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

“…the question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression––in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body.” Norman O. Brown

Freud claims that religion is the product of the human desire to have wishes fulfilled; that through religion we project what we long to be the case against what reality and/or society permits. Religion is thus an illusion. He considers the religious belief in God the perfect father to be a repressed compensation for our own imperfect fathers––this perpetuates the infantile longing for a perfectly loving parental figure. Religion, in other words, retards human development and interferes with the larger goal of attaining human maturity. While science aims to be clear about what is real and what is illusion, religion blurs this distinction and is symptomatic of mass repression. But is Freudian psychoanalysis really so dismissive of faith? This essay attempts to uncover the complex and subtle psychoanalytical view of religion.

For Freud the unconscious begins with repression––when an individual refuses to admit real desires and thoughts to conscious life; when he or she refuses to recognise his or her true nature. Dreams and neurotic symptoms which interrupt into the conscious domain do not give a perfect image of the unconscious thought of an individual, but they do give sufficient evidence that it exists in the form of a conflict between two psychic forces. Freud extends this into a theory of human nature, claiming that the repressed unconscious is present in all human beings and that we are all therefore neurotic in some way or another. Mental health then is a normative judgement about the social acceptability of the neurosis of a given case.

Where Descartes and the Enlightenment claimed that the foundation of human nature rested in reason and pure thought, Freud posited that the driving force behind the universal and fundamental realm of unconscious repression is desire. Thus, psychoanalysis effectively destroys the concept of pure reason as fundamental to human nature and demonstrates that it is desire above all else that motivates our psychology: I desire, therefore I am. Freud posits ‘the pleasure principle’ which claims that, above all, our psychic energy is concerned with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. However, this desire for pleasure is at odds with the rest of the world; the pleasure-principle is in conflict with the reality-principle, and it is this that is at the root of repression. But the pleasure principle holds fast in the unconscious, evidencing itself in reality through dreams and symptomatic behaviour. In this view, the conscious self can be understood as the surface mediator between our inner desiring selves and the outer world––governed by the reality principle, the conscious self is a largely linguistic psychological apparatus which allows for acculturation. Indeed, it has often been said that Freud srtikes a fatal third blow to the notion of human dignity. 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 consciousness 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 expressive form they take, Freud also questions the assumption that our understanding of the meaning of our emotions is consistent. Indeed, cultural and social variables could play and enormous role here as well. Considering this perspective it is very difficult to understand emotion as simply an internal mental state whose nature and meaning is secure.

Freud was clearly inspired by Darwinian thought and early on he identified the reality-principle with the “struggle for existence”, implying that, in essence, psychological repression was due to economic factors––the need to work. Later on Freud constructs a more complicated theory which claims that man, in effect, represses himself by creating civilisation. Freud came to the conclusion that mankind creates society, society imposes repression, repression is the cause of universal neurosis; and thus there is an intrinsic relationship between civilisation and neurosis. From this basic concept of universal repression comes Freud’s tripartite theory of the psyche and its constituent structural elements: id, ego and superego.

Freud divided the id (instinct and internal desire) into two parts: Eros (life, desire) and Thanatos (death). Eros is related to instincts that are crucial to pleasurable survival, such as eating and copulation––the instinct an infant has to suckle, or the drive the adult has for sex. Thanatos most clearly represents an unconscious wish to die––to put the struggles of life to an end. Freud also posited a relationship between the death instinct and our desire to escape reality through media, fiction, alcohol and drugs and religion. Thus the id is the source of our most fundamental drives for food, sex and agression––it is atemporal, amoral, egocentric and illogical. It is the home of the libido and is essentially infantile in nature. Indeed, Freud saw the mind of an infant to be all id: a collection of impulses and desires directed by instinct which demand immediate satisfaction.

Mediation between the external world the id and the superego is carried out by the ego. While it allows for the conscious expression of some instinctive desires from the id––depending on their perceived consequences––, the ego’s primary function is the protection of the individual. When id desire conflicts with reality or the individual’s internalisation of society’s morals, norms, and taboos, defence mechanisms are often used by the ego. Psychoanalysis structures these mechanisms on four levels with level one being the most pathological and four the most normal or healthy.

The mechanisms included in level one are viewed as psychotic and include: denial, distortion and delusional projection. These mechanisms arise form the ego when reality is too disturbing or threatening to accept; they permit a delusional reshaping of reality and effectively eliminate the need to cope with it. While the pathological use of these level one mechanisms may render the adult individual insane to others, they are also a healthy part of dreams and childhood psychology.

In an attempt to deal with anxiety provoked by threatening people or by uncertain or uncomfortable reality, level two mechanisms include: projection, paranoia, prejudice, idealisation of others, jealousy, passive aggression, somatization and acting out. Behaviour of these types are often seen in severe depression and personality disorders. In adolescence, however, the occurrence of all of these defences is normal. Those who use these defences habitually are often viewed as immature, difficult to deal with or out of touch with reality.

Level three mechanisms, while common amongst adults, can often cause problems in relationships, work and life in genera when used as the primary style of coping with the world. Displacement, dissociation, intellectualisation, reaction formation and repression are all common at this level.

Finally, level four mechanisms include altruism, anticipation, humour, identification, introjection, sublimation, and suppression. These mechanisms are considered by psychoanalysis to be mature and indicative of the healthy adult; and while they may have their origins in immature responses, they have been adapted over the years in order to optimise pleasure and mastery. The deployment of these mechanisms allows the subject to integrate conflicting emotions and thoughts while still remaining effective; and as a result, persons using these mechanisms are viewed as having virtues. (see glossary below)

Additionally Freud posited a super-ego, which opposes the id and tends to control the ego. The symbolic voice of the father, the super-ego dictates cultural rules, morality and taboo; and plays a large part in instantiating guilt. It is born out of the Oedipus complex: a stage of psycho sexual development in childhood where children of both sexes regard their father as an adversary and competitor for the exclusive love of their mother. In Civilisation and Its Discontents, Freud extends this idea to society by presenting a “cultural super-ego.” For Freud mankind is caught between civilisation’s demand for conformity and the individual desire for freedom. The culture of civilisation inhibits man’s instinctual drives, which results in feelings of non fulfilment. Additionally, Freud maintains that while human beings are inherently savage, our aggression is weakened and disarmed by civilisation which imbues us with a sense of guillt––the mechanism by which cultural norms are enforced.

