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Understanding suicide through the lens of Libertarianism; In what ways can suicide be interpreted as proof for the existence of free will?

March 7, 2023 / / 0 Comments

by Paz Daniela Ortiz Santa María, Peruvian Social Activist and Humanities Researcher

INTRODUCTION 

Didn’t you think I knew that you were born with the power of a locomotive,  

able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? 

“For You” (1973), Bruce Springsteen. 

French philosopher Albert Camus began his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” by stating that “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy”. When expanding upon the reasons behind his claim, Camus alludes to the real-life implications of deciding to take one’s own life, concluding that “the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions”.

Indeed, the issue of suicide constitutes one of the most intricate discussions related to the topic of human behaviour. Consequently, it has been widely examined through the lens of various disciplines, ranging from psychology to biology, from anthropology to theology, and from ethics to philosophy. Although in most of these instances suicide has been approached as nothing more than a social phenomenon, thinkers often decide to explore the metaphysical implications of an act of this nature, and what it can reveal about identity and free will. 

In metaphysics, libertarianism is the philosophical position that asserts that humans have free will. Free will can be described as “the main cause of human choices and actions. Actions are unpredictable because people are choosing from a set of options, and that choice is free. Despite some external influences, free will has the final word and can override external causes”. In support of this view, philosophers have appealed to diverse instances that allegedly stem from humans’ exercise of freedom; however, can it be argued that the voluntary termination of one’s life is one of them? 

According to Cambridge Dictionary, the noun suicide stands for “the act of killing yourself intentionally”. The word used to refer to this act is clearly distinguishable from the term that describes an unexpected or unplanned passing—that distinction being the intentional and aware pursuit of one’s death. This differentiation is present across many languages, as noted by the Austrian essayist Jean Améry, who highlights the importance of denoting intent when talking about suicide. In Améry’s native German, the term “Freitod” can be translated to “voluntary death”, which he explains is appropriate to describe the fact that “the act itself is sometimes—frequently—brought into being by a condition of urgent compulsion”.

Though initially, one might find it difficult to identify a clear connection between suicide and free will—let alone reach the conclusion that the latter’s existence is fundamentally proved by the former’s—, it takes but a close look at what killing oneself entails to realize the extent to which they are intertwined. Accepting the premise that suicide is feasible for any individual implies that human beings can be accurately described as self-aware creatures that can recognize their own mortality and voluntarily seek death. Amongst other things, it suggests that, unlike other animals, humans can challenge and ultimately overcome their biological drive to prioritize self-preservation. At the very least, the mere existence of people who have actively chosen to kill themselves defies our perception of ourselves as exclusively determined creatures. 

This essay is titled “Understanding suicide through the lens of libertarianism”, and aims to answer the question “In what ways can suicide be interpreted as proof for the existence of free will?” In this essay, a philosophical investigation of the metaphysical implications of suicide—voluntary death—will be conducted in order to evaluate how cogent it is to claim that, at its core, taking one’s own life is an exercise of free will. 

To do so, the essay will be divided into three chapters, each of which will address a different perspective on the matter: Chapter I: Through the lens of libertarianism (where the nature of actions, agency, and ownership will be studied); Chapter II: Fear of death (where biological and social determinism will be the main focus), and Chapter III: A life worth living (where it will be considered if suicide can be the result of a logical thought process). The conclusion will present the results of this exploration. 

METHODOLOGY. 

The investigation carried out to answer the Research Question focused primarily on works by philosophers who have discussed suicide from a libertarian or absurdist standpoint, amongst which “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus and “On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death” by Jean Améry have stood out as the most influential throughout the writing process. Likewise, Thomas Szasz’s essay “The Ethics of Suicide” both challenged and supported the ideas presented in this essay. 

Similarly, extracts from three of the Romanian pessimistic philosopher Emil Cioran’s works—“Drawn and Quartered”; “On the Heights of Despair” and “The Trouble with Being Born”—were consulted to formulate the thesis that this essay is evaluating. Other primary sources that were utilized include various academic essays and journal articles related to free will, suicide, or both. Secondary sources, used for definitions and expansion of ideas, include the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. 

CHAPTER I. Through the lens of libertarianism 

This chapter will attempt to define if it can be accurately claimed that humans have both agency and ownership over their own lives. To do so, Section a) will explore the nature of actions, agree upon a set of categories that aids the development of this essay, and sort voluntary death into one of them. Furthermore, Section b) will discuss different perspectives of who or what truly owns one’s life. 

a) Agency in the midst of cause-effect correlation 

According to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, an agent is “a being with the capacity to act” and agency “denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity”.8 Elemental action theory sums up action by asserting that it is something an agent does that was “intentional under some description”. Within deterministic schools of thought, any human action that indicates intent is often argued to be the mere effect of a related cause, proportional in every way to it. 

These definitions allow for a wider discussion to take place regarding the nature of actions and how they can be classified. Naturally, one can conclude that all causes have effects and that every cause is, in turn, the effect of another cause—and vice versa. Nonetheless, it is reductionist to the point of fallacy to assert that all effects react to the same type of cause, which can signify an important distinction when discussing free will. For the debate at hand, the source of an event—where it originates—will be analysed as a point of reference to classify potential causes. 

If one agrees with the premise that there is a cause-effect correlation between all actions, it is appropriate to conclude that the source of a cause has an impact on the nature of the effect. It logically follows to recognize that a given cause’s source can either be external to one’s space of consciousness, or internal. In order to assure clarity in terms of philosophical terminology, the term “space of consciousness” will be used to refer to the delimited extent within which a person can have first-hand experiences. Hence, a rainy day classifies as an external-sourced cause, and a person opening an umbrella is the effect. Accordingly, a desire would classify as an internal-sourced cause and fulfilling it, its effect. 

When discussing external causes, effects can be referred to as “reactions” because they constitute a response to an external stimulus, and a strong case as to why those are inherently determined can be made with ease. However, when talking about causes that originate within one’s space of consciousness, it becomes more difficult to measure how the effect could be directly proportional to said cause, simply by the nature of every person’s inalienability from their first-hand experiences. In other words, accurately identifying cause-effect correlation becomes almost impossible when the cause is an internal phenomenon because they are often unexplainable to anyone but the person experiencing it. Thus, if the effect were to be voluntary death, and the cause could be argued to be internal, then one could not fully confirm the extent to which that was determined to happen. 

Camus’s observations on suicide are as follows: “An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. […] One evening he pulls the trigger or jumps”. This implies that he considers that the causes behind someone’s suicide originate within their inner selves. He goes on to comment on the origin of suicide, saying that “beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought”. His mention of the limited—almost non-existent—role of societal factors in the decision to take one’s life speaks to a belief that suicide cannot be reduced to a mere response to external stimuli or social conditioning. 

This section allows us to conclude that agency can be identified in an action like suicide bearing in mind the nature of its cause. What follows is to discuss the ownership of life, and whether it is an individual’s to end. 

b) The nature of the ownership of life 

Having planted the seed of uncertainty in total determinism, this section asks: What can one claim to truly own? This question becomes relevant given that free will can be argued to exist only when exercised over things that one owns. Current societal structures are built upon the idea that objects—and even other people’s lives—can be rightfully owned by individuals, and that any violation of that property is a serious transgression. Nevertheless, it is not inaccurate to point out that ownership is, at its core, a social construct. There is no tangible attachment to any physical body but the imaginary one we agree upon as a collective species to sustain our society. This is proven by the fact that things one owns remain unchanged when one dies (eg. a man’s house will not face any physical transformation when the man dies, at least not one that arises from his death). 

Continuing with this line of thought, one could argue that the only physical substance that irreparably changes after an individual’s death is the same individual’s body. Thus, one can claim that true ownership is only present when referring to a person and their physical bodies, as there is an indivisible inextricable link between a human’s physical body and their life as we understand it. Life cannot survive the death of the physical body, nor can the physical body survive the end of life, which establishes a strong bond between life and body to the point where they can be understood as the same thing. 

The way each of their existences seems to depend on the continuation of the other shapes our understanding of them as somewhat inseparable. It is perhaps the only tangible ownership connection that can be discerned. It may be concluded that true ownership only materializes itself when it comes to a human’s body and life. 

CHAPTER II. Fear of death 

This chapter will attempt to find an explanation as to why suicide cannot be logically attributed to biological or social determinism. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the topic at hand, it should be noted that the author does not intend to develop a psychological, sociological, or biological account of suicide, but to look at the core claims that place suicide as a consequence of biological and/or social determinism and untangle them to decipher if they are rightfully stated or not. 

a) Suicide and biological determinism 

Biological determinism holds that actions are determined by an individual’s physiology. Thus, biological determinists would be inclined to state that suicide is nothing but the aftermath of a chemical event. This is the case when one examines suicide as the result of a mental health condition, such as depression. Notwithstanding, it can be argued that the condition only fuels self-destructive tendencies, but the presence of those tendencies can be overridden by the exercise of free will, and the decision to act upon them or not ultimately is an individual’s to take. 

Either side of the argument is difficult to disprove through the use of logical reasoning alone, although both appear to be equally feasible. 

