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Paula Gottlieb (Wisconsin)

Aristotle's ethics: Nichomachean and Eudemian themes

An examination of the philosophical themes presented in Aristotle's Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics. Topics include happiness, the voluntary and choice, the doctrine of the mean, particular virtues of character and temperamental means, virtues of thought, akrasia, pleasure, friendship, and luck. Special attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of virtues of character and thought and their relation to happiness, the reason why Aristotle is the quintessential virtue ethicist. The virtues of character have not received the attention they deserve in most discussions of the relationship between the two treatises.

Table of Contents Introduction 1. Happiness 2. Virtue of Character and the Doctrine of the Mean 3. The Voluntary and Choice 4. Virtues of Character and Temperamental Means 5. Justice 6. Virtues of Thought 7. Akrasia and Pleasure 8. Friendship 9. Sophistic Puzzles, the Kaloskagathos, and Luck 10. Happiness Revisited Conclusion.

Glossary of Key Terms

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Transcript

Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Philosophy Podcasts, where we interview leading philosophers about their recent work. Today, I am pleased to be speaking with, Professor Paula Gottlieb. She was educated at Oxford and Cornell. She's the author of, The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics (2009), Aristotle on Thought and Feeling (2021). And the book we'll talk about today is, Aristotle's Ethics, Nicomachean & Eudemian Themes (2022). Those are all Cambridge University press. Paula Gottlieb is Professor of Philosophy and the Affiliate Professor of Classical & Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Welcome, professor. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Thank you. Good to be with you. Speaker 1: Thank you. People have for thousands of years turned to Aristotle to help think about how to lead a happy life. I guess, the first question is, it's rhetorical, but if you could address it. One might think, a skeptic might say, "Well, why go back 2000 years? There are plenty of authors who are writing books about how to live your life today." What would be the advantage of going back so far? Professor Paula Gottlieb: Well, I think that a lot of modern philosophers do go back to Aristotle when they start thinking about happiness. Very often, they use Aristotle to support some more modern view, or they read back some modern views into Aristotle. And I take a different tack about the way we should think about reading ancient philosophers. I don't think, for example, Andrew Melnyk, that all the good bits of Aristotle have already been taken up by later philosophers, so we don't need to look at him anymore. Professor Paula Gottlieb: I think that there's a lot of interest going on there, and quite often it's things that we may not be still thinking about now, that's of interest. And I certainly take your point, you might wonder, "Why are we reading a dead, white man, who doesn't include women or enslaved people or whatever, in his discussion?" But I think we do look to say, the founding fathers and seeing them sort of interesting or maybe crucial ideas for today, even if they didn't see, I mean, they didn't fully grasp the insights of their own work. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I was actually going to ask you about that later, but maybe we could go to it now. As we talk later, we'll talk about virtues of character and virtues of thought, and I was kind of wondering what Aristotle's view on that would be. Would he say that to be a great philosopher, a great thinker, you need to be a great man also, or a person, and if you don't, that's a good sign that if there's an inconsistency there, that's a problem? Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, Aristotle does distinguish sort of theoretical thinking from practical thinking. And on my understanding anyway, he doesn't think that you need a great deal of abstract theoretical thinking in order to be a good person. So I argue for this more in my other books than in the one you're discussing. So somebody who's very good at higher math might be hopeless and have a very happy life, or even would be able to do practical things in their own. Speaker 1: Sure. Professor Paula Gottlieb: One of my favorite cases, a friend of mine who is a famous mathematician, was putting forward very abstract theories, but if we went to a restaurant, he couldn't add up the bill. I mean, that was just in a different world. So I think Aristotle's kind of familiar with that. I guess the question is, how much thinking is necessary in order to be a good person? And this is where give a new translation of phronesis, it's sometimes translated in intelligence or prudent, or practical thinking. The practical thinking is okay, but it sounds as if you've got some theoretical thinking that you're then applying to something else. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: And that's why I use thoughtfulness, because I think at this kind of thinking as a much more sort of hands-on way of thinking about things, being thoughtful rather than having great abstract views about things. I'm trying to think of an example of that, but people who talk a lot about diversity and how important it is, but don't notice there's no diversity in the classes teaching [inaudible 00:06:11]. Speaker 1: Yes. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So I think of Aristotle's view as getting away from a more abstract, platonic view, and having a more kind of hands-on view about what it is to be a good person. Speaker 1: I'm just thinking out loud here, I wonder if what you're getting at is also what might be called, bad faith, now. When you're thoughtful, you don't have bad faith. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yes. Well, I guess if you connect bad faith with what the Greeks call, akrasia, that's sort of when you know what the right thing is, but you do something else instead. He does say that the person with thoughtfulness won't be autocratic, which is kind of puzzling to many people. But if you think of akrasia as a kind of bad faith, you're not really quite into the views that you're presenting, or I will put it, they're not sort of integrated properly with your feelings and the rest of your character. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Then yes, I like that idea. Speaker 1: I'm going totally out of order here, but you talk about the integration of the virtues of character and the intellectual virtues. At that point, I don't know what your kind of experience of reading this is. When one reads about how to live one's life, you can either be uplifted and inspired or you can either be, "Oh, boy, this is tough. This is a long way off." Speaker 1: And normally with Aristotle I find it's uplifting, but when I heard about integrating everything, I thought, "Oh dear, this is difficult." I'm just wondering what your overall attitude towards that is. Do you feel it's inspiring or is it more, "Gee, you've got a long way to go. You're a bad person and you've got a long way to go." Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yeah. Well, I'd rather it not be something that's a big ideal, because Aristotle says that, I mean, he makes a big deal of the idea that happiness is something achievable in action, and if it's going to be so difficult for people, if it's something sort of more God-like. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Say, Socrates would think of it, "That this is an ideal, but human beings can't really be like that." I don't think that's Aristotle's idea. So I guess in my book on thought and feeling, I try and explain the integration in a way that doesn't sound sort of so outlandish, like you have absolutely no feelings or whatever. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So one example, this was actually a question, I think Rechinal Kantaker raised this question of, supposing the good person needs to have a blood test and they have to fast, I mean, it doesn't make sense to say that they don't want to have anything to eat. And my thought to that was, "Well, maybe they wish to have something to eat, and maybe they plan to have something to eat afterwards, but they don't actually still want something now so that they're going to go and get it." Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So, I think that sounds a more plausible way to describe this than, it's also not, if you don't have anything, you're not hungry or something like that. I have a broader view of how the kind of bumps of desires and feelings then develop into action, based on what your character is. I think that gives a more plausible view about how this integration is supposed to work. Speaker 1: That makes sense. Right, I think we all have that experience. And today, I think we really emphasize the difference across people in, for example, their ability to executive control, and the difference between adolescents and adults, for example, and their ability to do these things. And Aristotle, as I understand it, was sensitive to that, to the differences across people, maybe not between youth and adult, but certainly across people, and their different, natural abilities or where they start from. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Well, how I understand the Doctrine of the Mean, I think what's the right thing for you to do is, what's correct given your circumstances and your own abilities. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So I give the example of using, somebody's on the battlefield and there's somebody drowning, if they don't know how to swim, it would be rash for them to jump in, but if they do then it would be right. This is a controversial point in Aristotelian studies. Not everybody agrees with that aspect of the Doctrine of the Mean, but it goes back to your question about, is the good being good sort of beyond people? I mean, this is saying, no, it fits whatever your own abilities are. You're not supposed to be like Hercules, or I guess in the Jewish tradition, you're not asked, "Why weren't you Moses?" You're asked, "Why weren't you yourself?" Speaker 1: Right. Well let's go more orderly now. One of the things that I first learned that was an issue in Aristotle, decades ago was, that he uses this word, eudaimonia. How did you pronounce it, the same way? Professor Paula Gottlieb: Eudaimonia? Speaker 1: Eudaimonia. Professor Paula Gottlieb: That's probably a horribly anglicized way of putting it. Speaker 1: I noticed Dewey, the philosopher, John Dewey translates that as, wellbeing, and others have translated it, Owen Flanagan, for example, translated it as, flourishing. And so there's always been an issue. Now you say in here, an interesting statement, as I understand it, you want to keep with happiness and you say, "If moderns have merely changed the subject, there would be no disagreement with Aristotle's views, and there is." You want to keep the word, happiness, that we would think of, that would be the word we would use. We understand it has different connotations, but you want to use that word to capture the final end. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Right. Now, I agree that what Aristotle is talking about with happiness is, flourishing, rather than just feeling good, which is how modern people would think of happiness. But I think that if you just translate it, flourishing, then as I said that there isn't any disagreement. I mean, moderns and Aristotle are just talking about different things, and I think that's wrong. I think Aristotle would say, "You moderns have the wrong view about what happiness is, it isn't just feeling good." I mean, it does include feeling good, so in Aristotle's view, "The happy person will have an enjoyable life," he says, but you've sort of got a rather shallow view of what happiness is. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: And so that's why I want to translate it the same way, so there's an actual disagreement about what happiness is, you're not just talking about two separate things and going off on different directions. Speaker 1: No, that's very well taken. I mean, I think we can all think of people who are self-satisfied and in a pleasant state of mind, and therefore could be called in happiness, that we would say we don't want that life at all. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Right. I wonder if they would even call that happy or rather, yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know if you know about... I tried to look at the etymology of happy, and I think I got to hap and it was chance, and then beyond that, it was something like to be well suited, to fit. Professor Paula Gottlieb: That is similar, because domineer literally comes from the Greek word, dimo, which is sort of like your guardian angel or something. So there's a whole lot of idea that there's luck in there, and that's something that Aristotle addresses people who say, "Well, look, being happy is just a matter of good luck." So there's nothing in particular you can do about that, either you are lucky or you aren't. Speaker 1: Right. And we have the word, demonic, which I think also gets at that, that kind of spirit inside, that's not necessarily negative. So you talk about three different converging approaches to happiness, teleological, the method involving endoxa, and then the functional argument. I thought teleological, we don't normally think of Aristotle as teleological, but it is in the sense that we're not following rules, we're looking for something in the future. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Right. There's sort of a goal, it definitely has the idea that you should have a goal. I mean, in Eudemian Ethics, he even says something like it's kind of foolish not to have a goal in your life. That's a bit controversial. I guess this comes from his biological views of there being sort of a goal for a particular animal to become a fully formed adult of their species. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: And he has this tag, "Nature does nothing in vain." So he's got this view that nature is imbued with goal-directed activities, and that also applies to humans. The goals in nature may not be ones that anything sort of has in mind to strive for. So an acorn might be directed to the goal of being an oak tree or something, but it doesn't have that in mind. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So this is more kind of a naturalistic, but I think that continues in his ethics. And also even with the polis or the city, he thinks that's natural in the sense that people naturally congregate in families, and then in villages and then finally in the polis. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So there's this general teleological picture that he has, which goes with a number of different things that he says. Speaker 1: Right. Okay. And then, endoxa, I was not familiar with that word before reading this text. And now that I have, I think of that famous Rafael painting, The School of Athens, where Aristotle is pointing to the earth, and that seems to be what's going on here, he says, "Let's look at what the opinions actually are here." Professor Paula Gottlieb: Right. Let's start with not completely nutty opinions, but what do people think about this subject, and go from there. Modern philosophers have criticized Aristotle for this saying, it's too conservative, because you're sticking to what people already think. But as I go on to say, I think he criticizes the endoxa, based on some of his other views. But also, if you open any modern philosophy journal, it does start with, here are what the main people's thoughts on this topic are, then I'm going to proceed from there. Speaker 1: That's such a good point. Right. And I know you mentioned the mean though, in another section, but I also thought that we're kind of just talking about that issue of recollection, or originally there are certain views, presumably once Aristotle lays out what happiness is, we're going to recognize it. Not that we have it now, but that we will kind of remember it, or we already know it, or our current views may not be completely clarified, they need clarification, but they're a starting point, then we vary them, then we come back and see them anew. Do you agree with that? Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yes. It seems like we start from there, and we might criticize them or advise them or whatever, or see what is the insight in these views, and then the results should be recognizable. In the last book of the Nicomachean Ethics, he even says, well, basically, "If these views don't fit in with the way you live your life, then they're not very good." Speaker 1: I love that. Professor Paula Gottlieb: And he starts off with the different views people have about what's the happy life, is generally their lives. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So ethics is much more related, since it is to how people live their lives, that's going to be different from thinking about math or biology, or some other subject. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that was kind of astonishing when you pointed it out. He says, "Hence, we ought to examine what has been said by applying it, and if it chimes, we should accept it, if not, it's mere words." Pretty astounding. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Right. This goes back to your sort of bad faith. Speaker 1: Well, it's true. That's also true, yes. So when we go to the function arguments, that would be obviously a precursor to evolution. Today, one would think about the human being in terms of evolution and what is our function. Professor Paula Gottlieb: I'm not sure how it would apply to evolution, although we've developed various things. I mean, it seems as if the conclusion rather is, the happy life has to relate to human beings and involve thinking and feeling, that's kind of what I take away from the argument. And there's a ton of secondary literature on how to understand each line in the argument of what the argument's for, and so on. Professor Paula Gottlieb: But I think we've got to stick with how humans actually are, although, I guess if you take the reasoning part, that's kind of broader because we can create things beyond human beings. Of course, Aristotle didn't know about that so much in his time, but still he knew about crafts people making different things, and allowing us to do things. Speaker 1: I see. That makes sense. And one of the things you say about Aristotle a couple of times, is that he is the quintessential virtue ethicist, which I think as I understand it, you'd contrast virtue ethics with say, utilitarianism and versus a rule based system like Kant's. Speaker 1: And as I understand it, in virtue ethics, you're talking about developing a character of a certain sort, as opposed to evaluating specific acts. And the word virtue to me, makes me think we're talking about excellence or achieving something great, not achieving the minimum. I don't know, how do you think of virtual ethics? Why is Aristotle- Professor Paula Gottlieb: Discussing before that it's not an ideal. I think that there are difficulties with utilitarianism, I mean, seeming to allow some people to be used as means in order to get certain ends. I actually think that reading J.S Millen in a certain way might avoid those problems. But anyway, and the Kantian idea that there are these really hard and fast universal rules that you're supposed to be following, which aren't very plausible. I mean, people have tried to make Kant more like Aristotle, and then Aristotle more like Kant. Professor Paula Gottlieb: I think once you're including Aristotle and Kant, you should kind of give up on the Kantian bit. But I very much like the Doctrine of the Mean and the virtues, and that's something that even modern, [inaudible 00:24:40], a Aristotelian virtue ethicist don't really pay any attention to. So I think there is a point to the Doctrine of the Mean, and I think that these triads, I mean one big issue is, since there are so many ways to go wrong, why does he pick out these three things? Professor Paula Gottlieb: And I think that has to do with picking out three specific mentalities to do with self-knowledge, overestimating one set of vices, and overestimating your abilities and knowledge. One is underestimating and one is sort of getting them right, so there's actually a sort of psychological point of distinguishing these characters. I also think there are other types of vice, that you can sort of waiver from one vice to the other, and so on. But kind of keen on the idea that there are these character traits, maybe we don't want to call them virtues of it, but people due to it, call the time about whether somebody's a kind person, or they're a jerk or whatever. Speaker 1: Sure. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Or at other times it might not be feasable for your podcast. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So we do categorize people this way, even if the terms, virtues and vices sound a bit archaic. Speaker 1: Okay. All right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: But there are a number of people who don't like virtue ethics and they don't want that to be in Aristotle. So for example, Broadie and Rowe's translation, translates, Arete, the term I'm translating, virtue, as excellence all the time. They do that ostensibly, because in Greek you can say things like, talk about the excellence of a knife, it cuts well, or the excellence of, I don't know, an eye is to see well. Professor Paula Gottlieb: But I don't see why you can't use virtue, well, there is one modern philosopher, Judith Jarvis Thomson, who uses virtue for the virtue of a knife, she's happy talking about that. But even if you weren't, I mean, if you're going to go back to the etymology of Arete, it comes from Arian male, so it literally means, manliness, and that doesn't fit all the virtues that Aristotle's talking about. Speaker 1: Sure. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So, I don't see why we shouldn't use virtue, as I was saying, well, one class I taught Broadie and Rowe's book, and the students were all totally puzzled when I kept talking about virtue ethics. They said, "But there's nothing about virtue in the whole book." Speaker 1: So then if I understand it, when you said Aristotle is the quintessential virtue ethicist, you are saying that Aristotle breaks it down into certain, specific, into courage, into magnanimity, and so forth, into certain specific areas that then one optimizes for each of those. Is that the idea, and the [inaudible 00:28:06]. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So the good person, instead of somebody who learns a lot of rules, or is working to maximize happiness, every general happiness, is doing specific things to sustain their good traits of character. Speaker 1: I see. Professor Paula Gottlieb: I mean, Aristotle was the original founder of the virtue ethics movement, but originally by sort of Elizabeth Anscombe and others, who saw Aristotle as sort of doing virtue ethics, and this is the way to develop things in the future. Now, since then there's a lot of different kinds of virtue ethics, sort of religious virtue ethics, environmental, feminist virtue ethic. There are a lot of developments of the core idea, but I think that they are, I mean, although there are a lot of people working on virtue ethics, it still doesn't seem to be quite as mainstream as the other versions. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So for example, Derek Parfit wrote this book on what matters, and trying to, as a realist, putting all these different theories together, Kant utilitarianism and social contract theories. And he just doesn't bother about virtue ethics at all, certainly that doesn't matter from his standpoint. So I think that to some people this view, it is still sort not as central as it should be. Speaker 1: It is surprising when Aristotle says, "We want to find the mean." Because you do expect, well this is philosophy, it'll be extreme, it'll be one extreme or another. Does this match up with his philosophy in any other areas? Of course he was, I mean if you think about form versus matter, or potentiality and actuality, or any of those things. Professor Paula Gottlieb: He does have a discussion about the sensors being in a mean, in order to detect other things. One aspect of the Doctrine of the Mean, that I think is important, that others haven't taken up, although I think it's even in Alexander Grant's work, a long time ago, I got this idea in a class at Cornell by Norman Kretzmann, who discussed this idea of in the medieval philosophers, of the mean being, the person is sort of balanced or in equilibrium, so that they then register things in the outside world in the correct way. So if you imagine an old fashioned, the scales on a pivot, and if it's correctly balanced, if you put something on it, it goes down on one end and registers the right amount. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: And that's one way of thinking about the person whose character is in a mean, they're balanced in a way that they can react to external things happening in the right way and do the right thing. Speaker 1: The mean is an extreme in that sense, it's this point at which there is balance. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Right. And people said you could maybe call it, I mean, he does say at one point that it's an extreme as a mean, meaning sort of that's the optimum. So if you did sort of a graph, the mean would be at the top, and then the extremes would be at the bottom. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So, yes, in that sense it's an extreme, he actually says that. Speaker 1: Right. Okay. That's interesting. Now, a few sentences from the book that I wondered if you could elaborate on. And one sentence is Aristotle's practical syllogism is described as one of Aristotle's best discoveries by Elizabeth Anscombe. Review that concept of the practical syllogism. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Okay. It sounds like I can explain it on one foot. It's very controversial, what it is and whether it even exists. Speaker 1: Okay. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Carlo Natali, in his book on Aristotle, it has a chapter headed something like, "What is it and does it exist?" Or something like that. It's a way of thinking, so you have some general view, I guess that's the major premise, and the one I made up for him, because he doesn't actually give examples of really good ethical cases, or he gives examples where something's gone wrong in thinking, maybe this is because he's writing lecture notes to himself, and it's obvious to him what a good version would be, and he just writes notes about the bad ones. Speaker 1: Sure. Professor Paula Gottlieb: But my idea is that say, generous people help friends in need, and then the minor premise would be, this is a generous person, this is a friend in need, and the conclusion is to help. And what I find interesting about this is, I imagine that the good person sort of using this syllogism doesn't sort of go through each of the bits in turn, or think to themselves, "I'm a generous human being, and that's been attributed to me, that's not what I think." They would just see, "This is my friend in need." And in modern philosophy, things like this and I, are called indexicals, and they kind of get you to act. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So I think that it's important that this way of thinking has indexicals in it to get you to act. So one issue with whether there is a practical syllogism, is that the theoretical syllogism is all completely general. So how could a syllogism be practical, but how's he thinking of it? And so my idea is, he's thinking of, there are these general things, although they're not totally universal, they're sort for the most part, and you have to see when to apply them. But seeing what the particulars of the situation are, are very important in prompting somebody to actually act in that way. Speaker 1: And one of your examples, in a later chapter was about, let's see, a healthy person, I can't remember exactly, but maybe a healthy person doesn't eat this pint of ice cream. But then when it gets down to, I'm a healthy person and here's this particular pint of ice cream right here, somehow it doesn't get applied, this is too powerful for the general statement, the conclusion doesn't come. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Right. Well, this is the case of akrasia, where you should know what the right thing is and don't do it. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: I think in that case, you aren't properly a healthy person. I mean, it might be inspiring to be it. And then since you have a desire for the ice cream that's kind of not integrated, that kind of glops onto the, "This is pleasant." And the desire kind of goes off with that part of the syllogism, and you no longer have the whole thing together. Speaker 1: Right. That's interesting. I like that, yeah. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So that's how I'm understanding how that works. Now that's also controversial, I mean, there's no agreement exactly on how this works. And there are also people who think that there have to be two syllogisms at play, I don't think that's the right way to go. Actually, Anthony Price's view is probably more like mine. Speaker 1: Okay. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yeah. But it's still a more controversial way of thinking about things. Speaker 1: Understood. Another sentence that I'm just picking out here is, Dorothea Frede says, "Aristotle's treatment of pleasure is worthy of a Nobel Prize." Could you touch on that as well, what does she mean by that? Professor Paula Gottlieb: I think part of what she means is that, there's not very much about pleasure. I guess this is going back to somebody like Jeremy Bentham, who thinks that pleasure is just all this different stuff and you can't differentiate pleasures from each other. And Aristotle is quite sophisticated in how he does that. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Also, he doesn't think that pleasure are just processes, I mean, that was a popular view of the time, especially medical writers. Well, the pleasure is sort of coming into some natural state, and pain is going away from it. And Aristotle is saying, "No, pleasure really comes from activities, and if you're doing the various activities well, then they'll be pleasant." And so that is a rather more sophisticated view of pleasure, than other people have put forward. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Recently though, there has been discussion of the view that's quite popular in psychology about flow, the idea of, when athletes are sort of in the zone, they have flow and it's been suggested that's something that Aristotle might be getting at. It's a little bit hard to see exactly how that works for being a good person, as opposed to, well, I suppose if you're really engrossed in doing good activities, is going to be pleasant, it's not something that you're consciously thinking about getting. Speaker 1: Right. The other thing that people often note about Aristotle is that he talks about friendship. Friendship is an important part of happiness. And I guess, one of the things that's surprising about that is you would think he would talk about love, not friendship. Friendship seems too tame, we need something more romantic and more passionate than friendship. For the modern reader, that seems, "Why are we talking about friendship?" Professor Paula Gottlieb: Well, I suppose in Greek friendship, for Leah, it does come from philia, to love. Speaker 1: Okay. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So it is sort of loving other people, in that respect. Speaker 1: Okay. Professor Paula Gottlieb: It covers a whole lot of different relationships. So in Aristotle it can cover some sexual relationships or friendships, or acquaintances, or a civic friendship is the bonds you have with other people who live in the same society that you do, and so on. So it's a very broad notion, but also in Aristotle, it's quite narrow because he wants to narrow it down, in the end the best kind of friendship is between good people, and that's pleasant and useful, and based in good character. So part of the discussion I think is to show people, I mean, if he can really show you that you can't have good friends unless you're a good person, that's a pretty good incentive to become a good person. Speaker 1: That is. Professor Paula Gottlieb: If you realize what people are or what friends are only transactional, and so on. Speaker 1: That's interesting. Right. Well, I guess part of the symptom is that it doesn't seem that important. And I take it that, well, you keep seeing in this text or in Aristotle, this symmetry between, or this mirror image between the polis and the individual, they have the same structure, and they're structured the same way, we can think of them the same way, we can reason about them. Is it true that for Aristotle to be happy, you would need to live in a good polis, or you would need to live in a just polis? Professor Paula Gottlieb: I think that you would, well, you certainly can't be happy or you can't even be fully human according to Aristotle, unless you live in a polis. So he says the only beings that live outside of polis would be the wild animals, or God, we're not self-sufficient, so we need a polis. It does look as if you need to have a lot of good things going on in order to become a good person. But in the politics, I guess one idea, which is [inaudible 00:42:18] by Richard Kratos, if you're living in a bad society, it would be the role of a good person to try and change things or make improvements. Speaker 1: Okay. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So you couldn't become good. In my book on Aristotle's Thought and Feeling, I discuss more what happens if you're brought up badly, or what if you're, say a woman in ancient Greece, could you become a good person? And if you couldn't, would you be blamed for that, and so on. So I think those are important questions. Speaker 1: Interesting. Professor Paula Gottlieb: And I try and ask Aristotle then and see whether he could give a response to those kinds of issues. Speaker 1: Nice. The thing that really stands out is this opposition between Aristotle then, and Adam Smith, because there you have completely separating the two. We don't get our dinner because of the benevolence of the butcher and the baker and the brewer, but from their own selfishness, and that's really ingrained in the way we view society. So I think that's why it's strange to see or the way I view, it's strange to hear Aristotle say this. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yeah, I think we're very individualistic, everybody can sort of get on, on their own. And we have the idea of self-sufficiency, and it means you can get on, on your own without any help. But then once people think about this, so I've been teaching a class on Plato's Lysis about friendship. Once people start thinking about self-sufficiency, they sort of change their mind, I mean, how did they get where they were in the first place? They needed parents and other people and a whole lot of help. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: So Aristotle says at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, that what being self-sufficiency means, what's sufficient for you and your family and the other people, and so forth. So it's a different idea of what it is to be self-sufficient. Speaker 1: Understood. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Unfortunately, I think he goes back a bit on this in Book 10. Speaker 1: Yeah, well Book 10 is kind of strange, isn't it? Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yes, it's a bit- Speaker 1: It's puzzling. Professor Paula Gottlieb: A lot of different things going on there. Speaker 1: Right. Professor Paula Gottlieb: But the Book 1 discussion seems fairly clear on what he means by self-sufficiency. Speaker 1: Understood. Okay. Well, we're over time here, but Professor Paula Gottlieb, thank you so much. The book is Aristotle's Ethics, Nicomachean and Eudemian Themes. It was very informative to read, and I really appreciate you talking to me about it. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Well, thank you very much.

Graham Harman (Southern California Institute of Architecture)

Architecture and objects

Architecture and Objects thinks through object-oriented ontology ("Triple-O")—and the work of architects such as Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid—to explore new concepts of the relationship between form and function. By the founder of Triple-O, it deepens the exchange between architecture and philosophy, providing a new roadmap to OOO's influence on the language and practice of contemporary architecture-- and offers new conceptions of the relationship between form and function.

"Graham Harman's Architecture and Objects could very well be a new philosophical blueprint for how to build our emerging twenty-first-century world. By reconsidering the relationship between humanity, reality, and the built environment, he shows us, like a UV light at a crime scene, ways of understanding architecture that we'd never even considered but that are now, all of a sudden, glowing with brilliant potential." —Mark Foster Gage, Yale University and principal of Mark Foster Gage Architects

Full details.

Object-oriented ontology has become increasingly popular among architectural theorists and practitioners in recent years. Architecture and Objects, the first book on architecture by the founder of object-oriented ontology (OOO), deepens the exchange between architecture and philosophy, providing a new roadmap to OOO's influence on the language and practice of contemporary architecture and offering new conceptions of the relationship between form and function.

Graham Harman opens with a critique of Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze, the three philosophers whose ideas have left the deepest imprint on the field, highlighting the limits of their thinking for architecture. Instead, Harman contends, architecture can employ OOO to reconsider traditional notions of form and function that emphasize their relational characteristics—form with a building's visual style, function with its stated purpose—and constrain architecture's possibilities through literalism. Harman challenges these understandings by proposing de-relationalized versions of both (zero-form and zero-function) that together provide a convincing rejoinder to Immanuel Kant's dismissal of architecture as "impure."

Through critical engagement with the writings of Peter Eisenman and fresh assessments of buildings by Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid, Architecture and Objects forwards a bold vision of architecture. Overcoming the difficult task of "zeroing" function, Harman concludes, would place architecture at the forefront of a necessary revitalization of exhausted aesthetic paradigms.

About the author.

Graham Harman is distinguished professor of philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles, and author of many books, including Speculative Realism: An Introduction and Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything.

raham Harman's willingness—indeed, his pleasure—to immerse himself in the complexities of architectural history, theory, practice, and criticism results in a book that not only subtly translates between architecture and philosophy but, more provocatively, argues for architecture's centrality in rethinking Kantian aesthetic formalism and its legacy in formalist art, criticism, and aesthetics. He offers us a compelling account of architecture as a drama of rifts and splits in the 'zeroing' of form, function, and time, while further elucidating the crucial role of aesthetics as 'first philosophy' in object-oriented ontology.

