Longitudes: A Collection of Essays, Ideas and Writing in Progress

This entry will deal with the thought of Charles Darwin. From the Voyage of the Beagle and The Principle of Divergence to Natural Selection and the Descent of Man, Darwin displays remarkable changes (and consistencies) in the nature of his reasoning. As his ideas emerge into society at large they evolve in remarkably conflicting and often disturbing ways. This essay is a first step towards a better understanding the phenomenon and complex legacy of Darwinian thought.

When Charles Darwin set off on his voyage aboard the Beagle there was absolutely no sign that this relatively simple naturalist would cause such a great wave in western thought. His student years were the epitome of mediocrity––hunting and gambling his days away––and his presence on the ship seems to have been not much more than an after thought. The ship’s captain, a phrenologist, almost denied Darwin passage on the ship because the shape of his nose seemed to indicate undesirable moral tendencies (laziness). But Darwin seemed to have an innate passion for natural history and, through his friend Adam Sedgwick, found himself very interested in geology. The works of Alexander Humbolt and John Herschel were also very influential to Darwin––while Humbolt’s scientific travelogues sparked in Darwin the urge to travel, Herschel’s investigations into natural philosophy introduced him to rigourous philosophical and scientific thought. It was, however, geology that would first inspire Darwin’s theoretical task.

Lyell’s Principles of Geology influenced Darwin profoundly. Lyell presented a rigourously empirical historical view of natural science oriented around five key ideas:

1. The geologist investigates both the animate and inanimate changes that have taken place during the earth’s history.
2. His principal tasks are to develop an accurate and comprehensive record of those changes, to encapsulate that knowledge in general laws, and to search for their causes.
3. This search must be limited to causes that can be studied empirically.
4. The records or ‘monuments’ of the earth’s past indicate a constant process of the ‘introduction’ and ‘extinction’ of species, and it is the geologist’s task to search for the causes of these introductions and extinct ions.
5. According to Lyell, the only attempt to deal with 4 above, that of Jean Baptist Lamark who proposed the idea that species are capable of ‘indefinite modification’, is a failure on methodological grounds; for Lyell all the evidence supports the view that species variability is limited, and that one species cannot be transformed into another.

Well before Darwin arrived in South America, a fiery debate was raging with regards to the geological nature of the earth and the origins of life itself. The Platonic forms and the Aristotelian ‘chain of being’ were being challenged; and the biblical concept of creationism was being modified in an attempt to accommodate compelling new modes of thinking about the nature of life which had been introduced largely because of correlative observations made in the fossil record and geological strata. Although the idea of evolution had been introduced long before, these new observations challenged the Christian values which lay at the centre of 19th century British society in an unprecedented way. The Church countered these challenges as best it could. Arguments were made by faithful scientists with regards to the age of the planet, who claimed that it was too young to allow for evolution, and for the permanence of the geological structure of the earth––the only changes incurred were those brought on by God’s great flood. Change of any type, whether it be evolution, the introduction of new species or the extinction of others, geological or living, was inconceivable. But this was at odds with clear empirical evidence in the fossil record that demonstrated that some animal types disappear while others seem to undergo drastic changes. Christian scientists tried to explain this by putting forth the theory that there had not been one cataclysmic flood but many––God deliberately destroying his creation and recreating it. It soon became clear, however, that what was being observed was a process of transformation: invertebrates in the oldest and lowest level of the fossil records, then fish, reptiles, birds, mammals and man at the highest and most recent level. For a while pious scientists were able to counter this with the claim that these developments were distinct instances of creation and that the idea that new animal and plant types were evolving was merely an illusion.

While other defences were put up with varying degrees of success by the Christian scientific establishment, Natural Theology being chief among them, the growing feeling was that these transformations observed in the fossil record were the result of a gradual process rather than individual instances of creation. As the study of geology improved, the gaps between records became smaller thus reinforcing the idea of a continuous process; the observation of common rudimentary organs, sometimes non functional in certain species, brought Intelligent design into question; the common structure of vertebrate limbs as well as the observed similarities in embryonic development across animal types suggested common ancestry; evidence of the successes in selective animal and plant breeding as well as the discovery of new ‘non-biblical’ species in Australia questioned the permanence of types. All of this evidence, as well as the understanding that animals generally reproduced faster than the available food supply––resulting in a ‘struggle for existence’––led many to begin to view the world as a unity which was slowly changing its appearance under the influence of forces which were acting in the present moment.

Reflecting on his observations in South America and the Galapagos islands, Darwin was indeed confronted with certain facts that did not agree with the accepted Christian model of life and creation. Darwin became convinced that the fossil record and the current distribution of species could only be due to the gradual transformation of one species into another and was determined to articulate a theory to explain this that measured up to Lyell’s principles. He set out describe the process that produced the systematic patterns in the fossil record and the otherwise strange biogeographic distribution of species. He realised that he would eventually need to come up with a causal theory that would account for the transformations implied by his observations; every element of the theory would have to identify ‘causes now in operation’, which could be investigated empirically. For Darwin, the problem, and the methodological constraints, had been outlined by Lyell and defended philosophically by Herschel; but there were, however, other theories put forward by some of Darwin’s contemporaries and predecessors which would also profoundly influence the way he viewed things.

For Lamark, all living creatures––all ‘organic matter’––contained, in a manner of speaking, a will to self improvement. Lamark claimed that the behaviour and needs of the animal would lead to the development of certain traits; as a species inevitably moved its way upwards to greater complexity, matter formed itself into basic creatures which filled in the space opened up by this ascent. This endless process of generation put forward by Lamark––a development on the Aristotelian chain of being––was scorned by Darwin’s hero Lyell, and publicly given very little credence by Darwin himself, although it certainly had an effect on his thought. The Lamarkian position most certainly influenced Darwin’s ‘Theory of Pangenesis’ which we will discuss later. In addition to the concept of the ‘struggle for existence’ proposed by Erasmus Darwin and Buffon, the work of Chambers, which posited that the progression of fossil types was the evidence of the unceasing transformation of God’s initial creation created such a scandalous uproar that it could not have gone unknown to Darwin.

Darwin’s observations across the South American pampas eventually lead him to view the process of transformation as ‘continuous descent with modification.’ He saw a connection between the historical resemblance of organisms and their geographical proximity: different types of ostriches or armadillos seemed to descend from similar ancestors––they did not appear to be representative of separate instances of creation but rather the results of geographic separation. Bifurcating from a common ancestor the ancestors of the different types of ostrich would eventually become so estranged from each other that interbreeding would become impossible. Darwin’s experience on the Galapagos islands confirmed what he had observed on the continent. Despite the fact that the environmental conditions were very similar from island to island, the populations of birds and lizards that populated them bore unmistakable differences. Darwin would come to the conclusion that the separation of these animals had permitted the populations to vary independently from island to island. Ultimately this view would now put Darwin in conflict with Lyell who contended that, while the earth itself undergoes extensive changes, living organisms remain constant. For Darwin, Lyell’s objection to biological change was made incoherent by his belief in geological change.

Like Lamarck, Darwin initially saw biological evolution as being influenced by environmental change, as an adaptive process; but he also realised that, contrary to Lamark, the process could not be seen as a continual line of ascent. His observations had shown him that a given organism could evolve into a more complex organism with out disappearing itself. This developed into a concept of ‘adaptive radiation’ which posited the evolutionary movement of organisms into all possible habitats. Thus Darwin presents his theory of a tree of life in which all life branches out irregularly from a common stem.

But Darwin’s theory was not original. It owed profound debts to Lamark as well as Erasmus Darwin; the theory of common ancestry had also been postulated by Diderot and in the field of linguistics by Jones and Bopp. And, although Darwin had come some way in explaining how evolution works, he still had no idea why it worked––what was driving this process?

As we saw above, Darwin started by taking the position that evolution was prompted by environmental changes which bring about changes in behaviour––he was never able to quite shake off the spectre of Lamark. Darwin then moved to an hypothesis which stipulated that sexual reproduction produced ‘random unsolicited novelties’; and that positive ‘novelties’, or variations, would have the tendency to propagate themselves. While Darwin was very interested in the ways in which plants and animals had been selectively (consciously) bred by humans, he could not bring himself to believe that natural evolution worked in this way. Although Darwin was aware of the idea of the struggle for existence put forward by his grandfather and Buffon, it was only after examining the mathematical model of population growth put forward by Malthus that he came to the conclusion that any organism which found itself in the possession of a favorable variation would be more likely to survive and reproduce––whether it be the ability to move into new habitat (divergence), more easily aquire food and mates, or evade predators. For Darwin the only solution was a theory of blind competition which eliminates the unfit: Natural Selection.

Darwin still had problems. While he now had a theory, it was not one that lived up to the principles of credibility as he understood them. Darwin had always hoped to develop a properly inductive theory, but all he had was an hypothesis. He began to accept the fact that evolution would not be able to be observed directly and that the only way to present his theory in an acceptable manner would be to amass such an overwhelming volume of indirect evidence that deduction of his ideas would be impossible to escape. And, he still had not effectively explained the means by which variation was caused and maintained.

In attempting to explain causes, Darwin was caught between chance variation or the development of ‘random unsolicited novelties’ on one hand, and the idea that environment (Erasmus Darwin, Buffon) and the generational effects of use and disuse (Lamark) played a decisive role on the other. Indeed, the very title he gave to his theory, Natural Selection, is ambiguous in this regard and his texts vacillate between these concepts. At this point Darwin seems to give up on his cherished notions of scientific rigour, postulating theories which had little or no compelling evidence to found them. His theory of ‘Pangenesis’ suggested that physical traits acquired by parents during their life time such as muscle growth or certain talents were inherited by the offspring––this could also work in reverse. As Weismann later showed, the kind of clear rigorous research into observable facts that Darwin so excelled at in his earlier yeas would have been sufficient to prove that no compelling evidence exists for such a theory and that offspring invariably revert to type. Perhaps because of the lack of a genetic model on which to base an understanding of the connection between generations, this profoundly Lamarkian theory found a large audience in the United States where the clear causal––but unscientifically founded––model of the inherited effects of use and disuse and environmental influence were preferable to the chance effects of ‘unsolicited variation.’ Indeed, even with the advancement of modern genetics, many continue out of ingnorance, or preference, to understand evolution in this way.

