#166： Self, Soul, and Living a More Idealistic Life
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Professor Mark Edmondson joins me to discuss his new book, "Self and Soul: A Defensive Ideal," and how we can live a more idealistic life in the modern world.
Transcript
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Brad McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. One of my
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favorite books I read last year was a book called Self and Soul, a Defensive Ideal by a professor
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named Mark Edmondson. Really fascinating book. I read it a couple months ago and I'm still
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chewing on the things I read there. And in the book, he makes this bold argument that in the West,
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our commitment to ideals or the world of the soul, as he calls it, is fading. And we've become a
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culture of the self where material desires, even bodily desires, desires for comfort, for safety,
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have taken precedence over these more transcendent ancient ideals that he points out are courage,
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compassion, and contemplation. And he talks about why this transition happened,
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and this transition from soul to self happened, and gives some hints about what we can do to bring
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it back. Really great book. It'll get you thinking about your own life in a very profound way. So I
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was really excited to get Professor Edmondson on to discuss Self and Soul and his work and how we can
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be or live a more idealistic life. So without further ado, Mark Edmondson, Self and Soul,
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Well, I love your work. Your first book, as I said before we got on, that I read was Why Football
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Matters. As a football player, I loved it. It gave me some new insights and nuance to the sport that I
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played as a boy. But your latest book is something that I, one of my favorite books I read in 2015.
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It's called Self and the Soul. And you make this really bold claim from the very get-go that
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here in the West, particularly Western democracies, the world of the soul, or what you call,
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you know, what's the world of ideals is declining. And we've become a culture of the self. Let's talk
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about ideals first, because I think there's a lot of people who would be listening to this would say,
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well, hey, Mr. Professor. You know, I have ideals. I love my family. I love freedom. I love Jesus.
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I'm a social justice warrior. I'm out there protecting the environment. Aren't those ideals?
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I take it that there are three main ideals in the Western tradition, and that they come to us
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from the ancient world. And that the first one is courage, and that's exemplified in Homer
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by Achilles and Hector. And the second one is the quest for wisdom, and that's exemplified by Plato and
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Socrates in a combination. And that the third one is compassion, and that's exemplified first in the
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West by Jesus of Nazareth, but they're predecessors to that particular ideal, and those are to be found in the
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Hindu texts and in the teachings of the Buddha, and in some measure in the teachings of Confucius. So my study of
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ancient writings and thought leads me to think that those are the three central ideals.
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Gotcha. So let's delve into those a little bit deeper. So courage. I mean, aren't there soldiers out there
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today who are, you know, in combat, who are being courageous? What is it that you have in mind as the
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Sure. So in Homer, I find two ideals of courage. One of them is probably more available to us and more
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congenial to us. And that's the ideal of Hector. And Hector is the great citizen soldier who defends
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his city, Troy, against the onslaught of the Greeks. Hector's a very appealing character, as you probably
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know. He's very humane and very decent. He's one of the only two males in Troy who treats Helen with
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kindness and decency. And we see him with his wife and with his baby, and we see that he's a loving
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husband who treats his wife, Andromache, as an equal and a friend. And he's a wonderful father
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to his boy, Astyonyx. It's a very touching scene between them. But Hector is also a ferocious
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warrior who fights and eventually dies in the process of trying to save his city. He said at
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one point that he was not born to be a warrior, that he had to learn to be a fighter. And he probably
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would have been better off, and Troy would have been better off if the Greeks never showed up,
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and Hector had taken over the throne from Priam and ruled in a judicious and humane manner. But
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when war came, Hector was willing to step forward and fight for his city. And he did so with great
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valor. However, he lost. The other great idea is Achilles, which we can talk about in a minute. But
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it seems to me that there probably are exemplars of Hector fighting for laudable causes in the world
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right now. And I wouldn't doubt that there are some of those people representing America here and there
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in the globe who have decided, as Hector does, that overall, the cause of Troy, the cause of America,
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is just, and have decided that they're willing to risk their lives and everything they value
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for them. We don't hear a lot of stories about those people, and I wish we did. And there are
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lots of reasons for that that are very complicated. But I think that the ideal of Hector exists,
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and I think that a lot of people in the military would still respect it. The question then becomes,
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how much does the rest of America respect it? How many people who are sending their children to
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college devoutly hope that those children will go out and be Hector-like fighters for the United
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States? And I'm guessing not too many, some, but not too many. So we still respect that ideal, but
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there's fewer and fewer actually living it, or, you know, I guess, living it in some way?
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I think so. I think that's the case. I think most of the middle class wants the children to be
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prosperous, successful, and decent, and not to risk their lives in the pursuit of, you know,
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the preservation of the nation. That's for other people's kids to do. But I think everybody admires
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the Hector figure still. It's just a little difficult to identify him or her. It's the Achilles figure
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who is really problematic. The Achilles figure is the figure who I believe probably still exists,
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and you can find him, and now her, because all the combat roles are open to both genders now,
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recent development. You can find him in the Navy SEALs and in the Green Berets and sometimes just in
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the ranks. And this is the person who will do absolutely anything to win the battle, anything
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within reason and bounds, according to the rules of law, to win the battle and to bring his or her
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colleagues home. This soldier fights for glory and doesn't spend a whole lot of time wondering
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about whether the nation's cause is just. She signed on the dotted line, he signed on the dotted line,
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and we'll go where he is sent, we'll go where she is sent, and do what needs to be done.
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It's a much more difficult ideal to take in without some serious doubts, but I take it to be an ideal
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nonetheless. And although the weight of scholarly opinion now is that Hector is the hero of the Iliad,
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and Hector is the most admirable figure, I'm not so sure that's true.