— Aron Vinegar, University of Oslo* Table of contents

Contents

Introduction

1. Architects and Their Philosophers

2. I Know Not What

3. Object-Orientation

4. The Aesthetic Centrality of Architecture

5. The Architectural Cell

Concluding Maxims

Notes

Bibliography

Index

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/architecture-and-objects

August: Welcome to Philosophy podcast, where we interview leading philosophers about their recent work. Today we're talking about the book Architecture and Objects: Art After Nature by Graham Harmon. The description is "Object-oriented ontology has become increasingly popular among architectural theorists and practitioners in recent years. Architecture and Objects," this book, "the first book on architecture by the founder of OOO, Object-Oriented Ontology, deepens the exchange between architecture and philosophy, providing a new roadmap to OOO's influence on the language and practice of contemporary architecture, and offering new conceptions of the relationship between form and function. Engaging with Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, writings of Peter Eisenman, and buildings by Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid, Graham Harmon forwards a bold vision of architecture, one that places architecture at the forefront of a necessary revitalization of exhausted aesthetic paradigms." August: A couple of the recommendations. August: Mark Foster Gage, Yale University. "Graham Harmon's Architecture and Objects could very well be a new philosophical blueprint for how to build our emerging 21st-century world. By reconsidering the relationship between humanity, reality, and built environment, he shows us, like a UV light at a crime scene, ways of understanding architecture that we'd never even considered, but that are now all of a sudden glowing with brilliant potential." August: Aron Vinegar of the University of Oslo. "Graham Harmon's willingness, indeed his pleasure, to immerse himself in the complexity of architectural history, theory, practice, and criticism, results in a book that not only subtly translates between architecture and philosophy, but more provocatively argues for architecture's centrality in rethinking Kantian aesthetic formalism. He offers us a compelling account of architecture as a drama of rifts and splits in the zeroing of form, function, and time." August: Graham Harmon is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. His books include Art and Objects, and Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. Welcome, Professor Harmon. Graham Harmon: Thank you very much, August. It's a pleasure to be here. August: You start off your book by saying "why a book on architecture, other than that I have recently been appointed to a architecture school." I think that's your opening joke. How do you answer that? Graham Harmon: I answer that by saying that this book is a continuation of my book Art and Objects from two years earlier, in which I was trying to express support for what's called Kantian formalism in the arts. The idea that an artwork is cut off from other things, and needs to be interpreted in its own rights, not in terms of its conceptual meaning, not in terms of its socio-historical surroundings, not in terms of how it personally makes us feel. I want to basically express support for that while also pointing to the limitations of Kantian formalism, which I did in that book, by pointing out that Kant and some of his modern heirs in art criticism such as Michael Fried, someone I admire very much, are two quick to dissociate the artwork from the human beholder. I argued in that book there's no way to do that, because artwork has to be seen as a composite or hybrid made of the physical work and the person who encounters it. Graham Harmon: Now, in Architecture and Objects I wanted to take up the fact that Kant is quite down on architecture, ranks it very low in the arts. The reason being that it's useful. If an artwork is useful, that's just as bad as an ethical act being useful. Because, of course, in Kant's ethics, ethical acts have to be performed for their own sake not because they lead to any good results, or lead to a better reputation for the person for being ethical, or lead to the person going to heaven instead of hell. Graham Harmon: All of those things ruin the purity of an ethical act for Kant, and likewise, for an artwork to be useful ruins the purity of the beauty. I realized that the conclusion I reached in Art and Objects allows us to rethink Kant's idea of architecture. Namely, since the entanglement of the human and the artwork is no longer a problem in my interpretation of visual art, that means that architecture is no longer suspect. Because that entanglement already occurs at the level of visual art, let alone at the level of architecture. It was a chance to rethink architecture in a post-Kantian way that nonetheless respects what Kant was seeing. August: Okay. I guess you clearly haven't gone through the other fields that have both art and practical application, fashion design to interior design to just being a hairdresser. I understand you make an argument about the difference between architecture and art, and you talk about the centrality of architecture. But it'll be another project to think about how those other fields might rank. Graham Harmon: Yes. I mean, I could write a book about anything if I put myself to it. Architecture just seemed more pressing both because Kant has bad things to say about it, and also because I am working in architecture school. I've been pressuring myself to learn a lot about architecture over the past 10 years, but especially the last 7 that I've been teaching at an architecture school. August: I see. One of your statements in the book is that when an architect makes a building, it's a tacit statement about the nature of reality, and that provides a overlap with philosophy. That's not clear to me why that would be true. Why, when an architect is building a building, it is a statement or it is an attempt to capture a deeper reality. Graham Harmon: My friend and colleague David Rue, I was undergraduate with him and now on his colleague at SCI-Arc, made a very interesting statement about 10 years ago in one of his articles, where he said that architecture gives us our first sense of reality. It's quite rare that any human is in the middle of raw nature. Even if you're in a national park, you're in an organized space, at least the entrance into the park has been arranged by civil engineers and landscape designers. All the moreso if you're in a city, you're in a town. Right now you're in a house, I'm in an apartment building. We are not in direct confrontation with nature. We are inhabiting a human-designed medium. Just as many animals primarily inhabit media that they create themselves, whether it's beehives or beaver dams. Graham Harmon: What this means is that our sense of reality is actually decided by the architect. The architect can decide whether we're in a soothing space or an ominous space, can decide whether we are in a space that allows in lots of sunlight or not much sunlight. In more recent architecture, the architecture can decide that the world is basically homogeneous and smooth and curves gently from one thing and another, or that there are abrupt cutoff points and different fashions have held sway at different times. Graham Harmon: This is the sense in which architecture makes a tacit statement about the nature of reality. On this basis, architects have picked up different philosophers at different times, especially in the last 60 years, to help guide their thinking. That itself is controversial in the architectural world now. There are some architects who think there's been too much philosophy and they want to get back to disciplinary craft. Graham Harmon: In my book, I make the case that, look, architecture is already involving all kinds of other disciplines. Why should you simply decide to exclude philosophy? Architects are some of the most omnivorous intellects I've encountered. They have to know about everything. They have to learn about whatever it is that their project is dedicated to. We'll always be a natural dialogue partner for architects. August: I would assume there's a lot of variety across architects, so that some architects would look for inspiration in philosophy and others wouldn't. They might find it somewhere else, or they're feel the muse is speaking through them. Is that true? A wide variety? Graham Harmon: Yes it is, and if you just look at recent architects, Peter Eisenman is as much a theorist as he is an architect. He drew first on Noam Chomsky, later on Derrida, later on Deleuze. He's picked up all kinds of things that are interesting to him he writes theoretical texts that I find interesting as a philosopher. I've debated with some of them in my book. Then you've got Zaha Hadid, the late lamented Zaha Hadid, who unfortunately died six years ago, too young, who was one of the preeminent architects of recent decades, but doesn't show much evidence of having been interested in theory on the philosophy [inaudible 00:09:35]. And yet, she fits very well within the Deleuzian current of architecture, even if I don't know how much Deleuze she read, if any. But the kind of design she does as a natural partner for Deleuze's philosophy. She was called the Queen of the Curve. Everything is continuous. They are very beautiful forms that she creates. They are also a statement about the nature of reality, even if she wouldn't have framed them that way. August: One of your concerns is clearly to, it seems that people have started using your theory, or the theory that's associated with you. Do you call it OOO? Graham Harmon: I pronounce it Triple O usually, but- August: Triple O? Okay. People have started to use that. You've seen it being referred to in texts about architecture or in discussions. It seems that one of your points was, "Okay, how do you do this in a way that is not too superficial, not too literal?" Graham Harmon: I think literalism is itself a philosophical problem. One of the themes of my book. Literalism you can define is the idea that a thing is nothing more than all of the qualities that it possesses. Philosophically, I guess the godfather of this idea is David Hume, who says "there are no objects, there are just bundles of qualities." There's not really any such thing as an apple. There's just red, round, juicy, hard, cold, sweet. All of these things go together so frequently that we form the habit of thinking of them as one thing we call it an apple. But apple itself is really nothing more for Hume and his followers than all of those things put together. Whereas phenomenology in the 20th century, with Husserl and beyond, Merleau-Ponty and others, says the opposite. That an object is always more than its qualities, because it vary, see different qualities of the thing at different times. Yet you never stop thinking of it as one and the same thing. Graham Harmon: So, the path to literalism, first of all, is seeing that the object is something distinct from its qualities, can change qualities and still be the same thing. It can be split from its qualities and still be the same thing. What interests me about aesthetics, which is usually considered a minor side annex to philosophy. While the big shots do metaphysics and epistemology and political theory. Aesthetics, for me, is not just about art that cultured humans find enjoyable. It's about a split between the object and its qualities. Which I think is the fundamental philosophical problem, because you can never pin down a thing in terms of definite qualities. Aesthetics helps remind us of this. Aesthetic language play a much larger role in Triple O than they do for other philosophies. Because I don't think literalism works. I don't think you can get the literal truth about the cosmos. Philosophy is not a knowledge. Graham Harmon: I think even science, in a sense, is not a knowledge. Science is, in large part, a knowledge. But we find in moments of what Kuhn called paradigm shifts, science comes into crisis, that we're not really sure anymore what the fundamental nature of reality is. Not just Kuhn. I would make the same statement about Popper and falsification, that science is, in many ways, a negative procedure rather than a positive one. Knowledge, in a way, is what deep thought opposes. Knowledge is a pragmatically useful thing. I wouldn't want to live in the world without knowledge. We rely on medical knowledge, we rely on engineering knowledge and so forth. But the frontiers of thought are always somewhere other than knowledge. They're at the place where we don't know something yet. August: I think one of the things you're doing is saying, "Let's not downplay something like metaphor." It's very insightful, actually. I don't know. You talk about non-rationalism. I think of it as a romantic current. Do you think of it that way? Graham Harmon: It could be. One difference from romanticism, which I admire a lot about romanticism, is this notion of the sublime, and Triple O's opposition to the sublime. Kant defines the sublime. He's talking about things like standing and looking out at the stormy sea, or looking up at the sky at night, maybe looking at these new photos from the James Webb Space Telescope, that, I agree, with those profound emotions unlocked by those moments. But Kant defines the sublime as the absolutely large or the absolutely powerful. I'm questioning the absolute part of it. Another Triple O theorist, Timothy Morton, wrote on his book Hyperobjects, that in a way, infinity is easily masterable. When you think about infinity, you think, "Wow, I can think the infinite." You feel proud of yourself. But Tim Morton says, "Try counting up to a hundred thousand." That's a finite number, but in some ways that's a more realistic threat than, say, infinity. Graham Harmon: And he primarily applied this to climate change, that it's somehow less threatening to say infinity than to say that the half-life of this material is 70,000 years or something. Because nobody in 70,000 years who's left, if anyone is left, I'm not going to have any meaningful connection with any of those people. It will be a totally different world. That's an idea I drew from Morton, to critique the sublime, that things can seem infinite, but they're actually all infinite in different ways and in different amounts. That would be the difference from romanticism, the idea that each, also the fact that in some ways romanticism fetishizes nature. Triple O does not want to do [inaudible 00:15:04]. For Triple O, technological objects are just as interesting as pine forests. That's another departure from romanticism. August: I understand. That's a good point. I notice you go through the book and you talk about how architects have used other philosophers and it's Heidegger, Derrida, DeLeuze. It strikes the reader that these are so-called continental philosophers. Even when you describe how architects might want to look at/to philosophers for maybe a new way of seeing things, that seems like more of a role for a continental philosopher, to inspire provoke, rather than the, as I understand the more analytic, let's be very clear and careful just inscribing things, not trying to provoke or astonish. Would you agree with that? Graham Harmon: I would, and this doesn't reflect even a value judgment on my part. It's just the description of what architects are doing. Architects are not really reading analytic philosophers. I'm not even sure what analytic philosopher they might read to inspire new architecture. Obviously Wittgenstein is of interest to everybody on some level, and was also a fine architect himself. I had the chance to tour his- August: I didn't know that. Graham Harmon: ... house behind in Vienna. Which it's not generally accessible to the public. It's the Bulgarian cultural attache's office or something now in Vienna. But we had an architectural contact who enabled us to make a tour of that house. I was with an architect friend who said he thinks AR V Stein could have been one of the great architects [inaudible 00:16:42] decided to be. It's a remarkable piece of work. You'd think that Wittgenstein might appear more in architectural discourse, but that hasn't really happened the way it has in the visual arts with people like Kossoth, who was very influenced by Wittgenstein. Stanley Cavel is another person who writes well on the creation and has obviously had some influence on arts and our criticism through his friend, Michael fried. But I don't hear, Cavel mentioned by architects. I hear the big continental names. Heidegger, [inaudible 00:17:10] Deleuze, to a lesser extent Latour, Peter Sloterdijk has some growing interest, though he hasn't really spawned a school yet. Graham Harmon: We could ask why that is. I think part of this analytic philosophy made a decision early on. It is what it is. It made a decision to constitute itself as a science. It emulates specialized scientific disciplines. They take pride in this, in having very precise terminology, in referring mostly to recent work by other analytic philosophers, in dominating the departments of philosophy in the Anglo-American world. At least the prestigious ones. If you want to do continental philosophy like me, you end up going to small Catholic universities or maybe a few state schools such as Penn State or Memphis, Stony Brook, that do that kind of thing. But it's largely a Catholic- August: Interesting. Graham Harmon: Because continental philosophy fits well, I think, with the Catholic church's admirable support of the history of philosophy. Even though most of the graduate students at these places are not themselves Catholics. The Catholic universities support this very nicely. Graham Harmon: The problem that analytic philosophy has created for itself, there's two sides to every coin, is that it's not as accessible to the general public. Indeed, I think it takes pride in that, that we are a scientific discourse and just like the average person can't read quantum theory articles in a journal, the average person shouldn't expect to read analytic philosophy journals with ease. Graham Harmon: All right, but there's a sense in which philosophy also needs to be readable by the average intelligent person. This is something continental philosophy, in principle, does better. In practice, a lot of the professors in continental philosophy become just as narrow in their writing, and also tend to be more commentary-oriented sometimes. Rather than putting forth theories of their own, they tend to comment on Heidegger or Kant [inaudible 00:18:55] their own theories. But people like Zizek are always going to be more easily readable and perhaps more interesting for the general public than, say, Timothy Williamson at Oxford, who's one of the leading philosophers at Oxford, analytic philosophers, or David Lewis. The deceased David Lewis, one of their great meta-physicians. These are always going to be hard for the average person to read. I think that's the issue with architecture. August: Some would say, well, I guess there's the famous Nusbaum article on Butler where she says that some in the continental tradition cultivate a mystique around being obscure. Do you see any merit in that also? In some of the writing is very obscure. Graham Harmon: Sometimes. For example, I'm not an admirer of Derrida's style at all. I find it to be a headache to read Derrida most of the time. He gets into a groove once in a while, where he is got 8 or 10 pages that get right to the point. But that's usually preceded and followed by lots of dancing that I find tedious. Judith Butler is an interesting case. I just have to say this in defense of Butler. I don't like how she writes. She writes very technically. She's not as accessible as she could be. I think no spam made some fair points about that in her article. Then I had the chance to meet Judith Butler. She came over to Cairo, Egypt, as a guest speaker at the university when I was there. She's really disarming. Because, first of all, she's incredibly intelligent. There are certain people you're just in their presence and you have the sense immediately, "This is a very smart person." Graham Harmon: Second, she's an incredible listener. She looks you right in the eye and listens to everything you say. It's unnerving in a way. [inaudible 00:20:41] Judith Butler's listening to every word I say. It's rare to meet people like that. I didn't get the sense she's someone who cherishes obscurity as a person. Also, in the talk she gave, which was simply on Palestinian-Israeli politics, she was very clear. She didn't try to dither. She told us exactly what she thought should be done, to this audience. Obviously pro-Palestinian audience primarily in Egypt. I'm not sure why she chooses to write that way. I don't like the excuses that are sometimes made for that. They'll sometimes say, "Well, nobody complains that quantum theory is hard to understand." The difference there, Michelle Serres pointed this out, that in science, technical language is a shortcut. It's a way of saying more using fewer words. Whereas sometimes in the humanities, it's a way of saying less using more words. I think Serres is right about that. This is why I think it's very important to write clearly. Graham Harmon: I think one of the things about my generation in continental philosophy is if you look at someone like Meillassoux, he's very clear, very easy to read. I've talked to him about this. He said that that was his explicit goal. He didn't like the way Derridans wrote, he didn't like the way phenomenologists wrote even, and simply wanted to be as clear as possible. I think all of us in speculative realism made an effort to write clearly, to a greater or lesser extent I think this was an excess of the, let's say, post-structuralist generation of continental philosophy. August: We imitate our teachers, so something like a style can perpetuate like that. Graham Harmon: Yes. August: Let's talk about Triple O. All right. This was the first time I saw it. I actually just found your name by looking up leaving philosophers. Graham Harmon: All right. August: Yeah. Object-Oriented Ontology. I think if someone asked me to explain my understanding of it, in my words, I would say the idea is basically we want to go against what you hear. Currently. You hear this a lot in psychoanalysis, for example, about there is no such thing as a person. There's just a bunch of connections with other people. It's relationships come before the person, and there's a big problem with thinking about a person as a unit that goes through time. Triple O wants to talk about objects. That's the first word. It wants to have a very broad view of objects. August: I think it's very much in the line of Socrates in the sense of saying there's a lot that we don't know. It's also in line with Kant saying there is this noumena behind reality that we can't really access. I think it addresses the traditional problem in philosophy, which is this idea that there's what we interact with, then there's what things really are. That all our interactions are mediated. Then there's this question about what is real, what is underlying and real? It seems to me that Triple O addresses that. Then I would say, addresses that basic question, but it doesn't say, "Let's have a divide between consciousness and world, or mind and world." It says, essentially, as I understand it, "we're going to talk about objects, but we're not really going to put a subject in the center. We're going to make the subject another object. We're going to recognize an underlying or a deeper level, which is real and a higher level, which we'll call sensual, which includes much more than just sense perception." August: Then I think the other thing that it does is it says we're also going to put some structure on this real realm. Which is to say that there are, in this real realm, both objects and qualities. That would be my take after reading this book, but feel free to tell me I got it totally wrong. Graham Harmon: You got it totally right. August: Okay. Great. Graham Harmon: Nice summary. Very nice summary. Yes. You made a couple of important points there that I need to respond to. First of all, yes, we shouldn't reduce the thing either downward to its pieces or upward to its effects that's a common ... First of all, let me say that's what knowledge is. There are really only two kinds of knowledge that humans can have. If I ask you what something is, you can either tell me what it's made of or tell me what it does. There are subcategories of each of these. You can tell me the history of a thing, you can tell me its physical composition. These are all ways of telling me what it's made of. Graham Harmon: Or you can tell me what it does. You can say that oxygen allows living creatures to breathe, it causes fire to combust, things like this. And all forms of knowledge involve explaining a thing in terms of something else. That's fine. We need knowledge to survive as a species. Graham Harmon: But knowledge does not exhaust human cognition. There is also a human cognition that does a kind of mute justice, or tries to do a kind of mute justice to things that goes beyond that. It's commonly known, accepted by any philosophers if not all, that a thing is an emergent thing beyond its components. Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, and it's great that we've known that since Lavoisier' chemistry in the late 1700s. But obviously oxygen has properties not found in either hydrogen or oxygen. It puts out fire, whereas both hydrogen and oxygen combust fire, and so on. You need hydrogen and oxygen to make fire, and you can even predict the properties of water using quantum chemistry once you know what hydrogen and oxygen are. But it's not a question of predictability. It's a question of the thing, having an independent reality. Graham Harmon: The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team is something over and above each of the individual members, right? It has obviously not had the same members for the whole 60 years. Players keep leaving, new players come in, so the Dodgers are something over and above their pieces. They're also something, I would say, under and beneath their relations. Because new teams have been added to the league since the Los Angeles Dodgers franchise relocated from Brooklyn to Los Angele.s they have to play now the Colorado Rockies and the Marlins who did not exist when the Dodgers first existed. The Dodgers, they play in different stadiums than they used to. New stadiums are being opened. So, the Dodgers, and obviously the American society around the Dodgers and Los Angeles, these are all changing. And yet the Dodgers, in some sense, remain the Dodgers. You can't reduce them upward. Some kernel remains always there, though never perfectly expressed in any given Dodgers game or any given season. Graham Harmon: Those are what I call critiques of undermining and overmining. You can undermine a thing by going downward, overmine it by going upward, then those combine in what I call dual mining. Normal scientific materialism, for example, is a dual mining gesture. Because on the one hand, it says things are reducible to their tiniest particles or the fields, whatever the smallest stuff is. But then it also wants to say, "Yes, but this is all mathematizable," which we can know. Therefore reducing it upward to its knowledge. We're not taking account of any residue in the things that's non-mathematizable, ever since Galileo and Descartes. Graham Harmon: Object is something in between those two extremes, and you can't know it by definition because any knowledge involves an undermining or an overmining. So how do we get at it? Well, aesthetics is the obvious answer, because when you're experiencing an artwork, you're not telling the beholders what it's made of. I mean, you might as some kind of dadaist gesture, but we're not primarily interested in what an artwork is made of the way we are interested in what a rock is made of in science. You're also not interested only in how this artwork makes me feel, or how this artwork comments on contemporary politics, because those things all change, and an artwork is supposed to challenge me to perceive it differently. The better it is, the more I'm going to have to go back to it and find things in it that I didn't find first. Graham Harmon: An artwork's an obvious example, but then there's also philosophy, which I think is closer to the arts than the sciences. Something analytic philosophy would never like. Because philosophy is, of course, philosophia. Possibly from Pythagoras onwards. Philosophia means the love of wisdom, not wisdom. Philosophy is not a knowledge. You get some analytic philosophers referring to what they do as scientific philosophy or exact philosophy. I see those as a contradiction in terms. That's like saying exact art, what would exact art be? It misses the point. Graham Harmon: Socrates asks a lot about the definitions of things, but he never gets any definitions. Every dialogue ends in further perplexity. He always says, or at least a few times says, "The only thing I know is I know nothing. I've never been anyone's teacher." So we shouldn't see Socrates as a wise man or as a scientist. He's not. He's a philosopher, and philosophy is something a little closer to the arts than to science. I'll give one quote supporting this that's often overlooked. Last great philosopher before the analytic continental split was Franz Brentano, the teacher of Husserl. He gave a very interesting lecture about philosophy in the 1890s in Vienna. He made this point that's not been commented on often, where he said, "In some senses, philosophy is like science. It makes progress. Every generation should see things in philosophy that the previous generation didn't. But in another sense, it's like the fine arts. It has periods of ripeness and periods of decline." Graham Harmon: You wouldn't necessarily say, even in analytic philosophy, that analytic philosophy knows more in 2022 than it knew in the time of Russell and Wittgenstein. In some sense, yes, because we have critiques to Russell and Wittgenstein now. But in some sense, that was a riper era. That was a more celebrated era of analytic philosophy than 2022, I would say .just like you have in the arts. 2022 art is not necessarily better than high cubism, which was considered a great period in modern art. Graham Harmon: Now, the question is how you reconcile those two. In many ways, this was also the question that guided Thomas Kuhn in discussing the history of science, the difference between normal science and revolutionary science. What is the relation between those two? Because normal science is cumulative. Then from time to time, it's completely disrupted by paradigm shifts. This hasn't been applied to philosophy enough, this idea that there are paradigm-shifting periods in philosophy. German idealism remains one of the most revered periods in the history of philosophy by scholars [inaudible 00:31:41] between Kant and Hegel that seems to embody philosophy to an eminent degree. Lots of stuff was happening every year. That isn't happening right now, as far as the public eye can see. Right? August: Right. Graham Harmon: This seems like a fairly normal period in philosophy by comparison. August: Well, take Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. There's three, they were [inaudible 00:32:02] teachers. Graham Harmon: In Western philosophy this happens a lot. You also had Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz. In the UK you had Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and you had Husserl, Heidegger, and- August: Brentano. Yeah. Okay. Graham Harmon: Yeah. I would add Brentano. I might add Scheler. You could [inaudible 00:32:20] decrease the groups of. Oh, even in the Medieval time you had Aquinas, Scotus, Occam. This seems to be a common phenomenon in Western philosophy. I should say European philosophy. If you go to Islamic philosophy, what jumps out at you is that their lifetimes don't overlap. If you look at Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Averroes, I don't think any of their lifetimes overlap. There's small gaps between each of them. August: Interesting. Graham Harmon: I'm not sure what that means. I've been puzzling [inaudible 00:32:49] that for years, that they were spread out in time. I think that gives a different topology to Islamic philosophy. Whereas, yeah, in the European tradition, it's always bang, bang, bang. Three or four people in a row. Often they knew each other personally, at least some of them. August: And sometimes they were the student of the professor Graham Harmon: Quite often. That's right. Or at least met each other. Leibniz went and met Spinoza for example. August: Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, clearly. Graham Harmon: Exactly. Exactly. That's an interesting phenomenon. You see that in the history of art as well, that the artists are grouped together usually, in great periods, as though one unlocks the possibilities of the next. Graham Harmon: Another interesting thing about those clusters, is that the first person in the cluster always starts older, or almost always starts older. It's as though it's harder for someone like Kant to dream up the new principles of a new way of looking at philosophy. But then once someone's put it out there, younger people can take it and improve it or revolutionize it in some way. Hegel started much younger than Kant. The Phenomenology of Spirit, he was in his, I think, mid-thirties. [inaudible 00:34:00] wrote that. Whereas Kant was in his late 50s, publishing the First Critique. Same with Husserl and Heidegger. August: That's right. I imagine that, and you talk about this and I can tell that you have gotten, this must be a common response to the object-oriented ontology. It sounds like you're going to miss change over time. You're going to miss flows. It sounds like it's going to be static. Graham Harmon: That's been the most common criticism ever since my doctoral dissertation from some committee members. Here's what I would say. Constant change, in a way, ends up not giving you much of an explanation of change. August: Sure. That's a good point. Graham Harmon: Yeah. Because if everything's changing all the time, why should you then be interested in revolutions or periods where science changes? Because a hair falling from my head is also radical change according to this. August: Right. In fact, you could take, say, the economy and say if the inflation rate is the constant through time, prizes are increasing all the time, but there's no change really. The [inaudible 00:35:08] would say there's no change there because it's continuous. Yeah. Graham Harmon: Right. Is economics your- August: It was, yeah. Yeah. Graham Harmon: All right. Great. Yeah. Yes, and you also have, in paleontology, which is called punctuated equilibrium of Gould and Eldredge, opposed to Darwinian gradualism. but it turns out in their eyes to be a better explanation of evolution that it happens quickly followed by long periods of stability. That's more my own view as well. That if you're saying everything's changing all the time, you miss the punctuated aspect of history, that not equally interesting things are happening at every moment in time. Graham Harmon: For example, right now, if I were going into the sciences, I were a young person, I think I would choose astronomy. Physics, maybe not. Even though you think of physics as fundamental. That's what you want to go into. But Lee Smolin lamented in one of his books that he's part of the first generation of physicists in 500 years that hasn't made fundamental forward progress. He was quite depressed about it. Since the standard model in the early '70s, okay. We've discovered the Higgs-Boson, but that's just fulfilling a prediction of the standard model. There hasn't really been a huge breakthrough since then. But if you look at astronomy, well, first of all, astronomy discovered dark matter and dark energy, so that's coming from outside physics. Graham Harmon: There's also major discoveries happening in astronomy literally every day. Just open any news website you're probably going to find an astronomical discovery even before the Webb telescope, which is just accelerating it. Astronomy is really in a revolutionary phase, just like physics was in the early 20th century where Rutherford said, "We live in the heroic age of physics," and he was right. New discoveries all the time. At any given moment, there are certain fields where that's happening and others that are a little more devoted to consolidating what's already known, or to polishing our understanding. There's different rhythms in different fields, the different [inaudible 00:36:57]. August: So the point would be that these points of disruption are become objects themselves, or that the objects change from one to another? Graham Harmon: I think points of disruption, such as Kuhn's paradigm shifts or Alain Badiou's events, are points when we no longer can think of a thing in terms of its qualities. Because the qualities are no longer internally consistent, they no longer make sense, so we have to theorize what's deeper than these qualities? That's the object. What is it that's lying behind this? We're redefining the object. Einstein essentially redefined what space and time are in his [inaudible 00:37:37] and general theories of relativity. Some people try to make the case that, "Oh, Newton's theory is still true as a special case of Einstein's." I don't think that's right. I think that Newton's theory is refuted. I agree with Kuhn on this. Because says that, "Look at something like mass." Both Newton and Einstein use the concept of mass, but you can't say they're the same concept. Because in Newton, mass is conserved. In Einstein, mass is convertible with energy. So they're not really the same thing, sense. Einstein redefined an object. It might have the same name, mass, that Newton's hard physical stuff did, but it's not the same thing. You're redefining the referent of the term. Graham Harmon: I'm more on the side that these moments of crisis can lead to actual different conceptions of the world in terms of the objects that populate them. August: I understand. And the other idea, I think where there's some tension or I'm not clear how it's handled, is in relationships between real objects, or in relationships. Because it seems so, Winnicott said, "There's no such a thing as a baby. There's a nursing couple before there's a baby." The idea is there's a relationship that's a real thing in between two objects. My understanding would be that relationship becomes an object. Or I'm not sure about that. Graham Harmon: Yes. Any real relation will become a new object. The reason for that is, what defines an object for Triple O is that it has a reality deeper than our understanding of it, that no understanding can exhaust. There are certain objects that are false objects. I can name six random things and say that they comprise an object, but that object probably doesn't exist outside my thinking of it. August: [inaudible 00:39:31] once you name it does. Graham Harmon: It becomes a sensual object at least, then the question [inaudible 00:39:35]. August: I understand. Yeah. Graham Harmon: The question is, at what point does a sensual object become a real one? Because- August: I gotcha. Graham Harmon: Sherlock Holmes began as a sensual object in the mind of Arthur Conan Doyle. But now, in a sense, Sherlock Holmes is a real object. Because if somebody did a Sherlock Holmes movie where the Holmes character was not at all convincing, we would say that wasn't really Sherlock Holmes. August: Yeah. That's really good point. Graham Harmon: Which some people said about Danny DeVito's Penguin in one of those Batman movies. It was an interesting character, but it wasn't the Penguin. [inaudible 00:40:02] critics say that. How can you say it wasn't the Penguin when the Penguin doesn't exist? Well, because the [inaudible 00:40:06] does exist in a sense. August: Yeah. Right. Graham Harmon: You brought up the relation between real objects, and that brings us back to the second point I forgot to answer about your excellent summary of Triple O. Which is you talk about the Kantian noumena, which are things humans can think about but never directly contact. There is a lot of that in Triple O, and also Heidegger's withdrawn reality, withdrawn being, that can never be known directly. Some people accuse Triple O of just rehashing that. But there's a huge difference, which is that objects are impenetrable to each other. Also for Triple O. The usual tendency is to say, "Oh, we poor humans can't reach the in itself. It's our special burden." No. For Triple O, any relation has that aspect. So, in physical causation, is not a direct impact. It's an indirect impact. This brings us into contact with the occasionalist tradition in philosophy, the idea that nothing can affect anything else directly. Graham Harmon: Traditionally, it was thought that God has to bring those things together, which is not part of the Triple O theory. Because, for Triple O, no privileged object can be the locus of relation between all other objects, whether it's God or the human mind. Kant and Hume simply secularize their occasionalism by saying, "Ah, it's not God. It's the human mind. All causation's really happening in the human mind." Either through habit for Hume, or through a category of the mind for Kant. Whereas, for Triple O, no. It has to be local in each case. The way we handle that is with the difference between real and sensual objects. That two real objects can only be mediated by a sensual object. Because things only encounter the images of each other. August: I see. Graham Harmon: [inaudible 00:41:41] itself. Then two sensual objects are only mediated by a real object. Because on my table now there's my sensual scotch tape and my sensual book on the Huns. But they're both connected only through my mind. That's how we get around it. August: We're running out of time. But I thought that was very interesting. Yeah. You talked about the hard problem, mental life and consciousness, and you said that's a problem more broadly. Consciousness in the world, that's a much more broadly than that. Just to give the listeners a sense of the work that one does, there's this diagram with the real object and the real qualities, the sensual object and the sensual qualities. It wouldn't make sense to try to do this in a podcast. But basically you can look at the tensions between these and try to capture them through art or architecture or metaphor. Then there's another concept of a cell, which is, I understand it would be to take three of these and think of it as a milieu, or no? Graham Harmon: Well, you take two, which combine to a third. Yes. There are three in that sense. The idea there is that an architectural cell requires that we not see the human beholder and the artwork as two separate things. Kant [inaudible 00:43:09] wanted to purify the two of each other. For Kant, art is really about our minds. But then Kant's followers in the 20th century, implicit followers like Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, did it the other way. For them, it was the artwork that was important, not the human beholder. This is why they hated all the post-1960s stuff like performance art and conceptual art. They thought it was humanizing the artwork too much. Fried would call it "being too theatrical about the artwork". Whereas, I would say that art is inherently theatrical. It requires a beholder. If all humans are extinct, we don't have any art. We just have a bunch of pieces of canvas hanging in derelict museums. Graham Harmon: Because in order to have art, you need to create that rift between the object and its qualities, which you don't have, unless there's some creature capable of apprehending it. I mean, obviously some animals have aesthetic experience. I don't think there's any evidence of animals appreciating our artworks are artworks yet. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe certain primates understand that paintings are paintings and can appreciate them on some level. I don't know with dolphins. I'd be happy to hear that, but I don't personally know any evidence of that. Certain artworks are made for the human scale and are not intelligible to non-humans, let's say. Maybe all artworks. Maybe most. I don't know the exact percentage. August: I sense that another aspect of this theory is that it's not so human-centric. Graham Harmon: Yes. August: Which is certainly annoying when you look at other theories, and the human capacity is so much different than anyone else's, than any other creature's. Graham Harmon: Right. August: Well, Graham. Professor. It's been great talking to you. I could talk to you for a few hours. What a large amount of work to do to grasp architecture. I realize you've been teaching it and that's helped you say it out loud and get it. But that was quite an adventure to learn all this stuff, I would think Graham Harmon: It is. I would like to always encourage people to realize they can, if not master a field, they can get up to speed in a few years. August: That's what I was really thinking about when I read this. I was like, "I would never think about taking this on because how many library floors are devoted to architecture? And how can one come in, having a PhD in philosophy, and then come in and do that?" Yeah, no. You have a sort of optimism about that, which then becomes real. Graham Harmon: Way to stay young is keep learning new things. Whether it's new languages, or new fields. Keeps your brain active, keeps giving you resistance. And yes, there are endless floors of architecture books I haven't read them all and neither have the professionals in the field. But there are certain key joints in the history of any [inaudible 00:45:53] and you go right for those. Then that creates a space in which you can learn more details all the time, so I'm still checking out. I wrote a book on architecture, yes. But I'm still checking out new architecture books every week from our library trying to learn them. August: Yeah. I thought that your discussion of that show. I guess it was partly Phillip Johnson and someone else who put together that- Graham Harmon: Mark McGee. August: Right. That was, yeah. You could tell that was a real key point, and it really did open everything up. Okay. Great. Well, it's a great book. Congratulations on it. Architecture and Objects: Art After Nature. 2022, I think. Graham Harmon: Yeah. Just published in July. August: Great. Well, it was great talking to you. Appreciate your time very much. Graham Harmon: Thanks, August. I see you have a lot of interesting podcasts on your site. August: I hope so. Graham Harmon: Look forward to catching up on those. August: Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Graham Harmon: Sure. August: I'll talk to you later. Bye.

Stephen A. Marglin (Harvard)

Raising Keynes: A twenty-first-century general theory

Back to the future: a heterodox economist rewrites Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money to serve as the basis for a macroeconomics for the twenty-first century. John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was the most influential economic idea of the twentieth century. But, argues Stephen Marglin, its radical implications were obscured by Keynes's lack of the mathematical tools necessary to argue convincingly that the problem was the market itself, as distinct from myriad sources of friction around its margins.

Marglin fills in the theoretical gaps, revealing the deeper meaning of the General Theory. Drawing on eight decades of discussion and debate since the General Theory was published, as well as on his own research, Marglin substantiates Keynes's intuition that there is no mechanism within a capitalist economy that ensures full employment. Even if deregulating the economy could make it more like the textbook ideal of perfect competition, this would not address the problem that Keynes identified: the potential inadequacy of aggregate demand.

Ordinary citizens have paid a steep price for the distortion of Keynes's message. Fiscal policy has been relegated to emergencies like the Great Recession. Monetary policy has focused unduly on inflation. In both cases the underlying rationale is the false premise that in the long run at least the economy is self-regulating so that fiscal policy is unnecessary and inflation beyond a modest two percent serves no useful purpose.

Fleshing out Keynes's intuition that the problem is not the warts on the body of capitalism but capitalism itself, Raising Keynes provides the foundation for a twenty-first-century macroeconomics that can both respond to crises and guide long-run policy.

Stephen A. Marglin is the Walter Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University. His books include The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community and Growth, Distribution, and Prices. He is a past Guggenheim Fellow and member of the Harvard Society of Fellows.

"Marglin has taken 80 years of neoclassical distortions of Keynes, presented them with great clarity in their own language, and then pounded them into dust, pushing the detritus back into the faces of the high priests of the neoclassical synthesis, the New Keynesians, and the New Classical Economists. Raising Keynes issues a challenge that they would be cowardly to refuse—which is not to suggest that they won't do their best to ignore it."—James K. Galbraith, Project Syndicate

"Stephen Marglin's magnum opus makes a powerful case that we cannot expect the economy to solve its own problems, and that instead economists and policymakers need to put persistent unemployment at the center of their thinking in order to both better understand the economy and to make a stronger case for using fiscal and monetary policy to change it for the better."—Jason Furman, Harvard University, former Chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers

"This is a thought-stimulating reconstruction of John Maynard Keynes's insight that market economies do not automatically gravitate to full-employment equilibrium even if prices are flexible. Stephen Marglin shows, with modern analytical tools and (yet) in an often entertaining style, how normal signal processing leads to real-time adjustments to shocks that can move a competitive economy out of equilibrium in the short run and into a different equilibrium in the long. He succeeds in demonstrating this without invoking all those frictions and imperfections so indispensable to New Keynesians. The book opens a wide array of unorthodox, but well-founded perspectives on past and current issues of economic policy. It is the fruit of life-long research, and it deserves a wide readership."—Hans-Michael Trautwein, University of Oldenburg, Germany

"Raising Keynes is a work of great significance that anyone seriously interested in how capitalism functions and malfunctions should read carefully. Stephen Marglin succeeds in clarifying the central ideas in John Maynard Keynes's revolutionary macroeconomic framework, while also extending and deepening those ideas in important ways, applying the ideas to our contemporary conditions, and also delivering devastating critiques of orthodox macroeconomic theory and practice. The book is also highly accessible for a work of this nature, without skimping at all on technical details—an almost impossible combination to pull off."—Robert Pollin, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Table of Contents

• Notation
• Prologue: What Is This Book About?
• I. Background: The Rise and Fall
  • 1. Introduction: Is This Resurrection Necessary?
  • 2. What Were They Thinking? Economics before The General Theory
• II. Keynes Defeated: Static Models and the Critics
  • 3. The Determination of Output and Employment: First and Second Passes at Equilibrium
    • Appendix 1: Keynes's Definition(s) of Unemployment
    • Appendix 2: Do Interest Rates Adjust Saving and Investment?
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 4. Equilibrium with a Given Money Supply: Critical Perspectives on the Second-Pass Model
    • Mathematical Appendix
• III. Keynes Vindicated: A Theory of Real-Time Changes
  • 5. The Price Mechanism: Gospels According to Marshall and Walras
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 6. The General Theory without Rigid Prices and Wages
    • Appendix: A Brief History of Stationary Real-Price Equilibria
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 7. Dynamics vs. Statics: Can the Economy Get from the Here of Unemployment to the There of Full Employment?
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 8. A Dose of Reality: The Evidence of the Great Depression
    • Appendix: Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz on What Made the Depression Great
    • Mathematical Appendix
• IV. Building Blocks
  • 9. Consumption and Saving
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 10. Investment
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 11. The Theory of Interest, I: Liquidity Preference in a World of Money and Bonds
    • Appendix: Bond Coupons as Insurance against Price Declines
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 12. The Theory of Interest, II: Liquidity Preference as a Theory of Spreads
    • Mathematical Appendix
    • Empirical Appendix: What Do the Data Say?
  • 13. Taking Money Seriously
    • Mathematical Appendix
• V. Fiscal Policy in Theory and Practice
  • 14. Functional Finance and the Stabilization of Aggregate Demand
  • 15. Did the Obama Stimulus Work?
    • Empirical Appendix: Regressions and Their Discontents
  • 16. Functional Finance and the Composition of Aggregate Demand
    • Appendix 1: Sound Finance as Starving the Beast
    • Appendix 2: The Empirics of Debt Sustainability
    • Appendix 3: Are Government Bonds Private Wealth? And What Difference Does It Make for the Sustainability of the Debt?
    • Mathematical Appendix
• VI. Keynes in the Long Run
  • 17. First Steps into the Long Run: Harrod, Domar, Solow, and Robinson
    • Appendix: Inventory Accumulation as a Brake on Output
  • 18. Keynes in the Long Run: A Theory of Wages, Prices, and Employment
    • Mathematical Appendix
  • 19. Inflation and Employment Empirics in the Keynesian Long Run
• Epilogue: Attack Them in Their Citadel
• Notes
• References
• Acknowledgments
• Index

