The philosophical issue of "cause" in health and medicine

This one is worth reading if you are interested in the question of cause in science and medicine:

http://vaccinationissues.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-on-cervical-cancer-and-gardasil.html

Science, religion, politics and stem cell research

In light of my current focus on Rousseau and his first discourse, the current debate in the NSW Parliament may be worthy of our interest:

http://health-and-wellbeing.blogspot.com/2007/06/embryonic-stem-cell-research.html

Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Part II

Rousseau was 37 years old when a single incident changed his life and he became the philosopher we recognize today. It was 1749. He was in Paris attempting to make a name for himself with a new system of musical notation he had devised. His best friend, Denis Diderot (who would soon publish Volume 1 of the famous Encyclopedia) was in jail in Vincennes, not far from Paris, for a recent publication. Rousseau was visiting his friend. He described what happened in a letter to a French civil servant called Malesherbes more than a decade later, at a time when both "Emile" and "The social contract" were at the printer's (in January 1762; he had published his "First discourse" in 1750, his "Second discourse" on inequality in 1755 and "Julie" in 1761). He further described this event in his "Confessions", written four years later (1766-1770). Below I quote from both works and allow Rousseau to tell the story in his own words:

From: "The confessions"([1766-1770]1782), Part II, Book Eight: "The summer of that year 1749 was excessively hot. Vincennes is some six miles (10 kilometres) from Paris. In no condition to pay for cabs, I walked there at two in the afternoon when I was alone and I went fast so as to arrive early. The trees along the road, always lopped according to the custom of the country, hardly gave any shade; and often I was so prostrated with heat and weariness that I lay down on the ground, unable to go further. In order to slacken my pace, I thought of taking a book with me. One day I took the "Mercure de France" and, glancing through it as I walked, I came upon this question propounded by the Dijon Academy for the next year's prize: Has the progress of the sciences and arts done more to corrupt morals or improve them? The moment I read this I beheld another universe and became another man".

From: Christopher Kelly, Roger D Masters and Peter G Stillman (editors), “The collected Writings of Rousseau”, Volume 5. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995, Page 575: Letter to Malesherbes, 12 January 1762: In this famous letter (12 January 1762) to Malesherbes, Rousseau continued:

"If anything has ever resembled a sudden inspiration, it is the motion that was caused in me by that reading; suddenly I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights; crowds of lively ideas presented themselves at the same time with a strength and a confusion that threw me into an inexpressible perturbation; I feel my head seized by a dizziness similar to drunkenness. A violent palpitation oppresses me, makes me sick to my stomach; not being able to breathe anymore while walking, I let myself fall under one of the trees of the avenue and I pass a half-hour there in such an agitation that when I got up again I noticed the whole front of my coat soaked with my tears without having felt that I shed them. Oh Sir, if I had ever been able to write a quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, how clearly I would have made all the contradictions of the social system (be) seen, with what strength I would have exposed all the abuses of our institutions, with what simplicity I would have demonstrated that man is naturally good and that it is from these institutions alone that men become wicked. Everything that I was able to retain of these crowds of great truths which illuminated me under that tree in a quarter of an hour has been weakly scattered about in my three principal writings, namely that first discourse, the one on inequality ["Second discourse"], and the treatise on education ["Emile"], which three works are inseparable and together form the same whole. All the rest has been lost...That is how when I was thinking about it least, I became an author in spite of myself.”

Rousseau continued the story in "The confessions":
"(W)hen I reached Vincennes I was in a state of agitation bordering on delirium. Diderot noticed it; I told him the cause and read him Fabricius's soliloquay which I had written in pencil under an oak tree. He encouraged me to give my ideas wings and compete for the prize. I did so and from that moment I was lost. All the rest of my life and of my misfortunes followed inevitably as a result of that moment's madness.