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You know, yeah, Achilles is problematic, and he's one of those, it seems like even Homer
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had, you know, wasn't so sure about him as well, or even like Plato and Socrates.
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Especially thinkers. Achilles may go into a rage when he fights to revenge Patroclus,
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and that may well be something that Homer finds abhorrent. He does that amazing scene
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where a river becomes so furious at Achilles for filling it with the bodies of the Trojans
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that the river attacks Achilles himself. Now, is that the revulsion of nature against Achilles?
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It's a very bizarre scene, and not like anything else that occurs in the poem. Homer easily could have dropped it,
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but he doesn't. The river tries to kill Achilles. That suggests a strong level of ambivalence.
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But a simple question, you know, if you were, or I were, probably not in the position to be,
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going out on a combat mission, who do you want in front of you?
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He will win. I mean, when Hector and Achilles fight, everybody roots for Hector,
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but it's clear who's going to win, and it's pretty clear why.
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Yeah. And I mean, so is someone like Achilles, who like lives for this ideal of,
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I don't know what you would call it, is very martial and, you know, visceral courage.
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Are these folks born? Do they have something in them, like a muse?
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You know, telling them, this is what you're destined for,
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and this is what you're going to do with your life, or is it something...
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Yeah. This is one of the hardest questions in the book, and I, this is,
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it's an easy question in a way because I simply don't know how to answer it.
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Where does the urge to this kind of excellence come from?
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Is it because there are gods on high who love this kind of behavior?
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That would be Homer's answer, I think, though how metaphorical the gods are in Homer is an open question.
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I don't know where it comes from, but there will be all over America and all over the world right now,
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boys and girls who sit and thrill to the tales of heroes, and some will simply sit and thrill,
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and a few others will say, that's what I've got to do, that's me.
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Whether it comes from God or comes from the devil, it is their destiny, and some of them will embrace it.
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And I dare say, though I'm not quite a pacifist, but prone to the peaceful solution myself,
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People, progressive people, liberal people like to forget about them,
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but when it gets really dark and bad days come, you look for those people and you desperately need them.
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As I was reading that section on courage and thinking about Achilles and sort of this veneration for violence,
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for, you know, as a way to get glory and the respect and the esteem of your peers,
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it made me think about, for some reason, the Islamist terrorists that we're seeing right now.
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Because I've noticed in the West, at least, whenever you hear people talk about terrorists in the Islamic world,
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it's like, well, you know, if they just had jobs, or, you know, if we just, like, gave them money,
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and, like, they had prosperity, then, like, they wouldn't do this.
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And as I was reading that, I thought, well, maybe not, right?
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I guess we need to talk about what the self is, but they're doing something for an ideal, right?
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And, like, we're just sort of, like, in different wavelengths here in our comfortable middle-class American world.
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Is that what's—do you think Islamist terrorists are sort of—
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That is, is the ISIS fighter who blows himself or herself up in the middle of a group of civilians an accolade hero?
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But Achilles fights according to the rules of war in his time.
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He stands up chiefly against other warriors who see him coming and are prepared to fight against him.
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And his heroism consists in matching his prowess against the prowess of other fighters.
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Now, you know, not against women and children and defenseless civilians.
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So somebody who blows themselves up in the middle of women and children and defenseless civilians is not a hero
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There's also a misunderstanding that's quite possible on the subject of ideals.
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And what I would want to suggest here is that just believing in something strongly,
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like, you know, the destiny of the United States or the necessity for the caliphate or whatever it is,
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To me, the ideals are, you know, courage, contemplation, compassion, and maybe creativity.
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And they tend to be, with some qualifications applied to compassion, very personal commitments, right?
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And it's not about believing in America or believing in the caliphate.
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It's about believing in a standard that's been generated for thousands of years
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and a life you want to participate in based on being inspired by that.
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Well, let's, I mean, do you think we've covered courage enough?
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We got the gist of, well, let's move on to this idea of the contemplative life.
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And you use Plato and Socrates as the exemplars of that.
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Now, again, like people would say, well, no, we, us here in the 21st century, we think a lot.
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We have professors who are thinking about lots of deep issues.
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How is what we, you know, kind of consider the ideal of contemplation different from this ancient ideal of contemplation
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Socrates comes along and fundamentally his effort is to clean house.
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He goes through Athens and he questions people about their beliefs.
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And he finds that their beliefs are based on confusion, contradiction, and self-promotion.
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And he is continually able to show that, you know, what these people are involved in as truth is nothing more than shadows on the wall.
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And so that's a demystifying and debunking kind of tendency.
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Philosophy aspires to be completed at the point where Plato comes along and he offers what he takes to be truths that are eternal truths.
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That is, Plato isn't just talking about Athens and he's not just talking about Greeks and he's not just talking about the world in his particular time frame.
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He believes that he has gotten out what the good life is, what good government is, what education is, what the relationship between men and women is, what a philosopher is, all of those things for all time.
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And other philosophers have come along to give that a try, too.
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You know, Schopenhauer surely has and Kant surely has and Hegel surely has.
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So, you know, that ideal, I think, is pronounced and it made its way all the way through Western culture with the kind of toss-off observation that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato.
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Philosophy is no longer a footnote to Plato in that all the people in the think tanks and all the people who are doing exercising punditry on TV and all the people who are writing books about, you know, social justice or whatever it is, are not trying to find eternal truth.
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Now, they may have good reason for giving up eternal truth, but I don't want that aspiration to die.
