The Reenchantment of the World (52 page)

New Scientist
, 5 September 1974,
pp. 578-81.

 

 

30. The sociology of knowledge did exist prior to modern times, but not in
a serious or systematic way. Protagoras states that "man is the measure
of all things," but he is referring to what an individual believes,
not a culture, and he makes no mention of social influences. Plato
says at one point that the lower classes cannot know the truth because
their work distorts their minds and bodies; but this statement is
really a sociology of error rather than an examination of the social
roots of an epistemology (although it must be admitted that the line
between these two is not altogether clear). Though there is a subdued
theme in Plato that social circumstances shape the subject of knowing,
it is much overpowered by the notion of the immutability of the Forms,
and it is not developed as an ongoing critique in any event. The subject
does not get any rigorous attention until the Enlightenment, and the
sociology of knowledge does not constitute a serious discipline prior
to Marx's classic formulation of the relationship between existence and
consciousness. (On this point see Werner Stark, "Sociology of Knowledge,"
in Paul Edwards, ed.,
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
, 7:475-78.)

 

 

The paradoxes that the discipline is capable of generating, however,
were known as far back as the fifth century B.C. Thus, what is called
"Mannheim's Paradox" is a version of the ancient puzzle known as the
"Liars Paradox" (A Greek said, "All Greeks are liars." Was he telling the
truth?). In other words, if one takes Mannheim seriously, his argument
that knowledge is situation-bound must apply to that argument itself
("What sort of culture produced the sociology of knowledge?") But if
it does apply, then the argument is wrong, or at least thrown in doubt;
and if the argument is wrong (knowledge is not situation-bound), then it
might be right, and so on. (Plato uses the same line of reasoning against
the doctrine of Protagoras in the
Theaetetus
, 171A.) Various Greek
schools of thought, such as those of the Megarians and the Eleatics,
delighted in elaborating puzzles of this sort; and in a more serious
vein, the so-called Third Man Argument of Plato's dialogue "Parmenides"
presents the paradox of infinite regress as a threat to the theory of
Forms. But we should be clear that although these various paradoxes do
involve radical relativism in suggesting that there may be no fixed truth,
they are strictly problems of logic, not equivalent to the sociology of
knowledge. That is, they do not develop the theme that information about
the world is relative because it is socially conditioned or culture-bound.

 

 

Finally, it is important to add that commentary itself is not an issue
here; there is plenty of commentary and analysis in the Talmud, for
example. But the rabbis of the Middle Ages did not, to my knowledge,
analyze the nature of their own analysis, any more than cultures that
lived by myth had myths about the general nature or epistemological
status of mythology -- that is, they had no myths explaining how myth
per se ascertains truth.

 

 

31. Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Birth of Tragedy
, trans. Francis Golffing
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1956), p. 95.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 6. Eros Regained

 

 

1. Susanne Langer,
Philosophy in a New Key
, 3d ed. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1957), pp. 88, 92.

 

 

2. Erich Neumann,
The Child
, trans. Ralph Mannheim (New York: Harper
& Row, 1976), pp. 11-17, 28, 30; Sam Keen,
Apology for Wonder
(New
York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 46. For two studies of child development
that view the first few weeks of life in Freudian terms, see Margaret
S. Mahler et al.,
The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis
and Individuation
(New York: Basic Books, 1975), and Edith Jacobson,
The Self and the Object World
(New York: International Universities
Press, 1964). Although Neumann described the first three months of
life in these terms, he did take issue with the term "narcissism" as
implying a type of power relationship, which is not possible if an other
is totally unrecognized.

 

 

The letter from Rolland is mentioned in a footnote inserted in the
1931 edition of
Civilization and Its Discontents
. Freud admired
that the letter "caused me no small difficulty. I cannot discover this
'oceanic' feeling in myself. It is not easy to deal scientifically with
feelings. One can attempt to describe their physiological signs." We can
begin to understand why Freud's view of human life was so pessimistic. See
James Strachey, ed.,
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud
, 24 vols. (London: The Hogarth Press, 1953-74),
21:65 and n.