TRANSCRIPT Speaker 1: I once attended lectures that Duncan Foley was getting on a book called Growth Distribution and Prices, which was a great experience. I was fascinated by the book and partly because of Duncan's enthusiasm for the book, and that was written by Stephen A. Marglin, and today I have the great privilege of speaking Stephen Marglin about his newest book, which is Raising Keynes:, K-E-Y-N-E-S, Twenty-First Century General Theory, Harvard University Press 2021. Duncan referred to the Growth Distribution and Prices, as a tour to force, and I think this is another tour to force. Thank you for joining me. I should to give your status, your past Guggenheim fellow and member of the Harvard Society of Fellows. Steve A. Marglin is the Walter Barker professor of economics at Harvard University. Welcome Steve. Stephen Marglin: Thank you very much [inaudible 00:01:18] Appreciate the opportunity. Speaker 1: So how did this book come about? Stephen Marglin: Good question. So, as you indicated, the earlier book dealt tangentially with Keynes and I'm a little embarrassed now I XX think back about how little I really knew about Keynes at that time, the book wasn't about Keynes, so I guess it was more forgivable. I've been interested in Keynes and Keynes's theory and the distortions of Keynes theory and the evolution of theory since I was an undergraduate, which was in the 1950s. So off and on, I've done various things along these lines, including giving a course at Harvard, the early part of this century or the late part of the last century maybe, I think it actually straddled the turn of the century, and finally giving that up for lack of interest, not on my part, but on the students' part, there just wasn't much interest in Keynes. So I decided I had other projects and that sure, I could continue my own interest in Keynes, but I wasn't going to inflict it on an unwilling audience. Stephen Marglin: So I did turn to other things and that included giving an undergraduate course, an alternative deck 10 as we call it, EC 101 is often generically referred to and I was coming back from a lecture in that course on September 15th, 2008, the day that Lehman brothers crashed or they crashed on the weekend, but this was when the stuff hit the fan, and in the foyer of the Littauer Building, the home of the Harvard Economics department, there was a group of younger professors discussing, "Well, what are the consequences? What's likely to happen as a result of this financial debacle?" And I kind of eavesdropped. I didn't participate, I eavesdropped and tried to see what the currents were and this was group of economists, so there were different opinions to be sure, but I came away from that conversation with two conclusions. Stephen Marglin: One, that the weight of that group was that it wasn't going to have a big effect. This was a financial crisis, the real economy was in pretty good shape. Yes, we were in a recession, but the real problem were elsewhere, and this would write itself pretty quickly. That was conclusion one. Conclusion two was that Keynes's moment had come back, that there was going to be a reason why people would be interested in Keynes. Things were not going to be as rosy as the weight of opinion was. Stephen Marglin: So I decided that being, having just finished book called The Dismal Science, on the problems of economics as a social science and as an intellectual endeavor that leaves totally out of the picture community and just finished that I was ready for another project. And I thought, "Well, this is a time summarize my interpretation of Keynes and put it out there for the public." Stephen Marglin: I thought that this was a project that was going to take two years at the outside because I thought I knew what I wanted to say. Well, I discovered after two years that I was still learning what I wanted to say. I was learning a lot, but it was a moderately slow process and I think it took me three or four years to figure out really what I wanted to write and then another four or five years to write it. So the book was over 10 years in preparation. So the impetus, you could say the final cause was the crash of 2008 and the reaction of the economics profession to it. Speaker 1: And this came out in 2021, the pandemic economy. This is also extremely pertinent for that. Stephen Marglin: Well, I was putting the finishing touches because everything was slowed down cause of the pandemic. I was putting the finishing touches of this book in the spring of 2020, the pandemic had just started. Was I going to revise it? And I thought, "Geez, if I start revising now there's going to be no end to it." So there's really nothing about the pandemic. Speaker 1: I understand that. Stephen Marglin: In fact the only reference to pandemic or anything like it is with regard, I think, to the Black Death, if I remember. I do think it's relevant, the issues that have come up since the pandemic, but curiously, in a way, it's World War II and it's aftermath, which I think is most relevant to the pandemic and it's aftermath in terms the economic consequences. Speaker 1: Interesting. Well, I think heard... Well, a lot of people have said this, but I guess it was Lucas who we trace it back to, that there are no laissez-faire people, I guess, in a foxhole. Stephen Marglin: Well, you said there are no atheists in a foxhole actually. No. He said... No, no. He said, yes, what did he say? Speaker 1: We're all [inaudible 00:07:05] in a foxhole or something like Stephen Marglin: Something like that, yes. I used this phrase in a response to an interview Lamond and the question were in French and my answers were in English when they were going to translate this, at which they did, into French, they didn't have a clue what this meant because the foxhole in French, the first definition is the hole to which a fox goes. Speaker 1: Of course there are no- Stephen Marglin: And I had to straighten that out for them. Speaker 1: Right. Stephen Marglin: But yes, he did say that. And then he qualified that statement by saying, "I don't think we're there yet," or something to that effect, but yeah, there was a kind of 10 minute period. I think it wasn't on the day of Lehman Brothers crash, but when things started to unfold and it's clear that this was going to be a much more consequential event than people had anticipated on September 14th or September 12th and there was a kind of a 10 minute moment when I think the economics profession was bewildered and open to new ideas, but the ranks closed pretty quickly. Speaker 1: Did they? Okay. You've returned to teaching this to undergrads? Stephen Marglin: I did. I started teaching it not the next year, but I think maybe in 2011 and I taught it all the way through the writing process. I'm teaching a slightly different version of it now, which is a seminar based thing in which I want to explore with undergraduates, the possibilities of further research and what kinds of topics and emerge from this book that people might do research on. I don't know how that will go. We start classes day after tomorrow. So if we come back and talk again in a couple weeks, I might have a better fix on that or a couple of months, probably even better. Speaker 1: Right. Well, were the undergraduates more interested in the course while you were writing the book as opposed to when you were teaching Keynes before? Stephen Marglin: Yes. It wasn't the kind of mass turnout that I hoped and feared because I didn't want to teach a large class, but I would've been gratified by the interest, but certainly there was a sustained interest. I think the average turnout was, and this is of course an upper class elective that nobody has to take and I think it ran normally between 10 and 20. So that that's not a bad turnout for this kind of course. Stephen Marglin: It was very heavy reading and I'm just reminded by my TF, that the reading for this semester is much more than undergraduate courses normally happening. So it was a good turnout and certainly in terms of engagement, I felt that a number of the students really engaged in the material and accomplished what I wanted to do, was to get them to rethink everything they had thought they knew about economics. Speaker 1: Absolutely. It does a great job of that. I kind of felt like it was a textbook. Well, it's a lot of different things. It's a textbook and it's a book on theory. I think that in economics, maybe in other fields, if you say something is a textbook, that's kind of a put down, but in economics, textbooks are very important. Stephen Marglin: And it is, as you say, it doesn't fit neatly into any category. I wouldn't categorize it first and foremost as a textbook, that` I hope it will be used as such. I may have some illusions about how accessible it is to undergraduates. I think the fact that there was a course that went along with the book made it much easier to get the ideas across, but it's written purposely with the mathematics all put in separate compartments so that people with really a minimum of math can follow the argument, though I certainly wouldn't claim it's bedtime reading. Speaker 1: Correct. Yeah, no, as I was reading it has a very economics feel. It's models and it starts with one model and then layers another on top and then goes back, layers another on top and it requires real focus and it uses a lot of graphs, which we're used to in economics as sort of an idea a way of getting the intuition. Stephen Marglin: That's something does come out of teaching it and teaching it as I was going along because if I'm not going to use mathematics, which is the normal way of presenting this kind of material nowadays, what are the aids that I can use to get ideas across and graphs seem to work. I don't know how it would was for you or how be for others to read it on their own without- Speaker 1: A course Stephen Marglin: ... a course, but the aim was to make it accessible to people who wanted to put in the effort. Speaker 1: That's absolutely right. Yeah, I was saying I for the first time in my life understood ISLM from one of your graphs. Stephen Marglin: Which is a step along the way. It's not the... Speaker 1: No, it is- Stephen Marglin: [inaudible 00:12:58] Speaker 1: ... and it shows how much of a mere step along the way it is. Right. Stephen Marglin: Yeah and of course I had to relearn ISLM. That was one of the things I figured out along the way. I thought I knew what it was, but I realized I hadn't understand either how Hicks meant it or how it had evolved into what it is in the textbooks, how it ought to be used. Speaker 1: Yes. So if we think about, as you say, the fall and rise of Keynes, I wasn't very interested in your explaining how Keynes was interpreted. So if you read the general theory, it doesn't read like a piece of economics today. Stephen Marglin: No. Speaker 1: And then the people- Stephen Marglin: There's a [inaudible 00:13:47]- Speaker 1: Go ahead. Stephen Marglin: ... divide between the kind of economics that Keynes knew, believed in, wrote. Speaker 1: Right. Stephen Marglin: This is not due to Keynes. This was in the works. The younger generation was learning a whole new mode, which they then tried to apply to Keynes. Speaker 1: Right and- Stephen Marglin: It was never an easy book to read for anybody, but for the present generation, it just seems like it's- Speaker 1: You can't make heads or tails of it. Yeah. Stephen Marglin: Yeah. Speaker 1: So then I love this section of your book with friends like Modigliani, which is part of, I guess, what you had to go through and recreate is Keynes's, this inscrutable book, how was it converted into a modern model and what did it miss? Stephen Marglin: Right, that was one of the tasks I learned. I really hadn't understood any of that and I had to reconstruct it. So I leapt ahead myself and was thinking in the dynamic terms that I actually end up presenting, amending, however you put it, Keynes, and I didn't have the understanding of what Keynes was up to and what it then became in the hands of the next generation, both friendly and unfriendly critics. Speaker 1: Right. Now one of the things is you point out that Keynes did not have the math available to him, even if he had wanted to capture his insights. Tell us about what math that was. Stephen Marglin: Well, it's basically the mathematics of differential equations and it's not that it didn't exist, but it was just being mobilized by younger economists in the 1930s and to me, what interesting mysterious, if you will, question is not why didn't Keynes deploy this mathematics, which he didn't have, but why didn't the next generation deploy it, which they had it, but they didn't deploy it... Well, haltingly and fitfully in the 19-late sixties, early seventies, but by then the currents were flowing in a different direction and those got sidetracked and it was not picked up by the third generation, if you will. Stephen Marglin: The second generation was Samuelson, Tobin, Solo, just to mention three who Modigliani himself, just now four who won Nobel prizes, I wouldn't say that it stopped contributing to economics, that's certainly not true, but they were not the up and coming generation. The up and coming generation was Lucas, Sergeant, Kidman, et cetera, the rational expectations, new classical, the economics, if you will, of neoliberalism. Speaker 1: Now you mentioned a book by Frank Fisher on this general topic or on the- Stephen Marglin: Well, on the general topic of adjustment out of equilibrium, not really on Keynes. Speaker 1: Oh, no. Right. Stephen Marglin: Yeah, it sunk like a stone. Fisher was a very bright MIT economist and who did many, many things and this was one that was never picked up on. Speaker 1: Right. So what would you say in terms of Fisher's... Fisher was looking at the Disequilibrium Foundations of Equilibrium Economics. Could you say something about that? How- Stephen Marglin: He was looking at what is the key question. We have this concept of equilibrium and we have a lot of theorems about equilibrium and so forth, which leaves totally unasked, not to mention unanswered, well, what happens when you're not an equilibrium? Fisher tried to come to terms with that in terms of the same high theory that had been applied to equilibrium analysis, and he had some very interesting things to say, but as I said, nobody picked up on it. Stephen Marglin: I've always found very interesting the candid comment of the authors of one of the leading textbooks of graduate economic theory, which it's called Microeconomic Theory and the authors are three emanate economists, Mas-Colell, Green and Winston and that book has been the kind of... A, if not standard graduate text, since it was published in the nineties, and it's about a thousand pages, about the same length as mine, but it was very dense mathematics, 990 of which are devoted to the analysis of equilibrium and about 10 pages to dynamics, that is what happens outside of equilibrium. And the authors are very clear about this. They say, "Well, we know a lot about equilibrium. We have a lot of good theory about equilibrium. We don't know much about disequilibrium, so we won't say anything about it," which has always struck me about as akin to the joke about the drunk and the lamppost who's looking for his lost car keys and he is looking under the lamppost because there's light there, not because he thinks the keys are there. Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I remember a textbook Crepes on game theory, where it in the textbook, I think he pointed out that we have these concepts of equilibrium, but we don't actually think that that's what we observe. We don't actually observe empirically the equilibrium predicted in Nash or whatever. I guess that the response would be that this is about modeling. Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you about this anyway, but economics, we see this world, which is just so complex, and things going up and down and many people happy and many people unhappy, and as I think about economics the idea is a great economist will pick out some simplifying assumptions, and then work through a model which captures some insight, but the assumptions aren't necessarily simplifying, they're not accurate. Stephen Marglin: Absolutely. Speaker 1: So it raises the question of how do we judge our assumptions? One could say, "Well, it's the lamppost, but we don't really have a good grasp on disequilibrium, so we'll do the best, we'll use equilibrium and that'll be our simplifying assumption," in a sense. That might be the response. Stephen Marglin: Yeah, but it turns out that is my judgment and I offer Raising Keynes as the defense of my judgment. That's not a very useful assumption for understanding the macroeconomic fluctuations, depression, growth, the things we really... are not the only things we're interested in, but among the top 10 of what we're actually interested in about how the economy functions. Stephen Marglin: So I agree with you completely. All modeling involves some simplifications, mine certainly does and the question is, are those simplifying assumptions appropriate to what the questions are at issue. So in terms of what are the questions at issue, I think the overarching question, the Keynes theoretical question is, is there a self regulating mechanism in a capitalist economy which produces an efficient allocation of resources, provided there are no, what I call warts on the body of capitalism, that is imperfections like monopoly, oligopoly, trade unions, government intervention, et cetera. Stephen Marglin: So the idealization is an economy of small agents with no power to set prices, but are responding to markets, et cetera and the argument is that in that economy, the mainstream argument before Keynes and today was and is that there is a self regulating mechanism, vaguely speaking, Adam Smith's invisible hand, that produces an efficient allocation of resources, including and chiefly, full employment, that is a job for every willing worker. Corollary to that is, "Well, if you observe unemployment, it must be because of some imperfection in the economy, some wart on the body of capitalism and that leads then to a policy stance, which is excise the warts." Stephen Marglin: And this is not just theory because this was the theory behind the move towards deregulation that started, not with Ronald Reagan, as it's usually often... Well, not usually, but often associated, but with Jimmy Carter. So it was a bipartisan effort with the backing of the new classical economics that was taking over in the 1970s and 1980s and culminated in the financial deregulation of the late 1990s under, not Ronald Reagan or George Bush, but Bill Clinton. Stephen Marglin: I think arguably that was certainly one of the contributing causes to the great recession of 2008, with its long recovery period. We didn't really recover from that recession to the end of the Obama administration. Stephen Marglin: So these are not just... You we'd say, "Well, it's what difference does it make? We know the world is not perfectly competitive. We know they are always imperfection, so why are we interested in analyzing an economy where a model, it's not an economy, it's the model of an economy in which the warts have been removed?" And I think the clear answer is because it's that model which has produced very bad policies of laissez-faire and deregulation based on the idea that the economy isn't self-regulated. Speaker 1: Right. And I think if you looked at AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, it also, I think, was counter to this laissez-faire viewpoint and it was also acts during Clinton. Stephen Marglin: That's exactly right. Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah. Speaker 1: So I know quite a few young people who are not economists, and I think that if they were to hear that this was a alternative economics book or approach and that it was dealing with unemployment, they would say, "Oh, okay, well then you're talking about racism and domination by capitalists of people who are not like them, and as the..." at least these are the young people that I speak to, "this shows the Smith of rugged individualism and it's all wrong and people need to be nicer to each other," and they would be surprised to hear that in an alternative course is not one about racism or capitalist domination. Stephen Marglin: Well, if I were giving my introductory course that I gave in the early years of the century, this would be one piece of it and not the whole course and all the things that you mentioned would figure certainly in that course, I don't know, I'm not pretending this is the whole story. Speaker 1: Gotcha. Stephen Marglin: I think the mainstream would say, "Well, racism is a wart of the body of capitalism. We're not racists and we're against racism and we want racism removed, and if we can succeed, it's not an economic issue, it's a..." Famously the Nobel prize winner, Gary Becker attributed racism to a taste for discrimination. If we can just get people's tastes to be a little better, then we can eliminate discrimination. So yeah, this is not my textbook on economics, this Raising Keynes. Speaker 1: I gotcha. I understand. And it shares a lot... In a sense it's making its job difficult because it wants to show enduring unemployment without any of those things. Stephen Marglin: Exactly. Speaker 1: Right. So I was thinking about how is this the same and how is it different than... I was thinking about comparing your text to an advanced undergrad, or graduate textbook. You're taking this model approach, this very precise approach where you lay out your assumptions very clearly and you work them through, you've got individual decision making organized around and the economy is driven a lot by profit maximization? Stephen Marglin: No. Speaker 1: And you have different layers of models. I don't know what else is similar, but then if we start to think about the differences, I have a list of them too, but why don't you tell us. If I missed any of the similarities and also we can start talking about some of the differences. Stephen Marglin: Well, no, I think it may be even more, it's not mathematical, but more careful in terms of letting of assumptions and so forth than other books. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Stephen Marglin: So I plead guilty to that. Speaker 1: I agree with you. Stephen Marglin: But I mean the differences, I think the main theoretical difference is that I recognize the problems caused by super imposing Keynes' novel idea, which is that, we can get into why this case, but that this new concept that he introduces of aggregate demand, why that matters and why it complicates things enormously and why it necessitates a whole different method, which is not starting from equilibrium, but starting from the processes that work when the economy is not in equilibrium and in a sense, asking the question, "Well, do these processes lead to an equilibrium? If so, what kind of equilibrium? how is it different from the standard equilibrium that is studied in a framework which doesn't take account of the processes at work?" Stephen Marglin: So those are all the theoretical questions of a general nature and then I do get into some of the more nitty gritty of Keynes' assumptions, especially about how interest rates are [inaudible 00:30:18] and how consumption is determined and how investment is determined, where I'm basically following as much as I can Keynes, but at certain points, argue that Keynes didn't get it right and got wrong and here's what we have to do to get it right. Speaker 1: Exactly. Stephen Marglin: And then there are places where I think it's important to try to bring in data and real experience in order to actually test how useful these theories are. Are they conclusive tests? No, I wouldn't argue that, but I think they're very rarely the case that an empirical test in economics is conclusive. Speaker 1: I gree with that. I would agree with that, yes. And the way that this plays out is the model is more dynamic than comparative statics so- Stephen Marglin: Because it's looking at the processes. Speaker 1: Exactly. So if our listeners aren't familiar, how would you describe the orthodox approach to change, which is really comparative statics? Stephen Marglin: Well, I can describe because I did it myself for many years and it's a useful product, it's useful technique. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Stephen Marglin: But you have to understand its limits. What is the technique? Well, for example, here's a critical question for Keynes and for Keynesians and for anti Keynesians, what is the consequence of a change in wages? What happens if wages change because the argument that started... Well, I don't think it started there, but certainly prominent in the great depression and the analysis of the great depression was that, well, wages are too high. If only wages would fall, then everything would be okay. We would be back to the nirvana of full employment and all would be well. How does the mainstream analyze a fall in wages? Stephen Marglin: What they do is they set up two universes. Universe A is the same as universe B, except in universe A, the wage rate, now this is a simplification of just one wage rate, the wage rate is $20 per hour in universe B the wage rate is $15 an hour. So the analysis then looks at how much employment and how far are we from full employment in those two universes? Speaker 1: That works out an equilibrium in both cases. Stephen Marglin: Works out an equilibrium. That equilibrium in each universe is completely static. Universe A is totally unchanging. Universe B is totally unchanging [inaudible 00:33:27] time. Speaker 1: Exactly. Stephen Marglin: If you want to look at change, you do interplanetary travel. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. Stephen Marglin: You get on a spaceship and you go from universe A to universe B and that's how you analyze change and the argument is, "Well, if you have enough universes with different wages in them, one of them will have full employment." Well, that's a very different argument, actually, from what it means in everyday language to ask the question, "What happens if the wage falls from $20 to $15?" Speaker 1: Right. We want a narrative, something continuous. Stephen Marglin: Well, yeah, and something that's taking place in real time. And it's a different question with a different answer. And Keynes was asking, I think that's the question that people were interested in, the second question, but the analysis of economists was all about the first question and it gave the wrong answer to the second question. So that's why you need a framework in which you actually trace through the consequences of the wage being today $20 and tomorrow being $15 six months from now or whatever. Speaker 1: Right. Stephen Marglin: That's the fundamental difference in framework between analyzing real time changes and comparative static. Now, does that mean comparative static is useless? Speaker 1: I understand. Stephen Marglin: No, it's a very useful technique, but you got to know what questions it is useful for and why it's not useful for the particular question of, "If the wage is $20 today and we lower that to $15 tomorrow, what will be the consequences for employment?" Speaker 1: Right. Partly because the path will determine where you end up. Stephen Marglin: The path will determine where you end up. People start today with debts that they incurred on a basis of a $20 wage and now they're being asked to pay those debts with a wage which hasn't changed between today and tomorrow, but they're being asked to pay those debts with a $15 wage. So all kinds of things change and they do affect the outcome and more important, not just theoretically, that's what happened in the great depression, which was the occasion for Keynes to rethink his own ideas and to write the general theory. Speaker 1: I think another way to say this or another level of dynamic versus static, is to say that your models are "overdetermined," that there are more equations than unknowns? Stephen Marglin: Well, that's what causes the problem in the first place. When you introduce this concept of aggregate demand, you're adding one more equation without any more variables, so you can't even apply the static analysis. You can't apply it in the same old way anyway, so you're driven, in my view, to a dynamic analysis, but even if it was some way of resolving that as- Speaker 1: Modigliani. Stephen Marglin: Yes, that still doesn't get you off the hook because there's all these issues as to why a change in real time is not the same as a change between universes. Speaker 1: Right. So you say this is page... Well, I don't know the page number, I've written down, but I can't read it. "Keynes' is critical endeavor was to establish that a perfectly competitive market system would not normally provide full employment if left to its own devices." Speaker 1: We chatted a bit about this on email. One of the things about you're being very honest about what you're doing here, that sounds like Keynes already knows what he wants to show, and it has a political charge to it, and he's now getting a model or a way of thinking which explains something that he believes politically. So you might say it's ideological and you might think there's something wrong about that. Stephen Marglin: I'm with you all the way to, "There's something wrong about it." I think that we all have ideology. We tempted to say, "You have ideology, I have truth," but we all have ideology because there's always these things that we can't prove and we have intuitions about and we have beliefs about, and we have views about, but we can't prove them logically because in some cases they may be unprovable, and in some cases we just haven't got there yet, but we need to act in any case. So in that sense, we all have ideology. And with Schumpeter, Keynes's rival, as it were, certainly saw himself as Keynes' rival, I'm not sure that Keynes returned the favor, but Schumpeter was a great economist and is, like Keynes, going through cycles and I think his stock is on the upturn now. Speaker 1: Is it? Okay. Stephen Marglin: And deservedly so. I think he was very good economist with a lot important things to say. Speaker 1: A lot about dynamics. Stephen Marglin: Yeah, and one of the things he said was he has this two part, I would say there's really a three part division, but it doesn't matter. There's what he calls the pre-analytic vision, which he rants is, one might say, I would not, and I hope you would not, say tainted by ideology, but which is ideological in part. And then the theory is what elaborate in order to work out that vision and I think a good economist, you try to separate that theory from the vision in the sense that you want it to survive and you want to be able to argue it to people who don't share your pre-analytic vision. Stephen Marglin: So I think that's what Keynes was doing. He had this vision, this intuition, if you will, that, and this was hard come by, because as he says himself, he was brought up in this old school and the hard part for him was getting rid of the old ideas, which didn't allow for long term unemployment or any departures that were more than momentary from full employment and there he was faced like the rest of the world with the Great Depression and what do you make of it? And he rethought his vision, and then, as you say, I think was groping for the model and it took him several years, much less than 10 years I took on Raising Keynes, but it took him several years to figure out the theory, and it's an unanswerable question. Stephen Marglin: Keynes only survived 10 years after the publication, the General Theory, much of that time he was ill, the rest of it, basically, most of it, was World War II and he was absorbed in practical issues of British policy in the war, but it's an interesting question. If he had survived another 10 years, what he would've made of the General Theory and what a second edition of the General Theory might have looked like. We don't know that. Speaker 1: Yeah. I think my understanding is that there's a sense in which Keynes gave his life to the public good, in the sense that he was at Bretton Woods when he was very ill and he died just after that. Stephen Marglin: Yeah, he died in spring of '46. So yeah, he was very ill by then and he'd been ill really since I think '38, is when he was first hospitalized and there are pictures of him in the [inaudible 00:41:49] period. He had a heart condition and there are pictures of him smoking cigarettes. Speaker 1: Right. Oh, it just kills you. Stephen Marglin: And [inaudible 00:41:58] they didn't know. Speaker 1: Right, I know. Yeah, the famous picture of the Tour de France, where the guys were smoking on their bike. Well, you talked about, he needed to get rid of his old ideas and I think my impression of this book is that I think that many times, to me, the left can just criticize, criticize, criticize, or attack, attack, attack. Speaker 1: What's not done so much or so effectively is constructing an alternative model, and I think that this book does a great job of working through showing the flaws in the way that one has been brought up thinking in economics and building another approach or the start of another approach, not just attacking, but building up an alternative approach, which I think it's very exciting. And congratulations. I think the main reason to read it would be that you find it interesting, which is what I did, but it also, I'm hoping that it does serve as a springboard. Thank you so much, Steve. Stephen Marglin: Well, thank you very much and thank you for the compliment at the end, because that's exactly what I was trying to do and I'm glad I succeeded at least with one reader. I do hope that it is the start of something. It is meant to be that and I hope it does serve that purpose. So thank you very much for this opportunity to talk about it with you. Speaker 1: The pleasure of mine and you're welcome. Thanks so much. Okay. Bye Steve.

Claudia Melica (Sapienza Università di Roma)

The Owl's flight: Hegel's legacy to contemporary philosophy

co-editors: Stefania Achella (Chieti-Pescara), Francesca Iannelli (Roma Tre), Gabriella Baptist (Cagliari), Serena Feloj (Pavia), and Fiorinda Li Vigni (Italian Institute for Philosophic Studies)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110709278

This book presents a unique rethinking of G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy from unusual and controversial perspectives in order to liberate new energies from his philosophy. The role Hegel ascribes to women in the shaping of society and family, the reconstruction of his anthropological and psychological perspective, his approach to human nature, the relationship between mental illness and social disease, the role of the unconscious, and the relevance of intercultural and interreligious pathways: All these themes reveal new and inspiring aspects of Hegel's thought for our time.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110709278/html

Contents

OVERVIEW Editors' Introduction. The Owl's Flight. Hegel's Legacy in a Different Voice Stefania Achella, Francesca Iannelli, Gabriella Baptist, Serena Feloj, Fiorinda Li Vigni and Claudia Melica

INTRODUCTION Hegel's Theory of Absolute Spirit as Aesthetic Theory Birgit Sandkaulen

SECTION 1 THE NIGHT OF REASON The Dark Side of Thought. The Body, the Unconscious and Madness in Hegel's Philosophy Stefania Achella

The Feminine in Hegel. Between Tragedy and Magic Rossella Bonito Oliva

A Plastic Anthropology? Dialectics and Neuroscience in Catherine Malabou's Thought Federica Pitillo

Maternal Consciousness and Recognition in the Anthropology of Hegel Laura Paulizzi

The Rise of Human Freedom in Hegel's Anthropology Carmen Belmonte

Seele, Verrücktheit, Intersubjektivität. Einige Überlegungen zu Hegels Anthropologie Giovanni Andreozzi

Die Behandlung der psychischen Störung. Hegel und Pinel gegen die De-Humanisierung der Geisteskranken Giulia Battistoni

Verrücktheit und Idealisierung. Wachen, Schlaf, Traum in Hegels Philosophie des Geistes Mariannina Failla

Im wachen Zustand träumen. Der Einfluss der Gefühle auf die Entstehung psychischer Krankheiten Caterina Maurer

Dialectics of Madness: Foucault, Hegel, and the Opening of the Speculative Alice Giuliani

SECTION 2 WOMEN FOR AND AGAINST HEGEL Hegel's Master and Servant Dialectics in the Feminist Debate Serena Feloj

Giving an Account of Precarious Life and Vulnerability. Antigone's Wisdom after Hegel. Nuria Sánchez Madrid

"Men and women are wonderfully alike after all". The Practical Adaption of Hegel by Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911). Andreas Giesbert

Simone de Beauvoir Reading Hegel. The Master-Slave Dialectic. Mara Montanaro and Matthieu Renault

Irigaray as a Reader of Hegel. The Feminine as a Marginal Presence. Viola Carofalo

Domination and Exploitation. Feminist Views on the Relational Subject. Federica Giardini

Subversion without Subject? Criticism of the Dissolution of Nature and I-Identity in Performativity. Carolyn Iselt

Considerations on the Female Body between Political Theory and Feminism. The Rehabilitation of Hegel? Nunzia Cosmo

Reading Hegel on Women and Laughing. Hegel against or with Women/Other? Sevgi Doğan

SECTION 3 FEMALE CHARACTERS IN HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY

Hegel's Constellation of the Feminine between Philosophy and Life. A Tribute to Dieter Henrich's Konstellationsforschung. Francesca Iannelli

Von Antigone zur anständigen Frau. Hegels Frauenbild im Spannungsfeld zwischen der Phänomenologie des Geistes und der Rechtsphilosophie von 1820. Erzsébet Rózsa

„Der Stand der Frau − Hausfrau". Hegels Affirmation der bürgerlichen Geschlechterverhältnisse. Dieter Hüning

Antigone and the Phenomenology of Spirit. Between Literary Source (vv. 925–928) and Philosophical Reading. Eleonora Caramelli

The Feminist Potential of Hegel's Tragic Heroines. Rachel Falkenstern

Welches Recht ist gerecht? ‚Sittlichkeit' und ‚Gerechtigkeit' in Hegels Deutung der Antigone. Wenjun Niu

Antigone's Guilt. Reading Antigone with Hegel and Butler. Yuka Okazaki

Die Tochter der Nacht: „Nemesis" im Maß. Das Maßlose und die absolute Indifferenz in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik. Misa Sanada

Die mütterliche Seite der Dreieinigkeit an einer Stelle der Phänomenologie des Geistes. Pierluigi Valenza

The Sphinx and Hegel's Philosophy of History. On the Philosophical Riddle. Luis Antonio Velasco Guzmán

SECTION 4 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND HEGEL: SUBVERSION OR CONCILIATION?

Subversion or Conciliation? The Challenges of Hegel's Legacy. Gabriella Baptist

Hegels Relevanz für den heutigen Diskurs zu „Gemeinschaft/Community" Herta Nagl-Docekal

The Work of Man and the End-of-History. Hegel Transfigured by Kojève's Thought. Luisa Sampugnaro

Subjects of Desire and Law Hypothesis on Kojève's Hegel. Claudia Cimmarusti

Der Andere in der Begierde. Kojèves Hegelianismus und dessen Einfluss auf die französische Philosophie. Yufang Yang

Kreis und Ellipse Adornos Kritik an Hegel. Mauro Bozzetti

The Hegelian Influence in Adorno's Construction of the Idea of Nature. Miriam Rodríguez Moran

Difference and Affirmation. Deleuze against Hegel. Daniela Angelucci

WO-MAN DIFFÉRANCE (I): Figuras indecidibles. Sexual Difference and Gender (Hegel read by Heidegger, read by Derrida, read by Cixous, read by Butler … et ainsi de suite) Francisco José López Serrano

The Logic of Remains in Derrida. Pablo B. Sánchez Gómez

With Portia in the Passage towards Philosophy. The Place of Translation in Hegel's System. Elena Nardelli

Reading Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. A Feminist Issue. Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod

SECTION 5 RE-THINKING THE ABSOLUTE SPIRIT

Suggestions on a Re-interpretation of Hegel's Philosophy of Absolute Spirit. Stefania Achella, Francesca Iannelli, Gabriella Baptist and Claudia Melica

Friendship and Religion. Some Missing Elements in Hegel's Conception of "Lordship and Bondage" Myriam Bienenstock

„Das Lob der Frauen". Hegel und das ästhetische Ideal Schillers Mariafilomena Anzalone

The Reins of the Inconceivable. Contemporary Echoes of Hegel's Theory on Symbolic Art: Interpreting Kapoor's Art between Danto, Mitchell and Gadamer. Riccardo Malaspina

Philosophy and the End of Art. Hegel in Danto's View. Francesco Lesce

Judaism as the Other of Greek-Christian Civilization. Samuel Hirsch, Franz Rosenzweig, and Ernst Cassirer on Hegel's Religionsphilosophie. Irene Kajon

Von Homer bis Hegel. Die Konzeption der Geschichte in Homer und der ‚Traum des Hades' als vorstrukturierte Lesart der Hegelschen spekulativen Philosophie. Giuseppa Bella

Hegel's Thought in Egypt. The "East", Islam, and the Course of History. Lorella Ventura

The "Feminine". A Breach in the Absolute Levinasian Anti-idealism. Giorgia Vasari

CONCLUSION

Critique, Refutation, Appropriation: Strategies of Hegel's Dialectic. Angelica Nuzzo

TRANSCRIPT: AUGUST BAKER INTERVIEW TO CLAUDIA MELICA

August Baker:

Welcome to Philosophy Podcasts, where we interview leading philosophers about their recent work. We're based in the US, but we're reaching across the Atlantic to get a perspective from Europe and specifically Italy. We're talking about a book with a lot of great ideas and very inspiring and productive ideas. It's called The Owl's Flight and the subtitle is: Hegel's Legacy to Contemporary Philosophy. It's edited by six Italian women philosophers, and I'm delighted that one of them has joined me today to talk about the volume. I'm speaking to Claudia Melica. Her blurb says she's qualified as an associate Professor in Moral Philosophy and in History of Philosophy. She was affiliated with Sapienza University of Rome, University of Trento, and I.I.S.F. (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi filosofici, Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies) in Naples. Welcome, Claudia. Claudia Melica:

Oh, thank you very much for taking me in your podcast and to take our books in your podcast. August Baker:

It's a great pleasure. I want to thank you for doing this interview in English, because if we tried to do it in Italian, I would not be able to do it. I know that your ideas would probably come most naturally in Italian to you and be willing to express them in English, I really appreciate that. Let's start with Hegel. I think my overview would be that on one hand, Hegel's very important in the 20th century. He was thought of as the founder or the intellectual precursor both to Marx as a man to bourgeois liberalism. On the other hand, there was a lot of criticism of Hegel in the 20th century. And my sense, please, correct me if I'm wrong, is that there's more of an embrace of Hegel in the beginning of the 21st century.

Claudia Melica:

You are perfectly right. This is really a good point. But before speaking about Marx or Marxism, we should, perhaps, briefly mention one of the points of why Marx appreciated very much the Hegelian dialectical method. For Marx, such a method was able to show the contradiction implicit within history. And in Marx's opinion, such Hegelian dialectic gave a lot of importance to the so-called "negative" or "opposite", which Marx later will call it "alienation". Well, for Marx, this is a condition for the poor workers in a so-called "capitalistic society". Therefore, for Marx, the worker identifies himself with his job and with the object that he produces, but, in a certain way, he will lose his independence, his autonomy.

Claudia Melica:

This was clearly mentioned in some passages of the Phenomenology of Spirit, especially in chapter four, by Hegel. But Marx added that: because we are in a capitalistic society, there will certainly be someone who will profit economically from the job of those so-called "poor workers". So, very shortly, certainly Marx and Marxist grounded on Hegel, but then they moved in a totally different direction, in the so-called historical "materialism". It's certainly true, as you mentioned it, that also Hegel was the source for the so-called "bourgeois liberalism", which is totally opposite from, in general, the Marxist view. Because of the Marxist view, it's more a collective idea. Let's call it like that in a very simple way.

Claudia Melica:

And when you speak about "bourgeois liberalism", you push the concept a lot in the direction of "individualism". Anyway, Hegel was able in his philosophy to recognize that the subject has got its autonomous value. Obviously, there is a risk for individualism, private purposes, and that's why we speak and we add the term, which is not simply an adjective "bourgeoisie". Because, if in one way, it eliminates the action of the State, of the Government; on the other side, the risk is that the competition between different individual beings and, especially, in an organized society [will be that] only the bourgeoisie [will] profit of the work of the Other. That is why such liberalism could be dangerous. Claudia Melica:

Today, we assist at a re-thinking of such a concept, because the market and politics push over a lot [in such a direction] and there are a lot of difficulties in the so-called "social justice". Rawls' studies investigated very deeply such topics. Anyway, our volume has not taken into consideration such a point of view. Therefore, it's not analyzing which influence has got Hegel on Marx or which influence has got Hegel on such concepts on Marx which I'm trying to explain to you.

August Baker:

I'm a little embarrassed to ask this, but I think this is my real question. So, I'll ask it. You know, it's not a very interesting question, but it's one that comes to mind. And if we want to look at social problems today, why would we want to reread or reinterpret a man who lived centuries ago? I mean, I can think of several different reasons. One might think this was an extraordinary person, although you'd think, >

August Baker:

So, I don't want to put too much on him being a great man or a hero. Maybe he worked at an important time. Maybe it's just that he's part of the canon. But I guess my question is, what are your thoughts in terms of it might look strange that if you want to learn about problems today, let's read and interpret and read the prior interpreters of this man?

Claudia Melica:

I understand your point and this is a point which is not easy to reply to. But, anyway, what we try to do is to demonstrate that still in our days Hegel is not obsolete. And obviously in general, when you ask why we should go back to the past, why we should still use such a philosopher of the late 18th century or early 19th century, and why he is useful [the reply is the following]. The way in which you find him useful is when you find out some theories and you discover that such theories could be used as a paradigm still in our days. That is, such theories have been so rich in certain aspects that still can be very fruitful for our investigation. Obviously, Hegel was a man of his time and, therefore, he was influenced by the historical situation of Germany of late 18th century or early 19th century.

Claudia Melica:

And obviously, in a certain way, he was not so open-minded to give a role to the women at the time. But he was able to demonstrate, for example, in the social context (we spoke here about "social justice") how two different self-consciousness could gain their "recognition". And in this case such argument was still used in our days by activists and feminists to re-think Hegelian thought.

Claudia Melica:

I think for example, one very well-known part is when Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit, in the beginning of chapter six, he took the tragedy philosophically of Sophocle, and he took the character of Antigone and he was able to show how Antigone, in a certain way, she was a heroine, because she was able to broken the law of the State represented by Creonte. She represents, in a certain way, the law of the family, anyway, a different kind of law. And she represents the effort of a subjective individual to get its autonomy. And such character was very largely appreciated by the gender studies. It is still deeply studied and still in our days has got a deep value in research on Hegel and not only on Hegel.

August Baker:

As I hear you talking, it makes me think there's a sense that Hegel also was going back to the past. He was going back to read antiquity or to interpret that. There's a sense of going back to the source as a way of getting rid of things that have covered it over since then.

Claudia Melica:

Yes, you're perfectly right. Obviously, also Hegel was going back to the past and the fact that he was going back to the past is very important because he was trying to reconstruct the origin, for example, of the "ethical life" in ancient Greece. Once ancient Greece was organized in a so-called (in Greek term) "polis", an independent little State. It was a way of going back to Greece to show the difficulty of an individual being to face the accustomed, the abbots, the norms of an ethical life. So, this is an important point for Hegel.

Claudia Melica:

And, anyway, Hegel was a great Historian. Hegel was the one who wrote not only the Phenomenology of Spirit, but is very well known that he wrote his History of Philosophy and, therefore, he was able to reconstruct philosophically, from his point of view, the different periods of the philosophy.

August Baker:

Right, you were talking about the Phenomenology of Spirit and how influential it is today. Incidentally, I'm affiliated with Boston College. I'm a student there. And this term, there are two classes on the Phenomenology of Spirit, two classes devoted to it, one in the Philosophy Department and one in the Political Sciences Department. I think that one of the things you are talking about is ... I'll read this sentence from your book's introduction.

August Baker:

> (S. Achella, F. Iannelli, G. Baptist, S. Feloj, F. Li Vigni & C. Melica, Editors Introduction. The Owl's Flight. Hegel's Legacy in a Different Voice, in: The Owl's Flight. Hegel's Legacy in Contemporary Philosophy, ed by S. Achella, F. Iannelli, G. Baptist, S. Feloj, F. Li Vigni & C. Melica, De Gryter, Berlin/Boston 2022, pp. 4-5).

I mean, you can comment on any part of that you want, but I was thinking that we're very concerned now with "differences" and groups that are opposed to each other. I'm wondering if the dialectical process somehow naturally captures such tension.

Claudia Melica:

Oh, well, we know and we wrote it in our book, and especially in our introduction, where, as you correctly mentioned, we are six women, six editors. We know that in our day, gender studies, as you quoted, are concerned with the "differences", not only between "gender", but also "sexual identity". And we know (there is huge references in the secondary literature) that such "differences" are determined socially or by the culture, what Hegel called in a German expression the "Kultur", or biologically determined, naturally determined what in German is called the "Natur". Claudia Melica:

It's very well known that feminists and activists were trying all the time to discuss and to criticize as such "differences". But the level of complexity now and articulation have reached such positions! So, for example, the re-interpretation of the very well-known French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. She was able to re-interpretate some passage of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and especially chapter four, where there is a lot of references to the "battle for" recognition" between "master" and "slave". And she was able to insert such dialectical Hegelian argument within the feminist debate in France at the time.

Claudia Melica:

She was also going to listen to the lectures of Kojève, who had a great influence on the French thinkers at the time. And nowadays, Simone de Beauvoir, as for example, was shown in many, many papers of our book. For example, in the paper of Mara Montanaro. The interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir was of early years '50 and '60. It is still interpreted, still read as a very fruitful way to read and think on Hegel. But, anyway, we noticed that there are a lot of changes in sensibility and we could interpret Hegel from different points of view, which we call "voices" immersed in different cultures, in different perspectives.

Claudia Melica:

That's why we included it in the volume 40 different papers, but they are in a special form. Because the book has got a special form! Really, from all the world, we try to invite speakers from China, from Spain, from any part of the world to face such different cultures and problems. August Baker:

Right. Now, that's very helpful. Thank you. By the way, you are the one who is speaking to me today, but I wanted to mention the names of the other editors. Could you say something briefly about the other five please?

Claudia Melica:

Yes, I will be very pleased because I'm only here speaking with you and I'm giving my voice, but actually, we are six women and we are all academics. We struggle, all of us, to reach a position into the University. Let's mention all of them, because they are: Professor Stefania Achella from University of Chieti; Professor Francesca Iannelli from University Roma Tre; professor Gabriella Baptist from University of Cagliari; Professor Serena Feloj from University of Pavia: and Fiorinda Li Vigni. She's a professor, but she is also leading this important Institute for philosophical Studies in Naples (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici), and last, really last, me.

August Baker:

I'm sure that's not true.

Claudia Melica:

That's true.

August Baker:

It's very impressive and it is interesting to see so many different voices and helpful to see so many different voices in a volume. In your editor's introduction, you use the phrased in "a different voice". It might have been Hegel in a "different voice", but you were pointing there to the Carol Gilligan book. Is that right?

Claudia Melica:

Yeah. Yeah. We also quoted it in a footnote. Yes, we appreciate very much the book of Gilligan, which was printed in the last century in the year '70 and which was translated in Italian. In Italy, it had a great influence as it's very well known. Gilligan, she is still alive and she is a psychologist. She analyzed the "different voices" of the women of the time. Our goal it's also implicitly referred to her. So, the purpose is to give "voices" for the first time, not only in a volume, which includes mostly, but not only women, also some very good male researchers and professors are included into the volume.

Claudia Melica:

But the conference, which was organized in Rome in 2018, was the World WoMen [Hegelian] Conference. WoMen was W., o., and M. was capital block. Therefore, we want to say Women, but, at the same time, together with Men. This is a way to assert "different voices" in such a large community in what we call "post-ideological scenario". But yes, Carol Gilligan is very important for us and it's very important to speak of "plural voices" also in this case.

August Baker:

Right, and multicultural as well.

Claudia Melica:

Yeah. August Baker:

Let's talk about the different sections of your book of the volume. You mentioned, I think, section two, which is about Women for and against Hegel and you talk about Simone de Beauvoir there. Claudia Melica:

Yes.

August Baker:

One of the articles that comes up a few times is an article called: Let's Spit on Hegel.

Claudia Melica:

Yes. Well, the title of the book Let's Spit on Hegel [Sputiamo su Hegel] was the title of a book by Carla Lonzi. She was a very well-known activist and feminist in Italy. And she was the one who was deeply, deeply critics of Hegel. This is, in a certain way, linked with the topic we are trying to develop together. Because, from one side, of the feminism at the time in early '70 years in Italy, it was following Simone de Beauvoir as saying that Hegel could be fruitful to understand the social differences and social inequality between men and women. Even if Simone de Beauvoir told us in her book in The Second Sex that actually the women never, never struggled, never put themself into the battle for "recognition".

Claudia Melica:

Well, Carla Lonzi was very explicit. She won't throw away Hegel totally. She said: ≤≤He has nothing to do with our battle. Our battles are totally different.>> So, with really a peculiar expression, she wrote this book, Let's Spit on Hegel (Sputiamo su Hegel), which had a great influence in Italy. There is a movement connected with her and there are [in our collective volume] many articles, many, many papers dedicated to Carla Lonzi too. Especially one part, by Federica Giardini. She's a very well-known professor at Roma Tre University and she is also a feminist and a very good researcher on feminist thinking. She analyzed this point too.

August Baker:

I'm not sure if there's a section that focuses on the "master-slave dialectic" in Hegel. Of course, it's very famous. Is there a specific section developed not devoted to it, but it goes through all of them, would you say?

Claudia Melica:

Well, the section concerning the "master and servant dialectics" is explicitly only into the Phenomenology of Spirit and in chapter four. I'm going to explain to you. What is the topic over there? This section was deeply analyzed by some interpreters and, especially, most of them [investigated] Hegel's "master and servant dialectics" in section two [of our book]. Serena Feloj wrote a paper with references on American contemporary debate, which is very important, because she analyzed the way in which [Judith] Butler or [Nancy] Fraser or [Luce] Irigaray they interpreted such a part of Hegel. And I quoted Mara Montanaro with Simone de Beauvoir or Federica Giardini in the re-interpretation of Carla Lonzi. Anyway, for the American audience and not the specialists on Hegel, what is it this "master and servant or slave dialectics"?

Claudia Melica:

To make it very easy, and clear, it is the following. For Hegel, a self-consciousness could not "recognize" its value, if it is not "recognized" by another self-consciousness. To "recognize" the value of someone else, Hegel analyzed something that is so developed into history. So, for example, the opposition, and at the same time, there's a relation between "master and slave". But what happened exactly? The self-consciousness of the master is pushed by a desire to obtain more and more and more and more objects, but he cannot obtain them alone. He needs a huge work of the slave or of the servant. Therefore, the master is totally dependent for his desire, for his material desire, from the work of the servant.

Claudia Melica:

But Hegel made a good point. If, from one side, it looks like, at the first glance, that the servant looked totally dependent and submitted by the master. On the other side, the servant is able to transform the object with his work. He is not the one whom, after he has used the object, he threw it away and he doesn't need it anymore. But, anyway, this passage is important, because for the first time, Hegel is trying to speak about dialectical opposition, social justice, and inequality. This comes, in German language as recognition and it is Anerkennung. It means not only to "recognize" the value of someone else, but means also to "know" deeply, to have the self-consciousness of someone else, because I "know" myself deeply only if I "recognize" the Other and the value of the Other.

Claudia Melica:

And, therefore, this is a very important model or a paradigm, which was used also later to investigate all the oppositions within the history. And also, as I told you, through all the feminist battle. Because the question was for the feminist thought, whether such paradigm should be applied to women too. Does it work for women too? So, women (as "slave") are submitted to a "master" as man or not? This is one of the questions, which for example, as first was questioned by Simone de Beauvoir, but it is still investigated.

August Baker:

Right. Just as much as different cultures embrace different nationalities and so forth, right? Claudia Melica:

Yeah.

August Baker:

So, this is difficult because there's so much in this book, but I want to give listeners an idea of an overview of what's in the different sections. Even though it may seem surface level, it'll be a pointer, I hope. So, the first section deals with The Night of Reason. It was talking about madness dreams and passion. Could you speak a little bit about what people could find there?

Claudia Melica:

Yes. Hegel is not seen from this point of view. There are a lot of generalizations about Hegel. So, for example, he's a "systematic thinker" or only a "rational thinker". But what we would like to show is that Hegel at his time, he was studying the so-called "neurosciences". So, he was studying psychiatry, psychology at the time. He was given a lot of importance of what as a metaphor was called "the dark side of the reason". He was not criticizing such a part. He was able to demonstrate that the spirit (and "spirit" means our spiritual manifestations which go through our development) could be found also in illness or in dreams or as well, in this "dark side" [see paper by S. Achella, The Dark Side of Thought, pp. 23-36].

Claudia Melica:

That's why when he was teaching in Berlin during his lectures, which were lectures followed by thousands of students, he wrote a book, which was an Encyclopaedia, a compendium, including all the sciences. And within all those sciences, Hegel included all sciences of the time called "anthropology", which was not the anthropology of our days. Within anthropology, there was what is today called also psychiatry, psychology, and so on. And then in this part, he was able to study madness and unconsciousness.

Claudia Melica:

This was recently discussed by a very well-known interpreter, Catherine Malabou, which is the subject of a paper by Federica Pitillo and how the neurosciences have become important in our time to communicate the concept [of "plasticity"] and have re-interpreted such Hegelian anthropology and the implication also of the research on the brain, which started at a time and which is quite important for us, because this give us a new perspective of Hegel, which until now was not very well known for such studies.

August Baker:

That was fascinating. Absolutely. And then we have talked about section two. I will come back to section three at the end. For section four, it's entitled The Twentieth Century and Hegel: Subversion or Conciliation? Claudia Melica:

Yes. In this section four which is the purpose? The purpose is the following. There have been many interpreters, like Jacques Derrida for example, which is the topic of the first paper by Gabriella Baptist, which totally criticizes Hegel's point of view. And the point of view, very simply, criticized by Derrida, was to destroy the subject, to destroy the effort done by Hegel to affirm the autonomy of the subject, even if for Hegel, always within a qualitative structure, which was the ethical life. But there is this paper by Gabriella Baptist, which is the beginning of section four, where she showed well, this point of view of how Derrida was going in a different [direction] of what originally Hegel did.

Claudia Melica:

So, for example, there are many other papers like the one by Herta Nagl-Docekal. She analyzed, in the same section four, how Hegel is important today in order to discuss common values. I would like to underline that for Hegel, it's not only in German the word Gesellschaft, which you could translate in English "society", but Gemeinschaft (or Gemeinde) which means really to do something together as society, which shares something in common. There is this paper by Herta Nagl-Docekal, a very well-known professor from Vienna. She analyzed all the social pathologies of Hegel's concept of ethical life (Sittlichkeit). And she focused on Charles Taylor of the common constitution and individual identity which in the United States (U.S.A.) nowadays is deeply discussed.

Claudia Melica:

And then she also analyzed John Rawls' thesis on Hegel crucial achievement and how it was very important for organizing a modern State and an institution in order to build a so-called real freedom, not an abstract freedom. And also, she discussed, which is very important, Axel Honneth, whom was and still he is a German a very well-known Hegelian interpreter, who claim to reformulate the Philosophy of Right of Hegel in term of social sphere, because such social problems, are really very important even today in any global society, not only in Hegel's time. I would like to stop, otherwise it is too much.

August Baker:

Yes. And I think Honneth has an appointment currently in the US at Columbia, I believe.

Claudia Melica:

Yeah.

August Baker:

But I should also mention that. So, when you talked about section four, you talked about first an essay by Gabriella Baptist and then the second essay by Nagl-Docekal.

Claudia Melica:

Herta Nagl-Docekal.

August Baker:

Nagl-Docekal, and I should point out that the structure of each of these sections is that there's an introductory essay by one of the editors and then there's an essay by an invited contributor with a lot of stature. And then there's seven or eight other essays. Maybe you could go through the other invited contributors.

