How Are These Abstractions Compatible with Totality in Human Life?
Does not the ability to form symbols help every intelligent human being to "liberate" himself from the narrow viewpoint of the particular and the individual? Yes, yes! Let us admit as much as can ever be admitted. In fact, let us now be teachable and look at abstractions from the most favourable viewpoint we can possibly imagine.
Of course we cannot be blind to the enormous part played by symbolic representations, not only in modern science and in the whole development of our present culture, but also for a most practical orientation in the everyday life of homo sapiens.
Let us prepare the very relevant theme of our discussion here, simply by repeating first some things Professor Harald Schjelderup of the University of Oslo says about the symbol function.
As an illustrative example he chooses the Norwegian word for ball or sphere: kule (corresponding to the German "Kugel"). To a person who has perhaps heard that word only on one single occasion, when a particular ball of a certain material and a certain colour happened to appear, it may yet have a rather limited sense. However, to you and me it means all bodies of a special shape. So to us it has acquired the function of a symbol.[1]
It would be absurd to deny that this abstracting activity is both very practical and very human. Cassirer regards the symbol function as a trait so peculiarly human that he simply calls man "animal symbolicum".[2] In other words, a distinctive feature--if not the distinctive feature--of man's intellectual superiority, as compared to "other animals", lies in his ability to make use of generalizing symbols, to orient himself in life. At least we must assume this to be the tacit implication.
In other words, very much depends upon what we regard as essential in the symbol. Suppose now that this is just its function of abstraction. What will then be the consistent conclusion we shall have to arrive at? It will be to simply admit the abstracting faculty in man as the culture-creating factor par excellence in his history. Can we accept this as our personal view of human history? Can we accept it as consistent with our essential conception of the abstracting trend in Occidental culture?
Is it a truth of general validity that the human faculty of abstraction takes this place in this hierarchy of intellectual values? Here we must face the pertinent facts unflinchingly. It would be treacherous to oppose ourselves to the reliable data of psychology, or any other modern science, providing sober information about man as he unfolds himself in the living context of his destiny as a man. If, for instance, those irrefutable data prove his capacity of making abstractions to constitute the main factor of his cultural creativity, then we must not hesitate to draw the full consequences of this, relative to our special study here.
For instance, it would be absurd then to persist in an over-enthusiastic and one-sided eulogy of concrete thinking as the royal highway towards the pinnacles of human fulfillment. At least no shadow of implicit depreciation should ever be thrown over the trend towards abstract speculation in human minds, a quality so immensely favourable to the progress of culture and spiritual achievement. Such depreciation would be a direct crime against modern science.
Our call for caution is serious. And that applies to our concern about spirituality, even in the deepest sense that word involves in our specific terminology. For that is exactly the sphere of life currently evoked whenever we envision the capital role filled by the human faculty of forming adequate symbols. In a moment we shall refer to an eloquent report by Kurt Goldstein on the findings resulting from an examination in an American hospital, suggestive of the capital part played by the symbol function for the deepest spiritual phases of human life; but let us first try to give general expression to some important perspectives presenting themselves as relevant to our investigation.
We have duly focused our attention on a famous category of abstractions, those of spiritualist philosophy in general, and of Platonic idealism in particular. Now those "abstractions of Plato" should have an opportunity to "aver themselves" (reveal their proper nature): are they just as favourable to human totality, in our sense of the term, as certain other abstractions, "everyday abstractions", seem to be? We are of course speaking just about symbols here--and we understand symbols as the empirical investigations of our times have revealed them to us.
If they are of the same nature, then what would it really mean to depreciate Platonic idealism, as we have had a deliberate tendency here to depreciate it? It would mean either ignorance or downright villainy. In other words, we should either have to revise our ideas or improve our acts. In any case the moral obligation is incumbent upon us to evaluate with caution and sincerity all relevant discoveries of modern science regarding the significance of symbols in human life. That will, in the first place, necessitate an impartial and sufficiently complete presentation of the principal arguments. Let us then examine the conception Cassirer has formed of the symbol function.
Even the most intelligent animals have no truly symbol-forming and symbol-interpreting faculty. It was previously believed that they do have such faculties. But that belief may be ascribed to misunderstandings. Signals were taken for symbols. In Pavlov's famous experiment, for instance, the bell has been considered by some as a symbol for the food which comes to the animal at the moment when it starts ringing. But to that animal it is actually something very different. It is a simple signal. The signal announces what will happen in the near future, whereas the symbol tells what something means--regardless of time or space or particular modes. So we see how much more general it is, how much more abstract it is. That is to our topic really worth noticing.