The position that all of mankind is neurotic and that at the core of humanity is pure savage aggression is certainly a difficult concept to accept. At first glance it seems to throw history into darkness and mankind into a homogenous and undesirable state. Certainly, this is a questionable assumption. It is important, however, that we consider the context in which Freud was writing. World War I must have had an important impact on his central observation about the tension between the individual and civilisation. Europe, coming out of a relatively stable period, was entering a period of what must have seemed like catastrophic change––the very foundations of modernity were crumbling and, with the shock of a world war, the future would have seemed very uncertain indeed. Freud must have seen symptoms this anxiety in his patients and the society at large. Additionally, we should keep in mind that there are certain types of neurosis which psychoanalysis claims can serve a practical role during the historical development of a society. These different neuroses have different sets of symptoms and different structures with regards to the relation between the repressed, the ego, and reality. Freud claims that there is a co-relation between cultural variation and types of neurosis. In Civilisation and its Discontents he writes:

“If the evolution of civilisation has such far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilisation––or epochs of it––possibly even the whole of humanity––have become ‘neurotic’ under the pressure of civilising trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim great practical interest.”

Freud viewed neurosis as being dynamic because of the weak nature of neurotic compromise; he saw neurosis as a psychological process with profound historical implications. Left to itself, Freud viewed the pattern of this process as regressive, always moving towards the source of repression. In the dreams and symptoms expressed by his patients, he saw themes and images that were intrinsically linked to the ritualistic and mythical history of humanity. Thus, for Freud, the link between history and neurosis is religion. The mistake has often been made that Freud’s statement that religion is a “substitute-gratification” and Marx’s view that religion is “the opiate of the masses” mean essentially the same thing. While a surface reading of Freud could certainly give the impression that psychoanalysis views religion simply and only as a mistaken manifestation of wish fulfilment, we must consider that the Freudian concept of “substiute-gratification” also contains truth: distorted by repression, substitute-gratifications express the very real and timeless desires of the human soul.

Psychoanalysis views religion as a neurosis as well as an attempt to cure that neurosis from the inside. Freud’s position is that religion has tamed antisocial instincts and created a sense of community around a shared set of beliefs, thus helping the civilisation. However, it has also exacted an enormous psychological cost to the individual by making him perpetually subordinate to the primal father figure of God. Thus the fundamental positive psychoanalytical understanding of history can be seen as a process of gaining maturity, or independence from our self-instantiated psychological apparatus (religion). However, as Freud points out in the dark conclusion of Civilisation and its Discontents, regression is possible as well. For Freud it is the task of psychoanalysis to complete what religion has failed to do: overcome the repressed infantile neurosis of the individual and society and allow mankind to emerge as a mature entity.

Freud here is consistent, for if we examine his levels of ego defence mechanisms we find a correlation between the the most pathological or infantile mechanisms in level one with the most delusional and dogmatic aspects of religion. But religiously inspired thought has shown itself capable, especially via the individual, to rise and exhibit the altruism and other qualities associated with level four responses. However, these individual cases or small groups are easily reabsorbed into the dominant delusional ideology. For Freud, a psychoanalytical study of the individual, civilisation and history is crucial if mankind is achieve its ideal––to move beyond these historically necessary but ultimately dangerous neurotic illusions.

While Freud makes clear that it is desire that rules the human condition, for him it is science above all that offers mankind a humble place of reflection on his place in the world. Thus, psychoanalysis in the grandest sense, is a study of the fundamental unsatisfied and repressed desires which drive history; it is a science of history that takes up where Marx leaves off. Economic determinism rests on the tacit assumption that economic progress is driven by needs that are fully conscious and ultimately biologically determined. In Freud’s view, however, history gives ample evidence that man is never fully satisfied with the satiation of conscious desire––psychoanalysis offers a way out of destructive neurosis and endless discontent. Where Marx begins with the grand narrative of opposing economic forces in society, Freud’s dialectical struggle begins with in the individual case. The goal of psychoanalysis is to deepen the historical understanding of the individual and thereby the society so that mankind may “awaken” from his own history as if from a nightmare; to engage life rather than history; or, as Norman O. Brown puts it, “to enter the state of Being which was the goal of his Becoming.”

While the Freudian model of psychoanalysis is an elegant and, in an of itself, consistent system of thought, it rests on certain assumptions and comes to certain conclusions which have not only seen it discredited as science but have also raised the ire of feminists and anthropologists alike. His conclusions about the psycho sexual development of children and claims about the universality of the Oedipus complex have attracted harsh criticism; and, looking at Freud’s ideas in retrospect, it is difficult to separate them from the man and his times. Still, it is difficult to deny that Freud was on to something big. Psychoanalysis has not only spawned an enormous legacy but has also profoundly influenced 20th century thought across a wide variety of domains, from education to advertising. But what of this ‘promise’ of psychoanalysis? What of this claim that psychoanalysis might rid mankind of this ‘disease’ that is history in which religion plays such a pivotal role? Freudian psychoanalysis and the economic determinism of Marx both engage in the kind of prophetic historical vision inspired by Hegel and a dialectical interpretation Darwin’s ideas. Marx offers a clear and inevitable––albeit erroneous––outcome to the process of economic determinism; Freud, however, remains vague about the nature of the final rapprochement of psychological forces which have plagued mankind since the inception of society. For psychoanalysis, it seems, the final, positive state of mankind would be one free of repression; but does this not ultimately require a final and eternal subsumption of eros and thanatos? an eternal reconciliation of life and death; conscious and unconscious; physical and psychic? Is this not, in a sense, a resurrection? Clearly, the ultimate Freudian vision for psychoanalysis is no less mythical or grand than that of Christianity. It is nothing less than the salvation of mankind.