Claudia Melica:

Yes. I'm very grateful to introduce such a subject, because it's very important for us to explain the structure, the form of the book, because it's not simply a collection of different papers. We wanted to give a form of the book, which could be understandable. Therefore, we decided to organize the structure of the book in the following way. As you precisely told the audience, there is in each part an introductory essay, written by the different editors. So, Achella, another by Iannelli, another by Baptist, another by Feloj, another by Li Vigni, and the other by Melica. Then we decide that each section should be open by a contribution from a world renowned expert in Hegelian studies. And they should in our opinion, so we planned the book, coming from all different parts of the world. Claudia Melica:

Therefore, the invited speakers are: Rossella Bonito Oliva from Italy, Nuria Sánchez from Spain, Madrid, Erzsébet Rózsa from Debrecen in Hungary. We quoted yet, but we should quote it again, Herta Nagl-Docekal from Vienna, Austria, Myriam Bienenstock from France, from Paris, and so on. But it's also important to underline that the book, it's opened by the director of the Hegel Archive. She is a woman and she is Birgit Sandkaulen. And she is leading the famous and very important Hegel Archive in Bochum in Germany. And the book is closed by Angelica Nuzzo. She's Italian, but she's been teaching for years in New York and in the United States.

August Baker:

At CUNY.

Claudia Melica:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the book is divided into five different sections. We can speak later about the five different sections.

August Baker:

So, I think we only have CUNY, meaning City University of New York. And I think the fifth section is in the interest of time, I'll leave the fifth section to just name the title, which is Re-thinking the Absolute Spirit. Spirit is one of the essential topics in Hegel, but let's close with the description of section three about the female characters in Hegel's philosophy. And if you could also mention the title of the book. People are probably wondering: "What does an owl have to do with philosophy?" I did anyway. I think I had a sense of what it was, but yeah, go ahead.

Claudia Melica:

Yeah. Well, it's very well known that this kind of birds normally arrive at night and this is a metaphor used by Hegel in the Preface of the Philosophy of Right (1821), where he would like to say the following. This kind of bird, it's the symbol of Minerva, it the symbol of philosophy. The philosophy arrives only in the end, but the philosophy may [understand history in conceptual thoughts]. We use it as metaphor and that's why we use it as a title "owl" symbol of Minerva and philosophy may have a female form. That's why we thought that the Hegelian philosophy may have different languages, but the title is also that Hegel told us such bird (Owl of Minerva) arrived at night and begin to flight only with the falling of the dusk. And what does it mean?

Claudia Melica:

It is a metaphor which became most celebrated and very well known. It means that the way of making philosophy is part of an historical process. Only when this historical process, which means chronologically, historically, it's concluded, then arrives philosophy, which it's able to understand, to comprehend with conceptual thought all historical processes. Therefore, such female figures, let's say it with that, may offer an insider view of all the historical process. That's why we decided to give a title in this way.

August Baker:

Finally, just a survey of some of the articles in that section on the female characters or some of the other female characters.

Claudia Melica:

Well, there are many other female characters in Hegel. Not only he took them from the ancient tragedy from Sophocles, not only Antigone, but he took them from W. Shakespeare. So, for example, just to quote Shakespeare, Julia or Miranda or even Lady Macbeth have been quoted by Hegel and re-interpreted as a metaphor as heroines to re-read the conflict within the history. That's why we decided to call also a chapter, section three of this book, Female Characters in Hegel's Philosophy, where it's analyzed also these potential in Hegelian interpretation of those tragic heroines, not only the ancient one, the Greek heroines, but also the modern one as from English Literature by Shakespeare. August Baker:

Fascinating. Okay. Thank you so much, Claudia Melica. The book is: The Owl's Flight: Hegel's Legacy to Contemporary Philosophy. I went longer than I told you, an hour, but there's so much to cover. It's a fascinating volume and it's published by, The Owl's Flight: Hegel's Legacy to Contemporary Philosophy, De Gruyter 2022. Thank you so much, Claudia.

Claudia Melica:

I am really very grateful for the conversation and for the interview. Thank you.

August Baker:

Thank you.

Claudia Melica:

Thank you.

Nicole Iturriaga

Exhuming violent histories: Forensics, memory, and rewriting Spain's past

Many years after the fall of Franco's regime, Spanish human rights activists have turned to new methods to keep the memory of state terror alive. By excavating mass graves, exhuming remains, and employing forensic analysis and DNA testing, they seek to provide direct evidence of repression and break through the silence about the dictatorship's atrocities that persisted well into Spain's transition to democracy.

Nicole Iturriaga offers an ethnographic examination of how Spanish human rights activists use forensic methods to challenge dominant histories, reshape collective memory, and create new forms of transitional justice. She argues that by grounding their claims in science, activists can present themselves as credible and impartial, helping them intervene in fraught public disputes about the remembrance of the past. The perceived legitimacy and authenticity of scientific techniques allows their users to contest the state's historical claims and offer new narratives of violence in pursuit of long-delayed justice.

Iturriaga draws on interviews with technicians and forensics experts and provides a detailed case study of Spain's best-known forensic human rights organization, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. She also considers how the tools and tactics used in Spain can be adopted by human rights and civil society groups pursuing transitional justice in other parts of the world. An ethnographically rich account, Exhuming Violent Histories sheds new light on how science and technology intersect with human rights and collective memory.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nicole Iturriaga is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine, and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute Center on Religious and Cultural Diversity.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Back at the grave, Rosa had a red earring resting on her cranium. All four victims still had their wedding rings. I was removing the top soil from Rosa's feet due to the dryness of southern Spain. The soles of the victim's shoes were well conserved. Some locals from the village came by. They whispered that Rosa had been eight months pregnant at the time of her death. Speaker 1: I kept working, all the while, thinking about what they had said later while uncovering her soles. It dawned on me that Rosa and I were the same exact shoe size. I even held my shoe near hers to check. I then quickly scaled myself alongside her, and discovered that we had the same build and stature. I was looking at myself in a mass grave. Speaker 1: I was just paraphrasing from the book, Exhuming Violent Histories. The subtitle is Forensics, Memory, and Rewriting Spain's Past, Columbia University Press 2022. The author is Nicole Iturriaga. And Gail Kligman of this volume says Exhuming Violent Histories is an engaging ethnography of how forensic and genetic sciences are being deployed to recover and reframe literally buried histories in post-Franco Spain. Speaker 1: Through their painstaking work, human rights-oriented forensic specialists and human rights activists are together challenging the necropower of the state and revising the official history of the Franco era. Welcome to ethnography podcast, the first installment. I'm very fortunate to be able to speak to the author of this great book, professor Nicole Iturriaga. She's on the faculty at the university of California, Irvine. Welcome, Nicole. Nicole Iturriaga: Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1: So, could you tell us about the path that led to you being there, removing the top soil, and doing this study? Nicole Iturriaga: Sure. I was volunteering with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory as part of my dissertation field work. They are a scrappy activist group that due to lack of funds, and I think also part of their general philosophy, incorporate volunteers in their exhumation technical work. Nicole Iturriaga: And so, if you're volunteering at the right time of the year, they'll train you in the basics of forensic anthropology, forensic archeology, and throw you into the field work. So, in that case, with Rosa and her family, we were in the southern part of Spain, where the team had been actually many times looking for graves in this area. Nicole Iturriaga: They've spent many years searching for the... the south part of Spain has a lot of mass graves, and this was the first time they had actually found anybody. So, it was a really big deal. The town was ecstatic, and that's how I ended up there, even though I am by training, a sociologist, not an archeologist. Nicole Iturriaga: So, I ended up having about a year of actual in-the-field field work experience. So, it doesn't count, I guess, without it being attached to an official degree, but yeah, been part of over 10 exhumations. Speaker 1: And so, I learned a lot about this from the book. I had a very vague understanding of these things, but essentially as I learned, there are a lot of mass unmarked graves in Spain. Second, only to- Nicole Iturriaga: Cambodia is what the Spanish activists like to say. Speaker 1: Okay. And these are people that in Rosa's case, this was someone who had been executed in 1936. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. Yes, that's right, right after the coup. That would've been about two months. The coup started in July. They were executed in September. Speaker 1: Right. And so, I didn't realize any of this. Do you have a great first chapter, which reviews the history here. But essentially, for readers like me who might not know the history, there was an election in February 1936 of progressive government elected. And then, within the year, there was a military coup, one of the generals was Francisco Franco. Speaker 1: And there was a, I guess, a war period, which lasted until '39. And then, the Franco regime lasted all the way until 1975. And then, you've had silence after that, or so that we're talking about someone who had died 80 years prior or had been executed 80 years prior. Nicole Iturriaga: That's right. Speaker 1: Now, when you started to do your dissertation, did you know that you wanted to do ethnography as your method? Nicole Iturriaga: I did. Yeah, I did. My master's was also in ethnography, but it was the Tea Party movement, the Far-right movement here in Southern California. And I was pretty comfortable with that methodology. And so, I wanted to continue doing ethnography while also, I mean, in both, I use interviews as well, but yeah, ethnographic observations, I thought would be an interesting modality for this topic. Speaker 1: Fascinating. I agree with you. Now, how did you get interested in ethnography? Were there certain books that really intrigued you? Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. I'm trying to remember exactly which books really got me interested in ethnography. I got really into sociology in my undergrad years at Cal UC Berkeley and I was a transfer student. So, I was a little late. My path was a little laundering. And so, I was a little older, and I think that actually allowed me to really enjoy, and take my time with learning. Nicole Iturriaga: And so, I was really interested in family sociology. And so, I was reading a lot of those ethnographies, like Promises I Can Keep, I think by Edin and Kefalas, which is about working class and poor women having children, as opposed to other advancements, and what we only think of as adult progression, like getting a degree, buying a house. Nicole Iturriaga: And so, I remember thinking that data was so rich because of the ethnographic graphic observations that interviews can lend you one part of the story, but really observing people in their everyday lives, really observing an organization, brings so much more nuance, and this is my larger critique. Nicole Iturriaga: And I'm not trying to start a war with the quant people, but that can only give you so many metrics of a social problem or social phenomenon. To me, what's way more interesting is seeing what people are actually doing, as opposed to what they say they're doing. Speaker 1: Right. So, when we're talking about ethnography, we're talking about still using interviews, but they're more open ended, as opposed to closed. And they're more on site, as opposed to someone's filling out a form, and then you're analyzing them. Nicole Iturriaga: So, for me, in this study, I had to get very creative in terms of how I was using interviews. So, I used informal interviews. So, I did both. I was doing more of a semi-structured interview format with a tape recorder in a private location, with different actors in these fields. And then, I found that to talk to locals who came to the exhumation site, trying to do anything formal would scare people off because of the social context that this is happening in. Nicole Iturriaga: And I do a lot to try and ground how terrified a lot of the people are in Spain, especially rural Spain. Pulling out a tape recorder, and then being like, tell me about your thoughts, about state terror is a great way to watch people disappear. Speaker 1: You're right. Yeah. Nicole Iturriaga: So, realizing that really quickly. I think what's also the beauty of ethnography is it can be very fluid, and you have to be really good with your instincts, on how to connect, build rapport, maintain privacy, while also allowing the social context to be a guide in some ways. So, the informal interviews, I have my interview guide memorized. I knew what questions I wanted to hit and which ones to start with. Nicole Iturriaga: It was beneficial to me in my positionality, in the field to be a foreign woman, because that made me seem very naïve, and sympathetic, and people wanted to help me, I think, understand. Yeah, they were teaching me exactly. So, I have a very Spanish last name, but I'm not Spanish. My father is from Chile. Nicole Iturriaga: So, I think I also had this like, "Oh, she speaks Spanish. She's American. She's got this really Spanish last name." But I don't have any kind of dog in the fight, which I think someone explained that to me, actually, when I was there at one of these informal things. It's like, "Oh, it's so cute that you have this last name, but you don't know anything. You don't have anybody in the war." Nicole Iturriaga: So, it was like, I was a somewhat neutral person as the ethnographer who was just asking questions naively. And they were trying to explain them to me. And so, there was still the fear, but pulling out a tape recorder, as I said, was also just not happening. So, I'd write everything down if I could in a moment or reconstruct it immediately after. Nicole Iturriaga: And I found that to be... or I would record after they were gone into my phone or recorder and recount. And that was just a lot later of me writing notes, and then coding them, and then coming back to all of that. But yeah, I had to get very creative in this field. Speaker 1: I once read a book about interviewing, The Craft of Interviewing, I think it was called. And I think that the author said, as I recall, that when you're interviewing someone, they often have a story they want to tell. They already have an idea of what they want to say. And one of the things, as I recall, you want to do is let them tell whatever that story is. Did you have that sense? Nicole Iturriaga: Absolutely, yeah. And I think what's interesting about Spain and this particular topic is that the story that a lot of people initially start telling is the state line story of civil wars are bad, brother versus brother, leave the past in the past. But if you push just a little bit back, well, according to the association, this is just about returning families. So, family, where does that fit in? Nicole Iturriaga: And then, you start to see more of a negotiation with the actual person's perspective. And so, I think allowing the safety or the, okay, I've heard you say the safe answer. What's one you're actually thinking of? And in the book, I tell about a waitress who started with that. And then, in the further conversation revealed that her grandfather was in a mass grave. Nicole Iturriaga: And that he had been killed during the war, and had been on the Republican side, and how it would be nice to get him out of the ditch. But she started with leave the past in the past. And if I had just left it at that, I wouldn't have gotten this much more interesting history of someone who is, I think, a perfect embodiment of what the transition period really instilled in the population, which is like, we're leaving it alone. And if you don't leave it alone, it'll be bad for you. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. So, just for listeners who wouldn't know, so the Republicans would be the more progressive side, the people who were, I guess, leftist, Marxist, anarchists, communists, a wide variety of- Nicole Iturriaga: And pro-democracy even. Speaker 1: Pro-democracy. Nonfascist. Nicole Iturriaga: Nonfascist, yeah. Speaker 1: Right. And then, the nationalist was the military fascist side, right? Nicole Iturriaga: That's right. Speaker 1: Yeah. I was thinking, it's clear in that it must be difficult for those people to have, on the one hand, even privately, they have their private thoughts, and then they have what they can say. And you would imagine that since there's only something that they can say, that seeps into what they actually think. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. It was really interesting to watch people do that dance. Speaker 1: So, you say that you're doing an ethnographic exploration of how social actors, like the AR image are using a variety of tools and tactics to... one of the things they're doing is fighting for control over collective memory. The book is so interesting because there's so many different levels to this. For example, in some cases, it seemed like the memory was already known. Speaker 1: It was known that there was this mass grave out there, and that they had been executed. And what was really happening was more like a bringing to the surface or literally, bringing to the surface, but also a processing. You might think of someone in psychotherapy who had trauma and was now bringing it out. It was like this facing and speaking. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. Witnessing even, storytelling, witnessing, I think is absolutely, yeah. I think larger to the global movement of forensics-based human rights, you have examples like Argentina, where you really didn't know what happened, the disappeared, the desaparecidos. They just vanished. And the science there really helped fill in gaps. People really didn't know what went on. Nicole Iturriaga: And there's other examples of that too. But in Spain, yeah, people knew, it wasn't like they were like, "Are they still alive?" No. Everyone knew that these people who went missing were dead. And most of the time, a general idea as to where they were, I think in some ways, the seizing or the attempt to see its collective memory is how those deaths are remembered and what the state's role is for that remembrance. Nicole Iturriaga: And they just passed, and I'm not well versed in exactly what's in this bill, but the new memory law that just passed in Spain a couple weeks ago, I don't think anyone thought was possible, even when I was in the field, or when they exhumed Franco. Nicole Iturriaga: There's been these big shifts in Spanish culture that I don't think would have been possible without the work of the association and forensics-based human rights in Spain, constantly forcing this conversation, this witnessing of sadness, and death, and the responsibility of state for the terror that it imposed during the war and during the regime, because a lot of people were killed by an outside-of-the-war context. Nicole Iturriaga: And the stories of the repression of this regime have been so successfully buried for a really long time. So, I think most of their job was just making it okay to even mention it. And then, they've been making these moves to be like, "Okay, well, now that we can talk about this even existing, what are we going to do about it?" Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. I guess there was one example where there was one person came, approached who was very angry about it. And another person was with her who was more sheepish. Do you recall that? Nicole Iturriaga: I feel like that happened a lot. Speaker 1: A lot. Okay. Nicole Iturriaga: I don't remember that specific example, but yeah. A lot of initial reaction is anger, but I think the anger as being a secondary emotion coming from fear. Speaker 1: Right. And was there a sense that if you look at people now, maybe there's a left and a right in this area, and maybe the people on the right were thinking they were going to be identified with the fascists, and that that was part of what was going on? Nicole Iturriaga: It's funny. I think that would be in a place like Germany, who were being associated with the fascist or the Nazis is just a bad thing. Where it's like for the good portion of the 20th century, it was great to be affiliated with a fascist. Speaker 1: I see. Interesting. Nicole Iturriaga: And so, I think there's still a deep clinging to, I'm not going to apologize, and we were right, and we saved Spain from communism. Part of that also has to do, I think partially, with the amount of businesses and money that were seized from the Republican side. Nicole Iturriaga: If you start opening that door, you might start opening the door to reparation, and some of that money being returned. And I think there's a very vested interest to make sure that doesn't happen because they make a lot of money at this point. Speaker 1: Actually, as you raise that, there's another interesting thing about this is that as just... I don't know whether I'm typical for American, but I know more about Germany than about Spain. I hardly know anything about Franco, except that he existed, until this book. Nicole Iturriaga: Most people I've talked to didn't know Franco existed at all. Speaker 1: Yeah. And it comes through very differently. And sometimes I'm assuming that the case is similar to Germany and it's not... that that's one example. But it did seem that it was something about, at least for the family members, for people who identified themselves as family members of someone who had been executed, it was about not just here are the facts, and not just about processing, but it was also about holding your head higher, having a public recognition. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. I think that's totally accurate. If we put that in context, the victim, the losing side were horrifically repressed and shamed. To the point, especially, in those immediate post-war era, they couldn't hold certain jobs. They weren't allowed to travel. They were rendered very much so second citizens, and so were their children. And they were heavily, heavily stigmatized, punished and othered. Nicole Iturriaga: And that went on for decades, and even into the '80s, '90s. So, you've got generations of you should feel bad and shamed for having any connection to the reds. And so, I think this movement really offered those families the ability to go, "I didn't do anything wrong. What was wrong was what happened to us." And so, I think that's an extremely powerful offering of this movement is to reclaim the humanity of the victims, in this case. Speaker 1: Yeah. And you see that so often, again, to take it to the individual level. Someone who clearly was victimized by a crime somehow is the one that ends up feeling shame about it. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah, yeah. And that, if we take just Rosa from the beginning, the introduction chapter, she was pregnant, and was with her family, and they were leaving a party. And from that class at the foot of the grave that the lead archeologist gave... so just to back up, the association, when they do exhumations, will invite people to come, and see a class at the foot of the grave, it's what they call it. Nicole Iturriaga: And they walk them through the process. And most of it starts with science, and then it leads into these critiques of the state. And the one that he said at her class was what did this woman do to deserve summary execution on the side of the road? And then, on top of that, to be rendered silent and in a ditch for 80 years., or that we, as the citizens of Spain should never learn about her. Nicole Iturriaga: Not only did you execute her, leave her in a grave for a really long time, but insist that no one learn about this violence. It's just compounded insult on top of insult. And it's so upsetting. Speaker 1: Yeah. So many different levels to it. Boy, I've never seen a grave opened up, much less a mass grave. Nicole Iturriaga: It's intense. I describe it in the book as exactly like, they are exactly how they were left. So, it's a very effective tool, if you will, a pedagogical tool, but just there's nothing left to your imagination, really. You know exactly what happened. They're lying there like that, you can just imagine, oh, the movie plays in your head easily when you're looking at a mass grave. Nicole Iturriaga: Especially, if they're really well conserved, like the ones in Rosa's case, or there was one over there with a bunch of men layered on top of each other. The skeletons do all the talking. You don't have to explain anything. Literally, a child can... and there were children who came to these exhumations who could just totally get it. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. In the book, you have a picture of one of the skulls with a gunshot wound, with a whole through it. So, right, there's the story. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. You don't have a guess as to why, they didn't die of a heart attack. Speaker 1: Yeah. That was really fascinating. And just a whole intergenerational, we might think, "Well, what would I care about my grandfather?" Well, I'd care quite a bit about my grandfather, actually. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. That's funny. A lot of people have brought that up. Well, I wouldn't care. And I always think on that of, but you don't know because that's not you. But also, even if it's not related, you don't know this person, they're most people, I would say, a good majority of people who would never met a grandparent if they knew they were in a mass grave, who would want to get them back. There's something about the obligation of care too at that Speaker 1: Yeah. It just seems wrong. Even though we know it's a corpse, it's not a person, it just still seems a betrayal or something. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. And for me, in the field, especially trying to observe and be participating in these exhumations. My first one was that when I was describing with the men who were on top of each other, I believe the picture with the bullet wound is from that exhumation. I was working, it was my first one ever, and I was so terrified of breaking something. Nicole Iturriaga: And I had no idea what I was doing that I didn't realize that I was uncovering the cranium of what turned out to be a 15- to 17-year-old kid. Someone went, "Oh, is that the head?" And the archeologist went, "Yeah." And then, I was so overwhelmed by that, and I just screamed. This is not in the book, but I remember just touching the cranium, and being like, "We found you, and you're okay. Nicole Iturriaga: It took a really long time, but even if we don't your people, or they're not around, at least we found you." It was this very profound moment for me that I just felt so protective of this kid. Died alongside his dad. He was just wrong place, wrong time. And it was very moving to me as just a person in the field. But also, as the ethnographer, this is extremely powerful. And I feel connected to you. I don't know your name, but here we are together. Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm just thinking off the top of my head, but you don't... maybe we're so distant from death, and dead bodies, and burials that, but then, now you're right there. Nicole Iturriaga: Yes. Literally, staring death, I guess, and a version of death in the face. It's just this skeleton, and there's very obvious signs of violence, and you know that it's a kid, the kid is a minor. It was just, yeah, I feel like the United States has a really sanitized relationship to death. We don't really do, we embalm. There's so much distance. And then, I'm in a literal grave with bodies, and I'm digging them up. Speaker 1: Right. That's really fascinating, right. Now, that has really came across in the book. So, I was interested in the way that this came to Spain from, do you use the term global south? Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. Speaker 1: Could you tell me about that term? I just hadn't- Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. The global south, it's a way around saying developing a third, second, first world. That's the global south versus the global north. Speaker 1: How did this, I guess, forensic-based human rights movement get to Spain? Nicole Iturriaga: Actually, to me, I think such a really fun example of how a movement can start on the other side of the planet. And then, another one could piggyback off of the gains of that. So, I will try to be brief, but in Argentina, there was a military dictatorship that ruled that country for seven years. And in the process, disappeared around 30,000 people. Nicole Iturriaga: They also stole the children of the people they were disappearing, and they illegally adopted them out by stealing their identities. So, when that regime fell, after the very disastrous Falkland Island war with the UK, they were trying to do the distract everyone. And they just like major fuck up there on their part. But all of a sudden, there was a lot of questions. Nicole Iturriaga: What happened to all these people who went missing? Where did these children go? Some of these disappeared, people were pregnant women. What happened as a fetus? Things like that. The interim president invited people from the global north to help with these questions. And one of them was Clyde Snow, who is a forensic anthropologist out of Oklahoma. Nicole Iturriaga: He'd been really famous for identifying people from plane crashes. He also identified Dr. Mengele's skull. And so, that was how we knew what happened to Dr. Mengele. He goes there. He does a presentation on this very topic. A man comes up to him afterwards and goes, "Is it possible for an infant to dissolve?" And he goes, "What?" Nicole Iturriaga: And that man's story was his daughter apparently had died in a shootout with the police. Everybody died, including all the kids. And the coroner said when they went to bury the infant, that she was so delicate, she dissolved like water. And that is not how that goes. Clyde Snow asked to do an exhumation. He studied the remains. Found that they did not die in a shootout. Nicole Iturriaga: They died within a 30-centimeter execution style death. And that the remains that were... the pieces of bones that were in the infant's coffin, came from an adult foot that decomposed somewhere else, which suggested that that baby never was in that coffin, and was probably somewhere else possibly alive. Nicole Iturriaga: So, this opened up a whole world of, okay, so every state narrative we have about either potential deaths of people or all of these bodies that showed up has no names in municipal cemeteries might be these disappeared people, or also bodies that were washing up from the river plot, which is right there in Buenos Aires. Nicole Iturriaga: And that comes from these death flights, where they would load people they were done torturing, drugged, and then dropped them alive into the water. Some of them would wash up. So, they started doing all these exhumations. And that was this burst of this forensics-based human rights movement, where they were able to say, we know these people died this way. Nicole Iturriaga: That is completely opposite of what the state is saying had happened. And then, you have a second line there, where these women who had been protesting throughout the regime, the mothers and the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who are demanding answers about like, where did that baby go? Or some of these women that were found after they had been killed. Nicole Iturriaga: So, if you give live birth, it scars your pelvic bone. And so, that they can tell this person had a baby. But if there's no baby or fetus, now the question is, where is it? So, this kept happening. And so, you have a second line where the grandmothers had been asking international scientists to figure out blood testing. Nicole Iturriaga: And at that point, we didn't have DNA yet. DNA doesn't come out until 1989. This is 1986. You have a legal testing that can do paternity level testing, even to grandparents. And so, they start using that, and then DNA blows up, if you will. And so, then they're able to definitively prove that a child they suspected was stolen, was stolen. And that changed everything in Argentina. Nicole Iturriaga: Because then, they were no longer able to say that never happened. I don't know if you guys are crazy, you're making this up. And that was a massive watershed moment. And it was the first time that DNA and forensics was used to officially go you're lying and stop it. And so, that really changed everything. And then, they started this team, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. Nicole Iturriaga: Clyde is now a new student. And then, they went around and started setting up labs in other places. So, for those of you who don't know, the Southern Cone, so South America was distilled with dictators in the '70s and '80s, and there was a lot of human rights abuses. So, they went around to these different states to help set up independent forensic labs. Nicole Iturriaga: And the benefit there would be, you don't have to rely on a state that's probably hostile to you/involved in the violence. So, you have this separate unit that's set up by an outside force that trains people how to do this. They did one in Guatemala, Peru. They did, I think, some work in Chile. And then, we're getting into the early '90s, the Soviet Union falls, you have the wars in the Balkans. Nicole Iturriaga: Moved to Kosovo, they helped set up the lab there. And also, Bosnia Herzegovina. Bosnia have a massive genocide. They're setting up that lab. They move over to Cypress. There was a war there in the '70s, [inaudible 00:30:42] militarized zone where there's a UN-backed lab, also set up by the Argentinians at the same time, same timeline. Nicole Iturriaga: Spain, Franco dies in '75. So, the Argentinian regime starts in '76. He dies in '75, Spain transitions into '78, '80. So, we're getting into the end of the Argentinian regime. '80 to the late '90s, Argentina is going off and setting up all these other labs. 1998 comes, and Baltasar Garzon, who's a judge finds out that Pinochet, back to South America, who is a former dictator is vacationing in the UK. Nicole Iturriaga: And he goes, "I'm going to get you with universal jurisdiction." And universal jurisdiction is this idea that any state can hold another state's human rights abusers accountable outside of the territory. So, he goes, "Got you." Sends out an arrest warrant to Interpol. The UK freaks out and goes, "What do we do?" And this is a big, I don't know if you remember this in '98, people are freaking out. Nicole Iturriaga: People from Chile are coming over to UK, they're protesting. And it took two years for them to figure out what to do. Pinochet eventually had to pretend that he had dementia so he could get a humanitarian relief, and they sent him home, and then he lived another 10 years or something, and died in his bed. But what that did in Spain was a bunch of people went, "Wait a minute. Why are you going after Pinochet when we have 40 years' worth of fascist of our own?" Nicole Iturriaga: And this guy named Emilio Silva, who started the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, writes an article and says, "Hey, my grandfather was also a desaparecido. Why aren't we talking about that?" A forensic anthropologist who had been working in this world outside of Spain goes, I can help you find your grandfather. And that's exactly what they did. In 2000, they did the first exhumation in Spain. And that's how we get... I was trying to make that short. It's never short. Speaker 1: Did they actually find his actual grandfather? Nicole Iturriaga: They did. Speaker 1: Wow. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. They did DNA testing and he was found. Speaker 1: Yeah. And I remember the Pinochet stuff in the news, but it's one of those things where it's in the news and it's in the news. It's nothing that I'm attached to or that I... it's just something that is surface level. Nicole Iturriaga: In the background, yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So, it goes to Spain and the big difference is the huge time, the time gap now. Nicole Iturriaga: Absolutely. Speaker 1: So, that it's not being driven by the mothers who lost their kids. I understand that there are some grandchildren around and that were involved in this, but it seems like it's more... my sense from your book, well, there are lots of different levels. There were some grandchildren and there were some individual people, but it also seemed like it was more of a community drive. Nicole Iturriaga: I would say, Emilio Silva, he's the grandson. There're still a few children of the victims that are, at this point, pushing and they're in their 90s. Yeah, they would to be, right? Unless they were killed during... their parents were killed in the repression of the late- Speaker 1: In the repression era. Nicole Iturriaga: ... the '40s, '50s era. But even still, they're older. So, it's mostly, I would say run by grandchildren, great grandchildren, but it's gotten bigger than that at this point. A lot of people, especially in the newer teams, I don't know if they have any relationship the disappeared, if you will. But are just motivated by... I heard this once in the field of how can we claim that we have a democracy when our countryside is littered with mass graves? Nicole Iturriaga: And I think that's a great point. So, I think there's a movement amongst younger Spaniards, some younger Spaniards that feel an obligation to democratic ideals, and to the beliefs in science that this should be more of a priority than it was to previous generations. But yeah, it's still, I would say family victims, family members of the victims are very much involved. Speaker 1: So, you've mentioned both of these things as we've been talking. But I think if you think about someone coming into a community, and I'm going to touch on this issue of mass graves, and I'm going to actually dig them up. You're thinking, "Well, that's pretty hot and we need to cool this down." Speaker 1: And it seemed to be able to do it, you're going to have to lower the temperature here. And the two ways they did it were the framing in terms of this is just science, in terms of science and also in terms of human rights. Well, you can speak to that. Nicole Iturriaga: So, especially, in those beginning years. And so, they started this movement in 2000, I popped in there around 15 years later. So, those early years were extremely hard. People were very aggressive. I heard a lot of stories of people would come, and steal their tools, or would come and yell. And then, they would have to really work to cooling that situation down. Nicole Iturriaga: I don't think anyone was ever physically attacked in the association, but maybe the attention was there. And I think that's where this push towards really depoliticizing. There's also a lot of groups that started doing this in the early 2000s. And some were extremely political, bring out communist flags. They were associated with the communist party, would sing songs. Nicole Iturriaga: Not exactly a depoliticized approach by any means. And there's a lot of criticisms against the depoliticized approach. And I think some of those are valid, but I also think it's like, what do you want out of this situation? Do you want to be successful or you want to be right? And it doesn't mean just because you're successful that you're not also making a lot of headway. Nicole Iturriaga: And I think the depoliticized approach has won in many ways, a lot more success than being overtly political, as frustrating as that might feel. But I think coming in and being like, we are here, this is also a very Catholic country, even just culturally speaking. So, the idea of not doing death rituals is offensive in some way. And that was absolutely the point. Nicole Iturriaga: Franco did this with that in mind because he was such a Catholic. The point was that they wouldn't be buried in consecrated ground. The point would be that they were buried faced down. There's a point that they wouldn't have grave. So, things that were important to Catholic death rituals, they were meant to be insulting. And so, I think- Speaker 1: And shaming. Nicole Iturriaga: And shaming. And so, with that in mind of, do you think that this little abuela over here doesn't have the right to recover her dad and give him a mass if she wants to, is very powerful in that context. It's a certain level of a monster to be like, "No, screw her and screw her dad." That's bad politics, especially now. Now that media, they're way savvier in some ways. Nicole Iturriaga: Talk about Asuncion at the end of the book. And she was 92, and she was exactly that. She was this little old Spanish grandma, all she want... and she was so cute and so smart, in terms of her activism. I was like, she played right into that. Like, "I just want my dad back. You're going to tell me I can't have my dad back?" Yeah, exactly. What do you say to that? No? Nicole Iturriaga: So, there's that level of it's just about giving people their family members back, which is depoliticized. And then, you also have the, we're just doing this from science perspective. And we're trying to help this lady get her dad back, how we're doing that is through science. That it's the medium of our trade, and science doesn't have an agenda. Science doesn't have politics. So, whatever comes out from this, it's not our fault. We didn't do this. It's just what the science says. Speaker 1: No, absolutely. Nicole Iturriaga: So, if this person was tortured, I don't have to tell you. That's just what the body says. Speaker 1: Right. I was thinking and I was reading it that the depoliticized approach worked for this issue, this place, this time, this culture, but who knows in another- Nicole Iturriaga: I would say in the Balkans, in Bosnia, from what I understand, so Sarah Wagner is an expert in that field. We were in a conference together and she was like, "No." And I did interviews there too, which didn't make it into this book necessarily. I think it does maybe a little bit in the beginning, but it was like I was doing so much research or field work at that time. Nicole Iturriaga: And I had this whole other chapter that I had to drop just to be able to graduate on time. But when I was there, I was like, "Oh, this does not apply here." It does and it doesn't. It worked for the HEG in holding people accountable legally for genocide, which was proven through the forensics. But in the local levels, that is not happening. Speaker 1: No. Right. Nicole Iturriaga: And so, if you want to read more on that, I would say read To Know Where He Lies. It's also an ethnography by Sarah Wagner. It's excellent. And really gets into why this is a lot more complicated depending on the context you're in. But also even that, it's different. They worked legally. Speaker 1: Right. And I was just thinking in terms of today in the US, science doesn't... if you want to get attention, you need to be political and outrageous, not- Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah. And forensics is certainly, I get this question a lot too, is why forensics is this outlier in terms of science that the public believe? Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. Nicole Iturriaga: And I do think it's different than climate change or even vaccines in a certain way, because it is so accessible. As we were describing earlier, if you see a gunshot wound in a skull, you don't have to go, well, humans create bullet club whether or whatever. But also, it's the science of the state. And that's how trials are done. Do you believe in DNA? And it's also huge part of media. Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt. It's fascinating. And people are sending in their saliva to find out what- Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah, the ancestry testing, which I would urge caution on. But yeah, I'm about to go to Tulsa in a couple weeks because they've been doing exhumations there. Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say that was- Nicole Iturriaga: And I don't know, I think how that's going. Because they're also doing a very depoliticized rights of the family's approach. It's almost identical to Spain. It's a long time ago. So, it's over a hundred years ago. But the context is the United States, the case has to do with racial... white terrorism, basically, on a black neighborhood. Speaker 1: The Tulsa race massacre. Nicole Iturriaga: Like the Tulsa race massacre. So, they've been doing exhumations. They started last year, and I'm going with a research team to see what the impacts have been, very similar. Almost all use the same, exact, slightly modified interview guide there, but I'm anticipating it to be very different in some key ways. Speaker 1: Yeah. It sounds be interesting, right? Yeah. Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: Right. Well, I knew that the problem with this interview was I had way too much to talk to you about. So, I should end it now, but it's just a great book. I highly recommend it. Exhuming Violent Histories, Forensics, Memory, and Rewriting Spain's Past, Nicole Iturriaga, Columbia University Press 2022. Thank you so much. Did I get all that right? Nicole Iturriaga: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: Okay, okay. Thank you so much for speaking to me. It was really interesting. I really love the book and- Nicole Iturriaga: Thank you so much for having me. This has been great. Speaker 1: Okay, great. Nicole Iturriaga: Cool.

Sheryl Luna (poet)

Magnificent errors

Magnificent Errors is a collection of poems that shows how mental health challenges can elicit beauty, resiliency, and hope.

In 2005, Sheryl Luna burst onto the poetry scene with Pity the Drowned Horses, which quickly became a classic of border and Southwest literature with its major point of reference in and around El Paso, Texas. Now with the poems in Magnificent Errors, Luna's third collection and winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, Luna turns her gaze toward people living on the margins—whether it be cultural, socioeconomic, psychological, or personal—and celebrates their ability to recover and thrive. Luna reveals that individuals who suffer and experience injustice are often lovely and awe inspiring. Her poems reflect on immigrants in a detention camp, a meth addict, a homeless individual, and someone on food stamps. She explores the voices of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or PTSD, poets, visual artists, and people living in a mental health community setting. The author's own journey to recovery from childhood abuse and mental illness also illuminates how healing is possible.

The poems in Magnificent Errors are lyrical, narrative, and often highly personal, exploring what it means to be the "other" and how to cope with difference and illness. They venerate characters who overcome difficulties including ostracism and degradation. People who live outside of the mainstream in poverty are survivors, and showing their experience teaches us compassion and kindness. Ideas of art, culture, and recovery flow throughout the poems, exploring artistic creativity as a means of redemption. With language that is fresh and surprising, Sheryl Luna shares these remarkable poems that bring a reader into the experiences of marginalization and offer hope that grace and restoration do indeed follow.

"With Magnificent Errors, Luna has broken the regional boundaries of the American Southwest and become one of America's finest poets." —Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning

"In Magnificent Errors, Sheryl Luna shows us once again why she is one of America's premier poets. Her gutsy, gorgeous language, her hard-won vision of grit and grace—all bid us enter the universe of a poetic saint whose earthy wisdom is unparalleled." —Joy Roulier Sawyer, author of Lifeguards and Tongues of Men and Angels

"Sheryl Luna's voice is unforgettable because she has a visionary touch where her experiences become our own. As readers, we are blessed to find ourselves in her poems. We have been waiting. As a poet, she shows us, in powerful poem after poem, what it takes for the poet to reveal her place in a difficult world. The result is a book that opens when the poet says so and rests, gently, in the reader's hands." —Ray Gonzalez, author of Feel Puma

"Since her 2005 debut Pity the Drowned Horses, Luna has excelled at the elegant lyric, yet what stands out here are the interior landscapes that bridge a visionary attention to nature and raw reflections on mental illness, abuse, trauma, and healing. . . . Luna's book beautifully expands upon the many intersections between Chicana ecopoetics and disability poetics, while claiming its own lyric territories." —The Latinx Project

"Like her acclaimed first book 'Pity the Drowned Horses' and second book 'Seven,' Luna's newest work reminds readers, no matter a person's socio-economic or mental status, all of humanity is linked. Every poem in this collection is a standout. Each piece succinctly captures the discontent of the country's working poor." —Latino Book Review

Author

Sheryl Luna's first collection, Pity the Drowned Horses, won the inaugural Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for emerging Latino/a poets (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). She has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, Anderson Center, Ragdale Foundation, and Canto Mundo. She received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award from Sandra Cisneros in 2008. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, Kalliope, and Notre Dame Review, among others.

