the Finality of Death

We will proceed by testing both the weak and strong theses concerning the relation between personal­identity and the soul’s union with the body, for consistency with the Epicurean theory of memory.

Since the weak thesis is compatible with the possibility of a (genuine) post­mortem resurrection, both the weak thesis ​ and the strong thesis (which rules out the possibility of post­mortem resurrection) must pass our consistency­test, in order for Lucretius’ overall position on the finality of death to retain its persuasiveness. If only the weak thesis passes the test, then Lucretius will be forced to concede the possibility of genuine post­mortem resurrection. But this would entail the possibility that ‘we’ might awake to further pain after dying. We would, therefore, be justified in fearing death.

In assessing each of the two theses, I shall employ the following criterion for consistency with the Epicurean theory of memory: the thesis will be consistent with the Epicurean theory of memory if it can be explained adequately in terms of that theory. That is, if the Epicurean theory 102

This definition has the advantage of encompassing both the active and passive facets of memory. If we were to define self­recollection only in terms of the active effort of remembering things, then we would run into at least two problems: Firstly, it would follow that we die whenever we go to sleep. Lucretius says that during sleep, “…the [active] memory lies in slumber.” (Long & Sedley, 75) So that if self­recollection were defined ​ only​ as a function of active memory, it would follow that self­recollection is extinguished whenever we go to sleep. And given Lucretius’ strong thesis (above) that personal identity depends upon the ​ continuity​ of self­recollection, it would follow that personal identity is permanently extinguished when we fall asleep. Besides which, we know by experience that we retain a sense of personal continuity during dream­states.

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69 of memory can provide some genuine insight as to why the thesis should hold true. In the case of the weak thesis, this means that the Epicurean theory of memory should be able to explain why self­recollection is disrupted when the soul and the body dissociate at death. But in the case of the strong thesis, it means that the Epicurean theory of memory should be able to explain why the resumption of self­recollection (along with the restoration of the original aggregate of body and soul) would not amount to a restoration of the original person. That is to say, it should be able to provide an informative account of what it is that is irrevocably lost when the mind and the body dissociate at the moment of death.

6.1 Weak Thesis

Given our working definition of self­recollection—i.e., ready access to a certain sufficient number or combination of previously imprinted images​ —​ I think that it is rather easy to explain, in terms of the Epicurean theory of memory, why self­recollection is extinguished at the moment of bodily death. This is because the destruction of the body eliminates the bodily passageways through which memory­images are able to enter into the mind. The correct number (or combination) of memory images, therefore, has no way of entering into the mind. Thus, in the absence of the body, the mind no longer has access to a sufficient number (or combination) of familiar images to furnish it with a sense of self­recollection.

6.2 Strong Thesis

The strong thesis presents a greater difficulty. As I have shown above, the Epicurean theory of memory is capable of providing a satisfactory explanation as to why self­recollection (and thus, personal­identity) is interrupted when the soul dissociates from the body at death.

Moreover, on this theory of memory, there seems to be no special difficulty in explaining the weak thesis’ implicit concession that self­recollection might be restored, given the reconstitution of the aggregate of body and soul. If the atoms out of which the aggregate is currently composed were to be reconstituted in the exact same configuration as they are now, this would entail the

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70 restoration of all the same passageways forged by previous sense­impressions, through which memory­images might enter into the mind. Thus, upon the reconstitution of the aggregate, the mind would have access to all the same memory­images that it had access to before. And this would be sufficient to furnish it with a sense of self­recollection.

Crucially, however, when we come to the question of why this restoration of self­recollection would not constitute a revival of the original person, the Epicurean theory of memory fails to provide any significant insight. The strong thesis concerning the relation between personal­identity and the soul­body union emphasizes the ​ continuity of self­recollection as a requirement for personal­identity. But if we press for a more detailed explanation as to why the restoration of the original atoms of the aggregate in their original configuration (along with all of the memory­passages that it possessed before, which allow the exact same memory­images as before to enter into the mind) would not amount to a genuine restoration of the person, the respondent’s only recourse seems to be to repeat the original assertion: “because the continuity has been disrupted.” For this reason, it seems to me that the appeal to continuity is rather vacuous. And its designation as the single most crucial requirement for the aggregate’s sense of 103

personal­identity strikes me as arbitrary.

Thus, it seems to me that the weak thesis—but not the strong thesis—concerning the relation between personal­identity and the union of the body and the soul has been substantiated by the Epicurean theory of memory. The stronger thesis has been framed in terms of the Epicurean theory of memory (i.e., as being a function of self­recollection), and yet it appears to be inexplicable in the terms of this theory.