“…because the body is satisfied, the death instinct no longer drives it to change itself and make history, and therefore, as Christian theology divined, its activity is in eternity.”
Norman O. Brown

There are several more episodes of this on You Tube under the name “Century of the Self”

READING: Freud’s various theories about the origins and nature of religion are presented in Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, and Moses and Monotheism.
See also: Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History.

Ego Defence Mechanisms, Glossary of Terms:

Level 1

Delusional Projection: Gross delusions about external reality, usually paranoid in nature.

Denial: Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening; refusing to perceive or consciously acknowledge the more unpleasant aspects of external reality.

Distortion: A reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs.

Level 2

Projection: a primitive form of paranoia; also reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming consciously aware of them; attributing one’s own unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and emotions to another; includes severe prejudice, severe jealousy, hyper vigilance to external danger, and “injustice collecting”; shifting one’s unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses within oneself onto someone else, such that those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations are perceived as being possessed by the other.

Acting out: Direct expression of an unconscious wish or impulse without conscious awareness of the emotion that drives that expressive behaviour. Fantasy: retreat into fantasy in order to resolve inner and outer conflicts. Hypochondriasis (a.k.a. somatization): The transformation of negative feelings towards others into negative feelings toward the self

Passive aggression: Aggression towards others expressed indirectly or passively.

Idealisation: Subconsciously choosing to perceive another individual as having more positive qualities than they may actually have.

Level 3

Intellectualisation: A form of isolation; concentrating on the intellectual components of a situations so as to distance oneself from the associated anxiety-provoking emotions; separation of emotion from ideas; thinking about wishes in formal, affectively bland terms and not acting on them; avoiding unacceptable emotions by focusing on the intellectual aspects.

Displacement: shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet; separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening.

Reaction Formation: Converting unconscious wishes or impulses that are perceived to be dangerous into their opposites; behaviour that is completely the opposite of what one really wants or feels; taking the opposite belief because the true belief causes anxiety. This defence can work effectively for coping in the short term, but will eventually break down.

Dissociation: Temporary drastic modification of one’s personal identity or character to avoid emotional distress; separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.

Repression: Process of pulling thoughts into the unconscious and preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering consciousness; seemingly unexplainable naiveté, memory lapse or lack of awareness of one’s own situation and condition; the emotion is conscious, but the idea behind it is absent.

Level 4

Introjection: Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person

Sublimation: Transformation of negative emotions or instincts into positive actions, behaviour, or emotion.

Altruism: Constructive service to others that brings pleasure and personal satisfaction.

Anticipation: Realistic planning for future discomfort

Humour: Overt expression of ideas and feelings (especially those that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about) that gives pleasure to others. Humour enables someone to call a spade a spade, while “wit” is a form of displacement.

Identification: The unconscious modelling of one’s self upon another person’s character and behaviour.

Suppression: The conscious process of pushing thoughts into the preconscious; the conscious decision to delay paying attention to an emotion or need in order to cope with the present reality; able to later access uncomfortable or distressing emotions and accept them

Pascal: mathmatician, philosopher, writer, Christian apologist, natural scientist. Is there a unity of thought between the inventor of the calculus of probability, and the christian convert? between the defender of the Jansenites of Port–Royal and the moralist who saw glory only in human misery? Apparently many types of truth exist for Pascal: scientific, political, historic and metaphysical. These ‘truths’ do not reveal themselves in the same way and demand different approaches and languages for their interpretation. Is mankind capable of developing a science which could interpret these truths into a universal understanding? or are we forced to admit that reason alone cannot lead us to fundamental truths, which only faith allows us to approach?

The diversity is disturbing. The first temptation is to try to organise the thought of Pascal into some sort of system, to unify it so that we might understand it in its totality. But might this not be at odds with Pascal’s project itself? For it is the very diversity of his thought which allows his critique of reason to extend itself. If Pascal claims that mankind has made an idol of truth it is because, for him, truth without faith is not properly truth at all but rather a kind of diversion or psychological artifice. Scholars have shown that across the various texts there are certain similitudes and analogies which link the mathematical, physical, anthropological and theological thought of Pascal; there is a certain constant search for equilibrium in the face of the chaos of an infinite universe and a disenchanted world. Pascal sees a relationship between the book of nature and the Bible which manifests itself as a coherent centralising force; his thought can be seen as a sort of palimpsest of these two literatures (physical and theological). This perspective allows Pascal to examine the world though mutiple lenses and does not bind his thought in history, science, politics or common notions of morality; it allows him to critique the assumptions and behaviour of mankind from a unique position between these perspectives.

Pascal’s philosophical reflections are dominated by a theological interpretation of the human condition inspired by Saint Augustine’s interpretation of Adam’s Fall from grace. Pascal views human nature as essentially corrupt, and without the possibility of recovery by natural means or human effort. This theological perspective determined Pascal’s views about human freedom, ethics and politics; and it also set extra-philosophical limits to his theory of knowledge, resulting in a critique of reason. Additionally, Pascal cannot be seen as being apologetic for religion in the way the term ‘Christian Apologist’ is usually understood. Unlike the 19th century apologist movement which sought to reconcile reason and faith or reduce religion to reason alone, Pascal saw reason as completely inadequate to the task of connecting with a transcendent divinity–– the only way to God was by ‘faith’. For Pascal, true belief in God’s revelation is not based on rational calculation nor, as with Descartes, does it presuppose a philosophical argument in favour of God’s existence. For Pascal faith provides appropriately ‘disposed’ Christians with a means to transcend the limits of what is intelligible and to accept as true even matters that we cannot understand. To claim otherwise would be to set boundaries to the reality of God by reducing faith to the limits of human understanding.

“if one submits everything to reason, our religion will contain nothing that is mysterious or supernatural.”

Thus those who are given the gift of genuine religious faith are expected not only to accept things that are uncertain but also to embrace realities that transcend reason itself–– priority is given to intuitition, faith and belief.