Withal, if one was to agree with the biological determinist stance, it would open a new debate about the primary drive of any living organism: the self-preservation instinct. If this tendency (often referred to as survival instinct) takes precedence over any other physiological event, then wouldn’t it outweigh suicidal propensities? If anything, the decision to take one’s life challenges and ultimately wins over a human’s self-preservation instinct. Therefore, arguing that suicide can be explained by appealing to biological determinism becomes self-refuting in many ways. Though it does not fully disprove it, it poses a viable alternative to interpreting voluntary death. 

b) Suicide and social determinism 

Social determinism opens a discussion about social structures conditioning certain individuals to take their own lives. Although the way society works indisputably causes large amounts of suffering, one cannot deny how arbitrary and essentially unpredictable the circumstances that lead up to a person’s suicide are. As noted by Améry, “it is undeniable that there are acts of suicide that, at first glance, have hardly anything to do with each other as far as their casualty, their transsuicidal intentions, and even their ranking are concerned”. It seems as though individuals of all races, socioeconomic statuses, nationalities, backgrounds, and genders can engage in such an act, which suggests that it cannot be reduced to a set of emotions caused by social circumstances—which therapeutic views of suicide often propose. 

As pointed out by the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, libertarian Thomas Szasz is “strongly associated with the ‘anti-psychiatry’ movement of the last half century. According to that movement, attempts by the state or by the medical profession to interfere with suicidal behaviour are essentially coercive attempts to pathologize morally permissible exercises of individual freedom”. Similarly, Jean Améry stated that “the inclination to voluntary death is not a sickness of which one has to be cured as one is cured of measles”. Szasz and Améry’s view on a medical explanation for suicidal behaviour is that it is reductionist and ultimately inaccurate, Szasz going as far as to call it a restrain on individual freedom. 

According to Améry, people kill themselves because living in a wretched condition prevents the individual from having any dignity. Suicide then turns into the logical conclusion to an inner debate regarding whether life is worth living or not. Regarding social determinism as a probable cause for suicide, Améry writes: “Is and always has been an extraordinary act that goes beyond the customary ordering of individual and social existence; this it has been even in circumstances where it has been socially accepted as a duty of honor (hari-kari) or as an obligation of taste (Petronius) or even as an order in the name of an unwritten officer’s quote (Lieutenant Gustl)”.  

Thomas Szasz took a similar stand regarding this issue. He believed that the State took a hypocritical stand when it penalized suicide allegedly based on the premise that it could be prevented through psychological aid, considering that its regard for life appeared to be fluid to aid their stand at its convenience. It follows to recognize that, while social determinism may aid in explaining suicide under certain circumstances, it is too broad of a claim to ascertain that it does so in every instance related to voluntary death. One might go on to state that it is ultimately a subjective question about whether life is worth living or not. 

CHAPTER III. A life worth living 

After demonstrating that an action like suicide cannot be fully explained by social or biological determinism, this chapter will set out to explore the thought process that leads an individual to take their own life in order to conclude if suicide can be the logical conclusion of a rational thought process and not an undefeatable compulsion. Section a) will focus on the arguments posed by Jean Améry in “On Suicide”, where he thoroughly discusses why the reasons that lead someone to choose voluntary death can be deemed logical even if they cannot be expressed. Section b) will examine suicide as a response to realizing what Camus referred to as the absurdity of life in “The Myth of Sisyphus”.  

a) On choosing voluntary death. 

Based on his personal experience, Améry indicates that the reasons behind suicide are valid irrespective of the individual’s ability to verbalize them. Barlow sums this up by declaring that “for Améry, […] the alienations and setbacks one experiences in one’s life could lead to legitimate reasons for choosing a voluntary death, regardless of whether those reasons can be communicated”. He further elaborates on this idea: “One is trying to understand reasons expressed in a language that is individually subjective and not persuasive in the language of everyday life”. Améry discusses the idea that suicide means to engage in contradiction and truly embrace the unknown (i.e. non-existence) and calls the individual that does it “a person of nonsense” which, to him, is inherently different from “deluded sense”. 

Amplifying this syntactic distinction, Améry claims that “anyone who wants to commit suicide is breaking out, out of the logic of life”. He explains that desire to continue living often stems from habit and not from actively choosing to do so, asking the reader: “Do you have to live? […] In the moment before the leap, suicides tear to pieces a prescription of nature and throw it at the feet of the invisible prescriber”. The rejection and eventual intentional termination of conscious experience through the exercise of that same consciousness presents a logical contradiction that, in its feasibility, denotes the presence of freedom. 

The issue of coexistent logic and illogicality of voluntary death is quite revealing when determining the role that free will plays in choosing it. Améry writes: “Actually, someone standing before the leap […] has at the same time one foot still in the logic of life and the other in the anti-logical logic of death. Because we mean by the logic of life not only the immanent logic of behaviour that preserves the self and the species, to which we are tributary, but also the logic gained from this logic as an abstraction of higher order, one that weighs being against being, sets one against the other, […] because there is no bridge from being to nonbeing, because of all this, we are helpless in thinking about death”. Human’s perception of death is intrinsically contradictory, as it involves the conceptualization of something which lies outside one’s empirical knowledge. In turn, this transforms the awareness of mortality into a tortuous exercise which came to be from having the cognitive capacity to be aware of death but lacking the means to know what comes after. 

For Améry, humans can only reconcile these two opposing notions by choosing voluntary death. He claims that it is not even necessary to engage in the act itself, but simply by making the decision one truly embraces and rationalizes the “nonsense”. The active pursuit for what cannot be understood—death and the unknown—contradicts human nature and, as such, can only be attained through the unconstrained exercise of free will. 

b) Linking suicide, freedom, and the absurd 

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy states that “Camus sees this question of suicide as a natural response to an underlying premise, namely that life is absurd in a variety of ways”. Absurd, in this case, describes the realization that life has no meaning whatsoever, and suicide—Camus argues—seems to be an appropriate response to that realization, as seen in the following extract: “In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it”. 

He further develops the notion of the absurd by asserting that “you continue making the gestures commanded by existence, for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering”. Here, he summarizes the idea that living is nothing but the natural state in which we find ourselves and that, the more one contemplates it, the more one is enlightened to the many things that make it unbearable. 

Agreeing with Camus’s premise on the inescapable absurdity of life means agreeing that suicide can be the conclusion of a rational inner debate on whether life is worth living or not. He wrote: “At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. […] This must be clung to because the whole consequence of a life can depend on it.”. The lack of fulfilment that comes from being denied an answer to the question of the meaning of life can amount to the reasoning that suicide is the only path that remains.  

It is worth noting that Camus ends his essay by claiming that life’s meaninglessness does not have to end in suicide. Referencing the character that inspires the title of his essay which he used as a microcosm for humanity, he states that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”, in spite of the absurdity that permeates his existence because as individuals, our lives have no meaning but the one that is consciously given to it through action and perception. Nonetheless, doing so requires a decision that one can just as easily decide not to carry out. Camus acknowledges that, ultimately, the continuation of life in spite of being aware of its nature depends solely on the individual that owns it and the way they choose to exercise their free will. 

CONCLUSION 

In conclusion, a thorough analysis of free will and suicide has been carried out to answer the question “In what ways can suicide be interpreted as proof for the existence of free will?”. All things considered, it cannot be stated that suicide is the proportional effect of any given cause, given its intrinsic nature and the fact that it originates from an effect sourced within a human’s space of consciousness. Likewise, appealing to biological and/or social determinism only explains voluntary death to a certain extent, and ultimately does not address the issue in its entirety. Moreover, asking oneself whether life is worth living, concluding that it is not, and deciding to end one’s life has been proven to be a logical response to a rational thought process, even though the debate is inherently illogical. Suicide as a potential and factual phenomenon can only be feasible if individuals have free will. 

From these observations, one may conclude that voluntary death can and should be interpreted as proof for the existence of free will. This Extended Essay defied the foundations upon which many determinist theories have been built and conducted a thorough autopsy of the relationship between suicide and free will. When approached through the lens of libertarianism, it becomes clear that acknowledging and scrutinizing suicide takes the free will discussion to a whole new different level. 

As was pointed out in the Introduction, the perpetual possibility of voluntary death defies our perception of humans are exclusively determined creatures. Jean Améry declares that “as a way of death, however, voluntary death is still freely chosen even when one is trapped in a vise of compulsions; there is no carcinoma that devours me, no infarction that fells me, no uremic crisis that takes away my breath. I am that which lays hands upon me, who dies after taking barbiturates “from hand to mouth”.”. It is fundamentally in the individual’s power to forfeit the right to exist and exercise the right to terminate their life. 

Notes

Améry, Jean. “On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death.” Translated by John D. Barlow. Indiana University Press, 1999. 

Aronson, Ronald. “Albert Camus.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), accessed February 15, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/camus/. 

Camus, Albert. “The Myth of Sisyphus: and Other Essays.” Translated by Justin O’Brien. Vintage Books, 1959. 

Cholbi, Michael. “Suicide.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), accessed February 15, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/suicide/. 

Cioran, Emil. “Drawn and Quartered.” Translated by Richard Howard. Arcade Publishing, 2012. 

Cioran, Emil. “On the Heights of Despair.” Translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. The University of Chicago Press, 1991. 

Cioran, Emil. “The Trouble with Being Born.” Translated by Richard Howard. Arcade Publishing, 2012. 

Davidson, Donald. “Essays on Actions and Events.” Oxford University Press, 1980. 

de Melo-Martin, Inmaculada. “When is Biology Destiny? Biological Determinism and Social Responsibility.” PhilSci Archive, 2002, accessed February 15, 2021. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/1062. 

“Meaning of suicide in English.” Cambridge Dictionary, accessed February 15, 2021. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suicide. 

Nagel, Thomas. “The Absurd.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, no. 20, 1971, p. 716. DOI:10.2307/2024942. 