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I don't want it to be a laughingstock as it currently is in most philosophy departments.
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So there is an interest, I should add a footnote there, there's an interest in philosophy departments in finding what is essentially a good argument, a true argument, a just mode of representation.
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And there's something of the eternal in that particular pursuit.
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But virtually nobody who is, you know, sitting at a think tank does much thinking about eternal truth.
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Mostly they think tactically and pragmatically.
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What do we need to say and know and think in order to get what it is we want and need at present?
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So there are much more children of John Dewey and William James and my good friend and former colleague who might greatly mourn, Richard Rorty, than they are of Plato and Socrates.
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Okay, so the idea of contemplation is for an eternal truth, not just for short-term pragmatic results.
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And it seems, too, that, I mean, you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself, right, for this ideal, right?
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You sort of, okay, I don't care if I'm dirty, if I'm, like, people think I'm a laughingstock.
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I don't care if even if they want to kill me, like in the case of Socrates, like, I'm still going to stick to that ideal.
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I mean, Schopenhauer, who might take to be the most profound philosopher after Plato, gave his lectures in proximity to Hegel.
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And, you know, Schopenhauer got about seven students and Hegel got about 7,000.
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And Schopenhauer was ignored virtually his whole life.
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And he was not in disgrace or disdain in particular, but he had no disciples and he had no readers.
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He had a little bit of money, but he lived in complete neglect, and he was humiliated by it.
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He said, they will find my work after I'm gone.
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But then late in his life, he was reviewed a couple of times in England, of all places.
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And he said in Latin, I don't know the quotation, I am red and I shall be red, and came close to breaking into tears.
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Which, for Schopenhauer, he's very tough and a rather nasty person in a lot of ways.
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So, you know, every authentic philosopher doesn't end up in poverty, neglect, and on trial for his life.
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But I think that what Nietzsche, the word that Nietzsche uses about true thinking, his own included, is that it has to be untimely.
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It's going to be out of joint with the times, because the times are always going to gravitate.
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In the direction of a certain kind of intellectual conformity, and apologists, apology for that kind of intellectual conformity.
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So, you know, I think that it's never going to make its way easily, if it's true.
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I thought it was interesting that you noted how, or I think one of the philosophers noted that you quoted in the book,
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how most major philosophers or great philosophers were bachelors.
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Because they didn't have to worry about kids and a wife, like they just wanted to think.
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There's a kind of, there's an undercurrent of suspicion about family life in the book that I don't think most people will find agreeable.
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You can justify anything by way of recourse to your family.
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You know, I've, you know, I sold off the company, I fired 20 people, I, you know, thinned it down,
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and now it's, you know, much more profitable, but a couple of people can't pay their mortgage.
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You know, family is kind of the universal excuse and the universal value.
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But, you know, there's that moment in the Gospels where, and I have a family, and I love my family, and I do what I can,
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but my relationship to familiar life is maybe a little more skeptical than most people.
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There's that moment in the Gospel where they say to Jesus, your family's outside waiting for you.
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It's odd to imagine that Jesus has brothers and sisters, right?
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And most of the heroes of this book are non-familial people.
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I, you know, we can talk in the end about, you know, kind of combinations of self and soul.
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I take myself to be aspiring to a combination of those things.
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They're somewhat difficult and maybe somewhat compromised.
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But pure soul is skeptical about family and all involvement with self.
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Yeah, well, let's talk about Jesus for a second.
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Because I thought, you know, as a guy who considers himself a Christian, this was just a really fascinating chapter for me.
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And also the insights we get from, excuse me, the Buddha was interesting as well.
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You argue that, you know, Jesus has, even though like, you know, compassion and courage, we often sort of think as diametrically opposed.
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So how can these two virtues, like compassion and courage, have something in common when they seem on the surface opposed?
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Well, I think that what they have in common is that they reject the life of money and home and tranquility and satisfaction and the professions and respectability.
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But I do think that also they are ideals and idealists who are going to chafe each other, you know?
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You know, I mean, Jesus really does want the cessation of war and would like to imagine a world in which peace reigned.
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Achilles would not be at home in that world, and that would be the end of that.
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And in the book, I attempt to justify this tension among the ideals by saying that, you know, to everything there's a season.
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And, you know, when a nation is at war, the way, and at, you know, just war, the way America was, I believe, in World War II, then you need Achilles and you need, you need Hector.
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You need him more than you need Jesus, probably, because the people who are fighting you are absolutely remorseless and absolutely relentless.
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But, you know, when any time that it's possible, you know, recourse to Jesus and the thinkers is by far preferable.
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So, they have things in common, their relative insubordination, insouciance, and, you know, their laws unto themselves, it appears.
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But they respond to a higher law, the law of kindness on the part of Jesus, and the law of courage on the part of Achilles and Hector.
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So, they have things in common, but the values they endorse are in conflict with each other. There's no way around that.
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Right. So, what do you mean by compassion? Like, what do you think the Buddha and Jesus are, we're trying to get at, trying to get us to think about and live in our own lives in terms of being compassionate?
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I mean, this is the toughest of all, really, I think, to put into practice all the time.
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And, you know, and Schopenhauer, actually, who, harsh as he is, loves the Buddha and loves the Jesus that he imagines, says that, you know, most of us walk down the street and we see another person and we say, that's another person.
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The compassionate person, just as the Hindu sages said, says, that's me. That's, that's me. We all share one life. And anything that hurts me, hurts them. Anything that hurts them, hurts me.
