integrating the non-rational soul, jonathan lear

8/13/2019 Integrating the Non-rational Soul, Jonathan Lear

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p r o c e e d i n g s o f t h e a r i s t o t e l i a n s o c i e t y1 3 5 t h s e s s i o n

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b i o g r a p h y

Jonathan Lear is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago and a member ofthe Committee on Social Thought. He is author most recently of Radical Hope: Ethicsin the Face of Cultural Devastation, A Case for Ironyand Freud.

e d i t o r i a l n o t e

The following paper is a draft version that can only be cited or quoted with the authorspermission. The final paper will be published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,Issue No. 1, Volume CXIV (2014). Please visit the Societys website for subscriptioninformation: www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk.


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Aristotelian theory of virtue and of happiness assumes a moral

psychology in which the parts of the soul, rational and non-

rational, can communicate well with each other. But if Aristotle

cannot give arobust account of what communicating well consists

in, he faces Bernard Williams' charge that his moral psychology

collapses into a moralizing psychology, assuming the very

categories it seeks to vindicate. This paper examines the problem

and proposes a way forward:namely, that Freudian psychoanalysis

provides the resources for the development of a satisfying

Aristotelian moral psychology.

i n t e g r a t i n g t h e n o n - r a t i o n a l s o u l

j o n a t h a n l e a r

i. ARISTOTLE says that there seems to be some other nature of the

soul (!""#$%&'()%&$*&+,-*&) that is non-rational, but which in a way

participates in reason. (Nicomachean Ethics I.13, 1102b13-14;Aristotle, 1920) The Oxford (1984, p.1741) and Loeb (1990, p.65)

translations give us a non-rational element of the soul, the Rowe (2002,p. 110) translation gives us another kind of soul, but Aristotle isexplicit that he is talking about a different nature.1 Since nature, for

Aristotle, is an inner principle of change and rest, this would suggest thatthe non-rational soul on which Aristotle is focusing has its own principleof functioning. For Aristotle, we are in the best position to understandwhat a principle is when we grasp the excellent functioning of that of

which it is a principle. For the virtuous person in this case, Aristotlementions the temperate and courageous person Aristotle gives us twocriteria: first, the non-rational soul is better able and more willing tolisten (!"#$%&!'()) to reason; second, with respect to all things, itspeaks with the same voice ($*$+,)!-) as reason. (I.13, 1102b27-28)2

1The same problem arises with the Ostwald translation (1999, pp. 30-31). The Irwintranslation gets it right that a nature is involved. (1985, p.31). I follow standardpractice in translating './01' as either 'soul' or 'psyche'; and I follow Aristotle inconsidering soul to be the principle of life in a living organism.2. Liddell-Scott-Jones (1968, p. 1228) also gives speak the same language forhomophne, which is fine for my interpretation as well though, as I shall argue, thereare reasons for thinking that Aristotle is here drawing upon the literal idea of speakingwith the same voice. LSJ cites this particular line and gives chimes in with which,again I shall argue, is not a good translation. And, like Wittgensteins account ofbuying a second copy of the newspaper, the fact that it is so cited here lends no moreauthority to this translation than the original decision of the translator.


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jonathan lear integrating the non-rational soul draft paper

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That is, the excellence of this non-rational part of the soul consists incommunicating listening to and speaking with reason. So, the non-

rational soul has a distinctive form of activity, but that activity isnevertheless communicative: it listens and it speaks. And performingthat communicative activity well is nothing other than ethical virtue,according to Aristotle. For ethical virtue is the excellence of the non-rational soul. (NEI.13, 1103a3-10).

This communicating function the nature of this non-rational soul tends to get flattened out in translation. So, instead of drawing attentionto listening, the Oxford translation says that the non-rational soul of thevirtuous person is still more obedient' to reason than the soul of the

merely continent person. Of course, in a sense that is true; but it givesthe misleading impression that the breakthrough from continence tovirtue consists in the degree of obedience. But for the virtuous person,the issue is not the degree of obedience think of fanatical compliance --

it is the mannerin which the obedience takes shape. It is obedience thatflows from listening well and willingly to what reason says. As anotherexample, the Rowe translation says that this non-rational soul of the

virtuous person always chimes with reason. Again, true in a sense; butone bell can chime with another, without being in communication.Etymologically, the verb !"#$"paradigmatically means, not the sounds

of chimes or bells, but the sound made by voice, by speaking or cryingout. This voice need not be endowed with logos. Aristotle uses the termto cover the cries and calls of other animals. For Aristotle, !"#%is the

voice of the non-rational soul. 3 So, when the non-rational soul&'&!"#()with reason, it isnt just chiming in; it is speaking with the

same voice. This shows up in the wholeheartedness of the virtuous

person acting virtuously, but Aristotle suggests that this is both outcomeand manifestation of excellent intrapsychic communication.

There are, I suspect, two reasons for this flattening. First, in thispassage, Aristotle is not concerned exclusively with the excellent use of

this non-rational soul, but also with a range of less-than-excellent

3So, for example, in History of Animalsuses the term to compare the grunts of wildboar and sows during periods of copulation, birth and taking care of their young.(578a32; 1984, p.906) Aristotle also describes in this passage how wild boar castratethemselves; but that topic is beyond the scope of this paper. He also uses it to describethe voice of birds. (593a3-14; p.928). And he distinguishes the voice (!"#%) ofanimals from other types of sounds that animals make. (535b13-32; p. 848) So, forexample, certain fish make noises which appear to be voice but are not; and the scallopwhen it moves along the ground makes a whizzing sound; and the wings of flying birdsmake sounds, but none of this voice.


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manifestations. That is because he is concerned to make a large-scaledistinction between the nutritive soul -- a non-rational part of the soul

that, he thinks, in no way participates in reason -- and the non-rationalpart that participates in reason to some degree or other. Of course, thisincludes non-virtuous people, notably, the merely continent person. Thenon-rational soul of the continent person never rises above obedience,

though he is susceptible to admonishment, reprimand andencouragement. For him, excellent communication between the rationaland non-rational parts of the soul is the very thing he is missing.Second, to a contemporary English speaker, the phrase speak with the

same voice as or listening better and more willingly to may, on asuperficial first hearing, sound as though it leaves out the active living

that is the life of the virtuous person. But, for Aristotle, the courageousperson acting courageously is precisely an instance of the non-rationalsoul listening better and more willingly to, and speaking with the samevoice as, reason. Nothing more is needed; on the other hand, nothingless is involved than this excellence of communication.

