on 30-Nov-2023 (Thu)

impossible mourning Jor the maternal object.

a COITllnOn experience of object loss and of a modifi- cation ofsignifYing bonds.

intolerance jor o~ject loss and the signifier's jai/ure to insure a cOlnpensating way out of the states of withdrawal in which the subject takes refuge to the point of inaction

Inelancholia without always distinguishing the ities of the two ailn1ents but keeping in nlind their con1- Inon structure. The Depressive Person: Full ofHatred or Wounded, UObject" and Mourned IiThinc<;,JJ According to classic psychoanalytic theory (Abraham, Freud, and Melanie Klein), 4 depression, like 1110urning, conceals an aggressiveness toward the lost object, thus revealing the ambivalence of the depressed person with respect to the object of mourning

treatment of narcissistic individuals has led modern analysts to understand another form of depression.6 Far from being a hidden attack on an other who is thought to be ho stile because he is frustrating, sadness would point to a primitive self-wounded, in- complete, empty.

Persons thus affected do not consider themselves wronged but afflicted with a fundarrlental flaw, a congenital deficiency. Their sorrow doesn't conceal the guilt or the sin feit because of having secretly plotted revenge on the ambivalent object. Their sadness would be rather the most archaic expression of an unsyrnbolizable, unnameable narcissistic wound

The depressed narcissist mourns not an Object hut the Thing. 7 Let me posit the "Thing" as the real that does not lend itself to signification, the center of attraction and repulsion, seat of the sexuality from which the object of des ire will becorne separated

Of this Nerval provides dazzling metaphor that sug- gests an insistence without presence, a light without rep- resentation: the Thing is an iInagined sun, bright and black at the same time. "It is a well-known fact that one never sees the sun in a dream, although one is often aware of some far brighter light. "8

The "primary identification" with the "father in individual prehistory"9 would be the means, the link that might enable one to become reconeiled with the loss of the Thing. Primary identification initiates a compensation for the Thing and at the same time seeures the subject to another dimension, that of imaginary adher-

the notion of "prünary n1asochis111" became established in his work after the "death drive" turned up, particularly in "The Economic Problem of Masochism" (1924).

The distinctive characteristic of practical activity, one which is so inherent that it cannot be eliminated, is the uncertainty which attends it. Of it we are compelled to say: Act, but act at your peril. Judgment and belief regarding actions to be performed can never attain more than apre- carious probability. Through thought, however, it has seemed that men might escape from the perils of uncertainty.

"Safety first" has played alarge role in effecting a preference for knowing over doing and making.

he quest for certainty is aquest for a peace which is assured, an object which is un- qualified by risk and the shadow of fear which action casts. For it is not uncertainty per se which men dislike, but the fact that uncertainty involves us in peril of evils.

hile it is difficult to avoid the use of the word supernatu- ral, we must avoid the meaning the word has for us. As long as there was no defined area of the natural^ that which is over and beyond the natural can have no significance.

The two dominant conceptions, cultural categories one might call them, which grew and flourished under such circum- stances were those of the holy and the fortunate, with their opposites, the profane and the unlucky

The holy thing, whether place, object, person or ritual appli- ance, has its sinister facej "to be handled with care" is written upon it. From it there issues the command: Noli me longere. Tabus, awhole set of prohibitions and injunctions, gather about it.

Alucky object is something to be used. It is to be manipulated rather than approached with awe. It calls for incantations, spells, divinations rather than for supplication and humiliation.

The distinction between the two attitudes of everyday control and dependence on something superior was finally generalized intellectually. It took effect in the conception of two distinct realms. The inferior was that in which man could foresee and in which he had instruments and arts by which he might expect areasonable degree of control. The superior was that of occur- rences so uncontrollable that they testified to the presence and operation of powers beyond the scope of everyday and mun- dane things.

he change from religion to philosophy was so great in form that their identity as to content is easily lost from view. The form ceases to be that of the story told in imaginative and emotional style, and becomes that of rational discourse observ- ing the canons of logic.

ristotle tells us that from remote antiquity tradition has handed down the idea, in story form, that the heavenly bodies are gods, and that the divine encompasses the entire natural world. This core of truth, he goes on to say in effect, was em- broidered with myths for the benefit of the masses, for reasons of expediency, namely, the preservation of social institutions. The negative work of philosophy was then to strip away these imaginative accretions. From the standpoint of popular belief this was its chief work, and it was adestructive one. The masses only felt that their religion was attacked. But the enduring contribution was positive.

If one looks at the foundations of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle as an anthropologist looks at his material, that is, as cultural subject-matter, it is clear that these philosophies were systematizations in rational form of the content of Greek religious and artistic beliefs.

It translated into ara- tional form the doctrine of escape from the vicissitudes of existence by means of measures which do not demand an active coping with conditions. For deliverance by means of rites and cults, it substituted deliverance through reason. This deliver- ance was an intellectual, atheoretical affair, constituted by a knowledge to be attained apart from practical activity.

The realms of knowledge and action were each divided into two regions. It is not to be inferred that Greek philosophy separated activity from knowing. It connected them. But it distinguished activity from action that is, from making and doing.

