Readings in Pathology: Towards a New Ethics

Purpose:

What is the philosophical import of the terms ‘pathos’ and ‘pathology’? Is it possible to speak of ‘moral pathology’? How can victimhood, passivity, and resentment be interrogated philosophically? The purpose of this graduate seminar is twofold: first, to interrogate the meaning of the terms ‘pathos’ and ‘pathology’ through phenomenological analyses and readings in the philosophical tradition; and second, to develop, given a proper understanding of pathos, a new conception of morality and moral thinking that is pathological or pathos-based. ‘Moral pathology’ will be advanced as a novel way of philosophical thinking and reading, one that is rooted in lived experiences of passivity and helplessness and is therefore located at the limits of the mind.

 

Thesis:

Generally considered, pathos is an experience that is imposed, passively undergone (suffered) and, in acute cases, incapacitating. The paradigmatic case of such experience is victimization by torture –the experience of being reduced to a helpless bundle of reactions. The thesis to be elaborated over the course of the seminar is that experiences of victimization, notwithstanding their horror and pain, may have philosophical and edifying import. That is because, insofar as such experiences push the mind to its limits, undergoing them, or relating to them, means to suspend, and perhaps eventually modify, habitual assumptions and mediating frameworks in a way that thinking alone cannot. Such modification yields new ways of relating to the self, to others, to reality, and to the world. This is not to condone acts of victimization but to face their experienced effects and aftereffects on their own, pathological, terms.

Thinking about morality as premised on pathetic experiences, or more generally on passivity and incapacitation, counters a very long and diverse tradition in philosophy, particularly in moral thought, which emphasizes action and agency, values autonomy and freedom, and devalues whatever stands in the way of attaining and securing them. I argue that this tradition is motivated in part by a prejudice for health, power, and well being, and in turn by a fear of passivity, pain, and illness. This prejudice and fear result in inattentiveness to and a denial or faulty conceptualization of pathos and passivity in general. Ironically, the concern for free thinking and autonomous agency –or the fear of what threatens them– therefore ends up restricting our purview and constraining the mind within its prescribed limits. Pathos, on the other hand, for all its incapacitating effects, may be precisely what enables us to encounter and challenge the limits of our mind.

 

Structure:

The seminar will be divided into two parts. The first is a survey of the treatment of pathos and pathology in the philosophical tradition, from Plato to Michel Foucault. We will begin by examining the original meaning and use of the word pathos in Greek and Greek philosophy and continue to explore the ways by which pathos was interpreted (or misrepresented) by central figures and schools in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern thought, placing an emphasis on their attempts to eschew or falsely glorify pathos.  In the concluding sessions of the first part we will discuss attempts by 20^th century philosophers Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault to challenge and modify the prevalent perspectives on pathos and pathology. It will be argued that their approach to the problem is still partial and tendentious and still suffers from the same prejudices of thought as in the tradition they challenge.

         The second part will begin with a reading of essays by Jean Améry, an Austrian born essayist and Holocaust survivor, who, I will propose, is the first thinker to suggest an adequate interpretation of the philosophical meaning of pathos, and with it, an insight into its moral import. Améry’s perspective, both on pathos and on morality, will be contrasted with those of Nietzsche and some of Améry’s philosophical contemporaries. Finally, equipped with an understanding of pathos afforded to us by Améry, we will continue to elaborate on a new conception of morality as pathological through reading and reflecting on relevant cinematic and literary works.

 

Readings:

 

• For the most part, the weekly readings will not be long. They will range from 10 to 60 pages, depending on the complexity of the text. In the last week of the seminar, however, we will be discussing a novel by Truman Capote. To make sure you finish reading this novel on time, it is advisable that you start reading it as early as possible in the semester.

