The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the world’s most popular personality test. There are lots of free personality tests proposing to test one’s MBTI type online. But most of them are not very scientific. These free, professional-grade MBTI tests are offered in foreign languages for your service and perusal. Have fun discovering your personality type and unique cognitive preferences in one of the languages below.
Category Archives: Videnskab
Humanioraspiralen
Med en række indlæg i engelsksprogede aviser har humanistiske forskere igen fået striden om humaniora til at blusse op. Hvorfor skal skatteyderne fortsat poste millioner i de humanistiske uddannelser? I hvilket omfang skal markedets logik styre humaniora? I hvilket omfang skal statens? Og kan humaniora overhovedet bruges til noget?
Humaniora plages af både interne og eksterne problemer. Udefra presses man af den særegne blanding af erhvervshensyn og administratorvælde, som staten påtvinger de offentlige universiteter. Det er således ikke kun i Danmark, at refrænet om forskning og faktura har lydt. ”Humaniora skal være mere erhvervsvenligt,” får fakulteterne at vide. Et notat fra den britiske regering konkluderede sågar, at universiteterne skulle minde om en art konsulenthuse, der havde til opgave at hjælpe nystartede virksomheder på fode.
Staten fortæller også de humanistiske fakulteter, at de skal ”hæve produktionen.” På dansk betyder det, at de skal få flere studerende gennem systemet, og gerne hurtigere. Således presses de humanistiske undervisere til at lade håbløse studerende bestå. Resultatet er, at der med tiden bliver flere og flere diplombærende humanister, hvis faglighed til gengæld er mindre og mindre.
På forskningssiden betyder kravet om øget produktion, at der skal publiceres mere forskning, og gerne i de tidsskrifter staten har udvalgt. Med den amerikanske filosof Rebecca Goldsteins ord produceres der ”mere og mere om mindre og mindre” – der zoomes obskønt tæt ind på det enkelte træ, men ingen har længere tid til at opmåle skoven. Ifølge den britiske professor i litteraturvidenskab Terry Eagleton er det sågar så grelt, at meget af samtidens humanistiske forskning slet og ret er ligegyldig. Ifølge Eagleton skrives der bunkevis af publikationer, der udelukkende skrives for at score point i embedsmændenes statiske systemer. I mange lande er det nemlig denne overflødighedsforskning, der afgør, hvor mange penge staten tildeler det enkelte fakultet.
Humaniora har således rigeligt med udefrakommende problemer. Men på indersiden melder flere forskere også om fallit. I mange tilfælde er de humanistiske fakulteter ikke længere kulturbærende. Ifølge den amerikanske professor i uddannelsespolitik David Steiner er den fælles kerne af kulturarv, som humaniora burde oppebære, ikke længere fælles og dermed ej heller en kerne. For at behage de studerende undervises der mange steder i Fifty Shades frem for Friedrich Nietzsche og i vampyrfiktion frem for Virgil. Det populære har erstattet det svære.
Til humanioras problemer skal også lægges den politiske ekspertise, som mange humanistiske forskere selv mener, de besidder. Således rapporterer den amerikanske professor David Clemens fra et nyligt møde i verdens største organisation for sprog- og litteraturforskere, at deltagerne havde mere travlt med at fælde moralsk dom over Israel end med at diskutere deres fag. Ligeledes konkluderede en nylig rapport fra Harvard Universitet, at humanioras rolle nu reelt ikke længere er at videreføre og forske i klassisk kulturarv, men at afdække ”skjulte magtstrukturer,” som offentligheden ikke selv er i stand til at begribe.
En udvækst af denne selvforståelse kan ses i både danske og udenlandske aviser, hvor humanistiske forskere jævnligt forsøger at belære økonomer om økonomi. Dette foregår som regel under den belejlige antagelse, at kun humanister kan ”tænke kritisk” og i dybden. Belejligheden er ikke altid til at skelne fra magelighed, da humanisten har det med at afsløre, at han ikke har sat sig ind i grundlæggende neoklassiske principper, før han fremturede med sin kritik af dem.
Ironisk nok tyder erfaringerne fra udlandet på, at jo mere humaniora forfladiger sit emnevalg og gør sig til arnested for venstreekstreme ”magtkritiske” holdninger, des mere svinder offentlighedens lyst til at finansiere de humanistiske discipliner ind. Og logisk svarer staten igen med øgede krav om ensretning og uniformering. Der må jo styr på galskaben.
I løbet af de sidste 50 år er humaniora konstant blevet omtalt som kriseplaget. Men med humanioraspiralens seneste rotation mener flere universitetsfolk, at humaniora måske vil forsvinde helt fra en række universiteter i løbet af de kommende år. Alligevel er det dog svært at tegne et entydigt billede af fremtiden: I Storbritannien og USA bløder flere humanistiske fakulteter med frafaldsrater på op til 60% i løbet af de første to år. Til gengæld konkluderer en ny rapport, at humaniora tilsyneladende har undgået krisen i Australien.