Perfect certainty is what man wants. It cannot be found by practical doing or making jthese take effect in an uncertain future, and involve peril, the risk of misadventure, frustration and failure. Knowledge, on the other hand, is thought to be concerned with aregion of being which is fixed in itself. Being eternal and unalterable, human knowing is not to make any difference in it. It can be approached through the medium of the appre- hensions and demonstrations of thought, or by some other organ of mind, which does nothing to the real, except just to know it.

Are the objects of the affections, of desire, effort, choice, that is to say everything to which we at- tach value, real? Yes, if they can be warranted by knowledge jif we can know objects having these value properties, we are justi- fied in thinking them real. But as objects of desire and purpose they have no sure place in Being until they are approached and validated through knowledge. The idea is so familiar that we overlook the unexpressed premise upon which it rests, namely that only the completely fixed and unchanging can be real.

The quest for certitude has determined our basic metaphysics.

he common essence of all these theories, in shortLis that what is known is antecedent to the mental act of observation and inquiry, and is totally unaffected by these actsj otherwise it would not be fixed and unchangeable. This negative condition, that the processes of search, investigation, reflection, involved in knowledge relate to something having prior being, fixes once for all the main characters attributed to mind, and to the organs of knowing. They must be outside what is known, so as not to interact in any way with the object to be known.

The real object is the object so fixed in its regal aloofness that it is aking to any beholding mind that may gaze upon it. Aspectator theory of knowledge is the inevitable outcome. There have been theories which hold that mental activity inter- venes, but they have retained the old premise. They have there- fore concluded that it is impossible to know reality. Since mind intervenes, we know, according to them, only some modified semblance of the real object, some "appearance."

Since mind intervenes, we know, according to them, only some modified semblance of the real object, some "appearance." It would be hard to find amore thoroughgoing confirmation than this con- clusion provides of the complete hold possessed by the belief that the object of knowledge is areality fixed and complete in itself, in isolation from an act of inquiry which has in it any element of production of change.

he separation (set up in the interest of the quest for absolute certainty) between theory and practice, knowledge and actions. Consequently the later problem cannot be attacked in isolation, by itself. It is too thoroughly entangled with fundamental beliefs and ideas in all sorts of fields.

the distinction made in the classic tradition between knowledge and belief, or, as Locke put it, between knowledge and judgment. According to this distinction the certain and knowledge are co-extensive. Disputes exist, but they are whether sensation or reason affords the basis of certainty jor whether existence or essence is its object. In contrast with this identification, the very word "belief" is eloquent on the topic of certainty. We believe in the absence of knowledge or complete assurance. Hence the quest for certainty has always been an effort to transcend belief.

the ideal of certainty as something superior to belief

The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century effected agreat modification. Science itself through the aid of mathe- matics carried the scheme of demonstrative knowledge over to natural objects. The "laws" of the natural world had that fixed character which in the older scheme had belonged only to rational and ideal forms.

The idea that the stable and expanding institution of all things that make life worth while throughout all human relationships is the real object of all intelligent conduct is depressed from view by the current con- ception of morals as aspecial kind of action chiefly concerned

Instead of being extended to cover all forms of action by means of which all the values of life are extended and ren- dered more secure, including the diffusion of the fine arts and the cultivation of taste, the processes of education and all ac- tivities which are concerned with rendering human relationships more significant and worthy, the meaning of "practical" is limited to matters of ease, comfort, riches, bodily security and police order, possibly health, etc., things which in their isola- tion from other goods can only lay claim to restricted and narrow value.

Our depreciatory attitude toward "practice"

It would be possible to argue (and, Ithink, with much justice) that failure to make action central in the search for such security as is humanly possible is asurvival of the impotency of men in those stages of civilization when he had few means of regulating and utilizing the conditions upon which the occurrence of consequences depend. As long as man was unable by means of the arts of practice to direct the course of events, it was natural for him to seek an emotional substi- tute jin the absence of actual certainty in the midst of apre- carious and hazardous world, men cultivated all sorts of things that would give them the feeling of certainty. And it is pos- sible that, when not carried to an illusory point, the cultivation of the feeling gave man courage and confidence and enabled him to carry the burdens of life more successfully.

oing is always subject to peril, to the danger of frustration.

It will not be denied, Isuppose, that the chief aim of those philosophies which Ihave called classical, has been to show that the realities which are the objects of the highest and most necessary knowl- edge are also endowed with the values which correspond to our best aspirations, admirations and approvals. That, one may say, is the very heart of all traditional philosophic idealisms.

After degrading practical affairs in order to exalt knowledge, the chief task of knowledge turns out to be to demonstrate the absolutely assured and permanent reality of the values with which practical activity is concerned! Can we fail to see the irony in asituation wherein desire and emotion are relegated to aposition inferior in every way to that of knowledge, while at the same time the chief problem of that which is termed the highest and most perfect knowledge is taken to be the existence of evil that is, of desires errant and frustrated?

The notion that thought, apart from action, can warrant complete certitude as to the status of supreme good, makes no contribu- tion to the central problem of development of intelligent methods of regulation. It rather depresses and deadens effort in that direction. That is the chief indictment to be brought against the classic philosophic tradition. Its import raises the question of the relation which action sustains to knowledge in fact, and whether the quest for certainty by other means than those of intelligent action does not mark abaneful diversion of thought from its proper office.