Darwin’s own vacillations with regards to the interpretation of his observations allowed his audience to interpret the theory itself in a number of ways. And indeed, many began to pose the question: does natural selection work at levels other than the level of Darwin’s focus? Darwin himself offered a social theory in the Descent of Man. While the phrase “favoured races” which appears at the beginning of Origin of Species certainly refers only to pigeons, it does seem to echo throughout Darwin’s ‘Descent’ under the guise of the evolution of races as a driving force of human advancement. This unrepentantly classist and anglo-centric document––the spectre of Malthus looming heavily all the while––contributed greatly to the development of racialism which promulgated wildly speculative ideas regarding the superiority of races while masquerading as science. Again, Darwin vacillates in his understanding of man’s place in natural selection and society, leaving himself open for interpretation. This led to unfortunate consequences such as Social Darwinism and the development of other racist and economically exploitative doctrines that gave themselves credence by associating themselves with the increasingly deified Darwin.

As the figure head for contemporary naturalists and environmentalists, and as the foundation––at least in part––for the “scientific” credibility of laissez-faire economics and colonial military expansion, the iconic name ‘Darwin’ has taken on many guises over the course of the last century. The triumph of Darwin the man was to create the most comprehensive empirical model of the distribution and evolution of species; and indeed, modern genetics still uses his model a fundamental part of the interpretation of its data. But, while Darwin’s thought has inspired an appreciation of the mystery and beauty of nature and has undoubtedly played a crucial role in our understanding of biology and genetics, it has also contributed, directly or indirectly, to the creation of the social nihlism and malaise that are so characteristic of the 20th century––this due, perhaps in part, to the conclusion many have drawn that Darwinism exludes God and shows that man’s special status in creation is not only an illusion, but that mankind itself is inescapably bound up in the savage and bestial struggle to survive.

Clearly, Darwin himself was surrounded by an incoherent buzz of scientific and religious dogmatism and in light of this, the limpid nature of his observations should not be underestimated. What is remarkable, however, is how the observations and ideas this unassuming naturalist came to play such a profound role among the dialectical forces that drive modern history.

READING:
1. Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage.
2. Charles Darwin, On Evolution

It seems that a natural revolution is approaching which could, quite possibly, take humanity out of the evolutionary process or reduce it to a shadow of its former potency. All signs point to a coming crisis which, for humanity, will be as metaphysical as it is physical. This section will examine the contemporary problems of understanding and communication facing the individual, government and industry. It will propose that the environmental problem we all face demands a new conception of responsibility, and the self which must offer itself as a vehicle for the expression of positive personal action and open communication of knowledge between our institutions, the individual at large and the naural world.

The crisis I mentioned above has been germinating since the late 15th century when Europeans first started making major inroads into exploration, world conquest and the creation of a taxonomic view of nature with the intention of mastering it and generating wealth. The Economic creed of progress that developed in the following centuries demanded scientific innovation and political infrastructure to support it, creating a situation whereby human knowledge became fractured into increasingly specialised fields of understanding while human production polluted the environment. By the 21st century we find society to be dominated bureaucratically and technologically, with the creed of progress and profit inculcated into the soul of the western man and his institutions. The complex political and technological nature of modern government and industry coupled with the quasi-religious insistence on maximal economic growth renders the contemporary institution incapable of swift and decisive action in matters which do not fall into clear and well worn categories; issues must have a clear mandate and infrastructure of their own already in place within the system in order to be dealt with effectively or at all. This renders the rapid reforms necessary to countermand the effects of global warming very difficult to realise.

Additionally, this bureaucratic and technological complexity renders critical engagement by the individual extremely difficult and, as a result, a large part of society feels insignificant and powerless with regard to the enormity of the socio-economic structure in which he or she lives. This results in a cynical social malaise which is masked by irrational consumerism and hyper-individualism. Communication between the fundamental elements of society, crucial as it is for the sustainable functioning of humanity as a whole, seems farther from reach than ever before. Indeed, the very way in which we question responsibility itself expresses this fracturing of state, industry and the individual. In order to confront the contemporary global issues we face effectively, we will need some way of unifying or, at the very least, mediating these elements of society so that production, governance and the individual can communicate efficiently and function as a sustainable part of the natural cycle.

Consider the modern University. This institution has, since the late 19th century, positioned itself as the mediator between the institutions of mankind; it establishes the criteria for credibility and transforms individuals into policy makers, professionals, educators, and CEOs. The University collects the diverse scientific knowledge which has always been key in maximising production and produces the economic theories which govern the worlds workers; it defines the judicial standards that hold us responsible for our actions––or inaction––and develops the social theories through which we understand ourselves. It also gathers and interprets the complex data regarding green house gas emissions and other pertinent environmental issues. The University is positioned to mediate knowledge in a way that no other institution is capable of. I suggest that the 21st century will offer the University an unprecedented opportunity to redefine itself as a medium through which knowledge may be communicated across and between the diverse elements of society. This will demand an evolution in our understanding of responsibility which can no longer function as introverted, categorical fields of blame, possession and power that exist within the framework of Instrumental Reason.

Responsibility must become an expression of understanding across human endeavour; it must demand knowledge and be obliged to express it. This concept of responsibility depends on communication for its effectiveness. Although it is clear that the individual is the fundamental unit out of which society is built, we must realise that the individual permeates the institution itself and therefore cannot be separated from it. It is with this in mind that I suggest the University come down from its elite position and engage in a process which continually reaches out across diverse fields of study and experience to communicate knowledge in a way that inspires the individual––regardless of institutional affiliation or social strata––to think and act in a way that engages humanity within nature and that understands the interconnected nature of the world.

Indeed, some positive steps are being taken in this regard. Some universities and other educational institutions are offering community outreach programs; the curriculum in some elementary and secondary schools is beginning to include natural and critical studies where, until recently, science and mathematics have been dominant. We must ensure that this trend continues to grow, and rapidly. By assuring that everyone has access to the knowledge required to understand, on a basic level at least, the diverse political and technological elements that constitute our modern condition, the individual may begin to realise where his or her true power lies. Given the appropriate critical tools which allow the individual to understand and dismantle the psychological forces that have, until now, manufactured material desire, he or she may be able to affect positive change that begins on a personal level; we might begin to take down the metaphysical boundaries of categorical thought that divide humanity from itself and separate mankind from nature. The individual, both at large and within the context of the institution must, as a matter of course and in the of best faith, continually demand and give knowledge that extends understanding so that it may be expressed as action which gives rather than takes. Although it is unclear whether or not the human species will continue to thrive on this planet, the adoption of a new, evolving conception of responsibility––which expresses understanding and communicates knowledge via policy making, industrial practice, education and consumption––might just allow us to redefine ourselves as a sustainable part of the natural world before nature herself removes us from it.

READING:
1. Carolyn Merchant: The Death of Nature
2. Michel Serres: Le Contrat Naturel
3. Thorsten Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class
4. Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation
5. Charles Taylor: The Malaise of Modernity

this essay is not yet finished

The Science of Desire and the Dream of Reality:
Flaubert and the Modern Novel

”I would like to write a book about nothing,
a book without external links,
which would be held together by the internal force of its style …
just as the earth without being suspended moves in the air,
a book which would have almost no subject matter
or at least whose subject would be almost invisible
if that is possible.”

If we are prompted to describe Flaubert’s text as a ‘science of desire’, it is not to discredit his imagination or literary skill. Although the “emancipated student of Balzac” was acutely aware of his own literary tradition, he managed to transcend the massive figures that constituted it to forge a new conception of the novel and left behind him an incredible lineage of writers which include Joyce, Sartre, Kafka, Chekhov and Kundera among many others. This enormous achievement was singular not only in that he was able to compete with the likes of Balzac and Victor Hugo in a literary sense, but also in the way in which he managed to recontextualise old and introduce new literary devices and extend the role of literature beyond its well worn niche into the modern world of critique and science. The moeurs and mechanics of post Enlightenment Europe were changing radically and it is out of this environment that Flaubert’s aesthetic emerged.

By 1821, the date of Flauber’s birth, the French bourgeoisie had become rich and fearfully conservative; interest in the arts and literature stagnated and the the children of Flaubert’s generation grew up in an environment of commercialism where there was a general distrust for any kind of imagination or artistic creativity let alone deviation form the accepted social norms. The wealth that had been gained by the passionate revolutionaries of 1789 and the Napoleonic conquerers that followed them had turned the dynamism of french society in to a dull, lifeless monotony that left little place for artistic expression. There was, however, a group of young writers who began to turn out a steady stream of works that became increasingly bitter towards the bourgeois. Chief amongst the ranks of this new literary movement were Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. Their works could not have contrasted more sharply with those of Corneille or Racine in tone, content and in the harsh social criticism they put forward : if bourgeois society would not allow true literary imagination, literature would have to put itself in opposition to society. Motivated by the desire that this generation had to feel some of the passion that their parents and grandparents had experienced during the Revolution and the Napoleonic conquests as well as the disgust that they felt with the lifeless society in which they found them selves, the youth turned to the exotic and the passionate; the romance novels of George Sand2 became very popular and a romantic movement among the youth began to glow. Wives took lovers, people took to travelling and suicide became almost fashionable; perhaps warmed by Rousseau some 75 years earlier, Romanticism had caught fire in France.

As much as the young Flaubert felt himself to be a part of this new romanticism, he was also very critical of it and felt only scorn for those he heard ignorantly deriding the classics. Romanticism, for Flaubert, came from the awareness and cultivation of a deep natural drive and not simply from the act of mocking Montaigne or Rabelais. Although he greatly admired Hugo and Dumas, Flaubert was faced with a problem : the mode of this romantic expression itself was in the process of becoming stale but it seemed as though there was nowhere else to turn. There was a general mood among Flaubert and his contemporaries that the end of the road had been reached and that the form of the novel, such as it was, could no longer offer a medium for innovative expression. Flaubert realised that if he was to continue as a writer he would have to recontextualise the novel - both technically and conceptually - and as a result he began look to other disciplines for models by which he could frame and inspire his work. Above all, he seemed most interested in mathematics and the social sciences.

