𝗣𝗼𝗲𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵

Can a philosopher (also) be a reliable and trustworthy psychologist if he has only the most tenuous and guarded relationship with art, literature, and mythology? When he dismisses all the narratives, rites, and formulas from historical religion as pernicious nonsense and reason-obstructing superstitions? In strictly applying an uncompromising rational-naturalistic method and standard to the human psyche – to its dreams, fantasies, obsessions, and inspiring ideals – wouldn’t such an eminently reasonable philosopher be throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Wouldn’t he, like a modern-day behaviorist, be drastically limiting himself in terms of what he could reasonably and effectively describe and deal with 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑝𝑠𝑦𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑠𝑡?

In other words, if, like the bottom of the iceberg, the far greater part of the human psyche is veiled in darkness – where the faint, frail light of reason can scarcely reach – then what? If only a small segment of the human psyche – the precarious and puny conscious ego – can be said to operate in a deliberately rational manner, while 9/10 or more of the psyche is non-rational and ungovernable by ego-reason, then what?

Aren’t such rationalist-psychologists like the drunken guy in the parable who lost his keys and is looking for them under a street lamp? When a cop sees him and asks what he’s up to, the cop helps him search for a while, but to no avail. “Are you sure you lost them here?” “No, I lost them over there, but there’s much more light here under the street lamp.” Instead of diving into the darkness with nothing but his little flashlight of materialistic reason, such a philosopher-psychologist might be suspected of vainly and preposterously insisting that the darkness come to him (at his desk) and submissively defer to his “enlightened” terms and methods.

Among philosopher-psychologists, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and especially Spinoza bring to mind the ancient feud or antagonism between poetry and philosophy. In their writings about the mind or psyche, we can see a more or less coordinated effort to purge the mind (or soul) of every 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 that is neither naturally nor rationally derived. From the standpoint of modern depth (or archetypal) psychology, this makes the psychological teachings of these rationalists and empiricists seem rather superficial, narrow, barren, mechanistic, and abstract.

At the other end of the spectrum we find figures like Blake and Hölderlin. Goethe, who wrote both great lyrical poetry and scientific works (albeit on his own terms, which were radically different from those of the abstract-mathematical-mechanistic science of his day), stands as a model of “holding the tension” between 𝐷𝑖𝑐ℎ𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑊𝑎𝑟ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑡, or poetry and philosophy.

The word “meaning” is semantically linked to our word “purpose,” as in “What is the 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 behind your coming here tonight?” or “What is the 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 of your act of defiance?” In denying teleology – or final causality – to Nature (or “Substance,” “God,” the “whole”), doesn’t Spinoza simultaneously deny 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 to life, nature, “God,” the whole, etc.? And by “meaning,” of course I am not referring to “definition,” as in the denotation of a term or concept. Such “meanings” or definitions can be “clear and distinct,” but like many mathematical terms and formulas, remain abstract, colorless, and devoid of any affective, aesthetic, or sentimental quality. Devoid, in fact, of content.

The kind of meaning that perhaps a majority of persons attach to, or associate with, the things, persons, activities, places, etc., that supply quality and purpose to their lives: this is the kind of meaning that Spinoza targets for his critical examination, as if he were treating “lines, planes, and solids.” What may lie at the very core of Spinoza’s moral project in the Ethics is a relentlessly executed campaign to stamp out (or neuter, neutralize, tranquilize, lobotomize) the “problematic” passions (e.g., jealousy, envy, pity, etc.), but the passions, in general, may be the key ingredient behind the qualitative meaning that many, perhaps most (at some time or another) of us instinctively or compulsively seek out. (Admittedly, there are some passions, or emotions, that Spinoza endorses, but by and large, they are regarded with mistrust by him.)

Now if the passions or affects that initiate and propel the search for meaning are anesthetized or put to sleep by constant reflection upon their irrationality and futility in an uncaring, infinite universe, then we have some obligation, it seems to me, to question the sanity or benefits of such a philosophical enterprise.

It’s possible I’ve gotten him all wrong and I’m not being fair to Spinoza. But, using his own peculiar language, he equates passions (a passive state) with “inadequate ideas.” When we have, on the other hand, an adequate idea (of a situation or thing) our emotion or passion is, as it were, stilled or neutralized and our mind becomes active, instead of passive. How does an activated mind in possession of an “adequate idea” see and experience things? Well, it would seem, from what I understand, that to have a fully adequate idea is to see the necessary and inviolable concatenation of causes (or reasons) that are responsible for what is happening to and around us. In seeing and acquiescing to this determined, necessary state of affairs (that life eternally is), all passive and peace-disturbing emotions are vanquished – except for joy. This joy is the active state of the mind that sees and accepts the necessary, determined character of existence, according to Spinoza. Moreover, this condition of peaceful acquiescence or submission to the necessary order of things is utterly impersonal since our individual personhood is but a tiny “modification,” a blip-like, transitory appearance within this infinite, eternal, rational whole, euphemistically called “God, or nature” by Spinoza.