More is at stake here than the interpretation of a short passage from

Aristotle. The possibility of an Aristotelian approach to ethics is at stake.Aristotle delineates an intermediate part of the soul that, depending onthe way one looks at it, can be considered either rational or non-rational. (NE I.13, 1102b13-14; 1103a1-3). It is non-rational in that it

lacks the proper capacities of reason; but it is rational in that it canparticipate in reasons activities, and at its best can listen well to andspeak with the same voice as reason. It is on this distinction thatAristotle grounds his further distinction between intellectual and ethical

virtues. (NEI.13, 1103a3-10). Ethical virtue is of the non-rational soul.And, as we have seen, the non-rational soul has a nature its own innerprinciple of change which consists in excellent communication (of the

appropriate sort) with reason. This communication is what theintegration of the non-rational soul consists in. We may not yet knowmuch about it, but are in a position to see that anything less must besomething less than Aristotelian ethical virtue.

ii. It is this possibility of the rational and non-rational parts of the soul

speaking-with-the-same-voice that lends insight into why, for both Plato


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and Aristotle, psychic harmony should have ethical value.4 If we werecreatures such that psychic harmony was a real option only when our

capacity for reason was enfeebled, it would lose its appeal. What makesharmony appealing for these thinkers is that they see the possibility ofreason being instantiated in an individual human being, and the non-rational soul trained in such a way that reason can successfully

communicate with the non-rational soul thus manifesting itself in a lifelived according to reason, untroubled by countervailing factors.

It is another question what this possible harmony consists in. Platoand Aristotle are explicit at least, at the level of public policy, generaleducation and politics about how this condition might be achieved. But

they are skimpy about what it consists in beyond saying it is a speaking-with-the-same-voice. In particular, as we have seen, Aristotle says thenon-rational soul has its own nature, and that means it has its owninternal principle of change, even though he also says that in a way it

participates in reason. If it participates in reason, it must be a form ofmindedness; but if it has a different nature a different principle ofchange -- this implies that it is a different form of mindedness from that

of the rational soul. But how can two distinct forms of mindedness

4

Aristotle follows Plato in thinking that we are psychologically complex creatures, andin this paper, I want simply to assume this tradition and work within it, though I

recognize there are other psychological approaches. As is well known, Plato in the

Republic valorizes psychic harmony, and he uses the Greek terms harmonia and

euharmostia but he also uses the term symphnia, regularly translated as concord or

harmony, but which has a literal meaning of agreement in saying or agreement in

voices. (E.g. 1974, 2004) It is pretty clear that Plato has this meaning in mind because

he uses this term not just to describe intrapsychic concord, but also as a quality of the

stories we tell each other. So, for example, poets will not be allowed to say that the

gods are the cause of bad things because we already know that they are only the cause

of good; and such stories are not only impious and disadvantageous, neither do they

speak with the same voice / nor are they in agreement with each other (... !"#$

%&'()*++,#-+,#!./ ; II. 380c3-4. Plato 2003) The stories are not in concordwith each other precisely because they are sayingdifferent things. And when Socrates

famously concludes that it is appropriate for reason to rule because of its wisdom and

foresight for the whole soul, he goes on to say that this will be possible in virtue of a

musical and physical education that makes the elements of the soul speak with thesame voice (... %&'()*++0#+!12%$1) (IV. 441e7-8). His point cannot be that such

training produces mere concord as though reason were singing Do X! and the non-rational parts were harmoniously singing Lets do X! if reason is to ruleit has got

to be that this concord is produced by reasons ruling; and this requires some form of

successful communication between reason and the non-rational parts of the soul.


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conflict with them. Williams thought that neither Aristotles psychology,nor Platos, could live up to this task, and he looked elsewhere for

inspiration: Thucydides and (I believe) the tragedians, among theancient writers, had such a psychology, and so in the modern world didFreud. (1995, p. 202, my emphasis. See also, 1985, pp. 30-53; 2008)This is a suggestion I would like to take up, but take it in a differentdirection than Williams envisaged.

iii. Unlike Williams, I do not see Aristotles psychology as inevitablymoralizing; but rather as unfinished. So, instead of using Freud as a wayof leaving Aristotles moral psychology behind, I want to argue that

psychoanalysis can provide valuable insight into the communicativerelations between the rational and non-rational parts of the soul. Itshould thus be taken seriously by anyone who wishes, not simply tostudy Aristotle, but to extend a broadly Aristotelian approach tocontemporary ethical life. It might at first seem strange that I am linking

Aristotles non-rational soul to the Freudian unconscious, since themajor activity of Aristotles non-rational soul are manifest in emotionallife, and our emotions tend to be conscious experiences. However,

Freuds discovery is that the non-rational soul has a significantunconscious dimension, andthat it proceeds according to its own form.

Indeed, I believe Freud's most significant discovery is not of theunconscious per se, but that the unconscious mental activity has adistinctive nature. The unconscious, Freud teaches, proceeds according

to the loose associations and condensations of primary process mentalactivity; it works in a mode that is exempt from contradiction and in atemporality of timelessness; it substitutes psychical reality for externalreality. (1915, p. 187) By coming to understand this alternative form of

mental activity, we can work out in significant detail, the voice of thenon-rational soul. It also emerges from Freuds case studies that the

non-rational soul that part which he called the unconscious -- istypically engaged in a basic project: trying to address a problem of

human existence, albeit in a non-rational and childish way. Thus itmakes sense to think of the Freudian unconscious as another nature ofthe soul in Aristotles sense. It has its own principles of change as well

as a telos namely, negotiating a fundamental problem of humanexistence (albeit in a fantasied, imaginative, non-rational way). In thissense, Freud's discovery is an enrichment of that original Aristotelianintuition. And psychoanalysis, the praxis, is the attempt to facilitatecommunication between the non-rational and the rational soul.