Og løsningen på humanioras krise? I den nylige runde af indlæg er det Eagleton, der kommer det nærmest. Han udpeger bureaukraternes kontrol med universiteterne som den store slyngel og slår til lyd for decentralisering og et universitært selvstyre, der ikke står til regnskab for staten. Hvem der skulle have interesse i at finansiere dét, kommer han dog ikke ind på.
Nina Fauerholdt, Lars Lundmann og personlighedstests
I WA IDEER 20. Marts skriver Nina Fauerholdt om psykolog Lars Lundmann, der har forsket i jobsamtaler. I artiklen hedder det bl.a., at det er de færreste mennesker, hvis personlighedstræk er stabile. Det er noget pjat.
Den såkaldte Fem-faktormodel, som der henvises til i artiklen er blevet forsket til døde af forskerhold fra hele verden, som har gjort brug af enorme datasæt hentet fra flere nationer. Gang på gang er det blevet konkluderet, at de overordnede personligehedstræk, som denne test måler, ligger overvejende stabilt omkring 15-årsalderen og er stort set urokkelige efter de 30.
I artiklen hedder det også, at personlighedstests ”kun bidrager med støj.” Pjat igen. Hvad angår jobsamtaler har videnskabelige undersøgelser konkluderet, at en persons resultater på Fem-faktormodellen er en kraftigere forudsigelse for hvordan vedkommende vil klare sig på jobbet end vedkommendes referencer fra tidligere arbejdspladser, tidligere joberfaring og uddannelsesniveau.
What would Ayn Rand have said about climate change?
The growing problem of climate change is seen not just in the atmosphere, but in the minds of men as well. It is easy to see how in the olden days, men smoked cigarettes; man was at one with his creator aspect, embellishing himself with an example of the fire he had tamed (and the lung cancer he was seeding) wherever he went.
But today, non-creators and second-handers do not want man to be creative. They want him to be a slave. This is why they oppose smoking. They oppose climate change too, of course, but climate change is just a red herring; the real issue is smoking as will be obvious from anyone who dares to discern the matter through the power of reason, making no excuses for himself and his reliance on man’s highest faculties.
The people who oppose climate change may tell you that they want you to ride trains and live in skyscrapers. I, of course, also like trains and skyscrapers (in general, I seem to have something about large and imposing inanimate objects that inspire peculiarly submissive sentiments in my otherwise domineering personality – however, it is very rational since skyscrapers and trains are less emotional than human males).
Rational. It is important to use that word when discussing climate change (as it is everywhere else). When people show you charts and statistics and talk about Co2 they are not empowering man’s individual agency. That is irrational. When they smoke cigarettes and live in skyscrapers they are rational. It is good to be rational. And that is how we solve climate change.
Epicurus, Poststructuralism, and Nāgārjuna as Sources of Eudemonia
By Ryan Smith
1 Reason: An enemy and enslaver or a friend and helper?
The ”destabilization” of facts, the resistance to categories of knowledge, the cult of the immediate, the ”non-hierarchical communities” (Foucault) all point towards a common poststructuralist project, namely the dismantling of classical humanism and the philosophical notion of the individual subject: As a phase in the “emancipation” from bourgeois norms, the individual must cast off all conceptions of identity, as these are just the machinations of an external bourgeois discourse that have been forced upon the individual. As Deleuze and Guattari would posit in Mille Plateaux (1980): “[We should aim to] reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves.”[1]
This project of de-subjectification is but philosophical flotsam from Nietzsche’s “Dionysian impulse” as originally depicted in Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872) as well as from the subject-less Dasein of Martin Heidegger which simply just is.[2] This subjectlessness stands in the starkest possible contrast to the philosophical project of Socrates which constantly underlined the importance of continuously greater sophrosyne (wise self-insight) which is attained through critical introspection and gnōthi seauton (knowledge of the self).[3]
This approach to philosophical practice, however, would not reach its zenith with Socrates, but rather with Epicurus’ development of the original Socratic position. As we shall see, the Epicurean philosophy possesses an epistemology and an elaborate psychology of the subject which directly opposes the poststructuralist precept that the existence of the individual is derogated when tied up with rational categories of knowledge.[4] To the extent that the poststructuralists depict themselves as philosophers it seems quite odd that there does not exist a single poststructuralist refutation of Epicurus, for even in spite of the poststructuralist “de-centralization” of facts, the philosophy of Epicurus is at heart a unison of exactly the two things that poststructuralists believe to be irreconcilable: Rational knowledge and sensory happiness.[5]
According to Epicurus, man experiences happiness by understanding the material world rationally. Earthquakes are not the wrath of the gods, planets are not omens, and death is not eternal pain. Rationality is not the nemesis of human nature, but a friend and a helper.