Nezet, N. L., Williams, G., White, C., and Lee, D. “Philosophy: Being Human. Course Companion (IB Diploma Programme).” Oxford Univ. Press, 2014. 

O’Connor, Timothy and Christopher Franklin. “Free Will.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), accessed February 15, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/freewill/. 

Schlosser, Markus. “Agency.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019, accessed February 15, 2021. plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/agency/. 

SparkNotes Editors. “The Myth of Sisyphus Study Guide.” SparkNotes, 2007, accessed February 15, 2021. www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/sisyphus/. 

Szasz, Thomas. “The Ethics of Suicide.” JSTOR, Antioch Review Inc., 1971. www.jstor.org/stable/4637376. 

Springsteen, Bruce. “For You.” Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Mike Appel, and Jim Cretecos. Columbia, June 22, 1972. 

Wilson, George, Samuel Shpall, and Juan S. Piñeros Glasscock. “Action.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), accessed February 15, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/action/. 

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The presence of mono no aware in Japanese poetics

February 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

by Hayden Foldhazy, Philosopher

There is a definitive relationship between the content of Japanese arts and the aesthetic principle of mono no aware (sensitivity to ephemera, 物の哀れ), which came to be formally recognized amongst the people – as an actual facet of said arts – shortly after literati Motoori Norinaga’s analysis of Genji no Monogatari was published. It is only in his shorter essay however, titled On Mono no Aware, that Norinaga provides a clearer image of what exactly a feeling of mono no aware entails, its origins, and how it is used in the creation of song (uta, 歌 or 詩). Here we will begin with the linguistic origins of the term as it will be easier to map the ways in which it has transformed in use and meaning, moreover to better understand its context and content in modern songs. 

Thus, we turn our attention first to aware’s translation in earlier literature as an expression of sighing; like the English ah! or oh! Interestingly though, Norinaga makes no claims on whether this expression was ever used outside literature – in spoken language – as we often do in Western tongues to convey our displeasure or comfort directly. The sigh of relief is the best example I can think of, when one sits down after a long day and utters that customary breath of solace. Or perhaps for a more aesthetically derived sensation, when one gasps at a view of nature or painting in awe. He merely refers to it as a word that would express this action of sighing in song, which suggests otherwise; and I only bring this up because I am not – from my own experiences – familiar with anyone who uses the term aware colloquially [B 174]. Rather, Japanese speakers usually reply with a simple aa (ああ) or softer haa (はあ) when met with external pains or pleasure, which brings us to our next point. Though aware is, to this day, most often written as 哀れ, using the kanji for sorrow (哀), Norinaga emphasizes that aware is not a feeling of mere sadness; nor is it on the other hand one of mere happiness when written as 柯怜, using the kanji for compassion. Aware is an all encompassing term that articulates a broad range of feelings, but does so at a deep and most sympathetic level from within oneself. And so, when he explains what it means to know mono no aware it becomes clear why we are so concerned with songs and especially why there is no mono no aware without consideration for emotions of the heart (kokoro, 心). 

To know mono no aware is, on its surface level, a recognition of this action of sighing; what Norinaga describes as our fundamental “understanding of the nature of these things, and know[ing] how to be moved by them,” [B 173]. These things he mentions are where the mono (thing, 物) in the phrase mono no aware come from; where mono explicitly refers to objects of the external world – tangible things and never their ideas. So, if we take the two parts of the phrase in unison we literally have something that means the ah! (aware) of (no) things (mono). We see here as well why the phrase is so often translated into English as a sensitivity to ephemera, because the objects which bring about this ah! are only temporary. They are fleeting moments, rising and falling from the things our thoughts and emotions are derived – but we will return to this briefly when discussing particular songs. The feeling exhibited by mono no aware is hence best summarized as one where we experience and identify a deep awe in a particular something – ie., anything, whether it be the moon or a facile teacup. Norinaga makes it clear that all mono are capable of this and act on us involuntarily. But what is it that he really means when he says to know how to be moved by them? It would seem simply acknowledging our sighing is not enough then, and that something else is inexplicably involved. We have haphazardly thrown the term understanding about till now, implying at the very least that there is a process of learning attached to this aesthetic, and so I will attempt from here to interpret what this understanding consists of. 

Norinaga’s explanation is – ironically – a bit shallow. However what he alludes to in his introduction, when explaining the difference between man and animal, is that consciousness of one’s feelings is necessary for the aesthetic experience to occur; not just the action itself. Circling back to the heart (kokoro, 心) I mentioned previously, Norinaga claims that all living creatures possess one unquestionably – going so far as to state that they too are capable of song – but only man is in possession of a deeply moving heart, due to their superior ability to perform actions and also reflect on them. Moreover, he explains this quality of depth in terms of our greater exposure to actions which I interpret as our conducts, or functions, which assail the basic animalistic ones of survival. Consequently, only man can realize, ie., actualize, this aesthetic in a manner of self expression [B 172]. We are after all beings that think about thinking itself, making us more intimately aware of our situation. And so, when met with the external things we can act upon, the reflection of our actions – ie., the thinking thinking – causes our hearts to move with sentiment far more than any other creature, to the point we can not withhold the feeling within ourselves any longer. Ergo we sigh. The understanding, or the how, is therefore this very consciousness of the emotional response exhibited toward the object in question. We do not just sigh and move on from our sentiment, but relish in it until the sentiment itself moves from us; we watch the object – the thing – perish before us and in this find what beauty is. Thus to fully know mono no aware, in chorus one must be aware of the movement their feelings undergo, the thing that is causing this movement, and why the thing is causing this to occur. Perhaps from here it would be best to analyze how mono no aware comes about in song: what Norinaga asserts to be the realized, human expression of this sentiment.

From his own Suzunoya Shū, we consider the song Insects in front of the moon:

Mushi no ne ka (Is it the sound of the insects?)

Izure ni otsuru (Where are these tears)

Aware to mo (From a deep sentiment falling — ) 

Namida wakarenu (That never leave)

Aki no yo no tsuki (The moon on an autumn night?) [B 96]

The second and third lines are explicative of the songwriter’s emotions, the first condition we proposed of knowing mono no aware; awareness of one’s sentiment as related to the object at hand. There is a melancholic feeling expressed by the mention of tears that progresses into a chasmic, inexhaustibleness of their presence in the fourth line: tears that never leave. These words in particular suggest mono no aware to be a perpetual condition of man – thanks to their deeply moving heart – to always be in or affected by emotion; in this case one of woe. The first and fifth lines are offered as questions to satisfy the second and third conditions; to identify and inquire of the things causing our feeling, or our heart to move. Here these things are the sound of the insects and the moon respectively. We see once again that the mono under discussion are experienceable, tangible things that can always be reconciled with an action. As such, aware is often used in direct conjunction with verbs to relay this explicitly – something lacking in this song. Nevertheless, it is still implied in this instance by the sound of the insects, requiring us to listen, and the presence of the autumn moon, requiring us to see. We can surmise this better from the following phrases Norinaga provides in his analytical essay: tsuki wo aware to iu (sighing over the moon) and hito wo aware to iu (to be moved by someone[‘s words]), where aware to iu is a sighing (aware) accompanied by speaking (iu). Returning to the mono of this song, Insects in front of the moon, we emphasize again that the things responsible for our emotion are only temporary, like the seasons. The insects do not sing forever, being a conventional symbol of the summer, and the autumn moon will only appear in its respective months; yet an appreciation for them and all their beauty spawns from this finitude.

In modern poetry especially, mono no aware presents itself this way thematically; in metaphors for transience, almost always in relation to the passing of the seasons and their things. Consider the first two stanzas from Nakahara Chūya’s Summer Night:

Ah, in my tired heart

a cherry-pink woman     passes by,

a woman passes by.

In the summer night the paddy field’s sledge,

resentment has faded away.

— Will the surrounding mountains’ seasons come round? [A 55]

The song begins with an ah but it is not for me to say if this ah would be translated directly as something like aware to mo. We can still infer however that there is a sighing action taking place here, signified by a tired heart. It is accompanied by this symbolic passing of spring through the cherry-pink woman; representative of the cherry blossoms which come and pass in the April to May months marking summer’s approach – hence the next stanza beginning with a summer’s night. Cherry blossoms are synonymous with beauty in Japan because of their short-viewed presence and cyclical nature – of birth and death, not unlike our own movement through life. Transience is reflected in almost every line of this song, but the emotion developed from this temporariness of things is best found in the fifth and final stanza:

In my tired heart,     a petal passes by;

from time to time a gong grazes the writings.

The mist is lovely, but hot! [A 55]

The last line specifically emphasizes this bittersweetness partnered with the very passage of time. Moreover, in the prior line – similar to Norinaga – we also see this allusion to mono no aware’s incessant presence in man; as a gong which sounds from time to time, sparking what seems to be Chūya’s writings themselves: uta. Norinaga’s claim that song is the actualized knowing of mono no aware shines through here; as we are met with an overwhelming nostalgia – a lovely but hot mist – in response to the subtleties of living – time’s movement across things – that we must outwardly articulate.

