The Great Health of Melancholy copenhagen business school handelshøjskolen solbjerg plads 3 dk-2000 frederiksberg danmark www.cbs.dk CBS PhD nr 25-2009 Rasmus Johnsen • A5 OMSLAG.indd 1 PhD Series 25.2009 ISSN 0906-6934 ISBN 978-87-593-8404-6 The Great Health of Melancholy A Study of the Pathologies of Performativity Rasmus Johnsen Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies PhD Series 25.2009 22/10/09 14.47 The Great Health of Melancholy A Study of the Pathologies of Perform ativity Rasm us J ohnsen PhD Fellow D o c t o r a l Sc h o o l o f O r g a n i za t i o n a n d M a n a g e m e n t St u d i e s Departm ent for Managem ent, Politics and Philosophy Copenhagen Business School 20 0 9 PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER ONE......................................................................................................................................................... 7 PROLOGUE ................................................................................................................................................................................. . STRESS AS A FORMAL INDICATION ................................................................................................................................ . MICHEL FOUCAULT’S HISTORICAL PROBLEMATIZATION ANALYSIS........................................................................ . MICHEL SERRES AND THE THEORY OF THE QUASI‐OBJECT ...................................................................................... . HISTORIOGRAPHY: ONE OR SEVERAL MELANCHOLIES? ............................................................................................ CHAPTER TWO ..................................................................................................................................................... 47 PROLOGUE .............................................................................................................................................................................. . THE EMOTIONAL HYPERBOLE OF HEROIC INDIVIDUALITY ....................................................................................... . ER S AND THE ANTINOMY OF MADNESS IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES........................................................................... . ABNORMAL BY NATURE: MELANCHOLY IN PROBLEMS XXX, 1 ................................................................................. . SATURNINE MEN: THE DIETETICS OF MELANCHOLY IN FICINO .............................................................................. . PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: MELANCHOLY.................................................................................................. CHAPTER THREE ................................................................................................................................................. 87 PROLOGUE .............................................................................................................................................................................. . ACEDIA AMONG THE ANCHORITE MONKS .................................................................................................................... . THE VIRTUE OF WORK AND THE MELANCHOLY OF THE SOCIAL BODY .......................................................... . THOMAS HOBBES AND THE MELANCHOLIC OF THE LEVIATHAN ........................................................................... . THE PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: ACEDIA .................................................................................................. CHAPTER FOUR ................................................................................................................................................. 117 PROLOGUE ........................................................................................................................................................................... . GEORGE M. BEARD’S PHILOSOPHY OF NERVOUSNESS ............................................................................................ . THE CULTURE OF SENSIBILITY AND THE MALADIES OF THE WILL ...................................................................... . THE HUMAN MOTOR: NERVES AND LABOUR POWER ............................................................................................ . THE MECHANICS OF MELANCHOLY: FREUD AND NEURASTHENIA ....................................................................... . THE PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: NEURASTHENIA .................................................................................. CHAPTER FIVE ................................................................................................................................................... 153 . A RECAPITULATION OF THE HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS .......................................................................................... . STRESS AND THE POPULARIZATION OF THE EXTRAORDINARY ............................................................................. . DEPRESSION AND THE ARTICULATION OF THE SELF............................................................................................... . DEPRESSION AND SUBJECTIVITY AS A RESOURCE .................................................................................................... DANSK RESUMÉ .................................................................................................................................................................. REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................................................... ENDNOTES ........................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Pre face This thesis is a study of three philosophical form ations in the long and colourful history of m elancholy as a cultural notion. For nearly two m illennia the notion of m elancholy helped to shape, organize, explain, focus and render m anageable the encounter between individual and collective in the Western world. In term s of its im plications for social, ethical, epistem ological and m edical norm s, the m ultiplicity and diversity of this history is without com parison in the Occident. Yet, the work presented here is not so m uch an attem pt to unravel its historical com plexities. Rather, it is an effort to show that the history of m elancholy can provide an unequalled and vital background to a philosophical study of the relations between the contem porary m odes of organizing work and the individual pathos of work-related illness like stress and depression, which today has assum ed a central role in the way we understand the partaking in a socioeconom ic reality. In this sense, what the thesis provides is philosophical groundwork. It offers a looking glass through which the fascinating history of great achievem ent and personal failure that is central to the category of m elancholy can be represented in all its foreignness, and yet, at the sam e tim e, can be said to reflect and illum inate the present. The philosophical form ations explored here, it is m y hope, can lead to a better and m ore com plex understanding of the association in the contem porary between work-related illness and the injunction to participate and contribute as a self in the m odern organization. What they provide is an attem pt to inform and speak into the present from the point of view of history; not in order to reach the sublation of now and then, but in order to illustrate how philosophy, and the reflexiveherm eneutic space that it opens, persist in m aking us the contem poraries of a past that rem ains negotiable and precarious. In this sense, the work on this thesis which I began on Copenhagen Business School in 20 0 6, has also been a m ost im portant test piece for m e in m y attem pt to find, m aintain and use a personal voice on the threshold between classical philosophical studies, and the aspects of m anagem ent and organization studies that were new to m e at the tim e. It is m y hope that the diversity of these fields, rather than being reduced to each other, are al- lowed a space in which to grow and flourish in their diversity. The thesis began with an interest into the contem porary association between the spectacle of the experience econom y and the social phenom enon of depression. It has ended as a philosophical exploration of the historical sources that m ay be said to constitute a background to an association like this. It is m y hope that this work m ay offer a philosophical ‘toolbox’ to both m y own further engagem ent in LAS, the research program m e on m anagem ent of selfm anagem ent, which has provided m e with an opportunity to continue m y study of pathology and work today, and to those who work on the boundaries between philosophy, m anagem ent and organization studies, and who are interested in the relation between tropes of work, illness and perform ativity today. I want to thank first m y supervisor Prof. Sverre Raffnsøe, Asm und Born and m y good friend and colleague Marius Gudm and-Høyer sine qua non. Also Michael Pedersen and Anders Raastrup Kristensen, with whom I have enjoyed the privilege of sharing m y tim e at CBS until now, along with Birgitte Gorm Hansen and Pia Bram m ing, deserve special thanks. The advice, expert assistance and corrections by Cam pbell J ones and André Spicer is som ething I have valued a lot and which has m ade m y com plex text m uch better. Also the opportunity given to m e by Peter Case to speak in on the subject on the Bristol Centre for Leadership and Organisational Ethics (BCLOE) is som ething for which I am grateful. I want thank all of m y colleagues at MPP for valuable com m ents, suggestions and cheers and for backing m e when things got a little rough. Also all of m y friends and m y fam ily, m y father and Eva, m other, sister, Rune, Storm and Viggo deserve thanks for putting up with m e. Rasm us J ohnsen, Frederiksberg, J uly 20 0 9 6 Ch ap te r On e In tro d u cin g th e ‘Th in g’ in th e Bo d y P r ologu e 1. St r es s a s a P a t h ology of P e r for m a t ivit y 2 . Mich el Fou ca u lt ’s H ist or ica l P r ob lem a t iza t ion An a lys is 3 . Th e ‘Th in g’ in t h e Bod y a n d t h e ‘Qu a si-Ob ject ’ 4 . H ist or iogr a p h y: On e or Se ver a l Mela n ch olies? Pro lo gu e ‘An old m an who him self was extrem ely m elancholy’, Søren Kierkegaard writes in a journal entry from 1846, ‘gets a son in his old age who inherits all this m elancholy – but also has a m ental-spiritual elasticity enabling him to hide his m elancholy.’ (Kierkegaard 1978: 343) This little piece of selfobservation, apart from representing som ething which to Kierkegaard was m ore like a condensed autobiography judging from his num erous reflections on the nature and cause of what he called his ‘thorn in the flesh’, presents an em inent m otif for the present thesis. Through an inquiry into three very different periods in the broad and colourful history of m elancholy, this thesis provides a philosophical and theoretical background for the study of a relation between pathology and the ability to perform in a social context today. The assertion of such a relation – represented by the burgeoning societal interest into the association between stress-related illness, depression and the way a contem porary workplace is organized (e.g. Iacovides et al. 20 0 3) – has a socioeconom ic im pact on society like never before in history. In the wake of the debates, which were sparked in the 1990 s as a result of the approval in Decem ber 1989 of Prozac for the Am erican m arkets (e.g. Healy 1997, Kram er 1993), the societal debates about stress and depression have becom e linked to the question of the productivity of the ‘hum an resource’ and the potential hum anization of work engaged within this perspective. In both fields of critical theory (e.g. Honneth 20 0 5, Honneth 20 0 4), sociology (e.g. Ehrenberg 1999, Petersen 20 0 7, Willig & Østergaard 20 0 5), work-environm ent studies (e.g. Marchand, Dem ers & Durand 20 0 5, Levi 20 0 1), popular m anagem ent literature (e.g. William s, Cooper 20 0 2, Loehr, McCorm ack 1997), psychiatric discourse (e.g. Bech et al. 20 0 5, Schultz 20 0 1) and philosophically inspired studies (e.g. Pedersen 20 0 9) on stress and depression have been addressed as pathologies related to how contem porary work is organized. More often than not, work and m ental disorder em erge in a cause-effect relation, where pathology is viewed as a direct result of the social role that the workplace has acquired as a place for the individual realization of the self. Yet the assum ption itself of a relation between illness and the way individuals perform in a social context is not new. Although it was not always associated with the way w ork is organized, the association between illness and perform ativity, between individual health and a productive life, has a long and com plicated history. This thesis explores this history and the assertion in it of individual agency. Sharing with Kierkegaard’s selfobservation the inherent distinction between a psychosom atic state of suffering and the assertion of som ething like a ‘m ental-spiritual elasticity’ of the individual will regulating it, the three historical form ations with which it engages, each represent pathologies that possess connotations of health as an individual appropriation and of illness as the signal of a failure of agency. As m aladies of the will – or pathologies of perform ativity – the m elancholy of the extraordinary in character in Antiquity, the acedia of the religious m an in the Middle Ages, and the neurasthenia of the laborious businessm an around the turn of the 19 th century, all represent privileged and im portant aspects of a long tradition of illnesses associated with the reflective ability of the individual to articulate the ‘self’ as an object for regulation and m anagem ent. It is the task of this thesis to rediscover and explore this tradition and to illustrate how it m ay assist and inform an inquiry into the contem porary age in order to provide a better understanding of the way illness is associated with the organization of work and perform ativity today. Yet instead of focusing exclusively on this historical association as a cause-effect relation, designating a pattern of suffering in the individual body as the result of an external pressure, the thesis develops an alternative perspective, which seeks instead to ask the pertinent question about how such associations are structured and com e about. Providing a philosophical perspective on the history of the pathologies of perform ativity, it attem pts to illustrate how the reflective assertion of an individual agency 8 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body navigating on the precarious threshold between som a and psy che can inform the present in a way that transcends a traditional perception on psychosom atic illness (e.g. Greco 1998, Greco 1993). To Kierkegaard the profound depressive suffering that he believed was passed down to him by his father, the inexplicable and inarticulate burden that threatened to crush him , was them atized as a hereditary sin; but it was also associated with what he paradoxically described as an ‘uncom m on resiliency’, an em inen t health of m ind and spirit in spite of it (Kierkegaard 1978: 334). Kierkegaard viewed his ‘thorn in the flesh’ as the gift of Governance, som ething to which he, from the first to the last written page of his life, was riveted and com m itted. The seem ing contradictio in adjecto of this intim ate and passionate relationship with suffering provides a central them e to the following. Illustrating a relationship to an indeterm inate relation between som a and psy che – a ‘thing’ in the body – around which not only a psychosom atic pattern of suffering is structured, but also the different ways in which the individual can present the self as a perform ing subject within a social setting, the reflective relation between self and self – in Kierkegaard’s case represented as the difference between a state of depression and an activity of despair (Marino 20 0 8: 125) – designates a sway in which the possibility of self-regulation and self-differentiation em erges as a problem atic space of self-articulation. Establishing a fundam ental relationship between the dim ension of pathology and the dim ension of perform ance, it is the unfolding and distribution of this space in the historical form ations that constitute them as pathologies of perform ativity, which occupies the present thesis. An excellent exam ple illustrating the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body is found in Plato’s fantastic theory of the ‘wandering uterus’ taken from his great cosm ological dialogue, the Tim aeus (Tim . 91c) i. Describing a pattern of sym ptom s associated with the sexual frustration of wom en who rem ain childless too long after puberty, Plato’s theory assum es the existence in the fem ale body of an unruly organ which, endowed like an anim al with spontaneous sensation and em otion, desires to produce children. The frustration of this ill-tem pered anim al causes it to m igrate through the body of the unfortunate, resulting in a host of physiological and psychological disturbances, until she becom es pregnant. 9 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body Albeit an anachronism of m edical Antiquity, Plato’s theory m uch later is assum ed by Freud, along with his psychoanalytic colleagues, to be the first, rudim entary theory of psychosexual frustration and is thus associated with the diagnosis of hy steria that was fashionable at the tim e. (e.g. Freud 20 0 4, Freud 1920 , see also: Guttm an 20 0 6) As a proof of the scientific validity of sym ptom s related to the fem ale generative system s, this theory of a ‘thing’ in the body typical of wom en to Freud illustrated an age-old awareness of the m align psychosom atic effects of disordered sexual activity. Structuring not only a pattern of psychosom atic suffering in the body of the hysteric, which it was up to the individual to articulate in a socially understandable m anner, but also the pattern of authorities, institutions and technologies pointing it out, this ‘thing’ em erges as a precarious threshold between the individual and the collective in which the individual finds itself to exist. Indicative of the philosophical perspective on the history of pathologies developed in this thesis, the Freudian use of Plato’s theory illustrates how the regulative space opened in the bodies of hysterics was m ore than just an individual m atter. Designating a precarious threshold between som a and psy che, between nature and culture, Plato’s assum ption of a ‘thing’ in the body of frustrated wom en, in the hands of Freud em erges as a social bond, a precarious and problem atic space for psychoanalytic self-articulation, where the delim itations between individual and collective becom e blurred and indistinct. It is the historical unfolding of social bonds like this one in the history of the pathologies of perform ativity with which this thesis engages. But before engaging in this discussion a look at how the thesis is organized will be in place. Following this introduction, the rem ainder of chapter one introduces the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body and discusses the m ethodological and philosophical im plications of this perspective. The chapter begins with a discussion of the contem porary notion of stress as a form al indication of the historical dispositions that the following chapters set out to explore. Following this, a section discusses how the explorations of the pathologies of perform ativity reflect the m ethodological notion of problem atization developed in the late work of Michel Foucault in the 1980 s. The next section engages m ore directly with the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body, arguing that it can be seen as what Michel Serres has called a quasi-object 10 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body (Serres 20 0 7, Serres 1987, Serres 1995). This section also illustrates how the perspective on the ‘thing’ in the body in this sense can be represented by the distinction m ade by Bruno Latour between m atters of fact and m atters of concern (Latour 20 0 4). The final section of this chapter discusses the historiography of the ‘thing’ in the body, illustrating how the historical perspectives on pathologies developed in the thesis can be seen as a part of the history of m elancholy. Chapter two engages with the notion of m elancholy , asserted to be the pathology of the extraordinary in character in Antiquity, and revolving around the assertion of the black bile (gr. m elaina cholé) in the short Aristotelian text Problem s X XX, 1 from the Corpus Aristotelicum as a ‘thing’ in the body of extraordinary individuals. Rem oving the black bile from its place am ong the four hum ours of Hippocratic m edicine, which were thought to be in balance when the organism was healthy, the author of Problem s X XX, 1 (probably Theophrastus, a follower of Aristotle) assum es the precarious notion of an eukratos anom alia – a well-balanced anom alism – in the black bile itself. The extraordinary in character, the great m en of culturally form ative achievem ent in art, politics and philosophy of Antiquity are m elancholics, not dià nóson, through disease, but dià phý sin, by nature. While this m ay cause illness if they fail to govern them selves properly according to their nature, m elancholy in them is not in itself pathological; rather, when it is handled skilfully, it is an expression of ēthos, of the right character. This m anagem ent of character, paradoxically, is located in the body as a physiological balance in the subject of the bile ensuing from the Aristotelian assum ption of heat as the regulating principle of the body. The chapter traces the origins of this disposition to pre-historic tim es in the virtuosity of the tragic heroes and discusses its gradual transform ation to play a central role in the dietetic theories of the genius in the Italian Renaissance. Chapter three engages with the capital sin of acedia, first described in detail by the m onk Evagrius Ponticus around the 4 th century A.D., a constellation of unusual and undesirable feelings and behaviour also referred to as the noonday dem on. First found in the coenobite m onks of rem ote com m unities in the Egyptian desert, acedia – a kind of sinful carefreeness interfering with the virtuous activities of the m onastic – was structured as a 11 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body pattern of psychosom atic suffering around a dem onical possession, which m ade the m onk inaccessible to regulation in the theocosm os of vice and virtue and opened his heart to the Devil. Describable as a sinful privation causing the confusion of the affective life, which enabled the ‘good works’ of the Christian com m unity, acedia dem anded constant vigilance, adhering to the burden of a social reality, which – unlike the m elancholy of the extraordinary in character – was always already indebted to a ‘higher’ order. Focusing on acedia as an em otional hyperbole caused by deficient selfregulation, the chapter traces the confusion of affects from its assertion as a dem on in the body of the virtuous within the context of the theocosm os and to its assertion as a m onstrous eruption in the body of the vain-glorious m elancholic within the sociocosm os of Thom as Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651). Chapter four concerns neurasthenia, the m alady of the diligent and laborious individual of 19 th century industrialism , which was structured around the nervous force in the bodies of working subjects. Coined by the Am erican physician George M. Beard and representing the illness of m en (and wom en) of all classes, neurasthenia them atized the difficulties associated with the m anagem ent of a personal store of energy in an everyday world, where the dem ands of progress an d pitfalls of m odernity challenged the autonom y and individuality of those unfortunate enough to yield to social pressure. Owing som ething to the two Brunonian categories of sthenia and asthenia, this pathology of everyday life them atized both the excess of stim ulation of the individual when it was exposed to m odern life, and the resulting incapacity of the will to react to stim ulus, caused by the depletion of nervous energy. Reflected also in the Freudian understanding of m elancholia, the exhaustion of the dem ocratic individual resulting from a deficient m anagem ent of personal resources designated the task of a neuropathic household, which m ade of the individual a vehicle for the refinem ent of natural resources into culture. On the background of the three previous chapters, the fifth and concluding chapter of this thesis sum m arizes the findings of the explorations of the historical form ations and discusses how these findings can contribute to an investigation of the relation between pathology, work and perform ativity in the present. Focussing on the contem porary problem of depression, it indicates three dim ensions of this problem for further study, suggesting that 12 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body the work perform ed in this thesis contributes an im portant groundwork to the drafting of a philosophical topology of the contem porary conceptualization of productivity. First it suggests that the affinity between the contem porary phenom enon of stress and stress-m anagem ent in the light of classical m elancholia can be viewed as an eroticism of m odern day capitalism . Secondly, it illustrates how aspects of the contem porary conceptualization of depressive disorder reflect the problem atic form ation of acedia in the Middle Ages and suggests that depression thus can be seen as a fall from the social. Thirdly, and finally, it discusses the relation of depression to work in the context of subjectivity as a resource m odelled around the energetic tropes of 19 th century neurasthenia. Before proceeding to the investigation of the historical form ations, though, the following sections will discuss in a little m ore detail the system atical im plications of these explorations and take a closer look at the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body. First a description of how the contem porary notion of stress constitutes a form al indication of the kind of dispositions that the thesis sets out to uncover can provide not only a good introduction to the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body, but also help to point out som e of the system atical dim ensions which the thesis seeks to extract from its historical explorations. 1. S t r e s s a s a F o r m a l I n d i c a t i o n The contem porary concept of stress provides an illustrative exam ple of this dispersive relation to a ‘thing’ in the body, representing the opening of a space for agency between som a and psy che. Resonating with Kierkegaard’s own designation in The Sickness unto Death (“Sygdom m en til døden”, 1849) of the self as ‘a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is relating to itself’ (Kierkegaard 20 0 4: 43), the exam ple of stress offers what Heidegger in Being and Tim e (1927) term ed a form al indication of the disposition that this thesis engages with (Heidegger 1962, see also: Streeter 1997). Rather than grasping the concept of stress in the traditional m anner of a categorical attem pt to seize its object, this exam ple traces a projective or anticipatory sketch that advances on certain prom inent form al features of it as an entity, which can assist the understanding of the object of this study and provide it with a system atic dim ension. As a relation 13 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body which relates to itself as a m ind-body (m is)relation, the popular notion of stress articulates both the burgeoning interest in em ployee em powerm ent and the pathological problem s associated with the m anagem ent of the self in convergence with the dem ands of a productive organizational fram ework (e.g. Rose 1999, Pedersen & Kristensen 20 0 9, Pedersen 20 0 9). Popular titles like Creating Success: How to Deal w ith Stress (Palm er & Cooper 20 0 7), Stress for Success (Loehr & McCorm ack 1997), Stress-Proof Your Life: Sm art W ay s to Relax and Re-Energize (Wilson 20 0 5), and Conquer y our Stress (William s & Cooper 20 0 2) bedeck news-paper ads and internet flash-banners, newsstand shelves and airport bookstalls for the busy traveller, with prom ises of stress-busting advice that will lead to a healthier and m ore productive lifestyle. In a straightforward m anner these titles boast advice that m ixes m anagem ent perspectives with psychological, physiological and neurobiological research to create insight into how to m anage the stress that m ay build up in the body in the best way. One exam ple that illustrates very well how stress as a ‘thing’ in the body represents a m edium for both achievem ent and suffering is contained in the following lines from the foreword to Stress Managem ent for Dum m ies: Stress is an unavoidable consequence of life. There are som e stresses you can do som ething about, and others you can’t hope to avoid or control. The trick is learning to distinguish between the two, so that you’re not constantly frustrated like Don Quixote, tilting at windm ills. This book teaches you how to use your tim e and talents effectively so that stress can m ake you m ore productive, rather than self-destructive. (Elkin 1999: xxv) Here stress is asserted to be a natural phenom enon that there is no way to avoid, but which on the other hand can be controlled, directed and sublim ated by the intervention of concentrated self-m anagem ent techniques. Stress, in other words, is not asserted to be pathological in itself; rather it acts as a natural potentiality that can lead to physical and m ental suffering if the individual fails to take into account the pathogenic value of his or her specific disposition and environm ent. On the other hand, learning the trick of balancing the subject prom ises to increase personal productivity. Defining a healthy and productive balance in the anom aly of stress will lead to personal success, because ‘the right am ount creates a beautiful tone’. 14 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body The problem that the assum ption of stress as a threshold between som a and psy che presents to the individuals m anaging them selves lucidly illustrated by the pseudoscientific concepts of eustress and distress that were originally coined by Hans Seley (Cooper & Dewe 20 0 4), but are now popular in use throughout stress-m anagem ent program s. Designating stress as the articulation of a natural disposition, the ideas of a good stress and a bad stress, the er s and thanatos of m odern life-style, assert a subject that one does not only m anage, but whose em issions one is also disposed to and subjected by. There are, Elkin claim s in Stress Managem ent for Dum m ies, ‘the kinds of stresses that add to the enjoym ent and satisfaction of our lives. We want m ore of this kind of stress, not less.’ (Elkin 1999: 21) These eustresses are not defined in term s of illness; rather than designating anom alies, they are asserted to be natural aspects of a paradoxical balance of character in the anom aly that one does not sim ply handle in order to survive. The good stresses enable an ēthos – a ‘right character’ – in the anom aly, because ‘effective stress m anagem ent really com es down to effective lifestyle m anagem ent’ (Elkin 1999: 2). In this perspective health is not prim arily a state of being. It is a highly individualized com pound of activities, where health em erges as the precarious dynam ic balance in a ceaseless process of selfdifferentiation. The deficiency of self-m anagem ent, on the other hand, is represented as a double pathos: taken in both original senses of the word, this pathos is represented as the event of a transience as opposed to an ideal (the ēthos), and as an affection causing physical or m ental suffering. While health is a dynam ic value of self-differentiation, the possible disproportions of this differentiation are represented som atically as suffering. Stress com es to represent the precarious and problem atic ‘thing’ that takes place in the body and is detectable as the som atic pattern of failure or success of the self which m anages itself. As a precarious bond between som a and psy che that is not reducible to som ething psy chosom atic, stress functions as an arbiter of self-m anagem ent (e.g. Pedersen 20 0 9). In this sense stress as a ‘thing’ in the body represents the assertion of a nature that is in fundam ental conflict with itself. Or to be m ore precise: it constitutes a subject structured and cohered only by a fundam ental conflict. It is through and only through the caesura and ceaseless rearticulation of 15 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body this subject that the self-differentiation of individual ēthos is constituted. The deficient self-m anagem ent represented as transience as opposed to the right character em erges as the decadence in a literal sense (from latin de+cadere: fall apart) of a body that the self-differentiation passes through. The fundam ental conflict that is constitutive of this relation between som a and psy che is also represented in Stress Managem ent for Dum m ies. The practical ‘stress-busting advice an d exercises’ that are offered here function as articulating m edium s dissem inating stress as m ode of existence to individuals. Most of these tests, tables, hints and scales are designed to tell the reader ‘how [his] body reacts’ (Elkin 1999: 25) and how stress can m ake him sick with individual som atic reactions. The opacity of the subject of stress is highlighted by the fact that it is both assum ed to be som ething that defies general definition and a horm onal reaction, which works in a straightforward causal m anner: perceived stressor – horm ones – body organs and m uscles. According to Elkin, m uscles are prim e targets for stress, but also the circulatory system s, sexuality and the im m une system . Stress needs to be balanced, because ‘finding your stress balance is one of the best ways to find out if you are overreacting to the stress in your life’ (Elkin 1999: 38). The em ission of stress acts as a cause for an individual profile, which is the result of a horm onal balance asserted to y ou as an individual. In other words ‘y ou’ are pointed out by stress as a ‘thing’ in the body: Your sym pathetic nervous system , one of the two branches of your autonom ic nervous system , is producing changes in your body. Your hy pothalam us, a part of your brain, is activating your pituitary , a sm all gland at the base of your brain, which releases a horm one into the bloodstream . This horm one (it’s called ACTH or adrenocorticotropic horm one) reaches your adrenal glands, and they in turn produce m ore adrenalin (also known as epinephrine) along with other horm ones called glucocorticoids (cortisol is one). This m elange of biochem ical changes is responsible for an array of other rem arkable changes in your body. (Elkin 1999: 26) As a fundam ental threshold between the som atic constitution of the individual represented on a m olecular level and the interpellation of the individual as an active agent, stress as a ‘thing’ in the body that can be identified, isolated and m anipulated, but also m obilized, recom bined and intervened on, here em erges as an em blem atic representation of the object of this study. Structured around ‘objects’ that are neither fully representable 16 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body as nature, nor as culture, not fully as som a or as psy che, the pathologies of perform ativity presented in this thesis represent the precarious problem atic fields of subjects, which designate a conflict between an individual pathos and the ēthos of perform ativity that can only be regulated by a reflective intervention. As a first form al indication of the structural dim ensions that this study sets out to explore historically, this conflict in the contem porary conceptualization of stress can be represented on the fundam ental level of a distinction between problem and response. The em ergence of stress as a ‘thing’ in the body, illustrated in the quote above in a very literal sense, culm inates in the assertion a pathological problem , designating a host of m ore or less undifferentiated sym ptom s, which are articulated in convergence with the dim ension of a self-regulatory response, designating a space for individual agency. Yet these two fundam ental dim ensions, as the indication above illustrates, are not causally organized as a challenge to which a solution exists that m akes the challenge go away. As the patterns of psychosom atic sym ptom s are autonom ic, the pathological problem in a certain m anner itself represents a response to an un differentiated and unsym bolized ‘preobject’ in the individual body, an affective reality leading towards the m odality of significance. Likewise, the self-regulatory response itself on a certain level represents a problem as it is an adventure inscribing a sym bolic dim ension to this ‘preobject’ transform ing affect into activity. Instead of representing a causality , the dim ensions of problem and response represent the m ost fundam ental categorical aspects of a cosm ology organized around the ‘thing’ in the body. These categorical aspects and how their organization around the ‘thing’ indicates a system atical level of exploration for the thesis is som ething to which we will return in the next section. For now the form al indication of stress as an irreducible problem atic organized around a ‘thing’ in the body, and how that reflects the pathologies of perform ativity explored, deserves a little m ore attention. The difficulty of describing the ‘nature’ of the diffuse ‘thing’ in the body pointed out by stress as a form al indication reflects a fundam ental problem with which this thesis engages. Was the black bile really a physical substance that was m ore dom inant in the bodies of m elancholics than in other 17 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body people, or was it m erely a supposition of early Hippocratic theories that Modern and m ore advanced m edicine has proven obsolete? Was the coenobite m onk, whose body was filled with acedia, really possessed by the noonday dem on that tied his tongue so that he was unable to say his prayers or was his inability to see anything good in God’s creation m erely a result of his own sinful lack of spiritual vigilance? Was the nervous bankruptcy of the neurasthenic patient really an exhaustion of the body’s natural reserves of energy or did it rather constitute a kind of inverted work-ethics, an individual resistance to the social pressures of m odernity? How about the contem porary perspective? Is the im aging of the neural processes of the brain in stress a health scientific fact or is it a cultural im aginative? The problem of the nature of the ‘thing’ in the body is perhaps nowhere as painstakingly illustrated as in the assum ption of ly canthropy , derived from the notion of the transform ation of a hum an being into a wolf, which was popularly used to describe a kind of m elancholic individual, who would go out at night, im itating a wolf, frequenting tom bs in the cem etery until daytim e, where he would howl and wail m adly. Thom as Hobbes’ definition in Leviathan (1651) of m elancholy as the kind of dejection which ‘subjects m an to causeless fears’ and appears am ong other things as the ‘haunting of solitudes, and graves’ (Hobbes 20 0 6: 41) reflects Robert Burton’s call for self-knowledge in The Anatom y of Melancholy (1621), where he writes that while m en m ay be ‘sufficiently inform ed in all other worldy business’, when it com es to them selves, ‘they are wholly ignorant and careless, they know not what this Body and Soul are … or how a Man differs from a Dog’ (Burton 1986: 93). While the ontological problem of knowing the difference between m an and dog, of distinguishing between hum an and anim al in a categorical m anner, m ay seem trivial to a contem porary perspective, it was m ore than just a form al m atter to the 16 th and 17th century. As the trials against alleged lycanthropes illustrate, the determ ination of whether the prosecuted had actually been transform ed into a wolf or whether he was m erely under the influence of the Devil’s ability to insinuate him self into the m ental processes of the m elancholic m ind, was a crucial prerequisite for any legal sentence (e.g. Baring-Gould 1995, J ohnsen 20 0 9). To m ost of the m etaphysical, theological, juridical, historical, m edical and im aginative literature of the period, the lycanthrope represented a threshold between m an 18 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body and beast, an unresolved and unwanted indistinction that had to be worked out in order for the difference between hum an and anim al, between reason and unreason to rem ain (e.g. Agam ben 20 0 4). In a theory typical of its tim e, Thom as Willis, a lecturer at Oxford in the early 1660 s, argued that m an possessed a corporeal soul specific to him that had two aspects: one was its vital part, which in the tradition of the hum oral theory would inhabit the blood and enkindle it, and the second a sensitive part which on account of external influence would som etim es contract disproportionately with the body and thus cause delusion s of m etam orphosis (J ackson 1986: 348). Possessed by Satan, another theory along the sam e line added, the deluded would im agine him self transform ed into a wolf, because the hum ors of his body had been confused; he would, however, not be transform ed in reality, as the Devil had no power to fundam entally alter the hum an nature that God created in his im age (Otten 1986). To science, theology and law, the lycanthrope represented a very real problem to which there seem ed to be no easy solution. Reflecting the articulation of stress on a m olecular level, the problem of the m elancholic werewolf m ay be addressed in different m anners from a contem porary perspective. One way would be to explain society with nature. One such attem pt can be found in the explanation of the lycanthrope as an individual suffering from congenital porphy ria, a rare disease in which there is an inability to convert porphobilinogen to porphyrin in the bone m arrow. The sym ptom s of severe photosensitivity, a reddish-brown coloured urine, developm ent of pigm entation and hypertrichosis (an overgrowth of hair not localized to the androgen-dependent areas of the skin) and hyperplastic bone-m arrow would explain why som eone would prefer to wander about at night in secluded and isolated areas, m aybe on all fours and probably m entally disturbed and fear-ridden because of the condition (Illis 1986). Another way would be to explain nature with society: the m onstrous body of the werewolf contributes to a process of identity form ation by negative definition (du Coudray 20 0 2). As a social construct of the other of the hum anist subject, the lycanthrope reflects societal anxieties about m orality and represents an extrem e rendition of hum an carelessness. Such a perspective on stress would represent it as the prim ary trope of resistance to 19 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body the contem porary hegem ony of work in late capitalism as a place for individual self-realization, involving the organization and productivity of the working subjectivity (the ‘hum an resource’) (Costea et al. 20 0 8, Flem ing 20 0 8, Flem ing 20 0 3, J ohnsen 20 0 9) To the philosophical perspective on the ‘thing’ in the body taken up here, both of these assum ptions – the first explaining the evolution of a social category with nature, and the other explaining the hum an settlem ent on m atters of fact by social factors – fall short, because they, in spite of constituting a dichotom y, fail to address the sam e crucial issue. Reducing the im age of the werewolf to a problem to which one appropriate resolution exists, both perspectives fail to address the im portant aspect, that to the 16 th and 17th century scholars, who engaged with the distinction between hum an and beast, with the distinction between nature and society in m an, the lycanthrope represented a distinction that had y et not been m ade, a battlefield of interests involving supernatural, theological and scientific knowledge alike. Rather than representing a sim ple problem , the lycanthrope constituted an irreducible dilem m a, a problem atization that involved continuous alertness and circum spection, but also the exercise of specific m odes of questioning. Its nature, rather than representing som ething that was both m an and beast, was that of som ething that eerily was neither, dwelling within both, but irreducible to any of them (Agam ben 1998: 10 5). As a philosophical problem this is also the challenge that the ‘thing’ in the body represents to this thesis. What the black bile of Antique m edicine and the nervous energy of the 19 th century have in com m on is the representation of the ‘thing’ as not exactly nature or society, but as som ething that dwells paradoxically within both. Explaining the contem porary problem of stress as either an exclusively neurological and physiological pattern, defining the lim its of the working body (a pathophysiological disease) or as a social construction representing the lim it of the individual beyond which the dem ands of society becom e illegitim ate (a social pathology) is a deadlock, because both explanations m iss the trajectory of the ‘thing’ in question: the paradoxical articulation of a dilem m a that itself seem s to provide a breeding ground for specific m odes of experiencing series or networks of otherwise heterogeneous elem ents. 20 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body The articulation of such a dilem m a poses two im portant challenges. First, the question about how the heterogeneity of elem ents involved in the following explorations m ay be articulated system atically without m erely com ing to represent contradictions. This question will be discussed in the following section reflecting on the late Michel Foucault’s work on problem atizations. Secondly, the dilem m a of the ‘thing’ in the body represents the fundam ental question about the nature of the object of this study. Following the reflections on Foucault’s historical problem atizations analysis, a section arguing that the ‘thing’ in the body can be understood in term s of Michel Serres’ theory of quasi-objects, will thus reflect on the paradigm atic status of the ‘thing’ as a social bond – what Bruno Latour calls a m atter of concern. 2 . M i c h e l F o u c a u l t ’s H i s t o r i c a l P r o b l e m a t i z a t i o n An a l y s i s An illustrious exam ple of how the late analytical contributions of Michel Foucault can assist an understanding of the dilem m a of the ‘thing’ in the body and help to indicate a structural level of inquiry to the perspective developed in the following can be found in Foucault’s reflections on the status of hom osexuality in Antiquity. Based on the frequent m entioning of it in ancient Greek literature and art, it has often been assum ed that hom osexuality constituted an accepted practice in Antiquity. Yet as Foucault argues (Foucault 1996: 363-65; see also Detel 20 0 5: 118-162), the frequent reference to hom osexual encounters and pederasty in particular m ay be taken here also to indicate the contrary: that the phenom enon was not a triviality and that we encounter it as often as we do exactly because it was problem atic – not least as the im plicated youth risked falling into the category “prostitute” if the practice continued too long after puberty, as this would prevent him from entering any kind of political life. While the Greek m entality would tolerate pederastic encounters, it could not accept the com bination of sexual subm issiveness and political dom inance in one person. What Foucault’s exam ple illustrates is that the utterances and practices related to a problem like this one m ay be taken to be m odalities of ‘response’ to ‘problem s’ in the way also this study indicated such levels above in relation to stress as a ‘problem ’ in the present. In the exem plary case of hom osexuality, the utterances deal not with w hether hom osexuality was al21 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body lowed, but rather w hen it was, as it was not proper to the m ale subject, but only to the youth-object that was later to becom e a m ale subject. What Foucault’s exam ple illustrates is how the problem ‘hom osexuality’ on this background is constituted in a relational m anner associating it with heterogeneous elem ents, to which it m ight otherwise have no relation at all. In the case of hom oerotic practice in Antiquity, unexpected connections between topics like m an/ youth/ tim e, eroticism / politics etc., em erge and form com plex problem atizations in patterns or series of associations. It is this level of problem atization (rather than the problem s them selves), that constitutes the fundam ental field of interest to the late Foucault’s analytical gaze. The form ations of m elancholy, acedia and neurasthenia, which this thesis explores, can be said also to pertain also to such a level of inquiry, as they explore the dim ension of practice associated with and structured in heterogeneous patterns around the ‘thing’ in the body. As illustrated above in relation to stress, the association of labour with dim en sions of self-regulation, pathology and perform ativity can be said to constitute a problem atization in Foucault’s sense of the word. What the following reflections on Foucault’s m ethodological contribution can do is thus to provide an indication of how – and with which questions – such explorations can system atically proceed. Although the notion of a historical problem atization analysis itself was not fully developed by Foucault, it is possible to reconstruct it from his work in the 1980 s (Foucault 1991, 1996b, 1996c, 20 0 1). Research has already shown that Foucault’s notion of problém atisation occupies an im portant and productive place in his thinking in a broad sense (e.g. Raffnsøe, Gudm and-Høyer & Thaning 20 0 8, Castel 1994, Deacon 20 0 0 , Koopm an 20 0 8, Osborne 20 0 3). The work of Marius Gudm and-Høyer dem onstrates an attem pt to illustrate how Foucault’s reflexions on it can provide a m ethodological procedure for historical an d philosophical analyses (Gudm andHøyer 20 0 9). The following reflections do not pretend to engage in a discussion of the possible im plications of Foucault’s contribution to m ethodology as such; instead the goal here is to indicate how the ‘problem atization analysis’ – sketchy as it m ay be – can help to clarify the level of inquiry in this thesis and specify the problem atic ‘object’ of this study. 22 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body As Raffnsøe, Gudm and-Høyer and Thaning have argued, Foucault’s analysis of historical problem atizations asserts a level of inquiry on which the problem atizations represent the objects of the analysis (Raffnsøe, Gudm and-Høyer & Thaning 20 0 8 : 232-36). This analysis itself essentially operates by m eans of historical exploration, given that the problem atizations them selves consist of historical processes. More precisely, a problem atization in this sense refers to the totality of historical practices, said or nonsaid, discursive or non-discursive, raising issues and concerns, posing questions and difficulties, inducing procedures, interventions and instrum ents, or introducing hitherto unacknowledged elem ents into the field of thought and practice. As such, Burchell argues, the form ation of the problem atization process has to do with ‘the historically conditioned em ergence of new fields of experience’ (Burchell 1993: 277), which are not investigated or elucidated directly or in them selves, but indirectly through the form ation of the experiential field, or “breading ground”, where they em erge. The problem atic form ations of m elancholy, acedia and neurasthenia, all organized around a ‘thing’ in the body, can be seen as such breeding grounds, where otherwise heterogeneous elem ents form associations. In such a perspective, the form ulation of a series of questions directed from the present into the past, cannot be reduced to a level of historical interest; rather in a problem atization, as Robert Castel argues, ‘the diagnostic turned upon the present guides the reading of the past and prom pts it to decode history along this line of understanding.’ (Castel 1994: 241) The form al indication of stress as a problem atic ‘thing’ in the body in this thesis thus does not serve the purpose of indicating a contem porary issue, of which it then tells the historical em ergence. Rather the indication of stress as a ‘thing’ in the body today involves a level of inquiry pertaining to questions, which previous epochs have not asked, exactly because they are contem porary questions. The level on which stress, in the way the phenom enon has been articulated in the section above, relates to ancient m elancholia, to acedia and neurasthenia, does not reduce the phenom ena to each other, because a problem atization, if one accepts that it has appeared as a field of experience in the past, where otherwise heterogeneous elem ents have becom e related, does not repeat itself (Castel 1994: 239). Instead the interest into the present situation of this thesis involves the articulation of prob23 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body lem atizations, which have transform ed; but on the background of a continuity that allows them to be accounted for in the present. The problem atization of the ‘thing’ in the body does not take as its unifying principle of continuity the coexistence of its elem ents in the past. Rather it indicates the relationship of them to a contem porary question. The existence of the problem atic form ations, which this thesis sets out to explore, hinges on the m anifestation of the ‘thing’ in the body as a contem porary problem atization. This also m eans that the choice of sources for uncovering these form ations does not reflect the history of a historian. As section 4 of this chapter illustrates, the historical literature used in this thesis consists only partly in prim ary sources. Most of the sources are well-known and well-represented also in secondary literature; but from the contem porary perspective on the problem atization of the ‘thing’ in the body, the interpretation of them provides a different account that displays its own level of intelligibility. This leads to a second way in which the following explorations reflect the historical problem atizations analysis. According to Foucault the historical analysis of problem atizations that constitute such a history involves an investigation of the processes on the backdrop of which aspects of hum an existence and vital conditions em erge as them es which inevitably m ust be fathom ed and thus becom e objects for reflexion and different kinds of practice, for experience and change and for m anipulation and hopes (Foucault 1984: 17). But such a history can take different form s. While this analytical plane could be used to constitute the historical process of form ation of the ‘thing’ in the body, which represents a genealogical level of inquiry , the explorations that follow this chapter pertain instead to the m apping of their patterns of form ation around the ‘thing’ in the body. Such a differentiation reflects Foucault’s own distinction between genealogy and archaeology , where the first is concerned with uncovering the historical em ergence of its problem atizations, while the latter is associated with the existence of these form ations. The choice of an archaeological level of inquiry in the analytic investigation of the ‘thing’ in the body and its association with the problem atic form ations of m elancholy, acedia and neurasthenia reflects the interest of the thesis into how this ‘thing’ in spite of its transform ations through history has functioned – and functions – as a social bond designating a 24 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body threshold between the individual and the collective, between the regulation of the self and tropes of perform ativity and pathology. The assertion of a level of inquiry pertaining to the uncovering of patterns structured around the ‘thing’ in the body also opens to a third dim ension in the context of which the work of this thesis can be said to reflect Foucault’s late work. The history of ideas or m entalities identifies the discursive system atic that accounts for how som ething like m elancholia, acedia or neurasthenia can be represented as categories of consciousness in a given period of tim e. An exam ple of such a perspective on the history of m elancholy can perhaps be found in J ennifer Radden’s introduction to her anthology of classical texts (Radden 20 0 0 b), which seeks to identify a discursive level of reality. Unlike Radden’s work, the perspective of the following does not focus prim arily on w hat can be said about som ething, as m uch as it focuses on the m odes in which that which is being said (and done) erupts as a problem atic ‘thing’ for reflection and m anipulation. Placing their interest on this sem i-norm ative level, the following explorations reflect Foucault’s assertion that: Problem atization doesn’t m ean the representation of a pre-existing object, nor the creation through discourse of an object that doesn’t exist. It’s the set of discursive and non-discursive practices that m akes something enter into the play of true and false, and constitutes it as an object for thought (whether under the form of m oral reflection, scientific knowledge, political analysis, etc.) (Foucault 1996c: 456-57). Taking as its level of interest the constitution of an ‘object’ for thought – the ‘thing’ in the body – like the one m entioned here by Foucault, the historical inquiry of the following chapters seek the bundle of articulations, both of linguistic and ‘m aterial’ character, the conglom erate of which m akes som ething accessible to reflection and practice in such a way that its unity or its com plexity, its verity or falsity, its consequences or its im pressionability, its effects or lack of sam e, its value or harm fulness, its necessities or accidental occurrences can becom e aspects of debate, circum spection, consideration or intervention (Foucault 1996c: 456). Like Foucault’s problem atization this ‘som ething’, represented in the problem atic form ations of the following as the ‘thing’ in the body, to specific kinds of practice or reflection becom es an ‘object’, which m ay not exist as such or does not exist in exactly the way 25 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body it is suggested, but nevertheless ‘m arks’ the reality to which it pertains. The black bile, like the nerves of the 19 th century, m ay becom e object for biological adm ission or behaviourism , while the m onstrous eruption of lycanthropy in the bodies of others m ay instead becom e a juridical, theological or m oral them e, a them e for cultural critique and sociological explanation. Stress and its close proxim ity to depression today has becom e an object for m anagerial intervention, psychoanalytic reconfiguration, political analysis and socioeconom ic calculation, just to nam e som e. These considerations, in their reflection of Foucault’s historical problem atization analysis, m ay be used to assert a m ore system atic level of inquiry, based on the distinction between problem and response found above in stress as a form al indication of what this thesis explores. As a m atter beyond the distinction between som ething entirely natural and som ething entirely cultural, the ‘thing’ in the body here was found to constitute a distinction not y et m ade. This assertion reflects Foucault’s claim that the patterns of experience associated with the problem atization cannot be reduced to hum an behaviour, such as a study of social history would have it – even if these patterns of experience present new possibilities for behaviour; or to hum an ideas representable to a history of ideas as a relation between hum an consciousness and the already given – even though the patterns of experience are probably factors in the constitution of these ideas (Foucault 20 0 1: 115, 1991: 388-89). The patterns of experience belong instead to the process of problem atization which results in som e relations, m odes of behaviour, phenom ena and processes becom ing privileged, while others are ignored or reconfigured, forgotten or abandoned. Again this does not m ean that the problem atization does not pertain to reality and exists only in itself; the phenom enon – the problem atic ‘thing’ – exists in the world as it is being exposed to reflection and practice at a given tim e in history (Foucault 1996c: 457). As Foucault explains: [T]o analyze the process of “problem atization” … m eans: how and why certain things (behaviour, phenomena, processes) became a problem . Why, for exam ple, certain form s of behaviour were characterized and classified as “m adness” while other sim ilar form s were com pletely neglected at a given historical m om ent … How and why were very different things in the world gathered together, characterized, analyzed, and treated as, for exam ple, “m ental illness”? What are 26 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body the elem ents which are relevant for a given “problem atization”? And even though if I won’t say that what is characterized as “schizophrenia” corresponds to something real in the world, this has nothing to do with idealism. For I think there is a relation between the thing which is problematized and the process of problem atization. The problem atization is an “answer” to a concrete situation which is real (Foucault 20 0 1: 171-72). As indicated above, the em ergence of stress as a ‘thing’ in the body, in a very fundam ental sense could be said to assert the dim ension of a pathological problem , which designated a host of more or less undifferentiated sym ptom s. This host of sym ptom s, as it was also illustrated, were found to be articulated in convergence with the dim ension of a self-regulatory response, designating a space for individual agency. As fundam ental aspects of the problem atization as an ‘answer’ to a concrete situation, these dim ensions of problem and response can act as a guideline to the system atic level of inquiry in the following. The sim ultaneity of these dim ensions reflects another observation on the process of problem atization m ade by Foucault: To one single set of difficulties, several responses can be m ade. And m ost of the tim e different responses actually are proposed. But what m ust be understood is what m akes them sim ultaneously possible: it is the point in which their sim ultaneity is rooted (Foucault 1991: 389; italics added). What Foucault points to here, is the indissoluble and actual relation between the process of problem atization and the ‘objects’ of this problem atization. Like Foucault’s problem atizations, the objects of inquiry in the following chapters on m elancholia, acedia and neurasthenia represent not only problem s, but also responses and suggestions for solutions to concrete existing conditions that at the given historical tim es are problem atic (Foucault 20 0 1: 115). These dim ensions in the following will be referred to as dim ensions of response, which m ark the realities to which they pertain. As the explorations in this thesis will illustrate the dim ensions of response can often be said to be recursive to the extent that they com e to constitute the privileged response of a given epoch to a given problem (Foucault 20 0 1: 117). It is the indication of this level of social recursivity that constitutes the m ain contribution of the thesis in its attem pt to historically and philosophically inform an investigation of the present. 27 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body What Foucault’s notion of problem atizations can contribute to the following is thus not only an indication of the level of inquiry on which an investigation of a precarious m atter like the ‘thing’ in the body m ay be perform ed. It also provides an indication of what kind of system atic questions such an investigation should ask in order to discover the difficult problem s and the order of response of a given period and differentiate between them . If the history of problem atizations is sim ultaneously the history of how certain conditions ended up as a specific problem atic closely tied to a dim ension of response, then the exploration of a ‘thing’ in the body m ust inquire into why, how and where this ‘thing’ ended up being a specific problem to a specific period (Foucault 1996b: 414). This represents the difficulty of finding a level on which to com pare both that which is historically sim ilar and that which is historically different. In the case of hom osexuality as a problem atization that was m entioned above, Foucault went about this difficulty by assum ing a line of identical categories on the background of which he could com pare the differences between the historical “form ations” of hom osexuality. While these dim ension allowed him to represent different historical “periods” – Antiquity, the Rom an Em pire, early Christianity and Modernity – they also constituted different ethical categories, fleshing out m odes of ethical substance, subm ission, work and teleology that m ade it possible to both analyze the problem atizations in their own tim e according to its ethical “fram ework” and to com pare their differences over tim e. When the following chapters ask why, how and where the ’thing’ in the body ended up as a problem within the context of the different problem atic form ations of m elancholy, acedia and neurasthenia, it will structure its questions in a sim ilar m anner, which will be taken up at the end of each of them . Reflecting the im portance of un covering in which way the ‘thing’ in the body has becom e associated with particular problem s and particular m odes of response, such a level of inquiry can be represented within the following six dim ension, which will constitute a structural system atic for the explorations in the next chapters. Divided as three problem atic dim ensions and three dim ensions of response, these questions are represented below in TABLE 1. 28 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body TABLE 1 Pro ble m atical Fo rm atio n s Path o lo gical Pro ble m MELAN CH OLIA ACED IA N EU RASTH EN IA What kind of pathology is embedded in the problem atical form ations pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia, respectively? Which kind of character is associated with the problem atical form a- Ch aracte ro lo gical tions pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia, respecPro ble m tively? D e lim itative Pro ble m How is the individual separated from the collective in which it takes part within the problem atical form ations pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia, respectively? Se lf-Re gu lato ry Re s p o n s e What kind of self-regulatory respon se is associated with the problem atical form ations pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia, respectively? Pe rfo rm ative Re s p o n s e Se lf-Articu lato ry Re s p o n s e Which form does the perform ative response associated with the problem atical form ations pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia take, respectively? How is the ‘self’ articulated in response to the problem atical form ations pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia, respectively? Reflecting the aspects found above in association with the stress as a form al indication, the dim ension of the pathological problem and the dim ension of the self-regulatory response represent the fundam ental level of inquiry into: W hat kind of pathology is em bedded in the problem atical form ations pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia, respectively ? And: W hich kind of self-regulatory response is associated w ith the problem atical form ations pertaining to m elancholia, acedia, and neurasthenia, respectively ? Representing a level of inquiry seeking to illustrate how the organization of a psychosom atic pattern of suffering around the problem atic ‘thing’ in the body com es to be associated with aspects of perform ativity, the four rem aining dim ensions of problem and response indicate privileged areas of interest, which all add im portant facets to the problem atizations. While the relevance of these areas to the investigations of the 29 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body pathologies of perform ativity can only be fully justified through the explorations of the following chapters, the contem porary phenom enon of stress again m ay prove helpful as an indication. The dim ension of the characterological problem thus asserts for whom the ‘thing’ in the body becom es a problem . This question seeks to indicate the kind of character to whom the given association between pathology and perform ativity is relevant. While the dietetic m easures of the Italian Renaissance for exam ple was only relevant to the extraordinary and culturally form ative genius, stress as a ‘thing’ in the body today is relevant prim arily to the self-m anaging em ploy ee as indicated by the stress-m anagem ent literature quoted above. This indicates a problem atic contem porary association of tropes of labour with those of pathology. The third question in the problem atic dim ension engages with how – or better: w here – the perform ing character, to whom the pathological patterns of suffering are relevant are pointed out by the ‘thing’ in the body. The assertion, for exam ple, of dem onical possession in the problem atic form ation of acedia sees the afflicted individual erupt on the outside of the theocosm os, while the pathological deepening of an otherwise productive resource in the individual body represented by stress rather characterizes an inside to the contem porary collective order. On the side of dim ensions of response, the two rem aining questions function as a broadening in the sam e way. Associating pathology with the tropes of individual agency, the question about the perform ative response thus indicates how the perform ativity of the individual in response to the ‘thing’ in the body was organized. Within the context of 19 th century neurasthenia, the dim ension of the perform ative response was organized around the m anagem ent of labour power as a scarce individual resource likeable to a ‘second nature’. While contem porary work has taken over m any of the tropes related to such a m anagem ent of a personal capital, these resources, as the notion of stress form ally indicates, is associated today m ore often with the m anagem ent of subjectivity at w ork. The final question that this thesis uses to inquire into the dim ensions of response to the problem atic of the ‘thing’ in the body indicates the m ode in which the ‘self’ of the involved character is articulated. Although it does not m ake sense to speak of a ‘self’ in an non-historical m anner, the pathologies 30 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body of perform ativity, as the following will show, have always been associated with the ability (and pathological inability) to represent a ‘self’ in convergence with the collective order they belonged to. To the extraordinary m elancholic discussed in Problem s XX X, 1, the ability to represent oneself in the context of the exalted self-transform ation, which Nietzsche praised highly as a ‘great health’, was crucial, because this represented the paradoxical Aristotelian ‘m iddle’ in their anom aly. In the context of stress today, perhaps, the answer to this question can be found in the dem ocratized version of the ability to represent a “self” of self-differentiation. As the conclusion to this thesis will reflect on in a little m ore detail, it is the contem porary injunction to articulate a “self” in ceaseless developm ent that can be said to associate the problem of depression with the organization of work today. In the following chapters these six questions pertaining to the dim ensions of problem and response will constitute the structural level of inquiry into the problem atizing form ations organized around the ‘thing’ in the body. 3 . M i c h e l S e r r e s a n d t h e Th e o r y o f t h e Qu a s i -Ob je c t Following the constitution of the dim ensions of problem and response, which designate the system atic level of inquiry to the historical form ations that are organized around the problem atic ‘thing’ in the body, the challenge rem ains of explaining the character of this ‘object’ itself in a little m ore detail. Consequently, this section will discuss the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body in association with Michel Serres’ theory of quasi-objects (Serres 20 0 7, Serres 1987, Serres 1995, Latour 1992). Such a discussion will indicate how the ‘thing’ can be un derstood as a social bond. Reflecting the form al indication of the ‘thing’ in the sections above, in Serres’ words, the quasi-object ‘is not an object, but it is one nevertheless, since it is not a subject, since it is in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, since it m arks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject.’ (Serres 20 0 7: 225) The evasive character of Serres’ definition of the quasi-object m ay be appeased, perhaps, by looking at it from the perspective of what is being developed in this thesis. As a ‘thing’ in the body, the black bile of the outstanding Aristotelian character is not an object in the 31 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body strict sense that a tum our or even a haem orrhage would be. Governed by the interaction of opposite energies like the froth, its euphoric counterpoint that is found in the sea, in wine and in the sperm of m an (Kristeva 1989: 7), it is defined by the intervention in it and m obilization of it. Yet since it is som e-thing, a res extensa taking up space in the world like the body, it m ust be an object; but only if it exists as a quasi-subject m arking the m elancholic who holds on to it. Like the exam ple of the im aging of stress on a m olecular level from Stress Managem ent for Dum m ies discussed earlier, the quasiobject points out the subject that holds on to it, not the other way around. Put in term s of what has been developed above, the ‘thing’ is prim ary to the principle of individuation, weaving the individual rather than being weaved by it. The ‘thing’, in Serres’ words: ‘is the quasi-object and quasi-subject by which I am subject, that is to say, sub-m itted, fallen, put beneath, tram pled, tackled, thrown about, subjugated, exposed’ (Serres 20 0 7: 227). It is through the dilem m a of the ‘thing’ that ‘I’ com es to know itself – and is able to regulate and differentiate this self as a self. Serres presents the theory of the quasi-object in term s of the concept of play , but from a very different perspective than the m ore fam ous Spielm etaphor of his Germ an colleague, Hans-Georg Gadam er. If the herm eneutic subject in Gadam er’s concept of play is defined wholly by the ‘m ode of being of play as such’, which does not ‘allow the player to behave towards play as if towards an object’ (Gadam er 1975: 10 2), then in Serres’ work it is the object in play that designates both the subject and the collective that it em erges from . Serres uses the exam ple of a children’s gam e, the gam e of hunt-theslipper, where all players except one are nam ed ‘cobblers’ and sit on the floor in a circle a few inches apart. The ‘custom er’ rem ains inside the circle to hunt the slipper that passes from hand to hand very rapidly in the circle. The one in whose hand it is caught then becom es the new ‘custom er’, and pays a forfeit. The slipper (in French Serres refers to the furet) in this gam e, according to Serres, resem bles the quasi-object, because it points out the individual, picks her out when it is found in one of the player’s hands. The one who is not discovered rem ains part of the anonym ous chain, circulating, never recognized or discovered: 32 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body Who are we? Those who pass the furet; those who don’t have it. This quasiobject, when being passed, m akes the collective, if it stops, it m akes the individual. If he is discovered, he is “it” [m ort]. Who is the subject, who is an “I,” or who am I? The m oving furet weaves the “we,” the collective; if it stops, it m arks the “I” (Serres 20 0 7: 225). The ‘thing’ in the body, rather than being reducible to a natural substance or a social construction can be thought of in term s of this furet, the quasiobject that passes through a social group and m ediates identities, both collective and personal, transform ing itself while it circulates. The black bile, the dem on of acedia, the nerves, stress in the body of the contem porary em ployee; these ‘objects’ all have in com m on that they pass through collectives weaving the social group and m arking the “I” by exposing the individual to a Fall, to the subjugation under the dense heap of others. This is, Serres argues, what sets the quasi-object apart from other objects: like a ball it has no value, no function or m eaning unless in the hands of a subject that holds it. The dem on in the desert is stupid if there is no one in the desert with it. The quasi-object is only relevant as it shuttles back and forth between individual and collective, like the slipper in the children’s gam e, weaving the knowledge about who are subjects and who are not. Consequently, the one who plays ball is subjected not to the play itself, as Gadam er would have it, but to the circulating object that presents itself as the subject of circulation. The quasi-object witnesses the players only as relays and stations in the production of a nature (‘out there’), a society (‘up there’) and an individuality (‘in here’) alike: Playing is nothing else but m aking oneself the attribute of the ball as a substance. The laws are written for it, defined relative to it, and we bend to these laws. Skill with the ball supposes a Ptolem aic revolution of which few theoreticians are capable, since they are accustom ed to being subjects in a Copernican world where objects are slaves (Serres 20 0 7: 226). As the subject of the pathos described above as the som atic pattern of failure of the self to take care of itself, the ‘thing’ in the body is the m arty r (as Serres rem arks, the Greek word for “witness” is m artyr) that witnesses the articulation of rules, the bringing together and separation of networks of institutions and authorities and the ethical shaping of power, knowledge and m orality as it passes through the individual. Reflecting Foucault’s theory of 33 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body problem atizations, the ‘thing’ is interesting as a problem because of its precarious character that designates collective identities, network relations and subjectivity. As Serres dem onstrates, the character of such a dilem m a is that it em erges at a given m om ent in history and m ay disappear again unresolved as ‘history and attention bifurcate’ (Serres 20 0 7: 226). The lycanthrope as a dilem m a, for exam ple, to the 16 th and 17th century, represented the precarious indistinction between m an and anim al and the general difficulty both in philosophy, science and law of perform ing the hum an-anim al divide. Yet pervasive as this dilem m a was in its tim e, as the theories of evolution evoked the bestial inheritance of hum anity and opened the potentiality for lycanthropy to all individuals within the fram ework of degeneracy (e.g. du Coudray 20 0 2, Lawrence 1996), that which used to be true was no longer im portant; that which had supposed to be decided was no longer relevant. Reflecting Foucault’s theory of problem atizations, the indication of the ‘thing’ in the body is it em erges as problem atic at a given tim e in history designates a realm in which som ething is introduced as an ‘object’ for discursive as well as non-discursive activity and thought out of which the truth em erges. It is on this background that the ‘thing’ in the body can be thought of as a social bond, the nature of which m ay be represented by the distinction that Bruno Latour m akes between m atters of fact and m atters of concern (Latour 20 0 4). It was Martin Heidegger who initially provided the m eans for this distinction in his discussion of the ontology of the thing, das Ding (Heidegger 1970 ). As Latour points out, Heidegger illustrates how in the etym ology of the word thing in all European languages, there exists a strong relation between the object and the word for a judiciary assem bly. The Icelandic word for the parliam ent is Althing. Like the Danish folketing (lit.: “assem bly of the people”) it uses the word thing to designate the place for political dispute. Also in old English this m eaning is reflected as the word originally designates an assem bly. A thing, Latour argues with Heidegger, can thus be taken to m ean both ‘an object out there and, in another sense, an issue very m uch in there, at any rate, a gathering.’ (Latour 20 0 4: 233) The word thing entails a double m eaning: designating both a m atter of fact and a m atter of concern, it refers sim ultaneously to an object that is ex34 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body pelled from the political sphere, som ething that stands out objectively and independently (like stress), and to the Ding as an issue that brings people together in its division of them , in its problem atic character (also like stress) (Latour 20 0 5). As a philosophical problem , the ‘thing’ in the body that is exam ined in this thesis takes exactly this form : it designates an object (the Gegenstand in Heideggerian term s) as a m atter of fact that m ay at the sam e tim e be taken to be – or m ay be turned into – a m atter of concern (das Ding). As reflected above, this transform ation and its historical bifurcations, the direction of its ‘flow’ is what m akes it interesting as a social bond. As Latour (20 0 4: 235) m aintains such transform ations m ay go both ways. An object m ay suddenly becom e a m atter of great concern, while a ‘thing’ that was once the nexus of dispute m ay lose its precarious status, and becom e once again just another object. In term s of the ‘thing’ in the body, the form al indication of stress m ay again serve as a good exam ple. While it can be said that the discovery of stress as a problem in the late 20 th century was m ore a rediscovery (Cassidy 1999), the term itself was alm ost unknown outside the engineering profession, where it was used in relation to how m an-m ade structures (e.g. bridges) could withstand heavy loads without collapsing, before the 1940 s (Haward 1960 , see also: Cooper and Dewe 20 0 5). Only with its em ergence as a condition did it gain the popularity that it has today as a m atter of great concern. On the other hand, the black bile of the hum oral theories, which for about two m illennia was a centre of attention for physicians, theologians and scientists alike, has passed into oblivion, as it is no longer associated with m elancholy at all. If the m elaina cholé for alm ost two m illennia was a m atter of great concern, today m elancholy is reduced to be a thing of the past. Together with the system atic dim ensions of problem s and response, this assertion of the ‘thing’ in the body as a m atter of concern working to structure the collective identities, network relations and subjectivities in orbit around it opens the way to the historical explorations. Yet before this, one aspect rem ains. If m elancholy is said to be a thing of the past, a discussion of w hich past is in place. The following section will engage with this question, illustrating how both the phenom ena of acedia and neurasthenia can be seen as parts of the history of m elancholy. 35 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body 4 . H i s t o r i o g r a p h y : On e o r S e v e r a l M e l a n c h o l i e s ? In what is arguably one of the strangest works of English literature, The Anatom y of Melancholy , Robert Burton (1577-1640 ), a m athem atician and scholar who professed to be writing in the attem pt to keep his own depression under control, asserts that not even the m any languages of the Tower of Babel yielded the confusion of the variety of sym ptom s found in the phenom enon of m elancholy. Burton’s book, on which he worked for the m ost of a lifetim e (preparing four editions, while his final alterations were included posthum ously), in the words of his m odern day editors is ‘a patchwork quilt of alm ost half a m illion words of m iscellaneous learning, an inexhaustible quarry of quotations, a ram bling, often irrelevant, irregularly system atized com m entary on the hum an com edy, always excessive and overspilling.’ (Carter 1954: 1) Rem aining m ore a curiosity shop of learnedness than a m edical treatise, The Anatom y of Melancholy in its tim e becam e a short cut for anyone who wanted to quickly m aster the art of m ake-shift erudition and rem ained so deep into the 19 th century (Radden 20 0 0 b). In m any ways this description of Burton’s work is em blem atic to the broad and colorful history of m elancholy in western culture. The concept retains a place in psychiatric discourse today, referring to a m elancholic subtype of m ajor depression (Am erican Psychiatric Association 20 0 0 ) and som e researchers hold that it should be reinstated as a distinctive m ood disorder (e.g. Fink & Taylor 20 0 7, Frost 1992), but to m ost people it has been reduced to a description of a som bre m ood in artworks, m usic and cinem a. Yet for over two m illennia, m elancholy played a central role in the cultural shaping and fashioning of the hum an being, covering and explaining such diverse fields as m ental illness, lovesickness, artistic genius, shape shifting, m ere lack of reason, shear m adness, the state of bourgeois society and hysteria in wom en, just to m ention a few. The m elancholic of the Aristotelian Problem s was a great m an worthy of praise for his contribution to culture and society, like the Renaissance m elancholic exem plified by the artist with the ability to sublim ate the forces of Saturn creatively. On the other hand m elancholy in the 17th century was ascribable to alm ost everyone who objected to the Enlightenm ent ideology: as Böhm e shows (Böhm e 1988) the list covers both pietists and separatists, rom antic dream ers and fanatics, enthusiasts and visionaries, ‘m onkish’ ascetics, religionists and the 36 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body superstitious. Marxists saw in m elancholy the effect of a bourgeoisie that had failed to resolve the historical social dichotom ies in a positive way. The first congress of Soviet writers thus decided that the goal of literature was to oppose the social circum stances that caused the m elancholy of the people. Melancholy, to the m arxists, constituted bourgeois decadence (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 14). On this background, perhaps, it is not so surprising that the two m ost prom inent contem porary works on the history of m elancholy, Stanley Webber J ackson’s M elancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Tim es to Modern tim es (J ackson 1986) and Porter and Berios’ History of Clinical Psy chiatry (Porter & Berrios 1999), represent two radically different perspectives. J ackson’s work presents a com plete and im pressive historical overview of a clinical syndrom e – or as J ackson indicates, a group of closely related clinical syndrom es – stretching from Ancient Greece and Rom e over their m ore curious m anifestations in lycanthropy and nostalgia to their diffusion into the m odern day concept of depression. Finding ‘a rem arkable consistency’ of sym ptom s that explains ‘the etiology and pathogenesis of m elancholia and depression’ (J ackson 1986: ix), J ackson’s work argues for a continuity in the history of the affliction. The standpoint taken by Porter and Berrios in their History of Clinical Psy chiatry (1999) is the opposite. Arguing that up to the Napoleonic Wars m elancholia was no m ore than a rag-bag of insanity states whose only com m on denom inator was the presence of few (as opposed to m any) delusions, while sadness and low affect (which were no doubt present in som e cases) were not considered to be definitory sym ptom s, their perspective is one of a discontinuity. J ennifer Radden, in her introduction to a collection of classic texts on m elancholy in The N ature of Melancholy (20 0 0 ), also falls in this category, as she finds that the differences between m elancholia and depression, are ‘m ore persuasive than the sim ilarities’ (see also: Radden 20 0 0 b, Radden 20 0 3: 48). With these dissim ilarities in m ind, how is it possible to write a history of m elancholy? How can a historical continuity be introduced into a source m aterial of this diverse character an d m agnitude that som etim es seem s to only be held together by difference? With its association of both acedia and neurasthenia with m elancholy as a cultural and clinical phenom enon, the 37 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body history that this thesis tells obviously is one of both continuity and of discontinuity. As a kind of history of the ‘thing’ in body as a problem dem anding an individual response of those im plicated, the history of m elancholy in this thesis focuses prim arily on the dim ensions of self-regulation and its deficiencies. This history is one of discontinuities associated prim arily by their ability to illustrate a relation between pathology and perform ativity. To speak of pathologies of perform ativity in this sense m eans to provide a level of continuity, which argues that m elancholy, acedia and neurasthenia are not reducible to each other, and yet, when they are joined, provide one history which m ay illustrate a central them e in Western culture. The contours of such a history (which for good reasons cannot be m ore than exactly that before the following chapters) m ay be provided by offering a short introduction to the history of m elancholy on a m ore general level and by reflecting on how the phenom ena of acedia and neurasthenia are associated with it. This will also provide a welcom e opportunity to introduce som e of the literature, on the background of which the following chapters are written. Apart from the works m entioned above, also the psychiatrist Hubertus Tellenbach’s clinical study Melancholy (Tellenbach 1980 ) and J ulia Kristeva’s Black Sun (Kristeva 1989) constitute im portant contributions to this history. Engaging with the history of m elancholy from a contem porary perspective, the philosopher Michael Theunissen’s short but enlightening Vorentw ürfe von Moderne – antike Melancholie und die Acedia des Mittelalters (Theunissen 1996) belongs also to this category. These works show that m elancholy always covered a far wider spectrum than the narrow one of disease. The wide range of em otional variations that it reflects, concern m atters at the very heart of what it m eans to be hum an, and is thus in itself not reducible to pathology: feelings of sadness, depression, despair, anxiety, but also of being dispirited, discouraged, disappointed, dejected, despondent – or m erely bored – have been known to hum an beings through the entire cultural history of the Western world. Melancholy, as Radden concludes ‘is both a norm al disposition and a sign of m ental disturbance; it is both a feeling and a way of behaving. It is a nebulous m ood but also a set of self-accusing beliefs.’ (Radden 20 0 0 b: ix) This grey area between pathology and m ore com m on traits of character is very well reflected in the term inological transform ation that the notion has 38 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body gone through. Melancholia is the Latin transliteration of the Greek m elagcholia, which in ancient Greece was largely reducible to a m ental disorder involving prolonged sorrow and fear without cause. Som etim es it was just used in popular speech to denote ‘crazy or nervous conduct’ and – along with its cognates – denoted ‘biliousness’ (J ackson 1986: 4). This term , on the other hand, was derived from m elaina cholé, later translated into Latin as atra bilis and the English black bile (m elas, “black”, + cholé, “bile”). As one of the four hum ours in Greek science, which taught the existence of four corresponding elem ents (earth, air, fire, and water), the black bile was believed to be the causing factor in m elancholia. The Hippocratic m edicine conceived of health as a balanced relationship between the four hum ours in the hum an body: blood, phlegm , black and yellow bile; and im balance (not only in the black bile) would cause variations in tem peram ents as well as different states of characteristic disorders in a given person. In English writings the various form s of m elancholia, taken from Latin, began to appear in the 14th century as m alencoly e, m elancoli, m alencolie, m elancholie, m elancholy , and others variations on the basic term in m edical thought (J ackson 1986: 5). During the 16 th and the 17th century m elancholie and m elancholy becam e com m on term s for nam ing the disease, both in English and in other languages, where they often just cam e to m ean the black bile itself. But in addition to denoting the illness, during this period, the term s also cam e to be used for describing various non-pathological states of sorrow, dejection or despair, including well-respected som berness and fashionable sadness. It was only during the 18 th century, with the em ergence of clinical psychiatry, that the two term s becam e separated once m ore, with m elancholia gradually com ing to be restricted again to the disease, while m elancholy rem ained a synonym for it, but was also in m ore popular use as a diffuse term denoting different non-pathological states of m ind. To som e com m entators this com plex structure of the construct, which on the one hand stretches it towards pathological states of m ind, and on the other, involves a whole array of m ore or less com m on-place sym ptom s, m akes it com parable to the contem porary concept of depression (e.g. J ackson 1986). The problem of m aintaining a form al distinction between form s of m ental disorder and m ore com m on and non-pathological states related to for 39 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body exam ple m oral dilem m as represents the m ost fundam ental dim ension of m elancholy with which both the phenom enon of acedia and that of neurasthenia share a qualitative coherence. While acedia m ay be taken, as Siegfried Wenzel shows in his work The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature (1967), to denote prim arily despair associated with the aversion felt by m an against his own spiritual good (Wenzel 1967: 48), the phenom enon – apart from a host of sym ptom s – shares them atically with m elancholy the precarious position between pathology and nonpathology. Also neurasthenia takes this position in spite of not prim arily being associated with the fear and sadness without cause, which has always played a central role in the history of m elancholy. Although its predom inant sym ptom was inhibition associated with the tropes of energy so popular at the tim e, the phenom enon’s status as what Anson Rabinbach in his work The Hum an Motor (1992) calls an ‘ethic of resistance to work’ (Rabinbach 1992: 167) positions it on the threshold between pathology and nonpathology. Focusing on this in the history of m elancholy, the following explorations form a historical continuity on the level of self-regulation associated with this precarious threshold. It thus centres on the historical dim ension of an individual ability to perform and on the hy perboles of affect, which m ay describe the deficiencies of this perform ativity. Stretching from Plato’s original antinom y between m ania and am athia, between m adness and a kind of uncultivated ignorance of those who fail to govern them selves, and to the contem porary debates about depression and self-m anagem ent, this aspect constitutes an im portant them e in the history of m elancholy represented in this thesis. This broad definition of m elancholy and its tropes follows Foucault’s assertion in The History of Madness (1961) that the unity of the affliction was not defined by observed characteristics or by a presum ed causality, but rather by a qualitative coherence, with its own laws of transference, developm ent and transform ation. The assertion of a level of inquiry into the history of m elancholy, which includes both acedia and neurasthenia by focusing fundam entally on perform ativity and its deficiencies, leads naturally to a second them e. If the history of m elancholy focuses on the ability to regulate the self as a central aspect of the phenom ena it includes, then it touches also on the im portant 40 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body issue of the representation of affects on the precarious threshold between pathology and non-pathology. As Radden argues, fear and sadness without an obvious cause have been a key aspect in the understanding of m elancholy since the earliest Hippocratic writings and has stayed so ever since (Radden 20 0 0 a: 10 ). On this background another central them e in the following is the association in the historical form ations between em otional suffering and great achievem ent. As the following will show, the association between suffering and achievem ent has constituted a central m otif in this history from the earliest references to m elancholic states. In tragic dram a, Orestes’ attem pt to avenge the death of his father Agam em non is a good exam ple of this. Great heroes like Ajax and J ason, as the following will show, were seen to walk the thin line between states of extrem e dejection and despair and states of glory. Bellerophon, the rider of the Pegasus becam e fam ously known as the first m elancholic hero, when he was m entioned by the author of Problem s XXX, 1, who quotes Hom er as saying that Bellerophon ended his life wandering “alone on the plain of Aleïum , eating his heart out, and avoiding the track of m en” (953b23-25) ii. And already the Epic of Gilgam esh, originally entitled ‘He who Saw the Deep’ (Sha naqba īm uru) (Gardner, Maier & Henshaw 1985), portrays this relation between states of extrem e em otional suffering bordering on m adness and the achievem ent of heroic glory. This them e ties especially acedia to the history of m elancholy. Not because the afflicted m onastic was a hero; his pattern of em otional suffering was rather taken as a sign of spiritual boredom . But because the reality of the theocosm os that he pertained to represented a ‘higher order’ beyond him , dem anding an absolute vigilance in the control of his affective life. In a world where the Passion of the Christ m ade suffering a virtuous deed and an absolute prerequisite for the perform ative convergence of the m onastic with the institution of vice and virtue, sorrow w ithout cause was m ore than sim ply a m atter of m ood. Constituting an absolute vertigo of the religious order, the earthly sorrow of those suffering from acedia constituted not only a personal tragedy, but also an aversion against the ‘good works’ of Christianity when the spiritual good appeared all of a sudden to m an as evil. Described by Peter Toohey as ‘the Epidem iology of Individuality’ in his work Melancholy , Love and Tim e (20 0 4: 132), the affliction of acedia 41 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body am ong the anchorites with its characteristic sym ptom s of laziness, inertia, slowing of tim e and unwillingness to pursue spiritual exercises, undoubtedly represents an em blem atic exam ple of a relation between m elancholic tropes of suffering and perform ativity associated with the ability to regulate the self. Finally, this association of a psychosom atic pattern of suffering with perform ativity in the history of m elancholy, which to the following represents a privileged level of inquiry, is found also on a level that can only be tentatively presented here. This level of inquiry concerns the gradual transform ation of what perform ativity m eans in the history of m elancholy. From the fam ous Aristotelian question in Problem s about why all great m en are m elancholics, to the glorification of m elancholy and the em ergence of the m odern understanding of the genius, which as the following will show can be traced back to Florentine neo-Platonism , the association of m elancholy with creative abilities has been a them e. Em blem atic of this them e is especially Dürer’s Melencholia I, discussed in m uch detail by Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl in their influential Saturn and M elancholy (1964). Melencholia I portrays a figure, cheek resting on the hand, with a brooding and som bre facial expression. The com bination of this m elancholic countenance with the geom eter’s tools lying scattered and unused at the feet of the seated figure, suggests the polarity in m elancholy between states of dejection and creative abilities. The long tradition of a link between creative genius and m elancholy was revived in the Rom anticist literary m ovem ent of the late 18 th and early 19 th century. The m elancholic artist was characterized by feeling deeper and by being closer to the true and sublim e than ordinary people. The suffering associated with m elancholy was idealized and seen as inherently valuable, even if it was dark and torm enting. The fashionability of suffering in the service of a m ore profound responsiveness to a heightened sense of reality was also reflected in the larger em phasis in psychiatry on the cyclical nature of affective disorders (Radden 20 0 0 a). Although today m elancholy has to a large extent becom e obsolete as an explanation, psychiatric classifications like bipolar type II have taken over the role of representing this m ore sensitive state of being in the world. A quite recent exam ple is Alice W. Flaherty’s The Midnight Disease (20 0 4), where she 42 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body questions whether her happiness related to hypergraphia is m erely a sym ptom of her bipolar illness: The scientist asks how I call m y writing vocation and not addiction. I no longer see why I should have to make that distin ction. I am addicted to breathing in the sam e way. I write because when I don’t, it is suffocating. I write because something m uch larger than myself comes into m e that suffuses the page, the world, with m eaning (Flaherty 20 0 4: 266). At the other end of this association between creativity and m elancholic states of m ind, the related them e of an association between m elancholy, tropes of labour and states of idleness is found. The m ost fam ous indication of this association – apart of course from proverbs like: idleness is the root of all evil – m ay be Robert Burton’s observation in The Anatom y of Melancholy that there is no greater cause of m elancholy than idleness and no better cure than business (Burton 1986: 4). The representation of certain types of activity as m elancholic, but also the conviction am ong the m edical writers of the 19 th century, such as Freud and J anet, that m elancholia especially in wom en was closely related to strenuous action, linked m elancholic states of m ind inevitably to productivism , the belief that hum an society and nature were related prim arily by productive activity (Rabinbach 1992). From being represented prim arily as a m ental category in relation to idleness, m elancholy during the industrialization becam e m ore and m ore related to the 19 th century obsession with phy sical fatigue. As Rabinbach has shown, states of m ental fatigue were classified as ‘diseases of the will’ and the fashionable diagnosis ‘neurasthenia’ becam e a popular them e both in the literature of the age and an object of scientific and m edical study. Mental and physical exhaustion ‘was not m erely the consequence of physical overexertion, but the cause of a variety of physical and m ental pathologies born of the languid and torpid state of m en, wom en and especially school age children’ (Rabinbach 1992: 20 ). Representing a central aspect of the history told in the following chapters, the assertion of a relation between m elancholic states of m ind, cultural decadence, physical exhaustion and the ability to perform as a social resource culm inates in the 19 th century obsession with the tropes of energy. As Wolf Lepenies has illustrated in his Melancholy and Society (1992), the m elancholic by this tim e had com e to represent the verso of the entrepre43 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body neurial hom o europaeus, whose aggressive philosophy of action was conquering the world. And yet, in a curious fashion, it is Nietzsche, the philosopher of the will par excellence, who in an aphorism from The Gay Science (1882) relates the history of m elancholy once again with perform ativity in a fashion that reflects the level of inquiry found in the following chapters. In “The Great Health”, Nietzsche describes a ‘stronger, m ore seasoned, tougher, m ore audacious and gayer’ (Nietzsche 20 0 1: 246) health than any other. It is a health that is not m eant for everyone; or rather, it is a health needed only by those of prem ature birth, the ‘nam eless, hard to understand ones’ (ibid.), who have set for them selves new goals in an as yet unproven future. These self-transform ative ‘argonauts of the ideal’, who have ‘suffered shipwreck and dam age often enough’ (ibid.), do not need this new health because they are sick. On the contrary, Nietzsche argues: they are bursting with health already; they are ‘dangerously healthy, ever again healthy’ (ibid.: 247). They need the great health, this health ‘that one does not m erely have but also acquires continually, and m ust acquire because one gives it up again and again’, because they are not satisfied with the goals, dream s and ideals of ’present-day m an’ (ibid.). The new goal they have set for them selves, and for which the great health is a m ean, is the ideal of another spirit, the spirit of ‘a hum an, superhum an well-being and benevolence’ (ibid.). Interestingly, this health of a future ascent in a m ore literal sense belongs to the past. The ‘argonauts of the ideal’ to whom Nietzsche writes and who are in need of the great health are the ones with a soul: … that craves to have experienced the whole range of values and desiderata to date, and to have sailed around all the coasts of this ideal “Mediterranean”; whoever wants to know from the adventures of his own m ost authentic experience how a discoverer and conqueror of the ideal feels, and also an artist, a saint, a legislator, a sage, a scholar, a pious m an, a soothsayer and one who stands divinely apart in the old style … (ibid.) The list of characters nam ed here by Nietzsche as exam ples of conquerors of the ideal who m ay teach the disposition of the great health is not arbitrary. The ‘one who stands divinely apart in the old style’ m ost likely is a reference to the Platonic indication of a divine m adness of inspiration outlined in Phaidros (Phd. 244a-249e). The true m anic lover, suffering from a 44 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body form of self-transgressive ecstasy, an exciting of the self, is characterized as a species of philosopher. The term enthousiasis, which is used to describe him , literally m eans a state of divine possession (Obdrzalek 20 0 8). The ‘one who stands divinely apart in the old style’, in Plato’s divine inspiration, experiences the great health of self-transform ation through a suffering bordering on m adness. In fact m ost of the characters on Nietzsche’s list are taken from the opening question of Problem s XXX, 1 that it can be argued has an em blem atic character to the history of m elancholy: “Why is it that all m en who have becom e outstanding in philosophy, statesm anship, poetry or the arts are m elancholic, or are infected by the diseases arising from black bile?” (953a10 -13) Asking not w hether the extraordinary in character suffer from m elancholy, but rather w hy , the author hints at the pivoting point around which the following explorations of the pathologies of perform ativity revolve: the assum ption of a natural relation in Western history between individual patterns of suffering, the regulation of the self and the ability to achieve the extraordinary – whether this ability is found within the culturally form ative context of the genius or within the contem porary context of the self-m anaging em ployee. 