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And so, I must do everything that I can for my brothers and my sisters. It's a really, it's an absolutely daunting kind of ideal. But you do see, I think, I mean, you know, there are people who give their lives over to the poor.
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And I still think those must be the most miserable people in the world. But they're laughing all the time. Yeah. They know what they're supposed to do and they do it. Right. I think, uh, yeah. I mean, how many of us know what we're supposed to do and do it? Right. I know what they're supposed to do. Yeah. I know what they're supposed to do, but I, I don't do it. Um, we are, though. The little sisters of the poor, right? They don't get any food that's any good. They don't go on dates. You know, they don't have any fun. They don't get to ride Cadillacs or anything.
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Right. But when I saw them, when I was a boy, they'd be laughing all the time. Right. Right. They were supposed to do.
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So, I mean, like maybe this can be into this tough question I've been thinking about. Maybe you maybe don't have the answer to it, but all right. So Jesus, right. He said, uh, his yoke is easy. Right. We're just to take upon his yoke and our burdens will be light.
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But, but I'm like, when I think about it, like, man, no, Jesus, like your yoke is kind of hard. Uh, like loving your neighbor and forgetting about, you know, what I'm supposed to eat and wear the next day. Like he told his disciples to do. That's hard. Um, so we've got Jesus, you know, ideals are hard to live by. We've got Jesus saying, no, it's really not. So what's going on there? Is it the ideal is hard or is it, I'm trying to hold on to the self, the sort of my, my, uh, my desires, personal desires. Is that what's going on?
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I think it's like, I think it's more like once you've made the breakthrough, you'll be, you'll, you'll, you'll be surprised at how easy it is. You know, once you've decided to live for the poor, once you've decided that you're not going to amass wealth, once you've decided that everybody's your brother or sister, it's just not as hard as you think. Uh, it looks impossible, but it's not as hard as you think. Um, I mean, I say this, this is, I'm, um, as Schopenhauer said, well, this is an extreme example. Schopenhauer said, you know,
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you talk about compassion and this and that, but you're really a difficult person. I'm not a difficult person, but I'm far from the compassionate ideal. Um, and it strikes me as the very hardest one, but the most available in another regard, you know?
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Yeah, it is. It is the most available. I think you, you, you are, you make that case, that point in the book that anyone can be compassionate. Not everyone can be an Achilles, right?
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Cause you don't have, you have to be born probably with some sort of inherent ability to, you know, have that drive to conquer and be excellent in the martial field.
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Yeah. Um, and you want to be fast and strong too.
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Right, right. You got to be fat, have to be physically adept to it as well. And not everyone's going to be, you know, have, be able to do the contemplative life.
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Cause you know, maybe they have something wrong, you know, their brain that just doesn't allow them to do that, but everyone can be, everyone can be kind.
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Yeah. Everyone can be kind. And you know, if you take the gist of my last chapter about, um, Whitman, uh, and about Walt Stevens, um, there's the mixture of self and soul,
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the protection of soul by virtue of some kind of a development of self or defensiveness or position of continuity.
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And I think that can work for self. Self is devil and wants to take over all the time. You know, um, Jesus, there was never any danger that Jesus was going to want a trophy for being the most compassionate person in devil.
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But, you know, some of us could give ourselves to compassion and then start looking for awards two years later because self is still alive and protecting us and keeping us alive and keeping our families going.
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But I think that, that combination is possible to make. I just wanted to be as clear as possible about what these ideals were.
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And so it made sense to have recourse to the purest forms of the manifestations.
00:26:24.120
Yeah. Um, I mean, you could be, if, you know, Christ is your ideal, you could, there are ways in which you could become more Jesus-like,
00:26:31.260
a way in which I can become more Socrates-like, you know, for instance, not, you know, when I see something that I think really needs to be commented on,
00:26:37.840
but it's going to get me a lot of shit for doing it. I, you know, I, I guess I could step up and do that more often than I do.
00:26:44.180
Right. So you use these characters like Achilles, Jesus, Socrates as forms, kind of, right?
00:26:50.300
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I hadn't thought of that. They're absolute forms, right?
00:26:54.800
And, you know, I could have picked up people who were kind of part self, part soul, part this, part that, but the clarity would have been missing.
00:27:00.400
There's, I wouldn't say that it's quite a cultural emergency, but from my point of view, these ideas are sort of gently passing out of our can.
00:27:11.280
And so a dramatic reintroduction of them is a, uh, is the best way to go.
00:27:16.820
Okay. Well, so, I mean, we've been kind of, we've been talking about this throughout the podcast about the idea of the self.
00:27:22.220
Uh, and I think people, when they hear it, they understand and inherently, like, you know, they understand what it means on the surface, but what is it, do you mean, what is a, a person who has been taken over or captivated by the, a culture of selfhood?
00:27:37.740
Well, first of all, I think that there, there are more and less admirable forms of selfhood, right?
00:27:42.560
But basically the self is what it says. It are, it, it, it radiates around the individual as himself or as her, uh, self. Um, and, uh, the ideals on the other hand are aimed at the betterment of all, or that's, that's the, that's the aspiration, right?
00:28:03.200
Um, self is involved with the betterment of self, right? It, it, it's involved in, um, uh, getting a wife or a husband, taking care of one's children, taking care of one's family, during one's job, uh, paying one's bills, being a citizen, um, getting prestige, getting promoted.
00:28:22.860
Um, and, uh, there are more and less decent ways to do that and more and less admirable ways, um, to relate to the rest of the world while one is in the process of, uh, of doing that.
00:28:33.680
But the ultimate horizon of the self is the benefit of the, uh, self.