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One might suggest that Lucretius’ emphasis on the continuity of self­recollection is intended to offset a difficulty arising from the possibility that multiple body­soul aggregates might arise, by chance, with similar enough memory­passageways to allow them all to possess more or less the same sense of self­recollection (in which case we would be faced with the problem of identifying the original person, from a stock of individuals with the same sense of self­recollection). However, aside from the fact that Lucretius gives us no indication that this is what he has in mind, it seems to me that this suggestion overlooks the fact that Lucretius’ hypothetical reconstitution scenario—(2)—presupposes the reconstitution of body and soul, along with the relevant memory­passageways, ​ from the same matter (i.e. the same set of atoms) as before. Sameness of matter is a part of the context for the entire discussion. Thus, any similarly configured “duplicates” which might co­exist alongside of this reconstituted aggregate would have to be composed from different atoms. And so it seems to me that the correct set of memory passageways contained within an aggregate of the original configuration and composed out of the exact same atoms as before could be regarded as sufficient criteria for distinguishing the original person from similarly configured imposters, without the need for any appeal to continuity. We need only specify that it is not self­recollection on its own which is the necessary and sufficient condition for sameness of personhood, but self­recollection plus the correct material constitution.

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71 7. Conclusion: Returning to the Symmetry Argument

Since Lucretius’ overall position on the finality of death requires not only the weak thesis but also the strong thesis to be explicable in terms of the Epicurean theory of memory, and since the strong thesis has failed this test, it seems to me that Lucretius’ overall position on the finality of death is inconsistent with the Epicurean theory of memory. It would appear, therefore, that the demands of consistency commit him to the view that it is (at least) possible for ‘us’ to be revitalized, following death.

Thus, although we may be able to affirm a symmetry between pre­vital and post­mortem states, we must acknowledge that part of what this symmetry consists in is the fact that neither state is necessarily permanent. And this undermines the intent of the symmetry argument. If death is not necessarily permanent, then it is possible that one will awake to further pain after dying. And since the possibility of pain warrants fear, it follows that it may be rational to fear death.

This is not to say, however, that the symmetry argument does not retain a certain intuitive pull, from a modern perspective. If there have been past instances in which the atoms out of which I am currently composed were arranged in the same configuration, I must certainly admit that I have no recollection of any of these past lives. And so it does not seem obviously problematic to infer that the same will hold of any future instances. But my aim in this paper has not been to establish that this intuition is false. Rather, my aim has been to illustrate the difficulty of accounting for ​ why any of this should be the case, given the Epicurean mechanistic framework (i.e,. of memory). In light of this difficulty, we should consider the possibility that Lucretius was never entitled to make use of the symmetry argument.

Works Cited

Epicurus. ​ Letter to Herodotus​ . Trans. Long, A.A., Sedley, D.N. ​ The Hellenistic Philosophers​ .

Ed. Long, A.A., Sedley, D.N. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Print.

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Letter to Menoeceus.​ Trans. Long, A.A., Sedley, D.N. ​ The Hellenistic Philosophers​ . Ed. Long, A.A., Sedley, D.N. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Print.

Kaufman, F. “Death and Deprivation; or, Why Luctretius' Symmetry Argument Fails​ .​ ” Australasian Journal of Philosophy​ 74. 2 (1996): 305­312. Scholars Portal. Web. 12 Jan. 2015

Lucretius. ​ De Rerum Natura.​ Trans. Long, A.A., Sedley, D.N. ​ The Hellenistic Philosophers​ . Ed. Long, A.A., Sedley, D.N. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Print.

Nagel, T. “Death.” ​ Nous​ 4.1 (1970): 73­80. JSTOR Arts and Sciences I. Web. 12 Jan. 2015

Pettigrove, G. “Death, Asymmetry and the Psychological Self.” ​ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly​ , 83.4 (2002): 407­423. Scholars Portal. Web. 12 Jan. 2015

Rosenbaum, S. E​ . ​ “The Symmetry Argument: Lucretius against the Fear of Death.” ​ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research​ 50. 2 (1989): 353­373. JSTOR. Web. 13 Jan. 2015

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73

Ocularcentrism: Towards a Mastery over Life and Death Yun­Qi (Isaac) Jiang

The window is a curious invention. Often to be taken for granted as an unremarkable element in architectural designs, we may fail to apprehend how passage of lights allowed by the window cells fundamentally provides a material basis for the sustaining of our often visually­dependent bodies within enclosed environments. Should we prolong our stay in such an environment, by choice or otherwise, the window frames would define the limits of our world.

The word ‘window’ originates from the Old Norse ‘​ vindauga​ ’, a compound word that combines wind (​ vindr​ ) and eye (​ auga​ ). While the association with the ocular organ is lost in translation today, “our windows to the world” remains a commonplace description for the eye. A more common usage for the word “window” in contemporary imagination is the Microsoft computer operating system ​ Windows​ , named for its window­like interface. Likewise, computer monitors and other screens like it are a much more apt candidate for the title of “our windows into the world” in modern times, for it is in them that our visual engagement with the world is overwhelmingly mediated. The screen exacerbates the stranglehold of our ocular impulse upon the landscape of contemporary human experiences: through our visual engagements of information in the form of electronic news media whereby the bodily shape of its presenter is of 104

as much interest as (if not more than) the information itself ​ ; through the visual emphasis in our conception of entertainment such as the modern day video game industry and its constant attempt in achieving increasingly “lifelike” graphics; even intimacy is not immune to our ocular impulses, how things look became an integral part of desire itself, whereby the widespread availability of pornographic contents on the Internet can be understood as one of its cruder manifestations. Much of the technological innovations are produced by the visually­enabled for the visually­enabled, cashing out on our obsession with how everything looks. It may be said then, quite uncontroversially, that we are living in an ‘ocularcentric’ culture, where seeing is privileged above all the other senses. nd​ ​isconsin anchorwoman Jennifer Livingston responded on October 2​ W , 2012 to a disparaging letter claiming to be from a viewer complaining about her being a unsuitable role model to her younger female audiences due to her size http://www.businessinsider.com/fat­anchorwoman­speaks­out­2012­10 104