Take the example of an animal which has learned to stop when the word "stop" is called. This piece of learning, like all training of animals, is, as we know, the result of a so-called conditioned reaction. In the experience of that animal the pronouncing of the word "stop" has repeatedly been accompanied by some kind of inhibition, more or less painful to it. This pain has eventually been so closely associated with the sound of the word "stop" that, by and by, such reaction in the behaviour follows automatically.
In other words, that animal need not have the remotest conception that the word "stop" means the cessation of movement, i.e. as a more general representation. No, the word of command becomes just a signal, a forewarning of the rather painful thing which will happen if the movement does not cease. The beast has finally found it most propitious--or least disagreeable--according to its practical experience, just to stop on such occasions.
With a human being this is quite different. To him the word "stop" has become a real symbol. It means the cessation of movement in a general way, whatever the particular situation or the practical connection may be.
Of course this is a wonderful and inestimable achievement of the human intellect. And we do not for a moment doubt that just this places at our disposal possibilities for human unfolding and for the tackling of problems in human destiny so decisive that it is hard to imagine how any other faculty of the human mind could ever replace it.
And when the great life experience of Helen Keller is produced, as an example of what it means to a human being to be led into the secrets of those wonderful symbols called words, then that is certainly an example appealing to both the reason and the feeling of living human beings in our generation: while the water was running down over one hand of that blind and deaf little child, her patient teacher Miss Sullivan kept spelling into the other hand the word "water". Up to that moment such writing in the hand had meant very little to the poor girl. What had not yet dawned upon her unexperienced mind, was just that mysterious function of words, words as symbols. She did not even know that any such thing as a word existed. The movement of her fingers had been just an ape-like imitation of meaningless actions observed in other persons. And then suddenly the whole function of words as symbols burst upon her eager mind with dramatic force. Probably only her autobiographical description can give you an approximately adequate appreciation of what happened to a human life that day.
But let us then resume our discussion of our most crucial point here. In fact, if anyone ever had the evil intention of dealing an annihilating blow against the traditional prestige of the faculty of abstraction in our culture, then this certainly does not--on first views, at least--look too encouraging. And still more failing perhaps would his moral courage be to carry on his "holy" war against the "tyranny" of abstractions in human life, if he could hear the reports contained in a series of lectures given at Harvard University in 1938-39. Here Kurt Goldstein produced the results of his investigations regarding certain "concrete" versus "abstract" attitudes of the human mind, as revealed through psycho-pathological cases, resulting from lesions of the brain.[3] Let us note the cases in evidence:
The sense of concrete realities was seen to remain unimpaired here in some cases where the "abstract attitude" had been considerably injured. The difference that had taken place in such persons was clearly visible as soon as they were placed face to face with certain problems of quite everyday human situations. What kind of problems? Conserving Plato's formulation, one might say problems demanding the "liberation" of the mind from the concrete situation of the particular case. For instance, the patient in question might be perfectly able to drink water out of a glass when asked to do so. But given an empty glass, and asked to show how drinking is done "in general", he suddenly becomes helpless. Another patient is given a hammer and a piece of wood. Then he is asked how he would drive in a nail--if he had one. But alas, in the concrete situation of the moment he does not have one. That is sufficient to make the whole performance impossible to the poor fellow.
Now suppose we were quite hopelessly hardened denunciators of abstractions of any kind in our culture, and equally biased glorifiers of the sense of the concrete in human lives. Then we might still be audacious enough to object in the present case, "Well, the loss is not so serious. I am really far more sorry for the so-called normal persons who drink imaginary water and drive in nails which have never existed. They must be the real silly-billies, and should be duly pitied. Goldstein's patients are the true realists."
This would not testify in favour of our sober-minded reasoning. For here there is no running away from the sensible facts. Illness and anomaly can certainly not bring any person closer to the ideal of sound totality in human life. The damage caused to those unfortunate patients was fatefully real. And so were the resulting deficiencies.
We may still pay Plato the honour and the acknowledgement of having provided an adequate formulation to this evil: these poor patients were simply no more able "to raise themselves above" the realms of the concrete and the particular. Their minds were precluded from stretching themselves up towards the regions of the abstract and the general. And let us not reduce the extent of this misfortune. To these men's lives it meant a serious loss of something in their deepest humanity.
In fact, Goldstein will make that painfully clear to us through another example of the most pathetic implications, and therefore demanding our particular consideration and serious discussion.