 

 

3. At least, this was Freud's position as of 1923, and before 1902.
Between those two dates, Freud saw the ego itself as a set of instincts
instead of a structure deriving its energy from the id. This position
became the central plank of ego psychology, with Heinz Hartmann its
leading exponent. For an excellent overview of the evolution of early
psychoanalytic thought, see Daniel Yankelovich and William Barrett,
Ego and Instinct
(New York: Vintage Books, 1971), esp. pp. 25-114.

 

 

4. Cf. Gordon Rattray Taylor's intelligent discussion of "hard" versus
"soft" ego in
Rethink
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 81-90,
109ff. What modern psychiatry calls "ego-strength" is more often really
ego rigidity, and actually quite brittle. The equation of muted ego
virtues with mental illness is characteristic of societies that define
health in terms of productive capacity.

 

 

5. T. G. R. Bower,
The Perceptual World of the Child
(Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1977), pp. 19-21, 28.

 

 

6. Ibid., pp. 34, 49-50; Mahler,
Psychological Birth of the Human
Infant
, pp. 46-47, 52-56. I am personally skeptical of this time
scale. Although (see below) perceptual development is not the same
thing as ego-development, it is doubtful that the unspecific smile
lasts for three months or that comparative scanning begins only at
age seven months. Joseph Lichtenberg recently demonstrated that at the
age of fourteen days, the neonate distinguishes between his mother's
face and that of unknown female. See "New findings about the newborn,"
San Francisco Examiner
, 28 May 1980.

 

 

7. Mahler,
Psychological Birth of the Human Infant
, p. 223n, and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty,
The Child's Relations with Others
, trans. William
Cobb; in James M. Edie, ed.,
The Primacy of Perception
(Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 125-26. Merleau-Ponty's
discussion is largely based on the work of the brilliant and relatively
unknown Marxist child psychologist, Henri Wallon, which stands in sharp
contrast to that of Piaget. As of this writing, Wallon would appear to
be the only scientist who did extensive studies of children's behavior
in front of the mirror, which Merleau-Ponty discusses on pp. 125-40
of his essay. (According to Mahler, such a research project will soon
be published by John B. McDevitt.) For more on Wallon, see the Winter
1972/73 issue of the
International Journal of Mental Health
, as well
as his article, "Comment se développe, chez l'enfant, la notion du corps
propre,"
Journal de Psychologie
(1931), 705-48.

 

 

8. Mahler,
Psychological Birth of the Human Infant
, pp. 67, 71, 77-92,
101; R. D. Laing,
The Divided Self
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965;
first publ. 1959), pp. 115-19.

 

 

9. Merleau-Ponty,
The Child's Relations with Others
, pp. 136-37, 152-53.

 

 

10. Yankelovich and Barrett,
Ego and Instinct
, pp. 320, 386-92,
396-7. This point raises the problem of how language ever arose at all,
which has never been solved. On this matter, and material on children
raised by animals, see Langer,
Philosophy in a New Key
, pp. 108-42,
and passim. Ashley Montagu presents a Darwinian theory of the origins of
speech in
The Human Revolution
(New York: The World Publishing Company,
1965),pp. 108-13.

 

 

11. Bower,
Perceptual World of the Child
, p. 42.

 

 

12. Philippe Ariès,
Centuries of Childhood
, trans. Robert Baldick
(New York: Vintage Books, 1962),pp. 103-6.

 

 

13. See, for example, Mahler,
Psychological Birth of the Human Infant
,
p. 35. In general, I find this study highly teleological, with infants
regarded almost as subhuman, but "redeemed" in that they are, after all,
going to become adults, The authors do not seem to realize that the
scientific terms used to describe childhood, which include "narcissism,"
"haliucinatory disorientation," and even "autism," are loaded and that
such terms assume that the adult perception of the world is correct and
anything else is incorrect.