Transcript

August: (00:09) "Listening to Sky: There are song shells in our pink ears. We take apart. We break. We forsake. Unthinkable girl dismembered by 17 year old boy. Sky weaving a red lit thread. We are but guests among dragging gray clouds. Tapping to the beat of stars and making music, we refuse to forget ourselves in the first snow. Newspaper stories tell us we matter, tell us we don't matter. The dying churches feed us the paradox of living, the peacock's beauty tinged pride, the Magnificence of Errors. Praise more than blackberries, praise more than sunshine. August: (00:58) At home in our graves, we are less than politics and language, trust and opening of windows. Let go of smug, selfish days. I hear leaves scraping across pavement, falling from above at an angle, pumpkins half eaten by squirrels. There are secrets we keep from ourselves. We're trying too hard. Language drifts, fogged and moony. We find our single voice in a flurry of birds. Forgetting the self, we can finally hear the sky sigh." August: (01:39) That's the poem Listening to Sky by Sheryl Luna and it's part of her book titled Magnificent Errors. Magnificent Errors, subtitled Poems by Sheryl Luna, winner of the Ernest Sanders Prize in Poetry. This volume is published by University of Notre Dame Press, 2022. August: (02:03) A couple of quotes about this. This is from Dagoberto Gilb. He says, "With Magnificent Errors, Luna has broken the regional boundaries of the American Southwest and become one of America's finest poets." August: (02:18) And this is from Joy Roulier Sawyer, "In Magnificent Errors, Sheryl Luna shows us once again why she's one of America's premier poets. Her gutsy, gorgeous language, her hard won vision of grit and grace, all bid us enter the universe of a poetic saint whose earthy wisdom is unparalleled." August: (02:42) And for my own testimony, I'll say this volume often I shared it with my son and my wife, and they both liked it. I liked it. It was something that was often poignant and lump in the throat, but also inspiring, or I said the word "bouncy." But I think it's the thing you read and you have a new appreciation for things, even though you're feeling more emotional. August: (03:14) So this is Talks With Poets and I'm pleased to welcome Sheryl Luna. She's the author of many poetry collections, including the award-winning Pity The Drowned Horses and Seven. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, Kalliope and the Notre Dame Review, among others. August: (03:36) Welcome, Sheryl. Sheryl Luna: (03:38) Thank you. I'm glad to be here. August: (03:40) Great. So Magnificence of Errors was in that poem and it's also the title of your book. Quite a pairing: Errors and Magnificence. I'd often thought of Errors as being sometimes brilliant, but I was certainly not boring like correctness, but Magnificent is an interesting choice there. The sentence in the poem, it', "The dying churches feed us the paradox of living, the peacock's beauty tensed pride, the Magnificence of Errors." So looking at the sentence, you might think, "Well, this is something that is being fed to us by something that's dying." But, for me, I thought that there was something magnificent about errors in this context. It wasn't, "Oh, this is something that I don't like." August: (04:32) Tell me about that and the decision to name the volume Magnificent Errors. Sheryl Luna: (04:39) I think for that particular poem when it came about, I was thinking about mistakes, mistakes I've made, mistakes people make, in general, and how there's something beautiful in that if we learn something from the mistakes. And I think for the title that has a lot to do with it. A lot of the poems, I was in transitional housing for 11 months and a lot of the poems are about people I met in that situation and they were often making mistakes. They might have been an addict or something that they were struggling with, but that there's a beauty in learning from that and overcoming such a thing. So I thought that I wanted to celebrate people who struggle and make mistakes and that there's something beautiful in coming out of that and surviving. August: (05:47) That came through very strongly in all of the poems really. I don't know. Let's see. For example, we can take Rubbernecking. I'll just read the second half. "We have no answers. Some of us missed the broadcast to success. The neighborhood fills with unseen, deep throated robins. Remember what it means to be alone. We say disliking or loving mad streets where the broken fearlessly ride buses. We cannot fix the contest outside even if we rubberneck our way through accident and luck." August: (06:30) For me, I just thought about this being someone who was on the outside and I looked at it was looking at people who were fearlessly riding buses as though for this person to ride a bus was a big accomplishment. I mean, how do they do it really? Sheryl Luna: (06:52) Right. August: (06:53) And if you have social anxiety, it's very difficult to get in the car and drive down the road. How do these people get in these buses? August: (07:01) Go ahead. It looked like you were- Sheryl Luna: (07:03) Oh no. I was just saying that that's very true. Anxiety can get in the way of that, crowds. And it's just amazing when you take the bus. It's just the people on the bus. It's very interesting. Often there's almost something interesting that goes on every time you take a bus. August: (07:24) But it takes some ability to open the window or to take a risk to get on the bus. And also this idea of rubbernecking, it seems if you are ... I was thinking, to me, it was, if you are trapped at home agoraphobic or social anxiety, to give the medical terms, you end up rubbernecking your life or watching the TV and seeing what is happening to other people. Was that part of what you were thinking here? Sheryl Luna: (07:54) Well, I think we have a fascination for accidents, and not just car accidents, but just difficulty, drama. August: (08:04) Absolutely. Sheryl Luna: (08:05) I was thinking of that Johnny Depp trial. People were involved in it and there is an isolation that comes with that, in a way, a deterioration of faith in people, but we survive and we move on. I think that's what I was getting at there. Just the fascination with difficulty. And do you believe in luck or not? A lot of people, a lot of writers, will say they don't believe in luck. I do. [inaudible 00:08:40]. August: (08:39) Yeah. I got that sense from these poems. There's this possibility of something serendipitous happening at any time. August: (08:48) Another poem was Finding Water that says, "Deserts irrigated with labor. We do not understand our own messages. Cup bearers, givers of water. We can drown in the past. Drunks holding signs, begging for liquor money, forsaking our own names. We are fiery assurances, aquifers, mountain streams. What shapes us runs exhaustible, necessary. There is no meaningless voice in suffering. No one will remember the day we die in the end. In solitude heat breaks over our backs, yet all of us loving the musical sound of birds." August: (09:36) To me, what this poem said to me was you have these drunks and beggars, but they are actually the assurances and the aquifers. They are the fiery assurance and they have the heat breaking over their backs yet, like everyone else, they're loving the musical sound of birds. August: (09:59) Was that your idea that in this poem, the drunks and the beggars are ... That we are the fiery assurances? Sheryl Luna: (10:06) Yes. I think a lot of the book ... Well, these two poems deal a lot with idea of paradox that we can be two things simultaneously. We can be struggling with mental illness, for instance and, at the same time, beautiful and fiery, something to be celebrated. But I do think people struggling with poverty, there's oftentimes something beautiful about the way they survive and function just like that. So I think I have an interest in celebrating things that might be deemed inappropriate or abnormal or something negative to be despised or looked down upon. And so I think that may be where the fiery comes from. A fiery desire to live fully despite circumstances. August: (11:17) Yes. So I work in a psychiatric ward, and when you're saying that I'm thinking of, in the adolescent wing, a young woman who is in the psychiatric ward and yet playing music. She's 15, playing music. She wants to play really ... Well, music that's maybe could be said to be inappropriate. And that's lots of words that someone would say are inappropriate. As the song about quarter of the way through she climbs up on the table. This is outside in the school yard. Climbs up on the table and starts twerking and people say, "That's inappropriate. You have to stop [inaudible 00:12:03] music inappropriate." But in a way you'd think what would be better than dancing on tables? I mean, everyone would like to be able to lose the inhibitions that you could actually do that. And she's doing it, but it's all inappropriate. August: (12:20) Yet I walk away thinking she is so full of life. And also someone who comes to the aid of the other people when they're feeling down, more so than anyone else. I wanted to play this little clip for you. This is from Chris Farley. You remember the Chris Farley Show on Saturday Night Live? Sheryl Luna: (12:39) Yeah. August: (12:39) Okay. I'll show it. Chris Farley: (12:45) Mr. Daniels has done The Purple Rose of Cairo, Terms of Endearment, Arachnophobia and Something Wild, which is an awesome flick. Jeff Daniels: (12:54) Oh, thanks. Thank you. Chris Farley: (12:57) Remember, in Something Wild when Melanie Griffith had you handcuffed to the bed? Remember that? Jeff Daniels: (13:02) Yeah. Chris Farley: (13:03) And you had to make that phone call, remember? And you're chained to the thing and you couldn't get away? Jeff Daniels: (13:11) Yeah, yeah. I remember. Chris Farley: (13:14) That was awesome. Okay. So you were also in The Purple Road to Cairo? Jeff Daniels: (13:22) Yeah, yeah, I was. Chris Farley: (13:26) Remember when you were doing your movie and Mia Farrow was watching and then you came down off the screen and talked to her and you were in black and white when you were on screen, but then when you talked to her, you were in color? Jeff Daniels: (13:40) Yeah. What about it? Chris Farley: (13:41) Do you remember that? Jeff Daniels: (13:46) Yes. August: (13:52) I thought that the one way this interview could go would be, I would just read your poem and say, "That was awesome [inaudible 00:13:57]- Sheryl Luna: (13:56) God. August: (13:59) ... and do you remember writing that?" But because I'm not sure about asking you other things about your biography or whatnot. In a way, the poems speak for themselves and if you thought that they needed biography, you would've added that. August: (14:15) But you hear a lot about culture these days where people identify as a certain thing. In the Blurb value they talked about you as being a representative of Southwest literature and as someone who has been ... Oh, it says, "The author's own journey to recovery from childhood abuse and mental illness also illuminates how healing is possible." August: (14:43) Is there anything about your biography that, I mean, you think is helpful, whether you'd listeners to know about? Sheryl Luna: (14:53) I think that our struggles come through. Well, I want to share my struggles in a sense. I had a woman that lives in my building and her mother came up to me and said, "Oh, my goodness, I can relate to the poems about trauma because it mirrors my own life." So I know some people don't like confessional type poems, but I think, in a sense, that's a silencing mechanism if you're told you can't write about certain things. So I went ahead and did that. It's not all autobiographical at all. I often write from first person with the conflating characters that I know. So I think the trauma from early childhood, maybe growing up along the border between cultures, I like to look at things as gray, rather than necessarily black and white. I like to try to do that. And I don't know how important biography is. Sheryl Luna: (16:04) I like what you said, you want the poems to speak for themselves. Every time I interview, I get a little anxious about having to deal with certain topics, but sometimes it's easier to write than talk about [inaudible 00:16:20]. August: (16:19) Sure. Sheryl Luna: (16:21) But I think everybody has a story to tell. Everybody struggles with something and I think that's what makes us human. And the term "universality" was thrown about a lot when I was in grad school many years ago. And I think you want your poems to reach as many people as possible, but it's problematic to say something that's universal [inaudible 00:16:54] everyone. So I don't know if that answers your question? August: (16:55) No, that does. That's very helpful. And I completely understand the sense of anxiety about that. Someone being reduced to descriptions, I'm not interested in that. August: (17:08) I think I'd like to talk about some poems, both about the border and about PTSD. Would you mind reading one of the poems? Sheryl Luna: (17:22) No, I'll do that. August: (17:24) I was thinking about Tornillo's tent prison for migrant children, page eight. Sheryl Luna: (17:30) "Tornillo's tent prison for migrant children: There's a compulsion to sing of ranches outside El Paso, where [inaudible 00:17:44] and [inaudible 00:17:46] keep everyone happy. Meditating on the familiar, I remember the fence, the border, and being alone. Better to be in the open desert than cave. Men in rags once slept on our lawn. Look, I am honoring men and mothers who cry. Tornillo, a tent city. 471 parents deported without their children. [inaudible 00:18:25] traded for freedom that never came. What is it that divides us? A fence, metal, reaching high to the sky along a highway? Or hate? What is this huge Mexican flag flaps nearby? I walk down a sandy path. All that is familiar, a mirage. Sheryl Luna: (18:54) There is only one pond in El Paso at Ascarate Park. The ducks, they're thin and hungry for more than bread. The powerful have the strongest appetite. The buildings are teaching us, things fall, all things fall. The demagogue bites cleanly. If I could calm the angry mob and send Mexico a song, I would. The Rio Grande, a slow, drying hope. The Santa Fe Bridge and its crossers know what we don't or won't. The deportees are seeking tenderness. The shadow on the wall of the Oval Office berates the universe. How bitterly we argue or remain silent." August: (20:03) Yeah, thank you. Yeah. This was just a really powerful poem and I think, for me, it took something that was in the news that I didn't want to think about and made it very close and concrete and emotional. August: (20:21) I thought the image of, "The ducks were thin and hungry for more than bread. The powerful had the strongest appetite. The buildings are teaching us all things fall. The demagogue bites cleanly." Really moving. And one of the things I thought was that this way we're talking about two objects, right? Buildings that fall and fences that go high. We're talking about these physical things in the world that mean so much, that matter so much to our experience, and the deportees are seeking tenderness. Just a really beautiful thought. Also, how bitterly we argue and how bitterly we remain silent. The silence can be very bitter. August: (21:12) Is there anything that ... Again, if you thought that commentary on this would've helped the poem you would have added it. But is there anything that came to mind while you were reading it that you would like to mention? Sheryl Luna: (21:27) Well, I think I was touching a little on the polarization that goes on regarding this issue. And I think most of the people with an opinion don't really understand what it is to live on the border. And I think one thing that makes Trump popular right now with certain people is a demonization, in my opinion, of immigrants that come across the border. I think he called them rapists. Once in a video I was watching ... And they don't show this often, but someone was protesting in the audience and he said, "Are you from Mexico?" sarcastically. Sheryl Luna: (22:20) And so I'm sure you know about the Walmart shooting in El Paso? August: (22:25) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Sheryl Luna: (22:27) I think I was writing about a lot of contemporary issues surrounding that and wanting to humanize those families that were separated. And I think that they, in a lot of ways, have been dehumanized and that's [inaudible 00:22:46]. August: (22:46) Well, the poem really did. One of the people I showed it too, was a reflex Republican and read it and said that, "This really did show me a different side of this." It's the magic of really ... I guess the concreteness of it, of really seeing people, as opposed to these big abstract ideas. I think another person I showed the whole book to was talking about the birds. There are birds often. In this case, "The ducks were thin and hungry for more than bread." And in Rubbernecking, "The neighborhood fills with unseen deep throated robins." And The Hummingbird, which might be my favorite, "I will remember the red hummingbird I saw today hovering on the path before my heart." August: (23:40) I actually also, I don't mean to ... This is just for fun. I wanted to share another clip with you just to be whimsical here, something about the ducks. And I remember when I was a kid and grownups would talk about, "Oh, look at that bird there." And I was, "Yeah, whatever." And now I'm, "Oh, look at that great blue heron." August: (24:04) Is it something that you have always been interested in? Or recently? Or- Sheryl Luna: (24:10) Well, I think I grew up in the desert where there were pigeons and grackles. And now I live in Colorado, so there are all sorts of birds. I do love them. I probably could become a bird watcher. August: (24:29) Are you a bird watcher? Or you said you could be? Sheryl Luna: (24:30) No, not really. Maybe something I could do. August: (24:36) Right. Feel free to say this if you think you don't want to answer this question, but one of the people I show it to was asking, "So does she visualize some ... Say, take an image that she's seen and then try to get the words to match it, to capture it?" Sheryl Luna: (24:49) Oftentimes, oftentimes. I haven't written in a while. I've had a long dry spell with writing. But last night I jotted down some images along with some storylines or themes, I guess. And I was just brainstorming. Someone had told me, "Try brainstorming." So I guess some ways I do start with an image. It's not always something I've seen, but usually something that got my attention. I think it helps to be observant [inaudible 00:25:27]. August: (25:27) Well, let's read, I think ... Well, the other two about PTSD, there's Adopting Stepfather and Lamentation to Praise. I guess I'll read Lamentation to Praise. They're both really moving. "Lamentation to Praise: Startled by trauma, I touch no one, hear only the silence of forgetting, talk endlessly but speak to no one. When I remember childhood rape, it is with clarity. Decades after disremembering, it all comes back. Do you want the details? I won't tell you. August: (26:10) Tonight a fox runs the streets, shaggy, thin and skittish. A burgeoning moon fractures the lake. I paint trees with pink, blue and purple leaves. Seasons drift like a refrain of thoughts. When I remember shock, it is as sunset and early moon hanging onto the light." August: (26:39) Really moving for me, this poem. For me, I was really interested in this image of the fox. "Fox runs the streets, shaggy, thin and skittish." To me, boy, I experience trauma. Is this like that? Being, you're less generous, you're more closed in, you're grasping. "Skittish" is a great word for it, though. I'd never thought of it before, but it's a great word for it. And things just seem harsh. It's not a time when you're generous and open. And I thought that really captured that nicely. And then the fractures, the touching no one. When you would most need touching and healing, you can't do it because of your trauma. August: (27:37) So I thought this was just very helpful even, and poignant. I wasn't sure about the title, Lamentation to Praise. I couldn't really make heads or tails of that which ... I don't know. What are your thoughts on the title or on the poem? Sheryl Luna: (27:57) Well, I think there are different stages to healing trauma maybe and just also grief. There are different stages you go through. So that was a lament to me, the poem. But the nature, I think, well, maybe there's not a lot of nature in it, but I think the lamentation can be followed by praise of the natural world or the things that- August: (28:29) Aha. Sheryl Luna: (28:31) ... help one get through a time maybe where trauma is affecting you. August: (28:41) I understand that completely now. I see. So it's a progress. It's going from one A to B, as opposed to lamentation is about the praise. That's right. Okay. This phrase, "Slowly beginning to move on. I am kissed by a wet, sloppy sky." Just not what you're expecting, and it's just really with such an image you're expecting wet, sloppy kiss. Those words go together. In this case it's the wet, sloppy, everything, the way I read it. August: (29:13) The Hummingbird ... I guess we're running out of time. So I can't read the whole thing, but it's about ... Well, maybe would you mind reading it? It is a longer one, but if you wouldn't mind, I would really like to hear you read it. Sheryl Luna: (29:30) You know what page it's on? August: (29:32) Yeah. It's 69. Sheryl Luna: (29:33) "The Hummingbird: There will be exploding stars during the Armageddon of my soul. I will gather all my pretty blooms, earn them for an urn. The flash will fizzle like a sparkler. I will seek my final pulse and brief life. I will die with dilating eyes, listening to an imaginary wind, watch streams glimmer with small stars. Lovers will moan inside my heart. I will swim frothy waters. Trees will loom perfectly irregular. Saplings will survive their traumas. If longevity will have me, my hands will tremble with thick blue veins. Addendums to my past will not be added. Poets will not write poems for me. Painters will pass by. I will no longer doubt the God of childhood. They will place a Bible in my clasped hand. I will remember the red hummingbird I saw today hovering on the path before my heart, uninterested in my procession toward silence." August: (31:18) Thank you so much. Yeah, that was just such a tremendous poem for me. I think it's amazing how much time one spends, or I spend, thinking about one's last moments, what they will be like and trying to make sure they will not be terrifying. And this, I thought, it's very hopeful really. "If longevity will have me, my hands will tremble with thick blue veins." Not, "Ooh, it's terrible to be old but, if I get there, my hands will tremble with thick blue veins." And I just thought the idea of ... To me, I was thinking, "Well, yeah, right on your death bed you don't have to be thinking about rosebud. You can be thinking about the hummingbird that you saw today. Some detail from today." So it was very uplifting really. And, "The hummingbird hovering before my heart." Yes. That's the thing about hummingbirds. They hover and they don't really hover up in the sky. They hover right at your level and it's a striking thing. August: (32:30) But thank you so much for reading and for talking with me again. I don't like to be ... If someone's asking me too many questions, I feel I've been poked and pricked on and all that. I hope you don't feel that way? Sheryl Luna: (32:43) No, I don't. August: (32:44) Okay. Good. Tremendous volume, again. Magnificent Errors. Poems. Sheryl Luna: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022. Thanks so much Sheryl. It's great to meet you. Sheryl Luna: (32:57) You too. Thank you, August. It was really, really wonderful. Bye-bye. August: (33:01) Bye.

Terry Pinkard (Georgetown)

Practice, power and forms of life: Sartre's appropriation of Hegel and Marx

Philosopher Terry Pinkard revisits Sartre's later work, illuminating a pivotal stance in Sartre's understanding of freedom and communal action. Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, released to great fanfare in 1960, has since then receded in philosophical visibility. As Sartre's reputation is now making a comeback, it is time for a reappraisal of his later work. In Practice, Power, and Forms of Life, philosopher Terry Pinkard interprets Sartre's late work as a fundamental reworking of his earlier ideas, especially in terms of his understanding of the possibility of communal action as genuinely free, which the French philosopher had previously argued was impossible.

Pinkard reveals how Sartre was drawn back to Hegel, a move that was itself incited by Sartre's newfound interest in Marxism. Pinkard argues that Sartre constructed a novel position on freedom that has yet to be adequately taken up and analyzed within philosophy and political theory. Through Sartre, Pinkard advances an argument that contributes to the history of philosophy as well as key debates on action and freedom.

transcript

August: (00:09) Welcome to Philosophy Podcasts, where we interview leading philosophers about their recent work. Today, we're talking about the book Practice, Power and Forms of Life: Sartre's Appropriation of Hegel and Marx by Terry Pinkard, University of Chicago Press, 2022. One review from Robert Pippin says, "Pinkard has written a pathbreaking and compelling work that shows the importance of Sartre's extensive rethinking of his understanding of Hegel and Marx and the role of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism in his later thought. Key concepts such as subjectivity, agency, reciprocity, dialectic, materiality, and sociality are given original and philosophically rich interpretations, all presented with striking lucidity. Practice, Power and Forms of Life is an extraordinary tour de force, both as interpretation and as philosophy, and it should lead to a major reassessment of the later Sartre." August: (01:18) Terry Pinkard is university professor at Georgetown University. He's the author of many books, including Does History Make Sense? And Hegel on the Historical Shapes of Justice. Welcome. Terry Pinkard: (01:32) Oh, thank you. Well, thank you for having me. August: (01:34) I wanted to start with a quotation from Sartre, from the article Responsibility of the Writer in 1960. I'm paraphrasing here. He writes, "The writer, whether they wish it or not, is a person who gives the names of love and hate to personal relationships and gives the names of oppression or fellowship to social relationships. The writer can, of course, choose not to speak about something, but to be silent is yet to speak. Silence means something. The writer must therefore always answer the questions: What do I want to change? Why this, rather than that? Thus, we may ask the writer, why do you want to speak and of what on the whole do you want to speak?" So that is a big, serious, un-ironic question. But if you wouldn't mind, if I could pose that to you. It sounds confrontational. But in writing this book, why and of what did you want to speak? Terry Pinkard: (02:37) Well, good question. First of all, I wanted to do this on Sartre because I think that Sartre has quite a bit to say about these things and that he's been by and large forgotten. I think unjustifiably forgotten. The large part of this has to do with Sartre's own fault. He was a little over the top and pushing himself and so on and so on here. But also, he's suffered a kind of bad reputation in many respects. Anyway, it's partly his own fault, but not really. Especially, in both France and the United States, there was always a formidable anti-Sartrean group around. This has led to a very, I think, distorted picture of Sartre, that Sartre was a pop philosopher. He was a complete libertine. He was irresponsible. He supposedly had all these terrible political ideas and so on and so on, and that whatever else is the case, he was basically a pop figure, is now best remembered as a pop philosopher. Terry Pinkard: (03:39) I think that's just a mistake. I think Sartre has got a lot going on for him. I also think it's time also just to reevaluate and to help dispel some of the myths about Sartre, that part of this has come about just because of the, I say, the Cold War atmosphere in which Sartre was living and so on. Sartre has been portrayed as a member of the communist party, although he was never a member of the communist party. Portrayed as a Stalinist, although he was never a Stalinist, he was always critical of Stalin. He did make some very bad choices about some of the things that he endorsed, some of the causes he endorsed and so on. You might say he was a very good thinker, but in many ways on the ground politically naive about certain types of things. Terry Pinkard: (04:25) I think that the later book, the Critique of Dialectical Reason, and then the other things that I talk about really show Sartre in a new light. I'm particularly interested in these and manuscripts that Sartre started after he wrote the Critique of Dialectical Reason, which appeared in 1960, including a 499-page manuscript on ethics that he never got around to revising and publishing, along with several other essays, several other talks that he gave in Rome and so on to the Gramsci Institute there. To see what direction Sartre was going in, to try and say that actually there's a good case to be made for reevaluating Sartre and putting him back into the conversation with things here. August: (05:06) Okay. Right, most people would think of Sartre in terms of, as a philosopher, Being and Nothingness. Then I think the standard interpretation is that there was Being and Nothingness and then there was Critique of Practical Reason, but you're saying there were other writings that were not published. Terry Pinkard: (05:26) There were other writings that were not published [inaudible 00:05:28] August: (05:27) Not Critique of Practical Reason. Critique of Dialectical Reason. Terry Pinkard: (05:30) [inaudible 00:05:30]. By and large, the picture is Being and Nothingness, that was Sartre's great work. After that, his philosophy more or less just collapsed. He wrote novels and he wrote plays and he was a journalist and activist and a militant and so on, but there really wasn't any philosophy after [inaudible 00:05:46] 1942. That's the view of a lot of people. Terry Pinkard: (05:50) I was trying to argue that, in fact, there's a great deal of very interesting philosophy in this case, that Sartre had never gave that up and that there's things to be learned yet from him about this. So, part of this is just fighting against the overall picture of Sartre as this completely outmoded character and so on and so on. Terry Pinkard: (06:06) Now look, to be sure, the Critique of Dialectical Reason is a very difficult book that people have trouble with. It is entirely Sartre's fault, that is, he wrote it in a hurry. It's a giant long book with almost no breaks in it, no chapter headings, no way of dealing with it in that way. In some ways, the English translation is actually a little easier because... August: (06:30) They broke up the sentences. Terry Pinkard: (06:31) Yeah. Well, Jonathan Ree also added all these chapter headings and so on that weren't there in the original. The original list looks like Finnegan Lake. It just kind of starts and doesn't break, paragraphs that go on for pages and pages and pages and so on. So, this is the kind of thing that as I say in the preface, that being probably the world's most famous intellectual at the time, he thought he could get away with that. Nobody else could do that. He really shouldn't have. So part of this is trying to go back to the book to find out what really is going on in it and get over the big hump of trying to deal with this massive, unstructured book. August: (07:10) Right. One of the things I like about your book is that you have a lot of quotations from it. So I usually go through and I underline the sections in the Critique of Dialectical Reasons, and then at this point I have a lot that I've already read through, through you and that should make it easier to access the text, I think. Terry Pinkard: (07:29) Oh. Oh, well, good. August: (07:31) Yeah. I also think we reflexively today think about, well, let's look at the biography of the person and what does that say or not say about the philosophy? I saw a... So since he died, there've been the criticisms about... So he stayed defending the Soviet Union too long. There was amphetamines. There was the personal life with Beauvoir and these young women they cultivated, and there was one piece he wrote an introduction, to Fanon, which seemed to defend violence. On the other hand, I saw this quotation from the philosopher Lewis R. Gordon, 2008, saying, "I would love to have had a cup of coffee with John Paul Sartre. I would first thank him for his courage. I wonder if his critics would defend their values under the threats he faced, like 5,000 veterans marching down the Champs-Élysées shouting, 'Kill Sartre!'" Terry Pinkard: (08:33) That happened. August: (08:36) That actually happened, yes. Death threats, assassination attempts. I'm paraphrasing Gordon. And think of Sartre rejecting the Nobel Prize in literature on the grounds of belonging to no institution. Gordon says Sartre "understood the struggle for freedom and what it means to be historical. This made him a constant ally for Black liberation struggles throughout most of the 20th century." Terry Pinkard: (09:03) I think that's a good quote from him. I think that's also true of Sartre. Sartre displayed a lot of courage. I mean, besides the veterans marching yelling chain and kill Sartre, they actually he did try to kill Sartre twice. August: (09:16) That's right. Terry Pinkard: (09:16) Twice the terrorist organization of the secret army, the OAS, actually put plastic explosive in his place and tried to blow up his apartment with him in it twice. And he didn't back down. He kept going with his opposition to the Algerian War. One of the other things about Sartre is that he also is really one of the few people, when you look back at the '50s and '60s and so on, who really took the Black struggle seriously; he took colonialism seriously; he took all those kind of things. Despite his, want to say patchy record on this, he did take the women's struggle seriously. Of course, part of that had to do with Beauvoir both developing his ideas and then injecting all her own new ideas and so on. So he was really one of the very few philosophers for whom this appeared as a topic of concern. Terry Pinkard: (10:11) On the whole, mainstream philosophy, both in Europe and in Anglophone philosophy, Britain and the United States, didn't touch that. They didn't touch it. And Sartre did. August: (10:22) Right. That's what the 5,000 veterans were... Terry Pinkard: (10:25) That's what they were angry about. August: (10:26) That's what they're angry about was the support for the... Terry Pinkard: (10:28) Yeah. They very angry about that. Of course, this also has led to this very negative view of Sartre. So there's lots of wonderful quotes from Sartre that are taken out of context, such as the ending of No Exit: "Hell is other people." And the famous line from Being and Nothingness, "that man is a useless passion." So he's characterized as this nihilistic, completely negative guy who thought nothing made any sense of itself, which is of course not true. But nonetheless, he made a lot of enemies, and he made a lot of enemies over here in the United States, too, where he was consistently portrayed as a kind of, you might say, weak-minded fellow traveler of the communists. And not really, and not really thinking hard enough about this. But this just misses the whole context on what Sartre's arguments were and so on and so on. August: (11:16) Right. Okay. So as we go from Being and Nothingness to the Critique of Dialectical Reason and then beyond the posthumous, at least if we take from Being and Nothing, from 1943 to 1960, some of the changes are indeed going from individual to seeing the individual in a more complex way and also moving from the individual to a group perspective. Is that... Terry Pinkard: (11:43) Well, yeah, that's one way of putting it. You might say one of the big changes, of course, is that Sartre began to take something seriously that de Beauvoir had really suggested to him, that he had really to see individual subjectivities engage in reciprocity with each other, which he thought was missing in Being and nothingness. About around 1947, '48 and so on, Sartre had begun to see that himself and was now trying to work out a new theoretical arrangement on how to understand this. So when he wrote Being and Nothingness, he was really not very familiar with Hegel and dialectic, although he adopted some Hegelian terms and so on. But after 1947 or so, after Jean Hyppolite had translated Hegel some, Phenomenology of Spirit in French, brilliant translation, and had then written a very good set of books on Hegel and Heidegger and Marx himself. Terry Pinkard: (12:41) Sartre became more involved in this, particularly became involved in thinking about the relation between the I and the we, the first person singular and the first person plural. The old way, because the individual prior to society or society prior to the individual and saying, this is the wrong way to put it. They both go together. Yeah. The individual is something apart from society, but the individual's also not much apart from society. Likewise, society is not just an additive group of individuals, as it might be said in a social contract theorist, but really is something that has a priority over individuals. So how to think about that, how to think about that dialectically without just contradicting yourself. This is part of the force of the Critique of Dialectical Reason is that he's trying to deal with that particular issue to try and show that, actually, both these sides, the individual and social groupings, function together, and they only make sense when they're in this kind of tension-filled relationship. Terry Pinkard: (13:45) It is a temptation and it's messy, a natural temptation to want to say, well, it has to be one or the other. One or the other has to be really doing all the work and the other is just subsumed under it. When he read Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, which was an attack on his view in Being and Nothingness, he was led to this view that, in fact, Being and Nothingness really had in a way argued that one side has to take priority over the others here. In constructing this view at first, he stayed with the view that he had in Being and Nothingness. This is what his friend and then antagonist Maurice Merleau-Ponty criticized him for. A famous piece called, Merleau-Ponty wrote it, Sartre as Ultra-Bolshevist here. Terry Pinkard: (14:31) In Being and Nothingness, Sarre has thought, in the last analysis there really isn't any such thing as a we, other than just a kind of additive we. Wherein, say, look at, say, our pictures here and say, well, "We're both wearing white shirts. We are wearing white shirts." But there's no deeper unity there. Terry Pinkard: (14:45) One of the examples Sartre gave in Being and Nothingness was two people having a fight. So you suppose you and I are fighting each other, and Sartre walks in and says, "August, Terry, what are you two doing?" "We're fighting." Now, we're not really a group. We're not really thinking of ourselves as a group until the third person comes in. Merleau-Ponty said, "Sartre thinks of the socialist party or the political party as that third person." That's really a very Leninist, ultra-bolshevist conception that the workers, the whoever might it be, really can't get together until somebody puts them together. August: (15:27) Mm-hmm. It's Hobbesian. Terry Pinkard: (15:30) You can perfectly see Sartre slapping his head, kind of, "That's exactly right. That's not what I want to argue." Out of that came to this much more sophisticated view in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, trying to show how both these sides are going to be held together in this case. Now, there's another thing. By and large, most of the literature on Sartre has said that the Critique of Dialectical Reason... I mean, you can check this out in the secondary literature. The Critique of Dialectical Reason is Sartre's attempt to fuse his existentialism with his new Marxism. August: (16:03) Right. That's a standard thing you hear. Yeah. Yeah. Terry Pinkard: (16:05) It's very standard, right? Of course, Sartre doesn't say himself that's what he's doing. So it's not something. He says, "I'm trying to construct a theory of agency. That we dialectical will include this I and a we in this tension-filled relationship." But of course, once people began, say, losing interest in existentialism and losing interest in Marxism, he attempted to bring the two together. It didn't seem like it was really worth doing anymore here. I think that that's one of the things I start out with in book, is to say, first of all, Sartre didn't say this, that that's what he was doing. Second, I don't think it's the best way to read the book. Now, and maybe at the end of it all you think he has actually brought together Marxism and existentialism, but I'm more or less agnostic on that particular point. I'm really looking to try and see what he did end up with. August: (16:54) Right. Right. Right. What it's really trying to do, as I understand your book, is first of all there's that formal theory of agency. Then secondly, you talk about how it feeds into his work on Voltaire, this idea that how do you understand the singular and the larger social force without reducing either? Terry Pinkard: (17:20) Well, this is not his work so much on Voltaire as it is just his understanding of what's involved and now trying to figure out a view of agency that would really have place for this kind of reciprocity in itself. August: (17:32) Okay. I think one of the great examples of the having neither, nothing, the individual or the group who has priority or which is produces the other, you give this example of language that I thought was very helpful as representing that. Could you explain [inaudible 00:17:51] that? Terry Pinkard: (17:51) Well, yeah. Sometimes you read some philosophers say, basically, language is primary. We are just merely agents. The language speaks us. We don't so much speak the language. Now, one of the things that Sartre picked up from Hegel, and he also picked this up, I think, a little bit from Heidegger, but mostly from Hegel, is the relation between a practice and the practitioner. If we think of a language, a language, say, there is such a thing, like English. English shows itself through its speakers. The structure of English is something that is shown, not necessarily said, but shown, that's a Wittgensteinian phrase here, to its speakers, and the speakers exhibit the language in their particular speech acts. The language doesn't exist without the speakers. But the speakers also don't exist as speakers of that language without the language. Terry Pinkard: (18:45) Now, neither has priority over the other. It was a mistake, that's something that Heidegger thought, to think of this in a kind of metaphor of there being a being that was more real than all the other beings and therefore had to be the one producing it. So, you get the same argument going on about language and speakers, frankly. See, people say language is primary. It produces the speakers. Other people say, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's the other way around. There are speakers, and what we call the language is just a kind of additive construction out of what all these different people say here. Terry Pinkard: (19:19) The Sartrean view was that we should understand the relation between practice and practitioner as the language showing itself in the practitioners, and the practitioners exhibiting the language. Neither really makes any sense without the other. Now, we can now take that particular model and we can now use it for all kinds of other forms of group behavior and so on and so on here, to see what is showing itself through the behavior of people and what is being exhibited by those people as this particular kind of structure. August: (19:49) Is that also helpful in terms of just the individual acting by themself in terms of the action versus the background? Terry Pinkard: (19:58) Well, the action versus the background, Sartre wants to claim that the action is always going to have this kind of social content to itself, but the individual style, as it were, is going to be very different for lots of people. It's not just play things of the rules and so on. We are, in fact, active agents in shaping the language that we speak and the language that we speak is in turn shaped by us here. It shapes us; we shape it back and forth. It's a kind of interchange going on there. Terry Pinkard: (20:32) The other view is when I'm using this is that we shouldn't think of practices, as has become very common in Anglophone philosophy in particular, as basically structured around the model of a game where there are rules for the game. So, you wonder here are the rules and if you're not playing by the rules, you're not really playing the game and so on and so on and so on. That's helpful in some respects, but it's actually misleading in a lot of other respects. It's not a game that is a matter of showing and saying. It's a matter of the language showing itself. We acquire this kind of ability. I think probably somebody like Chomsky was right about this, there is something like a language acquisition mechanism that we acquire. But once we got that, we then start exhibiting that language in various ways where we're not necessarily following rules. In fact, in many ways, we're taking the language out to a certain type of limit in this case. Terry Pinkard: (21:22) This is when Sartre talks about being a writer. Of course, he's talking about this. You're really using the language. It's not like playing chess, trying to use rules and so on where you're following rules and trying to checkmate somebody else. You are expanding and contracting language as you work it out, and that there's a logical form to this, which is exploring in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. August: (21:47) Gotcha. So we take things that remain the same between the early philosophy and the later. In both cases, we're thinking about people acting with projects, with forward-looking goals. In both cases, we're interested in spontaneity as expressed by free action. Is that... Terry Pinkard: (22:12) Well, yeah. August: (22:14) [inaudible 00:22:14]. Terry Pinkard: (22:14) Sartre, for his whole career, is really interested in the question of freedom. He's taking over from the German idealist tradition. Fundamental to freedom is this idea of spontaneity, being able to just do something brand new, something to which there isn't a rule, to make a new beginning. So acts of spontaneity frequently carry their own, you might say, principle with themselves as they are... An act of beginning something anew, they establish the principle by which they're acting, and then they can be held responsible for this thing, where the principle leads to or contradicting the original principle of their action and so on. But the key element there is spontaneity. No matter how oppressive everything may be, we retain this capacity for spontaneity. Terry Pinkard: (23:05) Now, what he began to think of is how can we talk about spontaneity in terms of, say, groups and activities and things like this, as opposed to the kinds of things he talked about in Being and Nothingness. August: (23:15) Right. So, he talks about spontaneity, but not about free will. Terry Pinkard: (23:20) No. No. Sartre doesn't really use free will very much. He doesn't really believe in free will. Free will is the idea... basically a Christian idea. It is an idea that in many ways is invented by Saint Augustine, and it's to try and explain really on the day of Last Judgment how are we going to be held accountable? We're not going to be to weasel out of it. We're going to have to say there was something called the will that intervenes somehow or another, is a kind of weird causal mechanism that is intervening between all the plans you have and the actual things you carried out. There's an act of will now. Terry Pinkard: (24:01) Sartre thought that was far too mechanical a picture of human life and human action. For Sartre, what you have is a project, and that project now motivates you to carry things out in a certain way, without there being necessarily an act of will going on there. Now, there is an act of freedom which has to do with spontaneity and taking responsibility for what you've done, but we don't want to look at that in terms of free will. So what Sartre is fundamentally opposing is the view that, I form an idea, and now I pull the lever. Kajunk! And off I go! I don't know. That's far too naturalistic, you might say, a picture. Terry Pinkard: (24:41) So, Sartre's view of this is more of a kind of expressivist view, that is, we're making commitments and now we're holding ourselves to our commitments. That can be done in various ways. It can be done with all kinds of matters of self-deception and so on. It's of those issues of self-deception where I really do think that I'm really carrying out my plans and everything when in fact I'm not. I'm undermining myself as I go along. This is the thing that has interested him as a novelist, as a philosopher, as a playwright. August: (25:17) Sure. I think of, he talks about being laid down by inertia and this spontaneity, which is something which is arising from the person. So, you think about there's this sense of determinism. Would you say that when he is talking about spontaneity, it's also not as rational, not as instrumental as the concept of free will? Maybe more emotional and impulsive? Terry Pinkard: (25:48) Well, it's not necessarily impulsive. Certainly, Sartre thinks that the emotions are all very much part and parcel of this. But when you earlier mentioned this idea of inertia, that plays such a big role in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, one of the things that I think Sartre was always really, really concerned with was the way in which human beings freely, self-consciously tie themselves in knots so that they're leaving themselves very few alternatives, that is, we create this inertia about ourselves. [inaudible 00:26:24] one of the other issues in, say, the Critique of Dialectical Reason is to just go through sometimes with some very nice examples and so on about how just the sheer materiality of the world means that choices that originally made straightforwardly, lucidly, so on and so on, end up down the road being choices that we now perhaps regret having made or have tragic consequences. Terry Pinkard: (26:48) One of the examples he gets, that runs through the entire book, which I don't actually talk about in my book, but I probably should have, is just the example of the materiality of coal, that is, as these markets are getting established, and the industrial revolution's starting to set in, we really need good, cheap energy sources. Coal looks like this. So, we start using coal. But then we get all the coal that's on the surface and now we've got to start mining because now we've got to have coal. We've got to have more coal. We've got to start mining. But that means that the mines get full of water. So we need now the steam engine. Watt invents the steam to pump the water out. Now we got even more coal. All right. And pretty soon the air is polluted. Things are starting to happen to the climate, and down the road, we see that we really now boxed ourselves in by our own free choices. August: (27:37) Yeah. I guess he talks about, and not even just as a sort of, oh, my gosh, I'm surprised that this happened, but more that it's kind of what we wanted. Terry Pinkard: (27:49) Yeah. There this what he calls counter finality. So, this is what we will. August: (27:55) Yes. Terry Pinkard: (27:56) Nobody at the time said, "Let's poison the air," when they first started burning coal. But nobody wanted that, wished it, willed it. Nobody. Virtually nobody. Yet now, a couple hundred years later, we look at it and say, "That's what we willed. This is what we have done to ourselves." August: (28:17) So when he starts talking about groups or gatherings, collections, he talked about the example of waiting for the bus as the paradigmatic example. Terry Pinkard: (28:28) Paradigmatic for one type of group activity. August: (28:30) Right. I don't know. Could you describe that briefly? As I understand it, that's an example of how these relationships are mediated and how they're based on a threat underneath. Terry Pinkard: (28:46) Well, yeah. The example is Sartre, and of course this is talking about the day when you actually had a little ticket for the bus and you got on the bus and you gave your ticket for your seat and so on and so on. They don't... If there were no seats available, the bus driver didn't say, "Well, that's it. We only let so many people in. So we're off." He gave the example of this as, he called it seriality. It's a series. We're all standing around. We're waiting for the bus. So we're all doing something together, that is, we are waiting for the bus. But it's not a goal that we share together. It's just something we're doing together. The example of the series is such that the series can just go on, in principle, to infinity. I mean, there can just be an infinite number of people waiting for the bus. Terry Pinkard: (29:31) He picked this up from Hegel, that Hegel called this the bad infinite. In other words, you're never going to complete the series. It's like trying to add up all the numbers. There's always going to be one more. The good infinite, Hegel thought, was when the series turns around into itself and the image is that of a circle, that is, where you can be doing the same thing over and over again. But you're always going to be coming back to the same point. Hegel thought that was what freedom ultimately was, was the ability to start here, travel around the circumference, and then you'll eventually come back to all the points that you've been going through. Terry Pinkard: (30:09) So Sartre thought that what happens is that seriality really isn't an element of freedom because you are always the potential one extra. You're always the potential surplus individually: that extra person on the raft and so on. The nice thing about the bus is you're potentially the person who isn't going to get a seat. Terry Pinkard: (30:32) When the series curves around on itself and becomes a group, Sartre now goes back to his earlier Being and Nothingness idea of there being three people to form the group. But what he says now, instead of having just two people doing something and the third person observing them and forming them into a group for themselves, it's rather that each person now becomes the regulating third, as he calls it. So as it where, I give you, I look to you, August, to set the rules for what we're going to be doing. You, August, are looking to somebody else, let's call it Sartre, and you're trying to see what he's going to be doing. And Sartre is looking at me to see what I'm going to be doing. Terry Pinkard: (31:09) We are now in this kind of Kantian mode of being a kingdom of ends, where each is both subject and sovereign. Each is subject to the laws laid down by all the other people, but each is also laying down the law here. This is going to have a triadic circular, what Hegel called the good infinite, a triadic circular. At that point, we really are now free, really deciding without any of these other kinds of hindrances and so on to our freedom. We're acting collectively, and we are spontaneously organizing ourselves into this group here. Terry Pinkard: (31:46) This is the fundamental experience of a kind of political group where we are now getting a certain type of power by virtue of coming together as a group in this triadic structure. But we are, as it were, leaving materiality behind. We're just now focused on each other as both subject and sovereign. Terry Pinkard: (32:05) Then this gives rise to questions of how can we keep those kinds of groups together? And Sartre's answer, very typical of Sartre, is yeah, you can do it, but only up to a certain extent and they eventually come apart again. August: (32:18) Mm-hmm [inaudible 00:32:19] Terry Pinkard: (32:19) [inaudible 00:32:19] Sartre is very much an anti-utopian. August: (32:21) Right. Oh, that's... Yeah. Terry Pinkard: (32:22) [inaudible 00:32:22] Therefore, in relation to the communists, communism, he thought, really believed in a position where the state would wither away. We would all be completely unhindered. We'd hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, do criticism in the evening. So there's a pious myth here. There is no final way of getting society together. That's the anti-utopian element of Sartre. It's going to be struggle forever. August: (32:55) Right. Right. For the bus example, would this triad structure be, well, let's all follow the rules of being good people and cheerful, and we have a certain protocol that we follow in terms of we're not going to show that we're afraid we might be the last person? Terry Pinkard: (33:11) Yeah. I mean, the bus protocol shows... It's just a little minor element of, you might say, what you call the struggle here. It's not really a struggle. It's just illustrating what exactly would be a series. August: (33:23) Ah. I see. Terry Pinkard: (33:24) Everybody turning on their TV and watching the Super Bowl at the same time is another example of seriality. Me alone in my apartment, you alone in your apartment, we're both watching the Super Bowl, and you're excited about it, but we're not really sharing anything here. August: (33:40) Right. Or participating in the capitalist economy. Terry Pinkard: (33:44) Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We are still alienated from each other when we're caught up in these elements of seriality here. So group activity, which everybody has experienced, we've now organized yourself with a group where everybody is now dependent on everybody else in the group. In this mutual dependence, you really achieve a full-fledged individuality and independence that you wouldn't have had as a powerless member of a series. August: (34:12) Right. And so... Terry Pinkard: (34:14) And so the question then politically is how do we keep that together? What does it look like? What would a constitution look like and so on that would orient that and so on. August: (34:24) That was the example of the storming of the Bastille? That group? Terry Pinkard: (34:29) Yeah. Well, Sartre, a lot of his examples come from either the French Revolution or the French Revolution of 1848, those two. In this case, he has the example of what happens in the Bastille when you have an external threat, that is, the citizens are all marching to the Bastille to get these arms to defend themselves against the king's army, and the soldiers there open fire. As the soldiers open fire, what had been a series now fuses, as he puts it. People will come together. Everybody's now dependent on everybody else in their forms of group to keep themselves together. Then they end up storming the Bastille together in this case. August: (35:09) Is that an example of those people are... Certainly as a group, they have a lot more power than any individual would have. But they also are especially free, according to Sartre? Terry Pinkard: (35:22) Yeah. Well, especially free. That is, you really are now spontaneously... In this example, you're spontaneously forming yourself. You're doing something brand new. You're creating this group identity that had not existed before. This is very different from a mob, which is really just a series now out of control. It's being controlled by a few people in the mob and so on. [inaudible 00:35:43] to Sartre, this is an old trope, you might say, that Sartre is using in this particular case. It's the trope of the Greek polis, where at least the males, not the women and the slaves, the males would come together in the polis to discuss what was going to be done, the kind of policies. Everybody was in it together, and that the fundamental, you might say, principle of the action was what is best for Athens here? And so on, at least I suppose, too. In these kinds of groups, that's the experience that people have. I'm not sacrificing myself for the interest of the group, necessarily. The interest of the group is my interest now. August: (36:26) Gotcha. Terry Pinkard: (36:27) And that storming the Bastille example is one where my interests suddenly become the interests of everybody. August: (36:36) Right. Instead of I- Terry Pinkard: (36:37) [inaudible 00:36:37]. August: (36:37) ... and I, and I, it's a we. Terry Pinkard: (36:38) Yeah. It's an I that is a we and a we that's an I, as Hegel put it. It's both together. August: (36:44) So when we get to ethics... At one point in your book, you say, why would one expect unconditional bindingness? You point to what you call totalization. Terry Pinkard: (36:58) Well, totalization is a Sartrean term that comes over from Being and Nothingness into the Critique of Dialectical Reason. The view is, I mean, roughly, we're trying to get a view of what our life is like as a whole here. Individuals do this. Groups do this. So, we're trying to ultimately see where we fit in a larger order of things, what Heidegger would call the meaning of being. What we're doing is we're trying to get a view of a totality, but this totality always remains unsurveyable. We never really get it because there really isn't any totality. There's just an ongoing series of projects and so on and so on and so on here. Terry Pinkard: (37:37) This continues from Being and Nothingness into the Critique of Dialectal Reason here. What Sartre thinks that we really get the experience of ethics is when we think of our lives in these kinds of Sartrean, Heideggerian ways is, we're having been thrown into the world with the physical makeup that we have. We are caught up now in our own present time, our own present ways of seeing things, and we're projecting ourselves into a future which, with absolute certainty, we know we're not going to be around here. In that, when we are now projecting values, values of what we're now trying to give ourselves as a way of trying to think about what would make this life worth living in terms of putting ourselves and line up where we fit into the larger whole in this case. We're projecting values. We're now looking for these kinds of things that ultimately, ultimately are more important than life itself. August: (38:40) Right. Yeah. That is a way of kind of being. Terry Pinkard: (38:44) That's where the ethical experience comes from, the Sartrean phrase. August: (38:46) That's kind of a unconditional or... Terry Pinkard: (38:51) In Being and Nothingness, one of the striking things is Being and Nothingness is of course it's famous as an atheist book, right? August: (38:57) Right. Terry Pinkard: (38:58) Yeah. Nonetheless, strangely enough in that book, Sartre claims that the concept of God is a necessary concept. It's just that also God necessarily can't exist, but it's a concept we have to have because we are these kinds of self-relating beings; we're being for itself. Then there's beings that just are what they are. You can think of it's just nature. The world is what it is. It does what it does independently, if anything, when you think about. It just goes on its own way. We, on the other hand, are these... We're not nothing, but we're nothingness. We're just these creatures who exist in this social space and eventually we also, we know we're going to be gone and so on. Terry Pinkard: (39:38) The concept of God would be a concept of a being that was in itself and for itself and was its own foundation. We like to think that what we really like to be is autonomous, really making up all our decisions ourselves. But of course we're not. We're not autonomous in that regard. We didn't ask to be born. We didn't ask to have the particular physical shape that we have, so on. All these features for us and so on. So we are, in fact, not self-founding. We are completely free and we're forever making all these choices about what this all means to us. We are not self-founding. God is the concept of an in itself, for itself, founding itself. But there is no such entity. You can't be for itself in itself at the same time. Sartre thought that would lead into nothingness. Terry Pinkard: (40:30) Nonetheless, then there's a puzzling little footnote where he says he wants to offer also a doctrine of salvation in Being and Nothingness. And he gives that up. Instead, he starts talking about the sacred in later writings. The sacred are the things that we really now feel we need to commit ourselves to as these ultimate values, maybe even greater than life itself. August: (40:54) Interesting. Terry Pinkard: (40:54) They have to have to do with the reciprocity, recognizing the full reciprocity of each of us and the independence of each of us in a more global context and so on and so on here. But he never gets religious. Sartre remains an irreligious person. Terry Pinkard: (41:11) One of the last things he publishes is this great little essay on Kierkegaard where he says, "Kierkegaard makes it clear. We share of all these views, he and Kierkegaard and I. Kierkegaard wants to make this leap, and I-" August: (41:23) Don't. Terry Pinkard: (41:23) ... "can't do it." August: (41:23) Can't do it. Terry Pinkard: (41:24) And I say don't do it, then I can't do it. August: (41:27) Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's kind of refreshing, as opposed to thinking, well, we get to this point, we have to propose something pure and transcendent and he says, "No, honestly, can't happen." Terry Pinkard: (41:40) No. It can't happen. This is as good as we're going to get. August: (41:43) Yes. Yes. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for talking to me, Professor Pinkard. The book is Practice, Power, and Forms of Life: Sartre's Appropriation of Hegel and Marx, University of Chicago Press, 2022. Thank you very much. Terry Pinkard: (41:58) Well, thank you very much for having me, August. It was an enjoyable conversation. I hope we can stay in touch. August: (42:03) Thank you. Terry Pinkard: (42:03) Okay. Bye-bye. August: (42:03) Bye.

