Discussion: Damasio and Scarry

DESCARTES' ERROR
We had a good discussion tonight about this text.  I think most people enjoyed it and found it contained much to think about.  The discussion ranged over many different - but interconnected - topics. We spent alot of time discussing the concept of free will and trying to define free will vs personal responsibility, how does upbringing, brain damage, substance or other abuse etc affect this.  We had a good discussion on the value judgments made about brain issues vs other issues.  If you have cancer or diabetes or a broken leg there is usually no blame to the person, no negative judgments of their character, no blame whereas with many mental illnesses, we are uncomfortable with this, we may blame them for their illness, for their lack of "willpower".  A few people in the class deal with people with mental illnesses through their work, two through social services and one through the prison system and it was good to hear their perspective on these issues.

We also discussed sick cultures and what Damasio might have been referring to in the 1990s when it spoke about sick sectors of American culture.  One aspect might have been violence, video games, issues with sexuality etc.  Damasio didn't really elaborate on what he had in mind when he included the comment in his book.

We spoke a little about the effects of civilization on humankind and whether we are progressing (continuing to evolve) or whether we are just cycling through variations in human nature.

I didn't take alot of notes as I was guiding the discussion but I thought there was so much scope in this book, especially coming as it does after we've worked our way through the centuries of thinkers who have been wondering about the various roles of passion and reason, our place in the world.



ON BEAUTY AND BEING JUST - by Elaine Scarry
Roberta was scheduled to lead the discussion and had sent out a detailed list of questions she wanted us to consider and how she wanted us to consider them.  Unfortunately she didn't make it to the class and so Stephen led the discussion on the areas of the book he wanted to explore.  This is the 1st year that the book has been included in the GLS curriculum and everyone found it challenging.  It's a deceptively thin book, looks very pretty with its smooth cover, thick coloured end papers and textured paper.  I think that most people, especially after having read the very scientific Descartes' Error, were looking forward to a book discussing beauty and its role in human existence.  This book didn't really do this adequately for most of us.  It was interesting but since none of us have a background in aesthetics or have done any reading in it (except maybe Stephen?) we had trouble with the conceptual level Scarry was writing from.

PART II
Scarry says Beauty was banished from academic world for 2 decades.  Political critique was based on:

1. distracts us from important stuff like suffering, "wrong social arrangements"
2. when we make beauty an object of sustained regard, our act is destructive to the object

It's not that beauty wasn't appreciated but rather that it wasn't considered a good enough reason by itself to value something academically.  The class didn't agree with a) Scarry's statement or b) that her reasons for this valid.  The 3 in the class who had just finished an undergraduate degree did say that they found that universities or faculties tended to become very entrenched on a specific way to do things and all the other ways are denigrated each time a new "fad" comes along - which is not to say that new fads are adopted frequently or easily but rather that academic thinking tends to be quite prescriptive and proscriptive in how their field of study should be studied, discussed and written about.

Our view of beauty may be changing based on changes in the world such as ability to reproduce much beauty much more easily.  When you can find images of great works of art on the Internet or buy a decent quality reproduction of art you've seen in any museum shop, it's not as rare as it used to be.

Steve brought up the Pidgin Restaurant in Vancouver's Eastside and the protests against it, protesting against gentrification.  He said this fits in with what Scarry said: that the wealthy diners will be gazing out at the suffering poor and this could be harmful to them (destructive); and the beauty of the restaurant and the food may distract society from the 'wrong social arrangements'.  The whole argument seems a stretch to me but again, I probably have to think about it a bit more.

"No detailed argument or description is ever brought forward to justify this generalization, yet the generalization has worked to silence conversations about beauty.  If this critique or the other critiques against beauty were crisply formulated as edicts or treatises with sustained arguments and examples, the incoherence would be more starkly visible and the influence correspondingly diminished.  They exist instead as semi-articulate but deeply held convictions that - like snow in a winter sky that keeps materializing in the air yet never falls or accumulates on the ground - make their daily way into otherwise essays, articles, exams, conversations.  Suddenly out of the blue, someone begins to speak about the way a poet is reifying the hillside or painting or flower she seems to be so carefully regarding.

Stephen said that the Heisenberg principle, interpreted to mean that the gaze of a viewer affects the observed object, was adopted by the humanities to say that people's gazes whether this is the male gaze harming a female or whatever, have an effect on what they are observing and that this effect likely is not benign or is actually harmful - at the very least there is an effect.

Elaine Scarry would have spent much time in university environments that constrained value judgments of what is beautiful by wanting to apply notions of patriarchy, prejudice etc

We then moved on to discussions of 'lateral disregard' and how Scarry proposed that when we put our notice to something beautiful, we bring less attention to other related objects.  This can lead to problems with over-specialization or fixations about things we admire, find beautiful.  This concept carried more weight that some of Scarry's other arguments or propositions.