However, for those not in posession of the gift of faith Pascal posits The Wager: it is a better “bet” to believe that God exists than not to believe. As the potential value of believing––which is assessed as infinite––is always greater than the value of not believing, in Pascal’s view it is inexcusable not to investigate this issue.

“If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing”

There is a schematic quality to Pascal’s thought which pre-figures Kant, both epistemically and theologically. Like Kant, Pascal’s epistemology begins with an intuition of space and time, as well as a critique of the limits of reason and its relation to morality and theology. Additionally, there is an existential element which drives Pascal to vanquish the fear brought on by the self-awareness of an existence between infinity and nothingness––his project is to find man’s place of equilibrium. In Pascal’s view, the role of science is to serve epistemology; reflection on science permits man to know himself better and to more effectively meditate on his position in nature and the universe. For Pascal, science is merely operative, allowing us to fabricate ideas about the universe; mathematics is a métier; there is no scientific truth in the world, or if there is it is of a superficial order––physics is at best a contingent and necissarily human biased description of nature. Science is a method, or a group of methods which allow us to organise perception. Nature itself is not encoded; it is we who encode it with meaning. Contrary to the position put forward by Francis Bacon, Pascal does not view physical science as being an interpretation of nature but rather of man’s place in it: Science and Reason are, properly understood, tools which allow man to approach existential balance. And this goes to the heart of Pascal’s project which strives to understand the place of man in the world; but this place, existing in an infinite universe, is also, in a sense, a non-place. For Pascal it is the process of becoming: a hermeneutic quest for existential and spiritual equilibrium.

“Nobility–L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l’univers entier s’arme pour l’écraser; une vapeur, une goutte d’eau suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l’univers l’écraserait, l’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu’il sait qu’il meurt et l’avantage que l’univers a sur lui; l’univers n’en sait rien.”

With the rise of the Christian right in the United States as a powerful political entity, the last two decades have seen a re-emergence of the kinds of theological arguments that were dominating philosophical thought in the 18th and 19th century. Indeed, these kinds of debates about the existence, proof and nature of God go back to antiquity and the emergence of the Western consciousness; they have permeated philosophical discourse ever since. These arguments have exerted powerful influence over the ways in which we view and exercise our most fundamental social institutions and understand our relationship to nature and the society in which we live. And, it does appear that certain societies at certain historical periods show themselves to be more fervently engaged in this discussion than others––as it is today in the United States, so it was in England and Scotland in the 18th and 19th century. We will be looking at the perspectives of two thinkers from this period who held diametrically opposed views with regards to the debate around what has come to be known as ‘Intelligent Design.’

With the Scientific revolution well under way and the Industrial Revolution just around the corner, David Hume (1711-1776) and William Paley (1743-1805) found themselves on either side of a dispute about whether or not the existence of God could be proven by demonstrating design in nature. For some, science––and the new definitions of reason associated with it––presented a challenge to faith because it offered a paradigm for ‘evidence’ or ‘proof’ in which religion could not take part. While there were some who claimed that faith itself was a distinct faculty of understanding and did not need to qualify itself rationally; and others who took the position that reason’s true purpose is to serve faith, suggesting that the tools of reason cannot be directed properly with out it; it did seem to many that a growing scepticism fuelled by the increasing predominance of scientific reason was beginning to threaten faith in the Church. As a result, we notice in this period a renewed interest in the project to marry Reason and Faith which had been such a concern for St Augustine; attempts were made to create rational, logical, and emperical arguments which could secure the place of religion and God in a world increasingly dominated by a new scientific epistomology and philosphical/political thought which began to question theological assumptions.

Philosophically inclined thinkers, such as Paley, laboured to shape what begins essentially as intuition, into a more formal, logically rigourous inference. The theistic arguments that resulted tend to focus on plan, purpose, intention and design, and are thus classified as teleological arguments––or, more commonly, as arguments from or to design. As opposed to cosmological perspectives, which start from the position that there are contingently existing things and finish with conclusions concerning the existence of a maker to account for their existence; or ontological arguements which posit that God must nessicarily exist because to deny him is absurd; teleological arguments focus on finding evidence of cognitive design in nature. They begin with a specific group of special properties and conclude with the existence of a designer possessing the intellectual powers (knowledge, purpose, understanding, foresight, wisdom, intention) necessary to design the things exhibiting the special properties in question. Some type of order is the starting point of design arguments and as a result design arguments are often viewed as the most persuasive of all purely philosophical theistic arguments.

The basic positive argument for design generally goes something like this: nature exhibits such beauty of structure, function, and interconnectedness that is impossible not to see a deliberative and directive mind behind it; the necessary mind in question, being prior to nature itself, is of course taken to be supernatural: God. While this kind of argument is at the heart of the position that Paley takes in his Natural Theology, he gives it a modern, machinal interpretation (ie. the watch) in order to foreshadow his design argument which is aesthetic and quasi-legalistic. There is a subtil difference between Paley’s thought and the ‘classic’, comparative teleological arguement that allows him––to a certain extent at least––to deal with Hume’s critical view of the design arguement. Before we examine this however, we will need to have a look to the logical chain of analoguous teleological reasoning as well as Hume’s critique of it.

As we have implied above, design arguments are generally analogous arguments—various parallels between human artefacts and natural entities being taken as supporting parallel conclusions with regards to final causation (the mind of man or of God) in each case. This is summed up very well by Hume’s Cleanthes:

“Look round the world; contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.”

We can follow the analogous/comparative chain of reasoning in this way: entity ‘e’ within nature is like specified human artefact ‘a’ (e.g., a machine) in relevant respects ‘R’; ‘a’ has ‘R’ (relevant aspects/teleological aspects) precisely because it is a product of deliberate design by intelligent human agency; Like effects typically have like causes (or like explanations, like existence requirements, etc.) Therefore: it is (highly) probable that ‘e’ (entity) has ‘R’ (relevant teleological aspects) precisely because it too is a product of deliberate design by intelligent, relevantly human-like agency (in this case, GOD).