00:28:41.660
And the ultimate, uh, horizon of the idealist is the fulfillment of something outside the self, the ideal, that has, um, positive results, or it should, uh, for other people.
00:28:52.860
So that the, the, the, the, the person in the world of self is not sitting there saying, I'm doing this for other people.
00:28:59.340
And by other people, I mean people outside his family, her family, uh, he's basically thinking, these are my desires and I'm trying to fulfill it.
00:29:07.640
Another way to answer the question is to say that the self is, um, lives in a world of desire, right?
00:29:13.240
Um, desire for the good things, desire for success, prosperity, or even just protection and calm and tranquility.
00:29:18.480
Um, whereas the, um, the idealist, um, lives with, um, hope, uh, hope to make a contribution to the, the larger world.
00:29:27.960
Um, and, uh, the idealist is also, uh, uh, wanting to live at whatever cost with, um, meaning, right?
00:29:36.180
Um, the, um, uh, person in the world of self is looking for, I don't know, significance.
00:29:41.860
It's, uh, I don't know, I'm not getting the pairing exactly right, but I think that, uh, pairing and, and some kind of orientation to the other is part of what, uh, uh, soul is, uh, soul is all about.
00:29:51.560
So it's like the, the, the, the self person, the self sort of like Nietzsche's last man.
00:29:56.400
You know, that's, that's Nietzsche being nasty.
00:30:03.620
If Nietzsche had ever seen TV or Buster and God, I think.
00:30:06.020
Um, uh, but that's the worst manifestation of self.
00:30:10.880
I think there are higher manifestations of self, right?
00:30:13.340
Where people are interested in, um, uh, some of the things that you were describing, right?
00:30:18.580
Um, environmental issues, uh, justice, good neighborliness, supporting a church.
00:30:26.920
All those things seem to me in the higher reaches of, uh, of self.
00:30:30.700
Um, and, uh, they do leave the region of pure selfishness, uh, but they never arrive at the
00:30:39.480
level of the sacrifice of the self for something that is higher or more, uh, more demanding and
00:30:48.260
Because sometimes, you know, even those good things that are part of the self, uh, they can
00:30:52.860
clash with the ideal that it's, I guess, trying to emulate or trying to achieve.
00:31:00.560
One of the central points of contention there, and I think I could really be richly argued
00:31:05.160
against here, something I've turned over in my mind a whole lot, is the contention between
00:31:10.940
I mean, I think of justice as a virtue of the, uh, of the self, and it's an admirable virtue,
00:31:16.240
uh, but ultimately it, um, it's based upon dividing up the pie in a way that you find, uh,
00:31:24.820
fair, but also congenial, and it satisfies often a sense of guilt.
00:31:29.080
But, um, the, um, uh, the compassionate person just, you know, take any pie, take, take the pie.
00:31:38.300
So it's sort of a, uh, sort of a different, uh, sort of different thing.
00:31:42.520
And then there, there are levels of complexity here that involve motivation.
00:31:46.360
I used to think that as an American pragmatist, I used to think what matters most was, uh, results.
00:31:52.760
So, but by reading the Eastern thinkers, I began to get more interested in, um, motivation.
00:32:01.360
Um, and, uh, I think, um, you ask a compassionate person, a truly compassionate person is compassionate
00:32:07.420
because of love for others, love for the world and love for others.
00:32:09.840
A, um, uh, a just person, uh, who lives in the provinces of self may well be being just
00:32:17.340
to satisfy what Freud called his superego, his sense of guilt because he has more than
00:32:24.280
So it's a matter of satisfying a portion of the psyche so as to live more peacefully with
00:32:32.700
Uh, so motivation comes into it in a, uh, in a big way and you can never tell really what
00:32:38.560
And most of us can't tell what the hell is motivating us at any given time.
00:32:43.940
Um, let's talk, transition to your argument you make about why the, the, the world of ideals
00:32:51.440
And I'm sure that there's any English teachers listening to this right now.
00:32:55.240
You're not, they're going to be like, wait a minute with this part, but you argue that,
00:32:58.740
uh, Shakespeare, uh, sort of kicked things off in a big way in the modern world, but,
00:33:08.940
So what, what, what does Shakespeare do to be like, yeah, ideals aren't that great?
00:33:14.080
Um, first of all, um, I mean, the, um, general demystification, if that's what it is, or the
00:33:21.120
general denigration of ideals would have happened with a Shakespeare lived or did not, the general
00:33:25.820
demystification of denigration of ideals would have lived, whether his contemporary, also
00:33:29.600
a demystifier, uh, Cervantes ever lived or not.
00:33:33.440
Um, they simply are manifestations of a strong urge, uh, that has to do with lots and lots
00:33:40.280
of factors, historical and cultural factors, um, among them, the rise of capitalism, um, a
00:33:47.040
certain amount of turbulence in the area of, uh, religion, the movement to a Protestant or
00:33:52.640
a decentric kind of, uh, uh, uh, kind of faith, which gives the individual, uh, more possibilities
00:33:58.800
for determination and moves them away from a transcendental ideals and, uh, and, uh, uh,
00:34:06.120
Um, but, um, uh, fundamentally, uh, when one reads Shakespeare, and there have to be a couple
00:34:11.820
of caveats here, but when one reads, uh, Shakespeare, one sees that there's an overall, overriding
00:34:18.520
tendency, um, that he's not somebody who is, um, a figure of negative capability, uh, with
00:34:26.360
the power of being uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts after, uh, without irritable fact
00:34:30.100
or, uh, reaching after irritable fact or reason, as Keith says, it's a pretty strong
00:34:35.160
It's just that most of us agree with that strong polemical purpose so that it becomes transparent.