My feelings rose with the most inconceivable rapidity to the level of my ideas. All my little passions were stifled by an enthusiasm for truth, freedom and virtue; and the most astonishing is that this fermentation worked in my heart for more than four or five years [1749-1754] as intensely perhaps as it has ever worked in the heart of anyone on earth" [To be continued]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) - Part I

Jean-Jacques Rousseau deserves a place with not only the most important philosophers but the most significant sages about whom we have written records. It is not surprising that Socrates was one of his models, since Rousseau can justifiably be seen as the modern Socrates, albeit a flawed one, indeed, a highly-flawed one. And, while his influence on the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries is regarded as significant, I believe we have yet to take Rousseau's message seriously. What Rousseau wrote, especially between 1749 and 1762, could then, if it had been taken seriously and could even now, if we were to take it seriously, restore sanity to an insane world.

Personal background:

I was 16 years old when I first read about Rousseau, in the context of my then burgeoning interest in the English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. I do not actually recall reading about him at this time, but I know I must have done so because I read a fascinating biography of Shelley at this time (early-to-mid-1964) and it is inconceivable that any biography of Shelley could fail to mention Rousseau's influence on Shelley or the latter's fascination with Rousseau (Shelley carried a copy of Rousseau's novel "Julie" with him everywhere at a certain point in his life). When I enrolled in first year Arts at Sydney University the following year (1965), I again became acquainted with Rousseau as a result of my study of French literature, philosophy and politics. Although my favourite philosophers were the British empiricists, in particular, David Hume (a contemporary of Rousseau) and John Stuart Mill (with a much smaller interest in John Locke) and some of the precursors to existentialism like Schopenhauer and Kirkegaard, I was very aware of Rousseau both as a political philosopher (author of "The social contract") and as a novelist, as the author of "Julie: or the New Heloise". This was during the years 1965 to 1967. My interest in Rousseau was rekindled when I returned to Uni in 1971 to complete my philosophy major and begin the study of psychology. Locke, Hume, John Stuart Mill and Rousseau were all mentioned in the context of child psychology or developmental psychology as it was called. But my real interest in Rousseau dates from 1973, when I was already doing third year psychology honours and decided to enroll in an Education honors class as well. Here, Rousseau's "Emile" seemed. to me, to be a sort of a bible (much the same as "Julie" and "The confessions" had been the bibles in French literature eight years earlier). Progressive education, humanistic education, alternatives in education were all the rage at this time and, al;though I did not at first share the other students' enthusiasm for these ideas - which revolted me because they didn't appear to me to be "scientific" - I have come to recognize the profound influence that these six months of educational studies had on me (See "Andrew's story" at www.consciouslivingseminars.com ).

The birth of my second daughter and the way this birth influenced the family dynamic pushed me away from behaviourism and the so-called "scientific" approach to psychology and towards the ideas I had previously rejected (My reading the works of John Bowlby, Erich Fromm, Erik Erikson, Carl Rogers and R.D Laing during 1971-1973 was equally significant). During my Honours year (1974) I read through the progressive education literature and became a convert and, in 1976, when I began my postgraduate studies, nominally in psychology but choosing progressive education as my topic, I renewed my interest in Rousseau and bought an English translation of "The confessions" (I only had it in French), as well as "Emile", Rousseau's famous treatise on education. Rousseau was an important influence on my conception of children, human nature and education and, not surprisingly, on my PhD thesis ("History of an alternative school: An attempt to demodernise", 1983).

Soon after this (1985) I became interested in Aboriginal Affairs, joined the Department of Aboriginal affaitrs (DAA) for four years and eventually went to live on an Aboriginal reserve on the mid-north-coast of NSW for a further four years, followed by an eight-year involvement with a Sydney-based Aboriginal land council. As a result of these experiences and as part of my work for the land council, I began to study the early documents relating to the colonisation of Australia by the British in the 18th century. As part of my research I began to read the diaries of James Cook amongst others and was fascinated by his unusually sympathetic description of Aboriginal people. His biographer, Professor Beaglehole, "accused" him of reading Rousseau and allowing his observations to be prejudiced by this reading. So, during 1994, I began reading Rousseau again, this time focussing on his "Second Discourse", sometimes referred to as "the discourse on inequality" (written in 1754 and published in 1755). Since that time, I have re-read most of what Rousseau wrote, as well as Maurice Cranston's three-volume biography (1982, 1991 and 1997) and the more recent one by Leo Damrosch (2005). I should say that my emerging interest in the institution of modern medicine, especially since 2002, when my grandchildren were born, as well as my renewed interest in the history and philosophy of science (which dates back to my fascination with physics in the early 1960s) have strengthened my attraction to Rousseau and his message to the world.

With this personal introduction, I may perhaps begin to introduce the essence of Rousseau's teachings, in the context of his times, something I will begin in my next post [To be continued].

Arthur Schopenhauer

The second philosopher I would like to introduce is Schopenhauer (1788-1859). Again, for convenience, I am reprinting an article I originally wrote three years ago.

The Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, Socrates, Plato, Kant and Schopenhauer (written 9-20 February, 2003)

Over the last two to three years, as preparation for the creation of Conscious Living Seminars, I have been re-reading material I had first read in the sixties and seventies; mostly works in Philosophy and Psychology, some History, some Sociology – even some literature (the English and French Romantics, with a few German-speaking poets and philosophers thrown in). I’ve found it a fascinating experience, re-reading things I had first read 30-35 (in some cases almost 40) years ago. Several times in the last 18 years I actually gave up reading altogether. The first time was in December, 1984 after my remarkable experiences with Self-Transformation Seminars (ST). The last time was two years ago when I read something which upset me so much that I became physically sick (I spent several weeks in bed with the flu, in the middle of Summer). I have again reached the point where I can hear myself say:
“Enough reading”. Yet there is enormous value in reading, especially the thoughts and doings of people who lived at a different time, in different circumstances. My most recent reading – prompted by a desire to understand more fully the context in which modern (western) Psychology was born – has been the German-speaking world of the nineteenth century, with several detours into the eighteenth. What an eye-opener! Yes, I read much of this stuff in the mid-sixties; but that was a long time ago. I re-read much of it in the seventies, to be sure, but even that was light-years away from the present.

What is the point I am making? It is this. We are not alone. There is nothing new under the sun. Our “issues” – as we tend to call them today – our troubles, our concerns are not new. They were all known to those who came before us. The “new” concepts, the “new” approaches or “therapies” that are proposed to help us deal with or resolve our “problems” are neither “new” nor revolutionary. More important still, we can learn from those who came before us; we do not need to keep on repeating their mistakes in order to learn the same lessons.
Let’s start with one of my earliest loves – Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). As I mentioned earlier, my awakening began in early 1964, when I suddenly became aware of death. This led to despair and depression and, in this new state of consciousness, I discovered the English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and, through Shelley, something called “Philosophy”. I fell in love with philosophy, enrolled in a subject with that name the following year (1965) and began my intellectual journey. At the beginning of the 1965 academic year I enrolled in an eight-week extracurricular course of (lunchtime) lectures in “existentialism”. Amongst the earliest precursors of “modern, post-war existentialism” were, we were told, three nineteenth-century philosophers: Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900). I quickly fell in love with the first two while finding Nietzsche fascinating but incomprehensible. I immediately bought and read a paperback called The Essential Schopenhauer, which comprised a selection of essays from a book originally published in 1851 and also read some excerpts from an earlier work by Schopenhauer, completed between 1814 and 1818. In addition, I read several commentaries on Schopenhauer. Until recently, I recalled very little of what I had read by or about Schopenhauer, remembering only that I was attracted by his pessimism. Yet now, 38 years later, I have rediscovered what a wealth of insights this amazing genius had bequeathed the world. To my horror, amongst these are Schopenhauer’s reworking of what he had read in the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the Vedas. I say “to my horror” because I have no conscious memory of reading any of this material, even though some of it was actually underlined by me at the time! As late as last year, when I was writing my “story” for the website, I believed that my first exposure to (the ancient Indian philosophy which developed into what came to be called) “Hinduism” did not occur until March, 1988. An important lesson!

In re-reading Schopenhauer after a passage of 38 years I am simply awestruck by the profundity of what he had to say. How is this for a sample? “… whoever is satisfied with life as it is, whoever affirms it in every way, can confidently regard it as endless, and can banish the fear of death as an illusion” (1818). After giving several examples of what would ordinarily be described as “selfless”, “courageous” actions in which people have saved the lives of others, even when they themselves were “already destined to death, beyond any hope of rescue”, Schopenhauer writes: “In all these cases we see an individual in the face of his own immediate and certain destruction no longer thinking of saving himself, so that he may direct the whole of his efforts to saving someone else. How could there be a clearer expression of the consciousness that what is being destroyed is only a phenomenon [that is, mere appearance], and that the destruction itself is only a phenomenon; that, on the other hand, the real being of the person who meets his death is untouched by that event, and lives on in the other person, in whom, even now, as his action betrays, he so clearly perceives it to exist? For if this were not so, and it was his real being which was about to be annihilated, how could that being spend its last efforts in showing such an ardent sympathy in the welfare and continued existence of another?” (1851). Schopenhauer asks how a person “may become conscious of his own existence” [that is, of the Real Self, rather than the everyday self, or ego]. He replies: “[B]y going down into the depths of his own nature, a person may become conscious that he is all in all; that, in fact, he is the only real being; and that, in addition, this real being perceives itself again in others, who present themselves from the outside, as though they formed a mirror of himself … [This going down into the depths of his own nature] makes a person immediately conscious that he is the thing-in-itself [that is, what we could call “essence” or the person’s “essential nature”]. This is a doctrine in which … I have the Vedas to support me”. Finally, “our self can exist in other beings whose consciousness is separated and different from our own” (The Essential Schopenhauer, Unwin Books, 1962: 134-135).

There is, of course, much, much more that is worth quoting (the exception is his incredibly twisted view of women). One problem we encounter, however, is that of language. Several commentators have noted the difficulty of translating Schopenhauer’s German into meaningful English (the above quotation is an exception, rather than the rule). Schopenhauer’s major work was Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, completed by August, 1818 and published at the end of that year (though bearing the date 1819). The two major concepts are “Wille” (nearly always – inappropriately – translated as “will”) and “Vorstellung”, sometimes translated as “idea” and sometimes as “representation”. So we have an author’s major life’s work being presented to the English-speaking world under two different titles: “The world as will and idea”; and “The world as will and representation” – neither of which is very helpful to our efforts to understand Schopenhauer. Yet another key concept is “Idee”, which some have translated as “Idea” with a capital “I” to indicate that it is Plato’s (or Socrates’s) concept of “Idea” (or “Form”) that Schopenhauer implies. None of this helps us, particularly since the English translation of Plato’s concept as “Idea” or “Form” is misleading. The best translation would be “essence” or “[the] essential nature [of things]”. Finally we have the near-impossibility of translating the original Sanskrit of the Vedas, the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita into any modern language. That is why Schopenhauer, in 1818, after trying to convey his meaning of his two key concepts (“Wille” and “Vorstellung”) for over 200 pages, finally gave up and wrote: “But if we had to convey to the beholder, for reflection and in a word, the explanation and information about their inner nature, it would be best for us to use the Sanskrit formula which occurs so often in the sacred books of the Hindus, and is called Mahavakya, ie the great word: ‘Tat tvam asi’, which means ‘This living thing art thou’” [The world as will and representation (1818), trans E F S Payne, New York: Dover Publications, 1958/1969: 220]. More than 30 years later (in 1851), he wrote: “The readers of my Ethics know that with me the ultimate foundation of morality is the truth which in the Vedas and the Vedanta receives its expression in the established, mystical formula, Tat twam asi (This is thyself), which is spoken with reference to every living thing, be it man or beast, and is called the Mahavakya, the great word”. Every person who acts “in accordance with this principle”, Schopenhauer continues, “recognises himself as identical with another individual, who exists in complete separation from him”. This is “the beginning of mysticism” he writes, based on the “recognition of a person’s own true being in another individual” and leads to genuinely ethical or moral behaviour (The Essential Schopenhauer, p133). Alan Watts, writing in 1956, explained it this way: “Indian philosophy does not describe the content of this discovery (of who or what I am, when I am no longer identified with any role or conventional definition of the person), except in mythological terms, using the phrase ‘I am Brahman” (aham brahman) or ‘That art thou” (tat tvam asi) to suggest that Self-knowledge is a realization of one’s original identity with God” (The way of Zen, Penguin Books, 1957/1962: 56). Watts points out (p55) that in Buddhism this “experience or state of consciousness” is called “moksha” or “liberation”.

The above considerations are precisely those that led us to explain, in the section on Philosophy, why we did not discuss such matters – and why we do not intend to discuss them in our courses. Everything I have just written amounts to WORDS. These words may, or they may not, have conveyed any meaning. There is, simply, no substitute for experience – and that means, that must mean, experience of the PRESENT. The more we can stay in the present moment, the more we can learn to connect with – and to remain in contact with – our moment-by-moment experience, the greater the likelihood that, from time to time, we might experience something we cannot express in words, or, perhaps, we might say: “TAT TWAM ASI”.

What, then, did Schopenhauer mean by the terms “Wille” and “Vorstellung”. It is clear from the above that, for Schopenhauer, the “Wille” was what today we might call our “Real Self” or our “Higher Self”, “Spirit”, “Soul” or “Essence” (or, even, our “Being”). This is the “Ding-an-sich” (the “thing-in-itself”) of Immanuel Kant. In the Upanishads, this is called the Atman and, as the words “tat twam asi” clearly indicate, that is who we really are; our essence is without form, timeless, eternal, indestructible; it is never born; it never dies; it defies conceptualisation. Now, interestingly, hardly anyone in the nineteenth century noticed this aspect of the meaning of “Wille”. The reason for this is that the German-speaking world of the nineteenth century (but, increasingly, the English-speaking world, too) was fascinated with the other, more pessimistic meaning of “Wille” – as was I myself in the 1960s. For Schopenhauer, this other aspect of the “Wille” can be expressed by words (all of which he used) such as “will-to-live”, “life force”, a “blind, irresistible urge”, an “unconscious, blind impulse”, a “dark driving force”, “desire”, “passion”, “motive” and “instinct”; the most powerful of these was the sexual impulse (1818: 329-330). This impulse or force is something of which the individual is unconscious; it is the real motor or driving force behind action, irrespective of the conscious reasons which we like to present (to ourselves and to others) when giving an account of our behaviour. When the “Schopenhauer revival” which began in the 1850s accelerated in the 1860s, Eduard von Hartmann, clearly recognising Schopenhauer’s intention, renamed his “Wille” (in 1869) with a far better word: “Das Unbewusst” (“the Unconscious”) and this was picked up, first by Nietzsche and then by Freud, amongst others. So Schopenhauer’s term covers what we would today call the unconscious aspect of our minds; this includes both our “shadow” (the Freudian unconscious) and our “Higher Self”.

As for “Vorstellung”, Schopenhauer made his meaning fairly clear in his first (1818) book. The world that surrounds us, including people, things and events, is a “mirror in which we see our own reflection”. “The outer mirrors the inner”, Schopenhauer said in 1851. “The phenomenal world [is] the mirror … - of the ‘Wille’” (1818: 275). “As … life, the visible world, the phenomenon, is only the mirror of the ‘Wille’, this world will accompany the ‘Wille’ as inseparably as a body is accompanied by its shadow” (1818: 275).
Andrew Reiner

Socrates

In order to begin with something, I reprint a very brief (and inadequate) articleI wrote a couple of years ago on Socrates. I decided to do this, in spite of its inadequacies, because it attempts the beginnings of an answer to the quesion "What is philosophy?" and the related one: "What is a philosopher?" Please feel free to add your thoughts.

Socrates (written Saturday, 22 February, 2003)

It seems as if everything took place in 1965. In that year, as part of my induction into first year Philosophy, I was introduced to Greek philosophy, especially as expressed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (even though Socrates never actually wrote anything). This aspect of the course was almost useless; we used poor translations of the original Greek; the commentaries provided were one-sided; and the lecturers presented these philosophers to us in a form that, for me at least, was devoid of meaning. Although I read Plato’s Republic for a second time for the Political Science component of Government II in 1967 and although I learned a little more from it on that occasion, I basically gave the Greeks away for the next thirty-odd years. Not until mid-2000 did I return to these philosophers – especially Socrates and Plato; this time, however, they almost blew me away by their relevance to things I had experienced since first reading them.