David Hume held a view that was critical of this line of reasoning. Hume denied the the analogy between nature and human artefact, ironically suggesting that nature more closely resembled a living organism than a machine. He claimed that even if the analogy could be made, it would not necessarily constitute anything like a traditional conception of God: natural evils or apparently imperfect designs might suggest a less than perfect designer or a group of designers; if phenomena instrumental to the production of natural evils (e.g., disease ) exhibited ‘R’s (teleological aspects), then they would presumably have to have come from the designer as well, further eroding the designer’s resemblance to the good and perfect God. And, according to Hume, even the most comprehensive empirical data could establish only finite power and wisdom, rather than the infinite power and wisdom usually associated with divinity. More famously however, is Hume’s argument against the empirical certainty of causality which is central to the analogous chain of reasoning; for Hume causality is psychological, a habit of the mind which occurs through regular conjoinment of events––the basis of his famous scepticism. Hume’s critique of the analogous chain can be summed up in this way: if we are to go as far as to say that human artefacts (a) may be said to resemble natural phenomena (e) it is only by way of causality (like effects typically have like causes) that we can obtain this resemblance and therefore infer ‘R’ (relevant aspects/teleological aspects). Hume claimed that any number of alternative possible explanations could be given in place of causation of allegedly designed entities in nature–– eg. chance or saturation of the relevant space of possibilities. Thus, from Hume’s position, even if we could point to fundamental resemblance between ‘a’ and ‘e’ ––which Hume doubted–– the analogous chain does not necessarily lead us to the conclusion of inferring ‘R’.

It seems possible that Paley would have been aware of Hume’s position and of the problems with the teleological argument outlined above. Paley attempted to position his argument from a perspective which did not rely on explicit references to human artefacts and the causality––or constant conjunction––which Hume was so sceptical of. He sought to found his evidence for a cognitive force behind natural phenomena in a more intuitive fashion. Paley attempted to capture natural properties that in and of themselves offered evidence of design and which were not wholly dependent on analogous reasoning. For Paley, beauty and purpose when combined with intricate, dynamic and stable functioning was sufficient to be taken as suggestive of cognitive design; it seemed the sort of thing that minds and only minds were capable of producing. Thus the more perfect the balance and relationship of these above elements were, the more certain Paley was of intent, will, mind and therefore design:

“[T]he eye … would be alone sufficient to support the conclusion which we draw from it, as to the necessity of an intelligent Creator. …”

Paley’s deductive (inferential) reasoning can be summed up in this way: natural entity (e) is too complex, orderly, adaptive, purposeful, or beautiful to have occurred randomly or accidentally; (e) must have been created by a intelligent and purposeful being; God is that being; therefore, God exists.

With Paley, the direct dependance on human artefacts has dropped out of the argument; the argument is no longer comparative, it has become deductive. While Paley’s discussion of the watch does play an analogous role, it is by way of demonstrating of design inferences rather than as the analogous foundation for an inferential comparison; it is necessary only in as much as it destroys potential objections to concluding design in the watch. He is laying the foundation by which we can begin to claim evidence of design and designers in general terms. The analogy here is paradigmatic rather than correlative to particular instance.

Indeed, even if one sides with Hume in taking the view that nature is more organic than mechanic, it is difficult to deny that nature is full of things that look designed (on their own terms) and seem to be purposeful in terms of function. From an aesthetic point of view Paley’s arguement for design is compelling. However, the existence of a designing mind existing apart nature need not be the only explanation for such phenomena. Another position could be that nature itself is its own designer; intelligence as we understand it exists in nature as a provable phenomenon simply because we are; and that although this intelligence (our own) is itself a natural phenomenon, it cannot be reliably used to explain the universe as it constitutes only a small fraction of its (nature’s) expression and thus will be skewed to view and interpret nature from the narrow perspective of human cognition. Of course this gets us nowhere if our goal is to prove or disprove the the existence of God and raises questions of whether such a task is even sensible: can God, faith or religion be rationalised? is it within the capacity of human rational faculties to know, to some degree at least, the mind of God? Can questions about God and the mystery of life/existence even be properly posed? Why do we (some of us anyway) so desperately need answers to these kinds of questions when there are multitudes of things in the world that we can come to some relative understanding of?

“What can be said at all can be said clearly; and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” ––Wittgenstien

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; and it is this situation that she will dominate by destroying it and then, quite literally, by transcending7 it. Before she can do this she will have to face herself and it is only here that she finds any challenge to her will.

Medea’s confrontation with herself as she prepares herself to commit this terrible act takes a toll on her. We begin to see the complexity of her relationship to her children and understand that, as much as she is driven by vengeance, she is also motivated by her inability to accept her situation and the future to which it leads – a future in which her children will face only ridicule, scorn and, more likely, death at the hands of others. Still, we find it difficult to understand how it is possible for a mother to kill her own children and might well begin to regard Medea simply as a monster. There is, however, something about the complexity of this situation that should prevent us from drawing such a simple conclusion as this.

We can hypothesise that, among other things, Euripides was saying something about the moral state of Athens itself. It is possible that Euripides is commenting on the arrogant instrumental bureaucracy as well as the social decay that he must have seen developing around him in the Athens of his day which, by all historical accounts, was beginning to overextend itself.8 Jason himself is representative of this in his dispassionate ignorance and cold desire for status and wealth. His blind devotion to his instrumental point of view is made even more apparent when we consider that he, of all people, should know what Medea is capable of. His ignorance is inexcusable and we can only pity him as a fool. But, where Jason is one dimensional, Medea is awesome in her complexity: protector and destroyer – representative the plight of women – she mixes the balance of nature and the oaths of men with the mysteries of ancient tribal magic which transcend the mortal realm of mankind. Medea is nothing less than everything the civilised Athenian should fear and respect.