It was interesting to consider Scarry's references to Simone Weil who was "always deeply somatic: what happens, happens to our body." pg 111 Damasio would, I think, agree with this.

The essentialist who believes beauty remains constant over the centuries and the historicist or social constructionist who believes that even the deepest structures of the soul are susceptible to cultural shaping have no need, when confronting the present puzzle, to quarrel with one another.  For either our responses to beauty endure unaltered over centuries, or our responses to beauty are alterable, culturally shaped.  And if they are subject to our willful alteration, then we are at liberty to make of beauty what we wish.  pg 74

Kant is an essentialist and Hume is a historicist, Hume felt that rights and wrongs change over time, according to conditions, externals.  I don't think there is an intrinsic beauty or rather, I think that beauty is very much affected by the viewer (their background, culture, experience, education, mood etc).  I think there are some qualities that humans tend to find beautiful such as symmetry etc but the range of things we find beautiful is so wide and varied and the effect beautiful things have on us is also so varied that I can't conceive of beauty being constant.

The discussion made me consider about beauty from the perspective of non-humans.  It seems a very human concept and while animals can be interested in many things in all my observations of them I can't think of any time I've thought they noticed or had a any notion of beauty.  This thought seems to lead me straight to next week's text which is "The Animal that Therefore I am" which I'm looking forward to reading.

Discussion: Anatole France "The Gods Will Have Blood"

Stephen started the discussion off by mentioning his experience during the 60s at SFU where the revolutionary/Berkeley spirit was strong and students believed they would overthrow the old guard and change the world.  A friend of his told him that come the revolution they would have to shoot Stephen because he wouldn't be able to go as far as the extremists.  Anatole France's book "The Gods Will Have Blood" and especially the character Brotteaux spoke to Stephen and this very thrilling time in his life.

Bruce led the discussion and disagreed with Davies' suggestion that Gamelin was a modern-day terrorist.  He felt that Gamelin was an idealist, a fanatic and extremist but not someone who just wants to destroy, rather someone who believes in a new order to the exclusion of any other considerations.

Anatole France was known as a left-wing writer and he was unusual in attacking the French Revolution from the left.  Bruce spoke a little about the Dreyfus affair and France's support of Dreyfus.  He circulated the famous 'J'accuse' article by Emile Zola - an article in L'Aurore newspaper.
The Zionist movement arose from Jewish feelings about the Dreyfus affair.

Gamelin's unfinished painting of Orestes and his sister Electra was an important theme in the book and this led to a discussion about the myth, about Orestes as a symbol of a person forced to commit a sin in order to obey another duty.

Brotteaux and Longuemare, as well as Athenais, were like a Greek chorus - the voice of consience.  They don't fit in with the world of the revolution and so they are all doomed. They had a love for humanity whereas Gamelin loved France and the ideal of the Revolution but he didn't have  a love for humanity.

The rational abstracted from the real world can be dangerous - if a person (especially one with power) focuses in on theory and a structure, on laws and regulations and ignores the humanity, real evil can result.

Anatole France referred often to Rousseau in the novel - Rousseau probably represented the brutal, raw nature.  We discussed the country interlude - which was an odd break in the novel.  This was likely a bit of  critique of Rousseau who wrote about the healing effects of Nature.  France felt that you can't just go into Nature and have it change anything.  The odd character of Tronche could represent the peasantry of France and how it is used and abused by the aristocrats/intellectuals etc.

I would like to read a bit more about this time period and try to get a better understanding of the various people and the events.  It was such a dramatic upheaval in centuries of class structure and led to important changes that we are still dealing with today.

Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther; Tr. Michael Hulse; Penguin Classic; London, 1989

This is one of Goethe's earliest works.  He wrote it after a period of time when he fell in love with a woman engaged to another man he was friendly with; and also after he learned of the suicide of a young man over a failed love.  It's written in the form of letters to an old friend but it seems quite dated. Having a man write another male friend bemoaning and sighing over his forbidden love seems very unlikely in this time.

His passion does ring true though Goethe didn't bring Lotte to life for me - she seems colourless and not very present.

Werther has a discussion with Albert (Lotte's fiancé) about love and passion.
[...] a man wholly under the influence of his passions has lost his ability to think rationally, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane.

Werther replies: Ah you sensible people! [...] Passions! Intoxication! Insanity! You are so calm and collected, so indifferent, you respectable people, tut-tutting about drunkenness and holding unreasonable behaviour in contempt, passing by like the priest and thanking God like the Pharisee that you are not as other men.  I have been intoxicated more than once, my passions have never been far off insanity, and I have no regrets [...]