00:34:40.480
Um, Shakespeare's chief skepticism, from my point of view, is about, um, uh, martial ideals or
00:34:49.820
So when a heroic figure, uh, gets onto the stage in, uh, Shakespeare, he's going to be
00:34:56.040
Now, that, that could just be a tragedy, but in the process of being destroyed, he's going
00:34:59.740
to be anatomized, and he's going to be humiliated.
00:35:03.780
And in that process, um, uh, not only destroyed, that's tragedy, uh, but discredited.
00:35:18.280
In the beginning of the, of the play, we see how brave he is.
00:35:22.460
Um, but then as the play unfolds, we see that Macbeth has an amazing kind of anxiety
00:35:31.280
And when Lady Macbeth wants him to do anything, all she has to do is tell him that, uh, he
00:35:39.620
And then he goes on to do these absolutely horrendous kinds of, uh, kinds of deeds.
00:35:43.320
Now, Shakespeare's play isn't suggesting that everybody is a, who is a hero, is anxious
00:35:50.440
Um, Macbeth fully cannot, uh, produce children the way a previous husband, a paramour of Lady
00:35:56.460
Um, but this is a relentless blood, blood-making hero who, uh, who does have enormous insecurities
00:36:08.620
So, um, compensatory activity becomes a way to explain Macbeth.
00:36:14.600
And so, after watching Macbeth, we go off and we, uh, start looking at heroic warriors
00:36:23.400
Uh, and that lens is, what, what's being compensated for here?
00:36:26.280
You know, what, uh, what kind of inadequacy does this individual possess?
00:36:30.660
And as Shakespeare brings one after another of the heroic individuals onto the stage,
00:36:35.540
he gives us another lens by which we can demystify, as it were, if you believe in it, um, their
00:36:44.240
Um, and I think that's one of his larger polemical, uh, purposes.
00:36:47.980
And, you know, does it not make sense that it's time culturally and historically and especially
00:36:53.140
economically to clear the ground of these useless aristocrats and to replace them by a
00:36:58.940
new generation of men and women with new values?
00:37:01.200
That is, the values of the, um, uh, up-and-coming bourgeoisie.
00:37:04.700
Now, Shakespeare doesn't seem to be thrilled with those people, either.
00:37:11.480
I mean, if, you know, how does the Merchant of Venice end?
00:37:14.800
It ends with, um, the slightly admirable, but rather Doc Shylock, you know, absolutely
00:37:21.640
scapegoated, destroyed, and in the most sadistic way possible.
00:37:25.840
And it also ends with Antonio, um, who has a love for Bassanio that is probably homosexual,
00:37:31.460
um, being mildly scapegoated and marginalized and sent even more deeply into his melancholy,
00:37:37.980
and then the rest of the rich, happy people can party on.
00:37:41.780
Um, you know, is this, is this paradise after we've gotten rid of people like Othello and
00:37:47.800
I don't think it's quite paradise, even from Shakespeare's point of view.
00:37:50.700
Um, so, it's not a rosy picture overall, uh, but I think there's strong skepticism bordering
00:38:00.860
And in terms of our other great ideals, um, religion just doesn't play much of a role
00:38:07.180
Like Santana says, you could read the whole thing from end to end and not realize that
00:38:10.780
humanity has a religious life of any import at all.
00:38:12.880
Um, and in terms of high thought, Shakespeare is truly not a verse to it, and there are
00:38:19.440
moments, particularly in Hamlet, where people say things, characters say things, that may
00:38:24.980
have a transcendent, transcendent truth to them.
00:38:27.640
But mostly in Shakespeare, people do what Dr. Johnson says they do.
00:38:32.560
They talk in order to get what it is they, uh, they want.
00:38:35.840
And when they seem to be philosophizing, they're really trying to get an angle on the person
00:38:39.880
Um, so I think Shakespeare hasn't got much use for religion, um, has a little bit of
00:38:47.520
Um, and particularly has no use for the heroic ideal.
00:38:51.400
So what, what does Shakespeare, Shakespeare believe in?
00:38:53.520
Like nothing sort of like a, is he a nihilist or I mean, is he a worldliness?
00:39:00.640
Um, realizing that most people in the world are not disinterested, but are function out of
00:39:09.780
desire, uh, are out to get what they want and often are able to disguise what it is their
00:39:16.980
program is, unless you have read Shakespeare, in which case you will be able to see right
00:39:22.840
Um, so if you were sending your son or daughter out into the world to be a lawyer or a business
00:39:27.480
person, no one better to read than, uh, than Shakespeare.
00:39:30.820
Um, the other thing that you can associate with Shakespeare with as an ideal, and this
00:39:36.640
is a little bit precarious, um, is that of the writer or the creative force, the creative
00:39:44.800
His productivity is amazing that he goes on to inspire, um, lots and lots of writers
00:39:50.540
and some thinkers too, whose objective in some measure is to change the world, right?
00:39:55.080
He inspires the English and American romantics in a major way, right?
00:39:59.440
But I don't really think Shakespeare's objective is to change the world, you know?
00:40:04.160
It is to render it in its authentic guise, which is that of contending desires.
00:40:17.360
I don't know if there's any recommendation there.
00:40:20.240
I think Shakespeare just says, this is how it is.
00:40:28.800
You know, after, if, if my, and Cervantes's, and Montan, whom he clearly adored, uh, once
00:40:34.740
our demystifying work is done, what you're left with is the Merchant of Venice and, you
00:40:39.740
know, Bassanio and Portia, a couple of hustlers, though alluring and beautiful, no doubt.