45 Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body Ch ap te r Tw o Th e D ie te tics o f Me lan ch o lia P r ologu e 1. Th e E m ot ion a l H yp e r b ole of H e r oic I n d ivid u a lit y 2 . Er ōs a n d t h e An t in om y of Ma d n ess in P la t o’s Dia logu es 3 . Ab n or m a l b y Na t u r e: Mela n ch oly in Pr ob lem s X X X , 1 4 . Sa t u r n in e Me n : Th e Diet et ics of Mela n ch oly in Ficin o 5 . Th e P a t h ologica l P e r for m a n ce of Mela n ch oly Pro lo gu e There is little doubt that the m ost im portant classical text to the history of the ‘thing’ in the body presented in this thesis rem ains Problem s XX X, 1 from the Corpus Aristotelicum . It is here that the m elaina cholé – the black bile – is singled out am ong the other hum ours of the Hippocratic hum oral theory as a natural substance in the bodies of the extraordinary in character around which their paradoxical disposition is structured. Yet as this part of the thesis will illustrate, the designation in Problem s XXX, 1 of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body through which the ēthos perriton, the outstanding in character, m ust m anage them selves, is part of a broader decosm ologization out of which the care of the self as an individual responsibility em erges. With roots that are lost in tim e, the hyperbolic em otional response of the tragic hero represents the precarious em ergence of an individual who is in ceaseless conflict with his own fate and with the divine powers of the cosm os in relation to which he m ust observe a harm onious position. As the next chapter will illustrate, the history of the tragic hero designates the outstanding ēthos of the heroic individuality in whom the excessive em otional response, which will later becom e the hallm ark of the m elancholic personality, is m anifested both in a psychosom atic pattern of suffering and in the great achievem ents that m akes him what he is. Structured around the sublim ation of suffering, the great deed of the dejected and m elancholic hero is represented as the virtuosity of a character whose destiny is in the hands of the gods that determ ine his fate. As a precursor of the later Aristotelian naturalization that designates the black bile as the substance dom inating the outstanding m elancholic ēthos, the psychosom atic patterns of suffering am ong tragic heroes like Bellerophon, Orestes or J ason represents the em otional hy perbole of a heroic individuality that is both the source of achievem ent and of m addening torm ent. It is to this disposition that the designation in the work of Plato of m elancholy and its psychosom atic patterns of suffering as a specific kind of ignorance – am athia – represents the process of the decosm ologization that culm inates in the Aristotelian Problem s X X X , 1. As section 2 of this chapter illustrates, Plato assum es an antonym ic figure of m adness that joins the notion of the hyperbolic em otional response found in the character of the tragic hero with the theory of exallagé – of divine inspiration. The assum ption of er s as an aporetic condition originating from a psychosom atic relation between pain and pleasure defines the exceptional ēthos of som eone who suffers m ore profoundly than others in term s of a proportion of selfregulation. On the one hand the divinely inspired m ania of the great heroes, the poets and the philosophers expose them to a greater danger of disproportion than ordinary hum an beings. On the other hand the notion of am athia designates the m elancholy of the ignorant, whose disproportionate, insufficient or deficient self-regulation leads only to the suffering of m orbid m adness. Representing the loss of proportion to am etria, the m elancholic m adness of som eone who fails to lead him self, in Plato’s work represents an antonym ic figure to that of the genius, whose ‘higher’ m adness brings him in harm ony with the Platonic cosm os as it is described in the Tim aeus. The partial decosm ologization in the work of Plato is represented by the em ergence of m elancholy as a kind of disproportionate ignorance of the one that, like the leader who becom es a tyrant because of excess, fails to lead him self in the proper fashion. The assum ption in the Aristotelian Problem s XXX, 1 of a natural and non-pathological kind of m elancholy structured around the m anagem ent of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body can be seen on this background. As the third section of this chapter illustrates, the culm ination of the decosm ologization of the exceptional hum an being results from the em ergence of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body of the ēthos perriton – the extraordinary in character – that m ust be m anaged in order for him not to succum b to the 48 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia diseases typical of his tem peram ent. The m elania cholé em erges as a ‘problem ’ of self-regulation for the specific nature of the few and culturally form ative. Yet as the assum ption of a ‘nature’ in the Aristotelian sense, this disposition is desubstantialized as soon as it is defined. The m elancholic disposition of the outstanding hum an being in Problem s XX X, 1 em erges as the paradox of a nature in conflict w ith itself, because it presupposes the unnatural and exceptional in the ēthos that it describes. The em ergence of the ‘thing’ in the body in Problem s XXX, 1 designates the assum ption of a teleology without a telos, the ceaseless self-differentiation towards a higher or greater health, the provisionality of which is m anifested as a psychosom atic pattern of suffering in the bodies of the exceptional m elancholics. Representing this suffering, paradoxically, not as a result, but rather as the prerequisite of a natural disposition, which becom es pathological when it is deepened, the exceptional character of Problem s XXX , 1 is subjected to the m anifestation of a double pathos: first as a transience as opposed to the ideal of the ēthos represented by the assum ption of a ‘higher m iddle’, and secondly as the affection causing a som atic and psychical pattern of suffering, which structures the m anagem ent of the self. While the intercourse of the culturally form ative in Problem s XX X, 1 with the black bile structuring their tem peram ent in this sense is prim arily of prophy lactic character, the Aristotelian theory in the dietetic program s of the m elancholic genius in the Renaissance is recast in a m uch m ore active fashion. As the final section of this chapter illustrates, the com bination in the work of the scholar Marsilio Ficino of physiological Aristotelian argum ents with neo-Platonic theory, constitutes a double Renaissance that subjects the m elancholic to a two-fold source of suffering. Exposed to both the effects of the black bile and to the influences of its astrological analogue, the planet Saturn, the protean being of the Renaissance genius m ust actively seek to intervene on, identify, m obilize and m anipulate the effects of the ‘thing’ in the body. Out of this double source em erges the grand theory of a dietetic of active self-transform ation, which the m elancholic m ust expose him self to tota m ente in order to redeem his divine potential. The decosm ologization represented by the history of the black bile em erges in the Renaissance as an internalization of cosm os, a theory of ‘the heavens within us’, reflecting the correspondence between protean m an and the 49 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia world that surrounds him . Accentuating a psychosom atic pattern of suffering, the assum ption of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body of the extraordinary few, em erges as an occasion for the active and continuous sublim ation of suffering, which exposes the dietetic problem of self-leadership as an anticipatory sketch of the problem atic in contem porary tim es. 1. Th e Em o t i o n a l H y p e r b o l e o f H e r o i c I n d i v i d u a l i t y The m etaphysical resonance of the great tragedies, from King Oedipus to Ham let, all depend on one central m otif, the origin of which is lost in tim e: that greatness of character dem ands great sacrifice, that the extraordinary individual is subject to torm ent nearly beyond hum an capacity, that the line drawn between greatness and m adness is thin, vague and som etim es even invisible. Western cultural history is full of m elancholic heroes. As far back as any historical docum entation will testify, the relation between suffering and achievem ent has represented an elem entary them e of hum an existence. Constituting an im portant background to the history of the m elaina cholé – the black bile – as a ‘thing’ in the body, beginning in the 4 th century B.C. in Greece, the m otif of the em otionally torm ented hero can be found as far back as the Epic of Gilgam esh, originating about 350 0 B.C. and counting as the first m ajor work in the history of literature. While som e elem ents of the history about the ruler from Sum eria, who becam e one of the greatest heroes of all tim es, will probably appear quite foreign to a m odern day reader, som e other elem ents alm ost certainly will not. Presenting the heroic deeds of Gilgam esh, who journeys to the end of the world to retrieve his friend and one-tim e rival Enkidu, who has died and been claim ed by the nether world, the epic poem also portrays a very hum an and faulty hero, who struggles with the torm enting feelings of loss and m ourning that are driving him m ad. Reflecting som atic and psychopathological sym ptom s found in any m odern day textbook on depression – m ood reactivity, general dejection, a sensation of heaviness in lim bs and sleeplessness – the pattern of suffering found in Gilgam esh’s character is, as pointed out by Rose Spiegel (Spiegel 1997), inseparable from the nature of his conquest. His friend Enkidu dies after a dream that foreshadows his death and Gilgam esh, struck by his death, sets out to retrieve him and to achieve im m or- 50 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia tality. His restless wanderings are represented as the im m ediate result of losing his beloved com panion, with whom he shared all good things: Enkidu, friend, loved-one, who chased the wild ass, panther of the steppe. We overcam e everything: clim bed the mountain, captured the Bull of Heaven and killed him , brought Humbaba to grief, who lives in the cedar forest; entering the m ountain gates we slew lions; m y friend whom I love dearly underwent with m e all hardships (IX. i, 47-51). iii Gilgam esh m ourns this loss, but the process of m ourning takes on an excessive extent to which the central aspect becom es Gilgam esh’s fear of his own death: The fate of mankind overtook him. Six days and seven nights I wept over him until a worm fell out of his nose. Then I was afraid. In fear of death I roam the wilderness. The case of my friend Enkidu lies heavy in me. On a long journey I wander the steppe. How can I keep still? How can I be silent? The friend I loved has turned to clay. Enkidu, the friend I love, has turned to clay. Me, shall I not lie down like him, never again to move? (IX. ii, 3-14) The epic journey that Gilgam esh undertakes to retrieve his friend from the nether world is sim ultaneously represented as a journey into him self and his own anxiety, constituting an uncanny description of both the nonacceptance of death and the terror of harboring a wish to die. Paradoxically, death is both the source of Gilgam esh’s depressive dread and the goal of his journey. Com bined with the epic’s description of his appearance, this suggests that what Gilgam esh is struggling with has far m ore extensive im plications than just the loss of a friend. Travelling to the end of the world he seeks out the ferrym an Urshanabi, whose description of Gilgam esh reflects the nature of his dejected state: Your heart is filled with sadness, your features are worn; there is sorrow in your belly. Your face is like that of a m an who has been on a long journey. With cold and heat your face is weathered. 51 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia You roam the steppe in search of a wind-puff (X. iii, 26-29). Adding to this, Gilgam esh him self explains that he is suffering from insom nia and that his body is aching: No real sleep has calm ed my face. I have worn myself out in sleeplessness; my flesh is filled with grief (X. v, 28-29). While Spiegel m ay be right in assum ing that passages like these suggest that Gilgam esh is suffering from what today would be referred to as a clinical depression (Spiegel 1997), to the study presented here, this in itself is not the crucial point. Rather, what is interesting is how the state that Gilgam esh is in shares with the m odern day construct of depression what m ay be referred to as a hy perbolic em otional response, m anifested as a psychosom atic pattern of suffering. Reflecting the fam ous Freudian designation of m elancholia as an excessive m ourning over a lost object that the ego has turned on itself, Gilgam esh’s obsession, which keeps him sleepless and darkens his features, m akes not only his ego destructively void of m eaning, but also robs the world around him of all substance as if there was no difference between the two. Yet where the hyperbole in Freudian theory is the source exclusively of pathology, in the case of the m elancholic hero, the torm ent of the excessive em otional response also represents the source of his great destiny. The hy perbole of heroic individuality found in the m yth of Gilgam esh is well-known and found in m any versions. A beloved one dies and is lost to the nether world, where a hero like Gilgam esh, com pelled by sorrow, com es close to – and is yet so far from – retrieving him or her. The power to do this, whether it be through rage verging on m adness or through artistic genius, springs from the ability of the abandoned to persistently and inconsolably deny death its right and sublim ate em otional suffering into action. It is this m otive in the tradition of the m yth of Gilgam esh that serves as an im portant background in the following: the individual and heroic ability to sublim ate suffering in order to achieve the extraordinary. Another m yth of Sum erian origin tells the story of Ishtar, goddess of life and fertility, and her attem pt to reach the nether world in order to save her lover, the shepherd-god Tam m uz, and bring him back to life. This m yth is reflected in the m yth of Dem eter, goddess of grain and fertility, who, like 52 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia Ishtar, travels beyond life to retrieve her daughter Persephone, who has been abducted by Hades, the king of the nether world, who wants to m ake her his queen (Spiegel 1997). Fam ous also is Orpheus, the artist-god, who descends to retrieve his beloved Eurydice from the shadows of the underworld, and fails when he breaks his prom ise not to turn around and look at her. As Maurice Blanchot com m ents, paradoxically this failure is Orpheus’ way of being true to his destiny, because he has actually been turned towards Eurydice all along: ‘he saw her when she was invisible and he touched her intact, in her absence as a shade, in that veiled presence which did not conceal her absence, which was the presence of her infinite absence’ (Blanchot 1999). Finally, Dante’s Divine Com edy , which begins with the poet gone astray in the m iddle of his life after losing his beloved Beatrice, also presents the excessive em otional response as a source of inspiration. It is Dante’s fam ous m elancholy and his possible contem plation of suicide (m ore references are m ade to this in Canto I and Canto XIII) that m akes him enter that place where ‘all hope is abandoned’ and journey through the underworld with his travel-com panion, the poet Virgil. The wide recognition of Bellerophon, the Hom eric hero who attem pted to storm the heavens on the Pegasus, as the first m elancholic, can be seen in this context. Mentioned by Aristotle as the prim ary exam ple of those extraordinary in character that were susceptible to the diseases of the black bile, Bellerophon’s dejection, anxiety, loneliness and rejection of any hum an contact resulted from the loathing of the gods who turned on him . The sixth song of Hom er’s Iliad tells the story of the hero’s great deeds and tragic ending, when: … Bellerophon came to be hated by all the gods,he wandered all desolate and dism ayed upon the Alean plain, gnawing at his own heart, and shunning the path of m an (XI.20 0 -20 3).iv Bellerophon’s suffering is an indirect result of his great virtue, as he rejects the advances of a queen and consequently has the gods turn on him . It is only after his incredible achievem ents, his hunting down and killing of the chim era, and his final trium ph, that he is struck by the em otional suffering that leads him to shun other people com pletely. The Hom eric hym ns offer no psychological explanation to Bellerophon’s sudden state of m ind; only that the gods seem to agree in their wrath. As J ean Starobinski points out 53 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia (Starobinsky 1960 : 3), the greatest hero of all tim es, who withstood all hum an challenges, is unable to fight against the hatred of the gods. In the Hom eric universe the ability to associate with other people, to live am ong one’s peers in the norm al way, is dependent on the divine guarantee of the cosm os in which m an m ust find his place. Without the benign acceptance of the gods, he is left to loneliness and all-consum ing self-torm ent (Starobinsky 1960 : 3). As a foreign and invasive subject of sublim ation that constitutes a background to later Aristotelian assum ption of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body, the m elancholic sentim ent found in the hyperbolic em otional response of the great hero m ay be associated with a kind of agitation that upsets the cosm os in which m an m ust find his place. Heracles m elancholicus, of whom Virgil in the Aeneid says that he burns with the atrum fel, the black bile, or sim ply with m elancholy (VIII.219-220 ), is a good exam ple of this, as Heracles’ m adness is not described as an illness or even characteristic of the protagonist, but rather as an attack, m aybe even som ething god-sent that periodically upsets the order of cosm os and constitutes his heroic character (Theodorou 1993b: 36). Yet the association of m elancholic m adness with heroic character, which brings a relation between suffering and achievem ent to the foreground, can also be found in a context where it possesses a characterological m eaning. The exam ple of the hyperbolic em otional response as a trait of character, rather than a fit, provides an illustrative background to the m elancholic ēthos that is the central them e of Problem s XXX , 1. With the representation of a ‘psychological’ depth lacking in the Hom eric hym ns, the exam ples of Orestes and J ason, as Peter Toohey has shown in a work that am ong other them es explores the relation between character and m elancholy in Antiquity (Toohey 20 0 4), constitute typological exam ples of m elancholic personalities, whose achievem ents were closely related to a hyperbolic em otional response m anifested in psychosom atic pattern of suffering. Providing early illustrations of the m elancholic as a type, these exam ples represent the dispositions of their characters within a precarious context of nosos, of disease, that was later to becom e essential to the understanding of m elancholy in Western cultural history. Toohey prim arily illustrates this in his discussion of a vase painting of Orestes from the 4 th century, where the dejected hero is depicted in the agi54 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia tation caused by his m elancholic disposition. Orestes’ fam ous m adness is often understood as a result of his m atricide. At the advice of Apollo he had killed his m other, Clytaem nestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, to avenge the m urder of his father, Agam em non. Yet in spite of Apollo’s blessings, Orestes finds him self haunted and torm en ted by the Erynies, the deities of vengeance, for his bloodguilt. On the painting discussed by Toohey, Orestes has fled north to Apollo’s shrine, where the god will attem pt to purify him of his deed. He is sitting with a dissatisfied, tired and even unhappy expression on his face, while Apollo, wearin g a sim ilar facial expression, holds over his head a piglet, whose blood is intended to wash away the pollution of the m atricide. To their left the Furies sim ilarly seem to be in a deep m elancholic state. Yet, as Toohey argues, “The Purification of Orestes” does not depict the m elancholic sentim ent as a lack of m ental activity. Rather, there are ‘clear signs of m ental activity – of agitation’ (Toohey 20 0 4: 17), illustrated by the way Orestes holds his sword and by the tautness of his torso. What we find in Orestes’ state of m ind is an exam ple of a m adness that rages with inner turm oil and activity. Varro, the first century B.C. Rom an writer and scholar, term ed the condition insania on this background and later also Cicero in Tusculuns suggests that Orestes was the victim of melancholic illness (Toohey 20 0 4: 17.) That Orestes’ violent m elancholia, unlike that of Heracles, possesses characterological m eaning, is supported by the fact that his m adness is not reported by a m essenger, but is rather represented on stage. In a hallucinating scene he can feel the attack com ing. Elektra, his sister, inform s us that six days have gone by since his m other’s burial, during which Orestes has not eaten or washed, and has stayed hidden in bed, occasionally crying or jum ping around as seized by m adness. It is on these term s that the nosos, the disease, which is introduced very early by Elektra, is central (Theodorou 1993: 25) to an understanding of Orestes’ character. The psychosom atic pattern of suffering in the m elancholic hero, as illustrated by Toohey, is even m ore lucidly represented in the exam ple of J ason, the Hellenic hero of the poem on the voyage of the Argo by Apollonius of Rhodes (ca. 295 B.C.). Although J ason, the protagonist of Apollonius’ Argonautica, is not usually characterized as a m elancholic by the ancient writers (Toohey 20 0 4: 43) – at least not in any m edical sense – his reaction 55 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia to the challenges and adversities of his epic journey is often m ore than m erely tearful and em otional. The m edical historian Stanley J ackson produces a translation of ‘signs of m elancholy’ in the m edical author Soranus of Ephesus, whose description – although outdating the Argo considerably – can be helpful in understanding what is a stake in the early descriptions of the m elancholic type. These sym ptom s include: … m ental anguish and distress, dejection, silence, anim osity toward m embers of the household, som etim es a desire to live and at other tim es a longing for death, suspicion of the part of the patient that a plot is being hatched against him , weeping without reason, m eaningless m uttering, and, again, occasional joviality; precordial distention, especially after eating, coldness of the lim bs, m ild sweat, a sharp pain in the esophagus or cardia … (J ackson 1986: 35). As Toohey points out (Toohey 20 0 4: 43f.), m any of J ason’s character traits com ply with Soranus’ list of sym ptom s. He is depicted as ‘brooding over the enorm ity of the im pending tasks’ (1.460 -61) v, as ‘utterly resourceless because of his woeful circum stances’ (2.410 ), as ‘distraught in wretched and helpless ruin’ and a few lines later as ‘wrapped in excessive fear’ (2.627-28). He com plains over sleeplessness (2.632-33) and is despairing (4.1347). When the nym phs appear to assist him , J ason is not only am azed, but also ‘grief-stricken’ at their appearance and he turns away from the support they offer in ‘absolute helplessness’ (4.1313-18). After the disappearance of Heracles he falls utterly still: But J ason, am azed and utterly helpless, Said never a word, one way or the other, but sat there Bowed under his heavy load of ruin, in silence, Eating out his heart (1.1286-1289). Interesting about this last quote, of course, is the form ulation, ‘eating out his heart’ (“thy m onedôn”), which revokes the Hom eric description of Bellerophon also quoted by the author of Problem s X XX, 1. The sym ptom s of J ason, represented along the lines of the hyperbolic em otional response that is typical of the tragic sufferer, provide an insight into the character of the m elancholic ēthos. As Toohey points out, such ‘anxieties and dejections, while foreign to any Hom eric hero but a m ourning one, are in J ason’s case excessive, even for a Hellenistic hero’ (Toohey 20 0 4). What we find in the character of J ason, as he is described by Apollonius, is the elem ent of the 56 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia em otionally excessive response to suffering represented as absolutely central to the idea of a m elancholic sentim ent. As a background, not only to the later assum ption of a m elancholic ēthos found in Problem s X XX, 1, but also, as the next section will illustrate, to the Platonic dichotom y between a divine m adness and a m elancholic ignorance dependent on character, the m otif of the tragic m elancholic hero represents an intim ate and precarious relation between suffering and achievem ent, out of which the m anagem ent of the self em erges as a kind of virtuosity . The virtuosity designating the heroic character, at least in the cases discussed above, can be identified on the background of a rem arkable consistency in sym ptom s of both m ental and physical suffering (J ackson 1986). Dejection, anxiety, sorrow, sleeplessness, rum ination, indigestion and different form s of both m ental and physical pain accom pany the great achievem ent of both Gilgam esh’s raging sorrow and Bellerophon’s slaying of the Chim era. Orestes’ vengeance, even by the Ancient writers, was viewed within the context of a violent m elancholic disease, which like J ason’s dejected and sorrowful states constituted a part of his character. As a foreign and invasive body, the m elancholy of these tragic heroes constituted the anom alism of a hyperbolic em otional response that challenged the cosm os they were a part of, but which also pointed them out as extraordinary characters. Im plying an activity involving the virtuosity of an individual struggle with and ability to balance the som atic m anifestations of a disease, the m elancholic structure of these characters provides a background for the gradual em ergence of an individual responsibility and ability to m anage a self defined by its ability to sublim ate suffering into great achievem ent. 2 . Er ōs a n d t h e An t i n o m y o f M a d n e s s i n P l a t o ’s D i a l o g u e s In the opening of Plato’s Sy m posium a com m ent is m ade about a certain Apollodorus, the narrator of the dialogue, characterizing him as ‘the m aniac’ (Sm p. 173d). Although the words are said, it seem s, m ostly in irritation with Apollodorus, because he has a tendency to characterize everyone but Socrates – including him self – as a failure, the words are interesting, because they provide an entrance in philosophy to the them e of m adness as a disposition specific of character discussed above in relation to the tragic hero. Not that Apollodorus is ever characterized as a tragic hero – quite the 57 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia contrary. Apollodorus is a m aniac because of his obsession with Socrates. The term m anikos is used about him to refer to the vehem ence and excess of both his praise and blam e (Bury 20 0 8). But the reason that Apollodorus is characterized as m ad is not only that he is obsessing about Socrates; m any others did that too. The reason is that he is absolutely out of line in the way he does it. And what is m ore, it does not seem to be som ething he does only in this situation, as m uch as it seem s to be som ething in his character: in the Phaedo the sam e Apollodorus is present with a few others at Socrates’ deathbed. Here everyone is affected in m uch the sam e way, alternating between laughing and weeping – but, Phaedo says, ‘especially one of us, Apollodorus – you know the m an and his ways’ (Phd. 59a). The suggestion of Apollodorus as a well-known exam ple of em otional im balance is interesting here, because it opens up to both Plato’s conception of an antonym ic figure in the understanding of m adness, and to a subtle relation between this, the concept of er s, and the ability to be som eone who seeks real knowledge – a philosopher. Reflecting the assum ption of suffering as a prerequisite of heroic achievem ent found in the previous section, this them e m ay be represented by starting with Phaedo’s reference to the unusual m ixture of pain and pleasure in the people present in prison with Socrates on his last day in the Phaedo. Phaedo’s indication that everyone shared this ‘strange’ or ‘out-ofplace’ (“atopon”) em otion can be seen as a reflection of what Socrates tells his friends when he first sits up and speaks: What a strange thing that which m en call pleasure seem s to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, nam ely pain! A m an cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is alm ost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head. I think that if Aesop had noted this he would have com posed a fable that a god wished to reconcile their opposition but could not do so, so he joined their two heads together, and therefore when a m an has the one, the other follows later. (Phd. 60 b) The strange em otion that Phaedo refers to, Socrates identifies as part of all hum anity: to the m ost intense feelings of pleasure belong also intense feelings of pain. Moreover the two sensations seem to stand in a constitutive relation to each other, indicating that the person who seeks a life in 58 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia pleasure m ust also subm it to a life in pain – or at least to fierce oscillations between the two. That what Socrates describes is not only true for som e, but for everyone, can be seen by his reference to the fictive Aesopian fable, which, as Bruce Rosenstock has pointed out (Rosenstock 20 0 4: 245), is the very reverse of the Aristophanic fable in the Sy m posium about the origin of er s from the severing of a single creature. This creature, a kind of androgynous hum an being with four hands, two faces and two sets of sexual organs, was separated into two parts by Zeus, when he found out that it was trying to attack the gods because of its self-sufficiency. According to Aristophanes, er s cam e into being as a longing in the two parts to be reunited (Sm p. 189e-191d). In the Phaedo, on the other hand, this condition is reversed and represented in term s of a psy chosom atic relation, when Socrates explains about the curious conjunction between pain and pleasure and later adds that ‘every pleasure and every pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together.’ (Phd. 83d) It is on the background of this psychosom atic relation that Socrates’ reference to the origin of er s in his explication of the conjunction between pain and pleasure becom es interesting to the present study of m elancholy. While the circular com bination of pleasure with pain m ay represent a condition of being hum an, the em otional oscillations it causes m ay be m ore violent in som e than in others. In the em otional response of Apollodorus’ character, Plato certainly seem s to suggest that this is the case. What is of interest here is that exactly Apollodorus in the Sy m posium is sim ultaneously presented as som eone, w ho does not possess erōs at all, one who lacks any understanding of it. It is out of the antinom y between a m orbid m adness like this and the divine m adn ess of the tragic hero who possesses er s, that m elancholy first em erges as a problem of self-regulation. The tem ptation to understand Apollodorus’ role as a narrator of the Sy m posium as an indication that he has been caught up by er s exists because he is ‘preserving’ the speeches that he recounts. But as Rosenstock argues (Rosenstock 20 0 4: 243), rather than m erely understanding the Sy m posium as a dialogue about er s, its narrative structure also suggests that it is designed to dram atize and m anifest er s. In contrast to this, Apollodorus’ m em orization of the speeches does not dram atize er s at all. De59 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia spite his obsession with Socrates, Apollodorus’ docum entations of what Socrates has done, precise as they m ay be, are hardly erotic in them selves. As Rosenstock suggests, Apollodorus is m ore ‘like a record with a scratch’, ever-repeating the story of Agathon’s feast over again and again (it is even indicated that he did this only a day before). Apollodorus, although he him self m ight think otherwise, is an ignorant when it com es to er s, m erely m aking it his job to docum ent everything Socrates does and says every day. Before taking on that task, he says, he ‘sim ply drifted aim lessly’ (Sm p. 173a). While his encounter with philosophy m ight have given him a purpose in life, the hyperbole of his abnorm ally excitable disposition (referred to even by him self as ‘raving’ (Phd. 173d)) has not allowed him access to the heart of the m atter according to the Sy m posium : er s itself. Although Apollodorus feels stronger than people norm ally do, som ething in his character denies him the understanding and grasping of er s. The role of er s in philosophy and the relation in it to the com bination of pain and pleasure as it is treated in the Phaedo is the subject of Socrates’ speech in the Sy m posium on the education in love that he received from Diotim a. Socrates explains that Diotim a taught him that er s is a daim ôn that shuttles back and forth between gods and m en, rounding out ‘the whole’ and binding ‘all to all’ (Sm p. 20 2e). While er s exists as an attraction between that which is set apart, it also – rem inding of the circular com bination of pain and pleasure in the Phaedo – works to relate separates and m ake them whole. Er s is the son of Poros (“resource”) and Penia (“poverty ”), and therefore, Socrates explains, his life is a lot like theirs: In the first place, he is always poor, and he’s far from being delicate and beautiful (as ordinary people think he is); instead, he is … shoeless and hom eless, always lying on the dirt without a bed, … having his mother’s nature always living with Need. But on his father’s side he is a schem er after the beautiful and the good; he is brave, im petuous, and intense, an awesom e hunter, always weaving snares, resourceful in his pursuit of intelligence, a lover of wisdom through all his life […] (Sm p. 20 3c) Being the product of a paradoxical com bination of resourcefulness and lack, er s is at the sam e tim e in need, and itself in possession of the m eans to solve that need. In this way er s is literally a-poria, ‘bewilderm ent’ or ‘em barrassm ent’. But representing a ‘problem ’ in this sense is not necessar60 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia ily negative. As Socrates describes in the Meno (Men. 8 4a), reducing som eone to aporia can have a purgatory effect, because it illustrates to the one who m erely thought he knew what he was talking about that he does in fact not know it and com pels him – instils in him the desire, er s – to investigate it further. As an aporetic problem , er s itself is of the positive: it dem ands of the assailed to be handled intelligently. Exactly the them e of intelligence is interesting here, because it touches on the question of m elancholy as a problem of self-regulation, which has been m entioned above. Apollodorus lacks er s, not for want of trying, but because he does not understand the way it works and is m erely obsessing about what Socrates thinks and does. When it com es to er s, Apollodorus is an ignorant in the characteristic sense covered by Plato’s use of the m elancholic sentim ent in the condition of am athia. As illustrated by the psychiatrist Hubertus Tellenbach, the ignorance of Platonic am athia results from an inharm onious unison of the hum an body and soul that does not live up to the paradigm of the well-proportioned cosm os as it is described in the Tim ean vision of m an and world (Tellenbach 1980 : 7). Am athia designates a condition where the dom ination of the m aterial body over the soul has deteriorated from the wish to learn to the unteachability of som eone with a character flaw. Reflecting the definition in the Republic (R. IX, 573c) of the leader who fails to lead him self as a deranged, as m elankolikos, the specific condition of am athia com pares with the excessive gesture of som eone who tries to rule, not only over hum an beings, but over gods as well, and whose hyperbole results in ty ranny as both the individual and the state degenerates. As a later chapter will illustrate this assum ption of an analogue between the health of the individual and societal body plays an im portant role in the history of m elancholy as a ‘thing’ in the body, as Thom as Hobbes defines the m elancholic derangem ent of the individual who fails to lead his passions in term s of the degeneration of m an into beast in the Leviathan. The assum ption of a fine line separating grandeur and failure and governed by self-regulation is also found in the Phaidros, when Socrates characterizes ignorance by providing the exam ple of a m an who thinks that he has m astered harm ony, only because he is able to produce the highest and the lowest notes on his strings. Although that is not what a good teacher 61 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia would do, Socrates asserts, this m an can be approached as an ignorant, but of a special dispositional kind: ‘You stupid m an [m elancholais], you are out of your m ind!’ (Phdr. 268e) The use here of the term m elancholais am ounts to m ore than m ere stupidity: the m elancholic stupidity of the m an who thinks he is a virtuoso because he can play the high and the low ton es shares with Apollodorus the kind of ignorance that results from the deficiency of self-leadership. To Plato m elancholy is a kind of ignorance resulting from the excessive em otional response to a psychosom atic flaw of character. It is in this sense that am athei is related to the inability to achieve the divination of er s and its purgatory, productive effects. To the present study the disposition of m elancholic ignorance is interesting because it is supplem ented by the Platonic assum ption of the opposite kind of ēthos, that of the divinely inspired. Representing a prelim inary exposition of the precarious Aristotelian naturalization of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body, the designation in Phaidros of a god-given transform ation, the exallagé, which as a condition m ust be strictly differentiated from the m orbid state of m ania as described above (Phdr. 244b), constitutes an antonym ic figure of m adness. Not for the average m an, this inspired disposition governed by er s is, as Socrates states, a m atter for the exceptional in character. Prophets and sibyls, great sufferers like Orestes, poets and artists, all those who like Socrates him self are absorbed by er s, are subject to a greater health: that of the divine m ania that finds genial proportion with cosm os. To Plato the assum ption of an antonym ic figure of m adness, representing both the m elancholy of som eone unable to achieve er s because of a character flaw resulting in deficient self-leadership, and the divine m adness of the genius, as Tellenbach illustrates, is closely linked to the Platonic reception of the Hippocratic antinom y between pain and pleasure presented above (Tellenbach 1980 : 9). Som ething like this is already hinted at in the Sy m posium , when Eryxim achus in his speech argues for the existence a kind of love responsible for physical health, found between the heterogeneous elem ents of the body. It is the task of the doctor and his patient to restore the sym m etry between those elem ents that have com e to predom inate over one another through repletion and depletion (Sm p. 186b-d). 62 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia But as Tellenbach shows (Tellenbach 1980 : 6), it is in the Tim aeus that Plato’s reception of the Hippocratic doctrine is m ost obvious. Here both the divine sym m etry and the m elancholic dissym m etry that have been discussed above, are them atized within the context of the ‘diseases of the soul that result from a bodily condition’ (Ti. 86b). The disproportion of the hyperbolic attitude resulting in ‘a m ultitude of bad tem per and m elancholy’ (Ti. 87a) is psychosom atic in character and incorporates Hippocratic elem ents into the Platonic ordering of the soul and the body. As Tellenbach argues, it is in this Hippocratic context that the Platonic understanding of the m elancholic as an ignorant m ust be seen. Like m ania, its counterpart am ong the two basic characterizations of the nosos psy chés (“diseases of the soul”, Ti. 86b), am ethia, the m elancholic ignorance, results from an im balance between body and m ind: when inside the living thing the soul is m ore powerful than the body, then if the soul becom es too excited, the body becom es ill. Sim ilarly, when the body is stronger than the soul, this can lead to ’the greatest disease of all: ignorance’ (Ti. 88 b). None of these conditions are present when the body and the soul are found to be in harm ony. Modeled after the harm ony of the cosm os (Ti. 88 c-d), the Hippocratic notion of disequilibrium is integrated into the Platonic world order in the Tim aeus (Tellenbach 1980 : 7). The result of this introduction of a Hippocratic perspective on proportion into Plato’s thought, in reference to the em otional hyperbole of the tragic hero discussed in the previous chapter, represents a partial decosm ologization, because it presents the hyperbolic m ovem ent from the right m easure into the excessive and pathological in term s of ēthos. The com bination of the m otif of a relation between pleasure and pain with the notion of an excessive reaction that leads to either m ania or am athia – m elancholic ignorance – constitutes a partial internalization of responsibility structured around the disposition of psychosom atic suffering. It is the deficient self-regulation of this responsibility, related to character, that separates the ignorance of the m elancholic individual from the divine inspiration of er s. As a fall from cosm os, the pathological state of the em otional hyperbole constitutes a loss of sym m etry contrasted by the divine m ania of the exceptional one who sublim ates psychosom atic suffering into cosm ic sym m etry, through the genius of their character. Structured around a pat63 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia tern of suffering represented by the Hippocratic antinom y between pain and pleasure, both the ēthos of the Platonic genius and the ēthos of the m elancholic ignorant, the exceptional proportion of genius and the hyperbolic disproportion of ignorance, are subject to a virtuous activity, the origin of which is no longer com pletely external to their term s. If the first are able to achieve the cosm ic sym m etry of divine m adness through the dispositions in their character, the latter suffer the consequences of their dispositions which lead them into excess. Through the introduction of Hippocratic theory into the Platonic worldview, the em otional hyperbole becom es closely related to the balancing of a psy chosom atic relation. While this relation, in the work of Plato, is still found within the confines of a cosm ic world order, the Aristotelian assertion of the m elaina cholé as a ‘thing’ in the body of the extraordinary, which can lead to both geniality and to disease, if it is not m anaged in the right m anner, naturalizes the precarious ēthos of the m elancholic type as som eone abnorm al by nature. This is the them e of the following chapter. 3 . Ab n o r m a l b y N a t u r e : M e l a n c h o l y i n P r o b l e m s X X X , 1 Although there can be no doubt that the writings on m elancholy in late Antiquity and all through the Middle Ages focuses nearly exclusively on the pathological effects of the black bile (J ackson 1986, Klibansky et al. 20 0 1) it is sim ilarly reasonable to say that no single text on m elancholy has had the influence of Problem s XXX, 1, which exam ines also the positive effects of the m elaina cholé. As already m entioned above, even though the text belongs to the Corpus Aristotelicum , it is probably not written by Aristotle him self, but by his follower and kindred in spirit Theophrastus, who is known to have written a whole treatise on m elancholy, where he, am ong other things, pursues the question of a relation between geniality and m elancholy (Tellenbach 1980 : 9, Theunissen 1996: 3). The text’s focus on a kind of non-pathological m elancholic ēthos supports this claim , as Theophrastus was also the author of Characters, a treatise containing thirty brief descriptions of m oral types, like flattery, com plaisance, surliness, arrogance and irony. But as Philip van der Eijk (van der Eijk 20 0 5) has shown in an interesting study, the theory of m elancholy in Problem s XXX, 1 corresponds quite well to the concept of m elancholy as it is represented in other 64 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia parts of Aristotle’s work, indicating that there is no reason to doubt that Aristotle supported this theory. The historical popularity of Problem s XXX, 1 can to som e extent be attributed to the fact that it constitutes the first com prehensive study of the m elancholic tem peram ent in a specific type of character, even though the author never gives a definition of melancholy – or even m entions the term m elancholia. Having been understood first and forem ost as a ‘m onography of the black bile’ (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 76), and even as a sort of phenom enology of the creative genius (see for exam ple: Radden 20 0 0 b), Problem s XXX , 1 opens up a whole new tradition in the understanding of the influence of the black bile by asserting it to be a ‘thing’ in the body of the culturally form ative, around which their self-regulation is structured. As the following illustrates, in Problem s XXX, 1 the black bile is the prim ary subject. This is all the m ore interesting, because the Hippocratic m edicine treated it as a part of a larger cosm ological fram ework – and even believed it to be m erely a secondary phenom enon, a degeneration of the yellow bile or the blood (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 53, see also: Flashar 1966: 24). In the Aristotelian text the black bile is detached from the doctrine of the four hum ours and their relation to the elem ents, resulting in a decosm ologization, not only of the Hippocratic notion of balance (“krasis”), but also of the Platonic notion of proportionality, which was the subject of the previous chapter. It is out of this decosm ologization that the black bile em erges as a ‘thing’ in the body, which calls for m anagem ent and nurture by the extraordinary in character in order for them to m eet the dem ands of their nature. Com pared to the Platonic notion of the divinely inspired m adness, which would lead the exceptional few to a higher order of sym m etry, the Aristotelian portrait of the m elancholic extracts the m om ent of achievem ent from that of divination and places it in m an, in the nature of the few, who – paraphrasing Nietzsche – have a need for a ‘greater health’ (G2 382). If the Platonic theory of the divine and m etaphysical inspiration of er s separated the genial sharply from the pathological, the Aristotelian notion of a non-pathological m elancholic ēthos collapses this distinction and conceives instead of a type of character, whose genial nature m akes him m ore than averagely susceptible to the diseases associated with the black bile. This is also the reason that the real principal of Problem s XXX , 1 65 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia is not m elancholy itself or the ones who have succum bed to its diseases, but the ones w ho find in them selves the natural ability to m anage their suffering in order to achieve the potential greatness of their character. Constituting a prelim inary sketch of the contem porary problem atization of a selfregulation structured around a ‘thing’ in the body, the paradoxical ēthos of the extraordinary few is the prim ary interest of this chapter. This assum ption of a genial ēthos, m ore susceptible to m elancholy than the average, is indicated by the fram ework of the text in shape of its opening question: Why is it that all m en who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesm anship, poetry or the arts are m elancholic, and some to such an extent that they are infected by the diseases arising from the black bile, as the story of Heracles am ong the heroes tells? (953a10 -13) Interesting about this question is of course that it does not ask w hether, but rather w hy all m en of creative genius are susceptible to – but not necessarily infected by – the illnesses of the black bile. The assum ption of a kind of outstanding character – the ēthos perriton m entioned above – that is inclined to achieve great things, but on whom the influence of the black bile is very strong, is underlined by the reference to the tragic heroes. As discussed above, the hyperbolic individuality of the tragic sufferer constitutes a character in which the gift of heroic achievem ent is united with the affliction of m adness. But the opening question of Problem s XXX , 1 distinguishes the ēthos perriton not only from the heroic individual, to whom the rapture of m elancholic rage was a m atter of cosm ic fate, but also from the divine possession of the Platonic erotic. In the exceptional hum an being of Problem s XXX, 1 the greatness of character is structured around the natural substance of the black bile. The ēthos perriton of Problem s XX X, 1, as Michael Theunissen points out (Theunissen 1996: 11), are outstanding diá phy sin, ‘by nature’. As a ‘thing’ in the body of the extraordinary in character, the potentially harm ful and pathological character of the black bile is asserted as a prerequisite for great achievem ent. As Theunissen argues (Theunissen 1996: 9), the surprising thing about this is the indication of som ething negative as a prerequisite for the positive. 