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74 Like the window, the eye comes with its own frames. Frames that Dionne Brand describes as “perhaps already describing, perhaps not already as if born to it but born in it, already describing the edges of the picture and what must be at the focus…[the eye] is very 105

precise as to how it wants to see the world”. To see is never neutral; it is not a mere passive apprehension of the visual, rather it is simultaneously a projection of the eye’s sphere of influence and an assimilation of the world in accordance to its framed narrative. To see is also to understand, hence the common English expression “I see” as a stand in for “I comprehend,” that is to say, in the words of Luce Irigaray, “I see something, framed as and reduced to an object ­ 106

conceptual, mental ­ for my comprehension.” To see is to impose a familiar hermeneutic order onto the object of our apprehension; it is the recognition of something already known rather than the discovery of something new, or as Irigaray would put it, “seeing as understanding 107

corresponds to a ​ second time​ : we submit ourselves here to a model learned, and memorized.”

It is perhaps no surprise that the word “theory” finds its etymological roots in vision, from the Greek word θεωρία, meaning to look at, to behold; to engage in speculative thinking is to impose meaning onto what is seen, and to assimilate that into an already coherent framework of understanding.

Ocularcentrism is the belief that vision, over all the other senses, is the best and most reliable means for making sense of the world. What we must understand by this, is ​ not the privileging of a particular way to observe the world, but the privileging of language, the valorization of a learned code, of the memorization of a standardized form, that has supplanted the need to truly observe. As an example of this, the house next to my London residence was torn down a little less than a month after I had arrived, a house I and my housemates must have walked by every single day for weeks, if not more. Yet when called upon, none of us could describe what it had looked like prior to its demolition. No one could remember what colour the house was or even how many floors it had. It was understood by us as a “house” not through the result of careful visual observation, but through the recognition of a standardized visual form familiar to us, imposed upon us by language. Language, Irigaray will tell us, “will compel us to

Brand, ​ Seeing​ in ​ Bread out of Stone​ , pp. 170­171 Irigaray, ​ Being Two, How Many Eyes Have We​ , pp. 143 107 Ibid. (emphasis mine) 105 106

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75 see it or catch only a glimpse of it through an idea [in this case, that of a house]…from which we 108

will have to recognize it, renouncing a great part of our sight”. Language does not simply name the objects in the world as they register into our fields of vision; rather, language cuts us off from the world.

It is my contention that our ocularcentric impulses are motivated by a more general attempt to gain mastery over life and death. An encounter with blindness by the visually­dependent, as Tanya Titchkovsky would tell us, could invoke feelings of pity so disproportionately overwhelming in comparison to the actual lived experience of the blind 109

individuals themselves. While the very ocularcentrism of our culture may provide a sufficient account as to why we attribute such a strong sense of tragedy to blindness, I would like to suggest, in its stead, that our anxiety towards blindness is coextensive to a more general anxiety towards death, towards the contingency that afflicts our existence. What is prescribed by the ocularcentric doctrines is not an identification with the living, or the changes inherent to the living world, but with a form that exhibits the semblance of a permanence that could outlast the finitude of the living world. Ocularcentrism is itself a means of coping with such anxieties.

Irigaray illustrates this through the example of looking at a tree through the ocularcentric neglect of visual apprehension that language imposes upon us, “we do not see it changing, giving itself a form, forms, under our eye…..language submits the tree to a permanent form that it does not 110

have as living.”

1. On the “Wisdom” of Vision

Vision’s alignment with wisdom and truth is vividly illustrated in the parable of the blind men and the elephant. The story begins with six blind men that learn one day that an elephant has arrived in their village. Not knowing what an “elephant” is, the men gather around in hopes of getting a sense of the beast through their touch. As the men each touch a different part of the elephant, they conclude widely different beliefs as to what an elephant is. While the man

Ibid. pp. 144 Titchkovsky, ​ Disability, Self and Society​ , pp. 9­11 110 Irigaray, ​ Being Two, How Many Eyes Have We​ , pp. 144 108 109

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76 touching the elephant’s leg likens it to a pillar, the others disagree vehemently. Having touched the elephant’s tail, trunk, ear, belly and tusk, they determine instead that an elephant is like a rope, a tree branch, a hand fan, a wall and a solid pipe respectively. In some versions of the story, the men’s disputes were eventually resolved by the arrival of someone who is only known as the 111

“wise man”. The so­called “wise man” announces that they are all correct, that an elephant is all the things they have described, and that the nature of the dispute lies in the false generalization based on their narrow perceptions. What is taken to be the moral of this parable is the recognition of kernels of truths in different perspectives, that our different perspectives may constrain how we apprehend the world around us, and in so doing prevents us from seeing the “bigger picture”. Rather than being like the blind men, afflicted by the narcissism of their own subjective experiences, we ought to be “objective” and identify with the “wise man” whose access to vision makes him more trustworthy.