 

Texts that will be read in full:

 

–          Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” (essay)

–          Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits (book of essays)

–          Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis (short story)

–          Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (long poem)

–          Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (novel)

 

Texts that will be read in part:

 

• The list below may be subject to slight revisions during the semester.[1]

 

–          Aristotle, Rhetoric

–          Plato, Philebus

–          Epictetus, Discourses

–          Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

–          The New Testament

–          Augustine, City of God

–          René Descartes, Discourse on Method (first three parts)

–          René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (first three meditations)

–          Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (books III-V)

–          Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (first part)

–          Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

–          Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization

–          Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (first essay)

–          Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer

–          Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz

–          Immanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity

–          Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

–          Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age

–          Judith Butler, Precarious Lives

 

Films:

 

–          Todd Haynes, Safe (1995)

–          Ari Folman, Waltz with Bashir (2008)

 

 

Participation and Grading

In the beginning of each week I will post a ‘lecture’, meaning my own commentary on the topic and on the texts read. I expect students to post their own comments, both regarding my lecture and the texts themselves. As a rule, I am not interested in agreement –I prefer critical engagement and a plurality of perspectives and questions. Ideally, students should comment on each other’s comments as well so as to simulate something like an open discussion. The minimal participation required is reading the lectures and texts and posting at least one comment during the week, but the more the better. Students may write in English or in Spanish, as they prefer. All lectures and responses by me will be in English.

 

 

Course Schedule:

 

First Part

Pathology in the Philosophical Tradition – A Short History of Aversions and Evasions

 

I. What is ‘Pathos’?

 

1) Feb 6 – 12

 

Topic: A Greek Word in its Greek Context (pathos in Aristotle and Plato)

 

Abstract: The most common connotation of the word pathos in contemporary usage is affectation and the most common connotation of the word pathology is disease, especially in the sense of irrational or abnormal behavior. One of the chief goals of this seminar is both to understand these connotations and to expand our understanding of pathos and pathology beyond them. One way to do this is to interrogate the original meaning and use of these words in Greek. In the first week we will define the word pathos and observe its usage by Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle.

 

Texts: Excerpts from Philebus (Plato) and the Rhetoric (Aristotle)

 

 

II. Pathos Eschewed

 

2) Feb 13 – 19

 

Topic: Elephant Skin (Pathos in Stoicism)

 

Abstract: There is a very old and pervasive tradition in ethical thought that sees an antithetical relation between ethics, taken as the art of living well, and pathos, taken as what stands in the way of good living. On this approach, to put it crudely, ethics sees pathos as its chief enemy and conquering it (or devising an immunization against it) as its chief goal. Although, as we will see, this idea is still very much alive in modern philosophy and in contemporary ‘New Age’ culture, its most decisive origins in Western thought can be found in the writings of the Stoics. In the second week we will read excerpts from Stoic philosophers and observe the terms by which pathos gets defined as an ethical problem and project. 

 

Texts: Excerpts from Epictetus’ Discourses and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations 

 

3) Feb 20 – 26

 

Topic: The Passion of the Christ (Pathos in Christianity)

 

Abstract: The Latin equivalent of the word pathos is ‘passion’, and passion (both in the sense of suffering and in that of devotion) are central motifs and preoccupations of Christian doctrine. If Stoic ethics can be thought of as the art of conquering pathos, Christian ethics can be thought of as the art of sublimating or exalting it, perhaps under the dictum: “If you can’t beat it, love it!” Pathos in Christian theology receives a place of honor but at the same time is significantly reconfigured under the sometimes tender and sometimes spectacular image of sacrifice. We will consider the manifestations and ethical implications of this move by reading from the New Testaments and St. Augustine.

 

Texts: excerpts from the Pauline epistles (The New Testament), and City of God (St. Augustine)

 

4) Feb 27 – Mar 5

 

Topic: It Feels Warm therefore I Can Think (Pathos in Descartes)

 

Abstract: Attempting to philosophically consolidate the Catholic notion of a free will, Descartes, the ‘father’ of modern philosophy, bequeathed us an understanding of will as pure activity or self-determination (of the sort that only a pure mind or a thinker can possess). According to this novel conception, we are free to the extent that we are in essence impassive beings. Looking more closely at how this conception is worked out in Descartes’ Meditations will provide us the opportunity to reflect on the relation between freedom –a subject with which so much of Western modern philosophy, culture, and politics are obsessed– and the problem of passivity or pathos. What was Descartes’ ultimate goal? Was it, as it is often assumed, to establish the conditions for maximizing freedom in an otherwise deterministic world, or was it rather to establish the conditions for maximizing safety and control in an otherwise unpredictable one?