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This has not been appreciated due to a widespread misconception ofwhat psychoanalysis is. The misconception has various manifestations,

but at its core is the idea of the psychoanalyst as an expert on what ishidden in another persons unconscious mind. In contemporaryphilosophy, psychoanalysis is often invoked as a contrast-case to thenon-observational, first-person authority we ordinarily have with respectto our beliefs. So, David Finkelstein invites us to:

Imagine someone call him Harry who says: My therapist tells methat I unconsciously believe no one could ever fall in love with me, andshes generally right about such things, so I suppose I must have thatbelief. Lets imagine Harrys therapist is right about him and thatHarry is justified in believing that shes right about him. Harry is, then,aware of his belief that no one could ever fall in love with him; he

knows about it. But we can imagine that Harry holds no suchconscious belief. (2003, p. 115)

He continues:

we speak with first-person authority not about all our mental states, butonly our conscious ones. I might learn in therapy that I harborunconscious anger toward my sister, and having learned this, I mightsay to a friend, Ive discovered that Im unconsciously angry with mysister. In such a circumstance I would not speak with first-personauthority. If a friend were to ask me why I take myself to harborunconscious anger toward my sister, it wouldnt make sense for me to

reply, What do you mean? Im just really angry with her. . theclaims I make about my unconscious states of mind are only as good asthe evidence that backs them up. (p. 119, my emphasis).

And Richard Moran invokes analysis as an arena in which one canacquire non-transparent beliefs about oneself.

In various familiar therapeutic contexts, for instance, the manner in

which the analysand becomes aware of various of her beliefs and other

attitudes does not necessarily conform to the Transparency Condition.

The person who feels anger at the dead parent for having abandoned

her, or who feels betrayed or deprived of something by another child ,

may only know of this attitude through the eliciting and interpreting of

evidence of various kinds. She might become thoroughly convinced,

both from the constructions of the analyst, as well as from her own

appreciation of the evidence, that the attitude must indeed be attributed

to her. And yet, at the same time, when she reflects on the world-

directed question itself, whether she has indeed been betrayed by this

person, she may find that the answer is no or cant be settled one way

or the other. So transparency fails because she cannot learn of this

attitude of hers by reflection on the object of that attitude. She can only


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learn of it in a fully theoretical manner, taking an empirical stance

toward herself as a particular psychological subject. (2001, p. 85, myemphasis)

On this model, the psychoanalyst is an expert at taking an empiricalstance with respect to the analysand, perhaps picking up unusual bits ofavailable evidence, and then making an inference to what must be going

on in the analysands unconscious mind. The analyst might also be goodat encouraging the analysand to take just such an empirical stance withrespect to herself.

Of course, in popular culture there are the familiar images of theanalyst as someone relentlessly searching for repressed memories; or the

analyst who somehow has the keys to unlock the psychic basement and aspecial light to shine under the cobwebbed stairs.

All of these images are based on something, but they misrepresent thepsychoanalytic situation. Aristotle tells us that if we are to grasp an area

of knowledge adequately, it is important to find the right starting point.(NE I.4, 1095a30-b4). And we must also distinguish the order in whichwe discover a field of knowledge from the order in which we set it outwhen we understand its mature form. (An.Pst. 71b19-72a5; 1964) At the

beginning of his career, Freud was on the hunt for repressed memories;

and he was willing to make so-called deep interpretations of what waspurportedly going on in the analysands mind. An interpretation isconsidered deep if it is not easily available to the analysands own self-

conscious experience. But Freud fairly quickly realized that simply tellinga person the contents of her unconscious not only had no positivetherapeutic effect, it regularly provoked irritation and resistance; on

occasion it led to the analysand breaking off treatment. In effect, herecognized that simply telling another person the truth about himselfwas not a therapeutic method. By the time he writes Remembering,repeating and working-through in 1914, he gives a history of the

development of psychoanalytic technique which consists in abandoningdeep interpretation or the search for any particular hidden item in favorof facilitating the analysands own associations:

Finally, there was evolved the consistent technique used today, in whichthe analyst gives up the attempt to bring a particular moment orproblem into focus. He contents himself with studying whatever ispresent for the time being on the surface of the patients mind, and heemploys the art of interpretation mainly for the purpose of recognizingthe resistances which appear there, and making them conscious to thepatient. From this there results a new sort of division of labor: thedoctor uncovers the resistances which are unknown to the patient;


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when these have been got the better of, the patient often relates theforgotten situations and connections without any difficulty. (1914, pp.147-148)

On this conception, the psychoanalyst is not an expert about the hiddencontents of another's mind. Rather, the analyst is a facilitator of the freespeech of another. In that same year that he presented this revisedtechnique, Freud added this footnote to a later edition of TheInterpretation of Dreams:

The technique [of dream-interpretation] which I describe in the pagesthat follow differs in one essential respect from the ancient method: itimposes the task of interpretation upon the dreamer himself. It is notconcerned with what occurs to the interpreter in connection with aparticular element of the dream but with what occurs to the dreamer.

(Freud 1930a, p. 98n, my emphasis)5

The emphasis now is on the analyst facilitating a process through whichthe analysand him- or herself will come to be able to speak its meaning.In this sense, psychoanalysis stands in a tradition of Socratic midwifery.

From the beginning Freud encouraged his patients to say what wason their minds, but by 1912 he had explicitly formulated what he calledthe fundamental rule of psychoanalysis: namely, that the analysandshould try to say whatever comes into conscious awareness withoutcensorship or inhibition. (1912a, p. 115; 1913, pp. 134-135; 1910, pp.

31-32; 1925a, pp. 40-41). In calling this rule fundamentalFreud signalsthat this is the basic norm of psychoanalysis: the analysand is to try tospeak his mind; the analyst is to facilitate the process. I take this to be aconstitutive norm: we come over time to understand whatpsychoanalysis is as we come to understand what is genuinely involvedin facilitating a process by which the analysand develops the capacity tospeak his or her mind in a unfettered way. Whatever the complexities oftechnique, it is worth noticing a great simplicity here: a single norm tospeak one's mind freely. And there is this humanistic elegance: whatevertherapeutic value psychoanalysis has, it flows through the self-consciousunderstanding of the analysand. Obviously, there are myriad phenomenaone might use the term self-consciousness to describe. But thefundamental rule gives us a basis for an unusual, and perhaps surprising,claim: psychoanalysis is the activity of facilitating the free flow of self-consciousness. This claim is more illuminating than the (ultimatelymisleading) claim that psychoanalysis concerns the discovery of hiddencontents of the mind.