2 Liberating the soul: Transgression versus Ataraxia
As an applied philosophy, and a way of life, Epicureanism, like poststructuralism, aims to liberate the individual by uncovering the hidden forces that coerce it. For Foucault, these are the so-called “techniques of knowledge and subjectification”[6], while for Lyotard ”The notorious universality of knowledge […] [is] a mark of the destruction of personal identities.”[7] Common to each of these approaches is the fact that they endeavour to challenge the primacy of the singular, cognizant individual (often called ‘the subject’). For Lyotard, dispassionate analysis is the arch nemesis of the subjective, sublime feeling that cannot be analysed and cannot be shared with others in the least.[8] While for Foucault there was the Bataille-inspired ‘Limit-experience’:[9] Experiences so intense that they scramble all individual cognisance and reveal analytical modes of thought as unreal derivatives of reality, rather than true reality. The sensation generated by the limit-experience, then, is what Foucault referred to as transgression.[10]
Common to each of these approaches, however, is that they are epistemologically untenable: For without the notion of a subject, how can Foucault and Lyotard know that the subject is curtailed by knowledge-categories and analytical modes of thought? Likewise, how can poststructuralists know that individual identity exists when there is no subject on which to pin it?
So according to poststructuralism impersonal knowledge restricts and fetters the individual and compels it; governs it to be inauthentic. (As Lyotard said, only the self that is free of contact with knowledge-categories is in fact a self.)[11] Faced with exactly the same problem, Epicureanism argues instead for a synthesis that makes use of knowledge-categories as a way to liberate the subject:
”Just as there is no use in medical expertise if it does not give therapy for bodily diseases, so too there is no use in philosophy if it does not expel the suffering of the soul.”[12]
According to Epicureanism, expelling the suffering of the soul will lead to ataraxia, that is, a state of mental ease which – ironically enough – corresponds extremely well to the sensation described in Foucault’s account of transgression. So while Epicureanism and poststructuralism could not be further from each other with regards to means, they are essentially the same with regards to ends: The existential condition craved by each of these philosophies is ultimately very similar.
Where they differ, however, is that ataraxia is achieved through rational and calm contemplation of the human conditions and the often harsh terms of life on Earth, whereas transgression is instead facilitated though extreme and destructive experiences: Crime, drugs, sexual and political violence. As Foucault said, everything short of the extreme is nothing:
”Those middle-range pleasures that make up everyday life … are nothing. … A Pleasure must be something incredibly intense. … Some drugs are really important … because they are the mediation to those incredibly intense joys.”[13]
Or as the very same thought was sloganistically expressed in Surveiller et punir (1975):
”The soul is the prison of the body.”[14]
Meaning essentially the soul as the reflecting Cartesian cogito and the body as immediate, unreflective modes of existence: Thus according to poststructuralism, the more the cogito reflects on impersonal, identity-compelling knowledge-categories, the more the immediate and subjective is coerced into objective inauthenticity.[15]
An argument along the same lines can also be found in Foucault’s earlier work,
Folie et déraison (1961): Having subjected madness to science (and dubbed it déraison), the West no longer fears folkloric madness (called folie) as a force with the potential to erupt into a pandemonium that can possess us all.[16] According to Foucault, science has dispelled the tenseful duality between sane order and mad chaos that had persisted from ancient times.[17] And consequently, life in the scientific episteme, that is, in the West, has become a bland and sterile unity.[18]
Such themes evoke parallels to Nietzsche’s early Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872) as well as the later Götzen-Dämmerung (1889). In Nietzsche’s rendition of events, the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses are poised in equilibrium; they constantly curb and check each other, until sometime in the fifth century BCE the Apollonian gained the upper hand.[19] In Nietzsche’s narrative, the Apollonian without the Dionysian heralds the decline and decadence of Greek culture[20] and culminates in the perverse, ”wrong” Socrates who curtails Der Wille zur Macht (the Will to Power).[21] And what, according to Nietzsche, was the cardinal sin of Socrates’ philosophical endeavour? It was precisely that he sought to equip the Greeks with a self-consciousness that made use of objective knowledge-categories.[22]
Confronted with these same problems, the Epicurean posits instead that the greatest threat to ataraxia is the irrational fear that results from holding irrational beliefs.[23] (For example, believing that the reason that your house burned down is that Zeus is angry with you; this irrational belief leads to a constant irrational fear.) According to Epicurus, such irrational beliefs are best eradicated by the subject becoming acquainted with logic and material science and especially physics. Through an insight into science and epistemology the subject will eventually come to know that the celestial bodies above are not gods waiting to rain their wrath down upon you, but rather clouds of atoms; worlds such as this one.[24] To the poststructuralists discussed above such an approach to epistemology would lead to a convoluted Cartesian life, but to Epicurus it leads, fundamentally, to a life in accordance with nature.[25]
”What produces the pleasant life if not continuous drinking and parties of pederasty or womanizing or the enjoyment of fish and other dishes of an expensive table, but sober reasoning which … banishes the opinions that beset souls with the greatest confusion.”[26] (boldface added)
Rational knowledge and categories of knowledge do not just compound with human happiness and the wise self-knowledge that is sophrosyne. According to Epicurus, rational deliberation and introspection is the very precondition for human happiness and thus an unbending affront to the central premise of the supposed need for the poststructuralist emancipation-project. For according to the poststructuralist view, the very rational deliberation that Epicurus would have us engage in, in order to set us free, provokes “existential anxiety” and prohibits the delight in the senses that leads to true happiness.
3 Which Position is more Epistemologically Tenable?
Finally, leaving the question of happiness, we will look into which position is more epistemologically tenable. To this end we will need to define what kind of knowledge we are inquiring into. To this aim, I will present a theory not entirely unlike that of Karl Popper’s classical Three-world Theory to help us discern which kind of knowledge we are talking about.[27] The three kinds of knowledge that I will posit for this purpose are Immediate knowledge, Existential knowledge, and Objective knowledge. We will now look into each in turn.
Immediate Knowledge: By ‘Immediate knowledge’ we mean somatic, subjective and phenomenological knowledge. For example, how do you subjectively experience the phenomenon of thirst; what personal psychological connotations do you attach to it; what unconscious associations does thirst whirl up in you? This kind of knowledge is profoundly personal to the point where it cannot be communicated onto others; indeed even if it could, doing so would border on meaninglessness as the knowledge is both idiosyncratic and so inwardly richly textured that any recounting of the experience onto the other would be but a pale shadow of one’s own Immediate knowledge of it.
Hence, with regards to the domain of Immediate knowledge, Epicurean epistemology falls rather flat: To Epicurus, fear of phenomena is always lurking around the corner; a rainbow may be beautiful, but it could also be an omen; a particular dish may be delightful, but it may also sow the seeds of avarice and obesity.[28] Thus the Epicurean ‘cure’ is always to distance oneself from subjective and personal experience and seek a rational, trans-personal explanation to put in the place of personal meaning.[29] Thus, Epicurean epistemology is the enemy of Immediate knowledge.
By contrast, however, Immediate knowledge is the stated soteriological goal of poststructuralist epistemology.[30] It is through the intense and boundary-absolving experience of immediate reality that one can really live as a subject-less, emancipated, indefinable agent.[31] As we have seen, crime, drugs, sexual and political violence are all acceptable (and at times, recommended) as means to the end that is the poststructuralist conception of Immediate knowledge. Indeed, as we saw from Foucault above, anything short of the extreme is nothing.[32] By the same token, that is also why, when Foucault was asked to characterize Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical project, with its somber system of personal ethics, the former had but one word for it: “Terrorism”.[33]
However, when examining the poststructuralist recipe for inquiring into Immediate knowledge, we should be aware of a crucial critical interjection: Why are the extreme limit-experiences perceived as holding the key to an immediate understanding of reality when the brunt of reality plainly does not consist of such experiences? Of course, as the poststructuralists would no doubt posit, this touting of the limit-experience as a source of truer knowledge is due to the fact that our everyday notion of reality is to some degree socially constructed, wherefore we should seek out experiences that are not associated with our everyday lives in order to steal a peek at what lies behind the web of social constructs – to de-construct it, so to speak.
Yet a pertinent rejoinder presents itself in the face of this response: How can reality be defined by marginal experiences that are not central to it? Indeed in other sciences, researchers are often encouraged to discard outliers, while poststructuralists would seem to accord value only to outliers. In the same vein, if one wanted to say something about human cognition, one would get a skewed picture if one only used the exceptionally bright and the exceptionally dull for data. There is a fundamental misnomer at work here, which is how and why it becomes reasonable to the post-structuralist to inquire into a thing solely by virtue of its extremes all the while ignoring the bulk of it. And after all, even in a life filled with limit-experiences, the everyday sensations of thirst, hunger, sleep, fiscal ruminations and sex will remain largely the same with regards to Immediate knowledge.
Existential knowledge: By ‘Existential knowledge’ we mean extant knowledge of reality as it exists and the psychological self-knowledge that can be derived from this type of knowledge in order to allow man to find a personally meaningful place in the universe and a sense of purpose in life. This knowledge is not entirely rational, but nor is it entirely irrational. Existential knowledge is not impersonal (like Objective knowledge; to which we will turn shortly), but nor it is entirely personal (like Immediate knowledge, with which we have just dealt). Naturally this “middle of the road” quality makes the exact properties of Existential knowledge hard to pin down, but in making the attempt, we will posit that Existential knowledge is a kind of psychological knowledge or insight into reality. It is the type of knowledge that we all use when we decide whether to pursue one prospective partner over another, or deciding whether to have (more) children or that the family is now of an adequate size. It is the type of knowledge of which the fruits are sophrosyne (wise self-insight) which is attained through critical introspection and gnōthi seauton (knowledge of the self).[34]
Now at first glance it might seem like poststructuralist epistemology would be a good source of Existential knowledge (after all, several of most prominent poststructuralist philosophers were the intellectual scions of the great French existentialists). But, inspired by the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna (ca. 150–250 CE), we will argue that limit-experiences, of the kind trumpeted by poststructuralists, in fact constitute a hindrance to Existential knowledge.
According to Nāgārjuna, intense emotional experiences will not at all allow you to conceive reality any clearer than adherence to the rational cogito.[35] Both the insistence on rational knowledge (as trumpeted by Epicureans) and a familiarity with limit-experiences will, according to Nāgārjuna, ultimately distance your mind from the true nature of reality. But the poststructuralist approach will be the worse of the two, and for two reasons:
(1) Limit-experiences are so intense that they will tie your experience of reality to your own emotional life, whereas reality is far vaster than the personal subject. The poststructuralists claim that limit-experiences are so intense that they will dismantle the personal subject, but indeed, who has ever seen a shell-shocked soldier experiencing sudden bursts of universal empathy or an inexplicable experience of the vastness of the cosmos? Thus, limit-experiences will dismantle a person’s rational notion of his or her subject, but limit-experiences will not at all dismantle a person’s practical focus or groundedness in his or her own subject, quite the contrary; being shell-shocked, raped or cut with a knife (all examples of limit-experiences) will only serve to preoccupy a person all the more with his or her own well-being. Thus, as existence is obviously larger than one person’s pain or pleasure, limit-experiences will actually serve as a diminishment of Existential knowledge.
(2) By its very definition, a limit-experience is so intense that it will flood a person’s cognition with the derived effects of that particular experience. But a limit-experience is not something vast and multi-faceted; indeed it is usually of a quite singular nature. Conseuently going through a limit-experience will again diminish one’s ontological outlook. For example, let us say that a person is suspended in space, looking over Times Square in New York City: If he is stuck in the Epicurean cogito, he will see knowledge-categories walk by: Young/old, male/female, rich/poor, human, pigeon, dog and so on. If he is a follower of Nāgārjuna, he will see no categories, as he will pass no rational judgment (having relinquished the Epicurean cogito), and yet he will be keenly observant – he would indeed experience something like the transgressory state that limit-experiences supposedly lead to. However, if our observer is undergoing a limit-experience while watching the activity at Times Square – if he is simultaneously being subjected to intense physical pain, for example – our observer will surely not notice much of the activity in Times Square, as he will be completely overwhelmed by the limit-experience and thus attached to a narrow corner of existence rather than to existence itself.[36]
Thus poststructuralist epistemology is most certainly not a good source of Existential knowledge.
What about Epicurean epistemology as a source of Existential knowledge, then? As Nāgārjuna would have it, rational knowledge and knowledge-categories would also be a hindrance to existential knowledge yet not one that is nearly as bad.[37] If one’s primary approach to reality is through knowledge-categories (such as young/old, male/female, rich/poor, human, pigeon, dog etc.), then one is indeed depriving oneself of Existential knowledge as one would naturally miss all the idiosyncrasies and in-betweens that are present outside of the subject’s pre-conceived mental pigeonholes. But, as opposed to the limit-experience which, as we have seen, is a tyrant of the psyche, knowledge-categories at least constitute a reductionist model of reality and thus a broader outlook than the one provoked by the the limit-experience.
Thus, while poststructuralist epistemology as a source of Existential knowledge is decidedly poor, Epicurean epistemology is simply ok.
Objective knowledge: By ‘Objective knowledge’ we mean much the same as what Karl Popper meant by his Third World, that is, the state of our scientific and objective knowledge as it exists in books, letters, on discs, hard drives etc.[38] Without going into it here, we shall also assume, as did Popper, that the epistemology of the Third World is possible, even without a knowing subject.[39] This condition is not central to our argument, but it will help us unite our inquiry into Objective knowledge with the subject-less philosophy of poststructuralism.
4 Conclusion
While poststructuralism may indeed surpass the traditional Epicurean-Cartesian system with regards to auiring self-knowledge of one’s everyday persona, the poststructuralist adherence to the limit-experience is flawed as a source of Existential knowledge, and regarding objective, scientific knowledge, only the Epicurean-Cartesian system of rational knowledge will ultimately do.
| Immediate Knowledge | Existential Knowledge | Objective Knowledge | |
| Epicureanism | Poor | Ok | Good |
| Poststructuralism | Good | Poor | Poor |
References
Ansell-Pearson, Keith: An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker: The Perfect Nihilist (Cambridge University Press 1994)
Bülow, Katharina von: Contredire est undevoir (Le débat September-October 1986)
Dean, Michell: Critical And Effective Histories: Foucault’s Methods and Historical Sociology (Routledge 1994)
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F.: Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Continuum International Publishing Group 1994)
Dews, Peter: Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist thought and the claims of critical theory (Verso Books 2007)
Ferry, L. & Renaut, A.: French Philosophy of the Sixties (University of Massachusetts Press 1990)
Foucault, Michel: Abnormal: Lectures at the College De France 1974-75 (Verso Books 2003)
Foucault, Michel: Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage 1995)
Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 1995 ed.)
Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 2006 ed.)
Foucault, Michel: Religion and Culture (Manchester University Press 1999)
Foucault, Michel: The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences (Routledge 2004)
Gutting, Gary (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (Cambridge University Press 2005)
Heidegger, Martin: Being and Time (Blackwell Publishers 1974)
Kelly, Michael: Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault / Habermas Debate (The MIT Press 1994)
Lyotard, Jean-François: Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (Stanford University Press 1994)
Lyotard, Jean-François: Libidinal Economy (Continuum 2004)
Lyotard, Jean-François: The Postmodern Condition (Manchester University Press 1984
Miller, James: The Passion of Michel Foucault (Harvard University Press 2000)
Nāgārjuna: Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend: With Commentary by Kyabje Kangyur Rinpoche (Snow Lion Publications 2005)
Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: Writings from the Early Notebooks (Cambridge University Press 2009)
Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: Writings from the Late Notebooks (Cambridge University Press 2003)
Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (Cambridge University Press 1999)
Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: The Will to Power (Random House 1973)
Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: Twilight of the idols, or, How to philosophize with the hammer (Oxford University Press 2009)
Oksala, Johanna: Foucault on Freedom (Cambridge University Press 2005)
Popper, Karl R.: Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford University Press 1979)
Rabinow, Paul (ed.): Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. (The New Press 1997)
Scott, G.A.: Does Socrates Have a Method?: Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond (Pennsylvania State University Press 2004)
Simons, Jonathan: Foucault and the Political (Routledge 1995)
Warren, James: Facing Death – Epicurus and his Critics (Oxford University Press 2004) pp. 155-6
Ancient Sources
Epicurus: The Four-Part Cure
Epicurus: The Letter to Pythocles
Epicurus: The Letter to Menoeceus
Epicurus: The Sage as an Ethical Role Model
Nāgārjuna (attributed): Hymn to the Dharmadhātu
Nāgārjuna: Letter to a Friend
Plato: Apology
Plato: Symposium
Plato: Theaetetus
Porphyry: The Letter To Marcella
NOTES
[1] Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F.: Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia pp. 3-4
[2] Heidegger, Martin: Being and Time p. 150, pp. 165-6, cf. Ferry, L. & Renaut, A.: French Philosophy of the Sixties p. 214
[3] Plato: The Theaetetus 210bc, cf. The Apology 29b, cf. The Symposium 218bc, cf. Scott, G.A.: Does Socrates Have a Method?: Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond pp. 204-7
[4] Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 1995 ed.) p. 287
[5] Dews, Peter: Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist thought and the claims of critical theory p. 259, cf. Foucault, Michel: “Michel Foucault: An Interview by Stephen Riggins“, featured in Rabinow, Paul (ed.): Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. p. 129
[6] Foucault, Michel: Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison pp. 127-131 cf. Dean, Michell: Critical And Effective Histories: Foucault’s Methods and Historical Sociology pp.164-167, cf. Kelly, Michael: Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault / Habermas Debate pp. 269-271
[7] Lyotard, Jean-François: Libidinal Economy p. 249
[8] Lyotard, Jean-François: The Postmodern Condition, §15. The full quote will convey the author’s intent: “A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person is always located at ‘nodal points’ of specific communication circuits, however tiny these may be.” That is supposedly to say: Only through the relinquishment of analytical knowledge-categories can the individual truly be himself. For further examples, see: Lyotard, Jean-François: Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime pp. 238-239
[9] Foucault, Michel: The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences p. xxvi cf. Foucault, Michel: Religion and Culture p. 23, cf. Miller, James: The Passion of Michel Foucault p. 32
[10] Foucault, Michel: A Preface to Transgression in Foucault, Michel: Religion and Culture pp. 57-72, and Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 2006 ed.) pp. 249-254, and Foucault, Michel: Abnormal: Lectures at the College De France 1974-75 pp. 173-4, cf. Gutting, Gary: The Cambridge Companion to Foucault p. 22, cf. Simons, Jonathan: Foucault and the Political pp. 69-70,
[11] Lyotard, Jean-François: The Postmodern Condition, §15
[12] Porphyry: The Letter To Marcella, 31
[13] Foucault, Michel: “Michel Foucault: An Interview by Stephen Riggins“, featured in Rabinow, Paul (ed.): Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. p. 129
[14] Foucault, Michel: Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison p. 30
[15] In Foucault’s rendition of the scientific episteme, van Gogh would supposedly need doctors’ permission to paint paintings. Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 2006 ed.) p. 203, 273
[16] Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 2006 ed.) p. 223
[17] Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 2006 ed.) pp. 100-101
[18] Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization (Routledge 2006 ed.) pp. 263-4
[19] Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: The birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music §22
[20] Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: The birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music, An Attempt at Self-Criticism §1, cf. Appendix, §2
[21] Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: Twilight of the idols, or, How to philosophize with the hammer, cf. Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: The birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music, §13 cf. Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: Notebook Entry, KSA 8.97, 6: “Socrates … I am constantly doing battle with him.”, cf. Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: The Will To Power, §432
[22] Ansell-Pearson, Keith: An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker: The Perfect Nihilist pp. 67-68
[23] Epicurus: The Four-Part Cure (“Do not fear God / Do not Worry about death / What is good is easy to get / and what is terrible is easy to endure.”), cf. Letter To Pythocles, 110, 111, cf. The Letter to Menoeceus, 124, 132, 133, cf. Warren, James: Facing Death – Epicurus and his Critics pp. 155-6
[24] Epicurus: Letter To Pythocles, 88, 89, 96, 97, 112
[25] Epicurus: The Letter to Menoeceus, 128, 133, cf. The Sage as an Ethical Role Model, 118-120
[26] Epicurus: The Letter to Menoeceus, 131
[27] Popper, Karl R.: Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, chapters 3 and 4.
[28] Epicurus: The Letter to Pythocles, 98, 109, cf. Letter to Menoeceus, 132-133
[29] Epicurus: The Letter to Pythocles, 85
[30] Foucault, Michel: The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences p. xxvi cf. Foucault, Michel: Religion and Culture p. 23, cf. Miller, James: The Passion of Michel Foucault p. 32
[31] Foucualt, Michel, quoted in Oksala, Johanna: Foucault on Freedom p. 129
[32] Foucault, Michel: “Michel Foucault: An Interview by Stephen Riggins“, featured in Rabinow, Paul (ed.): Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. p. 129
[33] Foucault, Michel, quoted in Bülow, Katharina von: Contredire est undevoir p. 177
[34] Plato: The Theaetetus 210bc, cf. The Apology 29b, cf. The Symposium 218bc, cf. Scott, G.A.: Does Socrates Have a Method?: Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond pp. 204-7
[35] Nāgārjuna: Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend: With Commentary by Kyabje Kangyur Rinpoche p. 33, 93, 96, 150
[36] As we have seen, the poststructuralists claim that you cannot be free whilst experiencing the world through the rational cogito, but they fail to explain how one can be free while undergoing an arbitrary limit-experience. In the world of knowledge-categories there are at least several different categories to choose from, whereas in the world of limit-experiences there is only one limit experience at a time. The poststructuralist might argue that one can choose what type of limit-experience one would subject oneself to, thereby constituting a similar multitude of options, but how could a person choose between different types of limit-experiences without relying on knowledge-categories in the first place?
[37] This will be my argument, but I believe it fairly evident from passages such as Nāgārjuna’s Hymn to the Dharmadhātu, verse 6, trans. Donald Lopez in Lopez, Donald S., Jr. (ed.): Buddhist Scriptures (Penguin Books 2004) p. 466
[38] Popper, Karl R.: Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach p. 107
[39] Popper, Karl R.: Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach pp. 115-117
Psykologers arrogance
I 1970’erne var det helt standard i psykometriske undersøgelser at antage, at deltog man i foreningsarbejde (sådan som psykologer selv havde/har for vane), så var man et kreativt og velafbalanceret menneske. Omvendt, hvis man *ikke* deltog i foreningsarbejde, så var det angiveligt et tegn på, at man var snæversynet og lukket over for sin omverden. Denne antagelse viste sig ikke at holde stik, og siden da har psykologer lært deres lektie og er holdt op med at anvende deres egne personlige værdier som målestok for, hvad der er psykologisk normalt. … Eller er de?
Her er en nylig undersøgelse foretaget af tre psykologer. Hvis man svarer ‘nej’ til første spørgsmål, og ‘ja’ til de to andre, så indikerer det ifølge psykologerne, at man er “environmental denier,” altså en, der “benægter miljømæssige virkeligheder.” Selvom der findes fysikere og biologer, der skriver videnskabelige artikler om, hvorfor vi eksempelvis ikke løber tør for råstoffer, så er det altså ikke blot psykologerne, der ved bedst. Psykologstanden (forfattere, peer-reviewers, tidsskriftets redaktion) ved simpelthen, at disse fysikere og biologer altså har en forstyrret virkelighedsopfattelse.
1: “If things continue on their present course, we will soon experience a major environmental catastrophe.”
2: “The earth has plenty of natural resources if we just learn how to develop them.”
3: “Humans will eventually learn enough about how nature works to be able to control it.”
Freudian Personality Types
Anal Types
The anal-expulsive type is often sadistic in conduct in so far as he will attempt to break down the people that he perceives as trying to control his urge towards expulsion upon the world and his ill-planned participation in the events that surround him. In bed, he may be either a sexual sadist (dominator) or a masochist (subjugating himself to the dominance of others). Both of these dispositions hark back to the fundamental immoderation that is the hallmark of this type.
On the other hand, in the case of the anal-retentive type, he is normally prim and proper in interpersonal matters, but may reveal a “background sadism” upon closer inspection – a certain schadenfreude (a delight in the misfortunes of others) is often visible. This schadenfreude is, however, not genuine sadism: It is not there because the anal-retentive type really wants to break others, but rather because he perceives the misfortunes striking others as his reward for “following the rules” as tightly as he does. Unconsciously, the anal-retentive type hates following the rules just as much as the next guy. Contrary to immediate perception, he does not enjoy being a stickler, and doing everything “by the book” drains his life of joy. But since he feels that he has to follow the rules, he must compensate by telling himself that there must also be some reward for doing so. And so the “reward” is that misfortunes of fate tend to happen to others, but not to himself. That is his reward for following the rules.
In bed, the anal-retentive type may exhibit sadistic (dominating) behavior, but again, his true drive is not to bring others down. In bed, his sadism is a manifestation of his need to control an otherwise unpredictable situation by, for example, putting the partner in fetters.
Phallic Types
“Goethe conceived of a human being who would be strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily manners, self-controlled, reverent towards himself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
The phallic-aggressive type evinces very poor reactions to even minor defeats and has a tendency to externalize the blame for defeats. He tends to have a narcissistic and infantile sexuality. If the aspirations of the phallic-aggressive type are frustrated in early adulthood, the phallic type can become an exhibitionist as a way of gaining the attention which their talents did not allow them to develop and realize in life.