66 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia To understand this precarious indication, it is necessary to take a closer look at the way the author of the text in Problem s understands m elancholy as an elem ent of character, of ēthos. While the presupposition in the question quoted above is that all m en of outstanding character are m elancholics – and are at least m ore susceptible to the illnesses of the black bile than others – the contrary is not necessarily the case. All m elancholics are not geniuses. This is indicated am ong other things by the am bivalent use of the word perritos, ‘outstanding’. The word can certainly be taken to m ean ‘outstanding’ in the positive sense of som eone of excellent or extraordinary character. But it is also used in a m ore neutral sense, denoting sim ply som ething strange or out of the ordinary. As Theunissen points out (Theunissen 1996: 9), the m eaning of the word varies through Problem s XXX, 1, som etim es denoting the positively extraordinary and gifted and som etim es referring sim ply to the abnorm al. But in the som ewhat odd supposition that turns the opening question around and ends the text, in which it is stated that all m elancholic persons are outstanding (“perritoi”), not owing to disease but by nature (955a38-39), the only way the expression m akes any sense is by indicating ‘abnorm ality ’. If the assum ption cannot be of a character that is a genius, because he is a m elancholic (as this would contradict the assum ption in the opening question of the genius as som eone especially susceptible to the diseases of the black bile), then the assum ption of the extraordinary m elancholic at the end of the text, m ust paradoxically be of som eone who is naturally out of the ordinary . The m elancholic in Problem s X XX, 1 is not a natural genius; he is som ething as rare as an abnorm al by nature. This interpretation is supported by the indication that the black bile resides in everyone to som e degree, but that this does not m ean that everyone is a m elancholic (954a26). Everyone, even those who are not abnorm al, can succum b to the illnesses of the black bile; but to m ost people these conditions, arising from the consum ption for exam ple of daily foods, have no effects on their ēthos, on their character. Only those in whom ‘this tem peram ent exists by nature’ are affected in such a way that they develop different characteristics according to their different tem peram ents. The ones in whom the bile is found ‘considerable and cold’ have a tendency to becom e ‘sluggish and stupid’, while the ones who have it ‘excessive and hot’ becom e 67 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia ‘m ad, clever and am orous and easily m oved to passion and desire’ (954a3334). It is clear from the description of these average bilious characters that they are not especially inspired or extraordinarily creative, but also that their hyperbolic em otional response to the effects of the bile m ay m ake them appear different from everyone else owing to their condition. These m elancholics m ay be abnorm al by nature, but they are not necessarily geniuses. It is am ong these anom alies, though, that the author of Problem s XXX, 1 finds those who are. Som e m elancholics, where the bile is warm -natured, but in whom the hyperbolic response is m oderated and the ‘excessive heat has sunk to a m oderate am ount’ are found to be ‘m ore intelligent and less eccentric’, and they are ‘superior to the rest of the world in m any ways, som e in education som e in arts and others again in statesm anship’ (954b13). In these exceptional hum an beings, abnorm ality is not an effect of disease. Rather it is a consequence of a natural disposition that is both the subject of their great achievem ents and of their above average susceptibility to the diseases of the black bile: For just as men differ in appearance not because they have faces, but because they have a certain type of face, som e handsome, som e ugly and som e again having no outstanding characteristics (these are of norm al character), so those who have a sm all share of this tem peram ent are norm al, but those who have m uch are unlike the m ajority. If the characteristic is very intense, such m en are very m elancholic, and if the m ixture is of a certain kind they are extraordinary (perritoi). But if they neglect it, they incline towards m elancholic diseases … (954b21-29, translation modified) As a m oderation of the em otional hyperbole found in those who are abnorm al by nature, the geniality of the extraordinary in character em erges on the background of an act of self-regulation. Structured around the black bile, this act of self-regulation is governed by a psychosom atic pattern of suffering designating it as a prophy lactic activity . This becom es clear from the description of how the extraordinary m elancholic in Problem s X XX, 1 becom es ill. The relation between the m elancholic and the black bile in his body is explained within the context of the tem perature of the bile, which can be both very hot and very cold. These qualities, as the author inform s us, are the greatest agents in life when it 68 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia com es to the m aking of character (955a33). On the one hand, when the bile becom es colder than it should, it produces ‘all kinds of despair’ (954b35). On the other, if it is too warm it produces for exam ple over-confidence (954b30 ) or m adness (954a25). The relation of respectively dy sthy m ia and euthy m ia – of being dispirited or excessively overjoyed – to the prophylactic activity of the m elancholic, the author seeks to illustrate through the exam ple of wine. As the consum ption of wine can produce different kinds of em otional responses of both cheerfulness and despondency, the black bile, which like wine is full of air (955a35), can produce hyperbolic em otional states of either m anic elation or depressive desolation in the m elancholic body. The m ixture of the two is dangerous to the m elancholic because the heat of the wine, according to the author, has a tendency to cool the natural heat of the bile in the body and m ay bring him to ‘com m it suicide after a bout of drinking’ (954b35). Thus, while the average people will drink ‘to the point of drunkenness’ (955a4) to becom e m ore confident, the m elancholic is inclined to go and hang him self if he attem pts the sam e (955a10 ). This hyperbolic and negative inclination is an effect of the m elancholic ēthos, which unlike the wine that brings it about only tem porarily, lasts all life (953b17). It is the task of the ēthos perriton to m anage the ‘thing’ in the body towards a m edian optim al com position of cold-and-warm -galledness on the background of this. In the m elancholic character, referred to by Hubertus Tellenbach as the m eson-type in order to indicate his inclination towards a m iddle (Tellenbach 1980 : 10 ), the abnorm ality, under the right auspice of self-regulation, can be extraordinary in character and com e to represent the precarious ‘right m ixture’ from which geniality springs. It is this ‘eucrasia in the anom aly’ that m akes the non-pathologic m elancholics extraordinary (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 51f.). Responding to the task of regulating the paradoxical nature of the black bile, the ēthos perriton can achieve the higher balance of the abnorm al. It is in this sense that the disparate ‘thing’ in the body em erges as the paradoxical subject of the prophy lactic activity of the extraordinary in character. What is interesting about this etiological description of suffering and achievem ent in the m elancholic character is the difference it constitutes to 69 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia the Platonic conception of m elancholic ignorance discussed in the previous chapter. If the am athia of the Platonic m elancholic was a result of a character flaw, which set his disposition against that of the divinely inspired in possession of er s, there is no qualitative difference between these states in the m elancholy of the extraordinary character of Problem s XXX, 1. Structured around the paradoxical nature of the ‘thing’ in the body instead, the circular and bipolar form that the diseases of the black bile take, are exclusively the result of deficient self-regulation causing the hyperbolism . Furtherm ore, as Theunissen points out (Theunissen 1996: 15), the way the diseases set in the m elancholic character is not through the eruption of an anom aly; rather, as the illustration provided by the author with the exam ple of wine shows, the diseases of the black bile constitute a deepening of an already , naturally present anom aly . The m elancholic character in Problem s XXX , 1 becom es sick – and m ore so than others less so inclined – because he neglects to m anage him self according to his ēthos. It is in this sense that he can be said to be subjected to the effects of a double pathos: on the one hand his pathological condition is represented as a transience as opposed to the paradoxical ideal of his ēthos, caused by a hyperbolic em otional response, and on the other this transience is m anifested as a physical and m ental pattern of suffering at the lim its of which he gradually gains knowledge of him self. In contrast to the irredeem able ignorance of the Platonic m elancholic, the ēthos perriton of Problem s XXX , 1 ceaselessly transform s him self through the suffering to which his ‘thing’ in the body subjects him . As the paradox of a teleology without a fixed telos, it is in the nature of the extraordinary m elancholic to ceaselessly seek out his own lim itations and treat them as the provisional telos of his ‘higher balance’. It is around this m anagem ent of a natural disposition, defined in term s of the circular polarity between the exalted and the dejected, that the culturally form ative activities of the extraordinary in character – the philosophers, legislators, poets and artists of Problem s XX X, 1 – are structured. Steering clear of the excesses that will m ake him m ad, the outstanding character m ust m anage the inequality which sets his ēthos apart from the average. Naturalizing the Platonic antinom y of m adness, which separated the pathological from the inspirational, the disposition of the ēthos perriton in Problem s XX X, 1 70 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia represents a ceaseless activity of self-differentiation structured around the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body. This is supported by Theunissen’s argum ent that the ideal ethical m iddle of Aristoteles’ Ethics does not count for the ēthos perriton. Although the author of Problem s XXX, 1 recom m ends a tem pering of the excessively hot black bile as a rem edy to avoid disease, the ideal, natural m iddle, Theunissen claim s, is com pletely unattainable to the m elancholic in character. Instead the m elancholic is left to seek out the m iddle continuously, pròs tò m éson (“towards the average m iddle”), som ething that will never constitute a perfect balance, but only a weakening of the sym ptom s he is inclined to (Theunissen 1996: 16f.) Reflecting the Nietzschean notion of a ‘great health’ the m elancholic disposition of the exceptional m elancholic character in Problem s X XX, 1 em erges as a transform ation of the ethical “Be good!” into the typical Hellenic “Be different!” (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 91), which has a definitively m odern ring to it. The em ergence of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body of the extraordinary m elancholic of Problem s XXX , 1, on the background of this has three im portant im plications for the present study. First, it constitutes the culm ination of a decosm ologization where the idea of a higher cosm ic order, indicated by the suffering of the tragic hero, and by the Platonic idea of a divine sym m etry of m adness, is substituted for the natural substance of the black bile in the body of the m elancholic. The difference between the proportionality form ed by the er s of divine m adness and the disproportion with cosm os found in the inability of the m elancholic ignorant to lead the self, is reduced to the natural form of a substance, which is the source of both pathology and geniality and is subjected to self-regulation. Secondly, the internalization resulting from this decosm ologization transform s the question about greatness of character into the problem atic of a paradoxical ēthos that is in constant and irreducible conflict with itself. Desubstantialized by the internal disparity in it, the assum ption of a natural kind of non-pathological m elancholy forces the extraordinary in character to a prophy lactic activity of care for the self structured around a psychosom atic pattern of suffering. 71 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia Thirdly, and finally, the assum ption of the potentially pathological as a prerequisite for the great and culturally form ative achievem ent, results in a ceaseless and incessant activity of self-differentiation through this pattern of suffering. As the paradoxical designation of a m akeshift telos, the knowledge of the self gained on the lim its of the ‘elevated existence’ peculiar to this ēthos, invites a dietetic activity designed to actively sublim ate suffering into achievem ent through the ‘thing’ in the body. While suggested in Problem s XX X, 1 by the exam ple of the Syracusan poet, who is better when he is ecstatic (954a38) and also by the consequent use of intoxication as an analogy to the productivity of the naturally m elancholic, this perspective is not fully unfolded in Antiquity. But as the following section will illustrate, the positive rehabilitation of the Platonic notion of divine m adness in the Renaissance is unfolded in the dietetic philosophy of Marcelo Ficino, who reestablishes the Aristotelian notion of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body as the background for what becam e a theory of geniality. Here m elancholy is asserted also in its double character aut Deus aut Deam on, as either ‘an angel of heaven or a fiend of hell’ (Walkington 160 7, in: Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 361, note 23) in a theory of sublim ation that allows for those who are born under the astrological influence of Saturn to m uch m ore actively seek pleasure in the suffering of their peculiar disposition. 4 . S a t u r n i n e M e n : Th e D i e t e t i c s o f M e l a n c h o l y i n F i c i n o In what was later arguably to becom e the ‘m anifesto’ of the Renaissance, the Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486),vi the great Italian hum anist Pico della Mirandola focuses attention on the capacity of m an and on the hum an perspective. Like his good friend, Marsilio Ficino, whose dietetic philosophy will be the prim ary subject of this chapter, he considered the scholastic questions of logic and sem antics to be futile and was instead preoccupied with the relation of the hum an to the divine. Being the sum m it and purpose of God’s creation, m an had before him a great, if not easy task: the creation of him self out of the gifts that he had been possessed with by the powers of the universe. The Oration begins along this line: re-telling the story of creation, it sketches the foundation to a radical anthropology of selftransgression and sublim ation that encom passed the Renaissance m an and cam e to reiterate and unite the Platonic and the Aristotelian notions of the 72 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia extraordinary in character with a general theory of genius. Change and m etam orphosis, Pico asserts, is not a lack of stability in created life; rather it is on the autarchic capacity for change that the dignity of m an rests (J eanneret 1996: 129). This is m ade clear by his answer to the question about the excellence of hum an nature. Why, he asks ‘should we not adm ire m ore the angels them selves and the beatific choirs of heaven?’ (§3, 5) His answer com es in the form of an odd version of the biblical genesis: at the end of creation, when ‘God the Architect’ (§4, 10 ) had nearly com pleted his work, created both angels and anim als and put them in heaven and on Earth, he longed for som eone who would exist ‘to ponder the m eaning of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness’ (§4, 12). This being was to becom e m an; but as everything created was com plete, and the highest, the m iddle and the lowest orders were already assigned, no archetypes rem ained to m odel from . Man, the final creation and ‘creature of indeterm inate im age’ (§5, 18) would have to do without anything of his own, sharing instead a little bit of what belonged to every other being. With this gift, m an’s lack of predefinition instead becam e an endowm ent: he could take the role, the appearance and the function he wanted to and fashion him self as he responsibly desired. In return for the lack of fixed identity that set him apart from all other beings, he gained the freedom to be the architect of his own nature: Constrained by no lim its, you m ay determ ine it for yourself, according to your own free will, in whose hand we have placed you [...] We have m ade you neither of heaven nor of earth, neither m ortal nor im m ortal, so that you m ay, as the free and extraordinary shaper of yourself, fashion yourself in the form you will prefer. It will be in your power to degenerate into the lower form s of life, which are brutish; you shall have the power, according to your soul’s judgment, to be reborn into the higher orders, which are divine. (§5, 20 -23) Man, Pico m aintains, is the being that has been granted the task to m aster his own destiny at the risk of both ultim ate failure and ultim ate glory. Subject only to him self, he will have the power to cultivate his being in every which direction he would desire: his vegetable seed will m ake him plantlike, his sensual seed like a beast; with his rationality he can turn into a celestial being, and his intellectual gifts can m ake of him ‘an angel and a son of God.’ (§6, 30 ) As a creature of m etam orphosis, he is a cham eleon (§7, 32) 73 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia and even sym bolized by Proteus, the ancient Greek sea-good, who possessed the ability to tell the future, but would change his shape to avoid it (§7, 34). It is in the light of this conception of m an as a protean being that we should see the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. Reiterating the Platonic notion of a divine m adness and com bining it with the physiological argum ents of the Aristotelian Problem s X X X , 1 by m aintaining that m adness does not have the proper effect on the m ind unless it is assisted by the m aterial m eans of the black bile, Ficino’s theory of hum an genius develops out of the Aristotelian theory of the ‘thing’ in the body discussed in the previous chapter a specific notion of dietetics that was only provisionally present before. As in Pico’s work, m an is not m erely subjected to the influences of specific physical properties; rather, he is free to seek out and cultivate different powers in order to design him self in his own im age. These thoughts, shared by the Italian Renaissance with the Reform ation in the North, em erges out of the urge for em ancipation, both of the individual and its nationality, which sought to liberate notions of ‘personality’ from their ties to hierarchies and tradition (Burke 1998). In both the Italian South and the Germ anic North the hum anistic dealing with philosophical problem s em phasized the newfound self-awareness of a specific type of autarchic hum an being and sought to em ancipate the individuality of personality (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 352). As the following will illustrate, m elancholy , the influence of the black bile on the body in those who was found under the auspices of Saturn’s astrological authority, played a very special role in this. If the hum an being in the antiquity of Aristotle had been relatively bound in term s of nature, but free from the in fluence of the stars, the em ancipated hum an being of the Renaissance, on the other hand, found him self struggling with, m anipulating or succum bing to these powers as a part of a grand dietetic gesture structured around ‘the heavens within us’ as Ficino writes in a letter (Faracovi 20 0 5). The autarchic hom o literatus, who was stretched out between heroic notions of self-affirm ation, on the foundation of a suffering sublim ated into productive pleasure, and the despairing selfdoubt of som eone who is exposed to powers beyond his control, sketched out what becam e the ethical form of the m odern genius. This form was the result of a double Renaissance: on the one hand of the neo-Platonic under74 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia standing of the Saturnine powers, according to which the highest of the planets was also responsible for the highest powers of the soul; and on the other of the Aristotelian doctrine of m elancholy from Problem s XXX , 1 according to which all great m en were m elancholics (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 358). The Renaissance m elancholic suffered not only under the pressure of his psychosom atic constitution like his Aristotelian cousin; he also had the astrological influences of Saturn that were both benign and terrifying to answer to. As Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl have shown in their work on Saturn and m elancholy (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1), the astrological understanding of Saturn as a planet with precarious and equivocal qualities reflecting the peculiar polarity of m elancholy discussed in the first three sections of this chapter, was not an invention of the Renaissance, but have roots that reach back into Antiquity. Providing an external analogy to the black bile as a ’thing’ in the body, the am biguity of the planet’s properties was clear already in the Arabic astrology: Saturn is said here to be dry, but som etim es it is described as m oist; its reference is to the deepest poverty, but also to the greatest wealth; it is said to sym bolize both deceit, honesty, belonging and long journeys at sea – and the people born under it include both slaves, crim inals, the powerful and the ones who are silent because of deep thought and the secret wisdom they possess (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 20 9f.). The sam e kind of equivocation is found in the understanding in early Rom an sources of Saturn, this dark and m ysterious ruler of the heavens, as som eone who exercises his fundam ental power over the universe from an inverted perspective: he sees everything on its head from his place on the axis of the heavens, thus m anifesting an evil gaze on the world. In his hands he bore the fate of all fatherhood and of old age (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 220 f.). Beyond referencing to his status as father of the universe and the highest of the planets, this indication also points to Saturn’s origin out of the deity Cronus, who was probably the m ost am bivalent of all the Greek gods. As noted by Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl (20 0 1: 212f.) this paternal figure can rightfully be called the god of contrasts, not only because of his influence, but also because of his own fate: he is the father of the three very different rulers of the world, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades and seem s to have in him all 75 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia of their qualities. He ruled the world in the Golden Age where everything was abundant and he invented agriculture; but he also functions as the dethroned god who sadly roam s the farthest shores and waters of the earth. He is chained and im prisoned, living in or even under Hades’ kingdom Tartarus, but also counts som etim es as the Lord of the Dead. He is the father of m en and gods alike and, m ost fam ously, also the evil one who feeds on his own children, eater of raw flesh, the god who drinks up all other gods in him . Although this polarity in the figure of Cronus can be taken to have inspired the properties that defined the am bivalent astrological influences of Saturn as a planet under whose auspices those who both suffered the diseases of the black bile and enjoyed its intellectual gifts were placed in Ficino’s theories of the genius, it was the influence of its function in the neoPlatonic tradition that m ade the difference. These theories shall not be extensively discussed here. It suffices instead to say, as pointed out by Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl (20 0 1: 237), that the notion of a generally positive planetary influence propagated here, did m ore for Saturn than for the other planets. In the neo-Platonic tradition that so greatly inspired Ficino and his school of thought, Cronus is reinterpreted as the m ightiest figure in the philosophical pantheon: he becom es nous (“pure spirit”) in contrast to Zeus, who signifies the soul. It was this glorification of Cronus, no longer as an agent of worldly powers, but as a representative of the highest and m ost pure force of thought, which enabled Ficino to find in Saturn’s influence an affinity with Plato’s notion of a divine m adness and to com bine it with the influences of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body. It was not only the shared qualities of the planet and the m elancholic – the coldness and dryness, the propensity to loneliness, dejection and excessive fear, but also to visionary states of m ind – that related the two. It was also the analogy of their effects on the m elancholic bodies: like the black bile, Saturn possessed both the quality of lethargy (because of its slow revolution it could equip those born under it with ‘leaden feet’), but also the power of intelligence and contem plation (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 245). This is perhaps nowhere as lucidly illustrated as in the adm iration in the Renaissance of the tragic and m elancholic hero. Ficino’s em blem atic use of the suffering Prom etheus, also a nam e in the Orphic m ysteries for Cronus 76 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 239), as a m ythical paradigm for the m elancholic genius, m erged the them e of the tragic sufferer, with the Platonic notion of er s and with the Aristotelian traditions of m elancholy as a ‘thing’ in the body. According to Ficino, Prom etheus was instructed by divine wisdom to gain possession of the divine fire, that he interprets as reason, but this exhilarating task also proved to be Prom etheus’ bane: on the highest m ountain of his insight he was also m ost m iserable of all, gnawed at forever by the vultures of the m ind, sym bolizing the torm ent of inquiry (Brann 20 0 2: 95). It is on this background that Ficino’s dietetic philosophy of the m elancholy genius as a subject leading him self under the double influence of the saturnine powers and the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body unfolds. Having the property of the Earth itself, the black bile: ... continually incites the soul both to collect itself together into one and to dwell on itself and to contem plate itself. And being analogues to the world’s center, it forces the investigation to the center of the individual subjects, and it carries one to the contem plation of whatever is the highest, since, indeed, it is m ost congruent with Saturn, the highest of the planets. Contem plation itself, in its turn, by a continual recollection and com pression, as it were, brings on a nature sim ilar to the black bile (Ficino 20 0 0 : 90 ). Retaining the properties of the deepest things, the black bile will lead the philosopher, who is under the direction of Saturn, on an intellectual journey, sublim ating the m ere earthly life to a heavenly and eternal level. Thus the Platonic divine inspiration, which Ficino finds in the em blem of Prom etheus’ heroic er s, is not only passively received; it also actively instigated and sought out by those whose constitution allows them to give in to their m elancholic nature tota m ente, and place them selves under the guidance of Saturn, the Planet of Tears. Ficino’s De vita tres libri (“Three Books on Life”, 1489), from where this quote is taken, unlike his Theologica Platonica that he him self considered his m ost im portant work, is not so m uch a book of philosophy as it is a book on the health of this character. More specifically, it deals with the healthy life of the intellectual, who is inclined, like Ficino was him self, to m elancholy and em otional suffering. As Radden has argued (Radden 20 0 0 b: 8 7), it is not only the singling out of the health of the intellectuals for special attention, but also that De vita was the first Renaissance work to reiterate the 77 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia Aristotelian link between suffering and achievem ent in Problem s XXX, 1, and to develop the notion of the astrological influence on the black bile of Saturn, which m akes it unique. The com bination of these elem ents with the developm ent of a dietetic theory structured around the psychosom atic pattern of the black bile endows De vita with a perspective, which constitutes a direct prolongation of the problem atization of self-regulation em erging from the ancient theories about m elancholy. Including both concrete advice about how to live – avoidance of excess of any kind, a reasonable use of the day, good living quarters, the right nutrition, good digestion, m assages and m usical therapy (Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl 20 0 1: 384f.) – and m ore theoretic reflections about how the m elancholy can be optim ally cultivated, Ficino’s dietetic philosophy of m elancholy represents a conclusion to the perspective on the ‘thing’ in the body developed in the previous chapters. In De vita (Radden 20 0 0 b, Ficino 20 0 0 : 88-93) Ficino brilliantly illustrates this. Here he develops his dual perspective on the health ‘of those who devote them selves fulltim e to literary studies’ (p. 88) by referring to Hippocrates as a physician of the body, while Socrates is one of the soul. Both kinds are im portant, as the sublim e achievem ent of ‘the high doors of the Muses’ (p. 89) will not be possible without com bining them . Already this rudim ent is interesting com pared to the prophylactic theories found in the Aristotelian Problem s XXX, 1. Whereas the author of Problem s XXX, 1, as illustrated above, focused prim arily on the predisposition in the extraordinary in character towards the diseases of the black bile, Ficino focuses on the dietetic im portance of m aintaining good health in order to be able to achieve greatness. This is also illustrated by the em phasis on the im portance of achieving a m oderation of the hyperbole in a passage reflecting the attem pt of Aristotelian m elancholic to reach a ‘higher m iddle’ in the anom aly, which was also discussed in the previous chapter. Learned people in particular, claim s Ficino, are told ‘scrupulously to avoid phlegm and black bile, even as the sailors do Scylla and Charybidis’ (ibid.). Like the hero Odysseus, they m ust avoid the two m onsters threatening their sanity and find a m oderate way between them . For the Scylla of phlegm atic sloth ‘dulls and suffocates the intelligence’, whereas the Charybidis of m elancholy, where it is ‘too abundant or vehem ent, vexes the m ind with continual care and frequent ab78 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia surdities and unsettles the judgm ent’ (ibid.). Without either phlegm or black bile to stop them , the learned people would not only be ‘unusually healthy’, they would also be ‘the happiest and wisest of m ortals’ (ibid.). Yet, because of the com bustible nature of the black bile, this crux, which threatens the learned with the extrem es of the two m onsters, also offers possibilities. With a m oderate tem perature it not only steers the learned clear of disease; it also provides a m iddle passage between the m onstrous fangs of insanity towards genius. As Ficino claim s in De vita, with reference to Plato’s Phaedrus: ‘without m adness one knocks at the doors of poetry in vain’ (p. 91). No one can be intellectually outstanding if they are not ‘deeply excited by som e sort of m adness’. Melancholy, Ficino states, unlike any other hum our, has a ‘great tendency towards either extrem e, in the unity of its fixed and stable nature’ (p. 92). In this it is ‘like iron; when it starts to get cold, it gets cold in the extrem e; and on the contrary, once it tends towards hot, it gets hot in the extrem e’. But like the reaction in lim e, when it is sprinkled with water, the m elancholic hum our is easily kindled and when it is kindled, it burns intensely. This com bustibility also provides the learned with a m eans to control and sublim ate it: Extrem ely hot, it produces the extrem est boldness, even to ferocity; extrem ely cold, however, fear and extrem e cowardice. Variously im bued with the interm ediate grades between cold and heat, however, it produces various dispositions, just as wine, especially strong wine, characteristically induces various dispositions in those who have imbibed to the point of drunkenness, or even just a little too freely (Ficino 20 0 0 : 92). At this heart of Ficino’s genial theory it becom es clear that m an’s drive towards and sublim ation of his own inert ‘divinity’ is not only a m atter of steering clear of disease; instead the assum ption of an underlying affinity between contem plative rapture and the divine m adness that lifts the soul beyond its corporeal lim its prom pts m an to use m aterial causes and dietetic m eans to m anage the black bile in his body in a way that was only tentatively present in the Aristotelian Problem s. Being born under the auspices of Saturn, m eant to the m elancholic genius not only to suffer under its influences. The saturnine influence on the som atic subject of the black bile also constituted an agent for the realization of his hidden ‘divine’ potential, available only through a m eticulous dietetic m anagem ent of the m elan79 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia cholic body. The rule of Saturn over the m elancholic com plexion also played a cooperative role in the provocation of the hum an genius (Brann 20 0 2: 95). Ficino’s dietetic philosophy of m elancholy provides an interesting conclusion to the perspective on the em ergence of the ‘thing’ in the body developed in this part of the thesis. Representing the theory of an active sublim ation structured around the pattern of psychosom atic suffering, constituted by the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body, his theory accentuates the im portance of self-regulation to those extraordinary hum an beings whose hyperbolic em otional response m akes them both m ore susceptible to the diseases of the black bile and m ore inclined to geniality. As a theory also of active self-transform ation based on this dietetic knowledge, Ficino’s theory provides an im portant background to the contem porary problem atization of the ‘thing’ in the body. While the im plications of his theory gained its own life in the assum ptions of the artistic genius as som eone fashionably m elancholic and m ore receptive to influence than others (e.g. Schleiner 1991), the assum ption of the black bile as a direct subject of influence in the bodies of the extraordinary hum an beings waned. The following part of the thesis will take up the assum ption of acedia, a sinful affliction em erging first am ong anchorite desert m onks in the 4 th century A.D., m anifested as a psychosom atic pattern of suffering caused by the inability to control and m anage affect and represented as the noon-day dem on. 5 . Path o lo gie s o f Pe rfo rm ativity: Me la n ch o ly As the first of the three areas of interest, which this thesis has set out to explore, the problem atical form ation of m elancholy that has been the subject of the sections above has a privileged status. This status it owes not exclusively to the fact that it is the first and as such constitutes the fram e of reference on the background of which the following chapters inevitably will be seen. The real privilege of the form ation structured around the black bile in the bodies of the outstanding is that in it the dram a of the great tragedies becom es theory . The ‘theoretical m an’ of whom Nietzsche wrote that he possesses an ‘infinite satisfaction with what is’ (BT 15) here com es not only to occupy the Greek scene, but also to represent its theoros, its spectator. The decosm ologization described in the sections above not only represents 80 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia a deconstruction, but also the gradual opening of a space for individual selfregulation, the im plications of which are still relevant and problem atic today. Representing what has been developed in this chapter within the context of the six dim ensions of problem s and responses introduced in the be ginning of the thesis are sum m arized in TABLE 2 and explicated in the following. Firstly, the pathological problem that presents itself in the conceptual form ation of m elancholy em erges as the gradual transform ation of the hyperbolic em otional response of the tragic hero into a circular antinom y of m adness divided between excessive states of exaltation and dejection and associated with self-regulation, thus being MANIC- MELANCHOLIC (see TAB . TABLE 2 Pro ble m atical Fo rm atio n s Path o lo gical Pro ble m MELAN CH OLIA ACED IA N EU RASTH EN IA MAN IC- MELAN CH OLIA D ESPAIR EXH AU STION CIRCULAR ANTINOMY BINARY ANTINOMY ERUPTION OF IMMANENT ANTINOMY TH E EXTRAORD IN ARY TH E REJECTED TH E SEN SITIVE PERIPH ERY OU TSID E IN SID E D IETETICS VIRTU OU S LIVIN G N EU ROPATH IC Ch aracte ro lo gical Pro ble m D e lim itative Pro ble m Se lfRe gu lato ry Re s p o n s e H OU SEH OLD ACH IEVEMEN T W ORK AS VIRTU E SELF - TRAN SGRESSION Se lfArticu lato ry Re s p o n s e W ORK AS SECON D N ATU RE Pe rfo rm ative Re s p o n s e CON TROLLIN G AFFECT RESOU RCE AD MIN ISTRATION SUBLIMATION ABSTINENT SUBLIMATION 81 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia PSYCHOANALYTIC SELF - DIFFERENTIATION 2 ) First found in the Platonic designation in the Phaidros of a divine state of the m adness – the exallagé – that had to be strictly differentiated from the m orbid states of m ania, this antinom y was associated with the inspiration of the few and extraordinary, whose disposition m ade them m ore susceptible than others to the psychosom atic nosos psy ches, the diseases of the soul. When the ēthos perritón of the Aristotelian Problem s X XX, 1 was described as som eone struggling with the diseases of the black bile, the problem was also represented within the context of this circular antinom y. Opening a space for self-regulation structured around the tem perature of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body, the Aristotelian naturalization of m elancholy cam e to point out a specific character, who would be able to take control of his opportune disposition in order to achieve what it was in his paradoxical nature to achieve. With Ficino’s later appropriation in the Renaissance of the Platonic and Aristotelian theories, this antinom y of violent m ood swings becam e m ore than a disposition, it cam e to represent the ideal of the genius, who would have to expose him self actively to it in order to turn dejected im potence into glorious achievem ent and freedom . This idealization in Ficino’s work of the circular antinom y as som ething specifically associated with self-regulation am ong the geniuses that were governed by the com bustibility of the black bile is reflected in the second of the dim ensions, the dim ension of the characterological problem . As indicated in this chapter, the problem atical form ation of m elancholy also describes the gradual em ergence of a specific character, in which the m elancholic disposition in its offset is non-pathological and non-m orbid. As an EXTRAORDINARY the negative in this character is presented as a prerequisite for the positive. Already indicated by the association of achievem ent with great suffering in the characters of tragic heroes like Orestes and J ason, the elevated norm ality of the non-pathological m elancholic em erged as a precarious and com plex m odality, which represented a virtual m ode of existence that separated success from failure. This ēthos is reflected in the Platonic distinction between those who like Socrates and his peers possessed er s and those who did not, like Apollodorus whose quest for knowledge was bound to fail because of his characteristic and irredeem able ignorance. Constituting a background for the Aristotelian ēthos perriton, who was 82 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia paradoxically abnorm al by nature, the anom aly of the inspired was structured around the ability to achieve a higher balance through selfregulation, where m ost people would fail. Problem s XX X, 1 associated this achievem ent with the extraordinary character whose hyperbolic nature m ade him m ore susceptible than others to the pathologies of the black bile, but as illustrated above, it was only with the assum ption of m an as a protean being in the Renaissance that this disposition becam e the ideal of the culturally form ative genius. The delim itative problem of the extraordinary m elancholic, indicating the designation of the borderline between the individual and the collective, can be seen to reflect this. As anóm alos the self-regulating character that em erged out of the gradual decosm ologization, which the chapter has presented, always appeared on THE PERIPHERY, not only of the collective in which he took part, but also of his own self, as the pathos he was subjected to pointed him out at the lim its of his capabilities. The figure of the heroic, but tragic individuality, which struggled to find and possess its place in cosm os, is em blem atic of this defining inequality. When the Hom eric hym ns left Bellerophon, on whom the Gods had turned on account of his rebellious attitude against the cosm ic order, wandering in broken solitude on the barren Alean plain, it was no coincidence. Rather it reflected the fate of the culturally form ative, appearing always as a transgression of the already constituted collective order. Culm inating in the precarious Aristotelian designation of the ēthos perriton, whose legislative, philosophical or artistic contributions placed them always at the lim it of the collective, the peripheral appearance of the culturally form ative in the conceptual form ation of classical m elancholy was constituted as a state of exception which redefined the collective from which it was excepted. Illustrated as a kind of m akeshift telos for a teleology that possessed none, the elevated existence of the outstanding m elancholic, whose disposition was structured in a psychosom atic pattern of suffering around the ‘thing’ in the body, appeared in term s of a transgressive inequality with both the collective, the self and nature. It was on the periphery of all three that the delim itation of the m elancholic took place. The inequality of the extraordinary m elancholic was found both in term s of his exception from the collective and in term s of the disparity of his natural disposition, which separated him from him self and 83 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia designated in the gradual opening of this rift a space for self-regulation. It was the appropriation of this space in Ficino’s Renaissance theories of sublim ation, with which the chapter concluded, that the fundam ental foundation for a theory of the genius was laid. As a conceptual form ation representing the em ergence of the extraordinary character on the periphery of a gradual decosm ologization, the problem atic dim ensions presented above was closely associated with the dim ensions of response. Thus, the self-regulatory response was dom inated by the gradual transform ation of the pathos, which subjected the heroic individual to his cosm ic fate, into the full-blown DIETETICS OF SUBLIMATION in Ficino’s Renaissance theories. As illustrated in the chapter above there was no principal difference between the hyperbolic em otional patterns to which the tragic hero was subjected and his achievem ents, which m ade him what he was. The opening of a space of self-regulation for the exceptional in character gradually changed this. Already the Platonic assertion in the Sy m posium of er s as an aporectic problem , which contained the resources for its own solution for those few who had it in their character to be possessed by it, indicated how that which had used to be a m atter of divine intervention gradually becam e transposed into a dim ension of individual m anipulation. But although the internalization of the heroic virtuosity, represented by Socrates’ theory of divine m adness, did open a space for self-regulation, it was not before the Aristotelian naturalization in Problem s XXX, 1 of the black bile as a subject of m anipulation that the association of m elancholy with great achievem ent cam e to flourish. As illustrated, the nature of the Aristotelian self-regulation was of prophy lactic character, indicating the necessity of the naturally gifted m elancholics to m anage the com bustibility of the black bile towards the ‘higher m iddle’ for which they were disposed. Representing the boundless and unending necessity for self-regulation in a teleology without telos, the eucrasia anom alia of the outstanding and culturally form ative m elancholic gave form to a ‘greater health’ of geniality. It was this ‘greater health’, which becam e the fundam ent for the active dietetic theories of the Renaissance m elancholics. If the dietetic gestures in the Aristotelian theories were m ainly concerned with m aintaining the health of a type who was characterized by his susceptibility to the diseases of the black bile, the active self-regulative response of the Renaissance m elancholic 84 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia cam e to m obilize and m anipulate the inverted cosm os of the ‘heavens in m an’, em blem atically sym bolized by the planet Saturn, in order to achieve the greatness of geniality. Although this axis of self-regulation illustrates the transform ation of the heroic virtuosity into the dietetics of the genius, what holds these ends together is the dim ension of the self-articulatory response. From the classic gesture of sublim ation through the psychosom atic pattern of suffering, which has been illustrated in The Epic of Gilgam esh, to the active selftransform ation of the Renaissance genius in Ficino’s dietetic theories, the self-articulation of the m elancholic character took the form of SELF TRANSGRESSION . As a m ode of sublim ation, the self-transgression of the ex- traordinary in character indicated the prim ary trope for perform ativity. As a perform ative response to the problem atic dim ensions presented above, however, the self-transgression presented in this chapter was closely associated with and took the form of ACHIEVEMENT. The roots of this perform ative response representing achievem ent through self-transform ation was found in the pathos of the tragic hero, whose sublim ation of a psychosom atic pattern of suffering em blem atically allowed him to travel between the worlds of m an and gods. In a certain sense, this logic of transgression represented the source on which the virtuosity of the heroic individual was based. As the chapter has illustrated it was the consistency of this logic, which gradually cam e to transform the hero’s virtuosity into the selftechniques of the outstanding in character, whose perform ative response to his precarious disposition becam e represented as the extraordinary achievem ent of cultural form ation. Structured as a conceptual form ation associated with psychosom atic suffering around the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body, the dietetics of the Renaissance finally cam e to represent this perform ative response in term s of the genial. 