00:40:44.560
Um, that's not so great, but it's probably better than being lorded over by people like Othello
00:40:56.080
Well, let's talk about the other big figure who you argue helped the decline of ideals,
00:41:02.760
Uh, what did Freud do to help diminish ideals in the West?
00:41:08.100
Well, um, Freud believes that every single action we perform and every thought that we
00:41:19.400
have is based upon desire and that it is based upon a desire to do something for the self,
00:41:25.900
to gain something, to achieve something, to have something.
00:41:28.360
Uh, and this is manifest in something like Freud's theory of dreams, right?
00:41:31.860
In the theory of dreams, uh, Freud says a dream is a disguised fulfillment of a repressed
00:41:36.600
wish, but that repressed wish is always a wish for satisfaction of your own, okay?
00:41:41.380
No one has ever dreamed, according to Freud, at night, of world peace, okay?
00:41:47.200
And if he did dream of world peace, it was an illusion for dreaming about, you know, uniting
00:41:51.900
with his mother or sister in some unsavory way.
00:41:54.860
So, um, there is nothing but the self in, uh, in Freud.
00:42:04.960
Um, and he hates, uh, he's just overt about it, you know?
00:42:12.140
Oh, Freud says that heroism is becoming intoxicated with the approval of the father, right?
00:42:17.780
So that the state becomes the father or the general becomes the father.
00:42:20.980
And seeking the approval of the father, we were going to run out and get ourselves killed.
00:42:25.160
If you want to call that heroism, I wish you the best, right?
00:42:29.640
Which is the next ideal, really, in line of the next possible ideal, therefore it's particularly
00:42:35.480
Um, romantic love is a lot of nasty things in Freud.
00:42:39.720
It's putting the beloved in the place of the ego ideal or, or super ego.
00:42:44.900
It's, it's just, it's one mystification after another.
00:42:48.040
Um, the great mystification of religion is the mystification that all people are brothers
00:42:53.220
And as soon as you try that out, Freud tells us those people that you thought of as brothers
00:42:57.100
and sisters will disappoint you in some profound way.
00:43:02.000
Um, so anytime there is a, uh, an aspiration to transcendence, uh, Freud is against it.
00:43:09.940
Now, why, um, do we aspire to transcendence then from Freud's point of view?
00:43:15.220
Not because transcendence legitimately exists, but because transcendence or the ideals deliver
00:43:24.520
And the psyche, which is usually in Freud at war with itself is united into one piece,
00:43:34.100
In fact, it's very much like getting drunk, right?
00:43:36.420
You drink, you have two, three drinks and suddenly you're not this kind of mass of contending
00:43:43.240
So you commit yourself to the heroic ideal or you fall in love, which is for the paradigm
00:43:47.600
for all these things, or you become, you aspire to Jesus-like, um, uh, uh, compassion
00:43:54.400
or you seek, um, uh, true wisdom, which psychoanalysts call epistemophilia.
00:43:59.980
Um, you unite the psyche temporarily, but then, uh, after a certain amount of time passes,
00:44:06.300
You find that the beloved isn't truly worth loving or as much as you thought.
00:44:10.120
You find that heroism is a suck in a cell, so on down the line, and you become disillusioned.
00:44:14.300
And as Freud says, he, she could have quoted Wordsworth, feed me Wordsworth, um, as high
00:44:19.820
as we have mounted in delight in our dejection, do we think as low, except it's really about
00:44:26.960
Once you're disillusioned, you really crash very hard.
00:44:29.680
Um, so the best life is the one that doesn't go in for illusions, but realizes that we're
00:44:33.600
fragmented and contending, self-contending beings and tries to live with it.
00:44:39.940
So, I mean, is that like, I mean, is Freud the reason why whenever someone who does aspire
00:44:45.140
to live an ideal, we're like, that person's crazy, right?
00:44:48.380
Like, you know, I mean, like he's like, he's, he's, he sold all his stuff and he's giving
00:44:55.140
I, um, I gave a talk once, uh, to a group of psychoanalysts, uh, and they were very bright
00:44:59.080
and very responsive and, uh, it was just, it was a pleasure to talk to them because they're
00:45:04.300
And one of them said to me, if somebody came into my office and said, I want to be a compassionate
00:45:08.640
individual, I want to be a hero, I want to be a great thinker, I would say, um, you're,
00:45:14.500
you know, probably suffering from some kind of neurosis and we should begin treatment fairly
00:45:23.880
Cause I mean, I, I even, I mean, you probably even see this in parents.
00:45:27.040
Uh, you've, you've seen this before, like sort of, it's the, uh, stereotypical tale of
00:45:31.240
a young person who has this ideal, they're going to go for it.
00:45:34.780
Whether it's going to, they're going to join the army and be a Navy SEAL, or they're going
00:45:38.920
to devote their life as a missionary in some foreign field, but their parents are like,
00:45:44.000
no, wait, you know, you should go to college and like, you need to get a job and like make
00:45:52.620
Well, you know, also just, you know, bourgeois safety and security.
00:46:04.380
And he said that people now live for happiness, by which he means middle class happiness, because
00:46:09.980
happiness is now so much more available than it was in the past.
00:46:15.720
You can expect to be secure and have a good job and have a good family.
00:46:17.980
But, um, he wasn't quite at the point where he wanted to contend with the idea that what
00:46:22.120
is called bourgeois happiness doesn't really make people happy.
00:46:26.760
It surely doesn't make everybody happy, you know?