5The original Die Traumdeutung was published in 1899. The Strachey translation(1981) is of the eighth German edition, published in 1930.


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It is also misleading to characterize this relationship in terms of oneperson being an especially good observer of empirical evidenceinadvertently disclosed by the other. The psychoanalytic relationship isone of emotional intimacy and mutual, concerned engagement -- morelike a second-personal, I-thou relation. As a formal matter,psychoanalysis begins with one person asking another person for help,and the other person responding that he thinks he can be of helpprecisely through offering psychoanalysis. Whatever the demands ofpsychoanalytic neutrality, it is not a stance of detached, empiricalobservation. So, an analyst may be on the lookout for empiricallyavailable evidence, notably a pause in the flow of speech but it is in thecontext of a committed engagement to help. This help does not consist inusing such an occasion to formulate an empirically grounded hypothesisto present to the analysand. Rather, it is an occasion to ask the

analysand if she is aware that she has paused, and to wait to hear theanalysand's own reports of what she was thinking during the pause,where her mind wandered, and whether she had an internal sense ofwhether the pause was somehow related to what she was thinking. It isastonishing how much will come to the analysand's mind in this way.6Insuch cases, the analyst is not proposing an empirically groundedhypothesis about the hidden contents of another's mind, he is facilitatinga process by which the analysand expands and deepens her own capacityfor first-person authority on the contents of her mind.

iv. It turns out that no one can follow the fundamental rule. As Freudsaid, there comes a time in every analysis when the patient disregards it.(1913, p. 135n) That time comes very soon. There will be some kind ofdisruption to the free flow of speaking ones mind: a pause or silence, asudden change of subject, intense fatigue, the eruption of a somatic issuelike coughing, stomach ache, head ache, bowl troubles, and so on. Thesedisruptions are not merely accidental but are motivated in various ways.They tend to function as inhibitions; sometimes under the guidance ofself-conscious will, often bypassing the will, often just outside ofconscious awareness, though it is relatively easy to draw a person'sattention to them. These moments are of philosophical significance.They show, first, that there is something internally conflicted about thespontaneous unfolding of self-consciousness. Psychoanalysis promotes

self-conscious awareness of these specific moments of internal conflictwithin self-consciousness. Second, these are moments in which therational and non-rational parts of the soul are speaking in manifestly

6Analysands have reported to me that, if they pay attention, they can feel thoughtsescaping their consciousness; with effort they can draw them back. They can see forthemselves that the thought they were about to lose was not an indifferent thought, butan unwanted thought; one which was about to lead in uncomfortable directions. Thatis, when the analyst is working with the analysand at the level of the analysand's ownconscious experience, the analysand will on occasion experience repression as aconscious experience.


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different voices. It is as though the unconscious in interrupting the flowof self-conscious speech. From an Aristotelian perspective they must bemoments of non-virtue. Psychoanalysis takes up these moments whenthe non-rational and rational parts of the soul speak discordantly. Itworks on the obverse side of virtue.

It is a mistake to think that these moments of conflicting voicesalways take the form of threatened akrasia whether the person willstand by her judgment or give in to temptation. They can be momentsthat call the faculty of judgment into question. Freud formulated theconcept ego precisely because he came to see that the repressedunconscious is only part of the story. There are in addition motivatedstrategies for living, for dealing with uncomfortable material, for keepingthe repressed at bay that are themselves unconscious. And these modes

of ego-functioning themselves resist self-conscious understanding. Thusthe unconscious lies on both sides of repressing / repressed divide.

we find ourselves in an unforeseen situation. We have come uponsomething in the ego itself which is also unconscious, which behavesexactly like the repressed that is, which produces powerful effectswithout itself being conscious and which requires special work before itcan be made conscious. (1923, p. 17)

And he concludes, we must admit that the characteristic of beingunconscious begins to lose significance for us. It becomes a quality whichcan have many meanings. (p. 18)

From an Aristotelian perspective this is important because it meansthat the unconscious can show up as something that looks likecharacter. We are not just dealing with hidden forbidden wishes. Itwould require a paper of its own to delineate how the Aristotelian andFreudian divisions of the psyche map onto each other. For now theimportant point is this: The ego is and takes itself to be the voice ofreason in that it is the capacity for self-conscious deliberation andintentional action, for forming conscious beliefs on the basis ofperception and argument, and for giving reasons to others. It takes itselfto be rational and reality-governed; and when all is going very well, that

is correct. However, Freuds point is that a persons capacity for reasoncan be pervaded by unconscious, non-rational, mental forces; and whenthat happens reason can be pervasively distorted by a non-rational formof thinking. The issue is not just about repressed desires. And thiscomplicates the question of what it would be for the rational and non-rational parts of the soul to speak with the same voice.

I once worked with an analysand Ms. A, who seemed to inhabit adisappointing world. No matter what happened, she would experience itin a disappointing way. Real life disappointments were of coursedisappointing, but even when something she wanted came to pass, there


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quickly followed a disappointing interpretive frame. My boss told me heis going to seek a promotion for me... But he probably felt he had to...He was too embarrassed just to promote X, who he really wanted topromote, and not promote me as well. We can thus give sense to Ms. Aliving in a disappointing world in the sense that whether P happened ornot-Phappened, she would experience the world as letting her down. Icame to think of this world as a geodesic dome of disappointment,because it was constructed of countless small triangles. In the case ofgetting promoted, it was someone else the boss really wanted to appoint.When a colleague to whom she was attracted invited her out, Ms. Aassumed he had already been turned down by someone else, and nowhad nothing better to do. In relation to friends, X was always a betterfriend to Y than to her. In the family, there were the familiar triangles:the mother loved her brother more; the parents loved each other more

than they loved her, and so on. Experiencing life in disappointing wayshad become a style of living, experienced as rational; and the analysandwas resolutely unaware of how active she was in living that way.