With regards to the phallic type, the themes that unite both the aggressive and the placid version of the type is the wish to be in possession of people and institutions around them. For example, a man who views his mistress as a possession, rather than as a human being in her own right, or the man who defines his mistress in terms of the pleasure that she can provide for him, rather than who she is in herself, might be said to exhibit the traits of the phallic type.
Similarly, in a business context, the man who strives to possess the company which he works for may be a phallic type: Just like the man mentioned above may fuse his own identity with that of his mistress, a phallic type may fuse his personal identity with the company that he works for. Other employees of similar seniority are perceived as rivals, and competing ideas about how to accomplish the same thing for the firm are perceived as personal attacks. The phallic type is competitive, forceful and assertive, but secretly has a fear of collapse and yielding that is often palpable as it sits immediately under the surface.
Owing to these dispositions, the phallic type has a knack for getting himself into situations that he lacks the resources to resolve himself: His domination steers him into uncharted waters in pursuit of the grandiose goals of domination and accomplishment that he glimpses on the horizon, yet when he later capsizes and overturns in unknown waters, he cannot turn back and admit that he made a mistake and that he that was responsible for the faulty course – for that would be a concession to the fear of collapse and yielding.
He is like a driver who, upon losing control of the car, finds himself unable to step on the brake, but slams down the speeder instead. It is like he is inflating a balloon, and as it begins to crack around the edges, he can only inflate it some more.
Sexually, the phallic type is likely to be quite normal (though he may be gloating and unduly ceremonious about sex with a new partner and for the same reason also prone to infidelity). But while normal in bed, he may be sadistic or exploitative in interpersonal affairs. Their aim is to break or incapacitate the other, so that they can dominate undauntedly. On the other hand, where the aggressive phallic type always wants to plot the course, the placid phallic plays the social imbecile with no idea of where to go.
Pinker’s Arguments for Genetic Gender Differences
Geneticists have found that the diversity of the DNA in the mitochondria of different people (which men and women inherit from their mothers) is far greater than the diversity of the DNA in Y chromosomes (which men inherit from their fathers). This suggests that for tens of millennia men had greater variation in their reproductive success than women. (…) These are precisely the conditions that cause sexual seletion, in which males compete for opportunities to mate and females choose the best-quality mates.
Here are a dozen kinds of evidence that suggest that the [biological] difference between men and women is more than genitalia-deep:
– Sex differences are not an arbitrary feature of Western culture (…) In all human cultures, men and woman are seen as having different natures. (…)- Many of the psychological differences between the sexes are exactly what an evolutionary biologist who knew only their physical differences would predict. Throughout the animal kingdom, when the female has to invest more calories and risk in each offspring (in the case of mammals, through pregnancy and nursing), she also invests more in nurturing the offspring after birth, since it is more costly for a female to replace a child than for a male to replace one. (…)
– Many of the sex differences are found widely in other primates, indeed, throughout the mammalian class. The males tend to compete more aggressively and to be more polygamous; the females tend to invest more in parenting. (…)
– The human body contains a mechanism that causes the brains of boys and the brains of girls to diverge during development. The Y chromosome triggers the growth of tests in a male fetus, which secrete androgens, the characteristically male hormones (including testosterone). Androgens have lasting effects on the brain during fetal development, in the months after birth, and during puberty, and they have transient effects at other times. Estrogens, the characteristically female sex hormones, also affect the brain throughout life. Receptors for the sex hormones are found in the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, and the amygdala in the limbic system of the brain, as well as in the cerebral cortex.
– Variation in the level of testosterone among different men, and in the same man in different seasons or at different times of day, correlates with libido, self-confidence, and the drive for dominance. (…) There is a causal effect (…) When women preparing for a sex-change operation are given androgens, they improve on tests of mental rotation and get worse on tests of verbal fluency. (…) Higher-testosterone women smile less often and have more extramarital affairs, a stronger social presence, and even a stronger handshake.
– Women’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses vary with the phase of their menstrual cycle. When estrogen levels are high, women get even better at tasks on which they typically do better than men, such as verbal fluency. When the levels are low, women get better at tasks on which men typically do better, such as mental rotation. A variety of sexual motives, including their taste in men, vary with the menstrual cycle as well. (…)
– The ultimate fantasy experiment to separate biology from socialization would be to take a baby boy, give him a sex-change operation, and have his parents raise him as a girl and other people treat him as one. If gender is socially constructed, the child should have the mind of a normal girl; if it depends on prenatal hormones, the child should feel like a boy trapped in a girl’s body. Remarkarbly, the experiment has been done in real life – not out of scientific curiosity, of course, but as a result of disease and accidents. One study looked at twenty-five boys who were born without a penis (a birth defect known as cloacal exstrophy) and who were then castrated and raised as girls. ALL of them showed male patterns of rough-and-tumble play and had typically male attitudes and interests. More than half of them spontaneously declared they were boys, one when he was just five years old. (…)
Things are not looking good for the theory that boys and girls are born identical except for their genitalia, with all other differences coming from the way society treats them. (…)
Of course, just because many sex differences are rooted in biology does not mean that one sex is superior, that the differences will emerge for all people in all circumstances, that discrimination against a person based on sex is justified, or that people should be coerced into doing things typical of their sex. But neither are the differences without consequences.