It is not completely dissimilar in form from Western poetry, where poets seek to articulate emotion in writing. Except, the latter’s tendency to project feelings into objects – and not vice versa, where objects project feelings onto us involuntarily – drastically changes the content away from mono no aware. In the case of Chūya, we see that an experience of witnessing the passage of time has caused the melancholic response to this summer night. But in Western poetry we often see an already present feeling be signaled metaphorically by something that could occur, usually through imagery. Take for instance William Blake’s Ah! Sun-flower:

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun:

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:

Arises from their graves and aspire,

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

I chose this poem in particular, not only because it uses this ah! similar to our other songs, but because it uses nature – important in Japanese songs of aware – as an allusion for man. It is not even subtle, as the sun-flower is itself personified, being able to count the Sun’s steps – the days passing by – and wishing to go where the Youth and pale Virgin find themselves – presumably Heaven, after death. Here, feelings are contrarily idealized into the things rather than subjectively impressed by judgements offered of the things as in the case of Chūya or Norinaga. This is not to say Blake was not inspired by the viewing of a sun-flower to write this poem, but because the sun-flower is meant – in the context of the last line – to articulate its own feelings we are dealing with a more objective, outwardly-positioned scrutinization of life and beauty; ie., a judgment from outside the thing as it is. Beauty and hope for a peaceful death are positioned into the sun-flower rather than being found within it. There are of course many similarities to be encountered here too; mostly in regards to the poem’s apprehension of time and our own finitude. The weary sun-flower that tracks every day as it passes, accepting its eventual demise exhibits something close to the person who experiences aware’s appreciation for fleetingness; but again, the position – the sentiment – is one that is offered by us through an image of an object: the sun-flower.  

In short summary then, mono no aware is not unlike a direct expression of yūgen, which seeks to turn this action of sighing at the underlying sentiment of things into singing (utatte, 歌って) about beauty as it is. And though these feelings spring onto us involuntarily from the objects themselves, we are able to comprehend them subjectively via their accompaniment to our specific actions; such as watching the rain (ame wo aware to mite iru, 雨を哀れと見ている). Thus, it would seem the most important qualities of mono no aware are its derivation from the surrounding world as well as its recognition of beauty in finitude; very different from the traditional Western aesthetic which emphasizes beauty as ideal, permanent structures. In modern Japanese songs we have also seen how this aesthetic has continued, almost always in the songs’ contents, whereas traditional lyrics – from the likes of Norinaga – articulated this aware in the very form of the language. Today, in a contemporary Japan that moves further and further from the traditional values of its ancestors each generation, we still see this sentiment for the impermeant – perhaps, ironically, this is why the landscape is so open to change and progresses with ease into a modern world, as nostalgia is felt, allowed to pass, and not contrived. The people still practice hanami (flower-viewing parties of the cherry blossoms, 花見) and yet welcome new developments to the tradition as needed. Mono no aware has consequently become more than a literary phrase in poetics; it has become an aesthetic of living.  

Notes

AChūya, Nakahara. The Poems of Nakahara Chūya. Translated by Maki Sugiyama and Paul Mackintosh, Gracewing Publishing, 2017.

BMotoori, Norinaga. The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga: A Hermeneutical Journey. Translated by Michael F. Marra, University of Hawaii Press, 2007.

CBlake, William. Ah! Sun-flower. 1794.

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Silencing the sirens and sprites; a critique of the male’s de-feminized (and idealized) approach to women’s life, language, and philosophy

December 27, 2022 / / 0 Comments

by Hayden Foldhazy, Philosopher

The world is a self-evident place: a reflexive and historical one not so easily understood. Modern times are enveloped simultaneously by modern and archaic thought, in so much as the changes which pervade our philosophy and language, both our practical and ideal ways of life, continue to be directly influenced by the markers of our past; no less than our foresight – rarely of a pure reformative nature – deems these markers necessary or contingent, whilst also positing new ones for the roads we pave ahead. 

The woman, incontestably propounded the Other by such thinkers as Simone De Beauvoir and writer Ingeborg Bachmann, is no exception to this process of idealization; as imposed by the unfortunateness of a male dominated society, ie., a male dominated history. Treated as a marker by her male counterparts, even in today’s more politically augmented social realm, the woman and her ideal is often left to the realm of the past; as if – and I hate myself for using this analogy – she is some attic-dwelling knickknack, that shan’t change but only further herself into yesterday. By this account, ie., a historical one, the woman has been relegated to a position absent of her own willing-choice: to be an autonomous voice, thinker, and overall being. This is because the man, by and large, has stood tall above this history of the world and has made the past his own; domesticating the woman to certain roles and places. Women were forced – at most points in time and still to great extent today – to become wives, childbearers, and mistresses in the name of a greater male outcome with no consideration for her own call to life. Disgusting does not begin to describe it, but perhaps – as I wish to explore here – Bachman’s declaration can: You humans! You monsters! (a, pp. 178). In the most literal and material senses, through her Undine gehta, we shall see how the man has reshaped and refined history to his liking; in a manner that has not left the woman untouched but has rather subsumed her under this Other, or immanent, thing: as projected. And further, via comparisons to De Beauvoir’s own life and thought, we shall bring to light the modern ways men continue to subdue the woman’s autonomous voice; in both philosophy and the aforementioned literature.  

Beginning with this term immanent – if I am to paraphrase De Beauvoir’s The Second Sexb – we unanimously refer to the ideal of woman as inwardly driven and directed toward the physical realm; embodying a stagnant nature, in which habit exceeds ascendance. Of course, granted the position of the man as the counterforce that has made women wives and mistresses, we can fairly reason that this immanence is not of her explicit fault. She has been subdued, ultimately, to these images (or ideals); that we shall explore further, later on through mythological and literary de-feminization by male writers and thinkers. An important thing to note here, however, is that – according to De Beauvoir – the woman is in no way inherently lacking her analogue’s transcendent nature; ie., the man’s attitude of outward extension into the world, directed toward the divine and intelligible realms (b, pp. 441 – 443). It is merely that, through her historical relegation to positions such as wife or mother, she is often rendered incapable of achieving this sort-of male status of enlightenment. She must remain in marriage or in the household. The full extent of the world, where the male’s sun (and sons) shine over the horizon of opportunity and autonomous creation, remains a closed entity to her. But how exactly has this happened? And how might we mend this superficial gap created by the sexes between the sexes? First, and most advantageously, we should proceed through the experiences of women, written and explicated by women. Thus, we return to Bachmann. 

We see this paradox, between the man (as self) and woman (as Other) – but also, by extension, the self against self within both species – expressed best through Bachmann’s mythological allusion to the undine, in her Undine geht. Traditionally, deriving from German mythology, the undine is an elemental water sprite; liminal by design, and thus capable of transcending the border between the human and spiritual realms. Thus, similar to De Beauvoir’s argument for the woman, it does not lack one nature or the other, as either masculine or feminine; it posits both, yet is limited to the immanent position by its counterpart. Bachmann, through her Undine geht, narrates a very personal story of conflict and love between the Undine – whose voice she embodies – and men in general named Hans, through this disposition to the water; ie., the realm of immanence. Though water alludes of course to some level of fluidity, which may be interpreted as transcendence, the narrative relegates the water as less involved, or intelligible, than the land belonging to the Hans (that we shall explore indepthly just a bit later). The elemental Undine opines, “I love the water, its dense transparency, the green in the water and the dumb creatures (I too shall soon be equally dumb), my hair among them, in it, the just water, the indifferent mirror that forbids me to see you differently. The wet frontier between me and me…” (a, pp. 178). There are two important notes to take from here in further analyzing the Undine as more immanent to the Hans of society. Firstly, in claiming a love for the water, the Undine makes clear her position of inwardness via a nostalgic attachment to her own realm. She, in adopting this projection of man, is rendered incapable of escape. A water elemental, nonetheless liminal, should fundamentally belong to and arise from the world of water. She describes herself as in it, amongst the dumb creatures; which is our second important acknowledgement. This is a direct assertion of the water as somewhere less intelligible to the land, ie., as something more physical and indifferent (or mediocre) where women must reside. Rather, as transcendent men, the Hans of the society are not forced to belong amongst these dumb creatures nor do they wish to venture, “into that element in which no one builds a nest, raises a roof over rafters, covers himself with an awning. To be nowhere, to stay nowhere,” (a, pp. 178). The Hans, by this account, are free beings ironically more fluid than the Undine. They are dynamic and self assertive which enables them to build a society from the ground, ie., the land, upwards. The Undine, however, must remain a vassal to be sought by the man in his loneliness. And once he is done with her, to the water she must always return; that groundless realm where nothing she is producing or produces can stand.