If we can put Freuds insight into Aristotelian terms, the unconscious,non-rational soul has its own nature, its own form of mental activity. Hementions timelessness and exemption from contradiction as twohallmarks (1915, p. 187) -- and it is uncanny to see how these featuresunconsciously pervade conscious life. From the point of view ofconsciousness, Ms. As disappointments looks like repetition (even if therepetition was not initially recognized by Ms. A as such): disappointmentis happening over and over again. But if we try to capture the structureof Ms. As subjectivity, each of these individual disappointments isderivative. Each is there to sustain a large-scale structure: that life shallbe disappointing. This injunction has a different temporality from thehistorical narratives of life (when I was young I was disappointed by myparents, then as a teenager I was let down by my boyfriend, and now inadult life). It hangs over the historical narrative and informs it withthe timeless quality of disappointment. Via the particular moments inlife, a primordial structure, disappointment, is timelessly held in place.This insight links the Freudian unconscious to the Aristotelianconception of character. The ethical virtues are based on character andcharacter-formation. Character is ethically significant because it too has

a quality of timelessness. The ethically virtuous person has an excellentcharacter and thus we can count on that person to act in outstandingways, and it does not really matter whether it is this time or that. Ofcourse, the tendency to experience the world as a disappointment is nota human excellence. Still, even here we can see a certain timelesssteadfastness by which Ms. A insists upon (and thus protects) herunhappiness.7

7This gives us a deflationary way to understand claims about the psychic determinism

of the unconscious. The point is not that there will always be a hidden, antecedent


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Freud also said that the unconscious is exempt from mutualcontradiction, and as brilliant a philosopher as Donald Davidsoninterpreted this to mean that if a person consciously believes P, he mayalso unconsciously believe not-P. And he then concluded that theunconscious must be like another mind with its own holistic connectionsamong propositional attitudes. (Davidson, 1982)8 But Freuds point isnot about believing in contradictions, it is about the productions of theunconscious being unopposed by rational considerations to thecontrary.9So when, in an intrusive daydream, Ms. A imagines I preferanother analysand to her and in the fury and disappointment thatevokes the salient evidence to the contrary seems to fall away. Hercapacity for seeing the other side of the coin goes into abeyance.

Aristotle thought that the non-rational soul was childish in the sense

that at its best it could listen well to and follow grown-up advice. Freudadds rich, non-moralizing detail to what this childishness consists in.And this opens up the possibility of a more nuanced account thananything Aristotle could have envisaged of what it might be for therational and non-rational parts of the soul to speak with the same voice.For Freud the non-rational soul is childish in this sense: it shows up asan imaginative yet ultimately non-rational attempt to address a basicproblem of human vulnerability one that arose in childhood, andwhose attempted solution was crafted in childhood, but whichunconsciously persists into adult life. Ironically, our imaginationsregularly act like a resourceful philosopher who lacks the capacity forrational thought. As finite, non-omnipotent creatures we areconstitutively vulnerable in a world over which we have, at best, limitedcontrol. How disappointing that we cannot render ourselvesinvulnerable to disappointment! An imaginary strategy which the youngMs. A chanced upon was to render herself invulnerable to the worldsdisappointments by getting there first and, in fantasy, inflicting thedisappointment upon herself. This is an omnipotent victory being incontrol of the disappointment -- that consists in a lifetime of sufferingdisappointment. It has this illusory benefit: it protects a childish sense ofomnipotence from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. There is,as it were, a hiding place for her omnipotence, and the disappointmentsparadoxically reinforce her sense of power and control. Of course, from

an Aristotelian perspective, this is a disastrous outcome; in effect, atraining of the non-rational soul to speak in ways that will ensure

efficient cause determining the will how could we ever know that? but that,

whatever does happen, disappointment functions as a formal cause, shaping an

interpretation and form of experience. It is this timeless insistence of the formal cause

that life shall be disappointing --that Thomas Mann (1936) correctly saw can lead to

a sense of life as fated.

8I argue against this interpretation in Lear 2005, pp. 23-54.9The German is Widerspruchlosigkeit. Freud 1969, 10: 286.


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unhappiness. Psychoanalysis is an intervention which attempts to undothis outcome and open up hitherto foreclosed possibilities for humanflourishing. The mode of its efficacy is of philosophical importance.

v. How does psychoanalysis help a person change her mind? Aristotletells us that in the case of human excellence, the rational and non-rational parts of the soul speak with the same voice. This would suggestthat when we are working with persons who are at best en route to abetter psychological form of life, we ought to expect moments when therational and non-rational parts of the soul speak with different voices,and when communication between the parts either breaks down orreaches a crisis point. Such moments of disruption can be put to creativeuse.

Well into the analysis, an hour began where I could hear Ms. Ahesitate. She was pausing more than usual, breaking the silence withmundane topics such as an upcoming meeting, and then pausing again.As she entered into another pause, I asked if she noticed that she waspausing and whether there might be something on her mind that she wasreluctant to say. She thought about it for a while and then said thatactually she had wanted to ask me whether I could reschedule an hour,and she now realized she had been hesitating. As she thought further, sherealized she was afraid I would say no. And as she continued to associateshe realized that she had had a daydream-thought that went out of herconscious mind almost as soon as it entered -- that I would probably bewith someone else with whom I preferred to be. So here, in the livingpresent was one of the petite triangles of disappointment that made upher geodesic dome. Only this time, I was included in the triangle, aninstance of what Freud called transference. The significance oftransference is that it is a voice of the non-rational soul that immediatelyand presently entangles the analyst. It is, as it were, an attempt to drawthe analyst inside an unconscious drama. Thus, Freud said,transference presents the psychoanalyst with the greatest difficulties.(1912b, p.108) He meant both the technical difficulties of handling it,and the emotional difficulties of tolerating it. Freud came to see that thiswas the key to the efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment: But it shouldnot be forgotten that it is precisely [transferences] that do us the

inestimable service of making the patient's hidden and forgottenimpulses immediate and manifest. For when all is said and done, it isimpossible to destroy anyone in absentia or in effigy. (Freud 1912b, p.108, my emphasis).10 In the transference, the voice of the non-rationalsoul is alive, immediately present and palpable in the analytic situation.And the analyst and analysands joint task is to find a rationally

10See also Freud 1905, p. 117: Transference, which seems ordained to be the greatestobstacle to psychoanalysis, becomes its most powerful ally, if its presence can bedetected each time and explained to the patient.


