Paul Ricœur, Archaeology and Teleology (III)
In the last entries, we stipulated the characteristics of “archaeological” and “teleological” styles of explanation, as Ricoeur understands them. His central claim is that, while Freudianism's explicit “archaeological” gestures are universally recognized, its implicit “teleological” contents have been basically disregarded — where they have not been denied altogether.
We have described, moreover, the particular forms these two “hermeneutics” take in the Freudian context. Whereas
archaeology explains, regressively, human mentality with reference to its “origin” in infantile desire, or its archê,
teleology explains, progressively, this same mentality with reference to its “end” in an emerging self-consciousness, or its telos. (According to this latter approach, we have only grasped something when we perceive the end “for the sake of which” it exists or occurs.)
In short, as Ricoeur writes: “Freud links a thematized archaeology of the unconscious to an unthematized teleology of the process of becoming conscious” (FaP 461).
It is also part of Ricoeur’s argument, however — indeed, the most significant part — that these hermeneutical “antipodes” are, in reality, internally-related or even identical. This is naturally a counterintuitive proposition. We might suspect, after all, that archaeological and teleological explanations are mutually exclusive: in a given instance one practices one or the other, but never both at once. To be sure, I may explain a given item both by what precedes it and what follows it — its arché and telos — at different times, with the aid of different proposition-types. (On the one hand: “The behavior, x, is an unconscious manifestation of infantile desire.” On the other hand: “The behavior, x, promotes the growth of self-consciousness.”) In that case, though, there is hardly any question of which one I am doing.
Yet Ricoeur is not merely claiming that Freudianism contains both hermeneutics — as though some of Freud’s assertions about human mentality are archaeological, while others are teleological. Rather, in a way that may strike the reader as paradoxical, Ricoeur is arguing that these two hermeneutics are mutually-dependent. The very thrust of Freudianism that appears most “archaeological” is itself grounded in, or presupposes, a “teleology” inseparable from it, and vice versa. Or again: upon reflection, the archê of desire and the telos of self-consciousness are finally the same.
But what do these gnomic phrases mean, exactly? Ricoeur dedicates much of the last sections of Freud and Philosophy to substantiating this puzzling “identity” thesis — that is, the “archaeo-teleological principle” as such. Already in “Consciousness and the Unconscious,” though, he’d projected such an identity, albeit cautiously and in schematic form. We already quoted a relevant passage from this essay in the last entry, and I want to reproduce it here:
“[W]hat is at stake is the possibility of a philosophical anthropology which can take up the dialectic between consciousness and the unconscious. What world view and vision of man will make this possible? What must man be to assume the responsibility of sound thought and yet be susceptible of falling into insanity, to be obligated by his humanity to strive for greater and greater consciousness and yet remain a product of topographic or economic models insofar as ‘the id speaks through him?’ What new vision of human fragility…is required by the sort of thought which has allowed itself to be decentered from consciousness through reflecting on the unconscious?” (100-101)
While at the time of this essay Ricoeur had evidently not yet settled on the terms “archaeology” and “teleology” to canvass his concerns, their operation here is unmistakable. When viewed under his or her archaeological aspect, the human being is “a product of topographic or economic models insofar as ‘the id speaks through him.’” But this same human being is defined by a telos, namely, “to strive for greater and greater consciousness” and in this way “to assume the responsibility of sound thought.”
Later in the essay, Ricoeur redescribes this definitive telos — of the human being and, by extension, of psychoanalysis — as a “task.” Perhaps, in a Kantian spirit, this is an unendliche Aufgabe, an “infinite task,” an unending end:
“Everything that can be said about consciousness after Freud seems to me to be contained in the following formula: Consciousness is not a given but a task.” (108)
And a moment later, Ricoeur indexes the possibility of progress in self-illumination — the task of that agency designated simply “consciousness” — to the unconscious:
“Our question is the following: What is the meaning of the unconscious for a being whose task is consciousness? This question is related to a second: What is consciousness as a task for a being who is somehow bound to those factors, such as repetition and even regression, which the unconscious represents for the most part?” (108-109)
What begins to emerge in these passages is the indissoluble bond between teleology and archaeology, such that
one must realize the “task” of enlightenment or “consciousness” in and through what is unconscious; while
unconscious life — its meaning, its very existence — is at the same time dependent upon the realization of this “task” of consciousness
Which is to say: consciousness, in the sense Ricoeur has in mind, simply is this vexed relation to the unconscious, and vice versa. Hence archê and telos, one’s “foundation” and one’s “end,” define one another just as consciousness and the unconscious do. Indeed, these polarities are merely two iterations of the same basic problem or “task.”