In this parable, wisdom is aligned with vision whereas touch is associated with, if not ignorance, at least a lack of wisdom. The man endowed with vision is wise, he is able to apprehend from afar and see the “bigger picture” that is presented as inaccessible to the blind men, whose touch does not allow for such a distance. The closeness of their touch renders the truths of their account suspicious; their “truths” become, at best, fragmented and incomplete, if not entirely untrue. This is a particularly important thing to understand about vision, as opposed to what is classically understood as the four other senses; a minimal distance is required for us to see. We cannot understand what we are seeing if it is directly touching our eyeballs, whereas the lack of such a distance does not impair the other senses: touch and taste both require direct contact in order to function, while hearing and smell are often amplified by the closing of distances. The necessity of distance in vision renders it the ​ least intimate of our senses.

Therefore, to say our culture is ocularcentric is also to say it is one that valorizes distance and separateness over intimacy and closeness. It is only in this kind of a culture that the late arriver in the parable is deemed “wise”; it is by virtue of the distance inherent to his ocular mode of apprehending the world that he is deemed closer to “truth” and “objectivity.”

One such version: http://www.jainworld.com/literature/story25.htm

111

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77 This account of objectivity is entirely consistent with the Western philosophical canon.

Whereby, the path to objectivity is mapped out by the maintenance of our distance from the subjectivities of our own perspective. We are meant to understand philosophical arguments through a process of extrapolation, for if we allow anything extraneous to the argument per se to influence how we come to understand its content, we are deemed to have committed a fallacy.

To be “objective,” we must maintain a distance not unlike the ocular distance maintained by the “wise man.” The maintenance of this distance, in Western civilization, is increasingly becoming the ways we have come to envision ourselves; i.e., as separated, discrete individuals. Catherine Keller notes, “common sense identifies separateness with the freedom we cherish in the name of “independence” and “autonomy”[…]For [in] our culture it is separation which prepares the way 112

for selfhood.”

If we accept philosophy’s etymological roots as the “love of wisdom,” we must wonder, what kind of wisdom is this? Can this so­called “wisdom” restore for us the loss of intimacy that our contemporary economic and political landscape has plagued us with? Or is it perhaps time for us to examine the ocularcentric stranglehold that has for so long afflicted our conception of wisdom? What motivation is there for the distancing we have simply accepted as the general mode of doing philosophy? This motivation, I suspect, is death. To explore these suspicions, I will have to make a detour in the next section to examine the relationship between civilization and death.

2. Immortality, Necessity and the Horrors of Animality

In examining the pre­philosophic assumptions in Greek society, Hannah Arendt makes a note of the looming fear of death. She refers to it as the “general Greek estimate that all mortals 113

should strive for immortality,” an estimate rooted in the sharing of affinities between human and the divine in Greek mythologies. “To the Greeks, philosophy was “the achievement of 114

immortality;’” as such what it had consisted of includes contemplations of the everlasting

Keller, ​ From a Broken Web,​ pp. 1 Arendt, ​ Thinking​ in ​ The Life of the Mind​ , pp. 134 114 Ibid. pp. 137 112 113

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78 (e.g., the Platonic forms). Arendt suspects that from such contemplations came the awareness of a “decisive flaw in the praised and envied immortalities of the gods: they were deathless 115

(​ a­thanatoi​ , those who were forever ​ aiene ontes​ ), but they were not eternal.” Their theogony’s telling of a definite temporal beginning had perverted and compromised their permanence. And much like the pre­Olympian gods they themselves had supplanted in order to establish their pantheon, they are not precluded from the same fate. While they are deathless, they are not “birthless,” and as such, what was conceived as the human’s natural aim of achieving immortality cannot be actualized through the Olympian gods.

Arendt suggests that philosophy ultimately retained the achievement of immortality as the natural goal of human transcendence; while no school of philosophy would explicitly claim immortality to be its aim, it manifests in metaphysics’ continued tendency to locate pure knowledge in, much as Plato had, as “concerned with the things that are always the same without 116

change or mixture, or with what is most akin to them.” What had discursively replaced “immortality” was now “necessity,” that is to say, “philosophical contemplation has no other 117

intention than to eliminate the accidental.” What could be more accidental, more contingent, than the very fact of our corporeal existence? What is philosophy’s frantic repulsion of contingency if not the contempt for life itself? As Irigaray would tell us, “life is what grows; it is 118

not a complete totality to which death is opposed.” To subject life to necessity is to live it through the logic of death; it is to disavow the inevitability of growth and the change inherent to it. The logic of death shapes the very movement of civilization itself, which operates through an incessant need to separate from and conceal the fact of our carnal beginnings.

