9.Freedom, Emotions and the Mind

Freedom, Belief, and Emotions: Phenomenology and the Mind

Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground attacks the enlightenment’s claim that freedom and happiness are synonymous by showing that in reality these two concepts stand in opposition to one another. Happiness, Dostoevsky claims, is the absence of freedom. He introduces us to the underground man, a mean and spiteful individual who, in a relentless quest to maintain and exert the integrity of his personal freedom, systematically destroys every chance he has for happiness by irrevocably alienating his peers and brutally shunning his only chance for love; he suffers from a disease of the liver but refuses to see a doctor, proclaiming “let it get worse!” Dostoevsky takes on the enlightenment myth which claims that rationality and freedom can be structured as an equation for human happiness and the creation of an ideal society: “2+2=4, as if that is what is most important to us.” If it is our personal liberty that we cherish above all; and if the freedom of the will is to be understood as our most precious and humanising characteristic; do we not render ourselves, in some sense, inhuman when we blindly adhere to a role as part of the grand plan for the ideal society?

Dostoevsky makes it eerily clear that by going along with the enlightenment schema that which is “our most advantageous advantage” is, in fact, paradoxically left out of the equation only to be replaced by an subverted concept of freedom that is all but meaningless. If the enlightenment’s myth of liberty twists the notion of freedom––consciously or otherwise––into something resembling its antithesis in order to create social contentment, the underground man responds to this subversion with a resounding “No!” For him freedom is the very foundation of being human––to sacrifice it in order to acquiesce to society is impossible: true individuality, wretched and miserable though may be, is the highest good.

Although he is tempted from time to time to resolve himself socially, ultimately the underground man is would rather face the depravity of a life of spite than submerge himself in what he considers to be disingenuous social conventions and artificial hierarchies. And, of course, from the perspective of the underground man, there is no depravity; his position is only understood as perverse from the point of view of the enlightened rationalists who value social cohesion over the richness of true individuality. Thus, Dostoevsky presents the emotion of spite, not simply as an emotional disorder, but as a philosophical principle which allows the underground man to exercise freedom even in the face of his own personal interests. Indeed, even the expected course of action his physical ailment would seem to demand presents a challenge to the freedom of the will and is therefore rejected by the underground man in an affirmation of his existence.

In the final analysis, the underground man is rendered impotent, incapable of any kind of coherent active engagement with the world. Making choices which can be made manifest in action involves making predictions and judgements which are value laden, often involving moving or changing one’s self––physically as well as psychologically––in relation to the Other; the underground man finds that he cannot realise the simplest decision because in doing so he would have to relinquish his freedom by recognising the Other or the group. This terrifies and disgusts him above all else. Additionally, we should consider that understanding, choosing and acting are highly emotionally charged activities which involve some sort of compromise, acquiescence or coming to terms with the position of an Other, or some situation which is beyond the immediate control of the self. The emotions associated with such circumstances are pushed aside by the underground man with disgust; he regards them with horror and allows himself only spite. When he must give in to his emotions, as in the waning moments of the story when he his finally confronted with the possibility of love and happiness––and not only his own, but also that of the young prostitute whom his decision will profoundly affect––he crumbles, collapsing in tears. In the end, the underground man refuses everything except his own will; ironically rejecting his only real chance to make his existence felt by another, he chooses to remain in the misery, and wretched safety of spite.

Dostoevsky’s critique of the Western european concepts of freedom and happiness echoes throughout his work. And, when we consider the way in which he extends this critique of happinesss and freedom to the Roman Catholic Church in the Grand Inquisitor, we begin to understand that, for Dostoevsky, freedom, happiness and self affirmation rest in the realm of a personal and spiritual understanding of God and Creation. Like Augustine, Pascal, and Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky asserts that true individuality has a profound spiritual element which trancends the ‘herd’ mentality and distractions of daily existence. But, as we have seen, Dostoevsky’s underground man also offers us a subtil critique of the relationship between emotion and reason, and it is this relationship that the remainder of this essay will deal with.
As the underground man makes so painfully clear, the concept that emotions are in the mind, that they are can be negated rationally, or that they can be made to take on predictable or instumental roles is a questionable claim. But, on the other hand can we really understand our selves as being completly controlled by our emotions like Goethe’s Werther? <<<>>>

The Cartesian conception of the mind leads us to the conclusion that we are closest and most aware of our own experience and that we know this experience beyond doubt. But this position has itself been cast into doubt by, among others, Freud and Hiedegger. If Descartes asserts that emotiions are in the mind and only in the mind, then Hiedegger wants to offer a unified picture of being. As much as Cartesian dualism seems an innate part of the Western mind, we must 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 necssiarily distinct from the creature itself––it describes form and esence. 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 beleive in the emotions; they both spend a great deal of time discussing emotions, but 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 we are obliged to form understandings of as modalities of being. Hiedegger, in a sense, wants to return to this understanding of experience as an immediate unity of being in the world.

