What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins."-Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense"
Ricoeur names Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud the 'masters of suspicion', thinkers who abandoned the idea of truth, or saw it as plastic and not absolute and dominating. They are suspicious of truth claims in part because the use of truth is so tied up with the use of power, and rightly so. (EDIT: I'm not totally sure how to phrase this, what I wrote makes it seem like they think truth is still a "thing," is still out there in some form. Which, as that Nietzsche bit above will tell you, they most certainly did not.) From what little I've read of Nietzsche and Marx, that seems pretty accurate. What I question is Ricoeur's inclusion of Freud with these other two. Psychoanalysis abandons truth on a micro scale, saying that we lie to ourselves all the time, but from a macro perspective it has a surprisingly barefaced and even naive faith in truth. Truth not only exists but is codified, "fixed, canonical, and binding," particularly when we head in the direction Jung took Freud's ideas (not that that's Sigmund's doing, or fault). It's a sophisticated, modernist version of phrenology: we no longer believe that physical features correlate to the truth, but the revelatory medium has been shifted to feelings, actions, dreams. Those things, while complex, still correspond to some truth, one so bedrock we don't even know it's there—they only need to be prodded and questioned in just the right way to reveal themselves. Freud still believed in a nature that could be read like a book, only this book is dense and convoluted to all but the sharpest, most skilled interpreter. (I don't know how connected Freud was to his Jewish roots, but it's interesting to think about the similarities between his method and Talmudic interpretation and tradition.)
Which is maybe the reason I don't really care for Freud. It's one thing to say there is no absolute truth—that at least levels the playing field—but it's quite another to make yourself its gatekeeper. There is in Freud the tang of elitism, of knowledge-as-password, knowledge-as-phallus, which is one of my biggest academic pet peeves. And it seems that that's exactly what Ricoeur's other "masters" were calling out.
Ben, I know you're on a Freud kick and have read much more than I, what do you think? Am I right here?
6 comments:
I dunno man.
I don't think freud concerns himself much with notions of "truth". He seems more to be exploring experience. Also, Freud's so-called suspicion (i have thought) is about the interaction the 'I' has with the world and the 'me'. If anything, he is questioning the stability and prowess of the cogito, regardless of the cogito's perception of the world around it.
Perhaps i have missed what you are saying? Are you meaning that there is an under-pinning epistemology to Freud's Weltanschaung that is hopelessly 'modern', and that therefore you dislike it? Even if this is the case - does his operating on a notion of a world that has 'Truths' mean that he condones and affirms them? or rather that he just goes along with the game as a means of trying to figure out it's players?
That said, Ricouer's 'Freud and Philosophy' just arrived, so I will perhaps have some critical reflections forthcoming.
I need to thank you, Ben, for being polite and not straight-up calling me out. What I wrote is, I think, some late-night shower thinking indulged a bit too much.
For one, I think I misrepresented Ricouer. From my notes in our Auden class: the 'masters' suspected "our own resourcefulness at hiding the truth from ourselves." We "conceal our shortcomings naturally", and this concealment is "manifest in ideas and rhetorical gestures" (these quotes are I think Jacobs? Any rate they're verbatim what I wrote down) on a societal (Marx) and a personal (Freud) scale. That doesn't really say much about Truth, but only that truth as it's perceived by us is plastic. Which, in 2010: duh.
He is absolutely "questioning the stability and prowess of the cogito," as you said--Freud questions our powers of discernment.
I guess my point was that Freud still believes, to the best of my knowledge, that we're actually hiding something under our false consciousness. This as opposed to Nietzsche who says the only thing we're hiding is the fact that there's nothing under there--"truths are illusions." (This is all like way, way simplified and I think I'm just digging myself in further.) I.e. Nietzsche rejects absolute Truths, while Freud's vision still has room for truths that shape us in their image, we just don't know it.
Yes? The trouble is, I don't really know Freud. You may as well replace his name in all that with "stereotypical Freudian," because that's basically what I mean--though at least some of that must be true of the man himself, right?
But that's where I was going when I said "Freud still believed in a nature that could be read like a book, only this book is dense and convoluted to all but the sharpest, most skilled interpreter." And what I meant with my comment about elitism is that psychoanalysis says "You don't understand what's really going on inside of you; allow me, the (pseudo-) scientist, to explain." Which is annoying to me because of the suggestion that the analyst has gotten beyond that false consciousness, and in his (and it's a him) superiority deigns to attempt to free you from it. And come on, who's really done that.
Wait, I think I just explained the plot of The Matrix.
first off - gentlemanly politeness in academic discourse is my new gold-standard of goodness.
secondly, with this you are right on:
"my point was that Freud still believes..that we're actually hiding something under our false consciousness"
I just spent the last hour or two in 'Civilization and It's Discontents', and, urrgggh - it is so hopelessly reliant on evolution as analogy, and all i can think is - 'why can't freud get over HIS OWN sexual pre-occuptaions?!' It IS so un-lovely for him to assume that his speculations are what is 'really' going on. A great wikipedia trail to follow is the man Karl Popper, if you haven't already been introduced, who has huge beef with Freud-as-science because it fails what is for him the plumb-line of scientific inquiry: falsifiability. Freud's 'system' can never be proven wrong, and he always has a counter to any argument, claiming he sees through it. I.e. NOT science, because science is always open to new evidence. and speaking of said evidence - i just picked up a fantastic book: a collection of drawings done by children from a 10 year long study into children's development, including analysis and description by a very good psychologist, and interestingly - in pictures children VERY rarely draw genital or feces (the bastions of Freud's developmental theories), instead focus disproportionately on the facial feature and arms.
But back to Freud -
What disconcerts me is how much of his manner of thinking has been similiar to my own: seeking primal explanations for daily behaviours. It seems very 1920s, and shallow in a weird sort of way. seeing it in print is causing me to repudiate some of the weight I have given to thinking along those lines in search of better ones.
Stupid Freud.
1) Totally with you on gentlemanly scholarly discourse.
2) I like that, "seeking primal explanations for daily behaviors." Was any European movement NOT overly primitivist in the early 1900s? (Also.)
3) About that book of children's drawings, though, I'd add the small caveat that the cultural taboos about feces and genitalia and the representation thereof are pretty well hammered in place by the time kids can draw.
4) Finally, you made me think of an xkcd line: "You don't do science to prove you're right, you do science to BECOME right."
That. is a BRILLIANT T-shirt. hahahaha.
and with pt 3) - why are you always ruining my good, clean fun?!!!
:)
Sorry to ruin your perception of children, Ben. That's got to make it a baker's dozen, by now.
Also, seriously, I want that shirt.
Also also, I found this, which is not necessarily related to this particular discussion of ours, but others.
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