Anne E. Parsons

From asylum to prison: Deinstitutionalization and the rise of mass incarceration after 1945 To many, asylums are a relic of a bygone era. State governments took steps between 1950 and 1990 to minimize the involuntary confinement of people in psychiatric hospitals, and many mental health facilities closed down. Yet, as Anne Parsons reveals, the asylum did not die during deinstitutionalization. Instead, it returned in the modern prison industrial complex as the government shifted to a more punitive, institutional approach to social deviance. Focusing on Pennsylvania, the state that ran one of the largest mental health systems in the country, Parsons tracks how the lack of community-based services, a fear-based politics around mental illness, and the economics of institutions meant that closing mental hospitals fed a cycle of incarceration that became an epidemic. This groundbreaking book recasts the political narrative of the late twentieth century, as Parsons charts how the politics of mass incarceration shaped the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals and mental health policy making. In doing so, she offers critical insight into how the prison took the place of the asylum in crucial ways, shaping the rise of the prison industrial complex.

AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS

Co-winner, 2019 Outstanding Book Award, Disability History Association

About the Author Anne E. Parsons is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she serves as the Director of Public History. For more information about Anne E. Parsons, visit the Author Page.

Reviews "Parsons has written an excellent book about hopes, frustrations, and failures of deinstitutionalization and decarceration—one that will be of interest to historians, sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists, policy makers, and students of disability studies."--Journal of the History of Medicine

"A finely detailed assessment . . . Parsons places punitive shifts in criminal justice system perspectives and practice . . . at the forefront of the increased use of jails and prisons for mentally ill or psychiatrically disabled persons."--ICCA Journal

"An important work that urges scholars to consider how the contemporary mass incarceration crisis and overincarceration of people with mental illness in the United States has roots in a longer history of state-funded custodial institutions. . . . This book should garner much discussion in graduate seminars and would be a valuable read for anyone interested in the history of psychiatry, institutions, and the carceral state."--H-Net Reviews

"Parsons advances the compelling argument that a history of deinstitutionalization must be understood as inextricably intertwined with a history of mass incarceration in the United States. . . . As From Asylum to Prison powerfully demonstrates, the racialized and punitive political calculus that drove state and federal policies toward mass incarceration in the 1980s still persists – largely unrevised and too often unchallenged – to the present day."--Journal of Social History

"From Asylum to Prison definitively shows that asylums must be considered part of the carceral state—and that their 'deinstitutionalization' was less about shuttering asylums than it was repurposing them into prisons. The story of the country's move from asylum to prisons is one of reinstitutionalization rather than deinstitutionalization, not one of emptying institutions but shifting their function toward even more punitive ends."--Reviews in American History

"From Asylum to Prison joins a rich and growing literature on the history of the American carceral state. By centering the post-World War II expansion of the U.S. prison system squarely within the history of deinstitutionalization, Parsons reminds readers that mass incarceration, far from being a distinct historical phenomenon, has deep historical roots outside the halls of the criminal legal system. At the same time, however, as Parsons is contending with an ongoing social and political problem in the U.S., From Asylum to Prison demonstrates . . . the potentially life-changing value of historical research for the present and future."--History Teacher

240 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 10 halftones, 1 map, 1 graph, 1 table, notes, bibl., index

PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-4696-6947-2 Published: February 2022 EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-4696-4064-8 Published: September 2018 Justice, Power, and Politics PAPERBACK $24.95 E-BOOK $19.99

Speaker 1: Today on Author Podcast, we're speaking about the book From Asylum to Prison. We're talking about how the mental asylums were, at one time, very prominent in the U.S., and they've declined over time. At perhaps the same timeframe, the prisons have become much more prominent. We're looking at that interplay between these asylums and the prisons. The book is called From Asylum to Prison. It's published by University of North Carolina Press. The author is Anne E. Parsons. Speaker 1: I have some reviews here from Bernard Harcourt of Columbia University. Through a meticulous analysis, rich in archival research, Anne Parsons brilliantly illuminates the historical transformations in custodial confinement from the asylum to the prison. Parsons reveals how prisons and correctional facilities filled the emptying spaces of mental hospitalization. Jonathan Metzl, Anne Parsons brilliantly unpacks a vital social justice issue of the past half century: how prisons became de facto sites of treatment for persons with severe psychiatric disabilities in the U.S. Beautifully written, persuasively argued, Parsons pushes readers to rethink many longstanding assumptions about the ways we as a society treat the most needy among us. Anne Parsons is Associate Professor, Director of Public History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Welcome, Professor Parsons. Anne Parsons: Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Speaker 1: Thank you. The end of that review from Jonathan Metzl was talking about the basic issue here is how we as a society treat the most needy among us. You include a personal note in the book about your own personal connection to these issues and your motivations to write the book. Could you touch on those? Anne Parsons: Yeah, sure. One of the things that got me interested in this subject was the fact that in my own family, my grandmother's sister, Ruth, was institutionalized in an asylum for what was called the Feeble-Minded in 1929. She had severe intellectual developmental disabilities and physical disabilities, and she was institutionalized from about 1929 until her death in 1969. For me, it really resonated this period when there weren't many community options for people with severe intellectual developmental disabilities, but then also psychiatric disabilities. That really was one of the core questions of this book. Speaker 1: I find that, I guess this is obvious, but this is the point of history is to be able to tell us that the way things are today is not given from God. It not only can be different in the future, but it was different in the past. When I look at this, I don't know if we could just start with, maybe you could give a verbal overview of this figure one in your book or just the general trends about, well, the basic fact that jumps out to me is that who would've thought that in the 1940s and '50s, there were much fewer people in prison than in mental asylums, shocking really. Anne Parsons: Yes, it had me flabbergasted. I also, before going to graduate school, had worked with the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana on prison reform. And so, when I began my doctoral work, I assumed that prison rates had always been high and certainly higher than that of mental hospital rates. But in fact, the 1940s and '50s, the rates of hospitalization dwarfed the rates of people in prison. One example of that is that in the 1950s in Pennsylvania, which is the state I study, the rates of people in the state's mental health institutions was over 40,000. I think over 40,000 today is also the rates of people in prison. It was stunning to me as well when I found that. Speaker 1: Right. I think one of the factoids in your book was that there was one mental institution, Byberry, that had as many people in it as all of the prison population in Pennsylvania. Anne Parsons: Yes. It was over 6,000 at the time. Speaker 1: I guess we can think of two things. The time series here is that... Can you go through the time series about how things change when prison went up and institutionalized and these mental hospitals were deinstitutionalized? Anne Parsons: There's a wonderful statistical study by Bernard Harcourt on this and I relied on this at the beginning of the book as you mentioned. What the graphs told us for the rates of people in mental hospitals, for people within here, it's with for people with psychiatric disabilities, he did not include people with intellectual developmental disabilities, that it was almost like if you can imagine a roller coaster of really getting at its peak in the 1950s and then being high right into the early sixties. Then really just, and I think it was over half a million people in the country were in mental health institutions at that time. Then really from the 1960s, '70s, into the early '80s just dramatically going down like that roller coaster, down into, think it's certainly below 100,000, nearing 50,000 into the late 20th century. And so, it really just dramatically went down. Anne Parsons: On the other side, at the same time, the rates of imprisonment if we're thinking about that rollercoaster at the same time is low. In the 1950s and '60s, certainly under 100,000, well under 100,000. It really is right at the end of the 1970s to the '80s that it starts to kick up and exponentially goes high by the end of the 20th century. As we know, it has yet to dramatically go down. Speaker 1: That's right. The prison rate is pretty constant in terms of the rate per capita between 1928 and until the late '70s, and then it goes increasing. The mental hospital rate is high from the mid-'30s until the '60s. Then, as you say, it craters and it continued to go down. Now, one of the interesting things is you can sum them up as the figure does. You see that the combined rate in terms of both mental hospital and prison says it was high in the '40s and '50s, then it went down due to deinstitutionalization of the mental hospitals. Then it went back up and the combined rate at the end of at around 2000 was the same as it had been before. Accrued, and you say in the book an incorrect reading of this would be, oh, well the people who were in mental hospitals were released, they went out into the streets for a while and then they were arrested and they were put in prison. That would fit the story, but it's false. Anne Parsons: Correct. I mean, it's one piece of the puzzle, but a small piece of the puzzle. The most basic example I give of that, that people didn't just shift from mental hospitals to prisons was the fact that mental hospitals were roughly 50% female, women. Then you look at the rates of prisons and it's a minority of people. Speaker 1: That's a great time. Anne Parsons: Another big element is that people in mental hospitals, the demographics were much older. Indeed, mental hospitals in 1940s, '50s, '60s often served in some ways as a nursing home purpose for people who were elderly. And so, those age demographics were totally different too. It's one piece of the puzzle that there's some of this transinstitutionalization that scholars call, but that is not the justification for the whole- Speaker 1: Right. And, race, of course. Anne Parsons: Correct. Yes. Speaker 1: The population was mainly white in the mental hospitals. Anne Parsons: Correct. Exactly. Speaker 1: We could talk about the decline in the mental hospital rate, and then we can also then later talk about the increase in the prison rate, the decline in the mental hospital rate, what caused that? Anne Parsons: Here's the thing. I'm supposed to give answers that are 60 to 90 seconds and I want an entire lecture. Speaker 1: That's Twitter-like. Anne Parsons: Right, exactly. Speaker 1: I'm sorry to do that. I mean- Anne Parsons: No, I can answer it. Just- Speaker 1: Well, let me phrase it better though that your book gets into this in greater detail, but maybe you could just give a hint as to what people would find there. That's a good correction, I think. Anne Parsons: What I find is that in the 1960s, there really is this change in treatment and modality. There have been new developments in treating people through psychotherapy and also the advent of psychotropic medications. Treatments are changing. And so, there's more of a belief that people could be treated in communities rather than being sent away for long periods of time. It's getting away from that concept that a place, an asylum, can transform a person, which was deeply embedded in the asylum movement. That really is changing things in the '60s. Anne Parsons: There also is in the '60s that really leads to changes in the '70s I found is the rise patient activism, the anti-psychiatry movement, challenges to conditions in mental hospitals themselves, many of which were quite large and conditions had dramatically deteriorated in the 1940s and '50s. And so, there were a lot of exposes about mental hospital conditions. And so, with that, came this push to try to improve mental hospitals. With that, bring them down from being, in the case of Byberry, over 6,000 people down to smaller numbers. Then the final thing is really comes in the late '60s and '70s, the rise of patient's rights and major challenges to involuntary confinement, which changed the landscape of who could be confined. That's the very brief overview, and again, it could- Speaker 1: Appreciate that. Thank you. One of the things you brought out was who would've thought when you talk about the, I guess, public response, public attention or outrage. Interestingly, there's a big role in your story for conscientious objectors, who you would think, why are they involved in this? Anne Parsons: That was just fascinating to me, finding out the story of conscientious objectors and mental hospitals. During World War II, many conscientious objectors were assigned to do their service in mental health institutions. When they were there, a number of conscientious objectors based out of Philadelphia actually began organizing to learn about the conditions in many hospitals and institutions around the country, because they were seeing large amounts of violence or neglect at that time. As conscientious objectors, they did not just oppose violence in war, but also just in day-to-day life. They were seeing those terrible conditions in part because the great depression had led to diminishing state funds to mental health institutions. Then, also, the war itself pulled money away from domestic affairs to the war effort. Anne Parsons: And so, because of that, mental hospitals really were in terrible conditions. And so, these conscientious objectors really organized to expose through photographs, through articles, what they were finding and to advocate for better conditions. For me, personally, it was difficult to see those conditions and to know that my great aunt was in an institution like that during that period and just some of the pictures that I had seen from Stockley, which is where she was in Southern Delaware, were really disturbing. And so, it truly was a different world that these conscientious objectors were trying to really make them better. I mean, they made some significant gains. Speaker 1: There's no doubt prisons are today at a different world and out of sight, out of mind. The conscientious objectors then, I mean, one thing is you don't see this idea of patient rights. I think we've come a long way probably, but there's still a lot of stigma around psychiatric disability and there's still only the beginnings, I guess, of a neurodiversity, pride movement. It's not the sort of thing where people are proud to identify as someone who has had mental illness and also with incarceration, it's not a group that goes out and advocates for itself. That's my impression, I don't know, but the conscientious objectors seem to have, do you think of them as going in and getting that started? Anne Parsons: Certainly, the conscientious objectors were really in the 1940s and early '50s, because they form an organization that continues into the 1950s, were really putting front and center the human rights of people who are institutionalized in mental hospitals in front of people and saying that these human rights matter, these people's lives matter. That is important in laying the foundation for patients rights activism in the '60s and '70s, which really I was struck by how in the '60s and '70s, one of the rights movements that often is lost in history was mental patients rights activism. In Pennsylvania, where I had studied, there was the formation of the Alliance for the liberation of mental patients. These groups are around the country, radio shows that are trying to connect people and trying to organize and fight that stigma, but also fight against involuntary confinement in that time, which was different than today. Speaker 1: I think another thing you mentioned in the book is that one of the things about World War II is it showed that psychiatric distress is not a matter of genes and early childhood. It's something that can be due to an experience you have as an adult for getting PTSD. The conscientious objectors led to an article in, I guess, a couple of things that really brought attention to the asylums. One was a life article, another was the book and movie Snake Pit. I don't know, whichever one of those seems most worth talking about now, could you elaborate on it? Anne Parsons: One of the things that I found throughout researching this history from the '40s to the '80s, but that was particularly interesting in the '40s and '50s was that major news coverage and books and movies greatly impacted or affected the public's opinion about these places. That was one thing I was really interested in because as we're thinking today about how do we approach and make changes in our carceral system today with our incredibly high rates of prisons, looking at how the media, how books, how movies affected was really interesting. Anne Parsons: And so, one of the things that you bring up was the Life Magazine articles in which many conscientious objectors had taken photographs of conditions of mental hospitals. And so, there was literally photographic essays that were published that were showing people what literally it looked like. Those pictures often would have people who were only partially dressed or completely undressed, who were sitting in rooms without adequate furniture, who were in spaces that, in many ways, look like prisons with bars on the windows. These pictures at points really resembled photographs from the Holocaust. Anne Parsons: It's interesting, because right now, my research has taken a dramatic turn into a project on the history of the Holocaust in Ukraine. I'm working on an exhibit there. When I go back and look at those photos, again, I'm reminded how people are trying to use what had just been shown, these incredible human rights abuses and maltreatment of people that had happened in Europe during the war and they're trying to show that many of these same abuses are not the same, but that incredible abuses against humanity are happening in these mental health institutions. It's really intentionally showing these pictures in a way that evoke those extreme human rights abuses and are trying to get people to act. It very much does. Anne Parsons: In Pennsylvania, I think, or it might actually have been in a different state, the governor, and I almost want to say it was Kansas, the governor ends up taking all of the metal chains and restraints that are in hospitals throughout the state and brings them together and literally boils them down. It really is leading to major reforms in these areas that kick off deinstitutionalization. Speaker 1: Well, this is the Maryland governor. You have a photo of the Maryland governor casting the Mental Health Bell. Anne Parsons: Yes, that is potentially... Thank you for that. Speaker 1: Striking. They make a bell out of these chains and circles. Anne Parsons: Yes. The bell is now the symbol of Mental Health America, it's an organization that continues over time. Speaker 1: Yes, there's one of the photographs you include in the book called despair, which was in Life, May 6, 1946. It's just stunning. Once you look at it, you can't get it out of your head. I guess, it's out of sight, out of mind, but these articles you could say are bringing it to public mind. Then, we have also these court cases and a lot of court cases eventually ending up, and you go through it in detail, but in the end, we end up with this standard of clear and present danger of physical harm either to himself or others in order to be involuntarily committed. Then, it's only for a short period of time. Talk about how lax it was before then. Anne Parsons: Prior to then, the laws had allowed for commitments with doctor's approval and the support of family members, but doctor's approval. Once people had been committed, they often could not be released without the institution approving the release, that type of thing. There were very few, any due process protections at that time for people in mental health institutions. And so, one of the ironies there is that many people, in a time where due process in prisons was still quite limited, but they were in some ways, there was a little bit more due process in prisons than mental hospitals. Anne Parsons: One example there had been, I think, it was the case of The Laughing Eel, who was a man who was a robber and had been ultimately was institutionalized in a mental hospital and did not go to prison and ended up spending a few decades in the mental hospital. When his case came forward, probably would've faced maybe a 10-year or so prison sentence, but that lack of real due process, lack of access to attorney, that type of thing could lead to these extended sentences. Now, that was not the case all the time, but it really is trying to understand not everyone stayed in institutions for decades. It shows that there was that lack of due process protections that once people got in, it could be difficult to leave. Speaker 1: Right. That was fascinating. I mean, at least in jail or prison, there's a date that it's supposed to be done. Anne Parsons: Correct. Speaker 1: Right. You go through this Good Time Bill and some of the opposition from the left was, we don't want things to be up in the air. We want things to be... Because if it's just up to somebody to allow them to be released, that'll just never happen. When you get into a mental hospital, it could be forever. Anne Parsons: The Good Time Bill, thank you for bringing it up. The Good Time Bill is reflecting a moment in time in the 1960s and '70s, where people, policy makers, politicians, advocates were rethinking what the criminal justice system and mental health system could be. We're trying to look for more community-based alternatives. Out of that came the Good Time Bill, which prison officials were saying, "Maybe we should base this more based on rehabilitation," but you get that pushback from people in mental hospitals. But it really was an interesting moment in the '60s and '70s. This is a question for you. I know you've been raising things, but just your thoughts on that moment yourself. Speaker 1: Well, I thought that it was just someone who really tried to come along with a good idea. I guess it was K. Leroy Irvis if I'm reading this right. He came up with what he thought was a way of reforming sentencing and really thought through about what it would be and the bill did not pass. He ended up getting, not even, I guess, not getting support from the left or from the right. It's just made me think that so much is inertia, not good ideas, but someone who was just really thoughtful and came up with what he thought would work, but then politically, it's another question entirely whether you're going to get it through. That was my sense of it. Anne Parsons: Both in some ways was inertia, and in other ways, one of the things I found was that the '70s, just as people were trying to think of new solutions like K. Leroy Irvis was trying to make prisons more humane or trying to give incentives for people to readjust to society, that type of thing. At that very same moment, you see the beginnings of the penal turn- Speaker 1: Yes. Anne Parsons: ... in American society. That comes, I think, he was pushing for the Good Time Bill right around the time of Attica and the Attica prison uprising in which in the popular press afterwards, it really turned prisoners into animals incredibly hard. You see the slow hardening of what prison should be as more punitive spaces where you're serving time. I think you're right to point out that from the left, there was that concern around rehabilitation at the time, that it could lead to that over extension of power like they had had in mental hospitals. And so, there wasn't a huge amount of support for those humane efforts too. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't as if the left was coming out against it. Speaker 1: And so, in the '80s, which I remember well, there was this fear and put people away that was what I thought it was palpable. We get this rise in the number of people in prison and in prison for a long time. I guess, there are people out there who chose to be in mental institutions. I don't think there's anyone who chooses to be in prison, or it would be difficult to think of anyone who chooses to be in a prison. This has just started in the '80s and has just continued through the end of the century. Anne Parsons: It's interesting when we're talking about the '80s and '90s and this politics of fear, because it's interesting because one of the things that's important to remember is the way that asylums grew so large was through a politics of fear during the progressive era and through the 1920s and '30s. There was a real fear-based politics and conception that was rooted in eugenics around people who were feeble-minded or people who were labeled as insane or mad that they were a danger to society, more likely to be criminals, more likely to... Actually, people who were feeble-minded who had intellectual or developmental disabilities for instance were more likely to be susceptible to do crime or to women were thought to be more likely to be prostitutes. This is a very different conception from today. Anne Parsons: And so, that fear politics really helped lead to that fueling of big asylums where people were sent. I think we see that again in the '80s in a different form, only this time, it's much more around breaking the law at the point of law breaking. People aren't choosing to go into prisons, but crimes or misdemeanors that might have previously people may have been sent to mental hospitals or just not imprisoned in the '70s, '80s, '90s, there starts to be with the war on drugs, wars on crime that putting people away for drug offenses, for new misdemeanors, trespassing, and that shift to prisons and jails. Speaker 1: What's the difference between prisons and jail? Jails or local and prisons are federal, or is that essentially the idea? Anne Parsons: That's a great question. Jails are when someone is arrested. If you are charged with a crime and arrested, then you're placed in jail pending trial. Some people do serve their sentences for misdemeanor, smaller crimes there. And so, you do have people who stay for longer periods in jails. If people are then sentenced, tried and sentenced, or plead guilty and are sentenced, then they go to state prisons separately. Speaker 1: I gotcha. Anne Parsons: And so, today, I think the rates of people with psychiatric disabilities in jail, I looked at a report that had said, it was from 2014, but it gives you a sense of the numbers, which was that 20% of the people in jails that were diagnosed with serious mental illness, that's 20% and about 15% of people in prisons. It led to, at that time, 383,000 people with severe psychiatric diagnoses were in prisons, in jails, which at that time was higher than the number of people in psychiatric hospitals. Speaker 1: If you think about the middle class, say, is... I think there was a book called The Search for Order, trying to find worried about people on the margins and whether it was going to disrupt their lives, and on the margins would be people who were unemployed, people who were prisoners, juvenile, delinquents, that was the word, and just a sense that these people on the outside were going to poison the system and needed to be allotted, put somewhere, done something to, and it ended up being put away where they don't have to be thought of, I guess. Speaker 1: One of the things that happens then is, as you say, we don't know what is a sign of insanity, what is a sign of criminality. We know that there's a sign that this person is on the margins in some way. For example, I think you mentioned homosexuality was one time... Well, certainly, at one time it was thought to be a mental illness and it was also thought to be criminal maybe, I'm not sure, but it's something that now we look at and say, "Well, it doesn't seem like it is either, but it was thought to be just disruptive in some way." Anne Parsons: Homosexuality was criminalized in the 20th century and it was just in 2005 with Lawrence v. Texas that the Supreme Court decision in which can no longer criminalize crimes of sodomy, that type of thing. And so, it was literally had been criminalized. People, 1950s, '40s were often institutionalized in mental hospitals around homosexuality or sexual deviance, people who were trans were more institutionalized in mental hospitals. It was both considered social deviance and led to psychiatric diagnoses and institutionalization, but then also it was criminalized during this- Speaker 1: That's a good example. Also, there was a story about Allen Ginsberg in your book about him getting put into a mental asylum, I think, for what we would now consider a crime. It was a traffic crime, I think, perhaps. Let me look. Now, this is from page 37, the story of another famous nonconformist elucidates the connections between law breaking and mental hospitals in the 1940s. In 1949, police arrested a young Allen Ginsberg for participating in a car ride that turned into a police chase and wreck. In lieu of jail time, Ginsberg agreed to mental hospitalization. Right. There, something like a disorderly upsetting issue with cars and accidents now would be in the courts. At the time, the person was sent to a mental hospital for a time. It's fascinating. Speaker 1: One of the things that I think the book is talking about is in the push to... It's always easier and possible to look at the past and try to figure it out. To predict the future is another thing. But when we think about decarceration, as tricky as this is, what are some of the lessons that we might learn that you think people should pay attention to? Anne Parsons: The biggest lesson really was that in the movement to deinstitutionalize mental hospitals, there was a vision of trying to make society more just and equitable. While deinstitutionalization brought about the rights of people and significantly better conditions in mental health institutions, it did not bring about full community acceptance and really robust funding of healthcare, housing, supports for people on the margins, as you said. And so, as we approach decarceration today, how can we fight not only for reducing prison beds, but also changing society so that new forms of carceral systems don't emerge. Speaker 1: Right. It's interesting, people say, "You need to have something measurable, otherwise you don't know what you're doing, and otherwise you don't know if you're accomplishing something." In a way, that's true. But on the other hand, once you have something measurable, if that's all you're thinking about like number of people in the hospital, and the number of people in prison, you can't focus only on that. Anne Parsons: It's true, that over focus on those graphs or the statistics. Speaker 1: Well, anyway, there's a lot more in the book and great texture, examples. There's only really that one graph in the book. The book is not a book of graphs, it's a book of stories. Thank you very much, Professor Parsons. The book is From Asylum to Prison, subtitle, Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass Incarceration after 1945. The University of North Carolina Press. Thank you for talking with me. Anne Parsons: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

David Charles (Yale)

The undivided self: Aristotle and the 'mind-body' problem

Aristotle initiated the systematic investigation of perception, the emotions, memory, desire and action, developing his own account of these phenomena and their interconnection. The aim of this book is to gain a philosophical understanding of his views and to examine how far they withstand critical scrutiny. Aristotle's account, it is argued, constitutes a philosophically live alternative to conventional post-Cartesian thinking about psychological phenomena and their place in a material world. It offers a way to dissolve, rather than solve, the mind-body problem we have inherited.

x. A landmark work bringing together Aristotle and contemporary philosophy x. Charles argues that study of Aristotle can offer a persuasive alternative to modern thinking about the mind x. Accessible to readers with no background in ancient Greek philosophy

David Charles is the Harold H. Newman Professor of Philosophy at Yale University

Professor David Charles was a Fellow of Philosophy in Oriel College from 1978 before moving to Yale in 2014 and was a Research Professor in Oxford from 2008 to 2014. He has held Visiting Professorships at Rutgers, UCLA, Brown, Tokyo Metropolitan, Taiwan National and Venice Universities. He was a co-founder of the European Society of Ancient Philosophy and is an Honorary Fellow of the National Technical University of Athens.

"This important and challenging book is the fruit of many years of engagement with Aristotle's thinking about the soul-body relation by one of the most distinguished experts in the field. David Charles does what many have tried to do during the past fifty years, but he does it with more radicalism and ingenuity than, as far as I can see, anyone has done before. . . . The Undivided Self confronts us with important questions about the fundaments of our thinking about mind and nature.It presents a serious challenge to modern interpreters of Aristotle and demands attention from contemporary philosophers of mind." -- Klaus Corcilius, Mind

"This book best shows its brilliance in its subtle analysis of Aristotle's remarks on emotion, desire, perception, and imagination, its grand systematizing ambition, and its spirited defense of the credibility of an Aristotelian approach to philosophical psychology. Charles succeeds in laying a simple, elegant theoretical foundation upon which he is then able to erect an intricate edifice of nuanced observations. This achievement is the culmination of decades of thought about some of the most important issues in Aristotle's philosophical psychology and will be indispensable for those interested in carrying discussion of such issues forward." -- Bryan Reece, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"the book strikes the reader as an example of how a line of interpretation can be developed into a compelling reading at the hands of a perspicacious scholar. . . . [Charles] offers, in the introduction, different paths of reading his book through its chapters, which makes it all the more appealing to specialists, and to non-specialists as well, in philosophy of mind and ancient philosophy. The range of issues addressed in the volume and its unflagging engagement with these issues will be a source of inspiration to its readers as an example of intellectual courage." -- Refik Güremen, The Classical Review