85 Chapter Two: The Dietetics of Melancholia Ch ap te r Th re e A c e d i a a n d Vi r t u o u s Li v i n g P r ologu e 1. A ced ia a m on g t h e a n ch or it e m on ks 2 . Th e vir t u e of wor k a n d t h e m ela n ch oly of t h e socia l b od y 3 . Th om a s H ob b es a n d t h e m ela n ch olic of t h e L ev ia t h a n 4 . Th e p a t h ologies of p e r for m a t ivit y: A ced ia The desert grows: woe to him who harbours deserts! F. Nietzsche: Diony sos-Dithy ram bs Pro lo gu e The Aristotelian assum ption of a paradoxical m elancholic disposition, as the previous part of this thesis has illustrated, naturalized the hyperbolic em otional response of the heroic individual and organized it around the ‘thing’ in the body so that it could be m anaged dietetically by the extraordinary in character. While the black bile em erged from this history as the unequalled and problem atic subject of dispute, the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body am ong the coenobitic m onks who suffered from acedia is both m ore diffuse and m ore opaque, because it is no longer located within the naturalistic fram ework of the hum oral theories. As this chapter will illustrate, both the assum ption of the noonday dem on (a reference to the ‘destruction that wasteth at noonday’ of Psalm s 90 , 6) that according to the work of the m onk Evagrius Ponticus possessed the accidiosi, and later in this tradition of the m elancholic as a ly canthrope in the popular theories of Robert Burton, designates the ‘thing’ in the body as a psychosom atic pattern of suffering structuring the inability to control and m anage affect. Constituting the conflict between the individual and the m oral schem e of the capital vices which at its very bottom was based on a pathological conception of hum an behaviour, the tradition analyzed in this part of the thesis them atizes the ‘thing’ in the body as the m anifestation of a confusion of affective energies in the attem pt of the individual to regulate the self within the context of a theological and m oral conceptualization of the world. Representing the sinful privation of the m onastic, whose m ental or physical suffering prevented him from taking any pleasure in his spiritual calling, the vice of acedia, unlike that of the m elancholy described in the previous part, lacked any notion of ecstatic com bustibility. On the contrary, as the first of the following chapters will illustrate, acedia can be described in term s of psychosom atic sym ptom s resulting from a sinful dejection in the exercise of virtuous activities. As a ‘thing’ in the body, the dem on of acedia represented the lack of care in the m onk whose deficient m anagem ent of the self opened him to worldy sorrows instead of inspiring in him the virtue of godly sorrow that he should be sharing with the suffering Christ on the cross. As a sinful freedom from the virtuous sorrow , the dem onic com bination of sloth and sorrow inspired in the m onk by the sin of acedia represented not so m uch an absence of suffering as a privative m isappropriation of suffering resulting from the deficient m anagem ent of affects. While this m ay seem to som e extent to m ake acedia com parable to the Platonic notion of am athia – the m elancholic ignorance of som eone unable to achieve erôs because of disproportion – the sinfulness of the noonday dem on consisted in a m ark of depravity rather than in ignorant stupidity. The inability to lead the self according to the m oral standards of the church found in acedia, as Thom as Aquinas has it, is opposed to the virtue of spiritual joy and consists in the aversion against God him self. Conceivable according to Thom as as a superficial perception of God, the sin of acedia cam e to be represented by the m onastic feelings of ill health that led to the quenching of the soul’s spiritual voice and m ade the inner life of the m onk inaccessible to the m oral standards of the Church. Described as an unbearable tem pest of the soul, the dem onic spirit of acedia dem anded the constant watchfulness and vigilance of the susceptible m onk, who had to hold his sinful disposition in check. The disorientation of the affects originating from the interm ediate position between som a and psy che held by acedia constituted an idle condition towards which the m onk had to take voluntary action in order to rectify his conduct. As the second chapter in this part of the thesis will illustrate, this rectification was structured around the recom m endation of w ork as a therapeutic m easure m eant to cure the dejected states of idleness. It was out of these therapeutic m easures that acedia cam e gradually to be identified in a m ore popularized 88 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living version as the sin of sloth or idleness, which constituted a danger to all christians, but also cam e to em phasize prim arily an external behaviour that no longer involved the ‘thing’ in the body to the sam e extent as before. Yet with the im plication of work as a virtue, structured by the juxtaposition of sloth and busy ness in the idealization of the state as a body, the ‘som atic’ m anifestations of the inability to control and lead affect re-em erged on another level. Em phasized by Robert Burton in The Anatom y of Melancholy as the unhealthy disorder in a society, m elancholy cam e to represent the som atic pattern of illness in a societal body that was out of balance, caused by the inability of its m em bers to observe their right place. As the third and final chapter of this part of the thesis illustrates, in Hobbes’ Leviathan this analogy between the m anagem ent of affects on an individual and a societal level is presented as an analogy between the m elancholic individual, whose deficient m anagem ent of passions literally transform s him into a beast and the fam ous dictum ‘hom o hom ini lupus’ describing the state of nature, where m an is ‘a wolf to m an’. As an anarchic and threatening ‘thing’ in the body of both the individual and the state corpus, the ly canthrope represents the m elancholy of som eone who fails to lead him self within the norm ative boundaries of the com m onwealth. Represented by Hobbes as a result of vain-glory , the transform ation of the m elancholic body into a beast designates the pathology of an excessive desire for pow er with no place in civilized society. 1. A c e d i a a m o n g t h e An c h o r i t e M o n k s When Dante reaches the filthy shores of Styx in the Divine Com edy he finds a slim y swam p inhabited by m uddled people, who are fighting each other violently; not just with their fists, but with their entire bodies, tearing at each other with their teeth. Underneath these people, who have been defeated by their anger, he can m ake out everywhere bubbles on the surface. These bubbles are caused by the sighs of the accidiosi, the slothful, who lie subm erged beneath the water. These sinners, his com panion Vergil inform s him , have to gurgle their hym ns wedged in the slim e, because they cannot speak in full words: We had been sullen 89 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living in the sweet air that's gladdened by the sun; we bore the m ist of sluggishness in us: now we are bitter in the blackened m ud (Div. Com . VII.121-126). vii Trapped bitterly in the deepest regions of hell, their song barely audible, these neighbours of the wrathful, who held their anger in, were darkened by the accidïoso fum m o, the m ist that clouds both m ind and soul in spite of the kindness of a sun that would warm them . That Dante would have them gurgle hy m ns is no doubt a reference to the original occupation of these poor souls: the sinful ‘weariness or distress of the heart’ as J ohn Cassian calls it (J ackson 1986: 65), which the christian church by the end of the 4 th century had com e to know by the term acedia, was first found in the ascetic Egyptian desert m onks and was related to their struggles with isolation and tem ptations of the flesh as anchorites. This constellation of unusual and undesirable feelings and behavior, which was often referred to as the noonday dem on was first described in detail by Evagrius Ponticus (A.D. 345-399), him self a m onk, who had withdrawn to a com m unity that was part of a cluster of herm it colonies gathered at Nitria and Scete and the “Desert of the Cells” not far southeast of Alexandria (Wenzel 1967: 4). Like in other colonies of the sam e kind, the m onks here lived separately and gathered only to com m on worship. As Siegfried Wenzel explains in his excellent work on acedia (Wenzel 1967), these people were m ostly com m on Egyptian peasants without any education, who were often not prepared for the rigorous and intense tests of the ascetic’s life. Am ong the eight different ‘vices’ that could befall them acedia is nam ed by Evagrius as the sixth and is said to be the m ost oppressive of all the dem ons (Evagrius 20 0 3: 93). Possessing the m onk between the fourth and the eighth hour (at noon, between 10 a.m . and 2 p.m .), this dem on, in Evagrius’ powerful words, ‘m akes it appear that the sun m oves slowly or not at all, and that the day seem s to be fifty hours long.’ The m onk becom es restless, looking constantly towards the window, or he jum ps out of the cell ‘to watch the sun to see how far it is from the ninth hour [3 p.m .], to look this way and that’. The dem on also overwhelm s him with a sense of dislike for the whole place, and com pels him to think that all love has disappeared from the com m unity of the brothers, so that he can find no one who can offer 90 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living him consolation. He also m akes the m onk long for other places, where he is convinced that he can easily find ‘the wherewithal to m eet his needs and pursue a trade that is easier and m ore productive’, adding that pleasing the Lord is not a question of place. Along with this dislike of the com m unity the dem on m akes the m onk rem em ber and think of the close relations of his form er life, com paring his long lifetim e with the ‘burdens of asceticism ’. In short, the dem on in the body of the m onk ‘deploys every device in order to have the m onk leave his cell and flee the stadium ’. Acedia is not followed by any other dem on, Evagrius explains; but the relaxation and the tim e of ‘ineffable joy’ that com es instead is exactly the illusion, which m akes it the m ost oppressive. Opening the soul to other tem ptations and vices that the m onk has struggled to be rid of (Evagrius 20 0 3: 83), it m akes him be quick to undertake a service, for exam ple, but in the end only to his own private good: he ‘proposes visiting the sick, but is fulfilling his own purpose’ (Evagrius 20 0 3: 8 4). On the background of the exploration of m elancholy and the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body of the extraordinary in character, the first im portant question that Evagrius’ description of the spiritual flaw of acedia brings to m ind is of course if the two phenom ena are the sam e. Is acedia sim ply m elancholy presented within the m oral conceptual fram ework of the ecclesiastical writers and their lay followers and no longer within the physiological schem e of the hum oral dispositions developed by the Hippocratic writers? As Robert Daly has shown, acedia at least shares sym ptom s with m elancholy by including difficult em otions and feelings that are known to this day in psychopathology: the loss of sources of gratification and em otional attachm ents, loss of m otivation, dejection, hopelessness and sadness, low self-esteem , dim inished span of concen tration, nostalgia, irritability, isolation, apathy and suicidal tendencies, just to nam e som e (Daly 20 0 7: 32). Yet a look at the psychosom atic pattern of suffering structured around the dem on of acedia will attest to one im portant difference: as Noel Brann has also pointed out (Brann 1979: 198), the notion of acedia lacks com pletely the physiological quality of ecstatic com bustibility , which was crucial to the understanding of m elancholy as a subject of sublim ation associated with the hyperbolic em otional response of the exceptional in character. As a ‘thing’ in the body, acedia constituted only the pathological m anifesta91 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living tions of an unwanted disposition that prevented the afflicted m onk from com pleting his chores. Wenzel provides an exam ple from the 11th century of a m onk who associated acedia prim arily with the drowsiness that befell him and his fellow m onks in the early m orning: ‘The com ing of dawn, at which tim e acedia falls upon us m ore heavily, m ust find us upright and busy with reciting the Office.’ (Wenzel 1967: 30 ) The m onk praises the exam ple of the saint Rodolphus, who would overcom e this acedia by tying ropes to the ceiling of his cell, hang him self from them by the arm s and sing the psalm s extended in this position. Apart from the sleepiness, acedia would also m anifest itself as a general feeling of illness, along with m ore specific sym ptom s, which are sim ilar to som e of those we described in m elancholy, but with the particular effect of upsetting the m onks exercise of his spiritual duties. The weakness in the knees, pains in the lim bs and fever experienced by the m onastic was in no way associated with his achievem ents other than in the negative. As Andrew Crislip argues, the psychosom atic pattern of suffering produced by the dem on of acedia in the m onastic body has the specific result that [the m onk] is unable to pray the synaxis. An illustration of this is provided by an anecdote attributed to Am m a Theodora (probably a 4 th century m onastic of Lower Egypt), who asserts that dejection and the dem on’s work: ‘weighs down the body through illnesses, … debility, … and slackening of the knees and all the body’s m em bers. It dissipates the strength of the soul and body, so that [one m ight say]: ‘I am ill an d not strong enough to perform the synaxis.’’ (Crislip 20 0 5: 147) The m anifestation of a psychosom atic pattern of suffering associated with the m onk’s inability to m eet the m oral dem ands of his spiritual life, is reflected also in the problem of aphonia that is often attributed directly to the dem onical possession of the m onastic body. Another exam ple speaks of a general heaviness of the lim bs and the m onk continues by explaining how ‘once, this dem on of acedia … took hold of m y tongue and prevented m e from perform ing the office because he had placed a heavy weight on m y head, and a burdensom e disease … on all m y lim bs.’ (Crislip 20 0 5: 147) Reflecting the unpleasant fate of the accïdiosi in Dante’s Inferno, who suffered eternally the sin of the terrible paradox they lived: choosing the darkness of the soul in the broad daylight of God’s grace, the psychosom atic m anifesta92 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living tion of m uteness was often associated with dem onical possession. As Starobinski indicates (Starobinsky 1960 : 26), som e writers described acedia as a quenching of the soul’s voice, which m ade the inner life of the m onk gradually m ore inaccessible and incom m unicable. While sharing a fam ily resem blance to the extent that m any of their sym ptom s were the sam e, another im portant difference between the ancient conception of m elancholy as a ‘thing’ in the body of the extraordinary and the dem onical possession associated with acedia is found in this sinful disposition. To the ideal of a virtuous, Christian life, whose goal it was ‘to bring about a relationship between hum an beings and God, who are not the sam e’ (Cam pbell 20 0 1: 11), acedia constituted a sinful privation, even if it was an involuntary one, drying out any source of com m unication, not only with others, but also with God him self. As the psychosom atic pattern of a dejection in the exercise of virtue structured around the dem on in the m onastic body, acedia represented the pathological conception of hum an behaviour found at the roots of the m oral schem e of the capital vices. Interestingly, this definition of acedia allows also for a differentiated perspective on the role of the hyperbole, which played an essential part in m elancholy in Antiquity. While the notion of the hyperbolic em otional response in the understanding of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body was gradually involved in the decosm ologization that culm inated in the dietetic program s of the Renaissance genius, the excess of affect in the Medieval conception of acedia was only representable as the negative source of pathology . Crislip provides an exam ple that illustrates this, describing how the m onastic’s excessive practices of asceticism were seen as the work of the dem on of acedia that possessed his body. In the form of an anecdote describing the spiritual guidance of a m aster to a young m onastic, who burns to becom e a solitary before he is ready, the acedia in the body of the student is associated with his inability to m oderate his practice. The m aster advises his disciple to allow good tim e for rest and com fort in his asceticism , but as soon as he is on his own he begins to question the advice he has been given and on the third day falls prey to acedia: … instead of eating, drinking, and sleeping when faced with dem onic affliction, “he sang an abundance of psalm s” and fasted until dark because of the dem on’s subversive influence. Instead of finding rest at night, he was haunted by fright- 93 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living ening – perhaps erotic – im ages: an Ethiopian “gnashing his teeth” at him in bed. (Crislip 20 0 5: 154) Representing the result of excessive perform ance during the exercise of spiritual duties, the psychosom atic pattern of suffering found in acedia, as this exam ple illustrates, was associated with the inability to regulate the self properly according to som e external m oral standard. Designating the deficient m anagem ent of affects, the phenom enon of acedia within the fram ework of the ecclesiastical vices represented the sinful and privative deepening of a pattern of suffering in the m onastic who failed to regulate him self. The assum ption of acedia as a privative and sinful kind of suffering, prom pted by the individual inability to m anage affect, is supported by two im portant indications. First, the association of the phenom enon with the notion of care im plicated by the etym ology of the word. Deriving from the Greek akedia, it is a com pound. The first part is the prefix a- which m eans “not” in the sam e way as the prefix “un-” does in English. The second part is the abstract noun kedia, which itself com es from the m ore concrete noun kedos – translatable into ‘care’. Thus acedia prim arily points to a negative: the lack of care. As David Holden has pointed out (Holden 20 0 9: 7) the kind of ‘care’ im plicated here is of a special kind; kedos m eans ‘care for others,’ because it is the kind of care that you show when som eone dies. It designated the practice related to the death of a loved one, to washing the body, attending the funeral, and seeing the rem ains of the person respectfully buried. Kedia, then, m eant the exercise of kedos, caring for others respectfully and expecting nothing in return. The ‘carelessness’ of acedia, in its association with a psychosom atic pattern of suffering structured around the dem on in the body of the m onastic, in this sense im plicated not so m uch a com plete lack of care, as it designated the lack of care for others associated with a privation of suffering. This becom es even m ore lucid in the association of the phenom enon with the m edieval distinction between two kinds of tristitia, two kinds of sorrow, of which one was virtuous and the other sinful. As Mark Altschule has illustrated, (Altschule 1967: 779) the m edieval belief that a dejection of spirits m ay be either rational or irrational, finds its origin in a few words in the Corinthians (7, 10 ). Here St. Paul distinguishes between two kinds of sorrow, one com ing ‘from God’ and the other ‘of the world’. The ‘godly sor94 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living row’ that Christ felt when he was dying on the cross is m uch appreciated because it causes repentance. The ‘worldly sorrow’ on the other hand – the despair and dejection over worldly m atters – causes only death. According to an early exegetic, Altschule indicates, what J udas Iscariot, who gave up Christ to the Rom ans, succum bed to, was the latter form of tristitia. To the notion of acedia, which for a long tim e led an interchangeable career with tristitia on the list of capital vices (e.g. Wenzel 1967, Daly 20 0 7), this distinction is interesting prim arily because J udas’ suffering is defined, not in term s of an unforgivable sin (as God has it in his power to forgive everything), but in term s of the excess of his rem orse. It was J udas’ deficient m anagem ent of affect that allowed the Devil to lead him away from the beneficent sorrow and cause his paltry death instead. Like the tristitia that opened J udas up to the influence of the Devil, acedia designated an inability to lead affect that caused the sinful deepening of a pattern of suffering in the m onastic. But still acedia was not reducible to this second kind of tristitia. As a third them atic separating it from m elancholy in the Hippocratic fram ework, acedia, as the following illustrates, was associated with a paradoxical freedom from care seen from the perspective of the kind of repentance that virtuous sorrow could lead to. Culm inating in the Thom istic perception of it as the result of a ‘superficial perception of God’, acedia as a ‘thing’ in the body of the m onastic represented the privation caused by a psychosom atic pattern of suffering, which led to the sin of being careless about that which one should really care for. Representing the precarious position of acedia within a m oral fram ework as a pathological m anifestation in the individual body on the threshold between sin and vice, this them e illustrates how the diseases of dem onically possessed erupted as a crisis with im plications also for the social order. It was J ohn Cassian (ca. 360 – 435 A.D.), who was responsible for the tabulation of the effects of the capital vices, and for the establishm ent of a list of the virtues replacing them in the hum an heart. Travelling in Egypt and visiting the herm it colonies, Cassian cam e to know Evagrius and his teachings. Cassian transform ed the Greek akedia of Palestine and Egypt into the Latin ‘de spiritue acediae’, where it rem ained in Western Europe for over a thousand years as acedia or sloth (Daly 20 0 7: 34). He added to 95 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living Evagrius’ description of the noonday dem on the sym ptom s of w eariness and anxiousness and specifies further that the danger it poses is especially directed against the desert m onks. Like Evagrius he was concerned with the harm fulness of the affects to the ascetic practices, to which they constituted practical barriers: Our sixth struggle is with what the Greeks call acedia, which we can refer to as wearied or anxious heart. It is akin to sadness and is the peculiar lot of solitaires and a particularly dangerous and frequent foe of those dwelling in the desert. It disturbs the m onk especially around the sixth hour (12 a.m .), rushing in upon him like a kind of fever at just this time and inflicting upon the enfeebled soul the m ost burning heat of its attacks at regular and set intervals. Som e of the elders declare that this is the “m idday demon” that is mentioned in the nineteenth psalm . (Cassian 20 0 0 : 219) Although Cassian’s description of acedia is not notably different from that of Evagrius, it is interesting here, because of Cassian’s endeavors to establish a fixed m oral system of the vices in relation to the virtues. As Wenzel points out, in the work of Cassian, the m onk’s acedia is responsible for either sleep or flight from the cell, while the virtue related to it is fortitude – ‘strength’ or ‘courage’ (Wenzel 1967: 20 ). Within this m oral fram ework of vice and virtue acedia em erges on the precarious threshold between sin and vice. This is illustrated by Robert Daly in his discussion of the difference in Christian Medieval Europe between the two. If sin proceeded from freedom because the act it constituted was not com pelled but was effected by the capacities of a person or author who was responsible for his action and accountable to God for them , then these acts constituted a refusal of God’s love or a resistance to God’s grace. The question, of course, is if vice proceeded from freedom in this way. As Daly points out, m aking a distinction between sin and vice im plies that a ‘vice is conceived of as a m ore or less enduring trait of an individual’s character’, which is then ‘deem ed variously a habitual fault, flaw or defect (“vitium ”) relative of som e norm of conduct, or as a tendency or disposition to seek degrading pleasures and/ or to engage in degrading practices.’ (Daly 20 0 7: 41) In contrast to the sin that is m ore exclusively related to one action, the vice represents a disposition or sham eful habit, a m ark of depravity , which would “stand in for” the desired disposition. Reflecting the Aristotelian ethics, the 96 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living vice originates in a wrong estim ate over tim e of “the good” and with this tem poral aspect is in opposition to virtuous activity. Acedia, as Daly explains, could very well be a sin if the actions it im plicated proceeded from freedom ; but vices were not sim ply viewed as effects of freedom and the two term s were often used without distinction, m aking it hard to give a clear univocal answer to whether acedia was one or the other. Rather, in the context presented in the work of Cassian, acedia erupts on the precarious threshold betw een the two. Representing a flight from virtue, it is the dem onically induced diseases of the sufferer who leads him astray. Yet within the m oral fram ework of vice and virtue the victim s of the dem onic illnesses are held responsible for their condition and its rectification (Crislip 20 0 5: 149). As a problem atization of the m onastic’s ability to lead the self within the m oral schem e of the capital vices and virtues, acedia was not sim ply the nam e of a habitual sin. More precisely it designated a set of pathological traits within the afflicted that had com plex or variable relation to an activity (or a lack thereof), which was acknow ledged as a sin. When Thom as Aquinas in Sum m a Theologica later defines acedia as tristitia de spirituali bono (II, 2, quae. 35), as the kind of sorrow or aversion that m an feels against the spiritual good, it is the paradox of this precarious situation that is reflected. As Wenzel writes, acedia in the work of Aquinas is ‘conceived as, essentially, the aversion against the spiritual good when it appears to m an as evil’ (Wenzel 1967: 48). The character of the sin of the accïdiosi is not like the sins associated with the other vices; whereas the glutton, for exam ple, is excessive in his love of food and drink, som ething that is created by God, acedia constitutes the m uch m ore problem atic aversion against God him self. As Theunissen has pointed out (Theunissen 1996: 27), Thom as’ definition in the quaestio 35 on acedia of the Sum m a Theologica has to be read in the light of his definition of joy in the quaestio 28 on joy. Acedia is a special vice, and its effects even a special sin, because it is opposed to spiritual joy – the love of Creation. In this sense it reflects both Kierkegaard’s later notion of despair and the broader based feeling of a general disintegration of values in the late 19 th century, culm inating in the Nietzschean notion of nihilism . Its character of psy chosom atic privation of sorrow is not lim ited to the individual it affects; instead it spreads across and infects every thing 97 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living good in the world. It is evil, not just because it is a sin in action, but because it is m ore fundam entally a sin of th e heart infecting all other activities. As Theunissen has shown (Theunissen 1996: 31) the paradox of acedia, according to Thom as em erges because of a superficial perception of God that is characterized by the inability to penetrate to the source of joy. It is as such that acedia represents a sinful freedom from care: as the eruption of a privative deepening of suffering structured around the noonday dem on as a ‘thing’ in the body, acedia sim ultaneously represents a crisis in the m oral fram ework that surrounds it. The lack of care in acedia is not just a carelessness associated with individual virtue; it is a carelessness that is also thought to prevent the virtue of the social body, because of the individual’s deficient m anagem ent of affect. This precarious analogue between the pathological patterns of suffering in the individual body and the social pathologies of m elancholy which em erges out of the m edieval notion of acedia as a sinful freedom from care will be the interest of the following chapter. 2 . Th e Vi r tu e o f W o r k a n d th e M e la n c h o ly o f th e S o c i a l B o d y In his work on acedia, Siegfried Wenzel quotes from a 12 th century serm on by Abbot Isaac of L’Étoile on the episode from Matt. 8, 23-27 of Christ’s sleeping in the boat of the Apostles, when a great storm rises. While this passage is often used to em phasize the com fort of those who have faith, Isaac’s interpretation is som ewhat different. Using the m etaphor of the violent storm to point out the im portance of constant and vigilant watchfulness, he interprets the episode as an im age of those religious who have slackened in their faith in false security, and have thus let Christ ‘fall asleep’ in their hearts and souls. The storm , which Isaac thinks of as Christ’s doing, shakes those who have becom e m entally inattentive out of their ‘acedia, which leads to the flow of evil thoughts, like an inner and unbearable tem pest’. Concluding with a forceful exhortation to always be watchful and alert, Isaac declares: Woe to you if Christ sleeps in you! The wind wakes, the sea wakes, the storm and waves of evil thoughts wake, and thousand tides of tem ptation com e upon you, if only He is asleep in you … Therefore let us be vigilant, brethren, let us be vigilant above all against the plague of acedia! (Isaac de Stella, Serm o X IV quoted in Wenzel 1967: 33). 98 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living The paradoxical position of acedia on the threshold between a sin, constituted by an act of freedom , and a vice related to the natural or habitual condition of the m onastic, as discussed in the previous chapter, erupted as a problem atization of the m onastic’s ability to control his affects. With the gradual evolvem ent of the m oral schem e of the capital vices and virtues, the focus cam e to be on the question of the personal responsibility for rectification. As reflected in Isaac’s serm on quoted above, although the dem on itself m ight attack where one would least expect it, the afflicted m onk had a significant degree of responsibility, both to be always alert about the origins of the spiritual disease, whether it was a result of dem onic possession or not, and, as a penitent, to take voluntary action against it. Daly has shown (Daly 20 0 7: 41 ff.) that the acknowledging of the vice as a sinful disposition, with the help of the church an d God’s grace could rectify the penitent’s conduct and character. He would have to seek the m inistrations of the church, receiving both the exhortations and the com passion of others, exam ine his conscience and confess his sin in order for it to be forgiven by a priest of the church (e.g. Gudm and-Høyer 20 0 6). The attitude found in Abbot Isaac’s serm on also points to another issue. While the previous section showed that acedia shared with the conception of m elancholy within the Hippocratic fram ework of the hum oral theories a pattern of psychosom atic suffering, prim arily as a kind of sinful tristitia, structured around the dem on in the body, it also had in it an elem ent definable as laziness or indolence. The abbot’s exhortations to stay alert and the definition of acedia as a dem on that m ight com e at the tim e when the spiritual practices proved m ost difficult, show that the affliction represented m ore than a physiological problem ; rather, the interm ediate position between som a and psy che, between body and spirit, held by acedia, corresponded to a crisis in the m oral fram ework of which it was a part. The sin of acedia m eant m ore than only a withdrawal from spiritual exercise because of pains in the body. The dem onically induced pain in the sufferer, though very real, was a m anifestation not of aversion with work or toil in itself, but of a confusion or even disgust with that which should be the object of m an’s greatest love and hence should guarantee the spiritual value and joy of his activities within the m oral schem e of vice and virtue. Or in Wenzel’s words: ‘At the root of acedia lies, not physical exhaustion or a weakening of m an’s 99 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living will or intellectual darkness, but a disorientation of his affect or, as we would say today, his em otional life.’ (Wenzel 1967: 64) As Wenzel readily adds this affectus should not be taken as a “feeling” in the m odern sense of the word. To the m edieval Christian affect was a question of will and love resulting in “good works”. It is the understanding of acedia, not as laziness in itself, but as a despairing confusion that om itted the afflicted, who failed to lead his affects, from the “good works”, which explains its close historical relation to labour. Em erging on the threshold between the m onastic, who had com e to be possessed by acedia and the m oral crisis im plicated by this in the societal fram ework surrounding him , the virtue of w ork represented the correspondence between the health of the individual and the health of the social body. This correspondence is reflected in Robert Burton’s fam ous assum ption about business as the best cure for m elancholy and in such later proverbs as ‘idleness is the root of all evil.’ From the earliest known sources of acedia, m anual work, in the right m easures, was recom m ended therapeutically as an effective treatm ent of the ‘thing’ in the body. Crislip quotes Evagrius for the following advice: ‘Give thought to working with your hands, if possible both day and night … In this way you can also overcom e the dem on of acedia.’ (Crislip 20 0 5: 156) Also Cassian’s chief weapon against acedia is m anual work, which he suggests, should be applied to the ‘ulcers, which spring from the root of idleness’, so that Christ m ay heal them ‘like som e well-skilled physician’ (Cassian 20 0 0 : 10 ff.). The m ore sophisticated ‘interiorization’ (J ackson 1986: 73) of acedia in the Scholastic tradition is not less associated with work, even if it som etim es recom m ends the opposite. Those of the accïdiosi, som e writers suggest, who suffer from a ‘natural cause’ of the vice (which could be for exam ple m elancholy), or have been practicing excessive feats of asceticism to save them selves, m ay be better helped by not practicing endurance or m anual work, but by taking a walk or even dieting (Wenzel 1967: 59). Even if the prim ary target was the spiritual nature of the individual m onastic, the inability in acedia to m aintain a regular and tem porally bound sense of discipline and work in a social setting played a m ajor role in these therapeutic m easures. It was within the context of the popular view of the vice as idleness that the sins associated with acedia becam e failures that 100 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living was no longer restricted to those who lived an ascetic life in the desert, but was potentially dangerous for all Christians as the sin of sloth. This shift in em phasis to a focus on external behaviour, J ackson suggests, was related to the practical concerns of clergy and flocks with sinfulness in general and its assessm ent in confession and penance (J ackson 1986: 73). As J ackson has illustrated elsewhere, the association of sloth with a reprehensible idleness, which was the prim ary target of critique from both lay and religious leaders alike, gradually shifted the attention away from the psychosom atic pattern of suffering in the bodies of the afflicted. The dejection and despair associated with the ‘thing’ in the body of the m onastic possessed by the dem on of acedia, in the own life that sloth acquired in post-m edieval religious and secular writings, was no longer a prim ary target of criticism (J ackson 1981). The transform ation of acedia as a vice that was first and forem ost concerned with the precarious pathological m anifestations that resulted in a neglect of spiritual m atters, to the popularized version of sloth, which was m ore concerned with one’s worldly status and profession, indicates that toward the end of the Middle Ages, the sin of acedia cam e to im plicate a broader notion of negligence of duties in a social body . The im plication of the virtue of work m ust be seen in this light. As an antagonist of sloth, the virtue of busy ness took the place of the virtues of fortitude or spiritual joy , and as such constituted a change in the m eaning of acedia away from its focus on the ‘thing’ in the body to a reflection of a general change in society towards a greater significance of worldly perform ance. While sloth was certainly also related to the organization and execution of spiritual m atters, the virtue of work, which also found support in the Bible (for exam ple in J ob 5:7 ‘m an is born to work, and the bird, to fly’), becam e m ore a prom inent them e, indicating the point of convergence, the threshold, between the individual and the social body. Wenzel provides two cases, which exem plify this shift towards the assum ption of a precarious relation between the individual and the societal body in a brilliant m anner. The conception of sloth in the treatise “On the seven Deadly Sins”, attributed to Nicholas Hereford (ca. 1385) defines the sin in the conventional m anner of the tradition of acedia by referring to it as ‘slouthe in Gods servise’. But im m ediately after this it turns around and speaks instead of ‘ydelness in servise of God’ (Wenzel 1967: 91), represent101 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living ing the m oral failure of the slothful to observe his place in the societal body. The difference here between the reference to the original conception of acedia the sin and idleness in m atters of worldly work servicing God does not prevent the author from nam ing and discussing idleness in three estates: that of priests, “gentil m en” and labourers. Sloth here, as Wenzel m aintains, sim ply m eans the neglect in the obligations of one’s status or profession. The sam e three estates are nam ed in the second exam ple, taken from an extract of a serm on by Thom as Brinton, bishop of Rochester (1373-1389), but here they are all subsum ed under the different genera of the work served to them : Since man is by nature born to work, the arm y of Christians, which chiefly consists of three degrees, namely the prelates, religious, and workers, m ust hope of the kingdom of God be constantly occupied: either in the works of active life (which are works of m ercy, such as feeding the poor, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and sim ilar things), or in the works of contem plative life (which are praying, keeping vigil, preaching, hearing divine m atters, etc.), or in the works of hum an servitude (such as digging, plowing, sowing, reaping, and working with one’s own hands). In consequence, those m iserable idlers who are not usefully occupied in any of these three degrees and hence are unfruitful, deprive them selves by divine justice of the kingdom of God. (Brinton Serm o 20 , quoted in Wenzel 1967: 91) Disappeared here, and com pletely replaced by a notion of worldly m atters related to the virtue of work, is the psychosom atic pattern of suffering represented by the dem on of acedia possessing the herm it m onks of the Egyptian desert. From representing first and forem ost a therapeutic m easure designed to assist the m onk’s m anagem ent of affects, which led him to stray from the path of virtue, work in Brinton’s serm on has acquired a central position in the m oral structure of a hum an society, organized by status and generic duties. Idleness, on the other hand, represents nothing like an em otional pattern of suffering, but indicates a crisis in the divine organization of God’s kingdom . The sin of acedia, once representing activities associated with the inability to regulate affect, because of a psychosom atic pattern of suffering structured around the ‘thing’ in the body, here has becom e a largely secular concept, with little or no relation to som a, reflecting instead 102 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living the incipient aspirations of a society based on the both sym bolic and m aterial value of labour. Interestingly, this transform ation of the sin of acedia from being a spiritual affliction am ong the desert m onks to indicating a m ore worldly negligence of one’s obligations to society, converges with the conceptualization of m elancholy as a pathology of the social represented in the context of the correspondence between the individual and the social discussed above. The assum ption of society, reflected in the thoughts of Hereford and Brinton quoted above, as an organization that would com e apart without the absolute com pliance of its individual parts, was already expressed in the strong Platonic tradition of viewing the state as a body whose functionality depended on the cooperation of its m em bers. The organic m etaphor of the state becam e popular already in the 12 th century, in the work of the Bishop of Chartres, J ohn of Salisbury. In Salisbury’s Policraticus (1159) the state is idealized as a body, whose health represents the good of all its m em bers (Salisbury 1990 ). The offices of the state and their roles in society are here described analogously to parts of the body, with those who exert governm ental authority first, those who perform its functions second and thirdly those who are governed, but do not govern others. While the prim ary tier represents the head that is also the prince, who m ust function accordingly, with governors and judges as his eyes and m outh, the senate as his heart and the church as his soul, the second likens the hands, internal organs and flanks. Including for exam ple soldiers and tax collectors as hands and the bureaucracy of the state as the organs, the prim ary and secondary functions are all carried by the peasantry and the guilds of craftsm en, who constitute the feet of this governing golem . The dysfunctional governm ent, in this analogy, accordingly is a result of an illness or a conflict between the differing parts, not only working one way from the superior functions to the lower, but both ways so that ‘an injury to the head’, according to Salisbury, ‘is brought hom e to all its m em bers, and that a wound unjustly inflicted on any m em ber tends to the injury of the head’ (Pol. IV, 24). Em phasizing the m utual dependence of the single m em bers and their duty to fulfil exactly their purpose, the proper relation between the parts would constitute societal health, while the appearance of conflicting goals am ong them would m ake the body sick. When Thom as 103 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living Hobbes in 1651, at about the sam e tim e as Robert Burton’s sixth and final edition of The Anatom y of Melancholy was released posthum ously, published his Leviathan, the disease of a societal body out of balance with itself had been given the nam e m elancholy . As the following will illustrate, in Hobbes’ work m elancholy cam e to be represented in a dual m anner that borrowed from both the ancient tradition of m elancholy and the m edieval tradition of acedia to represent the results of a deficient m anagem ent of the self. Constituting both a representation of how the body of the com m onwealth could deteriorate once again into the natural state if its parts did not m anage to lead them selves according to their proper place, and the som atic m anifestation of this deterioration as a transform ation of the civilized m an into an anim al, m elancholy in Hobbes’ work em erges as a m oral conception of the excess or defect of the ‘Desire for Power’ in the Leviathan. 3 . Th o m a s H o b b e s a n d t h e M e l a n c h o l i c o f t h e L e v i a t h a n The assum ption in Hobbes’ work of m elancholy as a pathology, which threatens not only the sanity of the individual but also the health of the com m onwealth, although this relation has not been extensively developed in the literature, is influenced by Robert Burton (Rossello 20 0 8, Malcolm 20 0 2). In his Anatom y of Melancholy , which was very popular at the tim e when Hobbes wrote and published the Leviathan, Burton develops a theory of m elancholy that em phasizes the individual ability to control hum an passion, thus reflecting the m oral association of acedia with the inability to regulate the self according to the standards of the ecclesiastical m oral fram ework. In short, as Wolf Lepenies has illustrated in his work Melancholy and Society (1992), m elancholy to Burton is equal to disorder. It is found both on an individual level, where it is represented as an im balance in the passions, and on a social level, where it is designated as a social pathology in the hum oral constitution of the state body (Lepenies 1992: 22). Reflecting the organic m etaphor of the state in the work of Salisbury m entioned in the previous chapter, in one exam ple of this, Burton m akes a reference to the work of a colleague and describes how the state in question ‘was like a sick body which had lately taken physic, whose hum ours are not yet well settled, and weakened so m uch by purging, that nothing was left 104 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living but m elancholy’ (Burton 1986: 45). The im plication of a correspondence between the diseases of the individual body and the state, which was represented in the tradition of acedia and sloth, culm inates in the work of Burton. Like the designation of m elancholy in the individual body as a result of the failure of self-m astery over the passions, the corresponding m elancholic em issions in the som a of the state here is represented as a decadency that can lead to collapse. The pathology thus had to be purged in order for the societal body to survive: Kingdom s, provinces, and politic bodies are likewise sensible and subject to this disease … whereas you shall see in m any discontents, com m on grievances, com plaints, poverty, barbarism , beggary, plagues, wars, rebellions, seditions, m utinies, contentions, idleness, riot, epicurism , the land lie untilled, waste, full of bogs, fens, deserts, &c., cities decayed and poor towns, villages depopulated, the people squalid, ugly, uncivil; that kingdom , that country, m ust needs be discontent, m elancholy, hath a sick body and had to be reform ed. (Burton 1986: 43f.) The understanding in Hobbes’ Leviathan of the m elancholic subject as som eone incapable of regulating him self within the fram ework of the com m onwealth can be understood within the context of this analogues correspondence between the individual and the social body. In chapter VIII of the work, nam ed ‘Of the Vertues com m only called intellectual; and their contrary defects’, Hobbes defines the m elancholic as a m ad individual, whose dejection has subjected him to fears with no cause. His m adness appears in different m anners; in superstitious behaviour, in the groundless fear over som ething particular; or in ‘the haunting of solitudes and graves’ (Hobbes 20 0 6: 41). It is specifically the allusion to the haunting of graves as som ething typical of the m elancholic, which is interesting to the following. This allusion is taken from Robert Burton’s understanding of ly canthropy – the wolfm adness which was a subject of great interest to the period – as a specific kind of m elancholy including ‘howling about graves and fields at night’ (Burton 198 6: 113). In the context of the Leviathan Hobbes’ description of the m elancholic suggests a precarious and interesting correspondence between the lycanthrope and the crisis of the com m onwealth associated with the return to a natural condition, where, in the words of Hobbes’ fam ous dictum , m an is a wolf to m an: hom o hom ini lupus. On the one hand the 105 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living m elancholic individual in Hobbes’ universe, as the following will illustrate, is som eone in whom m adness has interrupted the use of reason. On the other hand, m elancholy also signals the irruption of the beast in m an, which signifies a crisis in the social body of the Leviathan. In the Hobbesian m elancholic, the psychosom atic pattern of suffering associated with the m adness of som eone unable to control their affects, em erges sim ultaneously in the analogue of the beast as a ‘thing’ in the body of m an representing the crisis of a social pathology. This argum ent can be illustrated in the context of study of m elancholy in Thom as Hobbes perform ed by the scholar Mauro Sim onazzi. As Sim m onazzi has shown, reflecting the precarious problem of the hum an-anim al divide in the 17th century (e.g. Otten 1986, du Coudray 20 0 2, Fudge 20 0 3), the difference between pathology and norm ality in Hobbes’ Leviathan is a quantitative, rather than a qualitative one (Sim onazzi 20 0 6: 6). Melancholy, in other words, is conceptualized as a m oral defect. The distinction that Hobbes m akes between m en in the chapter VIII of the Leviathan on grounds of the developm ent of their wits can be seen in this context. While the natural wit, consisting in the ‘Celerity of Im agining’ – the swiftness of thought and its steady direction – has as its contrary the dullness of m ind, the acquired wit, which proceeds from the proper m anagem ent of reason and passions, has m adness. As Sim onazzi illustrates, the difference between wits is closely related to the greater or lesser intensity of ‘desire of power’ that also sets m en apart (Sim onazzi 20 0 6: 51). While a proper developm ent of the intellectual gifts originates from a well-tem pered desire of power, a weak desire for the sam e results in giddiness and dullness. It is in the space between these two extrem es that the individual differences am ong m en are m odulated; but as soon as this m odulation goes beyond their boundaries, the excessive desire for pow er becom es pathological: And therefore, a m an who has no great passion for any of these things; but is as m en term it indifferent; though he m ay be so far a good m an, as to be free from giving offence; yet he cannot possibly have either a great fancy, or m uch judgem ent. For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired: all steadiness of the m ind’s m otion, and all quickness of the sam e, proceeding from thence. For as to have no desire, is to 106 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living be dead: so to have weak passions, is dullness; and to have passions indifferently for every thing, GIDDINESS, and distraction; and to have stronger and m ore vehem ent passions for any thing, than is ordinarily seen in others, is that which m en call MADNESS (Hobbes 20 0 6: 41, original capitalization and emphasis). Reflecting Antiquity’s understanding of the hyperbolic em otional response in the two m anifestations of m adness, m ania and m elancholia, Hobbes’ variants of fury and m elancholy result either in the excessive confidence in oneself or in the inability to satisfy ones desires. The title given by Hobbes to these excessive expressions of passion ‘whose violence, or continuance, m aketh m adness’, is either ‘great vain-glory ; which is com m only called pride, and self-conceit; or great dejection of m ind.’ (ibid.) As problem atizations of the im age of thoughts as scouts or spies seeking out solutions to the problem of life, these two pathological effects of the desire for power are results of the deficient m anagem ent of the self. While the desire for power in the individual who understands how to regulate him self can cause welltem pered joy, the vain-glory and the great dejection of the m ind, which Hobbes ascribes to the m elancholic in character, will cause the m adness of excess. The precariousness of m anaging an existence between the two extrem es without succum bing to excess is underscored by Hobbes’ use of the im age of Prom etheus, as already indicated in chapter two a figure central to the tradition of m elancholy: For being assured that there be causes of all things that have arrived hitherto, or shall arrive hereafter; it is im possible for a m an, who continually endeavoureth to secure him self against the evil he feares, and procure the good he desireth, not to be in a perpetuall solicitude of the tim e to com e; So that every m an, especially those that are over provident, are in an estate like that of Prom etheus. For as Prom etheus (which interpreted, is, The prudent m an) was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where, an Eagle feeding on his liver, devoured in the day, as m uch as he repayred in the night: So that m an, which looks too far before him , in the care of future tim e, hath his heart all the day long, gnawed on by the feare of death, poverty, or other calam ity; and has no repose, nor pause of his anxiety, but in sleep. (Hobbes 20 0 6: 60 , original em phasis) Illustrating the difficult task of m anaging a hum an existence that is always already projected into the dangers of an unknown future, the im age of Prom etheus represents the tem ptations of m an that can lead to excess of pas107 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living sion from which m elancholic m adness follows. As Sim onazzi argues, vain glory and dejection of m ind, which are the two effects of a pathological projection of the desire for power into the future, are described by Hobbes in psychological term s as the hy perbolic effects of the ‘sudden glory ’ of the passions which causes ‘those grim aces called LAUGHTER’ or of the ‘sudden dejection’ of the passion ‘that causeth WEEPING’. Reflecting the im portance of this them e in the tradition of m elancholy presented so far, m elancholy in Hobbes in this sense can be described as a disorder closely related to the com plex dynam ics of self-regulation that govern the functioning of the passions (Sim onazzi 20 0 6: 53). But whereas the hyperbolic em otional response of the m elancholic in antiquity was the hallm ark of an ecstatic com bustible disposition structured around the black bile, the birth of society required a sacrifice. As Sim onazzi argues, in the state of nature there was room for two anthropological types: on the one hand, the m oderate m an, who pursued the m iddle class values of caution and safety at the expense of passion and glory; and on the other, the vanaglorious m an for whom there does not seem to be room in the civilized society (Sim onazzi 20 0 6: 54). It is in this sense that the figure of the m elancholic in the work of Hobbes can be said to bring with it a certain awareness of that which was lost in the com m onwealth, and which also – when it erupts again in the deficient control of the passions – constitutes a crisis in the social body of the Leviathan com parable to the one proposed by Burton. Reflecting the psychosom atic pattern of suffering found in the accidiosi caused by the evil influence of the noonday dem on who possessed him , the culm ination in Hobbes’s Leviathan of m elancholy as a relational disorder of everyday life, associated with the frustration of the desire for power, signifies the irruption of the beast within m an in a world where the passion for expenditure had been substituted for the passion of calculation. As a pathology associated with the excessive display of passions rendering hum an carelessness, m elancholy is here structured around the anim al as a ‘thing’ in the body that sim ultaneously represents the crisis of a theological and m oral conceptualization of the world. It is in the sim ilar context of a psy chopathology of every day life to which everyone in principle is susceptible that the following will continue to 108 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living explore the ‘thing’ in the body. But whereas the noonday dem on of acedia, hiding am ong the m onks in the Egyptian desert, specified a tradition that culm inated around the tim e of Hobbes with the assertion of the em otional hyperbole as an anim al in m an, the subject of the nerves cam e to represent a problem atization of the dem ocratic m an. 4 . Th e P a t h o l o g i e s o f P e r f o r m a t i v i t y : A c e d i a Returning to the structural level of the six dim ensions of problem and response, which this thesis has set out to investigate, it is clear from the sections above that the problem atization of acedia explored in this chapter represents a considerable change of perspective from the problem atization of m elancholy, which was explored in the previous chapter. This change com es down to m ore than the difference between the conceptual fram ework of the two: that acedia was concerned prim arily with the difference between vice and virtue adhered to by ecclesiastical writers, while the form ation of m elancholy subscribed prim arily to the m edical theories associated with the infirm ities caused by im balances between the four bodily hum ours. The essential shift which this chapter has been concerned with is not only found on a conceptual level, but also in a fundam ental shift away from the dram a of subjectivity associated with the extraordinary, who em erged as the culturally form ative spectator at the periphery of his own private tragedy. Unlike the m onastic or the Hobbesian m elancholic, the extraordinary existence of the outstanding was never indebted to any other ‘higher’ reality than its own. Always already a deficient life-form in the perspective developed in the sections above, the m elancholic was subjected exclusively to him self and to the precarious ‘thing’ in his body, which m ade his character uneven to itself. The m ost striking difference between him and the character described in the sections just presented is that the latter does not find him self at the periphery, but always already in the m iddle of a social reality . In that sense if the history of m elancholy was also the history of the theoros, the ‘theoretical type’ who watched him self take a central place on the Greek scene, the history of acedia explored above, at least at its offset, represents the history of the m arty r – the Greek word for “witness” – of a personal sacrifice to a higher reality. The m onastic character suffering from acedia was born into a reality in which m an and God was already separated, 109 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living like evil and good, vice and virtue. To him suffering m ade not only the reality of the affliction clear, but also the painstaking reality of God and the world. Not only an individual issue, the psychosom atic pattern of suffering structured around the m onstrous eruption of dem ons and wolves in the bodies of the afflicted, adhered to the burden of a social reality , the historical im plications of which also represents the gradual transform ation from the theocosm os of the Church Fathers to the sociocosm os of the Hobbesian Leviathan. TABLE 3 Pro ble m atical Fo rm atio n s Path o lo gical Pro ble m MELAN CH OLIA ACED IA N EU RASTH EN IA MAN IC- MELAN CH OLIA D ESPAIR EXH AU STION CIRCULAR ANTINOMY BINARY ANTINOMY ERUPTION OF IMMANENT ANTINOMY Ch aracte ro lo gical Pro ble m TH E EXTRAORD IN ARY TH E REJECTED TH E SEN SITIVE PERIPH ERY OU TSID E IN SID E D IETETICS VIRTU OU S LIVIN G N EU ROPATH IC D e lim itative Pro ble m Se lfRe gu lato ry Re s p o n s e Pe rfo rm ative Re s p o n s e H OU SEH OLD ACH IEVEMEN T W ORK AS SECON D N ATU RE SELF - TRAN SGRESSION Se lfArticu lato ry Re s p o n s e W ORK AS VIRTU E CON TROLLIN G AFFECT RESOU RCE AD MIN ISTRATION SUBLIMATION ABSTINENT SUBLIMATION 110 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living PSYCHOANALYTIC SELF - DIFFERENTIATION Reflecting the Heideggerian notion of the burden of existence (“Lastcharakter des Daseins”) (Theunissen 1996), the pathological dead weight of acedia represented the problem s associated with the com pulsion to existence itself. The characterological problem presented in the sections above for this reason was not that of the extraordinary; it was that instead of the outcast, THE REJ ECTED (see TABLE 3), who represented the precarious Other of the collective or even, as it becam e quite clear in the case of the Hobbesian m elancholic, the casualty of the social form ation. More than the paradox of a contradictory nature, the characterological problem presented above was that of som eone living a contradiction. This contradiction was found first in the paradoxical etym ological construction of acedia as a concept. Representing not necessarily the problem of som eone who did not care, but rather the problem of one whose care lacked the quality of the virtuous, the negation of kedos im plicated a careless treatm ent of a practical situation. The specific carelessness of acedia was associated with the kind of activities that presupposed a joy of existence and a surplus of life. The contradiction in the lives of the accidiosi was em blem atically found in the gurgling hym ns of the m onks subm erged in the slim e of Dante’s river Styx in the fifth circle of hell, who died as they had existed: em bodying in death the terrifying darkness which they had harboured in life in the light and warm th of the world above, these poor souls were the victim s of a love defective. The contradiction they em bodied was the dejection in the exercise of the virtue, the darkness within the light, the sorrow over God. This existential contradiction was reflected in the pathological problem of acedia. Describing a BINARY ANTINOMY in contrast to the circular alternation of m elancholy and m ania, the pathological problem described in the sections above was only representable in negative term s. Nowhere was this as lucidly exem plified as in the assertion of the psychosom atic pattern of suffering in the body of the m onastic as a dem onical possession. The nam e of this noon-day dem on m ay of course be said m erely to refer to the fact that it took control of the m onk at the tim e of day when the sun was strongest and the work that he undertook hardest. But Evagrius’ description of it also seem ed to suggest som ething m ore. Apart from being associated with the m iddle of the day because it appeared at the hours around noon, the title which was given to the dem on, in the light of the negation it represented, 111 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living could be said to refer m ore sym bolically to an existential darkness. As Theunissen (1996) has pointed out, the m odel for the Kierkegaardian pseudonym with the sam e nam e, J ohannes Clim acus, saw in acedia the paradox of death surrounding the m onastic in the m iddle of life. The sam e is suggested by Dante when he finds him self, in the fam ous opening words of the Divine Com edy ‘m idway upon our journey of life … within a forest dark’. The pathological problem associated with the noonday dem on was the negativity of anhedonia (Willner 1993), the inability to experience pleasure from norm ally pleasurable life events, the terrible feeling of feeling nothing when one ought to feel only joy (J aspers 1948). As especially Evagrius’ description showed, the central problem of the terrible paradox of a sorrow over God represented m ore than a private issue. Or to phrase it otherwise: it constituted the com plex problem of a sin of privation. The dem onical possession itself was described as an overwhelm ing feeling of dislike with the whole m onastic com m unity; but while this feeling m ade of the dem on in the flesh a terrible opponent, the worst was what cam e after it: the ‘ineffable joy’ of the tim e of relaxation after the dem onical attack filled the m onastic with the illusory feeling of a need to do good to save him self – that is for his own private sake. Opening his soul to tem ptations and vices of all kinds, this problem constituted the heart of the pathological pattern. It was this privative character of affect that led to the confusion, which m ade the m onk inaccessible to both him self and the God who would have m ercy on his soul. Em blem atically illustrated in the differentiation between two kinds of sorrow, one com ing from God and the other of the world, the confusion of affect found in the case of J udas Iscariot’s privation of sorrow represented the problem atic at the bottom of the pathological problem of acedia. While J udas’ rem orse itself was justified, its reasons were flawed as the excess of it opened him to the influence of the Devil. Constituting what m ay be term ed a negative im itatio Christi, it cam e to represent the negative experience of the reality of the world as a place of suffering. A terrifying vertigo of God, the dem on of acedia which took hold of the m onastic body represented a sinful and privative deepening of a natural and existentially given pattern of suffering, and as such the pathological problem m anifested itself as DESPAIR . It was this m atter of a confusion of affect at the heart of the sin of acedia that was carried over into the 112 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living Hobbesian sociocosm os and cam e to represent a crisis in the social body of the Leviathan long after the burden of God had been exchanged by the burden of the social form ation of the Com m onwealth. The pathological projections of the desire for power represen ted by Hobbes as the passions of sudden dejection resulting in weeping or sudden glory resulting in laughter were exam ples of privative hyperboles associated with the m elancholic inability to regulate the self within the fram ework of the social form ation. It is along the lines of this confusion at the heart of the sin of acedia that the delim itative problem of acedia can be found. The delim itation of individual from collective in the chapter above was constituted prim arily as a negative experience of the fundam ental existential rules of the reality into which this individual was introduced. For the m onk this m eant the experience of God in the m ode of negation. If St. Paul’s conversion in Dam ascus can be viewed as a literal dejection, as he was struck to the ground and blinded (Acts 9:1-30 ), leading into the body of Christ representing the Christian com m unity (Rom ans 12:5, Corinthians 12:27), then the terrifying dejection associated with the dem onical possession of acedia led out of the body of Christ and into the despair of exile from the com m unity of the virtuous. Hence the delim itative problem points to a com plex situation of being sim ultaneously in the m iddle of a social order and yet on its OUTSIDE . In this sense the m onastic individual as opposed to the Greek m elancholic was found in the m iddle of reality, as stated above, but always falling out of it. As a m ark of depravity, the psychosom atic pattern of suffering structured around the dem on in the body constituted a threshold between the collective nom os and the individual phy sis. The problem of delim itation was the problem of the vertigo of a cosm ological order: on the one hand as the eruption of the m onstrous Other of the collective in the individual body causing despair; and on the other of a crisis in the social body where the individual regulation of affect fell out, a state of exception representable as a social pathology . As a brother of Agam ben’s hom o sacer especially the Hobbesian m elancholic’s rejection from the Com m onwealth because of his deficient regulation of his desire for power, illustrated the correspondence between the individual and the social body. Advertising the threat of dissolution of the social order, the m elancholic represented the eruption of an im m anent disorder that m ade the state body appear tam quam dissolute, as 113 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living if it was dissolved (Agam ben 1998: 10 5). This was seen in Hobbes’ assertion of the m elancholic as a ly canthrope, a wolf-m an, whose excessive desire for power, for which the greater good of the Com m onwealth had no space, had rendered m ad. Essentially structured around the problem of freedom , the three problem atizing dim ensions explored above in this light dem anded responses that were very different from the ones associated with the dietetics of the classic Greek m elancholic. While self-regulation to the extraordinary was an im portant aspect contributing to his m anagem ent of a natural disposition, in acedia and the later Hobbesian version of m elancholy it was the selfregulation itself that becam e pathological. The pathology associated with acedia consisted in doing the right thing wrong. The self-regulatory response to the problem atic dim ensions fleshed out above, was thus prim arily concerned with the VIRTUOUS LIFE within the m oral fram ework of the cosm os within which the individual existed. In relation to acedia this response em erged on the threshold between sin an d vice as a precarious attem pt to lead the self on its interm ediate position between som a and psy che. If acedia represented a disorientation of affect, m ore than a physical exhaustion or a weakening of m an’s will, then the dem onically induced pain which the afflicted felt was the result of a self-inflicted carelessness with vice resulting in sinful activity. This carelessness, as it was illustrated, had to be resolved by therapeutic m easures. Closely associated with the gradual transform ation of the m eaning of m anual work from representing m erely a therapeutic tool, to constituting a virtue in itself, this self-regulatory response constituted an im portant structural part in the transform ation of the theocosm os into the sociocosm os of Hobbes’ political theories. Thus the self-articulatory response associated with the sinful disposition of acedia was prim arily concerned with THE CONTROL OF AFFECT articulated as ABSTINENT SUBLIMATION . The sym bolic assertion, for exam ple in Isaac of L’Étoile’s serm on, of acedia as an unbearable inner tem pest resulting from the slackening of faith and leading to the ‘sleep’ of Christ, illustrated very well the im portance of assum ing a personal responsibility for rectification, which evolved with the gradual institutionalization of the m oral schem e within the fram ework of capital vices and virtues. It was as a sin of the heart that acedia assum ed the role of a threshold, which m ade it 114 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living prim ary to other sins. Infecting the world with a spiritual m eaninglessness that reflected Nietzsche’s later notions of nihilism , acedia assum ed a special role as other, m inor sins followed with its im plied slackening of faith. From concerning prim arily the coenobite m onk, the self-articulation associated with the threat of this spiritual despair gradually cam e to concern practically all m em bers of the Christian com m unity. The personal acknowledgem ent of vices as sinful dispositions, for which one would have to seek the m inistrations of the church in confession, evolved into a general exhortation to m ake oneself accessible to m oral advice. Sim ultaneously the evolvem ent of acedia into the notion of sloth saw the problem of a dem onically induced pattern of psychosom atic suffering in the individual wane as the problem becam e associated largely with notions of laziness instead. It was within the context of this shift in self-articulation from concerning the threshold between vice and sin to representing the m uch m ore general ability to m aintain a regular and tem porally bound existence that the Hobbesian m elancholic was of interest. Representing the m adness of som eone whose deficient regulation of passions resulted from the difficult task of m anaging a hum an existence that was always already projected into the uncertain future of the sociocosm os, m elancholy in Hobbes’ Leviathan like acedia was associated with the confusion of affects resulting in an inability to lead the self for the sake of a greater good. Culm inating here, the problem of a correspondence between the pathological states in the body of the individual and in the body of the m oral fram ework, underlines how the articulation of the self was concerned with becom ing accessible to m anagem ent. Yet, as an im portant problem which played a central role in the transition from the theocosm os where acedia was found, over the interm ediate position of sloth, to the Hobbesian m elancholy in the sociocosm os of the Leviathan, the problem of m aking oneself accessible to m anagem ent also played a central part in the transform ation of the im portance of work. The dim ension of the perform ative response in the sections above is represented first and forem ost by the transition of the im portance of m anual labour from a secondary position in the Christian ‘good works’, where it was associated with the deeds perform ed for others, to an absolute prim ary position of crucial socioeconom ic im portance in the idea of work as a virtue in itself in the sociocosm os. Acedia and the problem of becom ing accessible to 115 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living m anagem ent played an im portant role in the gradual transform ation of this response as m anual labour was recom m ended broadly as a therapeutic m easure against the spiritual despair it im plicated. The transform ation of acedia into the m uch broader im plications of sloth gradually saw the spiritual dim ension of the problem wane for the problem of idleness to which the im plication of work as a virtue itself was a response. Whereas the problem of acedia had been concerned prim arily with the dem onic dejection, which exiled the m onastic from the body of Christ, the virtue of work in the sociocosm os was a response rather, as it was illustrated above, to the neglect of the obligations of one’s status or profession within a socioeconom ic fram ework. It was within the context of this transition that work, as a perform ative response to the correspondence between individual suffering and social pathology, attained the position from which it was later to em erge as the pivotal point of a whole culture treating it as a kind of second nature. This, as the following will illustrate, was the culture of nervous disorders. 116 Chapter Three: Acedia and Virtuous Living Ch ap te r Fo u r Th e N e u ro p ath ic H o u s e h o ld o f N e u ras th e n ia P r ologu e 1. George M. Beard’s Philosophy of Nervousness 2 . The Culture of Sensibility and the Maladies of the Will 3 . The Hum an Motor: Nerves and Labour Power 4 . The Mechanics of Melancholy: Freud and Neurasthenia 5 . The Pathologies of Perform ativity: Neurasthenia Pro lo gu e Despite their m any differences, the two independently evolved conceptual form ations of m elancholy and acedia, the first subscribed to by the writers inspired by the Hippocratic-Galenic hum oral theory, the latter by the ecclesiastical writers and their lay followers, shared one fundam ental issue: the dispositions designated by them were always ascribable to som eone in particular. Whether it was the Aristotelian ēthos perriton, whose extraordinary disposition constituted a precarious relation between suffering and achievem ent, or the accidiosi in whom the m apping of m aladies of affect and behaviour onto the som a was the result of a social analogy, their affliction was that which pointed them out and set them apart from the opacity of their collectives. Like Foucault’s “infam ous m en” (Foucault 20 0 0 : 157176) who were snatched by their m om entary articulations from the darkness in which they could have otherwise rem ained, the psychosom atic pattern of suffering structured around the ‘thing’ in the bodies of the m elancholic geniuses or the despairing m onks in these traditions apprehended and exposed them in a fleeting trajectory that m ade them stand out. Even the general possibility of a hyperbole of affect constituting a crisis in the social body of Hobbes’ Leviathan, which dem ocratized the m otif of a m onastic correspondence between an individual and a social pathology, singled out the m elancholic on the background of the chain of collectively. It was not before the theories of evolution in the 19 th century began to designate bestiality as a shared point of the origin of the species, when these theories placed the anim al within the bodies of every one, that this age-old designa- 117 tion of the ‘thing’ in the body as the m arker of a precarious individuality began to wane. With the assum ption of the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body in the 19 th and early 20 th century, the precarious character of a disposition associating the psychosom atic pattern of suffering in the individual body with the ability to lead and m anage the self, gradually becam e a possibility for any one. Designating the ‘thing’ in the body, the pathological character of neurasthenia, coined by the physician George M. Beard, cam e to reflect the gradual em ergence of a dem ocratized culture of articulation directed at the psychosom atic pattern of suffering in the bodies of individuals. The injunction to articulate the ‘thing’ in the body in a socially acceptable and understandable m anner culm inates in the Freudian conceptualization in the fam ous “Mourning and Melancholia” of m elancholy as a hyperbolic em otional response to the loss of an object. Associated with the inability to selfdifferentiate through the overcom ing of suffering, m elancholy here em erges as a problem atization of the ability to m anage the self within the context of a m eaningful and productive life. It is as a background to this that neurasthenia, the pathology structured around the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body of the m odern individual, is of great interest. Representable within the context of the two Brunonian categories of sthenia and asthenia, neurasthenia them atized both the excess of stim ulation of the individual who was exposed to the m odern world and the resulting incapacity of the w ill to react to stim ulus, because of the pathological depletion of the individual reserves of energy found in the central nervous system . As the first of the following chapters will illustrate, Beard’s designation of neurasthenia as a nervous bankruptcy im plicated a kind of neuropathic household associated with an individual responsibility to know and m anage the self. As a pathology of sensitivity to the dem ands of m odern society, neurasthenia cam e to represent the failure of the individual will to stand its ground against m odernity, structured as a pattern of psychosom atic suffering around the nerves. The second section of this chapter of the thesis will illustrate how nervousness em erged as a pathology of everyday character, problem atizing the prophylactic articulation of the lim itations of the individual body, which both defined the boundary beyond which social de- 118 m ands were deem ed illegitim ate and a place from where the individual could no longer return without the help of therapeutic m edicine. Representing a m uch broader appeal than the traditions explored in the previous chapters, neurasthenia on this background becam e a disease of labour; an affliction of the am bitious struggler in the burgeoning econom ic system of 19 th century industrialism to whom work was a second nature. As the third chapter of this part will illustrate, the pathological exhaustion of the nerves resulting from fatigue not only focused on the im pairm ent of energy as a productive resource, but also on this energy as the individual body’s unique capital, its Arbeitskraft. Designating the ‘thing’ in the body as the prim ary site of its conversion, what the historian Anson Rabinbach calls the transcendental m aterialism of the 19 th century, cam e to predicate the notion of a single Kraft, a force of nature that could be transform ed into productivity. As a problem atization of the individual attem pt to provide a goal-oriented use of the body’s m ost valuable asset, neurasthenia cam e to constitute a relatively sim ple m echanistic explanation that focused on the pathological deficiency of an individual will to lead the self productively because of exhaustion. By the end of the 19 th century this perspective had transposed the problem atic of the ‘thing’ in the body from one affecting only the extraordinary in character into the sphere of work, where it potentially affected everyone, transform ing idleness into the paradoxical ideal of the working class, rather than a m ortal sin. Freud’s theory of m elancholy can be seen on the background of the m aterialistic and m echanical assum ption of the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body subjected to the individual will. His therapeutic m ethod, which prom ised to help his clients by transform ing their hyperbolic ‘hysterical m isery’ into an ‘everyday unhappiness’ was based on the restoration of the nervous system , which would enable the inhibited will of the m elancholic to once again project him self in into a m eaningful and productive existence. The Freudian conception of m elancholy designates the structural em otional hyperbole of a m ourning lam ent (“Klage”) that has becom e an accusation (“Anklage”) in the m elancholic who consequently has lost the ability to articulate his or her suffering as a pattern of self-differentiation through ‘inner travail’. The ‘thing’ in the body of the individual becom es the target of a therapeutic articulation, which designates the pattern of suffering as the field of a produc- 119 tive transform ation of the self, whose gesture is obstructed and shattered by the m elancholic lack of m eaning. 1. Ge o r g e M . B e a r d ’s P h i l o s o p h y o f N e r v o u s n e s s To a contem porary reader the m ost surprising part of the Heidelberg chem ist Wilhelm Weichardt’s invention in 190 4 of antikenotoxin was perhaps not that it constituted an antibody to the poisonous substances that he im agined gathered like quickly approaching, dark clouds in the bodies of the rodents, which he exposed to strenuous physical exercise. Rather the fact that Weichardt believed his invention to be a vaccine to cure fatigue, revolutionizing m ankind by abolishing weariness altogether and transform ing hum an bodies into tireless m achines (Turner 20 0 8) m ay seem curious. Yet Weichardt’s designation of a substance in the bodies of the rats from which he could extract the toxin that constituted an essential chem ical base of the antibody, was part of a m uch broader, social pattern of interests, associating worries about changes in the processes of civilization and the em erging science of work, with exhaustion and m ental illness. If one phenom enon sum m arizes the conglom erate of these interests in the late 19 th and early 20 th century it is neurasthenia, the pathological state of fatigue structured in a pattern of psychosom atic sym ptom s around the central nervous system , first coined in 18 69 by the Am erican physician George Miller Beard. A forerunner not only of Freud in his study of neurosis but also of the contem porary popularity of the cognitive and behavioural sciences, Beard’s popularization of neurasthenia was based on work that was far from original. As Charles Rosenberg indicates, Beard was neither a profound nor a critical thinker. His m edical writings constitute a m osaic pattern of the fashionable and controlling ideas of his tim e, m aking it the fam iliarity, rather than the novelty of his theories which m ade them so easily and rapidly accepted (Rosenberg 1962: 245). Yet Beard’s conviction of an underlying kinship between a range of seem ingly unrelated sym ptom s of illness which were not, he believed, reducible to hysteria or hypochondria is im portant to recognize, especially to the present study, as his consequent attem pt to bring order to the chaotic field of the so-called functional nervous disorders provides a crucial exam ple of the kind of introspection and rela- 120 tionality im plicated by the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body. Motivated partly by his own experiences, Beard m anaged to blend scientific theories from physics, neurophysiology and technology about the nature of nervous im pulses, energy-conservation and biological evolution into a disease entity, which was not only plausible, but provided the lack of nervous energy as a m edical answer applicable to a broad range of m ore or less obscure sym ptom s (Sicherm an 1977: 39). Ever growing in num ber, the list of sym ptom s of neurasthenia was quickly expanded to include such variables as: Tenderness of the scalp (cerebral irritation, cerebrasthenia); tenderness of the spine (spinal irritation, myelasthenia); tenderness of the teeth and the gum s; tenderness of the whole body (general hyperaesthesia); general and local itching; abnorm alities of the secretions; vague pains and flying neuralgias; flushing and fidgetness; trem ulous and variable pulse with palpitation; sudden giving way of general or special functions; special ideosyncrasies in regard to food, m edicine, and external irritants; sensitiveness to changes in the weather; a feeling of profound exhaustion unaccompanied by pain; ticklishness; desire for stim ulants and narcotics; insom nia; nervous dyspepsia; partial failure of m em ory; deficient m ental control; sem inal em issions; sperm atorrhea; partial or com plete impotence; changes in the expression of the eyes and countenance; m ental depression with general tim idity; m orbid fear of special kinds, as agoraphobia (fear of places); astraphobia (fear of lightning); sick headache and various form s of headache; disturbances of the nerves and organs of special sense; localized periphal numbness and hyperaesthesia; general and local chills and flashes of heat; local spasms of m uscles. (Beard 1879: 246) When Beard in 1881 published his Am erican N ervousness: It’s Causes and Consequences, he had listed m ore than 75 neurasthenic sym ptom s, indicating the broad range of phenom ena believed to be attributable to a pathological weakness in the nervous system . As Barbara Sicherm an argues, it was the im plied precision of this broad range of sym ptom s that offered practitioners an em phasis on what they could do for their patients, rather than exposing their im potence, at a tim e when m ost physicians felt only com fortable with clearly organic disorders (Sicherm an 1977: 39). Providing a relatively sim ple, m echanistic explanation to a problem that was ham pered by the fact that no two individuals would experience it in a uniform sym ptom atological m anner neurasthenia was a huge success. As Beard could only hope that it would ‘in tim e be substantially confirm ed by m icroscopical and chem ical exam inations of those patients who die in a neuras- 121 thenic condition’ (Beard 1869: 217), it was justified alm ost entirely by scientific m odels found elsewhere. Reflecting prim arily the recent discovery of the first and second laws of therm odynam ics, Beard’s definition of nervousness as ‘nervelessness – a lack of nerveforce’ (Beard 1881: 5) em phasized the central nervous system as a reservoir of energy. The Germ an physicist and physiologist Herm ann von Helm holtz, whose argum ent that the forces of nature are form s of a single source, was an im portant influence on Beard (Rosenberg 1962: 249). Only a few years later this assum ption of a universal, natural force powering both m an and his m achines alike was joined by Rudolf Clausius’ form ulation of the second law of therm odynam ics, which established that any energy transfer from warm er to colder bodies in isolated system s undergoes entropy. The offset of the enorm ous social confidence sparked by the im plications of the theory of therm odynam ics, which was caused by the realization in the 1850 s and 1860 s that a dissipation of force is inevitable, is reflected in Beard’s theory of neurasthenia. The notion of nervous bankruptcy applied by Beard to describe the differences between individual reserves of nervous energy is m ore than a m etaphor. Constituting one am ong a few privileged term s that he used to illustrate the im portance of nervous energy to the body, nervous bankruptcy, he claim ed, results basically from the individual’s overdrawing of his ‘accounts’: In finance, a m an is rich who always lives within his income. A m illionaire m ay draw heavily on his funds and yet keep a large surplus; but a m an with very sm all resources – a hundred dollars in the bank – can easily overdraw his account; it m ay be m onths or years before he will be able to m ake him self square. There are m illionaires of nerve-force – those who never know what it is to be tired out … and there are those – and their numbers are increasing daily – who, without being absolutely sick, without being, perhaps for a lifetim e, ever confined to the bed a day with acute disorder, are yet poor in nerve-force; their inheritance is sm all, and they have been able to increase it but slightly, if at all; and if from overtoil, or sorrow, or injury, they overdraw their little surplus, they m ay find that it will require m onths or perhaps years to m ake up the deficiency, if, indeed, they ever accomplish the task. (Beard 1881: 9f.) Constituting a correspondence in the individual body to the assum ption in the universal theories of therm odynam ics of a single force of energy, 122 Beard’s use of the bank account as a m etaphor reflects the individual task of self-regulation related to the ‘thing’ in the body. Designating the nerves as this ‘thing’, around which both the reserves of productive energies and the pattern of their pathological depletion are structured, Beard’s ‘philosophy of nervousness’ em phasizes an individual reserve of energy, the conservation of which can be m odulated m ore or less successfully by the m eticulous care of the individual and his physician. The origin of the differences in the am ount of nervous force in the single bodies, Beard argues, is essentially hereditary, som ething which he believed had recently been proved by experim ents that showed how dam age to nervous tissue m ight be passed down from one generation to another (Rosenberg 1962: 251). This argum ent was in line with hereditary explanations of m ental illness and with the pervasive contem porary theories about degeneration that was often used to argue for social difference between race, gender and class (e.g. du Coudray 20 0 2, Herm an 1997). Neurasthenia in this sense was assum ed to be the result of the depletion of a lim ited natural resource found w ithin the individual on the background of the deficient m anagem ent of a hereditary resource. A sim ilar assum ption is represented by another popular exam ple in which Beard draws on the work of Thom as Edison, whom he worked with for a short period. In order to illustrate another im portant them e in neurasthenia, nam ely the lim ited am ount of pressure under which the individual can sustain him self, Beard asserts that the research into electric light ‘is now sufficiently advanced in an experim ental direction to give us the best possible illustration of the effects of m odern civilization on the nervous system .’ (Beard 1881: 99) In all calculations m ade to estim ate the force supplied by any central source of energy, Beard argues, it has been m ade clear that there is a lim itation to the num ber of lam ps which can be interposed on a circuit without its failing. Illustrating another correspondence between the individual body and a natural phenom enon, this exam ple em phasizes the individual need to care about the am ount of stresses to which the body is exposed. The popular analogies provided by Beard to illustrate the causes and effects of nervousness in the body work to supply the relatively sim ple m echanistic fram ework that cam e to constitute an answer to the very dif- 123 fuse external pressure on the m odern individual. Set apart from the Ancients prim arily by five elem ents – steam power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences and the m ental activity of wom en (Beard 1881: 96) – this individual was under the im m inent and constant threat of succum bing to states of exhaustion from which it no longer could return on its own: The force in this nervous system can, therefore, be increased or dim inished by good or evil influences, medical or hygienic, or by natural evolutions – growth, disease and decline; but none the less it is limited; and when new functions are interposed in the circuit, as m odern civilization is constantly requiring us to do, there comes a period, sooner or later, varying in different individuals, and at different tim es of life, when the am ount of force is insufficient to keep all the lam ps actively burning; those that are weakest go out entirely, or, as m ore frequently happens, burn faint or feebly – they do not expire, but give an insufficient and unstable light – this is the philosophy of nervousness. (Beard 1881: 99) Suggesting a neuropathic household, which m ust be constantly observed by the individual, Beard’s philosophy of nervousness designates a ceaseless prophy lactic activity constructed to balance the ‘thing’ in the body in order not to suffer under the expenditure of the energy located within it. While this activity, as the next section will illustrate, had for a longer period been the privilege of the higher classes who suffered from the fashionable effects of glam our resulting from affluence, neurasthenia as a pathology of every day life quickly dem ocratized it. As Sicherm ann illustrates, a study of diagnoses in two New England clinics shows, that by the beginning of the 20 th century, neurasthenia had becom e the m ost frequent diagnosis am ong working-class patients (Sicherm an 1977: 44). Reflecting the activity of both the extraordinary m elancholics and the despairing m onks of the early Middle Ages, the introspection of the potential neurasthenic designated a prophylaxis structured around the ‘thing’ in the body; but if these early exam ples of subjections to a psychosom atic pattern of suffering had been reserved for eccentrics and sinners, the definition of neurasthenia as an exhaustion of energy related to a general sensibility m ade this activity accessible to anyone. 2 . Th e Cu l t u r e o f S e n s i b i l i t y a n d t h e M a l a d i e s o f t h e W i l l The im m ense influence of George M. Beard’s work on the conceptualization of nervousness as a state of pathological exhaustion associated with a gen- 124 eral sensibility to the challenges of m odernity and civilization, is attested to by the fact that in Europe the affliction was often referred to m erely as ‘Beard’s Malady’. But despite the popularity of Beard’s work, the idea of the nervous system as an organ sensible to external influence was not som ething for which he can be credited. In term s of dealing with psychiatric afflictions, already George Cheyne’s The English Malady (1777) argued for disorders as a result of disturbances in the nervous system . As Roy Porter has pointed out in his introduction to a newer edition of Cheyne’s work (Cheyne 1991: vii), Cheyne believed that such sickness was growing m ore frequent, and argued that it should be viewed as a ‘disease of civilization’ related to the pressure on the individual by the dem ands of m odern life. Cheyne viewed this m alady as a phenom enon, which was first and forem ost found in English nobility, because their luxurious lifestyle m ade them m ore susceptible to nervous disorders. The assum ption of neurasthenia as an affliction found am ong the higher classes, who were engaged in the spectacular perform ances of fashionable society is reflected in one of the m ost prom inent textbooks on neurasthenia of the early years of the 20 th century, written by the French Dr. AchilleAdrian Proust. Achille-Adrian Proust was father to the now m ore fam ous Marcel Proust, who was not only the author the im m ense À la recherche du tem ps perdu (“In Search of Lost Tim e” 1913-1927), but perhaps also the greatest literary neurasthenic of his age. Considered a sickly child from his early years, where he suffered asthm atic attacks, he spent long periods of his life in bed, where he is also said to have eventually written his great work. It m ay very well be Marcel Proust’s sickly condition, com bined with the character of his literary work and his frequenting of the fashionable Parisian society, which inspired his father in his description of the neurasthenics’ disorder. At least the older Proust, together with his co-author Gilbert Ballet, decidedly argued against neurasthenia as a neurosis am ong anyone else but the cultivated m iddle and upper classes that held intellectually dem anding positions of work (Rabinbach 1992: 157). These ‘society’ wom en and m en would be under im m ense m oral pressure during their frequent visits to the Parisian saloons, where they would have to ‘work’ hard to take care of their reputations: 125 One can easily be convinced of this by picturing oneself the existence led, especially in the Parisian world, by those who are called in the current slang “society” men and wom en. Those who go out m uch and especially women, have their whole day taken up by the duties that convention and vain care of their reputation im pose on them : visiting dinners, balls, evening parties m ake their life one of continual constraint, and of obligations without respite (Proust 190 2: 21f.). Like Thom as Mann’s m ain character Hans Castorp in The Magic Mountain (1924), those who becam e the refugees of Europe’s growing num ber of sanatorium s were bourgeois. Reflecting a spreading culture of sensibility with m ore than pathological im plications, the general notion of sensibility that used to be the hallm ark of the extraordinary in character, from the late 18 th century on had entered a process of dem ocratization, sparked by an elite full of Enlightenm ent ideologies (e.g. Porter 1995, Barker-Benfield 1992). As J oachim Radkau argues in his work Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (Radkau 1998) the ‘nervousness’ of the late 19 th century not only constituted a diagnosis, but also a specific cultural aspect that both cam e before and outlived neurasthenia. The broad based description of the sym ptom s of neurasthenia as arranged around the pathological sensibility of the ‘thing’ in the body, described by the Danish physiologist and pathologist Peter Ludvig Panum can be seen on this background: The sym ptom s of neurasthenia are constituted as a pathological sensibility to im pressions that used to pass unnoticed; trivialities appear very austere, m inor predicam ents build up in the m ind of the patient to becom e insurm ountable im pediments, portending calam ity and ruin. He becom es im petuous, irascible and sees the world only as a vale of woe. Or he becom es fretful, arguing back and forth endlessly without determ ination, living in constant fear of calam ities to come. Strong sense impressions have an excessive effect on him , lightning and thunder even inspire terror (Panum 190 4: 491; m y italics and m y translation). Reflecting the gradual dem ocratization of an extraordinary sensibility to external influences, Panum ’s general description of neurasthenia as ‘a pathological sensibility to im pressions’ involving anxiety, irresoluteness and dejection, im plicates a pathology structured around the receptivity of the nerves, specifying this as the cause of the nervous exhaustion. The depletion of the nervous energy in the neurasthenic patient results from a vul- 126 nerability to a broad and diffuse pattern of both trivialities and m ore serious m atters im pressing them selves on the individual. Growing out of the em piricist insistence in the works for exam ple of Bacon, Locke and Hum e on the receptivity of the senses as a m atter of not only m oral im portance but with profound ontological im plications, this assum ption in Panum ’s work of neurasthenia as the result of a hy persensitivity , assigned to the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body a central role as the organ of sensitivity. As a popular critical attack on the Kantian anthropology that had asserted the central role of reason, the designation of the nervous system as the physiological source of all em otional life was fashionable am ong the m edical intellectuals of the late 19 th century. Another exam ple is the work of Carl Lange, the Danish physician and psychologist who form ed what becam e known as the J am es-Lange Theory of Em otions with William J am es, in his fam ous work The Em otions (org. 1885). Here Lange criticizes the Kantian anthropology for what he believes to be a psychologically unrealistic focus on the general role of reason (Lange & J am es 1922: 33). The J am es-Lange Theory of Em otions, which becam e an im portant factor in the developm ent of the cognitive and behavioural sciences, instead em phasizes the nerves as a sense organ by viewing em otions as a result of physiological changes created by the autonom ic nervous system in response to experiences in the world (e.g. Ellsworth 1994). It is on this background that neurasthenia can be viewed also as a disease of the w ill. As a ‘thing’ in the body, the nerves represented not only the source of suffering, but also a source of em otionality and volition that was vulnerable to external influence and could inhibit the will so profoundly that it could no longer transform itself into volition. In The Diseases of the W ill (1884), written by Théodule Ribot, an influential editor of the Revue Philosophique, neurasthenia is represented prim arily as a functional pathology structured around the inability to act. Transform ing neurasthenia into a disorder which was not prim arily concerned with pathological lack (as im plied by the lack of nervous force in Beard’s understanding of neurasthenia), Ribot’s work focused on the disorder of a will that lacked the capacity to direct and project itself in the right, goal-oriented m anner. The inhibition of the will resulting from the deficient care of the nervous energies here is the central issue. 127 Com ing from an anti-Kantian perspective like m ost of his m aterialist colleagues, Ribot’s understanding of the will, as he argues, is not derived from the ‘state of consciousness, the “I will”, which indicates a situation’ (Ribot 1915: 2). Rather he takes his perspective from the psychophysical fundam ent of the will in the nervous system and its im m anent pathological m anifestations, its dissolution. In Ribot’s view, the Kantian argum ent for a free will is problem atized by the fact that every form of volition is the result of nervous activity: It is not the state of consciousness as such, but rather the corresponding physiological state which transform s itself into an act. In short, the relation is not between a psychical event and a movement, but between two states of the same kind, between two physiological states, two groups of nervous elem ents, one sensory and the other m otor. If one insists upon making of consciousness a cause, all rem ains obscure; but if it is considered as sim ply the accom panim ent of a nervous process, which alone is the essential elem ent, all becom es clear and the im aginary difficulties vanish. (Ribot 1915: 6) The designation of the will as a ‘physiological state which transform s itself into an act’ is especially interesting here, because of Ribot’s understanding of the pathological m anifestations of this will. Maintaining a wholly physiological perspective, Ribot argues that desire is constituted as an incom plete form , for exam ple in the actions of sm all children and savages, of the fully developed physiological m anifestation of the will that he refers to as the ideom otor. To the adult and civilized, the ideom otor represents a physiological guarantee that affects are transform ed into sensible volitions, when experiences have accum ulated enough for the intellect to arise. When an individual is suffering from ‘diseases of the will’ as a result of nervous fatigue the ideom otor becom es dysfunctional and the individual is subjected once again to the desire, which habit or reflection otherwise had com e to m odify or restrain. Pathology, Ribot argues, shows how the activity of desire ‘is augm ented when the will is dim inished, and persists when it disappears.’ (ibid.) As a curious reflection of the em otional hyperbole of the Platonic leader who becom es a tyrant because he fails to lead him self Ribot finds this represented also in ‘the case of despots, placed by their own opinion or that of others above the law’. 128 Constituting a bulwark against the augm entation of self-destructive thoughts in fatigued individuals, the m orally im peccable will to Ribot represented an anti-thesis to the prim itive form of affective life: desire. If desire represented the lack of self-control, the will, structured around the m anagem ent of the ‘thing’ in the body, constituted a superior form of m aterial power counteracting its negative effects (Rabinbach 1992: 165). The vulnerable will in Ribot’s work, in this sense represents a ceaseless prophy lactic activity structured around the nerves in answer to the im m inent threat of succum bing to the inferior form of desire. The pathology of the w ill represents the conscious ‘I will’ not transform ing itself into volition in a goal-oriented and self-differentiating m anner. Ribot provides an illustration of this by referring to one of the fam ous cases treated by one of the founding fathers of French psychology, Etienne Esquirol: A m agistrate, very distinguished for his learning and power of language, was, as a result of troubles, attacked with a fit of m onom ania … He has recovered the entire use of his reason but he will not go out into the world again, although he recognizes he is wrong; … “It is certain,“ he said to m e one day, “that I have no will except not to will; for I have all m y reason; I know what I ought to do; but strength fails m e when I ought to act (Ribot 1915: 29). Neurasthenia in the work of Ribot em erges as the m alady of a will that has lost control over itself and has succum bed to a precarious state of notw illing as the result of external pressure. As a part of a general dem ocratization of a culture of sensibility, the pattern of psychosom atic sym ptom s structured around the nerves in the body of the neurasthenic focused on the challenges of m odern life against the autonom ous will of the individual, whose general orientation in life was in danger. As a pathology of everyday life, neurasthenia represented not only a clinical diagnosis, but also the broader im plications of a diagnosis of the present, focusing on the exposure of individuality to for exam ple life in the big city. One illustrious exam ple of this is found in a widely read and discussed sociological dissertation published in 1895 by Max Nordau (Wagner 1956). By drawing also upon the other great explanatory figure in the latter part of the 19 th century, that of inheritable degeneration, Nordau claim s that the etiology of the increasingly prevalent neurasthenia was ‘the vast fatigue which was experienced by the generation on which the m ultitude of discov- 129 eries and innovations burst abruptly, im posing upon its organic exigencies greatly suppressing its strength, which create favourable conditions under which these m aladies could gain ground enorm ously, and becam e a danger to civilization’ (Nordau 1895: 3). The sam e attitude towards neurasthenia is taken by the Germ an sociologist George Sim m el his fam ous essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (Sim m el 1950 ), which was originally a result of a series of lectures conducted alongside the Dresden city exhibition in 190 3. Sim m el’s essay illustrates well the critical attitude that m any theorists and practitioners of the tim e took towards the individual’s life in the big city. Based on the assum ption that the will of the individual is threatened by the intensification of nervous stim ulation, Sim m el argues for a fundam ental dichotom y between the intim ate life of the individual and the social forces that im press them selves on him . He com m ences by stating that the ‘deepest problem s of m odern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonom y and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelm ing social forces’ (Sim m el 1950 : 40 9). The discrepancy between m an’s historical heritage and external culture, between the calling upon m an to set him self free in the 18 th century and for exam ple the division of labour, forces m an to struggle against ‘being leveled down and worn out by a socialtechnological m echanism ’. This discrepancy, Sim m el argues, is nowhere as profound as in the m etropolis, where a type of individuality has em erged, whose psychological basis consists in the ‘intensification of nervous stim ulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stim uli’ (Sim m el 1950 : 10 ). The contrast between the sm all town and rural life of earlier tim es and life in the m etropolis consists in the intensified societal im pression on the nerves ‘with each crossing of the street, with the tem po and m ultiplicity of econom ic, occupational and social life’ (ibid.). It is out of the individual dealing with this fundam ental conflict that a prophylactic activity em erges, which illustrates how the diffuse pressure of m odernity is m atched by an equally super-individual, m echanistic psychological response. As Sim m el argues, the m etropolitan type of m an ‘exists in a thousand individual variants’, but these variants act in a conform al m anner by developing a protecting organ ‘against the threatening currents and discrepancies’ of the external environm ent. It is out of intellectual effort, which the creation of this organ dem ands of the individual that the phe- 130 nom enon of the ‘blasé attitude’ em erges as a result of ‘the rapidly changing and closely com pressed contrasting stim ulations of the nerves’ (Sim m el 1950 : 413). This psychological hardening of the will in the intellectual, m etropolitan type is a good exam ple of the assum ption of a m echanistic response to the diffuse pressure of m odernity that was widely accepted in the late 19 th and early 20 th century as a threat to the nervous energy of the individual. The gradual dem ocratization represented by the em ergence of a culture of sensibility in the 19 th century, as this chapter has shown, m ade neurasthenia a pathology of everyday life to which virtually everyone was susceptible. In contrast to the traditions explored in the previous chapters, the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body, constituted a dem ocratic phenom enon, around which the concerns about the relation between society and the individual was structured. Oriented towards a neuropathic household, the prophylactic activity of the individual will had to balance the ‘thing’ in the body in response to both the inner individual and the outer social stim uli that threatened it with overstim ulation. While this oikos was by no m eans reducible to the sphere of work, as the next section will illustrate, it here gained a generality that underlined its socioeconom ic im portance. As a reserve of energy, the nervous force also becam e representable in the analogy of labour power, as a resource to be harvested in the individual body. 3 . Th e H u m a n M o t o r : N e r v e s a n d La b o u r P o w e r The actual conditions of som eone who experienced the ‘com plete exhaustion of suprem e nerve centres’ is recorded in The Autobiography of a Neurasthene by Dr. Margaret A. Cleaves (Cleaves 1910 : 5). The work, which was assessed by the Boston Gossip of Latest Books to be of great value, because of the author’s indications to ‘her nervously afflicted sisters’ of better ways to live, is the biography of a physician, who knows from experience ‘the worst of this condition without a pathology, but which evidences a definite pathological physiology.’ Reflecting the household of the ‘thing’ in the body within the socioeconom ic context of work, Cleaves’ docum entation of a getaway trip to Long Island represents very well the convergence of nervous energy and labour power. In the ancestral hom e of a patient, where she has settled to work, she experiences a nervous breakdown. Arm ed with books of 131 reference, data and papers, the intensity of her arrangem ent drains her of energy: Every m orning we rose early and im mediately upon the com pletion of breakfast – by half past seven always – I began m y labours. Hour after hour I toiled interested beyond words in what I was doing and unconscious of the fact that I was hour by hour exhausting my nerve centres (Cleaves 1910 : 5). Brought up with a stern sense of duty, which the narrator attributes to her Puritan ancestors, she will not give up work although she feels exhausted, until at som e point she is stricken by terror at the sight of her own colourless and quivering hands. Only then does she realize that ‘the strange incom prehensible feeling of desolation and danger’ (Cleaves 1910 : 60 ), which she is sensing, is a sign that she has been overwhelm ed by neurasthenia. Wearily walking down to the boat and setting out across the sound to reach the m ain land, she reflects in a way rem inding of the blasé attitude of the previous section: All was beauty about me, everything was full of the joy of life, but I could not feel it. I knew it was all there, that everything was just the sam e, but I had neither part nor parcel in it. I was glad m y work was done, sim ply because I could not strive any longer (Cleaves 1910 : 61). Back in the city and struggling with a profound sense of sham e, she calls on one of her ‘neurological friends’, who sees her even in advance of other patients. He exam ines her and concludes that she has ‘sprained her brain’ and needs to see a different side of life (p. 63). Maintaining that she has followed his advice and learned from the incident on Long Island, she still only increases the intensity of her work, but does not tell her physician about it. As she says: … I felt he would discourage m e and I sim ply had to do it. The im pelling force within m e, which is always driving me at full speed, would not slow down. To m e it is infinitely better to wear than to rust. Inactivity is stagnation. As I write these pages, I am living at top speed and white heat … Still I know perfectly well now how far I dare go. I did not then. Even now I would not be awakening neuronic m em ory of pain, sleeplessness, m ental anguish, im paired physical strength, if I had not a purpose in it … (Cleaves 1910 : 67). Com m enting that there is of course a loss in this m ode of life, but that the ‘expenditure of precious nerve energy’ (Cleaves 1910 : 68) is better spent 132 achieving som ething useful than m erely regretting that it is lost, the anonym ous physician of The Autobiography of a Neurasthene concludes: ‘Work was and is second nature. It m eant not only the m eans of living, but life, the power to do and to be.’ Cleaves’ description of a nervous breakdown associated with the deficient regulation of the energies in the body, along with her description of work as a kind of nature com parable to life itself, provides a brilliant description of how neurasthenia becam e a dem ocratic phenom enon within the context of work. Reflecting the com bustibility of the black bile as a ‘thing’ in the body, here represented within a socioeconom ic context, her description of a life at ‘top speed and white heat’ illustrates the precarious convergence of the neuropathic household of the individual and the notion of labour power which grew out of the transvaluation of work invigorated by the classical political econom ists and the enlightenm ent thinkers. Representing the universal notion of labour as a source of value to be gathered in the individual body, labour pow er becam e the object of widespread scientific studies in the late 19 th and early 20 th century. With it a growing interest in the negative effects of pathological fatigue focused on the depletion of the working body as a natural resource. The division and specialization of labour, which becam e m ore and m ore com m onplace during European industrialization, for exam ple, was listed by Beard as the prim ary reason for nervous illnesses am ong the working classes (Beard 1881: 10 1). A pathological exhaustion specifically related to the developm ent of the concept of labour as a resource to be found and yielded in the individual body is one of the m ain subjects in Anson Rabinbach’s fascinating study The Hum an Motor (1992). Like Weichardt’s announcem ent of a cure against fatigue with which this chapter began, the literature that Rabinbach’s study exam ines, is concerned not only with the hum an body and the extent to which it can be productive, but also with the conservation of the energy reserves found in it and the threat of their depletion. Reflecting the m echanical fram ework that was explored in the previous section on Beard’s concept of neurasthenia, Rabinbach exam ines the m etaphor of the hum an m otor, which cam e to provide a new overarching scientific and cultural fram ework to thinkers of the 19 th century by conflating the hum an body and the industrial m achine to one autom ata toiling to convert energy into m e- 133 chanical work. As Rabinbach argues, it was the m etaphor of the m otor which enabled society to m anage the energies of the working body in the attem pt to harm onize them with those of the industrial m achine (Rabinbach 1992: 2). Whereas the sin of sloth and idleness growing out of the tradition of acedia, as already discussed above, constituted the earlier predom inant m oralistic m ode of conceptualizing and dealing with resistance to labour, the industrial m etaphors of the 19 th century theories about work introduced the newer problem of m ental and physical fatigue as an object of scrutiny, which em erged both as an obstacle to be overcom e and as an om en of the ultim ate decline and failure of civilization. Like neurasthenia (and to a large extent indistinguishable from it) the phenom enon of pathological fatigue, which cam e to dom inate the discourses of political econom y, m edicine, physiology, psychology, and politics, also focused on the energy reserves of the individual body both in term s of constituting a natural threshold that preserved them from dissipating under the strains of m odernity and in term s of pathological exhaustion. As Rabinbach reflects, fatigue was not only a negative property but could also be linked to the individual body’s natural ability to resist the dem ands of productivism . The trope of fatigue: … also represented the legitim ate boundary of the individual’s physiological and psychological forces beyond which the dem ands of society become illegitim ate and destructive. Fatigue thus defined both the lim its of the working body and the point beyond which society could not transgress without jeopardizing its own future capacity for labour (Rabinbach 1992: 23). Although the tropes of neurasthenia and the tropes of pathological fatigue were often hom onym ous to the extent of inseparability, one aspect of difference is im portant. If the psychosom atic pattern of suffering im plied in the conception of neurasthenia focused prim arily on the overstim ulation of the ‘thing’ in the body resulting in the pathological degeneration of the autonom ous will, then the neuropathic household associated with the theories of pathological fatigue in the working body focused on the loss of natural resources. If neurasthenia had the im pairm ent of the will as a key factor, the broader debate about pathological fatigue focused on the loss of productive abilities in a socioeconom ic context. 134 Although the two tropes cannot be reduced to each other, the convergence between them in the notion of labour power is interesting because it illustrates how by the end of the 19 th century the assum ption of an energy source associated with the individual m anagem ent of a ‘thing’ in the body was not only generalized, but had also becom e unavoidable. As Rabinbach argues, the concept of labour power, which becam e popular in the 19 th century as a dom inant trope of the pervasive m aterialistic theories of the tim e, provided the analogy of the bank account, which Beard used to illustrate the stock of nervous energy in the body, with a gravity that he could not have given it him self. Corresponding on a socioeconom ic level to the assum ption of a relation between the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body controlling volition and the exhaustion of neurasthenia, the dichotom y between labour power and fatigue cam e to be an indicator of the body’s unique capital (Rabinbach 1992: 6). As Rabinbach argues, the distinction between a creative act and alienated labour that had been appropriate to a preindustrial era, by the second half of the 19 th century becam e superseded by the energeticist m odel of m echanical work, which m ade the work perform ed by hum ans, the gears of an engine, the m otions of planets, in short society and nature virtually indistinguishable (Rabinbach 1992: 47). It was prim arily the developm ent of the notion of labour power, as the resource of the individual working body, which suggested an analogy between the hum an and the m achine as m otors converting energy into m echanical work. As what Rabinbach describes as a transcendental m aterialism , predicating a single power, which was viewed as the source of all m otion and m atter, labour power cam e to designate the m anifest actualizations of the universal and yet invisible source of energy, when it was processed productively. It was under the auspice of this transcendental m aterialism that society, in Rabinbach’s words, becam e ‘assim ilated to an im age of nature powered by protean energy, perpetually renewed, indestructible, and infinitely m alleable’ (Rabinbach 1992: 46). Reflecting Ribot’s assum ption of the ideom otor transform ing desire into will, the labour force of the workin g body as a resource related to this overarching trope of energy, constituted the prim ary site of conversion for the forces of nature, when they were transform ed into productivity. It was on this background that the 19 th century notion of fatigue, reflecting the precarious status of neurasthenia as both a prophylaxis against the de- 135 m ands of society and a pathology of exhaustion, cam e to indicate a physical entropy of the individual body. Rather than constituting a sharp dichotom y between health and illness, fatigue cam e to designate the effects of a deficient m anagem ent and regulation of the natural power in the individual working body. As such it cam e to signify both the sim ple effects of considerable work and the dystrophic exhaustion, which in the worst case could lead to m ental illness. If the phenom enon of neurasthenia offered a relatively sim ple, m echanistic explanation to a diffuse m ultiplicity of sym ptom s associated with m odern life and structured around the sensibility of the ‘thing’ in the body, then the potential depletion of labour power constituted also a potential socioeconom ic crisis. As a dem ocratized phenom enon, the culture of a sensibility, which had once been reserved to the extraordinary, em erged in term s of the m oral problem of a will unable to provide a goaloriented use of the body’s m ost valuable asset, its labour power. Structured around the neuropathic household of the nerves, this problem cam e to have a horizon of its own. The universal character of the assum ption of labour power as the individual capital of the working body in the 19 th century political debates can be illustrated by the curious exam ple of Paul Lafargue’s scandalous pam phlet The Right To Be Lazy (1880 ). Posited by Rabinbach as the m ost poignant objection of its tim e to the new productivist m etaphor of labour power (Rabinbach 1992: 34), this infam ous text constitutes a brilliant exam ple of the elevation of the concept of energy to be the basis and source of all reality. It illustrates how, by the end of the 19 th century in the debates about labour power, an outside to the assum ption of the body as a reservoir of energy to be m anaged intelligently by the individual was no longer representable. Lafargue’s assertion of the right of the proletariat to idleness, which used to be a sin, illustrates how the problem of the neuropathic household related to the ‘thing’ in the body had transcended the context of pathology to be subsum ed under a general problem atization of the right to labour power. To the em barrassm ent of his father-in-law, Karl Marx, Lafargue’s essay begins with a m ockery of the fam ous ‘spectre’ in The Com m unist Manifest (1848): ‘A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds it sway.’ (Lafargue 190 7: 9). This delu- 136 sion, Lafargue holds, ‘is the love of work, the furious passion for work, pushed even to the exhaustion of the vital force of the individual and his progeny’ (ibid.). With this indication of a convergence of the individual’s life force and his labour power, Lafargue goes on to com plain about ‘the sacred halo’ that econom ists and m oralists have cast over work and declares that ‘work is the cause of all intellectual degeneracy, of all organic deform ity.’ (ibid.) Even J esus, Lafargue m aintains, preached idleness and the great J ehovah him self is the best exam ple of the ideal of laziness: ‘after six days of work, he rests for eternity.’ (ibid.) Sadly, even the proletariat follows the ‘disastrous dogm a’ of work, thereby ‘betraying its instincts, despising its historic m ission’. It is on this background that the working classes m ust free them selves from the yoke of productivism and oppose the ‘m ost terrible scourge that has ever struck hum anity’ (Lafargue 190 7: 29f.). By destroying the doctrine of idleness as a sin, it m ust com e to recognize that its real freedom lies in preserving the energy of the working body, rather than taking over the m eans of its conversion: But to arrive at the realization of its strength the proletariat m ust tram ple under foot the prejudices of Christian ethics, econom ic ethics and free-thought ethics. It m ust return to its natural instincts, it m ust proclaim The Rights to Laziness, a thousand times m ore noble and m ore sacred than the anaem ic Rights of Man concocted by the m etaphysical lawyers of the bourgeois revolution. It m ust accustom itself to working but three hours a day, reserving the rest of the day and night for leisure and feasting (Lafargue 190 7: 29). Rabinbach m ay be right in asserting that Lafargue’s essay is no m ore than a naïve anachronism , with its obversive idealization of the virtues of idleness and idyll of a working class dedicated to consum ption and luxury (Rabinbach 1992: 35). But while the assum ption of a ‘Right to Laziness’ serving the natural instincts of the working body m ay be said to be naïve, Lafargue’s antinom y of work and idleness also illustrates how dom inating the trope of energy had becom e in the 19 th century. As a part of the social conflict structuring society in different classes, the infam y of Lafargue’s elevation of idleness to a virtue instead of a sin shows how little room there was for an alternative conception of m an within the all-encom passing horizon of productivism . Lafargue’s doctrine of laziness, exactly because of its persisting 137 infam y to work ethics, provides a very good exam ple of how the assum ption of a protean energy resource structured around a ‘thing’ in the body becam e a crucial piece in the understanding of society as defined by a political conflict between class interests. 4 . Th e M e c h a n i c s o f M e l a n c h o l y : F r e u d a n d N e u r a s t h e n i a It m ay seem like an odd idea to read Sigm und Freud and especially his short essay “Mourning and Melancholia” from 1917, which will be the prim ary topic in the following, within the context of the fram ework that has been presented in the previous sections. There is no doubt that Freud’s work is found on the lim it of the tradition of the nerves, representing a waning of the 19 th century obsession with the protean energies of the body, and signalling also the dawning in the early 20 th century of a tradition m ore concerned with the opaque realm s of the hum an unconscious. Known as the father of psychoanalysis, Freud him self represents the inauguration of a whole new way to articulate and understand the inside of m an. Yet for exactly that reason it m ay be interesting to look at how his work reflects the social, m edical and epistem ological norm s structured around the nerves, which have been explored above. Like m any of his contem poraries, Freud cast his m odel of m an in energeticist term s, transposing the notion of protean energy to the dark realm s of the hum an unconscious and ascribing pathological states to fluctuations in or diversions of the perpetuum m obile of the drives. This m odel is a close to perfect reflection of the conflictual relation between the individual and the social m odernity explored above, but if the conflict of the sensitive individual with the world it inhabited was constituted as a dichotom y between an inside and an outside, the Freudian subject represents an internalization of the conflict. The Freudian subject, like the socius it grows out of, is structured and held together by conflict. Transposing the externality of diffuse pressure on the nervous system to a conflict between hierarchies of the psyche, Freud describes a subject in whom the splitting of the self constitutes the unity of the person. Like the theories of evolution planted the beast, which had used to represent an absolute outside, w ithin m an as a source of origin, Freud integrated an anim alistic part – das es – into civilization - das Über-ich. The two extrem es 138 were then asserted to constitute the extrem e parts of the m odel personality of the individual. Represented as a discontent with civilization, the frustration caused by the experience of the conflict between the two extrem e sides of the psyche, according to Freud, could becom e so strenuous that it becam e pathological, causing neurotic psychosis. It was the sense of guilt which presented itself to the ego, pinned down between civilization and its discontents, which exhausted the individual of nervous energies. Pathology, in this Freudian sense, was not qualitatively different from the problem s associated with an everyday bourgeois life, but represented instead a deepening of an existential condition that lead to nervous exhaustion. In Civilization and its Discontents (1930 ), although the work never directly defines the nature of the “discontent” that it addresses, Freud speaks of the anxiety neurosis developing in those who are for som e reason unable to recognize their guilt for what it is and deal with it (Freud 1946: 495). The anxiety neurosis results directly from the failure to recognize the conscience of guilt produced by the process of civilization, when it surfaces as a general feeling of discontent or diffuse discom fort, for which other causes are articulated (i.e. com pulsory neurosis) (Freud 1946: ibid.). Presented within the context of the question about how civilization – on the level of the Freudian psyche represented as das Über-ich – renders harm less the aggression which is directed against it by das Es, the anxiety neurosis represents the eruption of pathology in the individual, when the conflict between self and self becom es so profound that the ‘I’ begins to com e apart. Reflecting the physiological assum ption presented above of a m oral ideom otor in Ribot’s Maladies of the W ill, which could be rendered dysfunctional by neurasthenic exhaustion, the constant pressure of the m oral law, which separates the Freudian ‘I’ from the dark recesses of its unconscious anim alistic drives, can becom e so severe that it leads to nervous disorders. Freud’s psychoanalysis – referred to by him self as his ‘cathartic m ethod’ – m ust be seen on this background. Its task is not to rem ove the conflict between the sense of m orality and the drives altogether, but m erely to restore the reflexive subject to a state in which it is able to handle the conflict on its own. In an essay discussing “The Psychotherapy of Hysteria” from 1912, 139 therapy is explained as a m ethod to restore the nervous system to a less agitated state, enabling the hysteric patient to help herself: When I prom ised m y patients help and relief through the cathartic m ethod, I was often obliged to hear the following objections: “You say, yourself, that m y suffering has probably to do with m y own relation and destinies. You cannot change any of that. In what m anner, then, can you help m e?” To this I could always answer: “I do not doubt at all that it would be easier for destiny than for m e to rem ove your sufferings, but you will be convinced that much will be gained if we succeed in transform ing your hysterical m isery into everyday unhappiness, against which you will be better able to defend yourself with a restored nervous system (Freud 1912: 120 ). The prim ary task of the psychoanalytic m ethod is not to heal, but to transform the hyperbole of hy sterical m isery , found in the anxiety neurosis – and as we shall see in Freud’s definition of m elancholia – to a level of every day unhappiness, where the patient, with the help of a restored nervous system , can take care of the self by them selves. In the tradition of existential thought found in Kierkegaard and later in Heidegger, the assertion of anxiety as a m echanism through which selves reflexively turn back on their own boundaries, the Freudian assertion of the em otional hyperbole of hysterical m isery in this sense represents a pathological inhibition of the will. Associating the boundaries of selfhood with both the exhausting overstim ulation of the nerves and with the inability of the will to react to stim uli, Freud’s subject represents an im m anent version of the neuropathic household described above, structured around the sam e assum ptions of a protean energy in the body. Pathology here em erges not as an outside, the other side of health, but rather as the eruption of an antinom y im m anent to health, associated with the ability of the subject to m anage the self correctly. Em blem atic of the tradition described in the m ore m aterialistic term s associated with neurasthenia, this assertion of a pathology of every day life culm inates in the Freudian assum ption of the neurosis as a deepening of an everyday pathos, with which the subject exists as a fundam ental condition. The pathological state, which Freud associates with the exhaustion of the nervous system , is not qualitatively different from what defines the subject as such; rather it is the deepening of the conflict, which at the sam e tim e structures the subject, which is pathological. 140 Associating this pathological deepening with the conditions of a subject who suffers under and struggles with loss, Freud’s 1917 essay “Mourning and Melancholia” can be read in this light. The Freudian m elancholic, in analogy to the neurasthenic’s exhaustion, is som eone in whom overstim ulation has caused a pathological inhibition of the will that as such is no longer able to perform its duties. Characterizing som eone who know s that he has lost, but unlike the person in m ourning fails to see w hat he has lost there, the Freudian m elancholic is defined in term s of his inaccessibility to him self and to others. As it will be illustrated, this im plicates two im portant aspects to the them e explored in this thesis: first, the Freudian m elancholic is characterized as som eone in whom the internalization of the conflict explored above has lead to an inhibition of the will. Secondly, and im portant because it em blem atically points away from the m aterialistic tradition of the nerves, this inhibition is associated with the inability of the self to differentiate and reinvent itself at its own lim its. While the first of the two aspects, as explained above, constituted a central characteristic of the problem atization of the neuropathic household, the second was only tentatively present here. Pointing deep into the 20 th century and beyond, the definition of the m elancholic as som eone dejected by the inability to differentiate the self through reflective activity m arks a threshold between the functional pathology of neurasthenia and the contem porary assum ption of depression as a pathology problem atizing the ability to be and becom e a self. Freud’s essay points towards contem porary conceptualizations of depression as a phenom enon concerned with a societal dem and to be and becom e an entrepreneurial self. “Mourning and Melancholia” has gone largely unchallenged in psychoanalytic accounts of m elancholy and depression (Radden 20 0 0 a: 282), despite the fact that it breaks nearly com pletely with the historical associations of m elancholy. But because of its introduction and developm ent of such key psychoanalytic concepts as projective identification and introjection it is considered by m any to be one of Freud’s m asterpieces. The essay, as Radden points out (Radden 20 0 0 b: 282), is concerned with three aspects that it associates with m elancholia in ways that distinguish it from the earlier writings on the subject: the them e of loss, the strong em phasis on selfaccusation in the m elancholic subjectivity and the elaborate theory of nar- 141 cissism , identification and introjection that it introduces. Especially the last of these three aspects provides an im portant them e in later psychoanalytic theory on the nature of depression, for exam ple in the works of Melanie Klein and J ulia Kristeva (e.g. Kristeva 1989, Klein 1975). As the following is m ore concerned with the affinities of the Freudian theory to the traditions explored in this thesis, it will prim arily engage with the im plications of the first two aspects of loss and self-accusation. Freud com m ences “Mourning and Melancholia” arguing for a correlation between the two conditions, which he finds justified by their general picture. Com paring the em otional states associated with grief to the sym ptom s of m elancholia, he m aintains that m elancholia consists in: … a profoundly painful dejection, abrogation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the selfregarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and selfrevilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishm ent (Freud 1917: 283). Except for the last of the sym ptom s, which will be explored in m ore detail later, Freud m akes no qualitative distinction between m ourning and m elancholia; rather the central characteristic of the m ourning position provides him with an explanatory perspective on m elancholia. Mourning, Freud m aintains, ‘is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of som e abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as fatherland, liberty, an ideal, and so on.’ (Freud 1917: 283) Although a tradition of am atory m ania exists in the literature presented above that m ight reflect this association of the m elancholic sentim ent with the feeling of loss found in m ourning, the Freudian approxim ation of the two conditions rem ains surprising. The dom inant reaction to frustrated love in Antiquity was violence, while the rom antic notion of lovesickness and its literary depictions during Rom anticism seem s to have represented a whole other phenom enon altogether (e.g. Toohey 20 0 4, Mohr 1990 ). Yet Freud not only insists on the association, he also m aintains that m ourning and m elancholia share on an etiological level the problem of object-loss as a defining characteristic. Com ing to speak of this problem in the dynam ic term s of the libido, which reflects the tropes of energy associated with the neuropathic household explored in the previous chapters, he describes the struggle with the loss of at- 142 tachm ent and how this m ay result in a condition, the intensity of which m ay com e to resem ble psychosis: The testing of reality, having shown that the loved object no longer exists, requires forthwith that all the libido shall be withdrawn from its attachment to this object. Against this dem and a struggle of course arises – it m ay be universally observed that m an never willingly abandons a libido-position, not even when a substitute is already beckoning to him . This struggle can be so intense that a turning away from reality ensues, the object being clung to through the m edium of a hallucinatory wish-psychosis (Freud 1917: 284). The loss of an object of great personal im portance, according to Freud, can be so traum atic that it leads the subject into a w ish-psy chosis that it takes tim e to resolve, while the beloved object is preserved in m em ory. The process that accom panies the libidinal attachm ent of the drives to the lost object is painful, but as long as the ego once again ‘becom es free and uninhibited’ (Freud 1917: 284) through the work of m ourning, it is not pathological. The psychical pain that accom panies m elancholia, Freud m aintains, is not qualitatively different from the one found in m ourning. What sets the m elancholic position apart from the m ourning position is the sym ptom of self-loathing and the expectation of punishm ent m entioned above. Associated with the m ourning process that consists in the painful realization of a loss, the m elancholic patient who shares this pain, as Freud argues, m ay be aware that he has lost and even of w hom he has lost. But he is tragically unaware of w hat he has lost there: In grief the world becomes poor and em pty; in melancholia it is the ego itself. The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any effort and m orally despicable; he reproaches him self, vilifies himself and expects to be cast out and chastised. He abases him self before everyone and comm iserates his relatives for being connected with som eone so unworthy. He does not realize that any change has taken place in him , but extends his self-criticism back over the past and declares that he was never any better (Freud 1917: 285). While the analogy between m ourning and m elancholia associates the pattern of suffering with the loss of an object, the distinguishing feature in m elancholia, according to Freud, is the replacem ent of the object with the ego, which the m elancholic presents as hopelessly despicable and unalterable. The conflictuality of the pair Es/ Über-Ich in m elancholia represents the inhibition of a will which has turned on itself. The com plaint (“Klage”) 143 associated with the healthy and self-differentiating process of m ourning is transform ed by an excessive em otional response into the accusation (“Anklage”) of the self against the self. The m elancholic suffers under the internalization of the lost object, the loss of which he substitutes for his own self. As a pathological process of objectification, this m echanism by Freud is asserted to be the problem of a conscience, which distinguishes itself from the rest of the ego: We see how in this condition one part of the ego sets itself over against the other, judges it critically, and, as it were, looks upon it as an object. Our suspicion that the critical institution of the m ind which here is split off from the ego m ight also dem onstrate its independence in other circum stances will be confirm ed by all further observations. We shall really find justification for distinguishing this institution from the rest of the ego. It is the m ental faculty called conscience that we are thus recognizing (Freud 1917: 286). It is the assertion of m elancholia prim arily as a pathology of the conscience, which is interesting here. The Freudian reflection of the exhausting conflict structuring the subject susceptible to neurasthenia represents an internalization of the neuropathic household. But the assum ption of this inner conflict in Freud’s work has broader im plications. The aggressive expectation of punishm ent found by Freud to be a m atter associated with the m elancholic conscience not only causes the exhaustion of the nervous energies, representing both an inability to participate in the socioeconom ic developm ent of society and a personal bankruptcy. It also associates the pathological deepening of the em otional apparatus with the inability of the self to becom e a self through the self-articulation in the process of m ourning. Representing the m elancholic inability to self-differentiate as a pathology of self-hood, Freud’s essay points out of the m aterialistic tradition of the nerves, towards the contem porary assum ptions of depression as a functional disorder associated with the exhaustion caused by the dem ands to be and articulate the self in the socioeconom ic term s of new m anagem ent technologies. 144 5 . Th e P a t h o l o g i e s o f P e r f o r m a t i v i t y : N e u r a s t h e n i a Another return to the system atic perspective constituted by the six dim ensions of problem and response, within which also the problem atizations of m elancholy and acedia has been represented, will illustrate that the pathology of neurasthenia, and the tropes associated with it, although it is clear from the sections above that it has a fram ework of its own, in som e respects bear strong sim ilarities to what has been explored in the previous chapters. Beyond the sym ptom atological consistencies between the three pathologies of perform ativity, this is especially true for the affinity between acedia and neurasthenia as phenom ena associated with sociality as civilization. In both the case of acedia and the shift im plicated by Hobbes’ notion of m elancholy and in the case of neurasthenia, the idea that civilization bred selfinflicted sickness has been illustrated to be of em phatic im portance. Yet the designation of such an affinity covers over a m uch m ore categorical differ- TABLE 4 Pro ble m atical Fo rm atio n s Path o lo gical Pro ble m MELAN CH OLIA ACED IA N EU RASTH EN IA MAN IC- MELAN CH OLIA D ESPAIR EXH AU STION CIRCULAR ANTINOMY BINARY ANTINOMY ERUPTION OF IMMANENT ANTINOMY Ch aracte ro lo gical Pro ble m TH E EXTRAORD IN ARY TH E REJECTED TH E SEN SITIVE PERIPH ERY OU TSID E IN SID E D IETETICS VIRTU OU S LIVIN G N EU ROPATH IC D e lim itative Pro ble m Se lfRe gu lato ry Re s p o n s e Pe rfo rm ative Re s p o n s e H OU SEH OLD ACH IEVEMEN T W ORK AS SECON D N ATU RE SELF - TRAN SGRESSION Se lfArticu lato ry Re s p o n s e W ORK AS VIRTU E CON TROLLIN G AFFECT RESOU RCE AD MIN ISTRATION SUBLIMATION ABSTINENT SUBLIMATION 145 PSYCHOANALYTIC SELF - DIFFERENTIATION ence, which is of great value to the following explication: if acedia was an affliction concerned with the lack of civilization, then neurasthenia rather represented its opposite, an illness prim arily associated with too m uch civilization. The neurasthenic, and the tropes associated with his pathographic profile, as the sections above have illustrated, concerned the challenges of m odernity to the autonom y of the individual. Not rejecting, but focusing instead on the need to refine the process of civilization in order to ensure that the individual would not succum b under its pressure, the tropes structured around neurasthenia were concerned with ensuring the lightness of being rather than the virtuous burden of existence associated with acedia. While this focus on the individual hints at another affinity, that between the sensitive artist and the culturally form ative Aristotelian m elancholic, the assertion of such a likeness also covers over a m ore im portant disparity: although the culture of nervousness, which m apped m aladies of behaviour and affect onto the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body, found its sources on the stage of affluent and fashionable society, neurasthenia was m ore concerned with norm alization than with the originalization of the exceptional. Representing the beginning dem ocratization of the sensitivity that had used to be reserved to the extraordinary, the tropes of neurasthenia explored above concerned the laborious, rather than the culturally form ative, the entrepreneur rather than the genius. If the paradoxical nature of the ēthos perriton both allowed his genius and m ade him susceptible to the diseases of the black bile, then w ork as second nature was both the dem ocratic gateway to success for the struggler, and the threshold beyond which the depletion of the definite and not inexhaustible quantities of energy resources in the body becam e irredeem able. Continuing the sym bolic assertion of a line of sight em blem atic for the characters represented within the different problem atizations, the potential neurasthenic m ay be understood as a custodian. If the theoros of m elancholy represented the em ergence of the peripheral spectator and the m arty r the witness of personal sacrifice in the theocosm os, then the custodian as a guardian or keeper (from the latin custodis) who w atched over a personal stock of resource m ay be the best way to represent the character who had to navigate between a neurological and a socioeconom ic reality. 146 The language that m ediated between these two realities was the language of EXHAUSTION (see TABLE 4). Representing the prim ary trope of the patho- logical problem explored in this chapter, the depletion of a personal reservoir of energy structured around the nervous system was constituted in a fashion that owed m uch to the Brunonian division of pathology into two categories: respectively the excess of stim ulation and the incapacity to react to stim ulus. The depletion of the nerve force through excessive dem ands, according to Beard’s m edical m odel, would cause irritation and send exhaustion pulsing through the body, m anifesting sym ptom s in the m ost unlikely places and fashions. This process itself caused a weakening of the individual will, causing disorders on another level that were reducible to the social im aginaries of the lower classes: degeneration, poverty and m oral blem ish being som e of them . Representing a kind of phy siological bankruptcy , the pathological problem , rather than describing the circular antinom y of the m anic-m elancholic or the binary antinom y of the despairing accidiosi, in this sense represented an IMMANENT ANTINOMY to the will itself, erupting prim arily as the pathological lack of Kraft, which caused a protean variety of other secondary sym ptom s stretching from anxiety over fear of lightning to im potence or extrem e fatigue. Variations of this pathological problem were found in three em blem atic contexts: that of the neurom echanical im pairm ent of the will associated with hypersensitivity to the phenom ena of the m odern world, that of labour power which could be exhausted as a result of the excessive spending of the personal capital, and that of the Freudian econom y of the drives, the deficient control of which could lead to the hysterical m isery of the anxiety neurosis. The representation of a characterological problem of the problem atization of neurasthenia can be seen on this background. Constituting the problem of THE SENSITIVE within the m odern world of im pressions, the dem ocratized sensibility to im pressions of the character, which was pivotal point in the sections above, represented a nexus of conversion between nature’s raw m aterial and the culturally refined. Both in the literal sense as a hum an m otor and in the figurative sense of Ribot’s ideom otor transform ing desire into will that influenced Freud, the characterological problem was that of one whose function as a perpetuum m obile installed as an interm ediate link between nature and culture m ight blot out any individual characteristics 147 and threaten to erase the hum an. The sensitive character represented here in this sense also functioned as a seism ograph of the social, whose individual autonom y and private existence was constantly under siege. An em blem atic exam ple of this was Sim m el’s notion of the prophylactic blasé attitude of those whose nerves were torn and tattered, because they had been exposed to life in the big city too long. The internalization of conflict in the split subject of Freud’s psychic apparatus, whose exposure to the exhausted nervous system resulted from the excessive strain between the natural desires of the Id and the ‘civilizing’ process of the super-ego, illustrated that the characterological problem associated with neurasthenia was one that had to be m anaged successfully in order at all to becom e a ‘self’. The conflict associated with the difficult task of becom ing and m aintaining a ‘self’ in the social context was also what designated the dim ension of the delim itative problem of the problem atization presented in the sections above. If the threshold between collective and individual in the problem atization of m elancholy was found at the ever-transform ing peripheries of both, and in the problem atization of acedia as the precarious eruption of the other of the social within it, then the delim itation of the neurasthenic individual erupted as a threshold on the INSIDE of the social itself, beyond which its dem ands were illegitim ate and from where, in the worst case, the subject could not return on its own. This com plicated problem of delim itation m ay best be understood by thinking about the difference between the anom aly of the m elancholic and the abnorm ality of the neurasthenic. What defined the first was prim arily his peculiarity as an exception from the rule. The abnorm ality of the neurasthenic, on the other hand, was not prim arily representable as strange, unique or unusual; rather it constituted a deviation from the norm , which in its turn had nothing natural about it, but was always som ehow retrospectively determ ined as a virtual com m unity. As Sverre Raffnsøe has pointed out (20 0 1: 132-141), the norm of the 19 th century was not representable as a fixed m oral fram ework beyond the com m on, which one had to conform to. It took the form rather of an enclitic com m on goal that was only determ inable through the ceaseless evaluation of practice. An em blem atic exam ple of this indiscernibility between the abnorm al and the norm was found in the Freudian (in)distinction between the process of m ourning and the condition of m elancholia, from which the sub- 148 ject needed help to return. As the eruption of a disorder im m anent to the ‘norm al’ and healthy process of m ourning, the condition of m elancholia represented the nervous and hy sterical m isery , which had to be returned to a state of every day unhappiness in order to be regulated properly on an individual level. As a representation of the difficulty associated with m aintaining a healthy ‘self’ capable of projecting the will within the social context, the neurasthenic individual em erged as the deepening of an always already constituted conflict with the collective, an im m anent pathological m anifestation of everyday life, which was only determ inable over tim e. As the first of the three dim ensions of response, the self-regulatory response represented within the context of the problem atization of neurasthenia was constituted as the task of a NEUROPATHIC HOUSEHOLD. Reflecting the task of m aintaining a ‘self’ on the threshold between nature and culture, which functioned as a nexus of conversion of a naturally given, but definite and exhaustible protean source of energy, the self-regulatory response represented above was explored as a prophy lactic activity structured around the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body in three privileged dim ensions. Firstly, as a regulation of the m oral will to civilization, which functioned as a bulwark against the self-destructive and confusing anti-thesis constituted by desire as affective life’s m ore prim itive form . Em blem atically illustrated by Ribot’s m echanistic assertion of the ideom otor, this dim ension represented the will as a dynam o transform ing the ‘raw m aterial’ of affects into civilized volitions being projected into a socioeconom ic reality. Secondly, the regulation of labour power as a personal capital in the working body constituted the transform ation of natural resources into productivity and value. Owing m uch to an analogous association of the hum an body with the steam engine and drawing on the theory of both the first and the second law of therm odynam ics, the regulation of labour power as a source of value to be gathered in the individual body was constantly ham pered by the threat of fatigue, representing the depletion of resources which also constituted a socioeconom ic crisis. Thirdly, and finally, the Freudian econom y of the drives represented by the internalization of a sim ilar m odel in the psychic apparatus saw self-regulation becom ing an issue of the conscience, which had to control the ceaseless strain that the ego was under in the conflict between the super-ego and the id. This psychodynam ic regulation associated the deple- 149 tion of nervous resources with the anxiety neurosis, which over tim e would m ake it harder and harder for the afflicted to regulate and m anipulate the ‘self’ and guarantee its projection into the public sphere. These three levels of regulation all reflect the self-articulatory response of the problem atization explored above. Describable as the RESOURCE ADMINISTRATION of the character who had to regulate and project the different m anifestations of a protean source of energy from a neurological and into a socioeconom ic reality, the m ode of self-articulation found here assigned to the individual the task of a ceaseless m ediation between the unrefined and the refined, between nature and culture. The m ost em blem atic illustrations of this neuropathic household was beyond doubt found in Beard’s likening of the nervous system to a bank account, with which he sought to dem onstrate how nervous energy could both be wisely invested in the future, spent prudently or splashed out recklessly, and in his likening of it to an electrical circuit that could only take so m uch pressure without failing. But in term s of the self-articulatory response these illustrations, which are concerned with watching over the precious nervous resources, all have to be seen in com bination with the injunction to projection that likened m an to a dynam o, a vehicle of ceaseless alteration of the protean energies that circulated in him . The crisis of an inhibited will or of the inability to selfdifferentiate, which set the Freudian m elancholic apart from his peers, designated the real antinom y to the articulation of the ‘self’ as the entrepreneurial locus of activity. The m ode of PSYCHOANALYTIC SELF - DIFFERENTIATION which associated the ability to redefine, reinvent and reevaluate the past in term s of the future constituted an im portant aspect of the articulation of a ‘self’, to which, as the anonym ous physician of The Autobiography of a Neurasthene com m ented, inactivity was stagnation and to wear infinitely better than to rust. In this sense neurasthenia and the associated articulation of an entrepreneurial ‘self’ was always closely related to the allencom passing assertion of labour as the dem ocratic arena of the aspiring businessm an. The dem ocratization of the possibility for achievem ent asserted by this assum ption of WORK AS A SECOND NATURE was what governed the perform ative response of the problem atization explored above. The exam ple of Lafargue’s reinvention of idleness, no longer as a sin, but instead as a weapon 150 in the struggle between the classes, illustrated how by the end of the 19 th century labour itself had attained a new and central role in a society where the conflict of the social constituted the unity of the com m unity. No longer associated with the culturally form ative achievem ents of the extraordinary, with the hardships of the ascetic, or even with the virtue of work as a goal in itself, perform ativity here had becom e com pletely subsum ed under the notion of labour power that no longer seem ed to have an outside to it. Labour and the tropes of achievem ent associated with it becam e the dem ocratic arena on which everyone could attain the status of an achiever and potentially com e to display individual independency. 151 Ch ap te r Five Co n clu s io n : As p e cts o f Me lan ch o lia 1. A Recapitulation of Historical Dim ensions 2 . Stress and the Popularization of the Extraordinary 3 . Depression and the Articulation of the Self 4 . Depression and Subjectivity as a Resource As indicated in the first chapter, the prim ary task of this thesis was the constitution of three problem atic form ations pertaining to the association between pathology and perform ativity (in the m elancholia of Antiquity, in m edieval acedia and in the neurasthenia of 19 th century industrialism ) with the intent of creating a philosophical background for the exploration of such an association in the present age. With the conclusion of the previous chapter, the bulk of this work has now been com pleted. As three, very diverse form ations that represent problem atizations structured around a ‘thing’ in the body, the pathologies of perform ativity explored in the chapters above have been shown to constitute a tradition that ties into the history of the association between the heterogeneous tropes of work, perform ance and pathology in Western culture. Yet, while these explorations each can be said to represent precarious instantiations that describe the plight of the individual at different tim es in history, the task of indicating how they can inform a philosophical investigation of the present rem ains. Reflecting Adorno’s form ulation in Minim a Moralia, such an endeavour itself can be described as a m elancholy science, hesitant and evasive in its attem pt to subject m odern life to critical reflection without becom ing enm eshed in the dangers of m aintaining a critical perspective on society from within society. Com ing to know the truth about life in its estranged form , as Adorno has it, m eans to investigate ‘the objective powers that determ ine individual existence even in its m ost hidden recesses’ (Adorno 20 0 5: 15). The following recapitulation and indication of fields for further study m ay be said to reflect this relation between life and production referred to by Adorno, in which the form er to a certain extent is reduced to the latter. But even on this background the history of the three problem atic form ations explored in this thesis cannot be represented as one of decline. Not only the inconclusiveness of its character, but also on a m ore profound level its fundam ental indication of how life has always som ehow been estranged prevents this. An indication of how the tradition of an association between perform ance and pathology can inform the present is not gained by com bining the three form ations and claim ing that this com bination constitutes the em ergence of the contem porary society. The com plex job of illustrating the relevance of what has been unfolded in the chapters above to an investigation of the present consists not in reduction, but in the task of keeping the form ations apart and in insisting on the enduring relevance of their peculiarities and diverse character, while seeking to subtract from them them es of interest that can assist a critical understanding of the social today. On that note, what follows in this concluding chapter is neither a com plete and m ethodical exhaustion of the them es introduced and discussed in the previous chapters. Nor is it reducible to a fourth form ation exclusive to the present, which replaces and crowns the historical dim ensions explored above. Instead of pertaining to the sublation of the past into the present ‘age’, the critical perspective of the following will be gained by exposing the ‘untim eliness of tim es in the present’ (Kristensen 20 0 8) in a search for contem porary tendencies loaded with aspects of the history explored above. The ‘m elancholy science’ of the following reflections attem pts to indicate a level for critique of contem porary society; but it does this also by dem onstrating (in good, m elancholic style) the eccentricity of the present. Pertaining to an opening, rather than to closing down, the task of this inform ative level is to indicate areas for further investigation which are beyond the scope of this thesis. 1. A R e c a p i t u l a t i o n o f t h e H i s t o r i c a l D i m e n s i o n s The explorations of the dim ensions of problem and response constituted by the problem atic form ations of the m elancholia of Antiquity, by m edieval acedia and by 19 th century neurasthenia m ay be arranged in TABLE 5, which constitutes an overview of the historical findings of the thesis illustrated within the context of the system atical fram ework developed in chapter one. 154 Before continuing with the broader based reflections on how these dim ensions m ay inform a philosophical inquiry into the contem porary association between pathology and perform ativity, a short recapitulation of the ‘cosm ologies’ is in place. TABLE 5 Pro ble m atical Fo rm atio n s Path o lo gical Pro ble m MELAN CH OLIA ACED IA N EU RASTH EN IA MAN IC- MELAN CH OLIA D ESPAIR EXH AU STION CIRCULAR ANTINOMY BINARY ANTINOMY ERUPTION OF IMMANENT ANTINOMY Ch aracte ro lo gical Pro ble m TH E EXTRAORD IN ARY TH E REJECTED TH E SEN SITIVE PERIPH ERY OU TSID E IN SID E D IETETICS VIRTU OU S LIVIN G N EU ROPATH IC D e lim itative Pro ble m Se lfRe gu lato ry Re s p o n s e H OU SEH OLD Pe rfo rm ative Re s p o n s e ACH IEVEMEN T Se lfArticu lato ry Re s p o n s e SELF - TRAN SGRESSION W ORK AS VIRTU E W ORK AS SECON D N ATU RE CON TROLLIN G AFFECT RESOU RCE AD MIN ISTRATION SUBLIMATION ABSTINENT SUBLIMATION PSYCHOANALYTIC SELF - DIFFERENTIATION The DIETETICS of THE EXTRAORDINARY m elancholic of Antiquity, structured around the black bile, was organized in a CIRCULAR ANTINOMY relating states of exaltation and states of dejection with each other. As the assum ption of a paradoxical nature found in the outstanding and culturally form ative of character, whose disposition found them always at the PERIPHERY of the collective order they pertained to, the eucrasia anom alia – the wellbalanced diversity of m elancholy – constituted the precarious ‘great health’ of SELF - TRANSGRESSION , which in tim e cam e to be the m ark of genius. Modelled as an aporectic and erotic figure of sublim ation that designated the 155 task of self-regulation between the hyperboles of affect, this paradoxical nature took as its base the assum ption of a negative, which could be transform ed into positive and creative ACHIEVEMENT. The black bile of the m elancholic ēthos in this sense was attributed a fundam ental, exasperated inclination to ēros ensuing from tem perature as the m echanism that unhinged the m oral equilibrium , to which norm ality was bound. As an am biguous object of love-hate, to which the exalted states associated with both m adness and geniality were connected, the ‘thing’ in the body of the extraordinary m elancholic em erged as the nexus of dynam ic self- m anipulation for those to whom the ordinary ‘m iddle’ of the Aristotelian ethics were unobtainable. The sinister consequences that this nature, constituted by the aporectic conflict itself, m ight have for the individual, were redeem ed only by the indissoluble prom ise, which the doctrine of geniality held for those who found it in them selves to m anage and regulate their disposition towards an ever inaccessible telos beyond even the confines of ēthos, of their ‘right character’. This self-devouring pathos of m elancholy, as the potentially pathological takes the form of the healthy, and becom es a paradoxical prerequisite for great achievem ent, contains a figure, which by all m eans, I will argue in the following, is with us today – albeit in a very different form . Although it shared with this classic notion of m elancholy sym ptom s of severe depression, the DESPAIR of acedia – the nam e given by the church fathers to affliction also known as the noon-day dem on – was of a very different character. The BINARY ANTINOMY of this pathology, structured around the assum ption of dem onical possession and associated with the death of the soul induced by the deficits of VIRTUOUS LIVING within the conceptual fram ework of vice and virtue in the theocosm os, designated the topology of THE REJ ECTED, whose privation of affect constituted a flight from the rich- ness of spiritual possibilities of m an placed before God. Em erging as a fall from the world of the living, acedia was the m ortal evil of those who found them selves suddenly on the OUTSIDE of the social reality to which they belonged. The am biguous negative value of acedia in this sense was not related to achievem ent in the m anner found in m elancholy, but took instead WORK AS VIRTUE as the therapeutic answer to the desperation im plied by the 156 horrified flight from that which one could not evade in any way. The perform ativity of the religious m en, which evolved into a the m ore generalized struggle with sloth, took the form of CONTROLLING AFFECT, as it was subjected to the context of the sociocosm os in the guise of m elancholy as a social pathology. But to both acedia and the later Hobbesian m elancholic, the m onstrous eruption in the body of a ‘thing’ that threatened to spiral out of control because of hyperbolic affect, the withdrawal from divine destiny or sim ply from the virtue of ABSTINENT SUBLIMATION did not m ean that the afflicted sim ply forgot the proper categories of a virtuous life; rather the fundam ental indistinctness of the phenom enon was found in am biguous relation of despair to the desire to take part itself. This am biguity was what set the phenom enon apart from the laziness im plied by the concept of sloth as the affliction of som eone answering to a goal, which revealed itself only in the act by which it was also rendered unobtainable. The reversal of the process of frightful and vertiginous negation im plied by acedia was not a m atter of lack of salvation – as the opportunity for that showed itself painstakingly and relentlessly – but that instead of finding a way to eclipse the desire which knew itself to be in despair. As the ‘despair which knows itself to be despair, aware therefore of having an ego in which som ething eternal resides, and now despairingly wishes not to be itself, or despairingly to be itself’ in the words of Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard 20 0 8: 162, m y translation), acedia as a pathology of perform ativity designated the m ortal m alady of m an placed always already in a social reality. The affliction also of the individual placed in the m iddle of a social reality, neurasthenia like acedia was concerned with civilization and its antinom ies. But if acedia was the pathology of the one whose inability to regulate the self constituted the lack of civilization so lethally sym bolized by m onstrous eruption, then the EXHAUSTION of THE SENSITIVE , who failed to observe the physiological laws of his NEUROPATHIC HOUSEHOLD, resulted from too m uch civilization, from the pressure associated with the m odern lifestyle of the am bitious businessm an, whose shattered nerves affected his ability to transform desire into volition. In this sense the abnorm ality of the neurasthenic erupted on the INSIDE of the social as an IMMANENT ANTINOMY designating the failure of agency. As a ‘thing’ in the body, the nerves m arked an indeterm inate border between the pathological state of the will 157 and an agitated social body, which ceaselessly threatened to crush the individual autonom y. Weaved into the fabric of a socioeconom ic reality, the task of the dem ocratic m an, whose fibres were perpetually strained, was the RESOURCE ADMINISTRATION that worked to transform the culturally im agi- naries of protean energies into productivity. The excessive build-up and discharge of energies in the body borrowed from energy physics, which was attributed to be the cause of a diffuse host of m ental and physiological sym ptom s stretching from depression to palpitations and im potence, was widely represented in the tropes of investm ent and possible bankruptcy. Thus the language of the nerves was also the language of the aspiring and entrepreneurial businessm an, designating a dem ocratized trope of perform ativity, by which potentially everyone through hard work could attain the affluence and glory that had used once to belong to the fashionable upper classes of society, and earlier yet to the geniuses, who had it in their nature to achieve great things. Bound indissolubly to the tropes of labour and to the assum ption of WORK AS SECOND NATURE , the depletion of nerve force through excessive dem ands was the affliction of the burgeoning econom ies bursting with social m obility, dynam ic entrepreneurs and am bitious achievers, who acted as an interm ediate link for the protean, natural resource as it was turned into culture and volition in the environm ent of hightension and non-stop tem po of life that the Am erican civilization prided itself of. The language of the nerves, unlike that of the black bile and that of the dem on in the body in each their fashion, was not the language of the exceptional, but that of the general public whose aspiring hopes for a good life m ight be crushed under the weight of societal dem ands. It is these three ‘cosm ologies’, structuring problem atic patterns of heterogeneous elem ents in each their distinct fashion around a ‘thing’ in the body, which m ay be said to constitute a tradition of pathologies of perform ativity. With this recapitulation of how they are organized in m ind, the following sections will attem pt to point out som e of the privileged them es in the contem porary association between pathology and perform ativity, which they m ay be said to tie into and inform . 158 2 . S t r e s s a n d t h e P o p u l a r i z a t i o n o f t h e Ex t r a o r d i n a r y A discussion of how the three problem atic form ations of classical m elancholy, acedia and neurasthenia can open up to new m odes of philosophically questioning the present m ay begin by assum ing again a perspective on stress, which was used in chapter 1 as a form al indication of the kind of disposition that this thesis set out to explore. As the form al indication illustrated, like no other phenom enon today, stress and the tropes surrounding it assum e the existence of a natural relation between pathology and perform ativity to the extent that such an association has becom e a m atter of course, the truism of a m ode of existence that is accessible to anyone, even if it is different from individual to individual. Or as the author of Stress Managem ent for Dum m ies puts it: ‘Everybody has it, and everybody talks about it, but no one really knows what stress is. Why? Because stress signifies different things for each of us, and also really is different for each of us.’ (Elkin 1999: xxvi) As already indicated in chapter 1, the opacity of stress as a ‘thing’ in the body is assum ed to be im penetrable because it – paradoxically – constitutes a collective phenom enon that differs from individual to individual. Yet, the historical problem atizations explored in this thesis m ay be said to contribute to the opening of a field in which stress and the tropes surrounding it – prim arily the m odern-day phenom enon of depression and its relation to the way work is organized – m ay be understood in a new light. The following sections will be occupied with the indication of this field. First, and m ost fundam entally, the perspective developed in the first chapter of this thesis illustrated how stress as a ‘thing’ in the body today is m uch m ore than just the byproduct of a particular m odern lifestyle. Stress is a m ode of existence that involves and associates the whole life with – even subsum es it under – productivity in its assertion of an individual ability to distinguish between the pathos of over-work and the beautiful tone of balance, the ēthos of eustress associated with individual agency. Yet in the light of what this thesis has found, the assum ption of a paradoxical ‘nature’ to which the working subject pertains and which designates the individual ability to identify, isolate, m anipulate, m obilize and recom bine stress as a ‘thing’ in the body, constitutes a precarious generalization of the extraordinary . As I have also discussed elsewhere (J ohnsen 20 0 8), in the light of 159 classical m elancholy, the assum ption of stress as a natural potentiality that can be turned into productivity through self-m anagem ent techniques carries a strong affinity with the disposition of the ēthos perriton, the exceptional in character described by the author of Problem s XX X, 1. But if the disposition found in the Aristotelian assum ption of an eucrasia anom alia was reserved for outstanding and culturally form ative genius, then stress constitutes the dem ocratization of the extraordinary and its subjugation under the general tropes of labour power. The assertion of stress as a subject that takes place in the body on the background of the individual’s ability to control and regulate the hyperboles of affect associated with its pathological m anifestations, in the light of the conception of m elancholy as a ‘thing’ in the body, can be seen to open up for a topology differentiating between over-work and burnout in the self-m anaging em ployee of today’s work-place. Rem em bering the fundam ental association of m elancholy with ēros, such a philosophical topology of productivity m ay be said to understand stress as an eroticism of m odern-day capitalism , as it takes the relation of the individual to the ‘thing’ in the body to be a joie d’am our, an unstoppable and am biguous love-hate relationship ceaselessly rearticulating itself as the arbiter of self-m anagem ent. Like the disposition structured around the m elaina cholé, the m ode of existence associated with stress is m apped onto a circular antinom y between the highs and lows of the ‘corporate athletes’ who in the words of the authors of the best-selling Stress for Success ‘need to (1) deepen their capacity to tolerate stress of all kinds and (2) increase their ability to respond to stress in ways that bring full perform ance potential within reach’ (Loehr & McCorm ack (1997: 5). To speak of the circularity in such a generalized m ode of existence as the eroticism of m odern-day capitalism is m ore serious than it m ay sound; it hints at the traditional association of m elancholy with the obsessive and exhausting obligation to the im possible object of health, of balance and of happiness. In this context stress appears as the erotic process engaged in the am bivalent exchange with the unreality of the phantasm agoric ‘great health’ of m elancholy, the infatuated m ode of self-transform ation that always gazes beyond itself towards the ‘next level of perform ance’ which is identified as the ‘next level of health and happiness as well’ (Loehr & McCorm ack (1997: 5). The precarious trajectory of the erotic object in the bodies that it passes through 160 in this teleology without a telos itself is the decadence identified by Nietzsche in Ecce Hom o (190 8): To look from the perspective of the sick towards healthier concepts and values, and again conversely to look down from the fullness and self-assurance of rich life into the secret labor of the instinct of décadence—this has been m y actual experience, what I have practiced m ost, in this if in anything I am a m aster. (Nietzsche 1967: Wise 1) To this gaze, health and illness are not m utually exclusive term s. Rather, health em erges as discernible from the pattern of suffering structured around the ‘thing’ in the body only as a transform ative and sublim ating gesture, what Nietzsche also refers to as ‘m y will to health, to life’ (Nietzsche 1967: Wise 2). The incessant self-transform ation of the culturally form ative in the context of stress-m anagem ent becom es the exhortation to the ceaseless self-differentiation of the ‘athlete’ who not only has his gaze fixed always already on the new frontiers of productivity, health and happiness, but also gazes back at the ‘thing’ in the body as the dejecta, the excrem ent of the erotic process. The opening of such an inform ed philosophical perspective on the contem porary phenom enon of stress does not reduce it to m elancholy. The point to m ake is not that we have all becom e m elancholics. As already indicated in the section about Foucault’s historical problem atization analysis, the past field of experience that m elancholy could be said to constitute does not repeat itself. Rather, what a philosophical topology of productivity concerned with the ‘thing’ in the body can do is to open up for an inquiry inform ed by the historical findings: what, for exam ple, does it m ean to speak of labour in the general term s of achievem ent to which the classical concept of m elancholy pertained? What exactly is popularized in the generalization of the extraordinary? The individual ability to differentiate between the dim ensions of the pathological and of the perform ative? Heterogenization as opposed to norm alization as a novel m ode of socialization? A virtuosity of existence? It is questions like these that the philosophically inform ed perspective on the contem porary pathologies of perform ativity will have to deal with. Im plicating that the ‘thing’ in the body is always already a social bond, indicating a crisis in the assertion of the individual self within a social context, the philosophical topology of the ‘thing’ in the body will have to seek 161 its answers in the exploration of the way we perceive the association between tropes of labour, pathology and perform ativity today in the light of history. While the following will touch on som e of these questions, the answer to them lies beyond the scope of this thesis. Yet, the indication m ade above of a contem porary erotic circularity of productivity points to another topic for further investigation, which the findings of this thesis inform . In Bipolar II (20 0 6), a self-help book for patients suffering from m anic depressive disorder by Ronald R. Fieve, a professor of clinical psychiatry from Colum bia, the sam e em blem atic circularity can be found. Dr. Fieve’s book prom ises to ‘enhance your highs, boost your creativity, and escape the cycles of recurrent depression’ and to help by answering im portant questions like: ‘How do you channel hypom ania’s creative fire without getting burned?’ Presenting m edical breakthroughs that preserve a ‘hypom anic advantage’, Dr. Fieve offers advice that echoes the findings of this thesis: ‘Maintain a sense of control. This m eans an ability to face future situations with determ ination rather than helplessness’ (Fieve 20 0 6: 248). Such self-help advice, which takes the ecstatis of the individual in its literal sense to m ean a displacem ent (from gr. ek “out” + histanai “to place, com e to stand”), with which this individual becom es a social being, relates depressive disorders to the tropes of productivity and stress and reflects the assum ption that ours is the age of depression (Horowitz & Wakefield 20 0 5, 20 0 7). As Em ily Martin has illustrated in an interesting study of m ania and depression in Am erican culture, the connection between m arket and the trope of m ania today is m ore than m etaphorical. Manic depression and the econom ic order, Martin argues, today is ‘linked through structures of feeling’ (Martin 20 0 7: 249). As I will suggest in the following, this link between the cyclical eroticism of stress and productivity, and depression as a contem porary phenom enon, can be inform ed by what this thesis found in the problem atic form ation of acedia and illustrate how depression today can be viewed as a problem of self-articulation. 3 . D e p r e s s i o n a n d t h e Ar t i c u l a t i o n o f t h e S e l f A perspective on the contem porary phenom enon of depression as a fall from the social in the sense found in the problem atic form ation of m edieval 162 acedia m ay be found by reflecting on the status of the individual in a society where the ability to differentiate the self in the circular fashion articulated above, has attained a crucial socioeconom ic status that relates the despair of the vertiginous to the tropes of productivity and labour. In other words, another aspect of what this thesis has found opens up to the discussion of the status of depression today, how it is related to the eroticism of the ‘thing’ in body and to the ability to articulate the self as a self in the context of a socioeconom ic reality. A point of departure for this perspective m ay be found in the work of Axel Honneth, the professor of social philosophy and leading heir to the critical tradition as director of the fam ous Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt. Honneth program m atically understands the contem porary phenom enon of depression as the m anifestation of a social pathology associated with an institutionalized injunction to realize and m aintain a self (Honneth 20 0 5, Honneth 20 0 4, see also: Willig & Østergaard 20 0 5, Petersen & Willig 20 0 4). To Honneth the notion of social pathologies as ‘those developm ental processes of society that can be conceived as processes of decline, distortion’ (Honneth 1996: 370 ) becam e the central m atter for a diagnosis of the present in the 1990 s (Kristensen 20 0 8). The position he defends is that the processes of individual self-realization in Western societies today to a large extent have becom e a ‘feature of the institutionalized expectations inherent in social reproduction’, where they are ‘transm uted into a support of the system ’s legitim acy’ (Honneth 20 0 4: 467). The result of this reversal, Honneth claim s, is ‘the em ergence in individuals of a num ber of sym ptom s of inner em ptiness, of feeling oneself to be superfluous, and of absence of purpose.’ Based on the work of the French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg in La fatigue d’être soi (“The Exhaustion of Being Oneself”, Ehrenberg 1999), Honneth concludes that today there ‘rem ains for individuals only the alternative of sim ulating authenticity or of fleeing into a full-blown depression, of staging personal originality for strategic reasons or of pathologically shutting down’ (Honneth 20 0 4: 20 4). Resulting from structural transform ations in the electronic m edia, the advertising industry and business enterprise, the expectations concerning the ability to becom e a ‘self’ have attained a socioeconom ic im portance, which heavily increases 163 the social pressure on the individual. What began as the individualism of self-realization: … has since been transm uted – having becom e an instrum ent of economic development, spreading standardization and m aking lives into fiction – into an em otionally fossilized set of dem ands under whose consequences individuals today seem more likely to suffer than to prosper. (Honneth 20 0 4: 474) Although Honneth’s precarious assum ption that the depressive disorder is som ething one flees into m ay be m ore than problem atic from a clinical standpoint, the association it m akes of depression with the socioeconom ic order, the way contem porary work is organized and the ability to be and becom e a self can be seen as em blem atic of a popular critical view on how the nearly epidem ic spreading of depressive disorder in Western societies today can be explained. While a whole other story of depression can also be told, Honneth’s standpoint opens up to a topic where the despair associated with the problem atic form ation of acedia is very relevant. If the surge of depressions today can be seen as the result of a social pathology associated with the ability of the individual to realize an authentic existence, then it is because it shares with m edieval acedia as a ‘thing’ in the body the terrifying association with a despair that knows itself to be despair and suffers the disdain of the social order, which sees it as a vulgarity and a sin against the work ethics of m odern day capitalism . This aspect of m odern day depression, which sees in it a ‘sinful’ flight from the social exhortation to becom e and articulate the self in the erotic m anner described above, m ay be difficult to accept in the light of the attention the phenom enon enjoys. Yet, the am biguous negative value of this ‘thing’ in acedia, which described the privation of affect and the hyperboles of the despair im plicated by it, m ay be said to inform an unresolved aspect of depression as it has becom e associated with socioeconom ic tropes of value-creation. Like acedia was not opposed to desire and attention itself, but instead to the virtue of joy and the satisfaction of the spiritual good, an aspect of depression today is associated with the vertiginous inability to articulate the ‘thing’ in the body and m ake it accessible to m anagem ent. How a perspective on depression can be developed that takes into account the findings of acedia, can be understood by drawing on the theory developed in the work Black Sun (1989) by the French psychoanalyst J ulia 164 Kristeva. Kristeva’s work is interesting, because it approaches depression in a m anner sim ilar to the one developed in the chapters above, viewing the m elancholic suffering as a pattern structured around a ‘Thing’. Although Kristeva’s inspiration for this perspective is prim arily taken from Heidegger’s philosophy of Das Ding (Heidegger 1970 ), her understanding of the ‘Thing’ com es close to the assertion in this thesis of the ‘thing’ in the body as an opaque relational object, which structures the relation between individual and collective. As Sim on Critchley has pointed out, Kristeva’s ‘Thing’ is ‘the soleil noir, the black sun of m elancholia … a light without representation, the unknown object that throws its shadow across the ego’ (Critchley 1999: 216). Rem em bering how acedia asserted the ‘thing’ in the body to be a m onstrous eruption, which the afflicted was bound to in despair as the pattern of suffering it im plicated signified the inability to exercise the virtuous, Kristeva’s assertion of a non-representable locus of suffering in the depressive, a ‘black sun’ of im m easurable suffering, can be approached in term s of the inability it signifies in depression to articulate a self that is open to m anagem ent within the socioeconom ic reality. Depression, according to Kristeva, signifies a fundam ental lack of m eaning, which even m akes it difficult to write about: I am trying to address an abyss of sorrow, a noncom m unicable grief that at tim es, and often on a long-term basis, lays claim s upon us to the extent of having us lose all interest in words, actions and even life itself … Within depression, if m y existence is on the verge of collapsing, its lack of m eaning is not tragic – it appears obvious to m e, glaring and inescapable (Kristeva 1989: 3). To Kristeva, the depressive pattern of suffering – like the ‘thing’ found in acedia – is a presence, shining even with the paradoxical light of a cold sun, which looks like nothing else and feels like nothing else. It is an affect, which cannot be understood linguistically but in reality subtends the activity of language. What characterizes the depressive subject’s problem in this (cold) light, is the inability to speak in a m eaningful w ay (Watkin 20 0 3: 86). The depressive, from Kristeva’s theoretical standpoint, suffers from a pathology of articulation associated with a fundam ental loss of m eaning. Melancholia, she argues, ‘is the institutional sym ptom atology of inhibition and asym bolia’ (Kristeva 1989: 9). Depressive speech is dead speech in the sense that it rem ains a-sym bolic and unable to articulate the character of 165 the sadness which from the outside is representable only as ‘the m ost archaic expression of an unsym bolizable, unnam eable narcissistic wound’ (Kristeva 1989: 12). This narcissism reflects the privation of affect found in the problem atic form ation of acedia. To Kristeva the analytic fram ework of psychoanalysis, understood as the analysis of the interaction between psyche and som a through the distribution of drive energies (Watkin 20 0 3), holds a privileged place in the cure of the depressive’s linguistic disorder. Entitled “Psychoanalysis – A Counterdepressant”, the first chapter of Black Sun revolves around the role that the space opened by psychoanalysis for voice and interpretation plays in getting the depressed to construct a text out of their dead language. As pointed out by William Watkin: Psychoanalysis’ cure for m elancholia consists precisely in an act of reading the radical speech and expression of the depressed and converting their avant-garde expressive material into a m ore socially and culturally acceptably sym bolic and m eaningful text. It does this by allowing the depressed to discover differentiation … (Watkin 20 0 3: 92). Reflecting the Freudian designation of the ‘talking cure’ as a help to return from ‘hysterical m isery’ to ‘everyday unhappiness’, Kristeva’s argum ent is that psychoanalysis provides the socially acceptable text, which again will m ake the hyperbolic language of depression accessible to m odification and offer an alternative to the non-differential language of dead speech. From the point of view developed in this thesis on acedia, this aspect of m odern day depression is com parable to the position of the m onastic whose both literal and sym bolic aphonia that was interpreted as the quenching of the soul’s voice m ade him inaccessible and his spiritual life incom m unicable to the extent that he would have to seek the m inistrations of the Church. Yet to liken aspects of the m odern-day phenom enon of depression to the spiritual despair associated with acedia has profound im plications. In such a light, the privilege held by psychoanalysis as the provider of a language in which the dead speech of the depressed can again becom e articulate and present the afflicted with a space for self-differentiation, is broken, and points to a m uch m ore fundam ental shift in the socialization of the individual. If the socioeconom ic value of being able to articulate a self, suggested for exam ple by the m anagerial tropes associated with the ability to contrib- 166 ute as a self at work (Costea, Crum p & Am iridis 20 0 8 , Flem ing & Sturdy 20 0 8, Flem ing & Spicer 20 0 3, Alvesson & Willm ott 20 0 2, J ohnsen, Muhr & Pedersen 20 0 9), in this light is taken for granted, then it opens up for a discussion of depression as a flight and diversion from the m ost authentic possibilities of Being, as the cathartic effect, which used to be the privilege of psychoanalysis has been transform ed it into a social injunction. Depression, on such term s, signifies a fall from the social, not prim arily as an effect of how society is organized, but as a glaring vertigo of the socioeconom ic value of the tropes of self-realization. Associating the contem porary focus on depression with acedia will m ean to open for a discussion of how the pathological inability to articulate the ‘thing’ in the body as a social bond – to ‘work with oneself’ in term s of m aking the self accessible to m anagem ent – represents a crisis in a society, where the ability to articulate m eaning, even if it is associated with disorder, is prim ary to the pattern of suffering which m ay appear m eaningless. As a fall from the erotic relation to the ‘thing’ in the body, which sees the hyperboles of affect as parts of a ceaseless and m eaningful process of self-differentiation, the som nolent stupor of the depressive, from the perspective of acedia, represents the vertiginous terror of a social bond that has becom e void of m eaning in a society where even suffering can represent a m eaningful trope to those who work with them selves in it. The perspective developed in this thesis thus opens up for a discussion of depression as a fundam ental crisis of self-differentiation. 4 . D e p r e s s i o n a n d S u b je c t i v i t y a s a R e s o u r c e In the light of the problem atic form ation of acedia, depression as a pathology of self-differentiation today assum es the vertiginous position of the social form ation that values the ability to articulate, m obilize, regulate, m anipulate, and m anage the social bond of the ‘thing’ in the body as the ecstasis of a productive virtuosity. It is a fall from the social, or as Kristeva has it: ‘a waste with which, in m y sadness, I m erge. It is J ob’s ashpit in the Bible’ (Kristeva 1989: 15). Yet the sin that it constitutes is not directed against God; it is a violation instead of the exhortation to articulate the ‘thing’ as a social bond, a sin against the ‘self’ as a productive vehicle that has attained an im portant role in the contem porary socioeconom ic order of society. 167 This aspect of depression as a contem porary social phenom enon opens up to the final subject, which I will point out as a privileged topic for further study on the background of the findings in this thesis. Depression, and its association with subjectivity as a resource today, constitutes a field of interest which can be inform ed by the energetic tropes of the problem atic form ation of neurasthenia and its assertion of a neuropathic household, an individual oikos designating the ability of the subject to m anage a personal stock of socioeconom ic capital. The problem atic form ation structured around the nerves as a ‘thing’ in the body, as illustrated in chapter 4, was prim arily concerned with the tropes of the protean resources in their physiological quality as neurasthenia cam e to signify the deficiency of selfregulation leading to neurological bankruptcy. Transposed onto the contem porary tropes of depression in their association with the organization of labour, this figure of exhaustion precariously assum es subjectivity to be a lim ited resource, the exhaustion of which results in the collapse of the self as a socioeconom ic resource. Such a perspective on depression can be found in La Fatigue d’être soi (1999), a work on contem porary depression as a social phenom enon that has set a standard for the sociological debate, inspiring the standpoint of Honneth and others (e.g. Honneth 20 0 5, Honneth 20 0 4, Willig & Østergaard 20 0 5, Petersen & Willig 20 0 4, Ham m ershøj 20 0 8 , Petersen 20 0 7). Ehrenberg’s thesis is that depression today is m anifested as the m ental fatigue of a sovereign individuality. Transform ed from being a disorder prim arily concerned with sadness without cause, depression has becom e a disorder of activity for the individual, whose societal task it is to becom e, articulate and m aintain a ‘self’: Madness is the verso of the subject of reason, the Freudian neurosis that of the subject of conflict, depression that of an individual that wants only to be itself and can never catch up with this dem and as if it was chasing its own shadow, the shadow on which it is also dependent. Depression is the pathology of a conscience that is only itself and is never com pletely filled by this identity, never is active enough – too wavering, too charged. (Ehrenberg 1999: 265, m y translation) Modelled on the 19 th century’s tropes of energy, Ehrenberg’s assum ption of depression as a m ental fatigue represents a shift of perspective on the na- 168 ture of the personal resource. If the self-regulatory response of the potential neurasthenic was represented as a regulation of the forces of nature as they were converted in the body, then the shift from the outside to the inside of the individual asserted by Ehrenberg transform s the m anagem ent of physiological resources into a m anagem ent of affective resources. The contem porary phenom enon of depression in the light of the tropes of productivism of 19 th century neurasthenia takes the form of a functional disorder (Petersen & Willig 20 0 4). To the philosophical topology of productivity that can be developed on the background of the findings in this thesis, this naturally opens up to a discussion of the quality of labour resources today. If the prim ary quality of the natural resources, m odelled on the discovery of the first and second laws of therm odynam ics, was their scarcity, then the transposition of this m odel onto subjectivity as a resource at work today represents itself a problem atic anthropogeneric aspect of the m anagerial exhortation in organizations today to em ployees to expand and intensify their contributions as selves on the workplace (Costea, Crum p & Am iridis 20 0 8, Flem ing & Sturdy 20 0 8, Flem ing & Spicer 20 0 3, Alvesson & Willm ott 20 0 2, J ohnsen, Muhr & Pedersen 20 0 9). Can the assum ption of nervous energy as a lim ited resource, which was defined prim arily in term s of quantity, be said to be the sam e as a psychical or affective resource, which is defined instead in term s of its in principal indefinite character and its quality as som ething dem anding ceaseless articulation and rearticulation? Providing a privileged place to study the association of depression as a pathology of perform ativity with the qualities of the hum an resource, the trope of subjectivity as a resource at work, in the light of what this thesis has found, contributes to an investigation of the perform ativity of the self-m anaging em ploy ee, whose personal capital, rather than consisting in nervous energy, consists in affective resources, which have to be articulated and ceaselessly rearticulated in a language m anoeuvring within the space of the hyperboles of affect attributed to the circular antinom y described above. The m odern day depression as a social phenom enon in this light is not representable as a part of the eroticism of stress-m anagem ent, but rather as a part of a binary antinom y, a repulsive incapability to contribute in a society, where the hypom ania of affect has becom e norm alized as a productive resource. 169 On this background, stress as an eroticism of m odern day capitalism and its relation to the contem porary social phenom enon of depression as the pathology par excellence of the self-m anaging em ployee, who m ust regulate a stock of affective resources, can be seen as a field constituting a privileged topos for the study of the association between pathology an d perform ativity today. Providing a philosophical background on which to study this topos, the three problem atic form ations of m elancholy, acedia and neurasthenia represent a tradition of phenom ena that all tie into and inform such a study. Apart from constituting a privileged source of inform ation to such a topology the history of the ‘thing’ in the body explored in this thesis m ay also be said to describe the history of how labour cam e to be associated with achievem ent, how that which used to be the privilege of the extraordinary in character was gradually transform ed into a trope of work. It illustrates how the virtuosity of the genius cam e to be subsum ed under the general notion of labour power as the spectacle of self-transgression has com e to rest with the self-m anaging em ployee as a m ode of production. Representing a transform ation of what it m eans to be ‘culturally form ative’, the spectacle of the sublim ating self-transgression associated with the great achievem ent of the extraordinary m elancholic, in m odern work-life can be represented as the burden of ceaseless self-differentiation of an individual, whose selfarticulation paradoxically m ust represent the articulation of a productive social bond. Depression in this light is not only the terrible and torm enting crisis of an individual, but also the crisis of a socioeconom ic reality, which subsists as a social com m unity through the ever-differentiated articulation of individual selves. The history represented in this thesis thus suggests that the virtuosity of achievem ent, which was the hallm ark of the genius, today has becom e an im portant aspect of the way work is organized. As what Paolo Virno has called a ‘virtuosity in the workplace’ (Virno 20 0 4: 61), this designation of the self-m anaging em ployee as a perform er, who transform s affective resources, like linguistic com petence, knowledge and im agin ation into labour power, can be said to be em blem atic to the present age. Virno thinks of this perform ativity as ‘an activity which requires the presence of others, which exists only in the presence of an audience’ (Virno 20 0 4: 60 ) and suggests that this m ode of production, as a m odel for contem porary work, has be- 170 com e prototypical of wage labour. While this assum ption m ay be questioned, the findings of this thesis suggest that the activity of the working virtuoso as an activity that produces value without finding its own fulfilm ent, without ever becom ing fully objectified as an end product, is closely related to the trajectory of the ‘thing’ in the body. If Virno is right in assum ing that the virtuosity of work, which can be said to absorb im portant features of the historical form ations described in the chapters above, involve ‘the very anthropogenesis in the existing m ode of production’ (Virno 20 0 4: 63), then this im plies that the passions of the ‘thing’ in the body bear an im portant relevance today to the study and critique of m odern day capitalism . Returning to the m otive of Plato’s “wandering uterus”, the unruly organ that traversed the bodies of childless wom en in the social order of Antiquity, we m ay say that the study of the trajectory of the ‘thing’ in the always already social body of the hum an resource m ay contribute to a better understanding of both the plight of individuality today and of its possibilities for resiliency. 171 172 Dan s k re s u m é Tem aet for denne afhandling er en undersøgelse af tre historiske ’form ationer’ organiseret om kring en ’ting’ i kroppen i m elankoliens brede og farverige historie i et forsøg på at skabe baggrund for en filosofisk undersøgelse af sam m enhængen m ellem patologi, arbejde og perform ativitet i sam tiden. I denne forstand er der tale om et stykke filosofisk grundforskning, der forsøger at etablere og åbne et felt for m ødet m ellem de klassiske, filosofiske discipliner, og tem aer i organisationsteori og ledelsesfilosofi. Afhandlingen begynder m ed en form el indikation af hvorledes stress som et sam tidsfænom en kan betragtes som en ’ting’ i kroppen, der hverken kan reduceres til ren natur eller ren kultur, m en placerer sig hinsides de to som et socialt bånd, et refleksivt og selv-regulativt topos for en undersøgelse af hvordan patologi, arbejde og perform ativitet associeres i dag. Afhandlingen fortsætter i kapitel 1 m ed en nærm ere m etodologisk og filosofisk undersøgelse af begrebet om ’tingen’ i kroppen, henholdsvis i sam m enhæng m ed den sen e Michel Foucaults arbejde m ed den historiske problem atiseringsanalyse og i sam m enhæng m ed Michel Serres’ begreb om kvasi-objektet som et indikativt m ellem værende, der hverken kan reduceres til at være subjekt eller objekt. Kapitel 1 slutter m ed en historiografisk refleksion over den litteratur som afhandlingen har benyttet sig af i sin udarbejdelse af de tre historiske dim ensioner, der skal inform ere sam tiden, og m ed en indikation af hvilken historie i melankoliens historie afhandlingens fokus på ’tingen’ i kroppen benytter sig af. De tre følgende kapitler udgør afhandlingens hovedbidrag og består i tre undersøgelser af ’tingen’ i kroppen som strukturerende elem ent for forholdet m ellem sygdom , præstation og perform ativitet i henholdsvis den klassiske m elankoli, m iddelalderens acedia-forestillinger og det 19. århundredes opfattelse af nerverne i neurastenien. Kapitel 2 beskriver m elankolien i Antikken og opfattelsen af den som det ekstraordinære m enneskes sygdom , organiseret om kring den sorte galde som en ’ting’ i kroppen, der beskrev en særlig og prekær natur for de kulturskabende og kulturbærende genier. Det viser hvorledes m elankolien hos disse udm ærkede naturer ikke prim ært opfattedes som en patologi, m en i stedet som en disposition, der kunne sublim eres som etos, m en som også, hvis den ikke blev reguleret tilstrækkeligt, 173 kunne resultere i m aniske eller depressive udfald. Som en cirkulær antinom i viser den klassiske m elankoli sig at åbne et rum for diætetisk selvregulering organiseret om kring en ’ting’ i kroppen, der kan sublim eres og lede den rette natur m od den store, verdensom væltende præstation. Kapitel 3 fortsætter de historiske un dersøgelser af ’tingen’ i kroppen ved at henlede opm ærksom heden på m iddelalderens acedia-forestillinger, et fænom en forbundet m ed en slags syndig skyldsfrihed eller sorgløshed, der også var kendt som m iddagsdæm onen. Først organiseret som et m ønster af psykosom atiske lidelser om kring den dæm oniske besættelse af eneboerm unkene i den egyptiske ørken, beskrives acedia som en em otionel hy perbol afstedkom m et af en m anglende selv-regulering, en affektiv privation som gør m unken utilgængelig for både sin egen og om givelsernes ledelse. Som en affekt-forvirring i forbindelse m ed udøvelse af dyden i den sociale realitet kan acedia ses om en m onstrøs ’ting’ i kroppen, der tegner og beskriver den m anglende evne til at lede sig selv. I kapitel 4 henledes opm ærksom heden på neurastenien i 190 0 -tallet og opfattelsen af nerverne som en ’ting’ i kroppen, der forbandt det sensitive individ m ed sine om givelser i forestillingen om en neuropatisk husholdning, hvorm ed den enkelte skulle adm inistrere sin nervekraft i krydsfeltet m ellem m odernitet, arbejdskraft og indre drifter. Som et forbindelsesled m ellem en dem okratiseret kultur og en uhæm m et natur, der skulle tæm m es igennem den m enneskelige vilje, blev nerverne som en ’ting’ i kroppen til som et forbindelsesled m ellem den enkeltes vilje og autonom i, sam fundets socioøkonom iske krav og forestillingen om naturen som en kraft, der kunne høstes, m anipuleres og om sættes til produktivitet og kultur i individets krop. Neurastenien kom på denne m åde til at sym bolisere en ’neuropatisk bankerot’ for det individ som ikke form åede at foretage en klog investering af sin nervekraft i sig selv og ønsket om et lykkeligt liv. I kapitel 5, der også fungerer som afhandlingens konklusion, opsum m eres de system atiske undersøgelser af de tre historiske form ationer om kring ’tingen’ i kroppen, ligesom det forsøgsvist indikeres hvorledes de alle tre kan siges at ’tale ind i’ sam tidens opfattelse af en sam m enhæng m ellem patologi, arbejde og perform ativitet. Dette afsluttende kapitel fokuserer på den m åde som de tre historiske form ationer tem atiserer aspekter af depression som en sam tidspatologi, der forbinder perform ativitet m ed patologi og 174 arbejde. Ved at vende tilbage til stress som en form el indikation, illustrerer kapitlet hvorledes den cirkularitet om kring ’tingen’ i kroppen som blev beskrevet i forbindelse m ed den klassiske konception af m elankoli kan siges at bidrage til en forståelse af stress som den m oderne kapitalism es erotik. Herefter vises det hvorledes aspekter af m iddelalderens acedia- forestillinger kan bidrage til en forståelse depression som et sam tidsfænom en der handler om artikulationen af et ’selv’, der er tilgæ ngeligt for både ledelse og selvledelse. Afslutningsvis indikeres en sam m enhæng m ellem disse opfattelser af stress og depression og den socioøkonom iske vigtighed som subjektiviteten som ressource har antaget i sam tiden. 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The translations are quoted from Sam uel Butler (Hom er 20 0 8: 20 0 -20 3) v All references to Apollonius’ Argonautica follow the num ber of the song (in Rom an numerals) and the num ber of the verses in the song (in Arabic num erals). The translations are quoted from (Apollonius Rhodius 1912) and are m ade according the Loeb Standard vi All references to Oration on the Dignity of Man from (Pico della Mirandola 20 0 8) are translated by Pier Cesare Bori. vii All references to Dante’s Divine Com edy are taken from (Dante Alighieri 1995), translated by Allen Mandelbaum . 187