One of the most notable concealments of ​ beginning can be observed in the shift from a polytheistic worldview of divinity to a monotheistic one. There is no theogonic account of the biblical God’s existence; as far as we were concerned he was birthless. Irigaray refers to him as having occupied a place that is left vacant “after nature or Goddess have vanished into the 119

neuter,” ​ . Indeed, the relationship between the divine and nature marks one of the most Ibid. pp. 134 (emphasis original) Ibid. pp. 139 117 Ibid.

118 Irigaray, ​ In the Beginning, She was​ , pp. 23 119 Ibid. pp. 5 115 116

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79 profound differences between polytheism and monotheism. The polytheistic gods are predicated by, if not outright manifestations of, nature (e.g., Apollo, god of the sun, Poseidon, god of the sea, etc.). Whereas the biblical God is radically separated from nature, he “has all predicates appropriate to the suspension of the relation with her – or Her. Most radically, he resists predication, except in a negative way. He remains without any species or genus, and without any 120

particularity.” He is akin to a theological actualization of the philosophical notion of “necessity” Arendt had referred to: there is nothing accidental that can be attributed to his conception, his radical separateness from all predications have even led to some attempts to 121

derive his very existence from his definition alone. With the inauguration of such a God into our divine imaginary, Irigaray warns us, quite modestly I might add: “From then on, the world is 122

closed upon itself, and the way is prepared for the hell at work today”.

Unlike his polytheistic counterparts, the biblical God’s radical separation from nature deprives from the natural world what was formerly a “sacred” status. Roberto Esposito locates the word “sacred” in two apparently contrasting Greek terms: the affirmative ​ hieros​ , meaning that which is consecrated and marked off to God or the gods, and the prohibitive ​ hagios​ , meaning that which is defended against all manners of violations, or as Esposito puts it, “it is everything that is defended and protected from the injury of man through the threat of a sanction 123

or penalty.” To be sacred is marked by a radical separation from human contact; it is not 124

merely another “thing” subjected to, what Georges Bataille refers as, “servile human use” . To subject that which is consecrated to the gods to servile use is an act of profanation. The profanation of nature itself can be marked in the biblical passage, where God finally declares, “let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of

Ibid. pp. 8 That would be St. Anslem’s ontological argument for the proof of Gods’ existence: 1) God is the greatest thing that can be conceived of; 2) It is greater to exist both in the mind and in reality, than in the mind alone; The acceptance of these two premises alone renders God’s “existence” tautologically true, for if he doesn’t, something greater can be conceived. It’s not hard to see that something must have gone awry in the conception of this God, if his “existence” can be “proven” in terms of tautological necessity.

122 Irigaray, ​ In the Beginning, She was, ​ pp. 5 123 Esposito, ​ Immunitas​ , pp.54 124 Bataille, ​ The Accursed Share Vol. I,​ pp. 55 120 121

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80 the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 125

creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

The conception of a divine image in humanity in the biblical account sanctifies human life at the expense of the natural world. The human domination of nature, I contend, is one of a master­slave dialectic. The relationship between a master and a slave is by no means a one­sided domination. While it is true that the master asserts domination over the slave, binding the slave to labour, and forcing them into servile use, the master­slave relation itself also imposes a particular subjectivity onto the master. Bataille notes, “no one can make a ​ thing of the second self that the slave is without at the same time estranging himself from his own intimate being, 126

without giving himself the limits of a thing.” In order for the master to remain as “master,” he must confront the fact of his radical dependency on the slave, for it is only in his relation to the slave that he can be called the master. And what necessarily must be maintained in this relationship is the ​ distance between the master and the slave, for “the individual who employs 127

the labor of his prisoner ​ severs the tie that links him to his fellow man.” The master­slave dialectic profoundly depends on this severance, on the maintenance of this distance. To say that the human domination of nature is also one of master­slave dialectic is to suggest, for what is equally a perceived necessity, to maintain a distance from the object of domination.

The evidence of the alleged distancing from nature can be traced in the movement of civilization itself. Civilization, or what Bataille refers to as “the transition from animal to man”

128

, is posited upon an aversion of our animal needs. One measure of civilization is located in its sanitation efforts: how well we can conceal our own waste, how well we can cover over nature.

This disdain for our own waste is uniquely human; no other animals are disgusted in the same way, and human infants’ failure to share this disgust is often regarded as evidence of their immaturity. Bataille poses the question concerning the naturalness we ascribe to such aversions in a format reminiscent of the Euthyphro dilemma: do we know “if excrement smells bad 129

because of our disgust for it, or if its bad smell is what causes disgust”? We cannot possibly Genesis 1:26 (Authorized Version) Bataille, ​ The Accursed Share Vol. I, ​ pp, 56 127 Ibid. (emphasis mine) 128 Bataille, ​ The Accursed Share Vol. II, ​ pp. 61 129 Ibid. pp. 62 125 126

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81 answer with certainty, but it is a question worthy of our attention considering how “we have fashioned this humanized world in our image by obliterating the very traces of nature; above all 130

we have removed from it everything that might recall the way which we came out of it.” It certainly does not help that our reproductive organs are also the site of waste emissions. This frantic denial of the carnal relations of our birth is not unlike the neutering of divine theogony in the shift towards monotheism. Bataille suspects this repugnance towards nature is in fact the repugnance towards the mortality associated with our animality, whereby “the nature of 131

excrement is analogous to that of corpses.” And cleanliness marks a path toward human transcendence, or as the saying goes: “cleanliness is next to godliness.”

This transcendental assumption of civilization can most readily be observed in the education of children. The path to adulthood is mapped out as a process of ‘becoming human’.

But for Bataille, there is nothing natural or even consensual about this process; instead it is one of traumatic conditioning:

We busy ourselves in terrifying them as soon as they are old enough to take part (little by little) in our disgust for excrement, for everything that emanates from warm and living flesh[…]We must ​ artificially deform in our image and, as our most precious possessions, instill in them the horror of that which is only natural.

We tear them away from nature by washing them, then by dressing them. But we will not rest until they share the impulse that made us clean and clothe them, until they share our horror of the life of the flesh, of life naked, undisguised, a horror 132 without which we would resemble the animals.

Those who fail to separate themselves from nature and share our civilized disgust are deemed “primitive” or “savage,” terms central to discourse that attempts to justify colonial interventions.

(We may even successfully convince ourselves that we are acting out of altruism as we bring civilization to “these people,” to make them more “human.”) To be civilized is a flight from nature, for “man is the animal that negates nature: he negates it through labor, which destroys it and changes it into an artificial world; he negates it in the case of life creating activities; he

Ibid.

Ibid. pp. 79 132 Ibid. pp. 63 130 131

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82 133

negates it in the case of death.” The construction of this artificial world through labour is the very hallmark of the modernist enterprise. One of the ways ocularcentrism manifests within modernity is through the disciplinary practices attendant to the impetus of “civilization” and its vision of a universalized rationality, whereby “the forms of ​ animality were excluded from a 134

bright world which signified humanity.”

3. Labour, Arguments, and the Immunitary Apparatus

The relation between immortality and labour is not a recent idea; its influences can be identified in the works of Ancient Near Eastern writers. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of King Gilgamesh of Uruk (in Mesopotamia) and his quest for immortality. The death of his companion Enkidu instilled in him the fear of his own death, and so Gilgamesh ventures away from Uruk in hopes of finding a cure to overcome his mortal condition. But his quest ultimately ends in failure; a grief­stricken Gilgamesh decides to return to Uruk. As the city appears in the horizon, he gazes at it and says to the ferryman Urshanabi:

“Go up, Urshanabi, walk on the ramparts of Uruk. Inspect the base terrace, examine its brickwork, if its brickwork is not burnt brick, and if the Seven Wise Ones laid not its foundation! One ‘sar’ is city, one sar orchards, one sar margin land; (further) the ​ precinct of the Temple of Ishtar. Three sar and the ​ precinct 135 comprise Uruk.”

As though finally coming to terms with humanity’s finitude and precariousness, he takes comfort in the accomplishments of their labour. Gilgamesh chooses to identify not with the product­less labours he had “wastefully” invested in his quest for immortality, but those that had resulted in the majestic city of Uruk. Through such accomplishments, Gilgamesh believes that some kind of foothold can be claimed in human history after all. This view of labour, Arendt notes, coheres with what she calls “the modern public opinions”, one shared by Smith and Marx, which views “unproductive labour as parasitical, actually a kind of perversion of labor, as though nothing Ibid. pp. 61 Ibid. pp. 61­62 (emphasis original) 135 Pritchard, ​ The Epic of Gilgamesh​ , pp. 72 Speiser Translation (Empasis Original) 133 134

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83 136

were worthy of this name which did not enrich the world.” The value of labour is in its product, it is valuable only in so far as it can yield some rigidly specifiable result. Whereas the 137

labouring condition itself is slavish in nature, as long as no product can be immediately apprehended, the labouring process would remain to be seen as form of alienation.

The distance Gilgamesh stood from outside the city as he laid out his gaze, I believe, is significant. The magnificence of labour as inscribed in products can only be acknowledged through a distance. The identification with products over processes in this labouring paradigm shares the ocularcentric disdain for intimacy. For Bataille, the introduction of labour itself “replaced intimacy, the depth of desire and its free outbreaks, with rational progression, where what matters is no longer the truth of the present moment, but, rather the subsequent results of 138

operations.”

An illustration of this can be obtained through the philosophical reconfiguration of the “argument.” As opposed to a dialectical process between interlocutors engaged in conflicts (both perceived and actual), philosophy would reconceive of argument in the form of product: a conclusion followed by its premises, removing from the argumentation process its intimate involvement with people. And ascribing to them a form that allows for the ease of visualizable reproductions (having been reduced and re­framed as an object of immediate comprehension, as though replicating the gesture of ‘I see’), but in so doing, our ‘seeing’ itself becomes constrained.

“And we lose here the possibility of a free perspective, and even of a perception of volumes. The 139

objects constrain us to perceive their forms according to a pre­given intention”.

That is not to say that philosophical arguments no longer occur dialogically, but when they do, they must still cohere to the product­like model in the form of a “rational progression”, as though to actualize some linear projection of a unified goal. For the pragma­dialectical school 140

of argumentation, such a goal is towards the “resolution of disputes” for achieving the Arendt, ​ The Human Condition,​ pp. 86 Ibid. pp. 87 138 Bataille, ​ The Accursed Share Vol. I,​ pp. 57 139 Irigaray, ​ Being Two, How Many Eyes Have We​ , pp. 145 140 The pragma­dialectical school of argumentation was an approach to argumentation first pioneered by Franz van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, one that focuses on the practical (hence “pragmatic”) task of arguing as it occurs in a social process between two interactants (hence “dialectical”). They draw heavily from the works on speech acts in Austin and Searle, and attempt to model argument in relation to standards of rationality and orderliness. Michael Gilbert in ​ Coalescent Argumentation (1997) writes: “not surprisingly, a great deal of what ordinary people might 136 137

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84 141

“intersubjective acceptability for the discussants.” Under this framework, arguments function largely in the same way as the image of labour Arendt had outlined: arguments are meant to be productive, for variants of “arguments” that fail to be so are perversions of the argumentation process itself; arguments are only valuable in so far as they can promulgate “truer” perspectives while dispelling “false” ones. In order to achieve this, a necessary distance must exist between the arguments and the arguers. “Good” arguers must distance themselves from their own perspective, and be able to distant their opponents from the arguments they are making. Getting “personal” is one of the worst faults in an argumentation procedure.

Why are emotional investments so demonized in argumentation procedures? Are arguments themselves not personal engagements? For me to genuinely disagree with you, to genuinely disagree with something you did or said, does that not say something about me? Do the perspectives and beliefs that inform the genuine disagreement I have with you not constitute, in part, who I am and what I value? It is my contention that disagreements ­ even what is perceived as disagreement as a result of misunderstandings ­ intimately privies us to the values shared by those engaged in the process. There is some level of intimacy involved between the dissidents. An intimacy that, as dictated by the norms of argumentation, must not be recognized at all cost;any such recognition must be the subject of ridicule. This often comes in familiar expressions such as: “Why are you so into it?” or “Don’t be so serious,” or even, “I was only playing devil’s advocate.” Those who are socially marginalized may be given added incentives to maintain this distance from their own intimate engagements with what in fact matters for them:

“you

are

only

saying

that

because

you

are

bitter/poor/homosexual/black/female/disabled/etc.” Identifications with socially marginalized positions serves not as a way to contextualize or provide better understanding for the background of the arguments, but as a way of delegitimizing and explaining away what was said. To advance an argument involves, in a way, subjecting oneself intimately to the gaze of the other.

Something, which for all intents and purposes, we may wish to distance ourselves from.

describe as argument must be lost as a result of its being non­rational, insufficiently verbal (and so too ambiguous to identify,) or by dint of its following procedures or styles of argument that vary from the established model.” (pp.

19­20) 141 Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, ​ Rationale for a Pragma­Dialectical Perspective​ , pp. 280

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85 The ocularcentric impulses that emerge as a way to mediate such a dilemma, I believe, follows closely with what Esposito describes as the as the logic of immunization: “immunity is 142

the refractoriness of an organism to the danger of contracting a contagious disease.” As a means of preservation against viral incursion and other threats to the body, we may choose to administer small dosages of deadly elements by means of vaccination. By appropriating controlled quantities of infectious elements, the body internalizes them as a mean of warding off its more virulent forms. Esposito presents the logic of immunization as pervading upon all aspect of existence. Most prominently, it features in how laws operate in a community. Esposito notes that while “law is absolutely necessary for the community to survive, it actually relates to the community through its inverse side: to keep community ​ alive​ , it tears it away from its most 143

profound meaning.” In protecting society from threats of violence, law may appropriate the very object it attempts to ward off into its arsenal in the form of police forces and the death penalty. Having done so, while attaining the means to “protect” its citizens, the community also becomes its very negation: as a perpetrator of violence, reproducing the object it was meant to ward off in controlled forms, such as by ways of police brutality against unarmed citizens, often those deemed as in some way foreign to the dominant establishment. The process of immunization sacrifices various core­values in the object immunized, and allows all manners of its perceived violations to occur in controlled dosages hence preserving, in actuality, only a barren form of itself, as the mere “interface of its own immune system, the margin without depth 144

along which immunity folds self­reflexively back on itself.”

Ocularcentrism is one of many immunitary apparatuses; it acts particularly as a way of coping with intimacy, and to immunize the horrors and vulnerabilities that may come with it.

The reconfiguration of arguments can be understood as one example of this at work. The way “arguments” are taken up in non­philosophical discourse is with a sense of inherent negativity.

“Arguments” are contrasted from “discussions,” whereby the latter are preferred over the former, and the former areseen as though it is the result of something going awry with the latter. Being predicated upon conflicts, arguments are automatically designated to be heated, confrontational,

Esposito, ​ Immunitas​ , pp. 7.

Ibid, pp.22. (Emphasis mine) 144 Ibid. pp. 51 142 143

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86 and riddled with battlefield descriptions. At the same time, it is because arguments are such intimate forms of interaction that allows for all these associations. What the philosophical reconfiguration has done is essentially a form of immunization. As though to mitigate the very negative reputation argumentation has, the reconfiguration functions to preserve the image of arguments in a positive light, and it does so through depriving arguments from the intimacy of its engagement ­ the very intimacy that had made the act of arguing meaningful in the first place!

The deprivation of intimacy is done through the distancing between arguers and arguments. Informal logic students are taught that what they are engaged with in the process of arguing is no longer “people”, but artifacts simply referred to as “arguments.” Artifacts that can then be mapped out, schematized, framed as, and reduced to, a format that can with ease be visually captured and reproduced. “Your argument” then takes on a life all on its own, as entirely distinct from “you,” and hence engaging with one’s “argument” no longer requires the same kind of care or callousness as one does with people. An “argument” has become a thing, a servile order of existence to that of people, and all manners of violence and domination that order of existence that can be subjected to becomes fair game.

Understanding such immunitary logic comes to be presented as the kind of education a “civilized” individual would have to go through as an indicator of their emotional maturity. The very suppression of intimacy, of emotion, has been reconceived as its natural maturation! But embracing such perversions seems to be only the most natural response, for Irigaray would explain to us:

Whoever lives outside of this logic economy would be ignorant. This means anathematizing the one who refuses to enter into our systems, without wondering about the origin and the scene of the deception, and of leading the other to opt for a common path instead of searching for his or her own way. A common meaning begins to predominate. And whoever fails to perceive it will be described as sleeping, as mad; which does not rule out that this very one in fact remains in 145 contact with life.

Irigaray, ​ In the Beginning, She was, pp. 25 Irigaray is more specifically talking abstractly about the exuberant movement of life being subjected to the totalizing logic of death. I have quoted her here because I find the philosophical enslavement of the argumentation process to be a vivid application of her principle.

145

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87 To continue being immersed within such a “contact with life” is a form of immaturity, or even madness. The failure to distinguish arguments from arguers is a failure to enter into the ocularcentric economy, a failure to acknowledge the “autonomy” and “independence” of ideas from their bearers, and a failure to engage in the contemplation of everlasting, of “necessity”; what Hannah Arendt described as philosophy’s solution to the aim of achieving immortality.

Taking for granted that no dissociation of arguments from their arguers is ever complete, the immunitary logic carries with it the reproduction of what may only be described as a controlled form of “slavery”. Bataille describes slavery as being reduced to the order of things, whereby “the slave bound to labor and having become the property of another is a ​ thing ​ just as a 146

work animal is a ​ thing​ .” The immunitary stranglehold philosophy has placed on argumentation can be understood as a way of dissociating from people, what would have been an intimate part of themselves, and making this extension of themselves into an object of analysis. Reducing their arguments into a dissociated format subjected to the dictates of ocularcentrism, to a format that is acceptable to the least intimate of our senses.

Philosophers would most certainly object to such a violent characterization of argumentation. “But what about the principle of charity?” they might ask. The convention that we must always be charitable to our opponent’s argument, to always view them in their best light ­ surely the existence of such a rule would preclude the sort of violence I have ascribed to their reconceptualization? Michael Gilbert would not exonerate philosophy on such grounds. In examining the principle of charity, he notes that the name itself should give us insight into its real nature: “Charity is given to those who are needy, who cannot compose a defensible argument on their own behalf, and who, save for our generous largesse, would appear stupid, 147

shallow, or inept and most certainly be defeated and humiliated”. Charity is a patronizing gesture, its provision more than anything serves to reinforce and solidify the existing structural and institutional organization that is characterized by the unequal distribution of powers and privileges. To resort to charity as a plea of conscience is very telling. Philosophy’s domination of the process of argumentation is entirely analogous to the domination of life under “civilization”.

Bataille, ​ The Accursed Share Vol. I,​ pp. 56 (Emphasis Original) Gilbert, ​ Coalescent Argumentation​ , pp. 43

146 147

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88 4. Conclusion

Our identification with ocularcentrism is quite possibly the most pronounced feature in the domination of life. To identify with the eye is to identify with both the distance and separation inherent in the least intimate of our senses. In a culture that is ocularcentric, what is sacrificed is intimacy. As a way of preserving life, even in its most barren form, intimacy is to become collateral damage to the immunitary apparatus. For what is contained in intimacy is an excess in respect to form. An explosive fluidity that resists the predication of rigid outlines: “The world of ​ intimacy is as antithetical to the real world as immoderation is to moderation, madness 148

to reason, drunkenness to lucidity.” Having immunized intimacy, we no longer identify with the living world, but in fear of its exuberant outbreaks; we instead identify with the non­living and the comfort of its consistency.

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