Transcript

Host: Welcome to the Philosophy podcast, where we interview leading philosophers about their recent work. Today, we're speaking about the book, "The Undivided Self: Aristotle and the Mind-Body Problem", by Professor David Charles, Oxford University Press 2021. The book has received very positive reviews. The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews' Brian Reese says that the book presents an exciting vision of Aristotle's holomorphic, metaphysics in general. A vision that is likely to set an agenda for those studying multiple areas of Aristotle's philosophy. In Mind, Klaus Corcilius says that "David Charles does what many have tried to do during the past 50 years, but he does it with more radicalism and ingenuity than, as far as I can see, anyone has done before". He applies Aristotle's psychological high-low morphism, the modern mind-body problem arguing that it is both distinctive and philosophically preferable to all other positions in the post-Cartesian theoretical landscape. He also says that "The Undivided Self" has the potential to revive a very important debate about the basic assumptions that underline our thinking about the mind and nature. Finally, in The Classical Review, Refik Guremen says that the book is written in organized appealing both to specialists and non-specialists. The range of issues addressed in the volume and its unflagging engagement with these issues will be a source of inspiration to its readers as an example of intellectual courage. Professor David Charles is the Howard H. Newman Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Welcome to Philosophy Podcast, Professor Charles. Professor Charles: Very pleasant to join you. Thank you for inviting me. Host: I wanted to start by teeing up the mind-body problem. I wanted to use this quotation from Rebecca Goldstein's novel of the same name, "The Mind-Body Problem because we can get into the technical details of the mind-body problem. Her approach shows its wider significance to us. She says we start to do an ontological tally of what exists. We say, "Well, first of all, there are things, tables, trees, and other people. Then what else? Well, there's my consciousness." All the things that I'm conscious of and which create an entire inner world; all my memories, my associations, my hopes. Once we realize that then we say, "Well look, we've got things, we've got consciousness." Presumably, every person out there has this entire inner world. She says, "The interior decorating of a human being will be lush with particulars not to be found out there in the objects. Some of them are determined by sensation, mood, and memories, others by fewer transient features, such as where she stands on the mattering map." She says, "When you start thinking about what you would have to do this ontological tally, not only to name all the things but also include all of our myriad inner worlds." She notes, the interiority, the privacy of them. The question is, she says, "Can such facts as these be about material bodies? Material bodies exist in the objective and public out there. Are they capable of inner lives? Does a rich and vastly complicated interior gape open in the central guts of some of them? For God's sake, am I who carries an entire world within me a body." I like that for showing the [inaudible] of the mind-body problem in our daily life. Would you agree with that? Professor Charles: No, I think that's an extremely eloquent, articulate statement of how we are encouraged to think about the mind-body problem. I don't align, if I might, two things in Rebecca Goldstein's vivid description. One is the idea of consciousness, as a purely inner world to which, in my case, only I have access. Do you have any access to your inner world? Rather, that's one assumption. That's part of what I call in my book, the idea of the purely psychological, as well as separate realm or domain. Use these thoughts in our inner world. Directly given to us in conscience or experience. The other point of view of what the body, as well as the body, is understood to be something independent from and distinct from consciousness, sentience, and our capacities as agents; [inaudible] you can look at the body or something defined independently of psychological capacities. As you can think of the psychological is defined independently of the external world or indeed material objects. The question is, how do these two realms fit together? My own line of thinking has been, that once the question is posed in those terms, it is probably unanswerable. After all, we've been trying to solve them on the mind-body questions, at least it's Plato. Host: Right. Professor Charles: Certainly since they cut and has been a history of failures. Host: Right. Professor Charles: My interest in taking up your cue from Rebecca Goldstein is whether this is the correct way to formulate the problem. Host: Got you. Yes, I'm looking into that. At one point, we talked about scientism and in relation to the mind-body problem, I hope we get to talk about that. We're talking about the mind-body problem and Aristotle. Aristotle was simply the philosopher in the Abrahamic tradition, Aquinas, Maimonides Al-Farabi. It's clear that you want to do some recovery. Although, Aristotle is such an influence in the Abrahamic tradition. There's a sense that his original way of looking at things needs to be, or has been lost or needs to be recovered. As you've mentioned, you'd seem to point do they carve as the dividing line there. Professor Charles: Yes, although that Tony as well a partial beginning [inaudible] actually. I think your reference to the philosophers and religious traditions between Aristotle and Descartes is extremely important. Actually, I'm editing a collection of essays by many scholars and by many different hands. From my point of view, attempts to pinpoint the way in which the Cartesian problem emerges from modifications in the Aristotelian tradition. There were two, several but two. One was the idea of the self or freedom or consciousness as a separate purely psychological phenomenon, which comes partly from Alexander of Aphrodisias, and partly from the Neoplatonist. Then comes through into the Christian tradition through Neoplatonism. The other side is the development of a more serious material story, which you find in Lucretius and Epicurus and the attempt to take what is physically basic to be metaphysically basic. Host: Right. Professor Charles: I see Descartes and actually, Suarez before him. As it were a Confluence of these two streams which pull apart the Aristotelian in mid-position. I don't think Descartes, although he's a fantastically good philosopher and a brilliant writer. In a way, he really encapsulated movements which you can see in people I've mentioned and also in the common to tradition and Philoponus and Simplicius, who are Neoplatonist writers, who interpret Aristotle in the two-component way, which [inaudible] had encouraged them to do. Host: One of your reviewer's concerns, he says and this is Professor Reese, "I often found myself wondering how helpful it is to center the relevant controversies around Descartes." Is that sense that Descartes is just a label for a much broader change and that's the philosopher you're using? We're talking about the Scientific Revolution and modernization, urbanization. Descartes is more of a label for you than this particular philosopher changed the way. Professor Charles: Well, I think that's absolutely correct, Howard. I see Descartes as a clear exponent and understanding of the implications of what I call two-component thinking. Where one component is to be understood, as Rebecca Goldstein was saying, it was a purely psychological phenomenon." The other component if you understood in terms of a purely material picture. The question is, how do these two things fit together? Descartes's [crosstalk] they were really quite different things, and it was something of a mystery how they fitted together. That's how dualism works and emerges. It's basically the two-component thinking which drives Descartes. As I understand it, emerged from the streams in Pre-Cartesian philosophy. Host: Solution-wise. Right, I understand. Professor Charles: Which in sense Rebecca Goldstein picked up in her novel. Host: Right. I'm pulling from your book, "The initial idea for this book emerged from discussions in a long-running reading group on De Anima, held at Oriel College Oxford. When we decided in 2004, after more than 15 years spent on the second and third books, to read De Anima 8.1, much fell into place. I vividly recall our lively meetings at that time. I just wondered if you could talk about that. It sounded fantastic. Professor Charles: Yes, that was great. From the late 80s. Many of the extremely distinguished within ancient philosophy were very active, as well, for many years in this discussion group. I remember on one occasion, we spent a whole year reading De Anima Book 3 Chapter 5, "The Discussion of the Active Intellect". There were about six or seven of us, now teaching in Princeton or [inaudible] Professor in Oxford, several of my colleagues from Oxford other visiting. Sometimes, we make no progress at all in the text. Next session we begin just where the last session began. What we would do was to go through it as we're theologically very carefully, but also we try to grasp what the conceptual possibilities were. It was both as it were an exercise and also looking at the manuscript edition, which is now being really reconsidered in this area. It was an interesting combination of analytic acuity and philological procedure. That went on for a long time. We actually got in the way of reading the book backward, beginning in Book 3 and moving backward, thinking of this way as a fresh way to look at it. It turned out that we should have begun at the beginning. Host: That sounds great. One of your keywords here is "inextricability". I understand if we look at anger, everyone can agree that anger is inherently both psychic and psychological, and bodily. Inextricability is somewhat stronger than that. Could you explain that? Professor Charles: That's a very important concept. It's very important to be as clear as I can on what the commitments here are. Aristotle was very careful in this conceptual apparatus in this area and worked with ideas to think some things could be inseparable from existence. You couldn't have one without the other. For example, you couldn't have a number two without the number three with the necessary entity. He had a tighter notion of inextricability which he called inextricability in definition, where one can't define what one phenomenon is without essentially referring as part of its nature, to some other object, not some other entity. In the '40s, in the case of anger, the kind of desire for revenge, which anger is, isn't an ordinary desire for revenge plus the body. Host: Right. Professor Charles: It's stressful or intense or hot and bothered, they say, they were kind of desire for revenge. Football coaches in England say, "Don't get mad, get even." In other words, meaning, "Desire for revenge is a dish best served cold." Host: Right. Professor Charles: That doesn't capture anger. That captures as it were cold and calculating desire for revenge. Host: Right. Professor Charles: The kind of desire for revenge, which anger is stressful and physically intense. You get hot and bothered and you get physically agitated, that's the kind of desire for revenge, anger is. Here I was with [inaudible] intuitive example or thinking you don't have a purely psychological bit. The psychological bit as it were, can't be properly defined or understood without reference to some internal physical states. Host: Right. Someone comes along and says, "Well, I can. I'm looking at anger and I'm going through it, but right now I'm just conceiving in my mind, the psychological part of anger." What would Aristotle say about that? Professor Charles: He said, "That's fine. You can do that." We have to be very careful thinking about what we're doing in anything we do. You can abstract from the psychophysical entity. The hot desire for revenge and think of it just to desire for revenge, but don't think you can get back from that to the entity by just adding heat to it. Host: Got you. Professor Charles: His way of putting this is one which Horschel also used later following Aristotle with the notion of snubness. The idea here is don't think of a snub nose as a concavity in the nose. Though, you can concavity and find concavity in the nose and in legs and other objects. The distinctive kind of concavity is the nasal cavity. It's not an all-driven cavity in the nose but a distinctive kind of nasal cavity. Horschel used that in just the way Aristotle did to try to capture the idea of embodied kind of concavity, or the embodied forming attitude in way of thinking. The desire for revenge isn't a desire for revenge. Its anger is the desire for revenge plus heat but a hot kind of desire for revenge. Host: Correct. I understand you want to be economical in your writing. Wouldn't it be not only a desire for revenge but first I'll listen to the idea that also it comes after an insult? Professor Charles: Oh, yes of course. Absolutely. It's also interesting to think about revenge. It's an occasion by insult. It involves this physically involved but also is an ongoing process. Something that can last a long time. Think of the anger of Achilles before the worlds of Troy. Host: Sure. Professor Charles: He went on for days and could only be addressed by the tears of Priam by something as we're which emotionally impacted him. Host: Right. Professor Charles: We tend to think these days of these things as discrete events, one after the other. For Arthur, anger was a process that modified how Achilles behaved, which could have gone longer but was a swage by Priam. You can't understand the process without thinking of it as driven by a desire for revenge on an insult but also expressed in certain bodily ways. Host: Right. Professor Charles: To kind of embodied cognition view, I guess you might say. Host: Right. Robert Solomon gives the example of anger lasting decades. His example was the Women's Movement, you can be angry for a long or Civil Rights Movement. You can be angry for a long, long time. As you say this is maybe more unsettling, it's not only that the psychic part is physical, but it's also true that the physical part has to be psychic. Could you speak to that? Professor Charles: No, absolutely. That's the path of the Athenian picture which is most difficult for us to understand, giving up the miss of the purely psychological. Although, it has a big impact on the questions Rebecca Goldstein was talking about, mother nature and imagination and sensory experience. In a sense that's easier than giving up our work. We think it's more difficult than giving up our notion of the physical. Only two points about that. One is by no means clear what our notion of the physical is. Very often people say, "Well, it's well-studied by Physics." What constrains the physics of the future? Particularly, Physics is concerned with informational systems. What kind of information is it that Physics studied? When you think of neurons, some people talk about the language of neurons, as an informational system, what are the limits of Physics? If we talk of signaling systems, giving action potentials around the brain, the question would be, what are the limits of the correct description of the language of neurons? Host: Might say. Professor Charles: That was a question of what Physics is. To say, its three-dimensional spaciousness essentially, spatiotemporal would allow psychological states to be physical. The most important point is this, what Aristotle was insistent on was, I understand, the thought that anger and desire for revenge are controllers of the process, basic causes which guide our responses to the world. It's not that there are two causes: 1) psychological component and a separate physical component, which is somehow together or overdetermined or one's an epic phenomenon, or one rests on the other. There's one unified phenomenon that drives Achilles to behave in the way he does. Then the question is, how do you have to think of the physical for that to be the case, to think of that as psychophysical? Well, one thought would be in terms of thinking of the body, in terms of capacities as it were the bodies that are capable of reacting to input and output, go to input, in certain kinds of ways. The kind of ways which was shown in Achilles' actions. To take a case was another very good Achillean case. In the case of a physical skill, like weaving or playing a tennis shot, how does the body have to be the body of a skilled weaver? Our thought was at least one thing is true. The body has to have embodied capacities to move in the way the skill requires. Take outside of the problem, here's consciousness and there's a body to find independently of psychological capacities. Against that, you play the idea of the weaver or the tennis player whose body is attuned to reacting to the external world in the way their skill requires. The idea of one strongly unified causal story, then constrains, a notion of the physical. My book is really noting necessity and possibility, the thinking in this way, trying to say it will stand some objections. Host: Right. Professor Charles: I'm deconstructing the Cartesian dialectic pointing to an alternative and trying to knock down an objection or to consider objections to it. There's a further much more positive program, which I'm not engaging in which would dispel out. How am I instantiate these ideas within a modern scientific context? Host: Right. This is where we begin scientism. You sketched the case of how the Aristotelian view. What would someone do once you get this conception of matter in itself? As I understand it, that's fine. That would be another one of these abstractions. We could abstract and think about the physical matter as matter, and then one could build up the scientific project, but understanding that it was built on this abstraction. Am I getting that right? Professor Charles: That's exactly right. I think most claims of Physics is want to make. Namely, if you fix purely physical, you fix the purely psychological. Might well be true, but the basis of the truth. As a reward, the truth would be grounded would be these psychophysical processes and capacitors. It's not what has to deny anything within the scientific picture itself. All those claims can be true. What is in dispute is the idea that what's metaphysically basic. The basis for our understanding of these phenomena has to come from taking the most fundamental particles, whatever they are, and building up from there. Host: Right. Professor Charles: My claim isn't the doctor of science. Anyway, is no part of Physics to say. Host: Right. Professor Charles: What's more, you have to be a metaphysician by starting with the basic physical aspect. That's what I call scientism. Host: Yes. Professor Charles: As it was a brilliant, ambitious project. I try to explain everything in terms of basic physical elements, whatever they may be. That project is problematic because we have no idea what basic Physics is. As were generations now that's an ongoing search. The idea we have to start to pause our metaphysics until it was the golden day when the Scientific Revolution happened. Know what the fundamental particles are on the basis of those understanding as psychological states. It seems to me almost kind of revolutionary in the Marxist existence, Utopia as we're looking for today, far in the future when metaphysics can begin. Host: Right. Professor Charles: Let's put it rather rhetorically, but you see what I mean? Host: Yes, I do. You mentioned Horschel earlier. Professor Charles: Yes. Host: I don't know enough about Horschel know-how. Aristotelian he was, but a lot of times this reminds me of Horschel's project. Reminding us that science needs to be grounded in the life world. Professor Charles: Yes. It was a whole pack of European thought, which I'm not fantastically well-trained in. Horschel was clearly pretty knowledgeable about Aristotle. With the crisis of European thought Europeans had, he used these moves like the [inaudible] move and mental quantity, I take it also follows in that tradition. Another person who thought in this way was Whitehead, who thought that processes were a basic phenomenon and much further than Aristotle did. But thought ended that the Cartesian perspective was an abstraction from certain kinds of processes. Distinct tradition from nutrition or those who tend to engage with a Cartesian programmatic, and ways very similar to what I'm trying to do. Host: Right, absolutely. The name of the book, "The Crisis", kind of saw some stuff. Professor Charles: Yes, exactly. Horschel's idea was the mistake had been made to have a purely mathematical conception on the one side and a notion of matter defined independently of Mathematics on the other. That's exactly parallel to the kind of move I'm making, as to where to have a purely psychological realm with what Rebecca Goldstein was talking about and a purely physical realm to find independently of it in this case. Host: All right. Professor Charles: Let's look at what's in the broader context [inaudible]. Host: One of the reviews was mainly positive, but of course, they say they're concerned. One of them said that in terms of the psychic needing to refer to the body, the question was, what about rationality? For me a concrete example. You talk about Achilles. This is Sarpedon talking to Glaucus. He says, "If you and I could only get out of this war alive, and then be immortal and ageless all of our days, I would never again fight among the foremost or send you into battle. We're men when Glory." As it is, death is everywhere in more shapes than we can count. Since no mortal is immune or can escape, let's go forward either to give glory to another man or get glory from him. This is the sort of thing that we think about that is kind of like higher-level ideas. What am I doing in life? What should my values be, that I don't see immediately how it needs to involve a physical component? Yet, it clearly drives things like anger because it sets up our projects. Professor Charles: That's a very interesting question. Clearly, there are ways of thinking about Aristotle, like the pure observer self, or the self that never sees itself but only sees other things, or the self you can think of as immortal in the Judeo Christian. Host: Right. Professor Charles: In Germany, [inaudible] equivalence in some way. Now ranged against that the following perspective. You ask yourself, what kind of being is it for whom friendship, for example, is valuable? What kind of entity is it, which is capable of acting in the way we do? Taking that and where acting involves also practical reasoning and reflection on action. What kind of being is it for those who think in that way, beginning with, I suppose, our commitments, loyalties, and our friendships? Thinking of those is where springing out of the kind of embodied creatures we are. Host: Right. Professor Charles: From that point of view, the idea of the immortals self is a brilliant abstraction from the self who talks and discusses, and shares enjoyment... Host: That's right. Professor Charles: ...shares discussion, in case of friendship, sees things together as they say. The question is and the Athenian pictures this. Certainly, Arthur Luther's notion of pure intellect, or the active intellect, as it were, which is in some way, like, in his work perspective, some way like the intellect of God or Angels or whatever. Oh God, I'm a little valise in theological terms but he's very careful. It seems to me actually to think that are active intellect is different from the kind of active intellect of an imagined pure intellect. That is based on perception, involves emotional response, and can't be made sense of without commitments and data phenomenon that come from that source. So even if thinking can be defined or some kind without reference to the body, there were all kinds of thinking that are essentially embodied thinking. Host: Right. That makes sense. Yes. And I guess you've already covered your answer to the other clearly anger can be influenced by someone taking testosterone or someone that has a lesion in the brain or something. And those would seem to be not referring to the psychological at all. I guess though, your point would be, yeah, but it fits into the science, which is great, wonderful. In the Aristotelian view, it's an abstraction away from this psycho-physical foundational level. Professor Charles: Yes. That's as far as I get in the book, that's exactly right. But I think when things move carefully and look at the scientific discussions of pain and particularly the kind of modern work on pain management involving discussions of placebo effects, our mindfulness as we interact with pain, for example, or acupuncture treatment, and also the different meanings of pain in different contexts. I think there's a kind of growing awareness of the pain that isn't just wearing something in the amygdala, but it involves memories, a sense of salients, and distance. And then we're into the discussion of how the neuron as we're going to go forward in this project. What is the language in which the neuron signal to one another? Invoking memories, effect, and importance or salience. How does mindfulness work if it works? In terms of giving you some psychological distance. How is that embedded in the circuitry? I think the picture, which we were brought up on that pains, the lesion, and the amygdala, and then there's where our awareness of it. Host: Aware of someone. Professor Charles: As to where is just that kind of loss of the implications? Host: Yeah. Professor Charles: I think it's fascinating when you read a book like the [inaudible] book, the brain, and pains. It was a brain spect in a great pain management specialist. You see how much more complicated. People come to see it in the last 10 or 15 years. They're thinking about pain management. As it were in thinking about what pain is because there are these interesting people who have articles asymbolic[?] where they're aware of pain, but it's not so bad for them. As where it's not that painful for it. And in mindfulness and Placebo a case where it was, the pain can apparently be managed or reduced by the context in which you see it. Host: Yeah. And it's right on to mention the placebo effect. Just recently been seeing a psychiatrist who doesn't want to prescribe a drug if the patient doesn't think it's going to work. Professor Charles: Absolutely. Host: That's why. Professor: Absolutely, I mean, I'm very interested in Clinical Psychology in general as I know you are. One thing that really encouraged me down this line was the observation that certain kinds of depression, cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, and drug treatment are more or less equally effective. Host: Right. Professor Charles: And you ask, I said well, what kind of phenomenon is it, which is open to these two or three different phenomena, assuming it's a unified phenomenon? Host: That's interesting. And then there are also people who aren't in the studies who get over their depression by picking up golf. Professor Charles: Yeah, exactly. Which is some kind of detachment or alternative activity. Get active stimulation. Host: Right. So, one of the things I was surprised by in the thinking of politics, the human is by nature political animals, the policies prior to the individual. And anticipating that someone would say, well, the bees are much more social than humans. Aristotle says, "No, humans are more political even than bees because we had the faculty of language." I was just wondering if you could take these arguments, that the psychic should really be psychic-physical. I wasn't sure why you can't apply and can't use the same arguments to say, especially something like anger, which is so social or political that anger should be inextricably not only psychophysical but psychophysical-social. Professor Charles: That's a very interesting question, which you raised. And I think that's a line of thought, well, worth pursuing [inaudible]. And I would see it like this, if you push the question beginning with a kind of obvious case the case of friendship, for example, and you know that the question, what is the subject in friendship? Should we think of ourselves as a unit? We, the team or the two individual players as were transacting with one another and transacts, were a quid pro quo way. And neither of those is an alternative though which says, well, the notion of the self-involved in friendship is something that is inextricably interpersonal. As we're such that, we have these capacities which are essentially other-directed. Host: Right. Professor Charles: Not as a further entity of the "we", as we're beyond the individuals, but you can't say what the individuals are, except by thinking of them as definitionally what it is to be a human person to be connected in certain ways to another human person. Host: Right. Professor Charles: Then, the question is, what is the requirement for that? What kind of connections are they? Which distinguishes us from highly social animals like bees, where presumably the notion of friendship doesn't seem to apply. How I would try to prosecute, try to develop that line. Host: Okay. Professor Charles: So there's a kind of individualism that permeates much but our thinking. Host: Yeah. Professor Charles: Well, to be a human person is to be defined, either in terms of just my own internal states or is limited to the extent of my body. Host: Correct. Professor: But after that, it's the transaction between me and others as it were for my own self-directed goals. I think you're right. To say that the Athenian[?] picture is different from that, in that, there's an extension, which involves as were the inextricably social. Host: Right. The politics are prior to the individual right there, and the beginning of the politics. Professor Charles: Although these priority claims have to be handled very carefully. Host: Okay. Professor Charles: Because I take it, that means something like politics is the basic definition of what a citizen of the other politics. Host: I see, it doesn't mean more metaphysically, basically. Professor Charles: I don't think you need me that, you're living on one side, there's a really interesting question as was thrown up by his tradition which is, how does a human have to be for interpersonal relations to be as important for us as they are? Host: That's helpful. I wanted to just give the listeners a sense of the book overall. That's the last thing we're running out of time, but I wondered if you could give an overview of chapter 2, you're trying to take all of Aristotle's insights into psychology and the psychophysical nature of our lives and trace them back to Aristotle's metaphysics, as I understand it. We're talking about form, matter, and causation. And I think that this is one of the things that your reviewers were saying was controversial, exciting, or controversial. The idea of an impure form. Professor Charles: Yes, absolutely. Okay, good. I'm thinking of anger physically involved desire for revenge. It's a desire for revenge in a physical form. Not two components. I think then the question is, how far does this extend to the notion of this is like a causal question? Two notions of physical form in general. One way to put this question, I think kind of intuitive way to try to put the question is, how do you have to think of form for it to be causally applications? To make a causal difference to the world? Guys, [inaudible] crack his head triangles don't cut things. Host: Right. Professor Charles: As where abstract entities or mathematics entered is not the kind of thing which heat or cut or divide except of course in geometrical shape. Host: Can I interrupt just for one moment? So when we talk about form, I want the listeners to know, we're not talking about Plato's forms which we talk about or maybe we are. But we're talking about essence. Professor Charles: Well, let's begin slightly further down the mountain right here. Host: Fine. Professor Charles: The thing is the way of the notion of shape. That's what we were thinking, it's form and shape [inaudible]. I think the question we should put it like this, why do round things roll? Take a really simple intuitive case. Host: Right. Professor Charles: Now, his line is not good as circular. Understood as a mathematical entity, as a mathematical property because such mathematical properties are not the kind of things to roll. Host: Correct. Professor Charles: Yep. What kind of circularity is it? This is where he explains why the tires were credible, and then the thought is... Host: It's in mind. Professor Charles: ...don't think that is just the circularity mathematical plus a bit of matter. Host: Right. Professor Charles: Rather it soak in and it mattered waste embodied kind of circularity... Host: Understood. Professor Charles: ...in some robust physical form. Some of his intent is in the physical body. So it's a rigid or elastic kind of thing. And those sticks out his tires[?]. So that's the intuition. How do you have to think of shapes for them to be causal applications? I think his notion of form is kind of built and try to capture that idea. Host: That's very clear. Professor Charles: In the psychological case, the form of anger is a desire for revenge of this hot kind, that's why our blood boils if we get angry and agitated, uncontrolled. The embodied circularity of the tire explains why it rolls in the way. That's why all the cricket was all the baseball cricket ball, which explains why they spin as they do. That's the notion it mattered for, rather than the platonist idea, which is very, which is what causally was opposing, which is the idea of mathematical form plus a matter defined independently of us all[?]. Host: Good. Professor Charles: That does not the kind of intuitive way of putting it. There's a lot of scholarly debate in this area. But I want to give you the intuitions, behind a notion of form which explains why animals behave as they do criminals[?]. Host: Understood. And so, the idea is you're taking this impure form would mean it's essentially unmattered. Professor Charles: Exactly. Host: And you're taking that two cases of humans, something like anger. Professor Charles: Yes, exactly. I mean, that's a very good way to put it. I'm thinking of forms as essentially unmattered, and our kind of cognition speaking very generally, as essentially embodied cognition. Where you can't say what the kind of cognition is, without thinking of it as a bodily form. There is an embodied form, not cognition plus the body, but cognition as it were bodily in this nature. Host: Fascinating. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Well, thank you so much Professor for joining me. It was really enlightening and I think the book is great, and hopefully, listeners will know more about it and what it contains. Professor Charles: I'd like to thank you all the students for some very interesting questions and also for pushing me on the social restroom. Host: Okay. Professor Charles: And also, on the connection took us all and also on the further project I haven't really gauged in and I'm not sure I have the ability to engage with, which is to say how its implications for this viewpoint, for understanding how informational systems in the brain, our best to be understood. Naturally, understand the component. We don't understand that is where a signaling system is. Host: Yes, that's interesting. I know there are a lot of forthcoming books from you already, so I know you have a lot on your plate already. But anyway, I hope to talk to you about those in the future. Thank you very much for joining me. Professor Charles: Thank you again. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Host: Okay. [END]

Host: Welcome to the Philosophy podcast, where we interview leading philosophers about their recent work. Today, we're speaking about the book, "The Undivided Self: Aristotle and the Mind-Body Problem", by Professor David Charles, Oxford University Press 2021. The book has received very positive reviews. The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews' Brian Reese says that the book presents an exciting vision of Aristotle's holomorphic, metaphysics in general. A vision that is likely to set an agenda for those studying multiple areas of Aristotle's philosophy. In Mind, Klaus Corcilius says that "David Charles does what many have tried to do during the past 50 years, but he does it with more radicalism and ingenuity than, as far as I can see, anyone has done before".

He applies Aristotle's psychological high-low morphism, the modern mind-body problem arguing that it is both distinctive and philosophically preferable to all other positions in the post-Cartesian theoretical landscape. He also says that "The Undivided Self" has the potential to revive a very important debate about the basic assumptions that underline our thinking about the mind and nature. Finally, in The Classical Review, Refik Guremen says that the book is written in organized appealing both to specialists and non-specialists. The range of issues addressed in the volume and its unflagging engagement with these issues will be a source of inspiration to its readers as an example of intellectual courage. Professor David Charles is the Howard H. Newman Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Welcome to Philosophy Podcast, Professor Charles.

Professor Charles: Very pleasant to join you. Thank you for inviting me.

Host: I wanted to start by teeing up the mind-body problem. I wanted to use this quotation from Rebecca Goldstein's novel of the same name, "The Mind-Body Problem because we can get into the technical details of the mind-body problem. Her approach shows its wider significance to us. She says we start to do an ontological tally of what exists. We say, "Well, first of all, there are things, tables, trees, and other people. Then what else? Well, there's my consciousness." All the things that I'm conscious of and which create an entire inner world; all my memories, my associations, my hopes. Once we realize that then we say, "Well look, we've got things, we've got consciousness." Presumably, every person out there has this entire inner world.

She says, "The interior decorating of a human being will be lush with particulars not to be found out there in the objects. Some of them are determined by sensation, mood, and memories, others by fewer transient features, such as where she stands on the mattering map." She says, "When you start thinking about what you would have to do this ontological tally, not only to name all the things but also include all of our myriad inner worlds." She notes, the interiority, the privacy of them. The question is, she says, "Can such facts as these be about material bodies? Material bodies exist in the objective and public out there. Are they capable of inner lives? Does a rich and vastly complicated interior gape open in the central guts of some of them? For God's sake, am I who carries an entire world within me a body." I like that for showing the [inaudible] of the mind-body problem in our daily life. Would you agree with that?

Professor Charles: No, I think that's an extremely eloquent, articulate statement of how we are encouraged to think about the mind-body problem. I don't align, if I might, two things in Rebecca Goldstein's vivid description. One is the idea of consciousness, as a purely inner world to which, in my case, only I have access. Do you have any access to your inner world? Rather, that's one assumption. That's part of what I call in my book, the idea of the purely psychological, as well as separate realm or domain. Use these thoughts in our inner world. Directly given to us in conscience or experience. The other point of view of what the body, as well as the body, is understood to be something independent from and distinct from consciousness, sentience, and our capacities as agents; [inaudible] you can look at the body or something defined independently of psychological capacities. As you can think of the psychological is defined independently of the external world or indeed material objects. The question is, how do these two realms fit together? My own line of thinking has been, that once the question is posed in those terms, it is probably unanswerable. After all, we've been trying to solve them on the mind-body questions, at least it's Plato.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: Certainly since they cut and has been a history of failures.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: My interest in taking up your cue from Rebecca Goldstein is whether this is the correct way to formulate the problem.

Host: Got you. Yes, I'm looking into that. At one point, we talked about scientism and in relation to the mind-body problem, I hope we get to talk about that. We're talking about the mind-body problem and Aristotle. Aristotle was simply the philosopher in the Abrahamic tradition, Aquinas, Maimonides Al-Farabi. It's clear that you want to do some recovery. Although, Aristotle is such an influence in the Abrahamic tradition. There's a sense that his original way of looking at things needs to be, or has been lost or needs to be recovered. As you've mentioned, you'd seem to point do they carve as the dividing line there.

Professor Charles: Yes, although that Tony as well a partial beginning [inaudible] actually. I think your reference to the philosophers and religious traditions between Aristotle and Descartes is extremely important. Actually, I'm editing a collection of essays by many scholars and by many different hands. From my point of view, attempts to pinpoint the way in which the Cartesian problem emerges from modifications in the Aristotelian tradition. There were two, several but two. One was the idea of the self or freedom or consciousness as a separate purely psychological phenomenon, which comes partly from Alexander of Aphrodisias, and partly from the Neoplatonist. Then comes through into the Christian tradition through Neoplatonism. The other side is the development of a more serious material story, which you find in Lucretius and Epicurus and the attempt to take what is physically basic to be metaphysically basic.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: I see Descartes and actually, Suarez before him. As it were a Confluence of these two streams which pull apart the Aristotelian in mid-position. I don't think Descartes, although he's a fantastically good philosopher and a brilliant writer. In a way, he really encapsulated movements which you can see in people I've mentioned and also in the common to tradition and Philoponus and Simplicius, who are Neoplatonist writers, who interpret Aristotle in the two-component way, which [inaudible] had encouraged them to do.

Host: One of your reviewer's concerns, he says and this is Professor Reese, "I often found myself wondering how helpful it is to center the relevant controversies around Descartes." Is that sense that Descartes is just a label for a much broader change and that's the philosopher you're using? We're talking about the Scientific Revolution and modernization, urbanization. Descartes is more of a label for you than this particular philosopher changed the way.

Professor Charles: Well, I think that's absolutely correct, Howard. I see Descartes as a clear exponent and understanding of the implications of what I call two-component thinking. Where one component is to be understood, as Rebecca Goldstein was saying, it was a purely psychological phenomenon." The other component if you understood in terms of a purely material picture. The question is, how do these two things fit together? Descartes's [crosstalk] they were really quite different things, and it was something of a mystery how they fitted together. That's how dualism works and emerges. It's basically the two-component thinking which drives Descartes. As I understand it, emerged from the streams in Pre-Cartesian philosophy.

Host: Solution-wise. Right, I understand.

Professor Charles: Which in sense Rebecca Goldstein picked up in her novel.

Host: Right. I'm pulling from your book, "The initial idea for this book emerged from discussions in a long-running reading group on De Anima, held at Oriel College Oxford. When we decided in 2004, after more than 15 years spent on the second and third books, to read De Anima 8.1, much fell into place. I vividly recall our lively meetings at that time. I just wondered if you could talk about that. It sounded fantastic.

Professor Charles: Yes, that was great. From the late 80s. Many of the extremely distinguished within ancient philosophy were very active, as well, for many years in this discussion group. I remember on one occasion, we spent a whole year reading De Anima Book 3 Chapter 5, "The Discussion of the Active Intellect". There were about six or seven of us, now teaching in Princeton or [inaudible] Professor in Oxford, several of my colleagues from Oxford other visiting. Sometimes, we make no progress at all in the text. Next session we begin just where the last session began. What we would do was to go through it as we're theologically very carefully, but also we try to grasp what the conceptual possibilities were. It was both as it were an exercise and also looking at the manuscript edition, which is now being really reconsidered in this area. It was an interesting combination of analytic acuity and philological procedure. That went on for a long time. We actually got in the way of reading the book backward, beginning in Book 3 and moving backward, thinking of this way as a fresh way to look at it. It turned out that we should have begun at the beginning.

Host: That sounds great. One of your keywords here is "inextricability". I understand if we look at anger, everyone can agree that anger is inherently both psychic and psychological, and bodily. Inextricability is somewhat stronger than that. Could you explain that?

Professor Charles: That's a very important concept. It's very important to be as clear as I can on what the commitments here are. Aristotle was very careful in this conceptual apparatus in this area and worked with ideas to think some things could be inseparable from existence. You couldn't have one without the other. For example, you couldn't have a number two without the number three with the necessary entity. He had a tighter notion of inextricability which he called inextricability in definition, where one can't define what one phenomenon is without essentially referring as part of its nature, to some other object, not some other entity. In the '40s, in the case of anger, the kind of desire for revenge, which anger is, isn't an ordinary desire for revenge plus the body.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: It's stressful or intense or hot and bothered, they say, they were kind of desire for revenge. Football coaches in England say, "Don't get mad, get even." In other words, meaning, "Desire for revenge is a dish best served cold."

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: That doesn't capture anger. That captures as it were cold and calculating desire for revenge.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: The kind of desire for revenge, which anger is stressful and physically intense. You get hot and bothered and you get physically agitated, that's the kind of desire for revenge, anger is. Here I was with [inaudible] intuitive example or thinking you don't have a purely psychological bit. The psychological bit as it were, can't be properly defined or understood without reference to some internal physical states.

Host: Right. Someone comes along and says, "Well, I can. I'm looking at anger and I'm going through it, but right now I'm just conceiving in my mind, the psychological part of anger." What would Aristotle say about that?

Professor Charles: He said, "That's fine. You can do that." We have to be very careful thinking about what we're doing in anything we do. You can abstract from the psychophysical entity. The hot desire for revenge and think of it just to desire for revenge, but don't think you can get back from that to the entity by just adding heat to it.

Host: Got you.

Professor Charles: His way of putting this is one which Horschel also used later following Aristotle with the notion of snubness. The idea here is don't think of a snub nose as a concavity in the nose. Though, you can concavity and find concavity in the nose and in legs and other objects. The distinctive kind of concavity is the nasal cavity. It's not an all-driven cavity in the nose but a distinctive kind of nasal cavity. Horschel used that in just the way Aristotle did to try to capture the idea of embodied kind of concavity, or the embodied forming attitude in way of thinking. The desire for revenge isn't a desire for revenge. Its anger is the desire for revenge plus heat but a hot kind of desire for revenge.

Host: Correct. I understand you want to be economical in your writing. Wouldn't it be not only a desire for revenge but first I'll listen to the idea that also it comes after an insult?

Professor Charles: Oh, yes of course. Absolutely. It's also interesting to think about revenge. It's an occasion by insult. It involves this physically involved but also is an ongoing process. Something that can last a long time. Think of the anger of Achilles before the worlds of Troy.

Host: Sure.

Professor Charles: He went on for days and could only be addressed by the tears of Priam by something as we're which emotionally impacted him.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: We tend to think these days of these things as discrete events, one after the other. For Arthur, anger was a process that modified how Achilles behaved, which could have gone longer but was a swage by Priam. You can't understand the process without thinking of it as driven by a desire for revenge on an insult but also expressed in certain bodily ways.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: To kind of embodied cognition view, I guess you might say.

Host: Right. Robert Solomon gives the example of anger lasting decades. His example was the Women's Movement, you can be angry for a long or Civil Rights Movement. You can be angry for a long, long time. As you say this is maybe more unsettling, it's not only that the psychic part is physical, but it's also true that the physical part has to be psychic. Could you speak to that?

Professor Charles: No, absolutely. That's the path of the Athenian picture which is most difficult for us to understand, giving up the miss of the purely psychological. Although, it has a big impact on the questions Rebecca Goldstein was talking about, mother nature and imagination and sensory experience. In a sense that's easier than giving up our work. We think it's more difficult than giving up our notion of the physical. Only two points about that. One is by no means clear what our notion of the physical is. Very often people say, "Well, it's well-studied by Physics." What constrains the physics of the future? Particularly, Physics is concerned with informational systems. What kind of information is it that Physics studied? When you think of neurons, some people talk about the language of neurons, as an informational system, what are the limits of Physics? If we talk of signaling systems, giving action potentials around the brain, the question would be, what are the limits of the correct description of the language of neurons?

Host: Might say.

Professor Charles: That was a question of what Physics is. To say, its three-dimensional spaciousness essentially, spatiotemporal would allow psychological states to be physical. The most important point is this, what Aristotle was insistent on was, I understand, the thought that anger and desire for revenge are controllers of the process, basic causes which guide our responses to the world. It's not that there are two causes: 1) psychological component and a separate physical component, which is somehow together or overdetermined or one's an epic phenomenon, or one rests on the other. There's one unified phenomenon that drives Achilles to behave in the way he does. Then the question is, how do you have to think of the physical for that to be the case, to think of that as psychophysical? Well, one thought would be in terms of thinking of the body, in terms of capacities as it were the bodies that are capable of reacting to input and output, go to input, in certain kinds of ways. The kind of ways which was shown in Achilles' actions.

To take a case was another very good Achillean case. In the case of a physical skill, like weaving or playing a tennis shot, how does the body have to be the body of a skilled weaver? Our thought was at least one thing is true. The body has to have embodied capacities to move in the way the skill requires. Take outside of the problem, here's consciousness and there's a body to find independently of psychological capacities. Against that, you play the idea of the weaver or the tennis player whose body is attuned to reacting to the external world in the way their skill requires. The idea of one strongly unified causal story, then constrains, a notion of the physical. My book is really noting necessity and possibility, the thinking in this way, trying to say it will stand some objections.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: I'm deconstructing the Cartesian dialectic pointing to an alternative and trying to knock down an objection or to consider objections to it. There's a further much more positive program, which I'm not engaging in which would dispel out. How am I instantiate these ideas within a modern scientific context?

Host: Right. This is where we begin scientism. You sketched the case of how the Aristotelian view. What would someone do once you get this conception of matter in itself? As I understand it, that's fine. That would be another one of these abstractions. We could abstract and think about the physical matter as matter, and then one could build up the scientific project, but understanding that it was built on this abstraction. Am I getting that right?

Professor Charles: That's exactly right. I think most claims of Physics is want to make. Namely, if you fix purely physical, you fix the purely psychological. Might well be true, but the basis of the truth. As a reward, the truth would be grounded would be these psychophysical processes and capacitors. It's not what has to deny anything within the scientific picture itself. All those claims can be true. What is in dispute is the idea that what's metaphysically basic. The basis for our understanding of these phenomena has to come from taking the most fundamental particles, whatever they are, and building up from there.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: My claim isn't the doctor of science. Anyway, is no part of Physics to say.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: What's more, you have to be a metaphysician by starting with the basic physical aspect. That's what I call scientism.

Host: Yes.

Professor Charles: As it was a brilliant, ambitious project. I try to explain everything in terms of basic physical elements, whatever they may be. That project is problematic because we have no idea what basic Physics is. As were generations now that's an ongoing search. The idea we have to start to pause our metaphysics until it was the golden day when the Scientific Revolution happened. Know what the fundamental particles are on the basis of those understanding as psychological states. It seems to me almost kind of revolutionary in the Marxist existence, Utopia as we're looking for today, far in the future when metaphysics can begin.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: Let's put it rather rhetorically, but you see what I mean?

Host: Yes, I do. You mentioned Horschel earlier.

Professor Charles: Yes.

Host: I don't know enough about Horschel know-how. Aristotelian he was, but a lot of times this reminds me of Horschel's project. Reminding us that science needs to be grounded in the life world.

Professor Charles: Yes. It was a whole pack of European thought, which I'm not fantastically well-trained in. Horschel was clearly pretty knowledgeable about Aristotle. With the crisis of European thought Europeans had, he used these moves like the [inaudible] move and mental quantity, I take it also follows in that tradition. Another person who thought in this way was Whitehead, who thought that processes were a basic phenomenon and much further than Aristotle did. But thought ended that the Cartesian perspective was an abstraction from certain kinds of processes. Distinct tradition from nutrition or those who tend to engage with a Cartesian programmatic, and ways very similar to what I'm trying to do.

Host: Right, absolutely. The name of the book, "The Crisis", kind of saw some stuff.

Professor Charles: Yes, exactly. Horschel's idea was the mistake had been made to have a purely mathematical conception on the one side and a notion of matter defined independently of Mathematics on the other. That's exactly parallel to the kind of move I'm making, as to where to have a purely psychological realm with what Rebecca Goldstein was talking about and a purely physical realm to find independently of it in this case.

Host: All right.

Professor Charles: Let's look at what's in the broader context [inaudible].

Host: One of the reviews was mainly positive, but of course, they say they're concerned. One of them said that in terms of the psychic needing to refer to the body, the question was, what about rationality? For me a concrete example. You talk about Achilles. This is Sarpedon talking to Glaucus. He says, "If you and I could only get out of this war alive, and then be immortal and ageless all of our days, I would never again fight among the foremost or send you into battle. We're men when Glory." As it is, death is everywhere in more shapes than we can count. Since no mortal is immune or can escape, let's go forward either to give glory to another man or get glory from him. This is the sort of thing that we think about that is kind of like higher-level ideas. What am I doing in life? What should my values be, that I don't see immediately how it needs to involve a physical component? Yet, it clearly drives things like anger because it sets up our projects.

Professor Charles: That's a very interesting question. Clearly, there are ways of thinking about Aristotle, like the pure observer self, or the self that never sees itself but only sees other things, or the self you can think of as immortal in the Judeo Christian.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: In Germany, [inaudible] equivalence in some way. Now ranged against that the following perspective. You ask yourself, what kind of being is it for whom friendship, for example, is valuable? What kind of entity is it, which is capable of acting in the way we do? Taking that and where acting involves also practical reasoning and reflection on action. What kind of being is it for those who think in that way, beginning with, I suppose, our commitments, loyalties, and our friendships? Thinking of those is where springing out of the kind of embodied creatures we are.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: From that point of view, the idea of the immortals self is a brilliant abstraction from the self who talks and discusses, and shares enjoyment...

Host: That's right.

Professor Charles: ...shares discussion, in case of friendship, sees things together as they say. The question is and the Athenian pictures this. Certainly, Arthur Luther's notion of pure intellect, or the active intellect, as it were, which is in some way, like, in his work perspective, some way like the intellect of God or Angels or whatever. Oh God, I'm a little valise in theological terms but he's very careful. It seems to me actually to think that are active intellect is different from the kind of active intellect of an imagined pure intellect. That is based on perception, involves emotional response, and can't be made sense of without commitments and data phenomenon that come from that source. So even if thinking can be defined or some kind without reference to the body, there were all kinds of thinking that are essentially embodied thinking.

Host: Right. That makes sense. Yes. And I guess you've already covered your answer to the other clearly anger can be influenced by someone taking testosterone or someone that has a lesion in the brain or something. And those would seem to be not referring to the psychological at all. I guess though, your point would be, yeah, but it fits into the science, which is great, wonderful. In the Aristotelian view, it's an abstraction away from this psycho-physical foundational level.

Professor Charles: Yes. That's as far as I get in the book, that's exactly right. But I think when things move carefully and look at the scientific discussions of pain and particularly the kind of modern work on pain management involving discussions of placebo effects, our mindfulness as we interact with pain, for example, or acupuncture treatment, and also the different meanings of pain in different contexts. I think there's a kind of growing awareness of the pain that isn't just wearing something in the amygdala, but it involves memories, a sense of salients, and distance. And then we're into the discussion of how the neuron as we're going to go forward in this project. What is the language in which the neuron signal to one another? Invoking memories, effect, and importance or salience. How does mindfulness work if it works? In terms of giving you some psychological distance. How is that embedded in the circuitry? I think the picture, which we were brought up on that pains, the lesion, and the amygdala, and then there's where our awareness of it.