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informed voice that facilitates successful communication with the non-rational soul.

Ms. A associated to a litany of times throughout her life when shehad wanted to speak, but stopped herself for fear of disappointment --thereby disappointing herself. She could see for herself that this was afractal moment: immediately graspable in the present, but containing initself a large-scale structure of her life. She could see not just as atheoretical insight but as an emotionally laden moment in the livingpresent, that she was protecting herself from being disappointed by meby anticipating it and inflicting the disappointment on herself. She alsograsped immediately and from the inside that her sense of rationality hadbeen skewed. She knew with clarity and immediate availability toconsciousness: this triangle was her creation. She then made a comment

of unusual emotional intensity: The rage I anticipate, the rage if you sayno ... no one has even said no. It feels like an eternal obstacle, a weighton my throat, keeping me from speaking. The power of these wordscannot be gleaned from their content alone. To be sure, the statementwas a sincere, accurate and insightful account of her feelings; they alsoexpressed her feelings, and were uttered by her in the process of comingto self-understanding. As such, the statement might have therapeuticvalue. But, on this occasion, the power of the words went beyond that. Itwas as though a weight was literally lifted off her throat. One could hearher larynx open, her throat clear. Freud taught that the unconsciousoften speaks in corporeal terms, with bodily symptoms and corporealrepresentations of mental activity. (Freud 1923, p. 26; 1925, p. 237) Inthis moment, Ms. A is self-consciously describing her experience, and sheis using a metaphor to do so: it feels as though a weight has been liftedfrom her throat. This is the voice of her rational soul, her ego, self-consciously describing her emotional experience. In the same momenther non-rational soul even though it has its own nature, its own formof mental activity speaks in the same voice. It is a moment in which theword becomes flesh. Ms. A could feel that the various voices in her soulhad come together. This speaking-with-the-same-voice has aphenomenology, of vibrancy and efficacy. Ms. A could feel that in thepower of her speech and self-conscious awareness, she was activelytaking this particular triangle apart. Her awareness of her efficacy was

constitutive of this efficacy, and she was aware of that. That is, herability to break this triangle down was flowing immediately through herself-conscious understanding of the artificiality of the triangle. For lackof a better term, this seems to me a kind of poetic efficacy, one thatoccurs when the non-rational soul and the rational soul come to speakwith the same voice. With laughter, relief and relish she could ask me:might I be willing to schedule a different hour? In asking this question Icould hear that she was, as it were, all in. She herself could feel herworld changing. This speaking-with-the-same-voice is itself a moment ofintegrating the rational and non-rational soul.


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Do that again and again and again with the petite triangles as theykeep coming up over time and you have the process that Freud calledworking-through. It is too simple to call this a step-by-step process, butit is sufficiently discrete and clear that it takes the mystery out of thethought that over time the analysand herself can take apart a world thathad hitherto held her captive. This is ethically significant in that itenables a person to live more realistically and truthfully. And by now itshould be clear that psychoanalysis aims at more than theoretical insightinto oneself that I tend to experience the world in disappointing ways;and it aims at more than the practical ability to take ameliorative stepswhen one feels disappointment coming on. It aims to change thestructure of the psyche, by facilitating communication between the non-rational and rational parts of the soul.

vi. Obviously, more needs to be said to elaborate and defend theseideas, but I hope I have said enough to vindicate Bernard Williamssuggestion that Freudian psychoanalysis has the resources to help us inthe formulation of a robust, non-moralizing moral psychology. In thecase we have been examining, psychoanalysis gives us the resources togive content to Aristotles conception of the non-rational and rationalparts of the soul speaking with the same voice without simplyassuming an unexplained obedience of the former to the latter. This iscrucial for the possibility of a non-moralizing Aristotelian moralpsychology.

Aristotle is clear that the ethical virtues are excellences of the non-rational part of the soul; while practical wisdom (phronsis) is anintellectual virtue. (NEI.13, 1103a3-10) Yet the possibility of happinessdepends on getting these excellences to work together. Without ethicalvirtue, Aristotle suggests, practical wisdom degenerates into merecleverness the skill of obtaining poorly chosen goals. (VI.12, 1144a24-36). Conversely, the development of true ethical virtues requires the aidof practical wisdom. (VI.13, 1144b1-25) Aristotle begins by saying thatthe ethical virtues must accordwith right reason, but then he makes animportant qualification. But it is necessary to take another small stepforward: virtue is not merely a state in accord(!"#") withright reasonbut is with($%#") right reason. (VI.13, 1144b26-28) Aristotle takes this

relation of being with right reason to be distinctive of his moralpsychology: it is that which Socrates did not grasp as he mistakenlyidentified the ethical virtues as forms of reason. (b28-30) The Freudiancontribution is to offer a rich account of what this being-with relationmight consist in.

Aristotle is clear that eudaimonia regularly translated as happiness-- is possible for humans, but not for other animals. (NEI.9, 1099b32-1100a2; X.8, 1178b24; Eudemian Ethics I.1117a21-29) For Aristotle,the non-rational souls of other animals lack the capacity to be withreason in the right sort of way. This is the capacity for the rational and


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non-rational parts of the soul to speak with the same voice. Without asubstantial understanding of what this consists in, Aristotles conceptionof eudaimonia, the highest human good, remains a placeholder. Freudthus gives us resources to flesh out the distinctive nature of Aristotlesmoral psychology. And this can open up possibilities for philosophy.