As Werther becomes more depressed about the futility of his love for Lotte (the lack of any future togetherness) he speaks about the transitory nature of much love and the relative unimportance of individuals. [26 October]

Your friends value you! You often make them happy, and your heart in turn feels it could not do without them; and yet - if you were to go, if you were to depart from this intimate circle, would they feel the void, how long would they feel the void that your loss tore open in their fate? - how long? - Oh Man is so transient a being that even where his existence is most secure, even where his presence makes its sole true impression felt, he must fade and disappear from the memories and souls of his loved ones, soon, oh so soon!

[27 October]
I could often tear my heart open and beat my poor head on seeing how little people can mean to each other.  if I do not offer love and joy, happiness and warmth, ah! the other will not bring them to me either; nor will my heart, overflowing with rapture, move him at all if he is cold and listless.

Werther continues to love and pine after Lotte but after she marries Albert, he finds that he can't bear the idea, can't keep himself away from her and so he borrows Albert's pistols (such a passive-aggressive move though maybe it wasn't at that time) and shoots himself.  Like the real model (Jerusalem), Werther doesn't die right away but lingers for a day or so before dying.

Goethe has some lovely descriptive phrases about the countryside where Werther spent most of his time, in the mountains.  He speaks about sitting many hours at a table outside an inn, under the linden-trees.

The language is very over-wrought: beset hearts, floods of tears, tear my heart asunder, awesome majesty, torment, ardent pleasures, anguished spirit etc.  High Romance.

It seems very different from the man who wrote Faust.  Werther is very intolerant about reason, maturity and age.  In Faust, the older Goethe is more sympathetic to aging, writing: "Old age doesn't make us childish, as they say, It finds the true surviving child in us."  Though I didn't end up feeling connected to any of the characters or their problems, Werther's passion did seem strong and all-consuming and I felt this was a good introduction to an early Romantic novel.  Exposing my lingering prejudices, I would probably have found Werther's emoting more bearable if he were a female - but then again, maybe not...he did go on and on.

Plato's SYMPOSIUM

(Plato's Symposium, Tr. Christopher Gill, Penguin Classics, 1999)

(Plato's Symposium, Tr.Alexander Nehamas & Paul Woodruff, Hackett, 1989)

I read Plato’s Phaedrus for our introductory text back in July.  Phaedrus was an innocuously thin book that I found surprisingly tough to read.  I started to read his Symposium with some trepidation but found it much more accessible.  The Symposium contains a series of speeches about Eros or Love.  A relaxed group of post-prandial Athenian intellectuals are lying on their couches in the andrôn or male section of the house, attended by slaves, drinking wine and making speeches.  I tried to picture the scene.  I wish I had had some familiarity with the Athens of Plato and Socrates’ time when I was in my 20s and exploring Athens during a month travelling around Greece.  I would have loved to have contemplated life back in the 5^th century as I wandered around the city.  I enjoyed this book with its glimpse into the male Athenian intellectual world of 400-500 BCE.  I’ve decided to summarize what each speaker had to say as an aid to keeping the various ideas straight.

The SPEAKERS

Phaedrus speaks about love as LOVE, Eros the ancient, insufficiently-venerated God of love.  Created 3^rd, after Chaos and Earth.  This love is the love of an older lover for a younger boy where “guidance” is imparted, leading to a good life.  This love stops men from acting shamefully for fear of appearing shameful in the loved one’s eyes; encouraging men to behave well.  He cites  the story of Alcestis who took Admetus’ (her husband’s) place in Hades to save his life (and so the gods gave Alcestis her soul back). Alcestis is held up as an example of the ‘courage of love’.  Her bravery and love are overshadowed however by Achilles’ action in avenging his doomed lover Patroclus.  Because Achilles was the beloved rather than the lover, his sacrifice was considered nobler, and as reward, the gods sent him to the Isles of the Blest.

Phaedrus’ conclusion is that Love is the most powerful of the gods in helping men gain virtue and blessedness.

Pausanias, lover of Agathon, spoke next.  He discussed Aphrodite (companion of Love/Eros) as being 2 goddesses: ‘Heavenly’ Aphrodite, motherless daughter of Uranus who because of this purely male descent, “finds pleasure in what is by nature stronger and more intelligent.”  This Aphrodite is an older goddess and “free from the lewdness of youth”, preferring older boys who “have begun to form minds of their own.”  The relationship of an older lover to such a boy is not founded in deceit, but is about the imparting of knowledge, guidance – and is more enduring.  This speech seems a bit self-serving in its idealizing of the actual relationship of Pausanias and Agathon.

 ‘   'Common’ Aphrodite’s love “is truly common”.  It’s the love of an older man for young boys, or for women, “to the body more than the soul”.  This younger Aphrodite “partakes of the nature both of the female and the male” – hence vulgar.

      Pausanias groups philosophy, sport and Love together – as leading to ambition or bonds of friendship which is why he says Love is condemned by Rulers in their “lust for power”.  To be honorable, Pausanias feels that love should be openly declared.  He feels love is complex and that its character (honorable or shameful) “depends entirely on the behaviour it gave rise to.”