Host: Aware of someone.

Professor Charles: As to where is just that kind of loss of the implications?

Host: Yeah.

Professor Charles: I think it's fascinating when you read a book like the [inaudible] book, the brain, and pains. It was a brain spect in a great pain management specialist. You see how much more complicated. People come to see it in the last 10 or 15 years. They're thinking about pain management. As it were in thinking about what pain is because there are these interesting people who have articles asymbolic[?] where they're aware of pain, but it's not so bad for them. As where it's not that painful for it. And in mindfulness and Placebo a case where it was, the pain can apparently be managed or reduced by the context in which you see it.

Host: Yeah. And it's right on to mention the placebo effect. Just recently been seeing a psychiatrist who doesn't want to prescribe a drug if the patient doesn't think it's going to work.

Professor Charles: Absolutely.

Host: That's why.

Professor: Absolutely, I mean, I'm very interested in Clinical Psychology in general as I know you are. One thing that really encouraged me down this line was the observation that certain kinds of depression, cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, and drug treatment are more or less equally effective.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: And you ask, I said well, what kind of phenomenon is it, which is open to these two or three different phenomena, assuming it's a unified phenomenon?

Host: That's interesting. And then there are also people who aren't in the studies who get over their depression by picking up golf.

Professor Charles: Yeah, exactly. Which is some kind of detachment or alternative activity. Get active stimulation.

Host: Right. So, one of the things I was surprised by in the thinking of politics, the human is by nature political animals, the policies prior to the individual. And anticipating that someone would say, well, the bees are much more social than humans. Aristotle says, "No, humans are more political even than bees because we had the faculty of language." I was just wondering if you could take these arguments, that the psychic should really be psychic-physical. I wasn't sure why you can't apply and can't use the same arguments to say, especially something like anger, which is so social or political that anger should be inextricably not only psychophysical but psychophysical-social.

Professor Charles: That's a very interesting question, which you raised. And I think that's a line of thought, well, worth pursuing [inaudible]. And I would see it like this, if you push the question beginning with a kind of obvious case the case of friendship, for example, and you know that the question, what is the subject in friendship? Should we think of ourselves as a unit? We, the team or the two individual players as were transacting with one another and transacts, were a quid pro quo way. And neither of those is an alternative though which says, well, the notion of the self-involved in friendship is something that is inextricably interpersonal. As we're such that, we have these capacities which are essentially other-directed.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: Not as a further entity of the "we", as we're beyond the individuals, but you can't say what the individuals are, except by thinking of them as definitionally what it is to be a human person to be connected in certain ways to another human person.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: Then, the question is, what is the requirement for that? What kind of connections are they? Which distinguishes us from highly social animals like bees, where presumably the notion of friendship doesn't seem to apply. How I would try to prosecute, try to develop that line.

Host: Okay.

Professor Charles: So there's a kind of individualism that permeates much but our thinking.

Host: Yeah.

Professor Charles: Well, to be a human person is to be defined, either in terms of just my own internal states or is limited to the extent of my body.

Host: Correct.

Professor: But after that, it's the transaction between me and others as it were for my own self-directed goals. I think you're right. To say that the Athenian[?] picture is different from that, in that, there's an extension, which involves as were the inextricably social.

Host: Right. The politics are prior to the individual right there, and the beginning of the politics.

Professor Charles: Although these priority claims have to be handled very carefully.

Host: Okay.

Professor Charles: Because I take it, that means something like politics is the basic definition of what a citizen of the other politics.

Host: I see, it doesn't mean more metaphysically, basically.

Professor Charles: I don't think you need me that, you're living on one side, there's a really interesting question as was thrown up by his tradition which is, how does a human have to be for interpersonal relations to be as important for us as they are?

Host: That's helpful. I wanted to just give the listeners a sense of the book overall. That's the last thing we're running out of time, but I wondered if you could give an overview of chapter 2, you're trying to take all of Aristotle's insights into psychology and the psychophysical nature of our lives and trace them back to Aristotle's metaphysics, as I understand it. We're talking about form, matter, and causation. And I think that this is one of the things that your reviewers were saying was controversial, exciting, or controversial. The idea of an impure form.

Professor Charles: Yes, absolutely. Okay, good. I'm thinking of anger physically involved desire for revenge. It's a desire for revenge in a physical form. Not two components. I think then the question is, how far does this extend to the notion of this is like a causal question? Two notions of physical form in general. One way to put this question, I think kind of intuitive way to try to put the question is, how do you have to think of form for it to be causally applications? To make a causal difference to the world? Guys, [inaudible] crack his head triangles don't cut things.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: As where abstract entities or mathematics entered is not the kind of thing which heat or cut or divide except of course in geometrical shape.

Host: Can I interrupt just for one moment? So when we talk about form, I want the listeners to know, we're not talking about Plato's forms which we talk about or maybe we are. But we're talking about essence.

Professor Charles: Well, let's begin slightly further down the mountain right here.

Host: Fine.

Professor Charles: The thing is the way of the notion of shape. That's what we were thinking, it's form and shape [inaudible]. I think the question we should put it like this, why do round things roll? Take a really simple intuitive case.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: Now, his line is not good as circular. Understood as a mathematical entity, as a mathematical property because such mathematical properties are not the kind of things to roll.

Host: Correct.

Professor Charles: Yep. What kind of circularity is it? This is where he explains why the tires were credible, and then the thought is...

Host: It's in mind.

Professor Charles: ...don't think that is just the circularity mathematical plus a bit of matter.

Host: Right.

Professor Charles: Rather it soak in and it mattered waste embodied kind of circularity...

Host: Understood.

Professor Charles: ...in some robust physical form. Some of his intent is in the physical body. So it's a rigid or elastic kind of thing. And those sticks out his tires[?]. So that's the intuition. How do you have to think of shapes for them to be causal applications? I think his notion of form is kind of built and try to capture that idea.

Host: That's very clear.

Professor Charles: In the psychological case, the form of anger is a desire for revenge of this hot kind, that's why our blood boils if we get angry and agitated, uncontrolled. The embodied circularity of the tire explains why it rolls in the way. That's why all the cricket was all the baseball cricket ball, which explains why they spin as they do. That's the notion it mattered for, rather than the platonist idea, which is very, which is what causally was opposing, which is the idea of mathematical form plus a matter defined independently of us all[?].

Host: Good.

Professor Charles: That does not the kind of intuitive way of putting it. There's a lot of scholarly debate in this area. But I want to give you the intuitions, behind a notion of form which explains why animals behave as they do criminals[?].

Host: Understood. And so, the idea is you're taking this impure form would mean it's essentially unmattered.

Professor Charles: Exactly.

Host: And you're taking that two cases of humans, something like anger.

Professor Charles: Yes, exactly. I mean, that's a very good way to put it. I'm thinking of forms as essentially unmattered, and our kind of cognition speaking very generally, as essentially embodied cognition. Where you can't say what the kind of cognition is, without thinking of it as a bodily form. There is an embodied form, not cognition plus the body, but cognition as it were bodily in this nature.

Host: Fascinating. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Well, thank you so much Professor for joining me. It was really enlightening and I think the book is great, and hopefully, listeners will know more about it and what it contains.

Professor Charles: I'd like to thank you all the students for some very interesting questions and also for pushing me on the social restroom.

Host: Okay.

Professor Charles: And also, on the connection took us all and also on the further project I haven't really gauged in and I'm not sure I have the ability to engage with, which is to say how its implications for this viewpoint, for understanding how informational systems in the brain, our best to be understood. Naturally, understand the component. We don't understand that is where a signaling system is.

Host: Yes, that's interesting. I know there are a lot of forthcoming books from you already, so I know you have a lot on your plate already. But anyway, I hope to talk to you about those in the future. Thank you very much for joining me.

Professor Charles: Thank you again. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Host: Okay.

[END]

Brad Reedy (Evoke Therapy Programs)

The audacity to be you: learning to love your horrible, rotten self Expanding on his first book (The journey of the heroic parent) Reedy discusses how all our relationships are connected to the relationship we have with ourselves. He shows how the foundation for intimacy with partners, our ability to parent effectively, and the meaningfulness of our lives can be tied to how well we have unraveled our unique childhood history.

The audacity to be you: Learning to love your horrible, rotten self is a simple but bold exploration into what makes us human and why happiness and connection are elusive for so many.

Reedy's work is counter-intuitive, but readers will often have the experience of being found--and understood--as they make their way through his work. Many readers say that reading Brad's work is like hearing something for the first time that you already knew but just didn't have the words for it.

Dr. Reedy is a renowned author, therapist, podcaster, and public speaker. His approach is accessible and non-threatening. He is a prolific keynote speaker, T.V. and radio guest, and he travels the world presenting to audiences and training therapists.

Through stories gathered from decades as a therapist, co-founder, and clinical director of Evoke Therapy Programs, Reedy gives the reader an intimate picture of mental health and healing. The audacity to be you explains how our personalities are built, brick by brick. From what it means to be a Self, we learn how to authentically love others. Readers will learn the essence of mental health, and, with that, the stigma of mental illness evaporates.

Reedy debunks toxic myths so common in our culture, including: "You are only as happy as your least happy child." He shows how good psychotherapy goes beyond problem solving. Reedy teaches, "In this way of thinking, you don't get to be right anymore. But you get to be a Self. And that is so much better. That is 'The Audacity to Be You.'"

To learn more about his work go to evoketherapy.com or drbradreedy.com. You can find his podcast "Finding You: An Evoke Therapy Podcast" on your favorite podcast app or by going to soundcloud.com.

transcript

August: Welcome. I'm August Baker, and welcome to the podcast today. I've recently been working with parents of children who have been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons, and I've also had a chance to work with some adolescents directly in a locked psychiatric hospital. And in the course of that work, I came to hear about a program called Evoke Therapy in Utah and are very good things about it. And in the course of my puzzles, I decided to go to the website, it's evoketherapy.com and see what was there. And I found a book. And today we're going to be talking about that book. It's called The Audacity to Be You Learning to Love Your Horrible Rotten Self. It's 2020, and the author is Brad Reedy, who is a co-founder of Evoke Therapy Programs and the clinical director, he's also the author of The Journey of the Heroic Parent, and he's the host of Finding You an Evoke Therapy podcast. Welcome Dr. Reedy. Dr. Reedy: Very happy to be here. Honored. Thank you for having me. August: Oh, thanks. I tell you one of the first things that parents say is that when their kid is in a psychiatric hospital or they're adolescent, it's very different. The reaction you get with the community is very different than if your child was in the hospital for a broken leg or a tumor. And that's what part of what makes it so terrifying. Can you speak to that? Dr. Reedy: That's a great beginning question. I have a lot of compassion for that. Sometimes doing this work. I forget how tight that the stigma and the shame of mental health grips people because talk about it, I talk about my own work and, and my own personal therapy over the years. And so I, I sometimes forget that. So it's nice to be reminded. For me, it comes back to maybe the simplest illustration of that kind of shame and stigma that I think about. I talk about this idea that if I were to say to you, my brother had a good baby that he has , they just had gave birth my brother and sister-in-law and said that, that the baby's a good baby. You would know that the baby has no needs. It's not crying, not sleeping, sleeping throughout the night probably that, that all of its needs and feelings are contained in a tight little box that makes them easier. So I think from birth, we learned that our emotional needs are so taxing to the people who care about us and love us, that we learn that good is to not have needs. Good is to not struggle, good is to not feel big feelings. And implied in that we don't say this ever, of course, but bad is to have all of those things. And that's what these psychiatric hospitals and programs like mine are doing. They're holding on to people whose feelings are spilling out in their symptoms and their behaviors. They'll self harm, their self-medicating habits. And so I think it goes back to that, that that human idea that good is to not have needs and not to be messy, and the implication that bad. And so I think when people respond with that way in contrast to like a broken leg, or if you're having problems with your with your heart, I think we just go to that young place that the best way to stay safe and to not be abandoned is to stay quiet and not make waves and not be a mess and not need things at an emotional level, interestingly. August: That's right. Yeah. It seems like maybe there's a, the community wants to say, not me. I'm not that person. I'm not infected by that. That's not spilling onto me. So you're talking about parents and you're dealing with teens in your program and yet the book does not have that in its title. And I think that's because parents and teens are humans. the idea of my horrible rotten self. I was thinking it's a ancient idea, really. And job in the Book of Job, it's says first of humans before God as maggots or worms. And there is this sense that one can have that I'm not unfamiliar with. That there's a, there's something that I is bad that I don't, that I want to hide for whatever reason. I don't even know what it is. But I need to hide Dr. Reedy: . I love that you bring up Job in the journey of the heroic parent. I go back to the first story in the Bible in Genesis. The first thing that happened when they broke the rules aid of the tree that they weren't supposed to eat, of whatever that metaphor means to you, they did wrong. The devil always speaks in half truth, right? He tells part truths and part lie. That's what makes it so insidious. And so what he said was right after they woke up, he said, cover yourselves up and you're naked and go hide from God when he comes back looking for you. And so I call that the first real sin of shame. I think about it in that way, that the shame is that experience that who our nakedness, who we are, is not going to be acceptable before God. And we learn that again, because in our context, when we are children, this happened to me when my needs exceeded the bandwidth and the capacity that my mother had, she took that inadequacy that she felt, and she put it back on me. And said, something's wrong with you. You're being too sense. She called me melodramatic. That was the phrase that I remember as a child. And it's just another way of saying, you're too sensitive. You're overreacting, you're making mountains out of molehills. And what she was trying to do was take the inadequacy that she felt of not being able to soothe me and attend to me and put it back on me. So I felt bad and I got smaller. So I think that idea of being, being naked before God, being who we are before God is the spiritual dilemma of our lives. Can we nietzche said that after we battle the dragon of should and should not, that if we complete that battle that we turn back into ourselves. He said, as naked children, that we become who we are. And I really do think that that's the goal of therapy. The goal of therapy is to become who we are. We fear that because we had such bad experiences with being ourselves and being punished for it when we were growing up. August: Right. One of the things I was very impressed by in your book is that in the right up front, you dedicate the book for my therapist, Dr. Jamie Gill, who showed me what it means to be a self and love another. So I'm 58 years old, and I've, as you note in your book, you've, I've been in a lot of therapy over your life. I've, I think I've been in therapy half my adult life, probably. And I've been interested in it and interested in how it works or why it works. And I've read a lot of books and a lot of, I think this is the first time I can remember reading a book written by a therapist who actually says, oh, by the way, my therapy really worked. . Often the people writing the books will say, this is the way I do it. This is the way it should be done. But they may even say, but my analyst was terrible and but they don't really point to that. The therapy process is being really important to their lives. And it was really nice to see you doing that here, Dr. Reedy: Thank you for that. I, I have a lot of clients and people that follow me or read my work or listen to my podcast, who reach out to me because the message is resonating. I want to be clear. I'm not presenting something wholly unique. It's out there. I'm just, I've synthesized it and given my version of it to the world, it's, it w you know, DW Winnicott, it's started with Sigmund Freud and Carl Young. It's, it's Melanie Klein. You know, this stuff is out there, but I'm just putting it in my modern context. My modern life. But when people say to me, why doesn't my family therapist at home, my counselor at home, why aren't they talking about this? Why didn't I learn some of this in school? My best guess August is that they haven't done the work. I mean, when you do the work when you get seen, Carl Roger said it. When you get seen, it's as if you can relax. And it's as if tears, the tears that come into your eyes are saying, finally, thank God somebody saw me. It's what happened when, in Victor Hugo's story, when the bishop gave the candlesticks back to Jean, Val Jean, he showed him grace, and he saw him and all he said was, take this love that I've given you. You can feel it in the story. You can feel it when you're watching it, and now give it to everybody else, which is what you want to do when you feel it. The minute you experience that kind of grace. And I don't mean from a religious context in my context, it came from a human being sitting across from me for 23 years. Once you feel that the only thing you want to do is give it to other people and say, who you are is, I know you've hurt people. I know you've made mistakes. We all have, and I've made more than my share, but you're worthy of recovery. You're worthy of love, you're worthy of belonging. You're worthy, you matter. And that idea, that dedication is just to say, look, I'm not on some pedestal. I haven't, I'm not inventing a theory by any means. I'm just sharing with you the gift. Every time I thank Jamie every so often, I still see her. I saw her this morning. Every time I see her, or on occasion when I tell her thank you with tears in eyes, thank you for saving my life. She'll say, I'm just doing to you what somebody did for me. And that's all it is. It's just, it's the Jean Val jean story. It's like, once the bishop showed him that what the, that kind of loving grace was, all he wanted to do was spend his life helping people. And that was the rest of the story. August: Right? Yeah. I, it's interesting that you mentioned Carl Rogers. I I've read some Carl Rogers and yeah. His idea was, as I understand it, people thought, if you're not giving advice to the your patients, then people are bad. And so you're just going to be creating these beasts. And he said, I don't know my recollection, he said, I don't really know why. It's not like it has to be this way. But the fact of the matter is, the empirical fact is that when people see themselves, they tend to move towards this more mutual position or this more, once they accept themselves, it just so happens that they often move towards being kinder to other people. Not like it has to be that way. Just that was his empirical experience. Dr. Reedy: Hey, it is. It's what happens. You're right. He said specifically his quote that relates and teaches that story. He said, the great paradox is that it's only when I accept myself that I can change. But we're terrified of acceptance. We're terrified to not greet the tantruming child with anger and rage and punishment because we're living within the world of Darth Vader. That's what that story was about. Darth Vader's solution to the world was control and power and aggression and hate, hate for symptoms, hate for the parts of us that cause problems. And you contrast that with Yoda, who's really the model of a Buddhist monk. And his idea was, we embrace it. We listen to the crying child, because it's telling us something that we can't otherwise hear. If we learn to develop new ears and new eyes, we can hear and find the child. And when you soothe the child, the tantrum a true modern day philosopher that talks about global warming in a philosophical and spiritual context. And he said, remember that evil is not the cause. It's the result. And so that terrifies us. We have to live then with uncertainty. We have to live with what the Buddhist would call a lack of attachment. Darth Vader didn't want to suffer again. And so he gripped on tightly to life to control it. And Yoda felt it and let the emotions and the pain and the grief pass through him. And he didn't retreat as he teaches. He didn't retreat to anger and rage and hate to control and prevent his authentic suffering. August: Right. I really appreciated also when you mentioned Star Wars in the book in terms of, the way people, we keep having these, school shootings or whatever and everyone always acts shocked, like how Dr. Reedy: Right. August: Happen as though to say, I am so different Dr. Reedy: Right. August: From other people. And I think you were saying that we see these, these things on Star War. We're fascinated by these things. Dr. Reedy: A child that feels alone and on the outside and powerless and disenfranchised with access to weapons of max destruction, the recipe. We go to Star Wars and droves and we understand the story. And then when we come out into the world and see the atrocity play out in real life, we are intellectually dumbfounded because we've lost contact with the parts of ourselves that when we get cut off on the street, we flip the middle finger. That's the same rage. It's not as harmful and destructive of course. But that's what Yoda was trying to teach is he said, look, if you want to understand darkness, you have to know yourself. That's what learning to love the horrible rotten self is when you come to understand not just the good and pretty and smart parts, but all of you, then you can approach the person struggling with more harmful and dangerous behaviors. You can treat them with the compassion that heals instead of the rage and the hate and the anger that, caused the problem in the first place. So yeah, I think the story is by coincidence, there's no way you could have known this, but my family's been watching the Star Wars series, the original movie series in the last week. We watched four in a row, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Six was last night. And we watch it as a therapy family because we have four therapists in our family. And so we pause and we talk about how this motif, this myth illustrates life over and over again. You either gravitate toward hate and fear and rage and control, or you surrender to love, which comes with it pain and sadness and sorrow and loss and all of the feelings that we, that we struggle to feel, that we struggle to sit with. August: And I think, I mean it was, I should, first of all, you're right. You're not saying, oh, I had this new method or anything. In fact, I think you say you don't like to give advice, what you really do is just say what worked for you. And I appreciate, it sounded to me like, first of all, it's facing yourself, seeing yourself . And then it's being honest towards the outside world also. Being, having one, one person that you can be honest with and you realize you not get left. And then it sounds like you then took the next step to be honest with as many people as possible. And they hesitatingly maybe see where the chips fall. And it turned out not everybody leaves when you're just honest. Dr. Reedy: I think John Lennon said it at one point, if you just tell the truth, the people that'll be left standing around you are your people August: Right. Dr. Reedy: It's kind of simple. And I'll tell you the truth is, I've been a liar most of my life. I wouldn't have called it that. If you had told me that 15, 20 years ago, I would've thought you were crazy. because I see myself as having integrity and trying to do the right thing when I failed, when my marriage, the marriage that I'm still in when I thought it was over, which is what, what needs to happen to the narcissistic wound, to the narcissistic person. They have to experience failure and oftentimes go through a period of humiliation. It was either kill myself because I wasn't worth it. That was, I considered it a lot , or it was keep going and keep walking through this and you'll find something on the other side, which is what I hope for. I was going to Jamie see Jamie all along. And so, what I'm trying to do is encourage people to find a safe place to find themselves. And then when they do that, see if they can find the people around them to tell that truth. You know, it's just, it's not like a big philosophical mystery. It's like, what do you want to eat today? Do you want to go to church with me on Sunday or Saturday? Do you like pickles with your sandwich? it's everything. And when you start to learn to tell the truth, then you find your connections. But like I said most of us spend our time this and Brine Brown, I mean, everybody talks about this. Most of us are so in need of connection that we never had. That we will fit ourselves. We will change ourselves into we, we'll, I said something to my wife last night, she asked me something and I answered, and then a minute later I said, actually that's not true, August: . Dr. Reedy: She said, were you lying? I said to both of us. Yes. . And I just, I said it, I tried it on for size and I sat with her for a minute and it didn't fit. And now here's what I want, here's what I need, here's what I feel. That's what we're doing. We're just trying to help people find out who they are. August: Right. No, I got to. So in the first chapter you have, yeah. A young woman that says to you, it's so scary to stand in my own opinion. Dr. Reedy: Right. August: And you say it takes a rare kind of courage or audacity. I wanted to give you a quotation and see what your reaction is. Just talk about how scary it is to stand in your own opinion. This is from Robert Bal, who you quote in the book. This is from a gathering of men. The Bill Moyer's thing. Bal says, if I go into a store, if I go in, for example, with my wife into a store, and there's two sweaters. One is green and the other is blue. I can't decide. And I say to her, what do you think? She says, oh, the blue is beautiful. Immediately the green fades into some hideous color . Dr. Reedy: Yeah. August: Which I've had that experience so often where suddenly someone else says something and then you just adopt that. Dr. Reedy: Yeah. August: And so, I don't know, we just seem to be so, we're so social. That it's very difficult to, as your client said, stand in your own opinion. Dr. Reedy: For a lot of us, the way out of childhood, the way to survive it was to do just what blinds describing. I did that. The other way is to burn the house down. The, the other day is to, to rebel. There are more than just two ways, but that's another way of doing it. And I kind of did that one also. I've done that one when things when not deciding which color sweater I liked went on long enough. And I couldn't stand at the pressure build up until I exploded. And I've exploded at several times throughout my life in big ways, kind of had these midlife crises. And, and so most of us will struggle with what I call in the book, the gravitational pull of the other, and will feel the need to unconsciously all of this is unconsciously sacrifice, dismiss, ignore, not even know what we like. Because we need to fit in. We need to belong. We need that, what we think is connection, but it's not really connection. It's really a loss of self and an integration into somebody else's self. It's so powerful for, for us, sensitive people. I consider myself , I mean, I was called too sensitive when I was for us sensitive people. I was, my, we walk into an elevator and we know how everybody feels. And it's not an asset. It's a liability. We can feel the wants and the needs of other people. And we use that to survive childhood. That's what the drama of the gifted child is about. The most important book, in my opinion, that's ever been written about children is the gifted child was the child who could perceive what somebody else wants or needs and give it to them at the cost of the real self is what she describes. So Bal is Right. Right. Sensitively on to, to himself there. August: So let's talk about projective identification, which I've heard a lot about, but I thought your discussion was very clear. When I first heard it, I said, oh, oh, well I do that all the time. Dr. Reedy: Yeah. Yeah. August:: . If the idea is if I get an email that's upsetting or something and I'm angry, I might go into the next room and pick a fight with my wife. It just seems like for some reason, something that happens or in the business setting, the client gets mad at the owner. The owner is agitated at having been lectured to. So the owner goes and talks to the middle management and agitate to them, and then the middle management goes home and pisses off their kids. And it's just like, I've heard it described also this idea of pain passing, tossing the pain. Why is it that we think it will be a, I don't know why, but I don't know if there's this sense that I'm agitated and so I'm just going to go and piss somebody else off. I don't know where that comes from. But that is the idea, right. Of projecting. Dr. Reedy: Yeah. And working with, I have a colleague that worked with borderlines at a, at a hospital for a long time, ran borderline groups. And, and he said, they had a saying for it that they would put their stink on you. That you'd walk into the group having a typical day, and by the end of the group you'd be feeling powerless and frustrated and agitated. And then, like you said, you, if you're not aware of it and don't digest and metabolize it, you'll go home and take it on on your kids. Your kids will then kick the dog. And the dog siting, then the dog sits in the living room. The whole thing is complete. I think it's because again, it's about sitting with the feeling, digesting it, owning it, know embracing it. We want it out of us and onto the other person. It's so, and when I'm in a therapy session and I'm starting to feel frustrated, I always ask myself, now, is this what they're feeling? Oftentimes the the obvious answer is yes. And so then I have insight into how they're, we can use, in other words, we use projective identification when it's happening to us. To understand the other, yeah. So when your child comes to you and says, you never listened to me. You're a jerk. You're an idiot, I hate you. And you have a feeling of inadequacy or you're feeling attacked. , just ask yourself, is this what the child is feeling? And you will be absolutely amazed to find out so often that's what they're feeling. , then you know how to connect to them. Then you know how to respond to them. Because now you can use that, that thing, that projective identification, that that stink, that pain passing to understand the other. But that takes a chain breaker. That takes somebody who's going to take responsibility and say, I'm going to take this feeling. I'm not going to act it out from my own satisfaction. I'm not going to be self-indulgent in that way and go kick the dog. I'm going to sit with it, feel it. That's going to build up an empathy for me and an understanding of the other person. And I'm going to metabolize, I'm going to move through that, and then I'm going to go back to the person who gave it to me and say, in whatever way we can probably with our hearts, I see you. I get it. Now I know what you're feeling. August: Right. One of the great things about this book is that you have cases where you talk about where they don't end pretty bow around them. And for example, I don't know if this is on top of your head, but the, you have the case where you call the the clinician Melissa and the patient. Dr. Reedy: Oh, I know what it is. Yeah. August: Could you tell our audience about that? Dr. Reedy: Melissa the therapist. I was part of my job is I go around and I supervise therapist. I teach in-services. I'll go out and spend time with them, with their clients, watch their sessions, give my thoughts and insights. Maybe even model. So I'm sitting with Melissa, she's talking to this young child in our program, a teenage child who's lost parents has obvious attachment wounds that are explicit Big T trauma. And what Melissa's trying to do is she's trying to make this girl feel better. This, and this girl is accusing Melissa of not caring. She's saying, you left before we could talk last week. And Melissa's saying, wait, I talked to you twice. I had two sessions with you. I only had one session with everybody else, but I had two with you. August: Yeah. And she says, and I saw you laughing with... Dr. Reedy: I saw you laughing with the staff. You were, I know you were laughing about me. And I just saw Melissa wanting to make this young girl feel happy and okay and loved, which most people would say that sounds like a wonderful virtuous attempt, virtuous effort. But I had the advantage of sitting outside of that pair and watching. And I said, can I try it? And that's when I said, I think this, this young person, this young girl, I think she needs to be heard and seen and to know that yeah, you might love her for two months, three months while she's here. But she has some deep wounds that can't be fixed really easily. She has the loss of her caregivers. One is dead, one is in prison, or whatever the case is. And I think she just needs you to hear and sit with that. And clinically speaking, what Melissa needed to, to, to allow is she needs to be the villain. Her gift would have been, my daughter has written about this, she's also a therapist. She said The greatest gift that a parent can give is to allow the child to cast them as a villain in the story. Because Melissa was unwilling to be the villain and had to be a good therapist and a good person. That's her wounding. She couldn't hold it. She had no place for it. And so she kept on trying to solve both of their, their problems. And she was causing it to escalate. So I just said this young to the young woman, I said, you're in pain, you're alone. And I hear it. August: You say in the text, there's often no solution to these situations except to listen. In other words, hearing and sitting with someone's painful story is the solution. I have had the experience of an adolescent boy crying and saying, I just really miss my mom. She died two years ago. I really don't like being here. What are you going to say to that? I mean, I think you talk about those situations very well here about how if you're trying to accomplish something, you say, any attempt to try to get her to feel something other than what she currently felt only reinforced her feelings of aloneness. And any attempt to solve it would trivialize the immense pain and sadness that she felt. Dr. Reedy: It's funny that you share that story in my, in the journey of the parent. That's the first story is a young man whose mother had died. Oh really? And he snapped at somebody in a group therapy session, which my old mother tongue was. I kind of punished him. And I said, go sit by yourself. because that was my training growing up. I paused after the group was over and I went over and sat with him and I said, at that time I'd gathered myself and I said, what were you doing in group? You were snapping at people. And then he started to cry. It started to rain. I remember it, this is 24 years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember where we were sitting. He, it started to rain lightly. He started to cry and started to talk about his mother. He said, I love my dad, but it's not the same. And all I did was cry with him. I didn't have a look on the bright side. I didn't say this will make you stronger. I didn't, I couldn't solve his unsolvable problem. I cried with him in his grief. And it was that moment, August that I had that glimpse of what I wrote about many years later, which is, that's the gift that we give, is we can sit with somebody in their unsolvable problems and cry with them. And the only thing you know, when I got MS when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2015, I think I talked about it in the second book also. And I called a friend of a friend not knowing why I called him first, the first person, except for that he had family members that had the disease. He's an Osman and his father's Allen Osman, the oldest Osman brother. Oh, yeah. And his brother David also has MS. And they're big spokespeople for the disease. I called Tyler this friend of a friend, and I'd said, Tyler, I just got diagnosed with MS. And this 20 something year old young man said, you're not alone. I love you and I'll always be there for you. That's all he said. And I didn't even know I needed that. But what else could he say? There's a cure on the horizon or you can make, August: You may not have the worst kind and Yeah, Dr. Reedy: Yeah. Just, I'll be with you. And that's so hard and requires great capacity. That's why the great, I wrote about this on my social media today. The great masters of compassion, like the Buddha Clint, spent plenty of time in self care and self-reflection and meditation because they knew that kind of energy. To be there for people that are suffering requires a lot of spiritual food, a lot of, a lot of self care, a lot of time sitting and quietly meditating. So yeah, it is the, the gift of being a therapist to do it. But it asks a lot of us who have what I call empathic misery. Where we're connected to people's pain. It asks a lot. So we have to practice a lot of self-care and a lot of clear boundaries to do it Well. August: One of the things that I think you use the word a lot, understand you want to understand the person, and I looked it up. Because I'm, we, but First of all, I thought it was interesting, the etymology, the word understand it means literally to stand among to be around. Wow. It has these two meanings. One is, has a lot of different meanings. But the two that I think might get confused, the first definition is to get the meaning of, to comprehend, to know or graph what is meant by. And to me, that has a very cognitive feeling to it not affective. There's another definition, which is number seven, which is to have a sympathetic rapport with like, no one understands me. And so, I don't know, for me, maybe it's just my own associations with the word understand. A lot of times you're saying you want your clinicians to understand, to just understand. I think to me, that means, well does that mean like figure out what happened in their background to cause this? Is it like some little theory or is it more that kind of, unconditional positive regard, I guess that more of a, it has, it's not just cognitive, it's also evaluating or . What do you think. Dr. Reedy: I love this interview so much. This is the first time I've met you. Understanding is a shallow word. It doesn't completely communicate the robustness of the tasks that you're talking about. It comes up short for sure. Although the etymology actually kind of leans toward it. August: Right. Yeah. Dr. Reedy: But it is, I might get this wrong, so people are going to have to look this up, but my therapist taught me years ago that the German word for empathy was, I think it was Mitgefuhi or something like that. I can't remember. And she said it meant to sit with somebody in it. Sit with somebody. And so I think it's about just being with them at a deep level. who's the master? If, if people are wondering what we're talking about, again, since I didn't invent any of this watch, Mr. Rogers watch Fred Rogers watch the documentary that happened in 2018, 19. And the movie that came out around the same time with Tom Hanks playing the character, you will then see, he asks questions. He's curious, he, but you can sense his compassion and his feeling. He never tried to get a kid not to be scared, not to be angry. He simply listened to their fear and their anger and they were then allowed to move through it. But when it doesn't get listened to and heard and understood, then it remains fixated in the person. They remain stuck in it, they act it out. It becomes a complex for them. And so, if you want to know what I'm trying to say when I use the word understand, because it is more than an intellectual exercise, Mr. Fred Rogers is the best popular example I've ever seen of a master therapist. August: I've often liked that. interesting thing that, Carl Rogers and Mr. Rogers had the same name. Which one are you talking about? Dr. Reedy: They're synonymous. Right. August: You're also, your team, I guess it seems is very, creative. It seemed. I I thought that the one example, which was quite interesting was when, well there were several. One was the example of Nick who was resistant to therapy and the parents had his brain scanned. Dr. Reedy: Oh, yes. Yes. August: I can tell the story. I guess from my understanding, they were trying to get understand him, get in his head. And you guys were trying to do it at a certain point. You said you realized that he was tired of people trying to poke in there. Dr. Reedy: Yeah. August: That was my. Dr. Reedy: I picked up the baton of the intrusive pattern and just went along route. It was really the first really big moment where I realized what it meant to be an adult in the room and to apologize and to realize that he had a good reason for the defense. I grossly misunderstood him. And I perceived his resistance as, I didn't think of this word, but just badness, just evil. He was just being a jerk. August: Right. He had laughed at someone had said they had gotten so drunk there, had a blackout and he laughed. Right. That was the sort of thing that a teenager would do. Yeah. Dr. Reedy: And so I saw that as cruel because this, this boy that he was laughing with or at had almost died from alcohol poisoning. And then I went, went to Jamie and I tell her this story. I used her as my supervisor and she's like, you could just go back out and apologize for missing him. And she walked me through what I ended up writing about, which I did. In fact, I reached out to the character that's based on, because it was too, I told this story too precisely accurate that no one would know who he is. But if he read it, I would, he might recognize it. So I asked for permission, sent him the story, and he asked me to be his therapist. And I've been his therapist since. So it made a big impact on him. When I apologized for the intrusion, when I recognized it, when I was an adult enough to say, I don't care if I want to paint myself in the light of being a good therapist and a loving person doing the right thing, the fact of the matter is I screwed up. I misunderstood. I made the mistake and I was being cruel. And when I did that for the first time, I think he started to feel that there could be somebody in his life that could understand him, somebody that could be safe. Because everybody else has been trying to drill through his defenses, which by the way, he built to protect himself from the drilling in the first place. August: That's so profound. The other thing that, another example that was really, I thought very creative was, the one where you tell the staff he had lost both his parents, he had a significant growth in the program and then left and then came back and you say, I reflected on the job of the therapist. It wasn't to fix this young man, it was to find him. I said, rather than fixing him, and there's a lot of pressure on you to do that. You're speaking to the clinician, let's talk about what you can do. I think it is your job to find his story and tell it for him. Tell it to the staff, to his peers. Which were, that was a very interesting, just trying to do whatever out there. Can you talk a bit about, about that? Dr. Reedy: It reminds me of the quote that I use. I think I probably mentioned someone in the book from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who says, if we could read the secret histories of our enemies, we would find in each man's story suffering sufficient to disarm all hostility. Or as Abraham Lincoln said it more succinctly, I do not like that man. I must get to know him. Once you find somebody in their context, everything that seems irrational about their behavior, self-sabotaging about their behavior, crazy pathological about their behavior makes perfect sense. So that's the job. And by telling it, I mean to the client, you reflect it back. You say, it sounds like this is what you've needed to do to survive. And you're, you're fighting the client. Then the client, again, the nervous system, the defense relaxes because they've been seen. Then they can start to deal with the trauma and the pain that's been unprocessed with the staff and the grandparents and the other professionals. You tell this story to them so that you alchemize, if that's okay to use that there their rage and judgment and anger and impatience into compassion and love and understanding and tolerance. That's what finding the context does for the client. And that's what finding the contact can do for the treatment team, in this case, the peers and the people at home who are just wanting this child to be Okay. And so. It's something that as a supervisor is a wonderful opportunity to try to teach therapists that the goal is to find instead of fix. August: I think also you're dealing with situations which are not long horizon situations. I mean, these are kids who could really, with their impulsivity and their amount of pain, they could die by suicide or o something. And so there's a sense that also I think to be able to verbalize feelings is very difficult. I'm almost 60 and I'm struggling with it. And to ask a teen to be able to verbalize what's going on, I just thought it was really interesting that, let's try some stories out there and see how they resonate with you. But I don't know why we would expect a teen not to act out in a way, because it's, if you're in a lot of pain and adolescent, how are you really going to be? So I have to keep, when I'm reading the book, I'm reminding myself, okay, they're not, these are not intellectual discussions here when we talk about the understanding. We're talking about building a rapport or something because it's very difficult to put these things into words for anybody. Dr. Reedy: It is, that's why I'm drawn to myth, poetry and art, music because music, I don't use dance in my work, but a lot of people can use body movement is because these expressions are the closest we can it, it's the Star Wars motif is a better explanation than an intellectual one. You could feel it by, you watch Superman and you walk out of there feeling like a superhero because you've connected to the character. It's Deepak Chopra said, when you watch an iconic movie like that, it plants a seed of a hero inside of you and you know what it's like to transcend and become all that you are. And so I think it's really hard to describe some of these things. That's why even though this theory is out there already, I'm not writing it for the first time. I'm telling it from my vantage point from the things that I've seen. So people have more examples, they have more mythologies, if you will. They have more stories where, oh, that's what it looks like when you see somebody hear somebody and this is what they do now I understand. And so I'm just, just telling my version of Superman, my version of the Matrix, my version of Star Wars in the life that I've lived, because that's all I can do. All I can tell is the story that I've lived and the meaning that it has given me in my life. August: And I think, there's also some lines in here that are, unsettling or they're, they kind of shake things. For example, I've often liked the saying, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly because it kind of shocks you. And it's great for perfectionists. And one of yours is, or one of the ones in here is, strike while the iron is cold. Dr. Reedy: Right. Right. August: And the one about that was really striking was, this is from Jamie Gill. It took me a while to figure out the difference between the staff and the patients in a mental hospital I worked in. And then it came to me, the staff have keys. Dr. Reedy: Right, right. August: I think that's also kind of a myth or a different way of looking at something just to kind of flip it. And that can be helpful. Dr. Reedy: What I'm trying to do, well one tries to do is create a shift where people can see more clearly. The fish can't see water; the fish is the last to discover water because it's, you have to, you have to know not water. August: Right. Dr. Reedy: To be able to see water. And so I think those clever little sayings that we have, the one that you had, the ones that I've used are you create a shift for the person. They're expecting it to end differently and they're like, oh, I have to think the quote causes me to think and see things from a, from a different perspective. And I think that's what I'm trying to accomplish is that with the keys example, I, I gave this in a speech in Nashville two weeks ago and I tell people, if you don't know that you're as sick as your clients, you're in trouble. And so are they. If you think that you've transcended everything, first of all, if you had transcended everything, you'd have only empathy and you would see yourself in them. But if you think you've trans, if you've, if you've imagined, if you've adopted the fantasy psychosis that you are above it all and that you don't have the same issues that they have, you'll never make contact with them and they'll never trust you. It can't happen that way. And so you will laugh because you'll think I'm saying this just for this interview, but I watched The Matrix two nights ago because we took a break from Star Wars for one Night. . I haven't watched it in 10 years. And The Matrix is a metaphor for the common culture for what we've been taught as children. Part of what I'm trying to do in my books is I'm trying to speak to the part of you that knows most people when they read my stuff, say, I already believed this. I just didn't have the words for it or nobody had said it quite this way. That's what I think those sayings are trying to reach. I'm trying to reach that part of you that knows this already, but had to give it up and lose it to survive your childhood. August: I'm, we're past time now, but I I wanted to just ask you one more question. I don't know when I read your title for the first time, learning to the Audacity to be You Learning to love your horrible Rotten Self, I immediately associated to the book Alexander and the Terrible, horrible, no. Good, good. Very bad Day. I don't know if you, I don't know if that is. Dr. Reedy: It's one of my wife's favorite childhood books. August: Isn't it a great book? I just, the, just the God guess because of the word horrible in there. That is a great book. And it ends with Yeah. Some days are like that . Yeah. Some days are like no solution offered. Just That does happen sometimes. Well, Dr. Brad Reedy, thank you so much for, for joining me. It's been a pleasure to speak to you and thank you for Absolutely Work and your book and for sharing all these ideas and your, authenticity and vulnerability. Thank you very much. Dr. Reedy: Absolutely. Honestly, my pleasure. [END]