Viewed from the perspective of language there is something in the process of Greek tragedy that is antecedent to the very modern conception of Deconstruction as it was made known by Jacques Derrida. Sophocles does not give us definitions in the characters of Antigone and Creon, but rather a system of play which, although liminally bound by the two of them, is none the less undefined. We must deconstruct each of them and put the elements in play with each other in order to be part of a process of understanding. Euripides constructs Medea – and this is a hideous but brilliant perversion of the Apollonian image – out of everything that is Dionysian and imbues her with a rational power that surpasses all others. We must deconstruct her as best we can. We are not given a truth here, but rather are shown a system of elements in play which may be contingently deconstructed, constructed and deconstructed again – much like the continual birth and death cycle of Dionysus himself.9

2. The Construction of Reality

From the drama of tragedy came dialogue,10 in which smaller groups of players carved a dialectical inquiry for the purposes of dispute, critique and analysis which culminated in a revelation, or construction of Truth or the Ideal Forms. The Socratic dialogues of Plato epitomised this practise and it by way of them that philosophy and metaphysics were born out of this world of music, myth, dance, sculpture and painting. By radicalising itself against the old culture – or by positioning itself as a controlling agent of it – Platonic philosophy presented itself as a method by which society could be controlled and reshaped in accordance with an ideal conception. It was by the development of this phenomenon – whose purpose was to benefit mankind by offering a solution to decadence and bad pedagogy – that man and his aspirations were further estranged from nature and the past, and began to rely on the constructs of reason to guide and protect him.

The successfully cultured society – such as that of the 5th century Athens – faces a challenge that emanates from within it: the phenomenon of cultural and economic abundance that, if left unchecked, leads to social dissolution through decadence. As Athens reached the peak of its powers it began to topple into cultural arrogance; its decision makers were lost in their own self-importance and all political wisdom had been dissipated through the excessive use of the kind of specious reasoning made popular by the Sophists. Among other things, a poorly planned Sicilian invasion in 415B.C.E led to the destruction of the Athenian fleet, which left Athens open for defeat by the Spartans who then imposed an oligarchical regime to rule over the city. The Athenians lost their men, wealth, autonomy and their dreams and entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony. It is not surprising that when democracy was finally restored in Athens many of those those who had lived and fought through the errors it had created were not very sympathetic towards it. We can certainly see this attitude in the person of Socrates11 as we know him through the dialogues of Plato.

It is with this situation of political incompetence in mind that we can begin to understand Plato’s disgust for the ignorance and decadence of the Athenian state at the time. It was Athens that killed Socrates, his mentor and hero, and had ruined itself through its own hubris. Plato could not trust the Democratic ideal, nor the rule of the “theatre goers” or “the mob”; it became his mission to lead Athens out of darkness and into the light of true reason incarnated by his Republic, which expressed the ideal city in ideal moral terms.12 Given the terrible state post Periclean Athens was in, it is not surprising that Plato would have been loath to find the way towards this illumination via society itself and, as a result, he turned to the purity of mathematics and geometry13 to inspire his Forms. Towards the end of his life Plato wrote a dialogue called the Timaeus which, although resembling natural study,14 was full of spiritual significance.

In contrast to modern physical science, or even the physical science of Plato’s day for that matter, the Platonic natural model presented in the Timaeus is highly teleological15 and therefore, moralistic – it had to fit into Plato’s conception of what constituted the transcendent ideal. He postulates that what we experience on earth is merely a poor representation of perfect Forms and therefore the true and divine reality exists largely beyond the bounds of our earthy reach and can only be approached by reason as it is manifested by the dialectic and mathematics. Plato was not impressed by the external world of the senses and nature; he demonstrates a scepticism towards the empirical, rejects a materialistic view of nature as amoral and gives preference to inward contemplation. He moves towards a theodicy, a view in which everything supports the divine idea, telos, or will of God:

“We can now claim that our account of the universe is complete. For our world has now received its full compliment of living creatures, mortal and immortal; it is a visible living creature,it contains all creatures that are visible and is itself an image of the intelligible; and it has thus become a visible god, supreme in greatness and excellence, beauty and perfection, a single, uniquely created heaven.”16

By presenting the idea of a rational and creating God, Plato gives us something that resembles the framework of early Christianity. It is no coincidence that the Timaeus – in an unfinished translation by Calcidius17 – was one of the few Platonic texts that the early fathers of the Christian church would have had access to via the writings of the Neo-Platonists, such as Plotinus. This platonic theodicy would prove to be a helpful model for early Christian intellectuals, like St Augustine, in their efforts to reconcile faith and reason and thereby make the church into a political entity that could stand as a beacon of order amongst the chaos of the decaying Roman Empire.

3. Transmission, Integration and Laceration

Despite the obvious resemblance that the platonic model has with Christianity, we can ask the question: why would a rational perspective – such as that of the Neo-platonists – have been so valuable to the early church, which seemed to rely more on divine inspiration than rational inquiry? To answer this question we must consider the necessity of transmission and infrastructure.

The success of any religion depends on the promulgation of its fundamental tenets which must be able to be expressed by some system of ideas and signs so that the convert may move from one set of ideas to another in the most convincing manner possible. This, obviously, is no small task as the transmission from one system of thought to another must be taught through some kind of vernacular. This must be constructed carefully so as not to alienate the potential convert and in such a way that it is stimulating to the passions as well as the intellect. A completely anti-intellectual attitude is not helpful for the successful promulgation of any religion, creed or ideology as it would deny those intellectual elements which are so important in the creation of dogma and the political infrastructure that supports it. It was thanks to the neo-plationic interpretations of St Ambrose,18 that St Augustine was to find the rational elements he searched for in order to balance his passion for the Christian faith with his love of rational inquiry.19

The challenge that faced Augustine was to somehow reconcile philosophical scepticism with the credulity of the early Christian church – to find a rational argument that would underpin the non-empirical nature of faith. In the writings of Plotinus he found the basic elements of Platonic thought and, in the end, it was the sceptical nature of the neo-platonic arguments itself that would prove to be the most helpful to Augustine in creating the moral and spiritual hierarchy that was to be the foundation of his thought. The marvel of St Augustine is how he was able to recover the metaphysics of Plato, find in it that which was redolent of the teachings of the Church and eventually use this material to promote these teachings to his fellow intellectuals in a way that appealed to the passions as well as the intellect. This, of course, was a huge achievement and in realising it he was able to lay a large part of the foundation of the Christian church as a political entity, not only because of the power of his own writings themselves, but also because of the kind of educated minds his work would attract.20

In the Greek philosophy not dominated by Plato – of which there is a great deal – man is nothing if not a part of the natural order. Although we do find transcendent elements in the work of Aristotle,21 his philosophy is of a basically biological nature: mankind does have this identifying characteristic of rationality, but is still limited by the laws of nature. Epicurus promoted and developed the materialistic ideas of Democritus which, like Aristotle’s, dealt with a natural view of the world but instead of a biological approach, Epicurus expresses his ideas largely in terms of physics. These approaches placed man firmly within nature and expressed the Universe as a place of eternal change in which the phenomenon of human life was but a small discontinuous part. Far from being sceptical or pessimistic, these biological and materialistic points of view offered a reasonable way of understanding and accepting natural limits – birth, death, knowledge – as well as practical ideas of good living and the happiness that man derives from being who he his, even amongst the chaos of a civilisation in decline.

This certainly is not the attitude espoused by early Christianity where our proper location is in another time and place than the one in which we find ourselves. This is why for someone like Augustine – already stricken with the detestation of this world – the scepticism of Platonic thought was so appealing and so practical when applied to his efforts to understand his faith as it related to the world in which he found himself. For Augustine, neo-plationic metaphysics was the key in rationalising his faith and it is in his Confessions that we see him working through this process.

What is striking here is that, although Augustine’s prodigious intellect is made apparent from the outset of his text, anyone who has spent any time with the Platonic dialogues cannot help but be struck by a certain fragility in his rhetoric and the weakness of his logic. Any real kind of dialectical process is very diluted and his discourses on time, the senses and general epistemology are ultimately rendered useless by his refusal or inability to ground them in rigourous empirical study. Instead he floats around endlessly in enthusiastic speculation :

“Another view might be that past and future do exist, but that time emerges from secret refuge when it passes from future to the present, and goes back into hiding when it moves from the present to the past. Otherwise, how do prophets see the future, if there is not yet a future to be seen? It is impossible to see what does not exist. In the same way people who describe the past could not describe it correctly unless they saw it in their minds, and if the past did not exist it would be impossible for them to see it at all. Therefore both the past and the future do exist.”22

There is none of the lucidity of an Aristotle or an Epicurus nor is there the hard rigour of the true Platonic dialectic. Still, we cannot help being stuck by a certain honesty in the depiction of his angst and, if we are compassionate, we can only marvel at the enormity of his search as well as the remarkable way in which Augustine used what was available to him to come to his own spiritual conclusions, regardless of where our personal opinions of their validity might lie.

St Augustine’s testimony in the Confessions is an account of his Passion. It is the narcissistic struggle with his own identity and fate; it is a catharsis of guilt and fear as well as a quest for the limits of his desire and the locus of his passions – it is radically individualistic. Everything is turned inward, towards the self and its relation to God; that which does not conform with the ideal is rejected. There is something which now takes on the dynamic of a spiritual economy where the individual’s excess of feeling, desire or passion can either be ‘invested’ in some way or repressed, denied and detested.23

Although the Confessions is certainly self analytical, Augustine would have had no way of performing an analysis of the above type on himself, limited as he was by the discursive rational tools he had available to him and by the society in which he found himself. If we take into account the disparate and chaotic nature of the crumbling civilisation in which he lived, it is not surprising that a person like St Augustine would have longed for homogeneity and stability, even only as it existed in the realm of faith as he rationalised it discursively. He invested his passion in the construction of a world of faith – a world apart, brilliantly furnished with rhetorical constructions, fabricated largely out of neo-plationic discourse. While we must try to understand Augustine on his own terms and appreciate the fact that it was in no small part due to him that the light of reason, in some form, was kept dimly burning through the Early Middle Ages, we cannot not ignore the legacy his thought represents as we view it from our modern vantage point.

The evolution of Catholic orthodoxy promulgated a homogeneous belief system and a rejection of nature and life in exchange for an ideal that man created, and maintained, for himself with the tool of language. It seems that idealism was a natural response for man to deal with the chaos of civilisation in ruin. This evolved into the paradox of Christian orthodoxy, where man protects himself from reality – and civilisation – by retreating inwards towards a conception of his relationship with the divine, while at the same time constructing a complex mythological and rhetorical system by which nature and the body are rejected: man denies what he is and affirms what he imagines himself to be. This laceration stands in stark contrast to the vigourous, life and nature affirming perspective of the Dionysian festival and surpasses even the lofty idealism of Platonic thought which, although holding its ideals at a distance from nature, was intended to be of practical benefit to society. The state of man’s desire to transcend his limits – nature, the earth, mortality, civilisation – as well as the difference between the original Augustinian angst and the Christian orthodoxy that emerged from it is described ironically by Norman O. Brown:

“… Augustinian theology recognises human restlessness and discontent, the cor irrequietum, as the psychological source of the historical process. But Christian theology, to account for the origin of human discontent, has to take man out of the real world, out of the animal kingdom, and inculcate into him delusions
of grandeur. And thus Christian theology commits its own worst sin, the sin of pride.” 24

The ancient Greeks used their myths and drama to define their limits in an attempt to ensure the health and survival of their society, thereby investing the excess or abundance of their culture back into itself in an attempt to ensure that the passionate dreams of man would remain in rationalis with the natural world. When the cultural decadence of Athenian society reached a point where it could no longer invest wisely with regard to its social well being, Plato, with his dialogues, imposed an new set of limits on the society so that he might rescue it from destruction and imbue it with virtue. He could not, in theory, allow the society self-realization because of its past transgressions;25 and so he created a reality out of dialectical discourse in order to provide an ideal model by which man could aspire politically (The Republic), aesthetically (The Symposium) and spiritually (The Timaeus). In doing so he believed that he could guide man’s passions towards virtue and truth. His method of dialectical inquiry fiercely attacked the status quo in order to improve society by imposing a strict order through which the elements of society would remain in harmony.