Cartesian dualism refuses this position, claiming that the contents of our minds are all we can know immediately and that our knowledge of bodies, the world, and other people can only be understood as being mediated by our senses; the external world can only be understood as an inference, and this leads to skepticism about whether or not we can know anything for certain exterior to our minds. But Freud stikes what seems like a fatal blow to the claim that we can even be sure of the contents of our own minds. Like Copernicus and Darwin, who respectively shattered mankind’s assumptions about his elite place in the cosmos and nature, Freud’s claims remove humanity from its special position in conciousness and sheds doubt on the assumption that we are the masters of our own minds. Because emotions are necissarily fragmented by feeling, understanding and, ultimately, by the experssive form they take, Freud also questions the assumption that our understanding of the meaning of our emotions is consistent. Indeed, cultural and social variable could play and enormous role here as well. Considering this perspective it is very difficuclt to understand emotion as simply an internal mental state whose nature and meaning is secure.

Well before Freud emerged on the european intellectual scene, philosophers had aready begun to rebel against the Cartesian position. Kant refuted Descartes by introducing the phenomenal view of understanding experience, positing that the world cannot be understood in any way other than how we experience it––the world is phenomenal, an experience, and it cannot be proprly considered as a thing in itself. Hegel’s phenoemenology continues and attemps to complete the work of Kant. Abandoning the hierarchichal notion of inner and outer experience, Hegel views experience itself as being in the world as phenomena. 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. Husserl developed phenomenology into a discipline which attempts to describe our experience as it is; but beacause experience is necissarily of the world it is always intentional with regards to the world. Interestingy, however, Husserl was working to reestablish a version of Cartesianism,

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Existentialist phenomenology, as put forward by Sartre, critiques and extends the Husserlian method by taking the position that a phenomenological examination of consciousness must take the world into account in terms of action, not simply passive intention. Emotions are our own actions are ways in which we , what abou the body, Emotions are acts which allow us to escape from the world<<<spite or resent ment as a kind of escape, and act of esacpe, oppsed to james its not the physiology that gives rise to the behiviour, but it is the recoginton of the situation . Like Heidegger, Sartre, leans towards the view that consciousness and the world are, in fact, a unified phenomenon and, as a result, there is no separating them; that even in attempting to ‘bracket’ conscious phenomena out of common notions of reality we cannot neglect the innate unity of what we have separated. However, EP in also continues the tradition of the Cartesian dichotomy between the consciousness and the world, creating what often seems to be an infuriating paradox––on one hand Sartre embraces Heidegger’s Dasein; on the other he extends the Cartesian distinction between Mind and World. Despite the virtuosic and often confusing double talk Sartre employs to deal with this apparent contradiction, Sartre is always clear about the ultimate point of his thought which rests firmly in his concepts freedom and responsibility. For Sartre consciousness is freedom and responsibility is the idea that we are the sole authors of our actions––we must accept the consequences of our actions; there are no excuses.

Like Husserl, Sartre’s concept of consciousness requires intentionality–-it is always about the things and concerns of the world. But, for EP this is not a Husserlian realm like the transcendental ego, rather it is pure activity: an active, dynamic awareness of the things of the world. Thus EP views the phenomenon of emotion as imposing itself on the world, transforming it according to a subjective scheme. By postulating consciousness as nothingness Sartre manages to separate it from the realm of worldly causality. In order to protect his conception of freedom, it is crucial to For Sartre see consciousness as independent from the causal relations of the word, as distinct from the deterministic laws of physics. Echoing Ant, Sartre takes the position that, as we see ourselves as something distinct from the causal categories we impose on matter, we are obliged to make the distinction between the objective or scientific view and the perspective of active, subjective, first person engagement. Therefore, from the point of view of Existentialist phenomenology, consciousness itself can be in no way considered as an object of consciousness––hence the break with Husserl––and, more importantly, it cannot be understood as being caused. Thus consciousness is freedom itself.
Sartre’s conception of freedom allows him to introduce the concept that all action is chosen, and that the choices we make are often pre-reflective. Sartre removes causality from motivation and emotion, and––perhaps in an attempt to find a middle ground between physical determinism and the freedom of consciousness––describes them as “the terms by which” we make the choices that we do. An obvious argument emerges at this point: if motivation and emotion set the terms by which by which we make conscious choices, does that not imply––at least indirectly––causality? Sartre responds that emotions are not causes of behaviour but rather they are “spontaneous out pourings of consciousness in which one takes the world in a certain way.” For Sartre, emotions are a way of structuring consciousness, <> tbc