One patient observed by the investigator never appeared to be concerned about his family. He never spoke about his wife or his children. The wardens would sometimes suggest that he write a letter home. His response was one of total indifference. In fact his feelings on the subject seemed to be absolutely obtuse.
From time to time, however, he was sent home to visit his family and was allowed to stay at home for a few days. On such occasions he invariably behaved like a normal husband at the family hearth. He was kind and affectionate to his wife and children, and as much interested in their affairs as his mental abilities would allow.
But after such a visit, as soon as he had returned to the hospital--and was asked about his "dear ones" at home--he once more stood there with just a confused smile on his face and evasive answers to all questions. He seemed a perfect stranger to his own family situation. But obviously there was no actual habitation of the man's feelings. No, he simply could not imagine the situation of his home life if he was not literally there. According the corresponding feelings were not aroused either.
Goldstein was particularly struck by a total change taking place in such a patient's attitude towards the language--that teeming multitude of symbols. The words those patients had once learned would still be used in concrete connections. However, they had ceased to be symbols for ideas. They had almost completely lost their abstract significance. They were no longer used as signs for concepts, but only to denote the qualities of concrete things.
And now comes the great question which we cannot avoid, concerning that admirable symbol function in a human mind, as a medium of meaningful integration. One should keep in mind here the unique importance we have ascribed just to a person's orientation towards the reality surrounding him. This tacitly suggests an opposite alternative, a potential enclosure. And this is where the faculty of symbolic generalization comes to the aid of a human spirit, otherwise doomed to hopeless confinement and obstruction. It mysteriously widens the horizon of a living orientation in intellectual life. In fact, a sort of global enlargement of the panorama has taken place. If alterocentricity means spirituality, then this new orientation towards the exterior is certainly spiritual.
Our reader's surprise at our "conversion" may be understandable. What is this unexpected attitude we are taking here towards abstractions?
We have only held it necessary to consider the matter from all possible points of view, even the least promising one to our theory. So let us finally strike some sort of summary balance, a provisory balance.
It is simply every normal human being who seems to manifest a striking resemblance here with the idealist philosopher. That "miniature Plato" (namely, you or I) suddenly seizes those glorious wings of his inward being, rising majestically beyond the narrow boundaries in time and space, otherwise depressingly imposed upon every pitiable spirit of a purely concrete intelligence. Is that not a definitely praiseworthy thing?
Not that the present moment, so dear and indispensable to the sober realists, is bound to suffer any fatal reduction of its usual significance. Nor do the immediate surroundings of his native environment thereby become any less decisive for his orientation and his happiness as an individual among other individuals. The only thing is that certain new regions, or dimensions, have been added to the old ones. And the noticeable fact about those dimensions is that they have been added precisely for the purpose of facilitating an alterocentric type of flight. That flight is exterior and interior at the same time. It is total.
And, of course, one capital fact should henceforth be admitted frankly and never be insidiously bypassed: an abstraction, of some sort or other, is indispensable for man's realization of his deepest values.
So it becomes imperative to ask with renewed seriousness an old question: What are, after all, those "prison walls" of the concrete and the particular that manage to keep a human soul in bondage, at least in cases of illness and abnormal functioning? And what is the real nature of that sublime flight that liberates man from such bondage?
Have we arrived at this extremity then, in the end, that a Platonic liberation becomes our only way out? Is that time-honoured philosophical type of "liberation" after all our imperative necessity, our only avenue towards a totality enabling man to realize the fulness of his humanity?
To us, of course, it has been an axiom that this totality must needs include the spiritual values, spiritual precisely in our far-reaching sense of the term. But it was precisely here--let us admit it frankly--that a certain liberation proved to be the one great prerequisite. And how was that liberation realized in the minds of human beings? Solely through the blessed gift of the symbol! The abstracting activity inherent in the symbolical function revealed itself as a conditio sine qua non for the spiritual value!
How could the testimony of empirical data be more convincing! We certainly recall the tragic consequences provoked just by the absence of a certain "faculty of abstraction" in the life of a mentally sick husband and father: Nothing less than his sense of duty towards his wife and children was at stake. How could a deficiency of that magnitude be regarded as anything less than a tragedy in the spiritual sense!
And what is that tragic thing which is here seen to have happened to the wholeness of a normal man? A mutilation--simply a brutal cutting of the wings--the wings of the spirit! A whole world had suddenly and treacherously been taken away from that man. What world? His world out there and up there in the blue skies of his everyday human roamings, a world he had so recently been able to enjoy to the full. Now it was gone.