What then do we mean by this allusion to science as a method in the writing of Flaubert? How was this modern novel created and what does it tell us about the human condition? Flaubert had a clear understanding of the fact that he was living in a time that was approaching rapid change : the railroad and the increased access to the printed word via the steam driven printing press are only two examples of the many forces that were changing communication, economy, morals and life in general in the France and Europe of the mid 1800’s. These were the days of Hegel, Marx and Darwin and Flaubert wished to approach the novel with the appropriate geist :

“traiter l’ame humaine avec l’imparialité que l’on met dans les sciences pysiques.”3

Flaubert was suspicious of the ‘inspired artist’ and inspiration in general :

“méfions-nous de cette espèce d’échauffement qu’on appelle l’inspiration…”4

“Ecrire froidement”5

and:

“C’est pas avec le cour que on écrit, c’est avec la tete”6

Rather than rely on inspiration, he preferred to use a technique he called “la linge droite”7 , a kind anchor which would allow him to dig, “comme une taupe”8 , deeper and deeper into the work finally allowing him to emerge into a ‘reality’ of words and ideas. For Flaubert the work of writing was not founded on inspiration or genius but rather relied on an “apreté”, a kind of toughness or rigour that would allow him to create a work in which one would feel:

“une longue énergie qui court d’une bout a l’autre et ne fablit pas.” 9

As one would expect, the book did not come easily for Flaubert. For fifty-three months he agonised over every word - he poured himself into this book and when it was finished he declared: “La Bovary, c’est moi.” Flaubert wished to apply a new set of standards to the novel so that it could become a means by which one could examine the human condition from a point of detachment. Although Flaubert believed that literature should not be confused with the physical sciences, he hoped that what he called the “moral sciences” could take their place with the rest of the physical and emerging social sciences :

“Si les science morales avaient, comme les mathematiques, deux ou
trios lois primordiales à leur disposition elles pourraient marcher de l’avavnt. Mais elles tâtonnent dans les ténèbres…”10

Whether we can call Madame Bovary an object of science as much as we can call it a work of literature is open for question but Flaubert’s interest in science and scientific rigour does give us valuable insight into his motivation and crucial key insights into the construction and significance of his work.. There is no doubt that what Flaubert created was something new and mysterious, even viewed from the contemporary perspective; it is at once detached and passionate, cold and sensual. It is unlike anything that came before it and to this day continues to amaze and confuse readers who delight in its virtuosity and struggle to interpret its meaning.

As one digs deeper and deeper into the book, like Flaubert’s mole, one is struck with a strange sensation that becomes increasingly difficult to shake off. Flaubert seems have been to be able to ‘embed’ a kind of determinism into the very fabric of the text; the relations of the characters to each other and to their social and physical environment are dominated by it. This sensation seems to go beyond the mere fact that one might have read the text once or twice before - although this does seem to be a book that one should read at least once before reading it ‘for the first time’. Initially we can feel it more than we can intellectualise it, but as we get on this determinism, paradoxically, becomes the living pulse of the novel and as we approach the end it is this terrifying drive of self-realisation that dominates the story.

There are several letters exchanged between Flaubert and his friend Alfred de Poitteven11 discussing the deterministic nature of the universe and free will that are quite telling and, indeed, there are many references to the monotonous and deterministic nature of life within the book itself. If there is a certain machinal quality here it is certainly that of the highest order, like a magic clock or some other mysterious creation of the like. It is in this way that the book brings to mind the phenomenon of the Paper Theatre of the 1800’s12 , albeit in a very complicated and refined incarnation. While the characters in Flaubert’s story do seem to be limited to ‘two dimensions’ - created as they are almost entirely out of stereotype and cliché - the natural background is hyper-real and rendered with breath taking complextity and detail. As the novel progresses the initial pseudo-romantic expression of the physical environment is occasionally traded for an existential vision that touches the Sartrian.13 This existentialism is important because it represents the finest resolution of Flaubert’s gaze. In what amounts to a special kind of Flaubertian existential materialism, we find ourselves liminally bound on one extreme with the indifference of nature and on other - in the grandest image - a neutral, cosmic determinism. Flaubert moves us around in this world with staggering virtuosity : here we are looking down dispassionately on this world from above; there we find ourselves starting out inside someone’s’ private thoughts and feelings only to end up in the garden with the wood lice :

“Au fond de son âme, cependant, elle attendait un évévnment. Comme les matelots en détresse, elle promenait sur la solitude de sa vie des yeux déspérés, cherchant au loin quelque voile blanche dans les brumes de l’horizon…”14

and a page later :

“…dans le jardin… tout semblait dormir, l’espalier couvert de paille et la vinge comme un grand serpent malade sous le chaperon du mur, ou l’on voyait, en s’approchait se traîner des cloportes à pattes nombreuses…”15

Sometimes the very fragmentary descritptions of his characters physical attributes become almost indistinguishable from their surroundings. Flaubert shows us a natural world that is as strikingly beautiful as it is indifferent; one in which his creatures find themselves both interposed with and abstracted from their environment. He engages us in constant and subtle shifts of perspective which create a plurality of view points that make objective judgements very difficult. Additionally, the social environment in which the characters relate to each other is rendered in such a way that reference to it does not always need to be made in print although it is always clearly present.

This abundance of perspective and the ability to make understood what is not said is derived from the way in which Flaubert combines literary techniques and applies them towards the characters and events. Like lenses in a microscope or perhaps in a way analogous to how radioscopy allows us discern what lies under the surface, these techniques allows us to observe the events of the book on multiple levels. Three of these techniques are outstanding : Irony, Cliché and Free Indirect Discourse.

Cliché is the ‘material’ out of which all the characters are constituted and it shows itself both in situation and in the sparse dialogue. It is by this use of cliché that Flaubert is able to make clearly defined social and psychological objects out of his characters; it enables him to be categorical with them and to play these categories off of one another.

Charles Bovary opens the book with his emergence as the idiotic school boy and closes it with his pathetic death : he is the average bourgeois every man. Everything about him is mediocre and every desire that motivates him ends either in comfortable complacency, as is the case with his desire for Emma (at least in the short term), or disaster as is the case with his failed attempt to make a name for himself in trying to cure Hyppolites leg. He is the product of a nervous, nagging mother and a father who, although full of all kinds of grand statements, is as essentially complacent and mediocre as Charles himself. The final revelation of Emmas’ licentious activities and her death are impossible for him to comprehend as is everything that exists out side of his small sphere of comprehension - the Marquis’ ball for example. He seems completely oblivious to Emma’s passions but when he is finally made to face them they destroy him.

Homais is the incarnation of bourgeois values in the afterglow of the revolution : reason, ‘republican anticlericalism’, science and the printed word, all faded to empty rhetoric. He is the master at using the social ideals of the revolution (progress, humanism) to hide his lust for personal wealth. He is the empty ideologue and idealist and, as a result, is an abundance source of self-important nonsense. He is the spirit of Yonneville and epitomises the empty arrogance of the provincial Bourgeois.
Rudolphe - with all his contempt for the bourgeois - initially seems to stand in contrast to Homais but is, in the end, the other side of the same coin : he is the empty romantic and spouts out his own rhetoric as a result. His bold statements are completely self serving; he is the cliché of the fashionable romantic who uses romanticism as guise for lechery and self aggrandisement. Léon, Emma’s other love,r also shows these romantic tendencies but lacks the courage to act upon them decisively. He is just as empty as Rudolphe; where Rudolphe is brutish, Leon is timid. The cure and the merchant make for are equally stereotypical. Curé is completely useless in spiritual matters his existence is completely profane and completely useless and ignorant of all things spiritual. The draper Leureux masks his greed in obsequious, servile phrases and is completely shameless in his quest for money because in his world there is no shame in it.16

Cliché is also used in the description of Yonneville itself; it is the perfect stereotype of a backwards provincial town rendered with meticulous detail. Our arrival in Yonneville is like that of a lone spirit surveying a ghost town ; not a person is seen. As we begin the first chapter of part two, we fly in over the surrounding area moving over the beautiful landscape towards the centre of town which is described in intimate detail - we are even made aware of its backwards agricultural practices. We travel through the grave yard, through the church, the market in the main square until we reach the ‘Lion D’or.’ It is only then that we encounter the shadow - or rather the possibility of the shadow - of the pharmacist Homais bent over his desk. At this point the trip is over and we are taken directly to the cemetery where we encounter the sexton who has, in addition to burying the dead, taken to growing potatoes just next to the graves. We are then made privy to a fragment of a conversation in which the Curé says to him : “Vous vous nourrissez des morts.”17 We are then informed that:

“Depuis les événments que l’on va raconter, rien, en effet, n’a changé à Yonneville … les foetus du pharmacien comme des paquets d’amandou blanc, se pourissent de plus en plus dans leur alcool bourbeux…”18

There’s a sense in which Yonneville is a kind of eerie place out of time, a kind of 19th century ‘Pleasant Ville.’ Indeed, towards the beginning of our lonely flight into Yonneville we are told how, despite the construction of the construction of new roads in the area (ses débouchés nouveaux) the town has stood still and that from a distance it resembles a snoozing herd of cows.
Perhaps the most startling is Flaubert’s use of free indirect discourse or style indirect libre. moving the first person in and out of the third, creates a vertiginous effect and must have been very confusing for readers of the day who were not used to it. This effect seems to have been largely responsible for the moral confusion about the book. Certainly at times one can find oneself quite rightly asking : who is thinking this? the character? Flaubert? myself? He does it by maintaining the narrative in the third person but he puts <<<>>>

To this we must add Flauberts’ mastery of irony, which he uses equally well in the context of comedy as in pathos. <<<>>>>

Flaubert’s masterful and unrepentant use of cliché descends from the dialogue to permeate the very beings of the characters - it also creates the village Yonneville. Irony collides with these categorical characters moulded out of cliché and compel us, often subconciously, to move from our complacency into the position of critic. It is at the grand events of the novel that these elements of technique come together in all their majesty : the wedding, the ball, the agricultural fair and the cab ride though Rouen. Flaubert is always working his critical lenses and some of the most magical critical moments can sometimes be found hiding in the shadow of some larger event. What are we to make of the last phrase of part one, chapter two :“Elle l’avait aimé après tout”19 . Easily passed over, this sentence refers to Charles’ first wife - after her death - and begs the questions what? and who? : What kind of love is this - if it is love at all? Who is thinking this? Charles? Flaubert? Are we supposed to think it? Flaubert keeps us moving incessantly and often in multiple directions often snagging us on little hooks. All this is played out on a physical landscape that is at once the natural beauty of Normandy delivered to us with proper 19th century romanticism and the nausea of existential realism. In Flaubert’s world the material and the psychological ally themselves in a continual give and take….. join ….>>>>>

But what about Emma herself? What are we to make of her? What does she represent and where does she come from? As Flaubert’s own statement suggests, she is indeed none other than Flaubert himself but, like Charles’ hat “d’ordre composite”, she is a bizarre mix. She is Flaubert as he identified himself with his mother and his mistress, Louise Colet. His own transgressive drives mix with the domination his nervous mother had over him, the bourgeois society of which he was inextricably a part and his his bizarre relationship with the demanding Colet. After the death of Charles’ father and his sister - which occurred in rapid succession - Charles was left with his mother and his sister‘s baby daughter to care for. His mother was extremely nervous and hated for him to be away. He never broke with her, even after meeting Colet and went to great pains to keep them apart. After infrequent trips to Paris, or elsewhere, he always returned back to the tiny provincial town of Croisset where his family moved him after he began to be afflicted with bizarre epileptic attacks. Invariably he found his mother pacing nervously on the train platform, waiting for him to arrive. Flaubert showed almost no desire to leave or alter his situation and it seems almost as though he felt himself to be a willing prisoner to his circumstances.