Socrates occupies a unique position in the Western world. He never wrote anything, yet his influence has been profound. A mystic and a sage whose wisdom has rarely been surpassed, his message to the world has been twisted almost beyond recognition by friend and foe alike. Both have turned him into a “Western intellectual”, when he was much more like a Taoist sage or an Aboriginal elder. Yet, even though Socrates speaks to us only through others, such as Plato, and even though the translations from the Greek have rendered him almost unrecognisable, a sympathetic reconstruction is possible. Plato has him say: “I am subject to a divine or supernatural experience … It began in my early childhood – a sort of voice which comes to me” (Apology, 31d). While it is inconceivable that Socrates would ever have said this, the picture of Socrates as someone with direct access to such a voice is credible. First hand accounts of Socrates in various life situations generally convey a picture of a person who felt himself to be divinely guided and who acted like someone who was so guided, even in battle (he took part in several military campaigns when he was young).

As for the message that Socrates conveyed to his followers, it sounds so similar to what we find in the Vedas and Upanishads that one is tempted (as Schopenhauer did) to assume a direct influence from the latter. Whether this was the case or whether, as is more likely, sages and mystics of all ages and in all places simply “tune in” to the same truth, the similarities are striking. Socrates believed that a cosmic intelligence operated in the universe. Human beings were a part of this essence and had knowledge of the essential nature of the universe prior to being born and their essence continued to exist after death. All so-called “learning” is a “recollection” of what we already “know”.

Socrates believed that the ordinary physical world of time and space was but an image or reflection of an ideal, perfect world. This was an ultimate, changeless reality. The process of what today we would call “becoming enlightened” he called (in the English translation!) “education”. As we grow, develop, learn, become educated (enlightened) we gradually acquire more and more “knowledge” (ie consciousness or awareness) of the essential nature or reality (outside of time and space), that is, of the ideal or perfect world. This (what today we would call) expanded consciousness has nothing to do with ordinary sense-perception (seeing, hearing and so on) and nothing to do with merely verbal or rational or cognitive or intellectual knowledge or understanding. The nature of this perfect, ideal world is perfect love, perfect beauty, perfect justice and light. A person who has reached this state is called a “lover of wisdom”, that is, a “philosopher” (philein = love; sophia = wisdom). A “philosopher”, for Socrates meant someone who was a genuine sage, an enlightened person or a mystic or a visionary. A philosopher is someone who is literally in love with truth. Such a person is characterised by what some schools of thought call “the sixth state of consciousness”. In The Republic, Plato has Socrates teach that an ideal state is one governed by such people. These are people for whom the welfare of the whole is paramount.

Now, I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that the above is an “interpretation” of Socrates’s thought, as it is of Socrates, the human being. However, so are all the “learned” theses that have been written over the last 2,500 years. Yet interpreters of Socrates rarely acknowledge that they are attempting to fit his thought into conceptual and linguistic categories with which they are comfortable (because familiar). I’m convinced that the interpretation offered above is closer to the nature of Socrates’s teachings than the hundreds of attempts to fit him into a rational/philosophical mould. But I can no more prove this than the rationalists can prove that their Socrates is the real one.

But perhaps this has given you a taste. Try Plato’s Republic for starters (remembering what has been said above about the translation.

What is Philosophy - What is a Philosopher?

Welcome to "Philosophers' Corner". Philosophy - or what I understood to be philosophy - was my "first love", discovered at the age of 16, in early 1964, when I was in the midst of a depression which was to last for the next 23 years. Philosophy was the reason I enrolled at the University of Sydney the following year (1965), although my father, who was financing the operation by supporting me, thought I was embarking on a career in law! I will write more, both about my personal journey and about what I understand to be the answer to the questions in the title of this post, later. I only wanted to introduce myself and my new blog. I also intend to write short biographies of philosophers whom, for various reasons, I feel a need to introduce and to write about. I also invite contributions from anyone moved to do so. I look forward to hearing from you.