Likewise, St Augustine was responding to the times in which he lived which, by all accounts, was in almost total chaos. Where Epicurus responded to the Athenian social decay by turning away from the city, towards nature and a small community of friends, Augustine – late in the life of the Roman Empire – turned inward, rationally investing his passion in the image of the immutable divinity of God that he created inside himself. This was an attempt to find a solution to, or protection from, the very real personal and social problems he faced. There is a sense in which we can view the artifice of Plato and Augustine as a natural response to very difficult conditions in which the social, cultural and individual elements of civilisation were in sharp decline.

Regardless of the difficulty we might have in drawing definite conclusions from the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides, however distant the thought of Plato and St Augustine might seem to us at times, we must resist the temptation to let our modern judgement of ancient thought and practice distract us from the real analytical work that faces us in our attempts to understand the human condition. Although the examination of the evolving relationship between passion and reason presents itself as an endless task, it puts our minds in touch with the process of existence and offers us fleeting glimpses into reality from the vantage point of human consciousness. The nature of man is constantly engaged in the struggle to reveal itself; Apollo and Dionysus are continually at work.

October, 2007

1.I’m using this term loosely as it applies to culture and language as well as pecuniary matters. Inspired by Marcel Mauss’ Essai Sur le Don and George Bataille’s La Part Maudite, I would like to attempt to incorporate economic ideas of abundance and investment into the larger social panorama. For an overview of the ideas of Bataille - as inspired by Mauss - on this subject see: Michael Richardson, George Bataille, Chapter 5: Expenditure and the general economy, London: Routledge 1994
2. When Theseus emerged from the labyrinth he returned to the mainland and deciphered the maze though the dance of the crane; he showed in dance what one would have to do to get out of the labyrinth.
3. We see influences in art, literature, music and psychoanalysis.
4. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, tr. Douglas Smith, New York : Oxford University Press, 2000
5. All references to Antigone are taken from : Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays,tr. Robert Fagles, London: Penguin.1984
6. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy p.24
7. Medea – carrying the bodies of her children with her – leaves for Athens on a divine chariot sent by her grandfather, the sun god.
8. This would have been all too apparent to someone like Euripides as the Medea was presented in the same year that the war began between Athens and Sparta 431B.C.E.
9. Hera was enraged that Semele had borne Dionysus by Zeus and ordered the Titans to dismember him and eat him raw; Zeus consumed the Titans with lightning – Dionysus with them. Dionysus was restored and from the ashes of the Titans and the blood of Dionysus, man sprang forth : god, rage and divine aspiration fused. Dionysus is the god who dies and is reborn.
10. Plato (428 - 347B.C.E.) the dramatist : apparently Plato was on his way to submit some of the dramas he had written when he ran into an ugly man who convinced him that writing plays was not a socially constructive endeavour. Plato threw his plays out and began writing dialogue. The ugly man’s name was Socrates.
11. Plato presents Socrates as an ideal man, morally, intellectually, physically and civilly. In a sense, Socrates is to Platonic thought what Jesus is to Christianity; like Jesus, we never hear directly from Socrates. He is mediated by Plato and Xenophon although it should be pointed out that Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates is not idealised to the same degree as Plato’s.
12. Everything for Plato has its locus in moral order; politics, the individual, art etc. are all centred around moral issues. In this way he is antecedent to Kant and the other idealist philosophers.
13. Plato raises an important epistemological question: How is it that can arrive at certain ideas which are not derivable from our empirical environment? How is it that we could think of a perfect cube, and yet no such thing exists in our observable world? He answers this by postulating that these ideas are real and come to us though reason from a higher an more perfect plane of existence. For Plato the clearest line to this reality was through mathematics and geometry.
14. The Timaeus is as close as we get to a Platonic view of cosmology and the place of human life in nature, veiled as it is in Pythagorean mathematical mysticism and mythology. Before we relegate Plato’s ideas of the physical universe to the realm of implausibility, we must always keep in mind that Plato is working from a very different perspective than that of modern natural science; he would not have seen the conquest of nature which came from modern scientific developments. He was always more concerned with internal inquiry (the soul,morals and the like).
15. Plato does not ask how things are the way they are but rather, why? He then makes the how fit with the why; physical theory must conform to moral theory, or rather, in Plato’s case moral truth: the stars in the sky are put there by God to teach us geometry … the human intestine is the length that it is in order to give us enough time between meals to study philosophy! In any case, with Plato the moral theory comes first.
16. Plato, Timaeus and Critas,p124 (Conclusion), tr. Desmond Lee, London: Penguin, 1977
17. For a brief but clear depiction of the transmission of Platonic thought to the early Christian church
see: John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 1988
18. St Ambrose was bishop of Milan when Augustine was posted there as professor of rhetoric and was very influential on him.
19. Augustine searched long and hard to find a system of thought that would quench his desire for faith and reason. For many years he was a follower of Manicheism but was never fully satisfied with its teachings. Although he ultimately rejected Manicheism for Christianity there are still echoes of it here and there in his thought
20.Although St Augustine would have had a certain influence in his lifetime it was only well after his death that his writings gained the power that they did.
21. Although Aristotle denies transcendence to Plato’s Ideas and the soul, he does grant it to one concept : the Intellect (nous)
22. St Augustine, Confessions, p.267, tr. R.S. Pine-Coffin, London: Penguin , 1961
23. An orthodoxy does not permit the heterogeneous or individual expression of abundance and represses it by dogmatic indoctrination and channels it homogeneously.
24. Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, Middletown Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press,1959
25.The abundance that had been invested in the arrogant expansionism resulting in the destruction of the Athenian fleet and the fall of Athens to the Spartans had become, to use Bataille’s terminology, an “accursed share.”