The three Madame Bovarys - mother,first wife and Emma - that appear in the book are themselves a strange mixture of Flaubert, his mother and Colet. The patriarchal voice of Homais is, in part Falubert’s own father as well as the parochial voice of the bourgeois society. Léon is vaguely reminiscent of his admired friend, Alfred Le Pottevin, for whom he had so much hope and who in the end turned out to be a disappointment for Flaubert - as Léon was for Emma. There obsession with literature and the impossibility of escape for Emma (as for Flaubert himself) from the shackles of her environment and who she is - the escape into romantic literature was as endemic for Emma as it was for the youth of Fluabert’s generation. Everything in the book is an image or an artefact, a person or melange of different aspects of people and places that made up the physical, social and psychological material of Flaubert’s existence. With scientific rigour, he creates out of this material the most exquisite dream : instead of turning his gaze outwards, as his predecessors had done, he turns his focus inwards and lays his soul bare for examination. It is through the axial point of Flaubert that the characters and locations touch reality; that “linge droit” is dug inwards and the ‘reality’ of words and ideas it opens up exists deep inside Flaubert himself. He removes the outside world and creates (or finds) objects, from within himself, that resemble human instruments and activities; these objects become the loci of aesthetic contemplation : a critical dream of reality with each element perfectly placed to act out its part in the machine with exquisite precision. Still, there is something Emma that sets her apart. Her complete lack of conscious intentionality arouses something in us that is difficult to define in words. She finds her self in the middle of the most bizarre and self destructive activities often without seeming to know how she arrived there:

<<>>

She becomes increasingy estranged from the reality of her environment. Our conscious, rational minds are at pains to come to terms with her.

If, however, we consider that this object of Flaubert’s narrative is portrayed as a woman20 in parochial and patriarchal provincial France and, as such, is perhaps the perfect incarnation of subconsciously repressed desire - a desire with no chance of survival or full expression in the ‘conscious world’ that Flaubert presents to us and one that must constantly deny itself - we may be able to find some clues in deciphering the meaning of her character. Viewed in this light, Emma reveals herself as the incarnation of the psycopathological phenomenon of subconcious desire as it intrudes into the repression of everyday existence.21 His critique is of the society which, in its immaculate homogeneity, has raised reason to the status of religion; but this is a religion of profanity where transgression is not considered and the sacred no longer exisits : life and passion in the raw is repressed and expression of desire is channeled neurotically through the rational constructs of society. Desire manifests itself in other places and characters in the book but it is always restrained or is directed instrumentally towards the profanity of ‘reality’- towards money, status or sex : the drives of Rudolphe , Léon and Homais fade rapidly or change focus as they lose their practicality. Emma’s limitless passion is completly alien to them : even immediately after her gruesome death, the pharmacist and the curé continue with with their pointless and age old arguments over church and state and the characters continue as history has determined them showing little or no real sentiment over what has just happened - with the exception, of course, of Charles and the baby who are effectively destroyed by it but have absolutely no understanding of the situation. Emma’s desire is singular : it’s manifestation is transgressive to the extent that it removes her, quite literally, from the reality of society. It has no real tangible goal other than it’s own self realisation. Emma is passion that cannot or will not be mediated by society, made manifest in a society so repressed that understanding is impossible. She is all pathos, all Dionysian drive with no true Aplollonian vision to guide her - her romance novels will not suffice. All the while, as distubing as this all is, we recognise that there is something fundimental about Emma. Perhaps Flaubert is showing us that it is not reason or thinking that is the essence of being - as Descartes postulated - but rather desire.
Flaubert is pshycological in a way that was almost completely alien to the readers of his generation and Madame Bovary was put on trial for crimes against morality. He was aquitted after a lenghthy process that, by all accounts, Flaubert seemed to relish. <<>>Surrealism…

Questions,Other Notes and Ideas on Madame Bovary and Flaubert:

1. The Emotional Intelligence of Emma

“You must beware of turgid speeches
masking themselves as common
place passions”
Rodolphe p.177

Emma lives in a world apart which she has cobbled together from the language of romance novels. She uses romantic clichés – which have no grounding in reality – as the foundation of her thought and identity. Increasingly, this becomes all she sees and understands. When her world is challenged, her fear manifests itself as rage or retreat into piety; there’s an element here that’s almost bestial. Her self-delusion and laceration from the world reach such an extreme point that she is literally removed from existence. Although this is literature and Emma represents an extreme pathological case, her character does raise certain important points regarding the relationship between language and passion (as desire and emotion), and the ways in which we engage with the world through them.

– How is the nature of a given emotion dependent on the language we have to describe it? (metaphor etc.)

– If we had different language tools (or if our language functioned differently) would our experience of emotion be different?

– Are emotions in the mind or are they “in the world” (Decartes’ cogito vs. Heidegger’s Dasien) ? (passion/reason vs the ideas of mind and heart… chi)

– How do our assumptions – mind/body, inner/outer (dualism) or, our ideas of how love or anger “should be” – affect (or emerge from) our language and therefore influence our emotions?

– How are the passions related to personal and social narratives, and the drive to complete these narratives (consciously or sub-consciously) ? What’s the relation of the expression to the emotion?

– How does this narrative get out of control as it did with Emma?

How much choice (or control) do we actually have in deciding when and how we express our emotions? (Sartre’s mauvaise foi) Is it possible to change the nature of our emotions by changing our language; is our situation in it’s own way just as deterministic as Emma’s?

2. “Madame Bovary, C’est Moi” : What does this mean?

– Flaubert talked about burying himself in the work so that he could find the “straight line” (linge droit) which would allow him to dig “like a mole” (comme une taupe) and eventually emerge or open up a reality of ideas and words that was hitherto concealed.
– Flaubert detested the subject matter of this novel. Why did he write about it ?
– “méfions-nous de cette espèce d’échauffement qu’on appelle l’inspiration…” Flaubert was suspicious of inspiration and said, “write with the head, not the heart”, “…écrire froidment”
– “The highest point in art is not to make us laugh or cry, but to act in the fashion of nature and make us dream”
– “Treat the soul with the same impartiality that one uses in the physical sciences.”
– “ Don’t judge, show!”

What is he showing? Is this really – as it seems on the surface – a critique of french bourgeois provincial life (les moeurs de province) or something altogether different? How does Flaubert implicate us (our emotions) in the book? How does he set us dreaming?

– The novel raises issues about gender and the possibilities open to women with regards to self determination (Vargas’ bad girl). Is there is something deeper and more perverse going on here?

– Is Flaubert just making a statement about the plight of women or is he using this sexualization instrumentally to deal with a personal issue?

Baudelaire : “To accomplish this tour de force, it remained only for the author to divest himself of his sex, and to become a woman. The result is a marvel; for despite all his zeal as an actor he was unable to keep from infusing his male blood into the veins of his creation, and Madame Bovary, in the most forceful and ambitious sides of her character, and also the most pensive, remained a man.”

A Fragmentary Conversation About Emma Bovary with Myself:

– How do we interpret this book and Emma herself?
is it a critique of society?
do we sympathise with Emma for being caught in this situation, Do we detest her?
What is this book saying politically?
Is Flaubert making any kind of judgement at all or is this a kind of sadistic game?
What exactly is he playing at?
What do we think about Flaubert use of a female charater?

– Well, this is a complicated book and it’s made all the more difficult to access becuse of subtil way in which presents itself and the prejduces we might have in approaching it

– … that’s to say, how we might impose our own understanding of how a novel from this period should present itself and , in the grander scheme of things, what the role of litterature istelf should be in moral and aesthetic terms.

– Some still call this book as a “realist” novel or claim that it was a breakthrough because of the realistic way in which it describes mid 19th century society in Normandy.

– Certainly, this is part of it, and the novel – on the surface – does present itself in this way.

– And, without doubt we are reading something that has it’s basis in lived experience and obsevation… the very social material that makes up the charaters, thier motives and dialogue is taken from this environment that Flaubert knew so well

–I’m reffering to the social conformity, cold intrumental pursuit of wealth , fashionable romanticicm , the bougeois marriage (which was more about money and estate than love or passion), the place of women, the restrictions of class, social hypocrisy, blind allegience to the social doctrine of the day and the like .

– and certainly in his descriptions of the material world, Flaubert’s depth of detail can only come with a mode of obsevation that borders on the scientific in terms of its rigour.

– So I don’t think it to be entirely innacurate to call him a realist… However, I do think that this is just the begining with Flaubert and we know from his letters that he was interested in moving beyond this realist style of which he was obviously such a master..

– I think, we can say that actually that it is through of this masterful use realism that Flaubert takes us somewhere else all together , a place that litterature had not explored up until then or at least no in this way …

– and presents us with something that is so subtile that at first we have no idea what we’re dealing with, just perhaps and odd feeling that there is something unusual going on.

– So Let me see If I can roughy outline what I mean here

– Flaubert presents us with a kind of disconect between his characters and the natural world that surrounds them , this is most extreme in the estrangement of Emma’s inner voice and the reality of the natural world to which she has no emotional conection.
P34 …Convent Bginning of PT2 enrty into Yonneville

– in this way Flaubert accentuates of the evolving passionate narrative of Emma by posing it against, or lacerating it from the natural world, which is described with this breathtaking realism..

– Emmas passion is increasingly directed away from reality, towards her fantasies fuelled by romace literature P58 After the Ball , Trapped Etc … Down in her soul…

– as her passion reaches it’s peak, she becomes dislocated from society and even her lovers themselves. PAGE 100 (playing the virtuous housewife)

– now what’s interesting to notice here is how Flaubert paints these characters in relation to that of Emmma’s : they are categorical in a way, they fit into these very real social stereotypes that Flaubert detested somuch… they become almost 2 dimentional, unvarying, cliche and almost comic at times

– wheras the range of emma’s passion and the prodigious and uncontrollable nature of it’s evolution increasingly terrifies … these suppporting characters, pale in comparison to her.

WHERE DOES ALL THIS LEAD ?