Action, when directed by knowledge, is method and means, not an end. The aim and end is the securer, freer and more widely shared embodiment of values in experience by means of that active control of objects which knowledge alone makes possible

In reaction against the age-long depreciation of practice in behalf of contemplative knowledge, there is atemptation simply to turn things upside down. But the essence of pragmatic instrumentalism is to conceive of both knowledge and practice as means of making goods excellencies of all kinds- secure in experienced existence

the fact that it is so difficult to find acase of purely intellectual uncertainty, that is one upon which nothing hangs. Perhaps as near to it as we can come is in the familiar story of the Oriental potentate who declined to attend ahorse race on the ground that it was already well known to him that one horse could run faster than another.

When we withdraw ourselves from the possibility of a re- peated calamity—by walling out certain feelings (or a certain intensity of feeling), or by not allowing ourselves to repeat such trust, need, or love again—we take ourselves into a fortress, a defended state of being.

it is astrict truism that no one would care about any exclusively theoretical uncertainty or certainty

Those who have set such store by the de- monstration that Absolute Being already contains in eternal safety within itself all values, have had as their interest the fact that while the demonstration would make no difference in the concrete existence of these values unless perhaps to weaken effort to generate and sustain them it would make adifference in their own personal attitudes in afeeling of comfort or of release from responsibility, the consciousness of a"moral holiday" in which some philosophers have found the distinction between morals and religion.

the ulti- mate ground of the quest for cognitive certainty is the need for security in the results of action. Men readily persuade them- selves that they are devoted to intellectual certainty for its own sake. Actually they want it because of its bearing on safeguard- ing what they desire and esteem. The need for protection and prosperity in action created the need for warranting the validity of intellectual beliefs.

Just as belief that amagical ceremony will regulate the growth of seeds to full harvest stifles the tendency to investigate natural causes and their workings, so acceptance of dogmatic rules as bases of conduct in education, morals and social mat- ters, lessens the impetus to find out about the conditions which are involved in forming intelligent plans.

Philosophers, therefore, set to work to mediate, to find some harmony behind the apparent discord. Everybody knows that the trend of modern philosophy has been to arrive at theories regarding the nature of the universe by means of theories regarding the nature of knowledge aprocedure which reverses the apparently more judicious method of the ancients in basing their conclusions about knowledge on the nature of the universe in which knowledge occurs. The "crisis" of which we have just been speaking accounts for the reversal.

The physical world can -be surrendered to matter and mechanism, since we are assured that matter and mechanism have their foundation in immaterial mind. Such has been the characteristic course of modern spiritualistic philosophies since the time of Kantj indeed, since that of Descartes, who first felt the poig- nancy of the problem involved in reconciling the conclusions of science with traditional religious and moral beliefs.

If men had associated their ideas about values with practical activity instead of with cognition of antecedent Being, they would not have been troubled by the findings of science. They would have welcomed the latter. For anything ascertained about the structure of actually existing conditions would be adefinite aid in making judgments about things to be prized and striven for more adequate, and would instruct us as to the means to be employed in realizing them. But ac- cording to the religious and philosophic tradition of Europe, the valid status of all the highest values, the good, true and beautiful, was bound up with their being properties of ultimate and supreme Being, namely, God. All went well as long as what passed for natural science gave no offence to this concep- tion.

he problem of re- conciliation arises and persists for one reason only. As long as the notions persist that knowledge is adisclosure of reality, of reality prior to and independent of knowing, and that know- ing is independent of apurpose to control the quality of ex- perienced objects, the failure of natural science to disclose significant values in its objects will come as ashock.

This then is the fundamental issue for present philosophy. Is the doctrine justified that knowledge is valid in the degree in which it is arevelation of antecedent existences or Being? Is the doctrine justified that regulative ends and purposes have validity only when they can be shown to be properties belong- ing to things, whether as existences or as essences, apart from human action?

Why have not the arts which deal with the wider, more generous, more distinctly humane values enjoyed the release and expansion which have accrued to the technical arts? Can it be seriously urged that it is because natural science has dis- closed to us the kind of world which it has disclosed?

the first problem for philosophy would seem to be to clear itself of further responsibility for the doctrine that the supreme issue is whether values have antecedent Being, while its further office is to make clear the revisions and reconstructions that have to be made in traditional judgments about values. Having done this, it would be in aposition to undertake^ the more positive task of projecting ideas about values which might be the basis of anew integration of human conduct.

The method and conclusions of science have without doubt invaded many cherished beliefs about the things held most dear. The resulting clash constitutes agenuine cultural crisis. But it is acrisis in culture, asocial crisis, historical and temporal in character. It is not aproblem in the adjustment of properties of reality to one another. And yet modern philoso- phy has chosen for the most part to treat it as aquestion of how the realities assumed to be the object of science can have the mathematical and mechanistic properties assigned to them in natural science, while nevertheless the realm of ultimate reality can be characterized by qualities termed ideal and spiritual.