To give one example, it is a familiar thought in contemporaryphilosophy that our rationality and thus our freedom consists in ourability to step back in reflection and consider whether the evidencebefore us gives us a reason to believe, or whether in the face of a certaindesire we have a reason to act. (Korsgaard 1968; pp. 92-92; McDowell1998, pp. 170-171) This conception fits a moral psychology in whichthe threat to rationality comes from a sea of unruly desires -- someconscious, some unconscious -- pushing for satisfaction. These are

treated as outside, though reason can either rule them in or rule themout. This psychology also makes plausible the thought that by this veryactivity we constitute ourselves.(Korsgaard, 2009) On this model, in theabsence of our self-conscious commitments all that remains areunorganized desires.

But Ms. As desires were not disorganized indeed, that was part ofher problem. Her non-rational desires were all too organized, around aprinciple of disappointment. And her capacity of reason, for its part,had itself been infiltrated and shaped by her non-rational soul. Ms. Awas adept at stepping back in reflection and judging that her experiencewas disappointing. It was in this very act of stepping back in purportedlyrational deliberation that she unwittingly manifested her unfreedom.What Ms. A needed to move in the direction of psychic freedom andrationality was a break in the structure she experienced as reason, abreak in her familiar activity of stepping back and reflecting, a break inthe ordinary exercise of her capacity to judge.

It does not do justice to the phenomena to think of Ms. A asconstituting herself through those self-conscious judgments whichmanifested disappointment. Those judgments themselves were surfacemanifestations of a powerful non-rational, unconscious structure andthey added a misleading patina of rational reflection. It defies plausibility

to insist that this non-rational structure of desire has nothing to do withher on the grounds that it is not the expression of her rationaljudgment. (Korsgaard 2011, Lear 2011, pp. 84-102) The unconsciousstructure is itself the manifestation of early non-rational, but imaginativeattempts to address a basic problem of how to live. We should not ruleout the thought that the expressions of this structure are coming fromher simply because it does not fit a psychology that is inadequate tocapture who we are.

Aristotles conception of the rational and rational parts of the soulspeaking with the same voice provides a more illuminating model of


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what our rationality and thus our eudaimonia consists in. Here thecentral image is not of reflective distance, but a coming-together ofvoices into one. Rationality, on this model, is manifested in a lack ofdistancebetween the voices. Obviously, as rational animals, there will beimportant moments of stepping back and reflecting. But in thosemoments there will always be a further question of the mannerin whichthat stepping back takes place. Is this moment of stepping back one inwhich the rational and non-rational parts of the soul are in the processof coming to speak with the same voice? Or is a cruel superegopunitively holding desire in place? Or is the reflection just one moremove in a pseudo-rational life, dominated by exaggerated acts ofrationality? Certainly, the bare fact that self-conscious judgment hasruled a desire in or out is not sufficient to determine whether the voicesof the soul are thereby coming to speak together. And this opens room

for us to consider genuine acts of reflection to nevertheless be mereappearancesof rationality or freedom.

They can also be mere appearances of our happiness. Aristotlesinsistence that reason speak with the same voice as the non-rational soulmanifests a deep intuition of what eudaimoniaconsists in. For Aristotle,our happiness consists in part in the knowledge we are happy. That is, itpartially consists in the correct, appropriately grounded, self-consciouscomprehension of our happiness. Part of what it is for a happy life to belacking in nothing, to be a complete life, a life of excellence accordingto reason is that it possesses within itself the knowledge that it is thehappy life that it is. Now this knowing that constitutes our happiness isnot just the propositional knowledge thatwe are living a happy life. It isalso the rational, self-conscious grasp that the various voices in our soulare speaking with the same voice. This is an immediate, non-reflectiveknowing; a self-conscious experience of our rational and non-rationalvoices speaking with the same voice. This is a kind of knowing that isforeclosed to other animals, and it is one of the reasons Aristotleexcludes them from eudaimonia.

Psychoanalysis is a form of self-conscious speech that aims toenhance the efficacy of thoughtful, self-conscious speech, an efficacy thatruns through a self-conscious grasp of this efficacy; and an efficacy that

can change the structure of the psyche. It is a form of psyche-formationthat proceeds essentially through the psyche's own understanding ofitself. This understanding has a theoretical as well as a practical aspect toit, but it is also poetic in the sense of self-creating through its own self-conscious grasp of its own meaning-making. In this way, psychoanalyticpractice seems to me the best model we have of what is involved inreason coming to communicate with and thus inform the human soul.When Aristotle said that humans are by nature rational animals, he wasisolating a distinctive capacity of the human soul. (Boyle, 2012;Thompson, 2004) Psychoanalysis shows us what is involved in bringingthat capacity to fruition.


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This is a humanistic value, do we wish to be creatures who take thispeculiar responsibility for shaping our own psyches? Yet it is not easy tomeasure with empirically testable outcome studies. One can measurehow well different therapies treat a discrete pre-existing condition, likedepression; or one can measure the self-reports of satisfaction with atreatment, but none of these measures get at what psychoanalysis offers.Ironically, what psychoanalysis offers is basically itself. To put it inAristotelian terms, psychoanalysis is both kinsis and energeia-- processand activity. It aims to help a person shape her mind in such a way thatshe can continue the life-activity of taking the non-rational part of hersoul into harmonious and creative relations with her thoughtful self-conscious understanding. To bring Freudian and Aristotelian languagetogether: psychoanalysis is both terminable (as kinsis) andinterminable(as energeia). It is the flourishing human activity of the rational soul

taking immediate, poetic responsibility for the non-rational soul. Othernames for this activity are, I think, truthfulness, rationality, freedom andeudaimonia.

vii. I conclude by considering a pair objections: that psychoanalysiscomes both too soon and too late to be part of a broadly Aristotelianapproach to ethical life. It comes too soon in the sense that it is notconcerned with promoting the list of Aristotelian ethical virtues; and tomany it can seem amoral or even immoral. So, for instance, Aristotletells us that there is no right way to commit adultery (NEII.6, 1107a14-17). But if an analysand starts talking about his adulterous desires or hisadulterous behavior, the analyst's job is not to talk him out of it, but tohelp him understand what it means for him.