 

Texts: Discourse on Method, parts I-III, and Meditations on First Philosophy, meditations I-III (René Descartes)

 

5) Mar 5 – 11

 

Topic: Satisfaction Guaranteed (Pathos in Spinoza)   

 

Abstract: Spinoza’s views of freedom and human existence are radically disparate than those of Descartes. If Descartes prefigures the human being as pure mind, categorically distinct from all natural and physical beings, for Spinoza the human being is desirous and natural through and through –in fact, so for Spinoza is God and everything else. But as much as he restores a place of honor to the body and earthly existence degraded by Christian theology and Cartesian philosophy, Spinoza’s ethics, in many ways a modernized version of Stoicism, not only continues but outdoes its predecessors in their endeavor to overcome pathos. It outdoes them because it seeks to show that pathos and pathology can be nothing but figments of the imagination. Passivity, if you will, is a bit like Santa Clause (or any superstition) –those who mature know it’s unreal. We will read sections from Spinoza’s masterpiece emphasizing the relation he establishes between pathos and desire.  

 

Texts: The Ethics, books III-V (Baruch Spinoza)

   

6) Mar 12 – 18

 

Topic: Happy Villains and Suicidal Saints (Pathos and Pathology in Kant) 

 

Abstract: Aware of Spinoza’s vehement critique, Kant picks up on Descartes’ notion of free will as pure activity, this time as an explicitly moral issue. Considering its immense and enduring influence, Kant’s ethics stands surprisingly alone in its vigorous attempt to establish autonomy to the moral sphere. The autonomy of the moral is so extreme and uncompromising in Kant that we are almost tempted to suggest that morality and life (or the natural world of experience) stand to each other as parallel lines that never touch. The purity of moral thinking and reasoning, and the goodwill as their agent, is pronounced by Kant via their opposition to ‘pathology’ –the kind of thinking or reasoning that is contaminated by natural inclinations and conditions. Reading Kant, we will assess the adequacy of his use of the word ‘pathology’ and of his attempt to purify morality.

 

Texts: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, first part (Immanuel Kant)  

 

III. Pathos Embraced?  

 

7) Mar 19 – 24

 

Topic: Calm Anxiety (Pathos in Heidegger)

 

Abstract: No longer attempting to shun or overcome it, Martin Heidegger already elevates pathos to the forefront of philosophical concern, arguing that it is the most essential feature of the human condition. Nevertheless, Heidegger marginalizes all those connotations and manifestations of pathos that do not resonate with his philosophical agenda, such as disease and suffering. By doing so, he also jeopardizes the capacity of pathetic experiences to modify our relations to people and the world. We will consider this by paying particular attention to the way Heidegger interprets the feelings of fear and anxiety –the latter being for him a paradigmatic manifestation of our pathetic existence.  

 

Texts: “What is Metaphysics?” and excerpts from Being and Time (Martin Heidegger)

 

8) Mar 25 – Apr 1

 

Topic: Pathology as Madness (Pathos in Foucault)

 

Abstract: Any course engaged in the question of pathology must acknowledge the work of philosophical historian Michel Foucault, who attempted to show how the rationalization of modern society and civilization was achieved via the exclusion, and ultimately the habituation or disciplining, of its counterpart in madness. Put succinctly: the erection of ‘normalcy’ feeds off a process of demarcating and separating the ‘abnormal’. What is important for us in this regard is to consider the relation between madness or irrationality on the one hand and pathos and pathology on the other. As a rule, Foucault’s historical narratives focus on political dynamics of power. How do the themes of passivity and suffering fit into this perspective?

 

Texts: Excerpts from Madness and Civilization (Michel Foucault) 

 

 

Second Part

From Jean Améry to Moral Pathology – Pathology and Morality Reconsidered

 

IV. Pathos in Jean Améry and Beyond

 

General Abstract: Jean Améry was a Jewish Viennese self-taught intellectual and aspiring author until World War II broke out. He then escaped to Belgium and became a resistance fighter. He was caught by the Nazis and tortured and from 1943 to the end of the war was interned in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. In 1966 he wrote At the Mind’s Limits, a book of essays on his experiences during the war and in its aftermath that make up some of the most powerful, difficult, and penetrating reflections ever written on the subject. Améry’s perspective and mode of analysis and writing is unique in its rigorous focus on what he calls ‘the victim-existence’. Although he rarely uses the terms ‘pathos’ and ‘pathology’, ‘the victim-existence’ as presented to us by Améry, I will argue, is the pathetic condition. Both because of the unusual circumstances about which and from which he reflects, and because of his unusual resolve to interrogate through them the truth of victimhood as such, Améry is the first to give us an uncompromising account of what and how pathos is.