Now it seems to me we can give compressed form to Ricoeur’s “identity” thesis as follows: one’s “end” is nothing but a (more or less conscious) appropriation of one’s foundation; and, alternatively, one’s “foundation,” desire — as a moving force in one’s life — exists at all only as something (more or less consciously) appropriated as one’s end.
After all, what kind of “end” could a human being pursue, including the “task” of consciousness, if it is not one appointed by desire — a desire whose shape has been contoured beginning in the remotest past? And what is “desire,” the moving force of a life, if it is not something manifested in ends as various as the many projects constituting a life — above all, finally, the “analytic” end of self-consciousness?
This last remark raises an ambiguity I have deliberately bracketed until now. We have been drawing on some distinction between
the sundry “ends,” the projects, of a given human life — sex, family, money, fame, etc. — and
that meta-teleological “end” posited in analysis, even as analysis: the enlargement of self-understanding, or the “task of consciousness.”
There seems to be some important, albeit obscure relation between these “ends” of life and the proper “end” of analysis. And while Ricoeur is in no hurry to clarify this conceptual nexus, it is arguably crucial to the position he is defending. I want to consider two ways of conceiving this relation between the mundane ends of life and the privileged end of analysis. For they may throw light on our central issue: the purported “identity” between the archê of desire and the telos of self-consciousness.
The “end” of analysis overall, the thoroughgoing self-reflection on unconscious life and thereby the expansion of self-consciousness, draws attention to the patient’s “ends,” to the adult projects in which he or she is enmeshed, and to their largely unconscious meaning. And this “meaning” coincides with their origin in, and determination by, their infantile predecessors — that is, the archê of desire. In the course of investigation, which gradually imparts to these mature ends a conscious significance and value for the patient they formally lacked, these ends are (potentially) weakened, strengthened, or otherwise “revised.” At the same time, new ends are originated, refined, and so on. All of which suggests: the universal, meta-teleological “end” of self-consciousness, when successful, may alter — undermine, promote, or otherwise scramble —the particular “ends” of that patient in whom the “task of consciousness” takes hold.
But there is another, perhaps more satisfying way of considering this relation between the analytic “end” of self-knowledge and the many “ends” constitutive of anyone’s life. In Love and its Place in Nature, Jonathan Lear, drawing equally from Aristotle and Hans Loewald, glosses unconscious desire as “archaic mental functioning,” and argues that the “symptoms” encountered in an analysis — bodily episodes and complaints, ritualistic habits, confusing patterns of interaction — are precisely the mind’s way of pressing for self-expression when other, “mature” channels are obstructed, with the goal, viz. the end, of being known, understood, recognized. From this perspective, the “task of consciousness” (the meta-teleological “end”) is not something superimposed, externally, upon the patient’s behaviors and projects (and the “ends” embedded in them) — as though these latter were merely “objects” of reflection, over which one may subsequently exert conscious control. On the contrary, self-reflection is precisely the “end” of these phenomena, the final stage toward which they unconsciously strain.
This second interpretation, in particular, gives us a way of grasping Ricoeur’s broad identity-thesis. For in this case, the archê of desire “is” the telos of self-consciousness, in the following sense: the most primitive, infantile wishes are “manifested,” more or less unconsciously, in adult projects. Hence a desire for anything at all — a mundane end — is always also, inter alia and most significantly, a desire to “manifest,” that is, to be perceived, known, or recognized.
I will continue my exposition of this difficult thought in the next entry.