 

 

The question of innate and acquired is discussed later on in this chapter.
The importance of socialization was a major feature of Wallon's work
(see above, note 7).

 

 

14. This material is taken from remarks made by John Kennell in the
"General Discussion" section of Evelyn B. Thoman, ed.,
Origins of
the Infant's Social Responsiveness
(Hilldale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1979), pp. 435-36.

 

 

15. Stuart A. Queen and Robert W. Habenstein,
The Family in Various
Cultures
, 4th ed. (New York: Lippincott, 1974; first publ. 1952), p. 164;
John Ruhräh,
Pediatrics of the Past
(New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1925),
p. 34; and Ian G. Wickes, "A History of Infant Feeding,"
Archives of
Disease in Childhood
28 (1953), 156.

 

 

"Extended" is a loaded term, since the time span is being measured from
our point of view. It might be more correct to call the twentieth-century
period of lactation "curtailed."

 

 

16. Ashley Montagu,
Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin
,
2d ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 124, 187, 190; 199, 203,
and chap. 7, passim.

 

 

17. The study of Bali is
Balinese Character
by Bateson and Mead,
and is discussed by Montagu in
Touching
, pp. 115-18 (cf. Chapter 7,
note 16). See also chap. 7 of Montagu on comparative cultural studies,
and Beatrice B. Whiting, ed.,
Six Cultures
(New York: John Wiley,
1963). On Ariès see note 12, above. The "new" books on childbirth and
infantile sexuality include Alayne Yates,
Sex Without Shame
(New York:
William Morrow, 1978); Frederick Leboyer,
Birth Without Violence
(New York: Knopf, 1975); and Fernand Lamaze,
Painless Childbirth
(New York: Pocket Books, 1977).

 

 

18. The following discussion is taken from Ariès,
Centuries of
Childhood
, esp. pp. 10, 33-34, 52, 61, 107, 114-16, 254-60, 264, 353-56,
398-99, 405, 414-15. See also Lawrence Stone, "the Rise of the Nuclear
Family in Early Modern England," in Charles E. Rosenberg, ed.,
The
Family in History
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975),
pp. 36-38, 56; David Hunt,
Parents and Children in History
(New York:
Basic Books, 1970), pp. 85-86; and M.J. Tucker, "The Child as Beginning
and End: Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century English Childhood," in Lloyd
deMause, ed.,
The History of Childhood
(New York: The Psychohistory
Press, 1974), p. 238.

 

 

19. This point is very important, and his failure to understand it has
made possible Lloyd deMause's attack on Ariès' work in his essay, "The
Evolution of Childhood," pp. 1-73 of
The History of Childhood
. deMause
calls Ariès' description of playing with infant genitals an example of
sexual molestation, which such action certainly is when it occurs in
the West today. But Ariès' whole point was that yesterday is not today;
that sexual attitudes were very different then, and that the context
of attitudes determines the meaning of an act. As for action that is
unequivocally abusive, the point here is that love and hate have close
ties. It is absence of contact that is the real psychological danger, for
the child experiences such absence as apathy, and his psyche translates
it as meaninglessness. Perhaps existential man's search for meaning
originates in this tragic experience.

 

 

Second, the absence of ego in history never precluded violence, as the
Iliad
clearly shows. But such violence was of a very different order,
it seems to me. It was moved by spontaneous passion; the concept
of discipline as an institutional practice did not exist in schools
prior to the sixteenth century (at least not corporal punishment),
as Ariès notes. Such discipline is premeditated, done for different
reasons than immediate feelings. It is usually a form of sublimation,
for example, sadism posing as self-righteousness ("this hurts me more
than it does you"). With the crystallization of an ego, emotions get
twisted or transmuted into other forms. The result was already present
in the monastic flagellant orders of the Middle Ages, and it was Reich's
contention that much contemporary sexuality had a sadistic or masochistic
edge to it, and vice versa. A brilliant elaboration of this theme was
provided by Lindsay Anderson in his film
If . . .
, released in the
late 1960s.

 

 

20. Montagu,
Touching