To compare this with modern issues of society, a common difference – expounded by feminist movements – seen between men and women today is their willingness to change for one-another. Most often referred to as the double standard, women are – to a profoundly higher degree – expected to change their inherent personalities to conform to the male dominated society: the one of transcendence. By these means they become, and are forced to become, more masculine. Immanence is – seemingly – to be forgotten. Bachmann makes allusion to this phenomena via the notion of the Undine’s elemental nature, as water, and that of the clearing. The clearing, wherein the Undine always meets a man named Hans, accordingly represents the male dominated society that seeks to reshape her by striking the water from her arms, and licking the dew from her hair (a, pp. 177). To remove the water from the water sprite means to change the very being -itself; and in return the male offers no recompense, ie., no amendment of his own position. He does not join the water sprite in her realm – to become more feminine – or seek to grant her access to his own. He expects the world to surrender itself to him for nothing, and the modern world has consequently begun to (rightfully so) clamor him for it. We see this abundantly today in the working realm, to which men and women are purportedly now equally admitted. But it is simple to see the irony here, should we open our eyes to the material world, as men so often do not, looking upon their red flags with red-tinted frames. Orientation in thinking is important to make note of here as well; granted the man is raised to think transcendence is the solution for autonomy; as if god is becoming of him. Nevertheless, aside from the easily recognizable pay gaps between them, there are also the issues of representation and accommodation for women workers; who, of course, have social and biological limitations that do not necessarily overlap the male’s. These are – but are not limited to – menstruation, childbirth, constant fear of sexual assault and harassment, and being a minority in male dominated professions. I do not mean to present these as disadvantages, but merely explicate their social constructivism and the differences they create between the sexes regarding the aforementioned: representation and accommodation. Eg., the woman who bears a child and must take leave from work is rarely accommodated for such absence, with pay that is; as if she should be punished for something, frankly, out of her control (See c and e). Though it is her choice – at least in instantiated circumstances – to have a child, it is not her explicit desire to put her own life on hold and abandon the working environment. This she lacks control over; the hardships of childbirth and child raising are far too physically and mentally exhaustive to allow for both activities to persist. Further, eg., the woman who constantly fears harassment is seen as hysterical or irrational; as if – from the male’s vile perspective – she was not asking for it: “…crying it out, Hans, Hans…,” (a, pp. 177). Nevertheless, her fostering of yet another male ideal, ie., of something like motherhood or mistress, leads once again to her punishment by the male. It is a rather ass backwards concept to wrap one’s head around; one that the Undine seeks to understand here: “You monsters, that was why I loved you, because you knew what the call meant, because you allowed yourselves to be called, because you were never in agreement with yourselves,” (a pp. 181). The Hans understand what it is that they do, in purporting their own transcendence as the path of least resistance – toward a self willing life – whilst simultaneously leaving the Undine in her dark obscuring tides. Life is played like a game by them.

Additionally from Undine geht, continuing via the juxtaposition made of the Undine, the Hans, and their wives; Bachmann comments on the double standard confounded by the very institution of marriage, through an interesting notion of language. It is presented as a force of ensnarement, securing the woman within these social positions via relegation to ideal figures, known only by self-conception of word:

You who make women your mistresses and wives, one-day wives, week-end wives, lifetime wives and let yourselves be made into their husbands. (Perhaps that is worth waking up for.) You with your jealousy of your women, with your arrogant forbearance and tyranny, your search for sanctuary with your women; you with your housekeeping money and your joint good-night conversations, those sources of new strength, of the conviction that you are right in your conflicts with the outside world, you with your helplessly skillful, helplessly absent-minded embraces. I was amazed to see that you give your wives money for the shopping and for clothes and for the summer holiday, then you invite them out (invite them, that means you pay, of course). You buy and let yourselves be bought (a, pp. 180).

We see here that the Hans are essentially capable of relegating all of the women in their lives to these various positions of companionship – as wives, one-day wives, etc. – without any consequences becoming their sole position as husband. And further, as the Undine, Bachmann describes the male tendency toward jealousy and their overall self-contradictory natures – to buy and let themselves be bought – belonging once again to this modern notion of the double standard. After all, men are excessively and scarily more likely to confront and assault women on the bases they are unfaithful, or simply not fulfilling their duties as a lover or wife. But the man, irregardless, does not need to prove this same sentiment to the woman. The word wife carries much more weight than that of the husband, as she is expected to subsume herself under the husband and the sanctity of the marriage; whereas, in Bachmann, we see the man flee his home the first chance he can scrounge, to entertain himself with whom he call mistresses such as the Undine, who herself seeks true companionship and becomes angry with man’s continued unfaithfulness. De Beauvoir similarly comments on the power marriage (as an ideal) extends to the male, by means of his literal, material taking a wife. The act of communion – once the woman has said the words I do, and transformed into a bride – allows him to dip  his toes into the realm of immanence, but only to anchor himself to the social construct that marriage – as an archaic practice, and au fond realization of religious dowry – has enabled him as superiority; at best to raise a family, and yet nonetheless such that he may still escape the household in the dark of night, just like the Hans to seek his fun elsewhere (b, pp. 442 – 445). Language-itself is an extremely important notion to continue with from here, as being the idealization of power that allows men to subdue the societal position of women, to the mere immanent realm; what I ultimately hope to demonstrate here, through Bachmann and De Beauvoir, as the underlying cause for obstruction of the Other’s own lack of self-realization.

When the woman says I do, the man takes his wife. Preliminarily however the woman must be called a woman, such that the man can relegate her nextly to the position of wife. The language at play here is already, historically speaking, one of subservience. But let us return to Bachmann once again, and consider the very notion (or word) – in the most abstract terms – of the undine, so that we might better understand this. The process of de-feminization, after all, has taken its most grandiose form from literature that spreads false ideas on material concepts and beings. Many classical myths written by men, because only they were entrusted to read and write – and to embody those intelligible qualities – depict women as such as muses and sirens; another characteristic of the traditional undine, alluded to by Bachmann through the call. Undine we’re often shown residing in ponds and near waterfalls, singing their alluring songs to attract male suitors; and Bachmann’s own Undine takes up this role by asking the man to, “Come. Just once. Come,” (a, pp. 186). An important question is raised by this idealization of the undine, granted the material woman has been reformulated by the male author into some divine and to be feared creature of myth (ie., idea). What if, absent of any writing man’s intention, the undine as a being itself simply desired to sing for singing’s sake? To be independent? Ie., as figures created by men, mythological beings like the undine possess no means of autonomous creation or real being for themselves. From De Beauvoir, we see that the woman’s being is formulated as, “subordinate, secondary, parasitic…the very meaning of her life is not in her hands,” and this begins at their conception; their relegation, by male language and attitude, to the immanent place of the ideal woman. Their singing voices, their beauty and all else, were crafted by men for men. Thus, in this sense, Bachmann’s Undine geht provides a fervent commentary on the very male-designed nature of the woman-itself, as pure ideal, and literature as a tool for this continued means of subjugation to certain words or nouns; just as De Beauvoir proves through historical, philosophical notions. Overall, they both suggest this relegation to nouns, such as wife, leave the woman in a position absent of autonomy or joy. Consider more ardently De Beauvoir’s description of the work conscripted by idealized marriage: “The woman’s work within the home gives her no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it does not open out on the future, it produces nothing,” (b, pp. 442). To produce nothing means her work is considered without purpose and thus a work done beside herself; for the sheer intent of defending the male and male society. And so, it remains a struggle for women authors to find their creative voice because her purported natural position has always been one directed by the male’s compass. This is not to say women have not tried or succeeded in self production. Merely from a materialist stand, his voice has preceded hers in telling which direction to take the story, which characters to write, and how they should behave.  

This is all to summarily say books written by men  – and all other things from which language arises as word or speech or sign – will appeal more enthusiastically to men; but not as if they contain any right, as any sort-of pure knowledge of what is good or is in general. It is merely a historical appeal governed by the ruling vehemence and language. Thus, when the transcendent attitude dominates so too will literature and all other parts of society seek ascendance; and consequently abandon any other means of self-realization. Bachmann, as Undine, further states to demonstrate this phenomenon of language’s permeance and male guidance, “Never was there so much magic over things as when you spoke, and never were words so powerful. You could make speech flare up, become muddled or mighty. You did everything with words and sentences, came to an understanding with them or transmuted them, gave things a new name; and objects, which understand neither the straight nor the crooked words, almost took their being from your words,” (a, pp. 186). And so, we can see just how much power is held behind the simple terms crafted by those transcendent male literates: of woman, of wife, of undine and so on. By merely naming her Undine – along with coining terms for all other objects of the world – the Hans have conquered the world-itself. The world, inadvertently, has become a reflection of them (ie., those terms and language) because the world-itself, the land, is a fundamentally male ideal. They have sought, in giving the Undine her voice, to simultaneously strip her of it and its considered-seductive power; even though they were the ones to first posit her seductiveness and seek her company.

Contradiction, as Bachmann has already told us, is the nature of life for all, the Undine and the Hans alike. But by these same means the Hans have unequivocally captured the linguistic power of contradiction between idea and object, to place themselves above the immanent and the women within it. Whilst he can think! be! and speak out!, she does not understand and cannot understand (a, pp. 181) The dictionary written by the man, ie., the language he creates and contorts, will speak for none other than himself. He has the material power to change his willing-being. The ideal of the woman however, crafted by men for men, inherently lacks her experiential basis in this world for the men have always tried to talk themselves over her: to silence her alluring song without ever truly listening. Margaret Simons makes a good example of this regarding De Beauvoir’s own publications – especially of The Second Sex – and the historical interpretations provided by male philosophers (and translators), who have often subordinated her works under the likes of male existentialists Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Some as she further notes even claim Sartre to have written De Beauvoir’s works, excluding her name from their citations, consequently overlooking any possibility for an original thought to have arisen from a woman. The relationship between De Beauvoir and Sartre is commonly misstated and exaggerated; formulating her as a  figure of dependence (ie., immanence). And very rarely is she even mentioned by name, with some male thinkers simply referring to her as that woman and then proceeding in great detail to encounter Sartre (d, pp. 104, 106). Truly, I must give credit where credit is due: for us males, as the ‘intelligible ones’, to have gone to such remarkable lengths to prove ourselves the other way around; and take no credit for it. How humble indeed! But I digress, it is sufficiently evident from these experiences we have hence endeavored – by and through women – the extent to which the male has subsumed the use of language in all its contradictory nature – as the torture house of being – over his female half; both within and outside of himself.