My hunch is that Spinoza’s success – if he is to be credited with a significant accomplishment – lies in his depiction of a final or end state. If his 𝐸𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑠 can be charged with a significant effect, it would be that Spinoza offers us only an “inadequate idea” of the role that emotions (inadequate ideas) necessarily play in the difficult journey from impassioned ignorance to chilled-out bliss. There is something a bit static or non-dynamic about the 𝐸𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑠 – like the Euclidean geometry that provides the model for Spinoza’s exposition of this non-evolutionary, non-dialectical scheme.

James Hillman – perhaps the best spokesman for archetypal perspectives on record – would probably describe Spinoza’s view of nature as “Saturnian,” one of the many different ways or styles in which nature can be experienced imaginatively. Other equally authoritative, but quite different ways of experiencing or conceiving nature include “the virginal pristine nature of Artemis, the nature of Pan, the nature of Dionysus,” and not just “the mechanistic rational nature of Saturn.” (𝑅𝑒-𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑃𝑠𝑦𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦, 85) One might almost view Spinoza’s philosophy as one half of the perilous Senex-Puer split (in modern Western cultural consciousness), with candidates like Blake, Jim Morrison, and other Puer types at the opposite end of the dichotomy.

I suspect one must be very much in love with the clarifying, distinction-drawing, extrapolating, and cartographical powers of the reasoning faculty (𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑟 𝑑𝑒𝑖 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑢𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠) – and believe that nature is inherently rational in its constitution and operation – in order to feel (let’s call a spade a spade) the metaphysical comfort we detect in Spinoza’s “intellectual love of God.” Certainly there is a “transcendent” feeling associated with this intellectual marriage of the individual mind with the whole (of intelligible, infinite, eternal nature). And moreover, while such revelatory, ecstatic moments of alignment between the mind and the cosmic whole are intimate and utterly enthralling, they are undeniably impersonal or transpersonal. I speak here from experience and not second-hand or from hearsay. And yet this de-personalization or almost inhuman impersonality is no small part of their charm and appeal.

But what if you don’t happen to be a thinking type? Feeling types are certainly as eligible as thinkers for “transcendent” and ecstatic raptures of the mind, heart, and soul – but they approach and undergo these epiphanic experiences in a rather different way. It may be said that thinkers and feelers ascend the mountain of transcendent, holistic-synoptic vision from opposite sides, due to their very different temperaments and dominant psychological functions. At the very summit of this mountain of vision, their experiences may have a great deal in common – but their views on the way up are quite different, if not mutually exclusive, because of the mountain between them. Thus, during their respective ascents, the thinker and the feeler look out upon utterly different landscapes.

Certainly some (hypertrophic) thinkers are naturally or habitually averse to strong affects and feelings. Strong emotions and feelings are perceived by such thinkers as inherently disruptive (of their intellectual serenity) and threatening (to their cherished sense of detachment or altitude over life). Emotions and feelings muddy the clear element in which they strive, earnestly, to remain aloft. Emotions are like strong winds that blow the thinker’s long hair and beard into his eyes, obstructing his panoramic vision.

Spinoza may have been such a thinker. He had seen his share of the dirty work that is done because of strong feelings that are rooted in ignorance, superstition, insufferable arrogance, and cowardly fear. Excommunication, alienation, calumny, ostracism. The vicious slaughter of the DeWitt brothers by an angry mob of zealots. At some point, some gifted but perhaps excessive thinkers come to the conclusion that “enough is enough,” and all their rational powers and vital energies are expended on some perceived foe or adversary. Is this perhaps how Spinoza came to see those “inadequate ideas,” the emotions? Do all who follow in his footsteps do some kind of violence or mischief against their souls? Was Spinoza – in the light of his own philosophy of determinism – compelled by external forces greater than himself to take this radical stance against emotions and the imagination, the enemy of clear-sighted reason and the source of all the trouble?

Of course I know some feelers who recoil from abstract, detached, tong-like thinking with every bit as much aversion as the aforementioned thinkers regard affects and feelings, but I’ll get to them later.

• Email Address: flowersandtendrils@gmail.com