And it can also seem that psychoanalysis comes too late in the sensethat Freud stands on the other side of a divide -- between modernity andthe ancient world, or between post-modernity and pre-modernity -- suchthat, on this side, we can no longer assume any set of purportedlyinscribed values. (Lacan, 1992) The virtues of any civilization, so theobjection goes, are just manifestations of power relations by which onesocial class dominates others. And what philosophers of any givenperiod call 'reason' is a hodgepodge of valorizing self-justifications for

the dominating ideology of the time. The divide between Aristotle andFreud can seem unbridgeable when one considers their differing views ofpolitical society. For Aristotle, the good polis should function topromote the happiness of its citizens, and vice versa. For Freud, it is anillusion to think the civilization is in place to make humans happy:rather, it secures a basic order, indifferent to the human costs, and is thesource of neurotic discontent. (Freud, 1930) Moreover, there is Freudspostulation of the so-called death drive: purportedly, a principle withinus that works against our flourishing. (Freud 1920) This is a paradigmof a non-Aristotelian principle.


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These challenges are important, but not definitive. As a talking cure,psychoanalysis does differ from its famous philosophical predecessor,Socratic elenchus, in that it is not trying to promote any particularethical value beyond the value of truthfulness: truthfulness in speech thatmanifests a true self, one in which non-rational and rational parts areintegrated. By contrast, although Socrates repeatedly says he does notknow what the virtues consist in, he does not doubt that courage,temperance, justice and piety are virtues, and he is convinced that hismethod promotes their development. Nevertheless, Aristotelian ethicsholds out the prospect of virtue in contrast to mere continence andvirtue requires that the non-rational soul speak with the same voice asthe rational soul. Psychoanalysis is manifestly not a training inAristotles virtues; but it does help a person avoid an outcome Aristotlewould find unfortunate: a person who lives a life of continence but who

takes himself to be virtuous as he promotes the established norms of theday. In that sense, psychoanalysis may be prior, but it does not cometoo soon: it can help open the possibility of a distinctively humanflourishing life.

Politically speaking, Aristotle insists that ethical life must beunderstood in the context of an adequate politics that reflects andsupports that life. (NEI.2, 1094a18-b11; I.3 1095a1-12; I.13, 1102a7-25; Politics I.1, 1252a1-7; I.2.1252b2930; III.6, 1278b17-24; III.9,1280b39; VII.2, 1325a710.) One can insist on this principle, whilerejecting the specific aristocratic values Aristotle defended. In a similarvein, there are two ways to read Freuds critique of civilization: eitherthat it is inevitable that civilization frustrates human happiness or that inthe conditions of bourgeois modernity in which he lived, the discrepancybetween the conditions needed for humans to flourish and the demandsimposed by political society had become too great. On this latter view,the aim would not be Stoic ataraxia in the face of an inevitable, tragichuman condition, but rather political commitment to change the socialconditions so as to support ethical human flourishing. On this view, it istoo quick to move from the recognition that the concept of reason hasregularly been used for ideological purposes to the conclusion that that isits inevitable fate. When Socrates tells us it is appropriate for reason torule the whole soul, and Aristotle follows suit, the politically appropriate

way to understand these claims is not as stating an already-well-understood condition, but as setting out a task: we will come tounderstand better what reason is as we come better to understand whatis involved in rejecting false images of reason. It remains a psycho-political challenge to work out what it is for thoughtful, self-consciousness to inform the human soul well. And even if Freud iscorrect that there is something inherently destructive in our natures and we are still at an early stage of reflection about this the taskremains basically the same: how to take this into account in the living ofa worthwhile life that is self-consciously grasped as such.


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Psychoanalysis can be seen as a constituent moment in this process offiguring out, in theoretical, practical and poetic ways, what would beinvolved in a life of eudaimonia. It is an attempt to listen to andcommunicate with the non-rational part of a soul in a manner that is upthe challenge. Freud added depth to the Aristotelian insight that the non-rational soul has its own nature, and that will inevitably complicate as itenriches what we might mean by the rational and non-rational parts ofthe soul speaking with the same voice. We risk yet another moralizingpsychology if we assume we already know what speaking with the samevoice must be. In particular, do not assume we need a marching band ofthe soul. Think instead of marvelous improvisational jazz: there aresyncopated voices, some in the moment might appear at the edge ofbreaking the composition apart, but then they come spectacularlytogether and the experience as a whole teaches us something about

what it might be to come together into a single voice. If the voices of thenon-rational soul are an occasion for a creative, in-tune and thoughtfulresponse from reason; and if, in turn, reason is able to enliven and freeup the voices of the non-rational soul, as it channels them into a lifeworth living, we can give content to the thought that this is a rich formof speaking with the same voice. This, I think, is a route for anAristotelian ethics.


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references

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Boyle, Matthew 2012: Essentially Rational Animals. In G. Abel and J.Conant eds., Rethinking Epistemology. Berlin: Walter DeGruyter.

Davidson, Donald 1982: Paradoxes of Irrationality. In R. Wollheimand J. Hopkins eds., Philosophical Essays on Freud. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, pp. 289-305.

Finkelstein, David 2003: Expression and the Inner. Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press.

Freud, Sigmund 1905: Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. InFreud 1981, 7: 7-122.

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---------1912b: The Dynamics of Transference. In Freud 1981, 12: 99-108.

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---------1930b: Civilization and Its Discontents. In Freud 1981, 21: 64-145.

---------1969: Das Unbewute. In Gesammelte Werke. Frankfurt amMain: S. Fischer Verlag, 10: 263-302

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Korsgaard, Christine 1968: The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

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Lacan Jacques 1992: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960. London:Routledge.

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Liddell H.G., Scott R., Jones H.S. 1968. A Greek-English Lexicon.Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Mann, Thomas 1936: Freud and the Future. In Essays of ThreeDecades. London: Seeker and Warburg, pp. 411-428.

McDowell, John 1998: Two Sorts of Naturalism. In Mind, Value andReality. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 167-197.

Moran, Richard 2001: Authority and Estrangement. Princeton:Princeton University Press.

Plato 1974: Platos Republic, G.M.A. Grube trans. Indianapolis:Hackett.

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Thompson, Michael 2004: Apprehending Human Form. In RoyalInstitute of Philosophy Supplement (54), pp. 47-74.

Williams, Bernard 1985: Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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--------- 2008: Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress.


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