While Pausanias’ speech seems a bit pompous, he does support love of character rather than physical beauty.  Love of beauty “is bound to be inconstant, since what [is] love[d] is itself mutable and unstable.  The moment the body is no longer in bloom, “he flies off and away,” his promises and vows in tatters behind him.  How different from this is a man who loves the right sort of character, and who remains its lover for life, attached as he is to something that is permanent.”  Pausanias goes on to describe the only way in which these honorable love affairs should be conducted, a narrow viewpoint that has not held up 2500 years later.

Eryximachus spoke next.  He was a medical doctor and his speech addressed love from a corporal point of view.  He contended that our bodies “manifest the two species of Love.”  “Good” love is like good health and “bad” love is like disease in a body.

“The physician’s task is to effect a reconciliation and establish mutual love between the most basic bodily elements.”

He saw conflict within the body: between hot and cold, bitter and sweet, wet to dry; and he refers back to Asclepius as being the first to learn how to reconcile these opposing elements. 

Eryximachus extends this theory of the reconciling of opposites to music, with harmony being produced when high and low notes are brought into agreement.

Fourth to speak was Aristophanes who wove a beguiling myth about the original 3 kinds of human beings: male-male (offspring of the sun), female-female (offspring of the earth) and male-female (offspring of the moon).  These original beings had 4 hands and legs, 2 faces etc.  The gods decided to punish them after the humans attempt to “make an ascent to heaven” – an event very reminiscent of God’s punishment for the hubris of the Tower of Babel in Genesis.  In this myth however, instead of sowing linguistic confusion and scattering mankind to the 4 corners of the earth, the gods cut each human being in two.  Most fascinating in this was the description of Apollo drawing all the skin into a pouch with a drawstring, forming the navel.

Aristophanes’ myth proposes that love is the attempt by each human being to find and reunite with their separated half – a very appealing (though limiting) idea.

Agathon spoke next and his theory of love is that Eros or Love is the happiest, most beautiful and best of the gods.  “Love was born to hate old age.”  Not a very inspiring viewpoint for the Zoomer generation.  Agathon posits that Love “makes his home in the characters, in the souls, of gods and men.”  He goes on to describe Love’s moral character which is comprised of justice, moderation, wisdom and ‘manly bravery’.

In Agathon’s words, Love

Gives peace to men and stillness to the sea,

Lays winds to rest, and careworn men to sleep.

His view of Love also seemed constrained and limiting but without the appeal of Aristophanes' myth.

Socrates spoke last of those present.  He described how a speaker should construct their speech, at 198d:

“In my foolishness, I thought you should tell the truth about whatever you praise, that this should be your basis, and that from this a speaker should select the most beautiful truths and arrange them most suitably.”

He began by questioning Agathon and showing him where he has erred in logic in his speech.  He then recounted a discussion he had with a foreign priestess, Diotima, who taught him about love.  Socrates argues that Love is the desire for “good things” or for happiness and to have them forever.  Diotima described a myth about Love: a child of Necessity and Poverty, conceived on the day of Aphrodite’s birth and therefore her companion, lover of the beautiful since Aphrodite was beautiful, lover of wisdom.  Love is described as poor, resourceful, a schemer and great hunter: “brave, impetuous and intense.”

Diotima/Socrates ends by saying that what Love wants is reproduction in beauty and hence immortality.

A final speaker appears when Alcibiades arrives late and very drunk.  His speech focuses on Socrates and he describes him as both a man, ugly and unappealing on the outside, and a sage with many good qualities such as courage, endurance, wisdom on the inside; comparing him to the statue of Silenus which though ugly and base on the outside, opened to show beautiful idols inside.  Alcibiades’ speech goes on to describe Socrates as the beloved rather than the lover and then shows that Socrates loved beauty and wisdom.  He quotes Socrates as saying, at 218c, “You’re trying to get true beauty [Socrates’ wisdom or philosophical ideas] in return for its appearance [beautiful young boy].”

What was appealing to me about Alcibiades' eulogy of Socrates and of Love, was that though he started by ridiculing Socrates’ appearance and his role as aged lover of beautiful young boys, he ended up praising his understanding and wisdom, his integrity.

“If you’re prepared to listen to Socrates’ discussions, they seem absolutely ridiculous at first. … But if you can open them up and see inside, you’ll find they’re the only ones that make any sense. … They range over most – or rather all – of the subjects that you must examine if you’re going to become a good person.”

When I think about the topics for this course, Reason and Passion, I find both present throughout the Symposium.  The entire book is about Eros, love or desire, and discusses the passions that motivate and torment men but also as a path to beauty or the divine. The book is a constructed as a series of speeches attempting to present a point of view and persuade the listener, usually by reason and logic, of the truth of the speaker’s viewpoint.