00:46:29.360
And this sort of leads to like my next question.
00:46:31.760
So you, you argue in the book that, you know, there are glimmers of these ideals, but
00:46:44.920
And it's one of the reasons that I talk about Freud's, uh, sense of the psyche as
00:46:49.700
noble, um, because Freud lives in a world where you repudiate the ideals and what you're
00:46:58.180
pretty much left with is a rather pained and rather anxious and sometimes depressive psyche.
00:47:03.860
And you have to live with that, but it's worse than the exhilaration of commitment to
00:47:08.780
an ideal and then the dejection that follows upon disillusionment.
00:47:13.420
Um, and in Freud's time, there were ways to compensate the self for its, um, its limitations.
00:47:22.440
You could read a novel in which, which Freud loved to read novels that were kind of wish
00:47:28.820
Um, and you could read an escapist novel and you could become the hero.
00:47:32.420
And so suddenly you kind of make your way out through a fantasia, uh, into, um, uh, into
00:47:42.160
It was definitely tough to live without God, to live without romantic love, um, to live without
00:47:51.200
Uh, and so there was something admirable and noble about it, but what we've created since,
00:47:56.480
you know, Freud died in 1939 or so, what we've created is a, is a technology of, um, mock
00:48:06.640
I just, my nephew taught me to play a heroic, uh, role playing, uh, game this, uh, this weekend
00:48:12.640
because I thought that I was going to kind of gas on about these things.
00:48:15.140
I should know a little more about them than I do.
00:48:17.500
Um, and it was sort of great, you know, you, you became this creature with all these powers
00:48:21.840
and you went off banging and shooting and racking up scores.
00:48:26.240
Um, but, you know, multiply this times about a million and the most really dangerous of
00:48:32.460
all of the, um, ideas from the parents, but if it is shown to have, uh, these compensatory
00:48:38.700
or, uh, simulacrum or manifestations in the culture.
00:48:43.940
Uh, and you could find almost anything, any one of the ideals in simulation form in our
00:48:50.760
And, uh, so there's a technology of mock or false transcendence that far exceeds anything
00:48:59.420
Now, somebody could easily come along and say, look, we've got this figured out.
00:49:02.160
You live a safe, safe, reasonable, middle-class life and you do miss certain things, but you
00:49:07.660
compensate for that missing by virtue of playing video games and watching the news a lot to get
00:49:11.860
your wisdom and, uh, watching a lot of football to get your, uh, courage.
00:49:18.640
It's the least dangerous and you'd less likely do harm to other people.
00:49:21.420
I could understand that argument, it seems to me.
00:49:23.900
Um, but I do want the possibility of something else to be out there for people who are spirited,
00:49:30.120
who don't like it the way it is now in the culture and maybe don't quite know why.
00:49:33.980
So, so that's what you're, the whole thrust of this book is.
00:49:37.840
It leads up to this, you know, the final chapter too about ideals today.
00:49:42.220
Um, and as you're reading this and you read the book, I'll be honest, I, sometimes I got
00:49:46.960
I was like, man, like, is it, is it possible to live these ideals?
00:49:50.200
Because there are instances where I think like, yeah, I am living this ideal, but then
00:49:54.080
I think, well, maybe this is just a simulation of the ideal and it's not really it.
00:49:58.500
And, uh, so it is, is it possible to live the life of the soul in the 21st century?
00:50:06.100
Or as you said, is there, is it, are you looking for maybe a hybrid of self and soul?
00:50:10.680
Yeah, I think it's always possible to take a step in the direction of, um, of soul, right?
00:50:17.000
I mean, if you've thought hard about a subject, if you have done the research and the work and
00:50:23.040
talked to people and you have something to say that's out of keeping with the norm and you
00:50:27.920
bring it forward and do it modestly and intelligently and with humor, uh, and it, um, achieve some
00:50:33.780
interest and some unpopularity, you've taken a step in the direction of Plato and Socrates.
00:50:38.660
If you show up at the hospital a few times and visit and talk to people and, uh, hurry,
00:50:43.540
hurry in pain, uh, maybe, uh, volunteer for a little while and do your best, you've taken
00:50:51.220
I, I think those things, uh, remain, uh, remain available.
00:50:55.760
Um, it's too much to ask somebody who's 35, 30 or 40 years old to drop it all and tell
00:51:01.300
their children goodbye and that I'm going to go become a saint in India.
00:51:05.420
Um, uh, I think it's too much to do that, but I think that it's quite possible to take
00:51:11.840
Um, and you know, you know, you're there when it both hurts and feels good, you know?
00:51:18.320
That's a good, that's a good way to, to know you're there because you always, you often
00:51:26.000
So as my, one of my favorite writers, Camille Polly says, happiness is for slugs.
00:51:39.640
Well, Mark, this has been a, just a fascinating discussion and I hope the people who are out
00:51:44.200
listening to this will go out and get your book because it really has a lot of, uh, a
00:51:50.640
Um, I'm still chewing on stuff that I read a month ago.
00:51:55.920
The book's only gotten one really real review so far, so maybe we stimulate a couple more.
00:52:08.020
You really thought about it hard and I'm most, uh, uh, it really was helpful to me.
00:52:17.360
And like I said, it's one of the best books I read in 2015.
00:52:28.840
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:52:32.120
For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at
00:52:36.040
And if you enjoy this podcast, I'd really appreciate it.
00:52:38.500
If you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, help us, uh, get some feedback on how we can
00:52:42.100
improve the show as well as get the word out about the podcast.
00:52:44.800
Until next time, this is Brent McKay telling you to stay manly.