– BY the end of the book she’s really is like a caged creature, desperate to maintain control, desperate to keep herself disengaed from the others…. she is tormented and killed, by her own desire…surrounded by all these pathetic and demonic creatures ….this is NOT Balzac . this, by the end, is like some kind of dream… seems more like a nightmare than anything else

SO what I’m Getting at here

– There’s a sense in which this realism is merely the surface of something or as Flaubert put it the “scaffolding” which “would allow him to dig like a mole , and to eventually emerge into a reality of ideas that was hither to unknown”

Explain … But Madame Bovary is, in a sense, his authorial judgment on such human frailties, a revelation of the fatality and fultility of living out such romantic dreams in the modern world.

– But Flaubert doesn’t stop there

– the accuracy and detail of Flaubert’s realism as well as his understanding of science allowed him to recognize that reality, or at least our understanding of it, could be brought into question by the change or suggestion of even the smallest things. And so we see him laying out these hooks for us – and sometimes they are very subtile. He’s drawing us into this “reality” he’s discovered – sometimes forcing us to question our very understanding of the things that make us most human, the very understanding of our emotioanl language PP…19 “She Loved Him, After All”

– In this way he Implicates us in the novel, forcing us to weave in our own thoughts and feelings, our own emotional “Mythology” with that of the book. He puts us in the thoughts of the charaters and forces us to make our own judgements

– Irony + Free indirect discourse 271… “But as She was Writing…”

– the combination of Flaubert’s nautural realism, the lacerated internal voice of Emma, the almost symbolic supporting characters and the ways in which Flaubert pulls us in to the book creates the sense that what we are dealing with is some kind of reality abstracted from itself … somekind of critical dream in which we the readers, are expected to play a crucial critical role. In this way Flaubert is realist in his technique, modern in his depiction of bourgeois values the kind of moral relativism he implies but, in a sense, also surreal in the way he engages us with the book PP …152 She Would Explore his room ….

– What then, if anything, does this book provide… what does it show us???

– Well I think for me the most striking thing that came to mind is the way that, personal and social narratives are created, accepted or used… and become accepted as truth or become (or create) objects of obsession

– It seems to me that dominant issue here is that of the relationship between language and emotion. I’d like to speak about this briefly, not in an attempt to offer somekind definitive of model as to how this relationship plays out but rather to open a path for investigation and discussion. I’ll then move on to examine a few points in the text that I found to be of interest in this regard

––Rousseau, sturuggling with language in his attempt to expess these feelings he had; to define them into something that we (or he for that matter) could understand as some kind of recognisable emotion.

––– how difficult it was for him to do this given, among other things, the bizarre nature of his relationship with Mme De Warrens and the unstable nature of his family life. I for one, felt quite sympathetic towards poor Rousseau in this regard, contantly striving as he was to pull emotion out of raw feelings, never able to constitute for himself the common narratives that define Mother, Lover, Protector, Father etc…

But, as sad as it was for Rousseau it’s also very interesting to think about how fragile our ideas about our emotions actually are, and that they might not be always exactly what we assume them to be. So, let’s pause here for a second and try to understand what we mean by this idea of a narrative as it relates to emotion.

–– Emotional Intellegence… We are linguistc creatures and we use language to understand and describe our world, to each other and to ourselves. Metaphor is one of our chief devices in this regard

– However, in a nutshell I think we can begin to undertstand it if we are willing consider the ideas that our emotions are engagement with the world, and that our emotions, such as we understand them, are in large part percived as they are due to accutulration and the language that goes along with it. A few points

– We engage with the world through emotion

– Emotion tends to involve desire which moves –sometimes in very complicated ways – within a narrative and compells the individual to engage with the world. (there’s always somekind of object or direction)

– This is Intentionality

– Emotions can be false. (physiological response just is but the understanding of the narrative may be misunder stood or it could change)

– Our langugage and acultration has a lot to do with the nature of the emotions we have. Metaphors we use the cliche’s we live by etc…

– The ways in which the subject responds to the pressures of these narrative can be intelligent depending on how the story of this narrative is pursued.

– Active engagement with these narratives can affect not only our behavior or our way of engaging in the world but also the world itself

Now, on one extreme one might not engage at all, it might not even come to mind that such a thing would be possible; on the other, one could neurotically over think the narrative. Like Hamlet for example: the locus of his desire lies in direct, clear , action, and is never questioned: he must, and will kill Claudius to avenge his father. However, Hamlet is so busy engaging, questioning, tweaking the narrative of his revenge and missing opportunities for satisfaction as they present themselves, that we begin to wonder if he’ll ever get around to actually doing the deed that honour demands of him. There is also this extreme case, as suggested by Flaubert, where the subject (or rather ltterary subject in Emma’s) attempts to completely replace one set of narratives for another which has been completely fabricated out of books , these romance novels etc

… I should also point out
this idea of narrative as it relates to our emotions is itself a kind of metaphor : If we took this idea litterally we’d be living in some kind of novel … so I’m not saying it’s definitive by anymeans as a model of how our emotions work, thing are more myserious than that. However, I think it’s quite helpful as a tool for litterary critique in trying to create a relation between the lived and the written.

SO , with all of this in mind I’d like to have a look at few parts of the book where we can see this emotional narrative taking place, being formed or manipulated. And also, more interestingly point out line here and there where Flaubert implicates us, the reader and our own narratives into the book and into the characters them selves.

Anger and Resentment – There’s this perverse way in which Emma seems to savour all her Emotions , Anger and resentment are no different P94 … Dirested against Charles, P101 she’s almost frustrated that her “narrative” of resent ment directed towards Charles is missing some of the elements it needed to make the narrative itself complete “ she wished that he would beat her…”

Ideas of Love – Emma, Leon, Rodolphe … 177 this contrast between Emma and Rodolphe’s ideas

Friendship – Homais P81

There is perhaps no single philosophical idea more inculcated in the Western psyche than that of Cartesian Dualism. Indeed, it seems very likely that many of the contemporary discussions going around regarding the “mind/body problem” would be perfectly comprehensible to Descartes as the vocabulary in use is essentially his. Although the Cartesian model and its subsequent implications for our notions of the subject became a major part of the modern paradigm, it is not without its problems and critics.

The goal of the Cartesian project is to lay a permanent, universal foundation for knowledge. To achieve this, Descartes claims that we “cannot possibly go too far in [our] distrustful attitude”––better to have a method that excludes some truths, than one that justifies some falsehoods. Descartes started his line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notion. The four precepts that characterise the Cartesian Method:

1. “The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
2. The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.
3. The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.
4. And the last, in every case to make enumeration’s so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.”

Descartes then applies the method to itself––challenging his own reasoning and reason itself–– in order to derive three things that are not susceptible to doubt and which support each other to form a stable foundation for the method:

1. that something has to be there to do the doubting (I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am ( i cannot doubt that I think)
2. The method of doubt cannot doubt reason as it is based on reason.
3. By reason there exists a God and God is the guarantor that reason is not misguided.

Thus Descartes discovers his first item of indefeasible knowledge, his famous cogito, ergo sum, “I think therefore I am.” This foundationalism allows for the expansion of knowledge from first principles.Descartes saw the universe as dividing into two types of entities: mental and physical. Following Aristotle, Descartes understood the universe as consisting of substances which have essential properties; the essence of physical reality is spacial is extension, while the essence of mind is thinking (any state of consciousness). For Descartes we are essentially thinking beings but we do have a body which is completely determined by the laws of physics; the mind is free the body is determined; the mind is indivisible but the body is infinitely divisible. Therefore mind is eternal while the body is mortal; we know our own minds in a way we cannot know the physical world. Each of us is innately aware of ourselves as a thinking thing, by an unmediated understanding I think, therefore I am. By posing this distinction between body and mind, physical and mental, Descartes was able to make room for science and religion to coexist thereby laying a large part of the foundation of the Enlightenment.

However, we have problems. How do these two domains, these two separate metaphysical realms relate to each other causally? how does the mind connect with the body and therefore, the external world; how can a nonmaterial mind can influence a material body? Descartes suggested that the pineal gland is “the seat of the soul”, or the place where the soul and the body connect. For Descartes the soul is unitary, and unlike many areas of the brain the pineal gland appears to be unitary as well; it seemed to offer a place where sensory stimulus could be unified––microscopic inspection reveals it is formed of two hemispheres. Descartes (incorrectly) believed that only humans have pineal glands, just as in his view, only humans have minds––thus the special nature of the pinneal gland is ‘proof’ that it is the point at which the mind and body connect. This also led him to the belief that animals cannot feel pain, and Descartes’ practice of vivisection––the dissection of live animals––became widely practised throughout Europe until the Enlightenment.

The “pineal solution” is problematic because its speculative and empirical nature seems to fly in the face of the first precept of methodic doubt; it is arrived at by guess work and intuition which contradicts Cartesian method. Some of Descartes’ followers tried to do away with this by suggesting that, in fact, there is no causal connection at all, that it is God himself who mediates our engagement with the physical realm. It is God who lifts our arm for us when we want it to go up or down. Hardly and improvement over the pinneal solution, the problems with this view are self evident.

Additionally, we ask ourselves : in light of this fundamental separation between mind and body, how do we reconcile the deterministic nature of the physical realm in which our bodies exist with the freedom of the will? Is free will merely epiphenominal in nature? The closest Descartes comes in responding to this is to claim that when we feel free we are free. Again by the rigourous methodic standards of his own method this does not seem sufficient as an explanation of such a fundamental problem. Given this separation between mind and body and the fundamental doubt we must maintain over the contents of our senses, we must now face the next problem of how we can know anything exists at all. Descartes deals with this in the following way: we can know true reality when we have clear and distinct ideas; God is good and perfect and as a result will only give us clear and distinct ideas (he is not a deceiver); the existence of God proves the validity of clear and distinct ideas; Clear and distinct ideas prove the existence of God. Clearly, these statements are not adequately defined or validated; the infuriating self validation of these propositions has been dubbed “the Cartesian Circle.”

From this we must logically continue by asking: how then do we know other people really exist? Can we make a compelling Cartesian case for the existence of other minds? The answer seems to be no. I cannot “know to be true” that anyone feels or knows anything at all. If I stick a needle into my thumb I feel pain; If I stick a needle into the thumb of the person next to me, I feel nothing at all––I can never observe or know someone else’s consciousness. Thus if we follow the Cartesian method we seem to be lead towards a scepticism with regards to the existence of other minds. Although it seems unlikely that this is a conclusion that Descartes would have desired, it does seem difficult to avoid a solipsistic end.