               In the first two weeks we will read the five essays of At the Mind’s Limits, focusing in particular on the second essay (“Torture”, week 9), and the forth essay (“Resentments”, week 10). In “Torture” Améry attempts to bring out and describe the pathetic element –what it means and how it feels to be passive and disconnected. In “Resentments” he attempts to articulate, in a polemic against Nietzsche, a view of morality that is grounded in that experience of radical passivity and disconnectedness, an experience he now terms “the moral truth” (or truth of morality). Our analysis of Améry’s texts will be informed by the concepts and perspectives studied in the first part of the course. In the consequent three weeks (11-13) we will deepen and sharpen our understanding of pathos by considering, in relation to Améry and his ‘pathology’, claims made by 20^th century philosophers who were engaged with similar problems or shared similar concerns and sensibilities.  

   

9) Apr 9 – 15

 

Topic: “Pain = Body = Death” (Regarding Pathos through the Lens of the Experience of Nazi Torture)

 

Texts: “At the Mind’s Limits”, “Torture”, and “How Much Home Does a Person Need” (Jean Améry, from At the Mind’s Limits)

 

10) Apr 16 – 22

 

Topic: In the Aftermath of Torture –a Pathological View of Morality (Ressentiment between Améry and Nietzsche)

 

Texts: “Resentments”, “The Necessity and the Impossibility of Being a Jew” (Jean Améry, from At the Mind’s Limits); the Genealogy of Morals, first essay (Friedrich Nietzsche)

 

11) Apr 23 – 29

 

Topic: Pathology as a State of Exception (Between Améry and Agamben)

 

Texts: Excerpts from Homo Sacer and Remnants of Auschwitz (Giorgio Agamben)

 

12) Apr 30 – May 6

 

Topic: Thoughts about Passivity (Between Améry, Levinas, and Blanchot)

 

Texts: Excerpts from Totality and Infinity (Emanuel Levinas) and Writing of the Disaster (Maurice Blanchot)

 

13) May 7 – 13

 

Topic: Gendered Perspectives on Pathos

Texts: Excerpts from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Coming of Age and Judith Butler’s Precarious Lives. 

 

 

V. Pathological Readings in Film and Literature

 

General Abstract: Améry, alongside and against the other philosophers discussed in the previous sections, give us a more refined working definition of pathos and the capacity to discern something like a pathological dimension of lived-experience. In this last section of the seminar, we will take advantage of the vivacity of literary and cinematic works which are, I believe, particularly concerned with that pathological dimension, in order to expand our understanding of pathos and acquire a sense of the kind of moral sensibilities, difficulties, and relations that come to the fore in experiencing or reflecting on pathological conditions.

 

14) May 14 – 20

 

Topic: Her Brother’s Keeper (Pathology in Kafka)

 

Text: Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka) 

 

15) May 21 – 27

 

Topic: Through the Bubble (Pathology in Film)

 

Films: Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995), Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)

 

16) May 28 – June 30

 

Topic: Beyond the Right and the Wrong (Concluding on Moral Pathology)

 

Texts: The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Oscar Wilde), In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)

 

 

Roy Ben Shai holds an MA and a Ph.D. in Philosophy (New School of Social Research, New York). His areas of expertise are Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy (modern and
contemporary), and Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian phenomenology. His dissertation, entitled “Moral Pathology. A Philosophical Study of Jean Améry and a Pathos-Based Approach to Moral Thinking,” is the first book-length study of Holocaust survivor and essayist Jean Améry as a philosopher. Alongside a reading of Améry, with and against Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, the dissertation pursues an original interpretation of the meaning of ‘pathos’ and ‘pathology’ that leads to a radical rethinking of central tenets of ethics, morality, and politics.
He currently teaches at Fairfield University (Connecticut), and has taught at the New School University (Eugene Lang College and The Bachelor’s Program), Manhattan College (New York), and Bifrost University (Iceland). He has been awarded various fellowships for his academic work, including the Leo Baeck Doctoral Fellowship and the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Center Doctoral Fellowship at the Hebrew University (Jerusalem). He has published in Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Critical Thought and in The European Legacy, among other journals, and has forthcoming publications in the books On Jean Améry: Philosophy of the Catastrophe and Europe in the Eyes of Survivors of the Holocaust.