In brief, Descartes asserts that the mind, independent of the senses, must turn the intellect inward, realizing the "I am" as pure mind (cogiton) so as to construct an external reality, as well as one's relationship with said extended reality. For Descartes, the only union that exists between the mind and the body is that of the mind as a pilot to the body machine, capable of existing quite independently of it.
While reading Damasio, I was urged by three issues:
* The mutuality of the mind and the body in regard to emotion, namely suffering.
* If there is a mutuality, there must be a mediator.
* What does all of this mean for analysis?
Damasio dives into the neutral underpinning of emotions in regard to the body which echo (much more scientifically) the correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth of Bohemia. Damasio, in a nutshell, explains that emotions are not elusive, but rather images of the landscape of the body. Furthermore, they are mechanisms of life itself. If this is the case, Damasio rightly notes the corporeal body as a yardstick to the mind.
Elisabeth presents one of the earliest, most genuine critiques of the Cartesian system. By way of an extensive correspondence, she admitted an inability to logically grasp Descartes' mind/body dualism. How, she constantly asked, can there be a union of two utterly separate, utterly distinct things? With this, how can the soul, something entirely immaterial, move the entirely material body?
She manages to understand the union only through the senses, namely suffering. She breaks down quite well that one can grasp clearly and distinctly the ideas of res extensa and res cogitons, yet cannot clearly and distinctly the union of the two, suggesting that the soul of the mind is itself extended.
This argument, for the in-extension of the soul as being contrary to Descartes' assertion that it moves the body (since there is no clear and distinct idea for their union in this) exposes a fundamental gap in his system.
What comes of this is the need for a mediator. Anne Finch Conway establishes a metaphysics that effectively serves as the mediator between Descartes and Elisabeth (and later, Damasio). Conway, through the use of religious terminology, conceived the following system:
God (incorporeal)
↕
Logos (Christ) → ouisos (essence, unsubstantiated, rational plan of the world)
→ proforikos (revealed nature of God, soul, instantiated)
↕Creatures (corporeal)
Conway establishes God as creator, for our purpose, the mind, at the top of the chain. At the bottom are creatures, bodies, all that is corporeal. Mediating between the two is the Logos, Christ, which is divided into two categories, ouisos and proforikos. The former is the essence, the latter the instance. The dual Logos perfectly illustrated in the figure of Christ, who was believed to be both fully human and fully divine, allows for creatures to have in them the essence of creation (God), or more suitably, the mind, or the incorporeal.
Creatures, in this system, operate on a continuum of vitality. This is a return to Elisabeth insofar as the passions of the soul serve to better the body, and that for this to be the case, the soul and the body cannot be distinct. Lady Conway states (much better than I can):
"For if a creature were entirely limited by its own individuality and totallty constrained and confined within the narrow boundaries of its own species to the point that there was no mediator through which one creature would change into another, then no creature could attain further perfection...nor could creatures act and react upon each other in different ways...
...Since the divine power, goodness and wisdom has created good creatures so that they may continually and infinitely move towards the good through their own mutability, the glory of their attributes shines more and more. And this is the nature of all creatures, namely that they be in continual motion or operation, which most certainly strives for their further good" (32).
Something tells me Lacan would have enjoyed Conway, there is a bit of Spinoza in her...
And finally, analysis.
Our hands are dirty. We sift constantly through dusty, old ideas. What for? What's the point?
It's simple. We still don't really understand the mind. The eternal S1 and S2, the mind and the body, will always be misunderstood. It's damned to it.
Elisabeth and Conway had suffering as the symptom. The power of emotion over the body, and of the body over emotion was so pressing that they could not, would not, logically accept a separation of the two. This goes in hand with what Jacques-Allain Miller states in The Symptom and the Body Event: "Lacan congratulated Aristotle for having on one hand isolated the subject of the signifier, but, on the other for not having totally separated it from the affected individual who should be corporeal substance...a body capable of jouissance...the parlêtre is the union of Aristotle's upokeimenon and ouisa, the union of the subjext and the substance, of the signifier and the body."
The body is vital to life. It shapes it, and is shaped by the mind. It is this cycle that demands mediation. In making matter entirely under the thumb of thought, jouissance of the body is out the window.
Even in the formation of the body image there is an inseparable, necessary knotting of the Innenwelt and the Umwelt. The form or structure (Gestalt) that emerges must be a unity. This knotting echoes Conway when she states: "Nevertheless creatures and the will that created them are so mutually present and happen one after the other so immediately that nothing can intervene, just as if two circles should immediately touch eachother."
The fundamental misunderstanding of the mind still defies science. What rises from this is a need for a mutuality between neuroscience and analysis. The "disembodied mind" remains beyond science. If we content ourselves with Cartesian dualism, there can be no accounting for the symptom or jouissance. Descartes left us with a body wholly contingent on the mind. Yet the body we possess, our corporeal form, is just one part of a cyclical structure.
Descartes denied it.
Elisabeth and Conway moved toward it.
We're stuck trying to make sense of it.
Mikey batz suxxxxx
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