To be sure, he still had another world, his world down here, the world where his feet meet their ground. That too is a good world an indispensable world, a spiritual world, as well. For notice, we have all due respect for the realm of man's immediate obligations, his deeds and duties among things and people he may, at a given moment, see with his concrete vision, right in front of his own nose, the things and people he could not fail to perceive with all his literal senses, because he actually keeps stumbling right into them every minute of his busy day. This is to us an extremely real world, a definitely spiritual world, as we understand spirituality. Or how could there ever exist such a thing as "un-spiritual obligations" for a human being?
But should that prevent us from knowing the reality of a more distant world at the same time? Does not man have an existential need of a sense of obligation that may raise his vision far above that limited sphere of the things and people he keeps literally and corporeally "stumbling into"? Suppose his sense of duty stopped at this point! Suppose it did not extend beyond the door of his own little house, or beyond a community of fellow men he has to "bump into", in a quite literal sense, in order to see them! Then his moral world would, indeed, be a pitiably limited one. Fortunately this is not the normal case. Man is a moral being called upon to take his full responsibility in an infinitely extended world, a world of internal vision. He has sacred obligations towards a family numbering millions of men. So his gaze is bound to go out to an invisible crowd of anonymous beings: Humanity. For who are the men who need his personal aid most desperately? Perhaps just those who, for the time being, happen to exist in his thoughts only--as "numbers in a series", as "members of a class". So what if his human vision does not include those invisible, but still frightfully real ones? Alas, what a tragic failure!
And above all, of course, he is obligated towards God, the eternally Invisible One. How could he count, and concretely perceive, the blessings, and the "counter-services", he owes to Him. How could he reach the moral spheres of this wonderful God without the highest faculties that God has given him? We are speaking, with admiration and awe, in terms of some mighty "wings" of the human mind.
To be sure, the human spirit has need of wings. How else should man even start fulfilling the sacred engagements, immeasurable in grandeur and infinite in number, which he really has, far beyond the limited sphere of his immediate concrete perception.
Man's mind needs wings quite particularly, we would say, in order to realize that total penitence (metanoia) which the Christian religion, with its unique spirituality, demands as an elementary attitude on the part of man, for every justification and every salvation. Of course we do not, there either, deny the primordial importance of the concrete and the immediate. Man must definitely give evidence of a spirit of true repentance right in the face of those evil actions of which he has rendered himself guilty here and now. But his sense of culpability ought to reach infinitely farther than that. It ought to encompass even the most secret offenses of his total past. It ought to tremble in front of the dreadful eventualities of their remotest repercussions in an equally realistic future.
In short, everything keeps building up towards that looming tower of an inwardly searching tribunal trying the very honest--intellectual and otherwise--of our present thesis: How can we make all these new considerations compatible with the general trend of our previous view-point regarding abstractions? After this, just how should abstractions really be valued in a spiritual world, a world of human totality? In view of the simplest empirical facts brought out by modern science, can we defend our old theory and still remain consistent?
Yes, we sincerely believe that a course of perfect consistency can be maintained all the way along. And the solution is easy to find. To some it may seem too easy. But we definitely do not think it is either superficial or farfetched in any way.
Well, we have simply come to the conclusion that there must be two very different forms of abstraction.
Is this "dichotomy" we suddenly recommend here, in our turn, simply the old pattern of philosophical history as we have hitherto described it, and condemned it? Is it the common trick of cunning demagogues, that is, of history, by and large: divide et impera!
We believe not. In fact, the insidious peril, demonstrated by the history of ideas, consists not only in the temptation to force apart what naturally belongs together, but also the temptation to force together what naturally falls apart. So sometimes particular efforts should be made precisely in order to separate, to make realistic distinctions.
But abstraction is abstraction, one may object; and symbol is symbol. How can anything there "naturally fall apart"?
Let us try to explain why we feel pretty convinced that abstraction and abstraction--as one commonly, and sometimes rather carelessly, tends to use the term--have the curious lot of being, at least, two fairly different things.