While responses to the problems have been discussing have been offered by the thinkers that followed Descartes––indeed, this has been one of the central tasks of modern philosophy––it seems that the crucial and lingering legacy of Cartesian thought lies in its revolutionary conception of the subject. In the 17th century, this conception laid the foundation for the modern idea of self and identity and set the mood––along with the thought of Bacon––for a new world of progress and mastery made possible by a new, radically humanistic perspective which objectified nature and, increasingly, humanity itself. As we noted above, the ontological model that results from Descartes’ method is dualistic: mind and body, internal and external; and this dualism favours the subject, the mind or the “I” as it is the seat of indefeasable knowledge. With Descartes the subject was no longer defined by ethics as it had been with Plato, Aristotle and Cicero; rather it became the locus of pure knowledge, uncertain of its relationship with the practical sphere of everyday life. Indeed, the modern idea of subjectivity owes much to Descartes as his dualist ontology penetrated deep in to the western psyche and has remained there despite the many criticisms of his method.

The last 250 years, however, have seen the emergence of diverse critical views of the Cartesian subject; but these critiques have not been with out problems of their own. For many contemporary critics, the various historical ideas of the subject are linked to power. The 17th century saw a philosophical movement towards the inner-self and away from the practical world. Descartes is seen as establishing a tradition which understands mental life as being contained inside the subject. Foucault claimed that this interiorisation of the subject was representative of a kind of rationality ‘designed’ for survival in the elite life of the courts; it separated public and private and delineated class and power. Merchant adds that this understanding of subjectivity contributed to the increasingly mechanised and emotionally detatched view of nature that had until then been viewed as living and female. And years before this, Marx too recognised the historic nature of Cartesian thought and understood that the social foundations on which is was based were shifting. Marx worked to establish a critique of subjectivity, pointing out that intellectual ideas are merely products of the conflicts of society; and claimed that what the Cartesian tradition––or philosophy in general––has taken to be human nature (the alienation of subjectivity) will be over come by communism which will place mankind in “the objective world.” The prophetic lucidity and immediate subsumption of the self into the larger reality of economic determinism which characterise Marx contrasts starkly with Freud’s claims that the ego, the conscious self, is essentially a construction of unconscious conflict between the id, reality and superego. Where Marx begins with the social conflicts that guide the historical consciousness of mankind towards a determined conclusion, Freud starts his study with the individual case of unconscious neurosis which can, through the development of general understandings via many case studies, be used to diagnose society and understand history––their deterministic claims about the fundamental nature of mankind rest in economics and psychology respectively.

Foucault’s contribution to the critique of the self does away with anything resembling human nature and views the subject as a construction; his project being the creation of “a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects.” Under the name of “discipline” Foucault represents a number of cultural technologies which, when implemented by the appropriate institution, create the subject, and collectively the modern soul. For Foucault the subject emerges at the intersection of cultural discourses on power and develops historically.

For Derrida too, the Cartesian subject is an historical creation which is undergoing its historical demise; but for Derrida the self emerges out of language rather than power. Derrida’s critique of the Cartesian “I” is that Descartes does not distinguish between “pronouncing” and thinking, thereby implying that the two are the same. However, in Derrida’s view once committed to language, the statement “I think, therefore I am” immediately inserts itself within “a system of deductions and protections” which must presuppose an Other. Thus, because of the inherent uncertainty of interpretation and the instability of meaning, pure self cannot exist––the very idea of it disappears in to language.

Looking into furthrer into the past we must also consider that, for Aristotle, the distinction between mind and body would not have been understood in the Cartesian sense. Aristotle discusses the soul, but the soul is not seen as being distinct from the creature itself––it describes form and essence. Indeed, even for Augustine, whose inward retreat into Christianity and rejection of the desires of the body can certainly be seen as a precursor to Descartes, this mind/body distinction is not clearly defined. This is not to say, however, that Aristotle and Augustine did not believe in the emotions; there is never the sense that these emotions are simply and only products of the mind, rather they appear more like experiences of the world which are understood as modalities of being.

Although Kant made the distinction between the world and observer, he nonetheless refuted Descartes by introducing the phenomenal view of understanding experience. He posited that the world cannot be understood in any way other than how we experience it––any understanding of the world is necessarily phenomenal because all knowledge begins with experience which forms the fundamental intuitions of the mind. Hegel’s phenoemenology continues and attemps to complete the work of Kant. Abandoning the hierarchichal notion of inner and outer experience, observer and object, Hegel views experience itself as being in the world as phenomena of the mind; for Hegel, it makes no sense to draw the distinction of things in themselves because in order for the phenomenon experience to occur there can be no separation between the mind and the world––it is all ‘Spirit.’

Above all it is Heidegger who seems to stand in direct opposition to Descartes, providing the turning point between the contemporary and the romantic critique of subjectivity. Hiedegger, in a sense, returns to and develops the ancient understanding of experience as an immediate unity of being in the world through a critique of the notions of time and presence. If Descartes asserts that that Being is reducable to two substances, mental and physical, then it is Hiedegger who most directly opposes this dualism by offering a unified conception of being in Dasein.

HEIDEGGER BBC 1-7

“…are we not at liberty, where we cannot make assertions, at least to invent theories and to have opinions?”––Kant

Kant was posing this question in 1781 as he moved God, morality, freedom and the fallen science of metaphysics out of the sphere of a priori thought and into the domain of practical reason. While he was able to vindicate the scientific status of mathematics and physics by demonstrating their capability of pure synthetic judgement within his a priori forms of intuition––space and time (mathematics)––and by way of the principles of pure understanding which were derived from his twelve categories of the understanding (physics)––, Kant could find no such vindication for metaphysics. He came to the conclusion that pure reason was incapable of making the kinds of absolute a priori judgements required by metaphysics as they extended beyond the realm of experience and therefore beyond the limits of human understanding. For Kant, a priori synthetic judgements are only possible in so far as experience necessarily presupposes them; experience itself is made possible by a framework (the principles of pure understanding) which presupposes the very nature of it’s reception into consciousness (ie. causation). Thus, in Kantian terms, pure reason errs when it claims to prove (or disprove) the existence of God and the freedom of the will or to present the nature of the soul and morality in ultimate terms. Of course Kant does not simply do away with God, freedom, and morality but rather places them in the context of practical reason. Here they are not presented as objets of knowledge––as they were in metaphysics––but rather as modes feeling and contemplation which give us practical insight into our moral and spiritual nature as well as our idea of freedom. As he reintroduces into the practical sphere what was lost in the denunciation of metaphysics as a science, Kant offers a categorical imperative which structures moral vales rationally; he allows for, and makes the distinction between pure understanding and a rational method of belief.

In 4th century B.C.E. Athens, Plato was wrestling with epistemic and moral problems that were very similar to those which confronted Kant late in the 18th century. Like Kant, he offered his own distinction between the faculties of reason: whereas Kant divided the faculties of reason in to three basic categories––pure reason and practical reason are mediated by judgement––, Plato’s model consisted of two, true knowledge and true opinion. For Plato true knowledge can only be derived from mathematical certainty; the closest approximation to this is true opinion which involves a set of judgements and speculation based in true knowledge. This allowed Plato to distinguish between the knowable and the speculative––there is a general similarity between the Kantian faculties of pure and practical reason and the Platonic categories of true knowledge and true opinion. Plato, however, views true knowledge as having nothing to do with experience and does not distinguish between the theological and the scientific as belonging to different faculties of understanding; indeed the term scientific as we understand it to day does not apply to Plato. He sees true knowledge as being attainable only by pure mathematical thought; there is a distinct hierarchical separation between physical experience and the perfect reality whence true knowledge comes via mathematics.

In this way the Platonic conception of mathematics does not––as it does with Kant––necissarily presuppose fundamental forms of experiential intuition (spacial extension and time); it comes to us instead from the stars to teach us divine order (geometry). Thus while Plato and Kant would certainly agree on the ability of mathematics to render synthetic a priori judgements, they would likely disagree on the nature and providence of mathematical thought. And they would certainly disagree on where the ultimate value of mathematical understanding was to rest––Kant on the side of science and Plato on the side of morality. Additionally, as the loci of their thought leads them in such different directions, Plato and Kant would be hard pressed to agree on the epistemological value of a physics based in empirical observation of nature: Kant recognises the epistemological value of physics as natural science; Plato can find no moral weight in natural science and rejects it as essentially useless to mankind.

Thus Plato rejects the Ionian thought of his day as morally corrupting when its physics reduce existence to the meaningless movements of atoms in space and when it founds it’s knowledge on empirical observations and intuitive insights that lack moral and ideological substance. He also rejects sophistic rhetorical argument as being devoid of the kind of teleological locus that gives Socratic dialogue the ability to achieve true opinion. We find in his Timaeus an account of nature that is as teleological as it is theological; Plato is less concerned with making an account of nature as we find it and is more interested in explaining God’s ways to man. He offers a “likely account” (true opinion) of the nature and meaning of the universe to his interlocutors which is meant to give spiritual a spiritual dimension to the moral and political themes raised in Plato’s Republic. Plato can lay claim to true opinion with regards to the claims made in the Timaeus because he bases his account of the universe in true knowledge (geometry). He builds up a mythical argument founded on the immutable celestial movement provided by the heavenly spheres and the perfection of the triangle as the divine form on which all matter is based (true knowledge). The Timaeus is Plato’s grand hymn to the universe.

The Platonic universe is created by a divine Craftsman (Demiurge) who is rational and beneficent and who bases his creation on a perfect eternal model. By imposing mathematical order onto chaos for the good of all, the Craftsman constructs the world to be as perfect as nature permits; the beauty of the universe is the model for rational souls to emulate. Plato posits a distinction between what always is and never becomes and what becomes and never is: the former is grasped by understanding and the latter by opinion––true knowledge and true opinion at work. The metaphysical being/becoming distinction establishes the framework for the entire Platonic cosmology, including the persuasive effects of Intellect on Necessity. Intellect pushes Necessity to approach perfection but resistance by Necessity limits the degree of perfection the created world can attain. Interestingly, it seems as though the Platonic Intellect itself cannot be placed either on the side of being or on that of becoming––on the side of knowledge or opinion. For Plato Intellect is a substance that transcends the metaphysical dichotomy of being and becoming, possibly not unlike the Judaeo-Christian conception of God. The conclusion is that the universe is a work of craft, produced by a beneficent Craftsman in imitation of a perfect eternal model; it is through realigning the motions of our souls with those of the universe at large that we achieve our goal of living virtuously and happily.

Lucretian materialism presented in On the Nature of the Universe offers a very different view on the meaning and requrirement of the happy, good or tranquil life. Writing in the first century B.C.E, Lucretius bases his understanding of the physical world––which includes the human soul, freewill, desire and all other aspects of human life––on insight arrived at through the analysis of analogous structures derived from obsevations of natural phenomena (horses out of the gate: atomic swerve; sheep on a hillside:distance/perspective). He dismisses religious and mythical modes of thought that characterise the work of Plato as misleading and proposes a universe founded on the concept of the atom and void. As his thought is based on the Ionian tradition––his physics and ontology is derived from Epicurus––he has no need of God or Gods as they pertain to the life of mankind. For Lucretius, all phenomena are results of atomic action/combination; nothing is born or disappears in to nothing, void and material (body) are fundamental – all else is a product of this and inseparable from it – time and historical facts, are argued to be in fact existentially parasitic on the presently existing world, and thus not independently existing. He postulates a minimal indeterminacy in the activity of atoms to account for free will (swerve, clinamen)––this is antecedent to quantum uncertainty––and describes the universe as infinite: great numbers of other worlds exist and worlds come and go like ours has and will. This, of course, is a damaging view for religion. Lucretius does offer an account of a mortal soul which exists in two parts: spirit (anima) exists throughout the body, mind (animus) is located in the chest. Both are corporeal and are created by a special blend of atoms including a special fine atom unique to soul which allows it’s movement and sensitivity––brain, nervous system and vital spirit. For Lucretius, our conscious selves cannot transcend death and once the body dies, the atoms of the body and soul disperse. To fear a future state of death, is to make the conceptual blunder of supposing yourself present to regret your own non-existence. The reality is that being dead will be no worse (just as it will be no better) than it was, long ago, not yet to have been born.

Lucretius works through a range of the phenomena that physical theorists were standardly called upon to account for: storms, waterspouts, earthquakes, plagues and the like. Exclusion of divine causation undoubtedly motivates the his account, the phenomena in question being nearly all ones popularly regarded as manifestations of divine intervention. Lucretius not only explains them naturalistically, but is ready to mock the rival, theological explanations. For example: if thunderbolts are weapons hurled by Zeus at human miscreants, why does he waste so much of his ammunition on uninhabited regions or sometimes strike his own temple. He also discusses the emergence of life and precedes Darwin and others in postulating natural selection to offer a non teleological account of natural design. He goes on to discuss language, love, civilisation and cultural constructions such as friendship and justice, religion– civilisation has advanced because of man’s desire to better his lot, but to no avail, because every advance eliminates one source of grief only to replace it with another.

Although Lucretius presents the mythical characters of Venus and Mars locked in an eternal dialectic struggle between creative (pleasure) and destructive (pain)––this, the poetic form of his discourse is the “honey on the rim of the cup”, is to help the medicine go down––in all other respects he is consistent with the maxims of the Epicurean tetrapharmakos: ‘God holds no fears, death no worries; good is easily attainable, evil easily endurable.’ In contrast with the moral and scientific concerns of Kant and Plato, the locus of Lucretian reasoning lies in the understanding of desire: identification of the irrational fears which create and are maintained by religion and discerning real needs and pleasures from those created out of neurosis and greed––one leads to pleasure and tranquility (Venus) the other to pain (Mars). Thus Lucretius advocates the Epicurean life of detached tranquillity, portrayed as maintaining modest and easily satisfied appetites while shunning lofty ambitions; the implication being perhaps––and this is not explicitly stated––, that if everyone adopted this mode of being mankind could avoid many of the discontents that plague him.

We have three very different views on the nature and limits of understanding, morality and what it means to lead a good life. Kant draws the distinction between knowledge and belief (moral obligation). On one hand he presents the faculty of pure reason which allows for synthetic a priori judgements, such as experience presupposes them. On the other hand, he offers the faculty of practical reason which allows us to engage morally in the world of experience: what is right to do cannot be determined with reference to anything empirical or sensuous; rather, it can only be determined by pure practical reason which inevitably leads to the necessity of God and freewill. Kant presents the faculties of pure reason and practical reason as serving distinct functions in terms of human epistemology and in doing so he offers us two distinct categories of truth on which to found our understanding of science, morality, God and freewill. Kant’s faculties of reason––pure reason and practical reason are clearly defined and serve distinct functions with regards to understanding of a scientific nature on one hand; and the rational structuring of practical, moral and spiritual belief (the moral imperative as derived from rational insight) on the other. Plato offers us his two categories––true knowledge and true opinion––but here the second is dependent on the first. There is no real experiencial foundation needed in Platonic thought because of his assertion that mathematics transcends experience; it exists in and is representative of the world of being––it is the basis for forming true opinion or a “likely account” of the world of becoming. For Plato, reason––although arranged in hierarchically in two parts––has a single, unified, teleological directive and therefore a clear moral and theological locus and providence. Lucretius, to the contrary, bases his entire materialistic interpretation of nature and being on emperical conclusions; and as a result, his reason functions as a part of the natural material world which constitutes it.

For Kant, Plato and Lucretius, some kind of evolving faculty of aesthetic judgement is crucial in order to consruct meaning––albeit contingently––out of existence. Although it seems that reason and insight can lead to the creation of a practical belief system which can serve human needs for a time, any such system must necessarily be founded as part of history and therefore be subject to development or replacement as needs change and understanding evolves. Universal truth remains elusive.

KIERKEGAARD’S SUBJECTIVE TRUTH

In this GLS 801 journal/blog I hope to begin a process of synthesising and clarifying the ideas and concepts found the class texts and external materials which seem relevant with regards to the concepts we are exploring in our seminars. Although the texts offer many divergent themes to explore, I hope to keep my eye on the nature of reason in it’s different incarnations and interpretations in the realms of science, nature, religion, morality/ethics, emotion and freewill. I am also interested in exploring the relative epistemic values of language, mathematics, science and art (as it extends to poetry, myth, literature, painting music etc.) as they relate to, and are nesessary for our ideas and conceptions of truth and understanding: does science need poetry? does all useful knowledge, every great idea require a ‘leap of faith’? Which is fundamental, knowledge or belief? Is there a cultural/historic “arrow” or determiner which directs the kind reasoning we engage in and therefore the kinds of understanding we come to? And what about emotion, belief and insight?

Some of these entries will be posted as works in progress and will, with any luck, complete themselves as the term progresses. I’m viewing each piece like a short essay which evolves over the course of the semester; each entry is like a vessel which will be filled and refined as the weeks go by. Once I feel as though I’m starting to get somewhere with a given piece I’ll post it, but it should grow and hopefully improve. When you see <<>> you’ll know I’m planning to fix, extend or complete. Also, I’ll give a little introduction to each entry just to let you know where I’m headed or at least where I think I’m headed with each piece. Links are in blue.

A Look at the Conflict and Evolution of Passion and Reason
in Early Western Thought

In approaching an understanding of the struggle between passion and reason, we might start by identifying four of the principle constructs by which the evolution of this relationship is given expression in the world: society, culture, civilisation and the individual. Reason, born out of the desire to satiate need, is initially expressed through work and is foundational in the development of society––protecting mankind from from nature and from himself. As the needs of the primitive society manifest themselves through work, they become increasingly codified into language and custom; the inherent complexity of the social strata increases and the structural imprint or culture of the society takes shape. In a primitive, preliterate society, the construct of culture is a matter of survival because in order for a society to survive and flourish it must have some way of identifying itself, some mechanism by which it can begin the formation of the social contract. It is through culture that identity is protected and contextualised by the primitive society and it is here that man begins to imagine his destiny, dreaming of what he might become.

If society’s relations with nature are permitted to go beyond the simple satiation of need, it can begin to engage in activities that are ultimately dependent upon, but not directly related to, its immediate environmental and existential desires. This is the beginning of human artifice, as society creates its own environment, holding itself at a distance from nature. Emerging from this cultural abundance,1 passion and reason begin to manifest themselves as sexual, economic and political entities which begin to evolve in their own right, eventually emerging as mankind’s pursuit of truth and beauty (Eros) and as his desire for control over his destiny. It is through the evolution of cultural tools that man is able to create – from the germs of myth and ritual – the media (art, dance, drama) through which these desires can find expression in society. Eventually, by the grace of language, man is able to construct metaphysics, a kind of platform from which religion and ideology are born – crucial elements in the formation of civilisation and the individual. From this platform, this place of detachment, mankind consciously and unconsciously moulds his own psyche, transforming nature and directing his passion in an attempt to realise an ideal.

What follows is a brief look at the phenomenon of how the development of rational constructs – chiefly language – create the means by which desire and passion are directed with regard to the needs of society, culture, the individual and civilisation. By examining the construct of Greek tragedy, as well as the development of Platonic dialogue and Augustinian Christian philosophy, we will interest ourselves in the ways in which linguistic technology develops to address the balances and imbalances of passion and reason in society and the individual.

We will attempt to show how, under certain conditions, cultural devices – such as tragic drama – were developed by the society in order to face the situation in which it found itself; and how, under different circumstances, discursive methods – such as those of Plato – were developed to reform the understanding of social and natural conditions. Then, in examining the transmission of Platonic thought to early Christian philosophy, we will take a look at how such discursive methods can be – in response to a civilisation in chaos – re-contextualised in remarkable ways to define an inner, spiritual reality that separates itself from the natural world.

In attempting to trace this line from Greek tragedy to the early Christian church, we will examine the Antigone by Sophocles, the Medea by Euripides as well as the Confessions of St Augustine as being representative of their particular periods. Additionally, we will have to find the thread of humanity that joins these periods and will therefore be obliged to take a look at the well out of which the phenomenon of Greek tragedy sprung as well as the conditions that gave birth to the early Christian church. Therefore, we will also take a brief look at Platonism, Neo-Platonism and the conditions by which the transmission of faith via intellectual means was made possible.

1. The Birth of the Dream Image

Desire continually reaches out for new objects through which it can express itself until it eventually turns to its source: mankind turns its gaze towards itself and begins to dream of what it might become. Although this social narcissism reached its pinnacle with the majesty of Doric sculpture and in the Platonic dialogues, it is in the earlier incarnation of the Homeric hymns and the Olympian myths that we find the birth of the expression of the ideal in the culture of ancient Greece. These hymns and myths were the means by which the society identified itself and created the sacred environment whereby the constituent parts of the society – individual, family and tribe – could share their dreams and understand where they came from; it was a way in which the dreams of man could be expressed against the backdrop of the mysterious ocean of nature, death, procreation and ancient wisdom. Initially, these earliest, preliterate cultural moments were encoded by art itself, choreographed into dance and song.2 Chorus and dance were played out before the community with tales of heroism, pathos and tragedy which placed the various elements of a society in contrast and conflict. This was momentous drama that was intended to teach a lesson, announce possibilities unforeseen or remind one of things that must always be kept in mind if the society was to be kept intact. This cultural phenomenon allowed the Greek individual and society to understand who they were and to recognise what their cultural obligations were.

The evolution of this phenomenon led to the dramas of Aeschylus, Sopholcles and Euripides and it is here that we find ourselves face to face with one of the greatest cultural phenomenona of the Western world: the art of Greek tragedy. Heroic characters – well known to the audience from the myths and Homeric hymns – were pitted against one another and the chorus in order to present moral, political and spiritual conflicts. The drama of tragedy was played out against the larger backdrop of the festival Dionysus, an enormous social event where limits were tested and normal social roles were subsumed into a collective environment.

The force of the struggle depicted in these works, coupled with the flexible manner in which they can be interpreted, speaks to this utility of this remarkable cultural tool which posed the pertinent social questions but left them open for interpretation and evolution. We find in these texts a depth of psychological understanding that continues to inspire until the present day3 and which seems to have been intended to be, in some sense, socially therapeutic – always balancing the aspirations of man with the mystery of nature, the gods and the ancient tribal ways. Represented on one hand by the dream image (sculpture) and the on the other by the imageless (music), these two drives were deified respectively as Apollo – the goals and aspirations of man – and Dionysus – nature, blood ties and the mysteries of life. Always in conflict, these two forces continually stimulated each other to take on new and more powerful forms until finally, as Nietzsche wrote:

“…through a metaphysical miracle of Hellenic ‘will’, they appear coupled with one another and through this coupling give birth to a work of art which is as
Dionysian as it is Apollonian - Attic Tragedy.” 4

Perhaps nowhere else is the balance between the Dionysian and the Apollonian more perfect than in Sophocles and indeed Hegel considered his Antigone (circa 441 B.C.E) to be one of the most perfectly structured pieces of art that Western civilisation has produced. Here the two artistic drives are not played off each other so much as they are shown to be part of the same condition. It is very difficult to draw concrete, categorical conclusions about what we are supposed to think or exactly what Sophocles is trying to tell us; if we are to come to terms with the struggle that this drama presents, we must make a personal investment.

In Antigone we find the characters engaged in a classic struggle with limits. Both Creon and Antigone are driven to transcend social, individual and religious limits and both pay the price. Like most Sophoclean characters, Antigone and Creon are rendered with almost immutable, heroic, Apollonian idealism and appear in stark contrast to the each other and, as the drama progresses, the humanity that surrounds them.

On one hand, Antigone, driven by her fanatical devotion to her family and its fate, is representative of divine law, respect for ritual and destiny:

“And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I will lie with the one I love and loved by him - an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer to please the dead than please the living here…” [85-90]5

On the other hand, Creon represents the city and the laws that must be upheld in order to maintain civic cohesion:

“whoever places a friend/relative [philo]/
above the good of his own country ,
he is nothing” [203-4]

The positions of Antigone and Creon are further complicated by the evolution that their respective positions undergo over the course of the play.

Initially, Creon is received by the chorus as the keeper of the city – he is the rational voice of justice and civic law. However, as the drama progresses and his position is challenged with increasing force by that of Antigone, Creon begins to show himself as the tyrant he truly is. This transgressive drive renders rational reconciliation with Antigone out of the question and estranges Creon from the city and the very laws he decreed at the outset :

“And is Thebes going tell me how to rule?”[821]

“I will take her down some wild desolate path never trod by men, and wall her up alive in a rocky vault, and set out short rations, just the measure piety demands to keep the entire city free of defilement…”[870]

Antigone moves from a position which demands recognition of divine law and the rights privileges of women to something that resembles tribal fanaticism; by the end of the play Antigone’s position collapses from a universal defence of divine law into an individual expression of the realisation of familial destiny by personal self-sacrifice :

“Land of Thebes, city of all my fathers - O you gods, the first gods of the race!
They drag me away, now, no more delay!Look on me, you noble sons of Thebes - the last of a great line of kings,I alone, see what I suffer now at the hands of what breed of men - all for my reverence, my reverence for the gods!”[1030]

The crisis reaches such a point that only the mysterious intervention of the gods can resolve it, but this resolution is of the most brutal kind: to pay for the imbalance, Creon’s family is destroyed. A core element in Sophcles’ rendering of this conflict shows itself in the way in which he deals with renunciation. When Creon eventually renounces his position – in effect admitting that he has gone too far – he shows that it is not virtue that drives him but rather the fear brought on by Tireseas’ prophecy of doom. This changes nothing in the eyes of the gods; his violent delusions of grandeur are shattered and must spend the rest of his days contemplating his error, knowing that his family and blood line have been destroyed because he could not recognise the limits of his situation.

Ironically, the disparate positions of Creon and Antigone are joined by blood – as uncle and niece respectively – and thus are shown to be part of the same universal condition. The Chorus speaks on the human condition :

“Man the master, ingenious past all measure, past all dreams, the skills within his grasp - he forges on, now to destruction, now again to greatness. When he weaves in the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods, that binds his oaths together he and his city rise high - but the city casts out that man who weds himself to inhumanity thanks to reckless daring.” [406-411]

Sophocles gives us an intricate showing of the conflict between the passion of the blood line – and the unspoken (imageless) divine law it implies – and the rational necessity of the decreed civic law. He makes it clear that these elements of society must be the subject of examination and that the individual must be very critical of the limits within which the expression of his or her desire can function with positive results. Antigone and Creon are so closely matched that we are at pains to decide who is right; but this, of course, is precisely not the point. The elements Sophocles presents should be seen as components that need to be reconciled in a way that is beneficial and balanced for the whole. In taking a somewhat Hegelian view, we could suggest that Creon and Antigone represent spirits looking for synthesis. This is to be a conflict on which we must meditate; and, despite the bloody ending to the play, we should feel as though some positive social analysis is occurring as we work through the significance of their encounter. Sophocles worked towards the preservation of social unity by the rigorous examination the elements that formed it. Remarkably, he was able to render this analysis in a manner that created an open forum for interpretation in which a moral hierarchy was not strictly imposed between the principal elements of the drama. In the Sophoclean drama, passion and reason – society, city, family and individual – were played together, intertwined into an intoxicating fabric spun from the barbaric myths and the dreams of man that bound the society together.

By balancing the elements of conflict in this way, Sophocles offers a method of social and cultural analysis which demands an intellectual and spiritual investment from the individual and society in order to fully affirm life in all its passion; he gave to his society “an allegorical dream image”6 that encouraged a kind of contemplation, rather than blind adherence to dogmatic social doctrine. This would have been in keeping with the spirit of the Athenian democratic dream.

Euripides, although rightly considered a tragedian in the lineage of Aeschylus and Sophocles, presents us with a view of things that is quite different from that of Sophocles. Although he was a contemporary of Sophocles, Euripides was younger and his approach is perhaps more cynical. Sophocles himself was said to have remarked of him: “I portray people as they should be but Euripides shows them as they are.” Both Plato and Nietzsche levelled harsh criticism at Euripides and he is generally regarded as the most controversial of the tragic poets. Indeed, in his Medea we are faced with a very different approach to the art of tragedy from that which we find in Sophocles.

Like the other great tragic poets, Euripides makes use of myth and employs the themes of vengeance which arise from them but his characters are not heroic in the same way as those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In the character of Medea we face something new and complex. In her we find an incredible number of evolving paradoxes that are seemingly impossible to resolve; quite a change from the solid, Apollonian character types of Sophocles. She is unpredictable, brilliant and violent; she is frighteningly passionate and coldly rational. Medea is also a woman and a foreigner – she has connections to the natural mysteries and the gods, as well as the dark barbaric history out of which Greek culture emerged. In keeping with the tragic tradition, Euripides’ character of Medea plays the woman’s role of passion and defiance against the rational world of men. However, although she may remind us of Aeschylus’ Clytaemnestra in her vengeance or Sophocles’ Antigone in her defiance, Medea is something much more complicated.

Euripides’ version of the mythical tale of Jason’s betrayal of Medea has none of the balance of wills that we saw in the Antigone; if we examine Medea in her relation to her interlocutors, we find that she is always superior to them and manipulates them at will. First, she manipulates the Chorus of Corinthian women by appealing to their common plight in the world of men. She then convinces Creon, the king, to delay her exile – which he has just decreed out of fear of what Medea might do at the announcement of the marriage of Jason and his daughter – by just one day. She bemoans the fate of clever women and asks for pity on the children. Medea then vents her rage on Jason and in doing so makes clear the reasons behind the passion that drives her vengeance. Jason responds to her cooly that it will be better for everyone if he marries Creon’s daughter. Jason to Medea:

“Be assured of this right now, no woman’s charms are the cause of this royal match I have made; no, as I said before now, my intention was to make you
safe and to father princes who would be kindred to my own sons and so
provide security for our family”[557]

From Medea’s point of view this is ridiculous. She continues to lay her plan by extracting safe haven in Athens from king Aegeus and then proceeds to feign repentance to Jason. Then, she asks that their children deliver a wedding robe to the princess as a sign of goodwill; Jason agrees to this wholeheartedly but Medea, of course, has poisoned the fabric of the robe and the king and his daughter are both killed by it. Medea understands that she and her children are without hope and that Jason’s statement about the benefits of his marriage to Creon’s daughter was either a lie or was uttered out of stupidity, naiveté or something of the like. She knows that the children would only be reviled by the new family and, most likely, killed. The messenger reveals this sentiment in the reaction of the princess to the children when they arrive with the “gifts” that Medea has sent to her :

“…at their entrance she showed her revulsion, covering her features with a veil and turning away a white cheek.” [1155]

This brings us to Medea’s most difficult encounter, which is also the most difficult confrontation for us to make sense of. It is, of course, the conflict she has with her self as she prepares to kill her children in order to gain, what seems to be initially, pure vengeance on Jason. From the beginning we understand that Medea has a difficult relationship with her children.
The Nurse :

“She hates her children and takes no pleasure in seeing them”[48]

And Medea herself:

“…O cursed children of a hateful mother, I want you to die along with your
father, and all the house go to ruin”[99]

However, we learn very quickly that for someone like Medea, things are never as simple as they seem. It is the situation that she and her children are in that Medea laments; a