And so, to conclusively reiterate this notion of idealization and de-feminization, I ask; is it not the case that the woman whose nude body we have so longingly encased in marble is placed – unquestionably – freely on the museum floor, whilst the woman who wishes merely not to wear a bra in public – to seek domain over her body –  is condemned? The separation between the ideal woman and the material being has imposed such a great harm to her existence in this world, to the point she has – as Bachmann says – taken her being directly from the crooked words of a male society’s creation. This subordination, first and foremost, begins with language and has been perpetuated throughout history by the male dominated literature (and its interpretations) of ideals. The sprite we are taught to  worship and the siren we are told to fear have unanimously represented one being: the woman. And her voice, first shattered and then silenced by her male counterparts, will slip unheard into the trench of the immanent sea should we not come, just once, and listen. Ground yourself in the material of the woman, even if you are not one; do not seek to transcend it. You are but a dumb creature too, who likes to play at god and treat the world as mere soil when the world – come the day we shall all dissolve from our ideals of men and women – uses you only as fertilizer. Because the world cares not which you are or which you choose to be; it simply asks to remain whole through us. This is self-evident. 

Notes

aBachmann, Ingeborg. Undine geht, The Thirtieth Year: Stories, Translated by Michael Bullock. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., NY, 1964. pp. 177 – 187.

bDe Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, Translated and edited by H.M. Parshley. Lowe and Brydone (Printers) LTD., London, 1956.

cGovernment of, U.S. “The Federal Register.” Federal Register, Part 825 – The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, United States Department of Labor, 6 Feb. 2013, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-C/part-825#825.217.

dSimons, Margaret A. Sexism and the Philosophical Canon: On Reading Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., MD, 1999. pp. 101 – 114.

eWisniewski, Megan. “In Puerto Rico, No Gap in Median Earnings between Men and Women.” Census.gov, United States Census Bureau, 20 Oct. 2022, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/what-is-the-gender-wage-gap-in-your-state.

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The self in Kantian reason; opposing the referential self in favor of the Nishidan reflexive (or religious) worldview

December 27, 2022 / / 0 Comments

by Hayden Foldhazy, Philosopher

The Kantian form of reason, following the self-critical procedure of the Critique of Pure Reasona, most notably remains an issue of transcendence; one that has attracted criticism and reformulation from many who describe it as too abstract. That is, in seeking to understand or grasp some semblance of reason -itself (bloße Vernunft), Kant proposed we must search outside of the phenomenal world belonging to and arising from the senses; so as to endeavor those absolute, non experientially conditioned maxims of reason, its principles, and its products. To do so however one must work from within reason -itself: the inescapable, transcendental condition upon which all knowledge is – as a final stopping point – purportedly realized. An important outcome of this study of reason by reason was the Kantian claim that knowledge of self is an impossibility – floating in noumena – via an early, semantic notion of the I as mere contentless subject, transcendentally designated. The I, using his logic of subject, lacks any direct affirmation (or negation) of oneself; acting as a mere indexical to synthesize determinate, particular conscious acts under one universal form of awareness. But before we proceed with exploring how this transcendental condition ultimately influences a philosophy of knowledge of the self – what Kant opposes at every turn, and only defends in terms of self-consciousness – it is important we understand what procedure pure reason follows in necessarily realizing our knowledge. Thus, let us begin with illustrating (what I shall call) the Kantian procession of thoughtful attainment; starting from the very beginning: seeing, touching, hearing, etc. 

All objects first encountered in the world via the senses are considered by Kant to be appearances, separate – only by means of their connectivity to reason and the understanding, and not necessarily in quality – from the things in themselves (das Ding an sich) [a, A251]. Object-appearances are given through intuition (Anschauung) as singular representations of sensibility, which are then thought through the understanding (Verstand) via concepts. The thing in itself is often reformulated as illusory – ie., seemingly real but nonetheless impossible or contradictory – for it can only be posited by the power of reason -itself, and never truly encountered or grounded in experiential terms. Perhaps it would be better to explicate this in the following terms: what Kant calls transcendental illusions contain, aside from pure intuition, judgments that inadvertently re-orient our form of pure reasoning with fallacy. The key word here, for differentiating the reasonable and intuitable, are the grounds of judgments; for judgments that lead to illusion are – more often than not – entirely subjective [a, B350-352]. Subjective judgments are particular in nature, and thus derive from a particular subject’s state of mind rather than proving something universally instantiable: ie., objective. Consider a common example, between that of sensible reality and dreams (ie., illusion). If I dream that I am in Hokkaido but am in fact on the other side of the world, upon waking from my dream I may for a short while think myself there. However, there are several things (processes) that allow me to dispel this illusion of my own condition rather quickly. One, once I am up and out of bed, I can simply look from my window and reconsider my objective position. Two, I can deliberate via reason with another person – say, my roommate who occupies the same house – that we have not been magically transported overnight. Illusion is thus easy to avoid when one, in perfect unity, combines the sensible intuitions and practices of pure reason; although ironically it is from reason -itself these transcendental illusions arise and from their arisal are ultimately considered necessary to reason [a, B354]. We shall not endeavor into this further. It is however important to take away from this talk of illusion that there is a critical difference, relayed by Kantian reason, between what is knowable and what is not. Appearances, because they are representations of phenomenal objects – and are hence attained by sensibility – are known; whereas das Ding an sich are a product of reason’s own illusion and cannot be called knowable for they are noumenal. Returning to our above example – having reasoned through our current state of experience – allows us to claim I have dreamed; but not the happenings of this dream were real. Thus reason, as critiqued by reason -itself, becomes an activity of self-imposed limitation. 

The knowable things (ie., the subjects of knowledge) are always grounded simultaneously in experience as derived from the senses, further explicated through the understanding and its consciousness of concepts, and lastly synthesized through reason’s faculty which subsumes the whole of the understanding under maximizable principles applicable to all rational beings [a, A299]. Kant refers to this process of conscious synthesis as the unity of apperception, through which all knowledge is conditionally possible – on experiential grounds which keep us on soil as sensibly intuited, and the transcendental condition of reason to exceed the world via in-experientiable, conscious processes grounded in the concepts of understanding; and their ultimate extension into the universal [a, A300]. What is alluded to here, far before any actual claims are made in favor of it, is the categorical imperative: the ethical opus and maxim of Kant’s philosophical project into practical reason [b, 421-422]. As we have already mentioned through our conversation on illusion – and as is further explicated here – reason is very much based within its own limitations and possibilities. Kant makes a great effort to always posit this in an auspicious manner nonetheless. Granted our capacity of reason is now one of margins – one of boundaries and high walls that themselves do not reach heaven (ie., transcendence) – we would seem to be trapped in the phenomenal world. We would also seem to not be free, and more importantly – for our endeavor – it makes an explicit claim that knowledge of self (and further knowledge of knowledge -itself) is impossible. 

Thus, we seem in need of something – at the very least – redemptive to our hopes and dreams which are now nothing but transcendental illusions; to our soul which is now fantasy, and to our gods which are nothing but principles confounded by reason’s necessity of absoluteness [See a, The paralogisms of pure reason]. After all, the absolute stand point of reason in many ways restricts rather than implicitly exuding freedom to all, or delegating each of us to an equal faculty of reason – itself. However, I myself do not deny his proceeding claim; that without limitations a freedom would ironically not exist at all. Laws like gravity are, simultaneously, crushing and restrictive to the imagination; and yet fundamentally, without said laws, we would know nothing of what it is like to fly. The imagination -itself would be purposeless in a world of infiniteness; ie., one in which laws are null and we act autonomously as gods. It would be quite boring incidentally. We, I will reiterate, do not disagree here. 

What I and other philosophers disagree with on the other hand, in spite of this contention for freedom as self-binding, is the means by which limitation is imposed; through the Kantian form of reason and its – decisively – contentless existence, as something seemingly inactive. Consider this from the abstract terms imposed by the categorical imperative. Maxims which are universally instantiable fundamentally lack experiential grounds – a prominent member (claim) of almost all Western ethical theories – by means of their referential method of positing reason -itself. Ethics is always seen as something noumenal, abstract, and transcendent; with no claims to be asserted of its material and historical uprising. Once again, from the standpoint of the categorical imperative, consider the very formulating act of Kant’s ethical argument whilst bearing in mind the historical circumstance of conception: the Enlightenment. Like all the rationalists inspired by the movement, Kant voids any materialist notions from the categorical imperative by working only through abstract lines of reason – said to envelop all places and all times of rational beings; through allusion to a common principle (of reason) he never once expands upon in the Critique, the Groundworks (in which it is postulated), or anything later [b, 391]. Pure moral philosophy is his goal – void of any empiricism, that would consider the way in which people act a posteriori, so as to determine these absolute, abstract grounds of morality (from reason -itself’s own abstractness). Kant entirely opposes such a motion for emotions and grounded experiences – what he commonly denotes as private happiness – to structure morality here:

Empirical principles are wholly incapable of serving as a foundation for moral laws. For the universality with which these should hold for all rational beings without distinction, the unconditional practical necessity which is thereby imposed on them, is lost when their foundation is taken from the particular constitution of human nature or the accidental circumstances in which it is placed [b, 442].

But the issue I raise to this is the manner by which emotions directly influence our actions, and rather make reason an active form of intuition; through feelings (kanjō, 感情) and impulses (shōdō, 衝動) themselves. Rarely are these features of mind ignored, for what better – for what good – do we act more commonly than through gut feelings? These notions – and I shan’t call them notions any longer, for we all know them by heart – are definitive of a contentful self we are all made aware of through our own experience. And so it is not enough to merely deny their causal effect on action and acting, and abstract from them an ideal of perfection not anywhere on this earth; to merely reference the divine without willing it conscientiously. And so I say, the Kantian notion of the grounds of reason – as taking the form of some universal principle, purely transcendent – can not remain so (abstract) in the case of a historically framed and contentful world; and further, what I will argue for as a reflexive self, should they continue to persist in a maximizable manner. The particulars – of experience and people – must ultimately be reconsidered. My argument, following from the likes of Kitarō Nishida, makes reason -itself a material concept; an actively moving and self-orienting force, which Kant may ultimately have agreed to – to some extent – in his later essays such as What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? where he discusses the practical uses of theoretical judgements. Still, however, I have some doubts about this. But I digress; with our basic form of Kantian reason in mind, it is now time we see how reason is applied by Kant to and through the self; as the notion of self-consciousness but not self-knowledge, via indexicals. Then we shall proceed with mine and Nishida’s favorment of a religious worldview, and expound upon this source of active intuition.

Indexicals are, semantically speaking, ways of denoting oneself, others, or objects –  such as I, he/she, you, that, etc. – in terms of reference. Consequently they change meaning at every particular instance with which context is dependent. Eg., the I used whence referring to myself is not the same as the I you would use to refer to yourself. And so for sentences such as I walked to the store or I read the newspaper, there is a contextual link between the subject I and the thing being done (the action/verb); but nothing that discloses the thing being done as denoting an implicit quality of the I. This semantic process is best described as a self-reference without any means of true identification of the particular to which it references; and thus can be called universal. Kant himself denotes this as the transcendental subject of thought, through which one is said to be conscious of oneself but not known to oneself [a, A355]. The further split made by Kant – here – is of delineating the inner sense from that of the outer. The inner, where the harbor of self-consciousness non-objectively presents itself as thinking subject, is not to be confused with the outer sense, wherein: “…bodies are mere appearances of our outer sense, and not things in themselves…we cannot intuit their thoughts, their consciousness, their desires, etc. externally; for all this belongs before inner sense,” [a, A358].

Nishda would not disagree with Kant here; neither does the Japanese language. To know the desires or feelings of another directly is impossible but not underlyingly, mediately contentless. Rather, the action of desiring to know one’s feelings is actively intuited; not merely abstracted from their bodily presence as immediately void. Consider, eg., from the Japanese language, the two statements I want an apple (watashi ha ringo ga hoshī, 私はリンゴが欲しい) and she wants an apple (kanojo ha ringo wo hoshigatte iru, 彼女はリンゴを欲しがっている). Depending on the topic of the sentence, the adjective want (hoshī, 欲しい) changes grammatical form to add a layer of uncertainty in declaring another’s desire, but remains affirmative for the self. However, the want of the other is not in any way denied possibility and – as I have stated – becomes actively, or mediately sought by the speaker via want’s change in form; as hoshī becomes hoshigatte iru (欲しがっている): meaning more closely, from the above,  (I think) she is wanting an apple. This may seem unimportant for our discussion of the self, pure reason, and all we have just been discussing; but I assure you, this will bring to light significant claims made by Nishida against Kant that we shall now delve into!

Backtracking just a few steps, let us return to the Kantian argument that empirical principles are not to be considered for universal endeavors of moral law; for this is where Nishida begins his Nothingness and the Religious Worldview:

To Kant, religion has significance as a vehicle that supplements morality. I cannot find in Kant any autonomy given to the religious consciousness itself. Perhaps he never even considered religion as an autonomous sphere. I contend, however, that the religious form of life does not fall within the sphere of mere reason, bloße Vernunft. That is why one who discusses religion must experience, to some extent at least, religious sentiment…[c, pp. 49].

Here we can see Nishida bring to the forefront his notion of kanjō, (感情); the so called religious sentiment of everyday experience that must be intuited within the world and not in transcendental form, floating above it. He greatly opposes the idea that a mere formal theory of moral consciousness (of self) can accurately depict the ways real people make decisions; as what action consists of, (ie., producing),  and what it possibly produces, (ie., product). Kant’s argument for the categorical imperative and moral self takes advantage of this separation between the act of constructing, as a thinking subject, and what is intuitively constructed, as an objective thing. People are rather incredibly emotional beings and ones who do not conform, as he puts it, to stagnant law and such a separation of material. Much like Kant himself argues regarding private happiness; the beauty is left in the eye of the beholder. What he suggests however, to amend such differences amongst people, are common transcendental predicates – derived from pure reason’s illusory faculties – to heteronomously guide the actions of all, and simultaneously provide a sense of autonomy. As we have already expounded, autonomy will by some means always require limitations; thus what concerns Nishida and I are not the limitations but their enforcement. How will we come to realize this common principle of reason if only through pure rationality? There must be material considerations to mend the paradoxical relationship imposed by the starry heavens and the moral law within. Abstracting from the material basis – the time and place of thought – will only lead to further idealization and confusion amongst individuals who will then have no idea what the universal right is. Is it not the case after all that beauty standards and all those things we call transcendent themselves change with passing time? Reason, just like the indexical I, should change with the times and context; something entirely ignored within the Critique and in The Groundworks. A common example of moral dilemma I often return to, as to expunge such universal mockery of emotional weight as is necessary to reason, is something like the trolley problem. Given a junction of train tracks whereon differing sides lie ten people and one person; the universal claim to life demands that more people should survive but without any real explanation: any material one. Pure rationality cannot solve this problem, just as pure moral theory attempts through it. As soon as you ask the person, well, why should the ten people survive?, they cannot provide any answer aside from a sentimentally justified one. Well, ten peoples’ deaths would weigh more on my conscience. Thus, they position themselves from a vector of goodness derived on impulse. The relationary status between you and the people is what fundamentally matters; and not the connection between you and the moral law sitting on its throne in the sky. Interactivity, for people – as thinking beings and bodies – and particles of matter alike are always reciprocal and dynamical. In other words, for every reaction there is always an equal and opposite reaction; and wholly the world is persevered through these particular events [b, pp. 51-52]. There exists, however, no reciprocity between the moral law and people if it is lifted from the world and its current conditions. 

Life as an autonomous self, from this account, becomes a form of creative expression – what Nishida calls expressive activity (hyōgen sayō, 表現作用) – which is consistently changing form and thus bleeds content upon the place of its standing and simultaneous birth [c, pp. 52]. It is also referred to later on by Nishida as pure apperception (junsui tōkaku, 純粋統覚) in place of the hyōgen sayō – taking explicit influence from Kant’s own faculty of apperception. Nonetheless, they are very different on the following grounds: junsui tōkaku is not a manner of isolated, ie., detached, thinking of something, but is itself grounded in the material, reflexive behavior of the world. We see this here, where, “…each self-conscious world is a momentary vector of historical world-space, which mediates its own objective self-determination within itself, and infinitely determines itself through its own process of self-expression,” [c, pp. 59]. 

More poignantly; morality, god, and the self are all reformulated as reflections of the self nature and not in reference to some unknowable thing – ie., something noumenal. Thus to know the self, ie., in Kantian terms the transcendental subject or I, we need not search beyond our own immanent place in the world, and constitute perfection as pure ideal. We do not seek to know the theoretical self where this pure reason hangs its hat precisely because there is no posited (or possible) place for its hat to truly hang. There must be a historical, or experiential, component to all facets of reason; and especially to a reason seeking to know itself. And so – from Nishida – the personal self conducted via personality as a point of absolute standing – rather than one of meager particularity or a universally idealized law –  is what dominates the conception of the good for all and what guides the self to act morally through the hyōgen sayō of willing will. Kant, as Nishida puts it, sought to find this transcendent plane for reason to reside in by seeking wholeheartedly to know the fact of knowing, or to know the fact of self – something Kant ultimately dismissed with metaphysics altogether. Whereas Nishida on the other hand sought to know knowing as is, through its existential basis and active forms. Pure perfection, beauty, god, and all those transcendental predicates – according to Nishida – are not just ideals sprung from reason but markers of the self-forming individual. They are not mere postulates of theoretical reason which may exist outside of us, as Kant calls supersensible entities, unprovable by reason’s own design; they are but only through us existent, in so much as through them, too, we exist. To alleviate the headache this paradox may entail, he provides this quote from Daitō Kokushi:

Buddha and I, distinct through a billion kalpas of time,

Yet not separate for one instant;

Facing each other the whole day through,

Yet not facing each other for an instant (c, pp. 78).

The notion of the reflexive nature of the self is solidified here as a dynamic, affirmative and self-negating expressive force reciprocated between the hyōgen sayō and the world’s own fluidity. This world, he makes clear however, is not some abstractable place wherein transcendental, pure reason arises. It is a concrete matrix of the logical form, wherein self-transformation is itself made possible and is ultimately realized. This he refers to as the place (basho, 場所) of all self-conscious activity [c, pp. 73]. A prominent notion, as we see here, of most Japanese philosophy – often dismissed as some phantasmic act of satori or mystic art – is the collapsation of mind-body duality in accordance with one self-realizing entity. Basho is precisely this place from which the hyōgen sayō can be exercised freely, via mediated experiences of the self (or mind) as the world (or body). If we now return to our previous example, as I expounded through Japanese semantics earlier, we can see why the reflective nature of self is important for an overall, mediated process of knowing both the self and other. We actively – as through hyōgen sayō – in assuming the wants of another seek to know the other’s self-expressed desire within; rather than simply assuming them under some I think, I am logical framework.  The (I think) in the (I think) she is wanting an apple is hardly ever exuded in both English and Japanese alike. Nonetheless it is au fond inferred by our expressive activity, to know their knowing and not assume the fact of their self-identity; and most importantly, it is not pursued via reference to the transcendent.

Nishida in offering the basho as the grounds from which peoples reflexively willing will, provides an ardent logical framework for the possibility of individual selves; not as particular vectors, but as absolute ones irr-referentially determined by the monadic world. To this extent perhaps some would read him as far too religious, in a pious sense; or perhaps as a Spizonist wanting to mend the paradoxical world through substance. I do not see either as such, but rather see his brilliance through the semantics themselves. It has been made clear throughout the entirety of this endeavor that language has played a critical role in formulating our arguments; and it is what implicitly sits at the feet of the hyōgen sayō. For language is at best the objective means – ie., as speech, written word, signs, etc. – through which the self is intuited and through which the world is itself crafted. Through our own words and through the words of the world, a reflexive process is always at work – wherein speech enters the ear and proceeds through the lips of the other. There is, for the Kantian defender of the moral self, no such redemptive process of the whole of communication; should god and reason continue to operate above the clouds of our own visibility. They must always refer to themselves above us, or below us, should we try to do the same. There are, rather, in this historical place the others who we surround ourselves with and the water we can peer unabridged upon that allow one – at all times – to see their own self. The world, I hope to have illuminated here, is your mirror. And you, in turn, are hers. 

Notes

aKant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1998.

bKant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Lara Denis. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, The Broadview Press, Canada, 2005.

cNishida, Kitarō. Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, Last Writings. Translated with an introduction by David A. Dilworth, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1987.

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Hello Philosophers!

December 18, 2022 / / 0 Comments

From our staff…

Welcome to Bad Subjects! We are the undergraduate philosophy journal of Trinity College, based in Hartford, CT. Our journal will publish the unique voices of our peers on a month to month basis, focusing on a variety of philosophical issues and trains of thought; as well as provide smaller updates to you regarding all of our club activities.

So please read and write us with your suggestions; we hope you’ll join us in rethinking and reshaping the many facets of our community, and more importantly the world. We look forward to your continued support!

Club Spotlight: The Philosophy Club Investigates What is Funny?

October 5, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Jackson Loze ’24

staff writer

In this week’s philosophy club meeting, the question “what makes something funny” was investigated. The meeting started with a discussion aimed at categorizing all the empirical examples of laughter the group could come up with. This yielded two distinct groups: intentional laughter and unintentional laughter.

Intentional laughter includes moments when you laugh, not because you thought something was funny but instead to conform with social conventions. Examples of this include laughing at your boss’s joke because you want them to view you more favorably or laughing at your friend’s unfunny “joke” to boost their confidence. Lastly, laughing to look as though you understand a joke everyone else is laughing at also fits here. 

Unintentional laughter, as the name suggests, includes moments when you laugh involuntarily. Examples of such laughter include seeing an animal fall in a clumsy and seemingly non-injurious manner. Also, laughter provoked by traumatic experiences, such as being tickled, would also fit into this category. 

In trying to determine whether intentional laughter should be considered legitimate laughter at all, the club was unable to reach a consensus. In support of intentional laughter, it was argued that someone who is in a really bad mood often will not be able to unintentionally express any positively charged emotions, causing them to resort to intentional laughter in order to express their genuine reaction to something humorous (I.e., a grieving widow laughing during a funeral speech). In opposition, the argument was presented that the majority of intentional laughter is not really laughter at all; instead, it was suggested that intentional laughter is really just a noise humans make that kind of sounds like laughter.

After categorizing empirical examples of laughter, the club considered 3 different theories of laughter, which claim to explain why we find things funny.  

Firstly, the club considered the Superiority Theory, which was advanced by Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes.  Simply put, this theory posits that our laughter expresses feelings of superiority over other people or over a former state of ourselves. A contemporary proponent of this theory is Roger Scruton who analyses amusement as an “attentive demolition” of a person or something connected with a person. “If people dislike being laughed at,” Scruton says, “it is surely because laughter devalues its object in the subject’s eyes.”

Secondly, the club considered the Relief Theory of humor which was advanced by philosophers like Freud. Essentially, “The Relief Theory is a hydraulic explanation in which laughter does in the nervous system what a pressure-relief valve does in a steam boiler.” While not commonly taken to be a proponent of the Relief Theory of humor, the club correctly, in my opinion, decided that Adorno’s assessment of humor best fits here; in the Culture Industry, Adorno suggests that the function of laughter is to alleviate the revolutionary desires and tendencies of the masses living in a capitalist economy by constantly distracting them with amusement and laughter. 

Lastly, the club considered the Incongruity Theory of humor, which was advanced by Kant, Kierkegaard, and the majority of contemporary philosophers that are still commenting on humor. Proponents of the Incongruity Theory will typically say that it is the perception of something incongruous, something that violates our mental patterns and expectations, that causes us to laugh. In a unanimous 12-0 decision, the club agreed that this theory of humor had the most explanatory power of the three. 

To attend future philosophy club meetings, please contact our president, Charlotte Bond ’23 (charlotte.bond@trincoll.edu).

Club Spotlight: the Philosophy Club Shares Discourses of Locke’s Views on Substances

September 20, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Jackson Loze ’24

staff writer

Often described as the “Father of British Empiricism,” John Locke stands as one of the most influential philosophers of the early modern period. In his work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke’s primary aim concerns determining the limits of human understanding to establish what one can and cannot legitimately claim to know. While many philosophers would consider such monumental work to be a success, given the essay’s continued prominence at the foundation of modern philosophical empiricism, some of Locke’s expressed beliefs invite more confusion than clarity for his readers. An example of such opaque beliefs can be seen in Locke’s discussion of the idea of substance in general, a concept that has been debated for centuries. To contribute to the ongoing discussion surrounding Locke’s view of substances, this article will speculate three answers Locke may give to being asked “How do you envision the idea of substance in general?”  

Before offering potential answers, it is important to distinguish what Locke means when he writes about our idea of ‘substance in general.’ Within the historic debate amongst philosophers involving substances, most beliefs can be classified as being either categorical, which pertains to the types of substances that exist (e.g., lead, gold, or God), or metaphysical, which examine our idea of substance and how we conceptualize it. While Locke’s categorical beliefs are also the subject of much controversy, this article will examine his metaphysical views. Put simply, the idea of substance in general is what would be left if all the qualities that distinguish sorts of substances from one another could be stripped away.

Answer #1: “Substance-in-general does not exist and is human invented folk metaphysics”

An interpretation that has risen in popularity has been that Locke does not believe in the existence of substances in general. The textual evidence that supports such interpretation is as follows:

“There is another idea, which would be of general use for Mankind to have, as it is of general talk as if they had it; and that is the idea of substance, which we neither have nor can have, by sensation or reflection… We have no such clear idea at all, and therefore signify nothing by the word substance, but only an uncertain supposition we know not what (i.e., of something whereof we have no distinct positive) idea, which we take to be the substratum, or support of those ideas we do know.”

As seen by his explicit statement “We have no such clear idea at all, and therefore signify nothing by the word substance,” this quote would suggest that Locke believes we have no knowledge of substance in general; however, it is worth noting that after being accused by the Bishop of Worcester Edward Stillingfleet of discarding substances out of the reasonable part of the world, Locke changed this passage from describing substance as “something whereof we have no idea” to “something whereof we have no particular distinct positive idea” in the 4th edition of the essay.

Answer #2: “I view substance-in-general as a featureless substratism”

Given its prominence among secondary literature, the second possible answer I will analyze is that Locke views our idea of substance in general as a featureless substratum, commonly known as the ‘bare particular theory.’  This theory is strikingly similar to Aristotle’s views expressed in Metaphysics, where he claims that the substratum which underlies a thing primarily is thought to be in the truest sense its substance. He defines such substratum as “[T]‌hat of which the other things are predicated, while it is not itself predicated of anything else.” The most common piece of textual evidence used to support this interpretation is in book 2, chapter xxiii of Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

“The Mind … takes notice also, that a certain number of these simple Ideas go constantly together; which being presumed to belong to one thing … are called so united in one subject … Because, as I have said, not imagining how these simple Ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves, to suppose some Substratum, wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result, which therefore we call Substance … The Idea then we have, to which we give the general name Substance, being nothing, but the supposed, but unknown support of those Qualities.”

Based on quotes like this, supporters of the bare particular theory hold that for Locke, substance in general is used solely as a functionalist term. Given that our ability to sense and reflect has left us with ideas of a multitude of both primary and secondary qualities, this interpretation holds that there logically must be something in which those qualities inhere which in and of itself is not a quality. This leaves us with a bare ‘something,’ which has no properties, except the property of being the support of other properties

Answer #3: “I would prefer not to answer”

Due to the importance that the idea of substance had to the Christian religion during the early modern period, an interpretation I believe to be possible is that Locke purposefully kept his stance on substance opaque to avoid either losing favor with or harming the teachings of the Church. In 1697, the Bishop of Worcester Edward Stillingfleet publicly accused Locke of almost discarding substances out of the reasonable part of the world. Stillingfleet worried that Locke’s empiricist philosophy would subvert the Church’s teachings about the Trinity and soul’s immortality given that the concept of substance lies at the heart of both those doctrines. As mentioned previously, such correspondence caused Locke to change a passage in book one of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding from describing substance as “something whereof we have no idea” to “something whereof we have no particular distinct positive idea” in the 4th edition of the essay.

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