Already that clinical study undertaken by Goldstein gave us some intimations pointing definitely in this direction. For please consult your own sound sense of human values: What is the real nature of an "abstracting faculty" anyone would expect to find in a husband and a father? What mental image, or "winged idea" do we think that even that father in the hospital ought to have had, of his dear ones at home, if he had been mentally well? Is it some fantastic, ingenious perspicacity we demand here? No, it is just the simple degree of imagination that could have been expected in any typically naive and normally outward-oriented mind! Notice this: it is nothing but the image-forming faculty we expect in the mind of any genuine child! I would even venture to say: quite particularly in such childlike minds. For please keep this simple fact in mind: here there is no question at all of any rare introspective faculty in man, some theoretical idea, elaborately concocted through the subtle detours of an exceptional ruminative type of intelligence. No, no. What was demanded was nothing but the simple instinct of an ordinary parent or mate. And, as far as we know, this has never assumed the presence of any particular genius of abstract thinking as an indispensable prerequisite.
If you need any piece of special evidence for that, then here is one that ought to convince you: even an "unintelligent" animal, separated from its special mate and its young ones, will feel visibly miserable until it has finally been reunited with those congenial ones to whom it is so strongly attached. And it does reach them, in the end, sometimes even over vast distances and through a maze of serious hindrances. So vivid, then, is the "vision of the invisible" even in a dumb beast; but notice, a beast remaining harmonious with the totality of its being, exactly as living nature has provided it!
And now to another case of that same experimental evidence with which we think our theory ought to find its adequate trial and its possible corrective. What about that imaginary nail which some patients were asked to drive into a piece of wood? Well, even that is not, obviously enough, really comparable to any degree of philosophical rumination of the Platonic or Aristotelian type! In fact, that game has nothing to do at all with the philosophizing trend. It is miles away from abstraction, in terms of that typical endowment which constitutes the fundamental prerequisite for a mind of the properly speculative bent--or of the properly scientific bent; we mean a bent towards pure speculation--or a bent towards pure science.
On the contrary, the most un-philosophical and un-scientific being we know, namely a little child, would grasp immediately that idea there which Goldstein's patients completely failed to grasp. To tell the truth, he would simply love to play that wonderfully childlike play of some make-believe nail being there all the time. In fact, where in the world would you find a sound and normal boy who would not put his whole soul into the task of "driving in" any number you might ask of imaginary nails, even into an entirely imaginary piece of wood, and with nothing but an entirely imaginary hammer also!
And as for drinking water out of that empty glass we mentioned, or even no glass at all, just he would prove a past expert in any such practice. In fact, the more soundly childlike he happened to be, the better would he be at it.
Therefore such a child is also infinitely better qualified for seeing certain types of an invisible world. We say "certain types"; for to be sure, this must be a world definitely different from that of the professor in mathematics. Above all, it must be a world infinitely more true to life. That is: the world of the heart. And we do not hesitate to add: the world of the spirit; that is, a world extending its realms even unto God--to some the most real, to others the most un-real of all things!
According to our theory the most "spiritually seeing" is the one who is able to see the Highest (God)--or the hand of God--in the most lowly things.
In short, our conviction remains unwaveringly the same: the spiritual world is infinitely more related to the world of the concrete than most people believe; and infinitely less related to the abstract than most people believe. Of course, we are here thinking of abstraction in the traditional sense of a purely theoretical and a more or less ruminative tendency. And we are thinking of spirituality in the sense of the Christian Gospel. If the real, intimate relationship were rather one between true spirituality and learned speculation, then how on earth could Christianity ever, from its earliest beginnings, have appointed just the Child as the model among men with respect to spiritual excellence?
And now the symbol again: Why is religious life and religious literature simply teeming with symbols?
Symbols may be the most graphic and the most naive thing of the world. We cannot help thinking of the extensive use Christ made of symbols in His religious ministry. The Saviour Himself, by the way, is symbolized as a Lamb. That is certainly a symbolism destined to appeal to the imaginative faculties of the most simple minds.
But please pass now to mathematics, for instance, with its symbols of x, y, and z. Those are, indeed, very different symbols, appealing to very different types of minds. In the former case the aim was a more graphical, a more popular, a more immediately understandable representation--in fact, even a certain concretization of the idea one might wish to convey. In the latter case, there is, on the contrary, a generalizing and truly abstracting method, serving the aims of pure scientific speculation.
At the same time it may not be irrelevant to remind the reader that there is a "symbolism" presenting itself in some schools of art today. This symbolism certainly does not always appear to be made for the sake of the "poor in spirit"; its heartfelt concern can hardly be that they may thus obtain an immediate vision of the values which their childlike minds might not otherwise be sufficiently subtle to grasp. On the contrary, one should think that the point is to make things more complicated--for the sake of complication as a goal in itself.
Indeed, the student of totality in human life will soon enough discover that what man calls "symbolism" is a rather multifarious phenomenon.
Notes: