choose one of the topic
Please write a 5-page tightly argued essay on one of the following numbered topics. You can also write this final in the form of a dialogue, a dialogue between authors we have read for the second half of the course or between characters in fictional worlds we have read (you can even have authors in dialogue with characters). If you decide to go the dialogue route please keep the following points in mind:A) A good philosophical dialogue focuses on a problem or question just as a philosophical essay does. Some kind of progress in the characters knowledge is attained by the end, even if such progress is the negative discovery that what seemed like a good answer to the question has turned out, under examination and further questioning, to be false or no answer at all. (This is typically the result of Platos early dialogues: successive definitions of a philosophically important term like virtue or piety or knowledge are offered by a character which, under questioning from Socrates, all turn out to be deficient definitions. But something is learned about virtue or piety in the process and we learn why the definitions or explanations on offer are unsatisfactory.)B) Since the dialogue form is a kind of play, the spacing for it is not the same as an academic essay; that is why I have required that the dialogue be at a minimum 6 1/2 pages.C) Please try to limit your dialogue to the texts we have read for this course, i.e. we have not read the full seven volumes of Prousts In Search of Lost Timewe havent even read whole of Swanns Way, the first volume. This limitation will be difficult for those of you basing your dialogue (or essay for that matter) on group research you did on a certain school of modern psychology. But still, dont pretend you know more than you really do.D) Some dialogue partnerships that you might consider: Hamlet comes to Freud as a patient; Freud analyses Marcels constant need for his mothers kiss as a repetition compulsion; Garcin and Hamlet discuss how one comes to know who and what one is (Am I a coward?) and if one can know this; Descartes and Proust have a discussion concerning the mind body distinction, or about how I know that I am dreaming or not; Emily Dickinson and Hamlet debate differences on how the dread of something after death affects
consciousness or on how knowledge of death affects self-consciousness; Sartre and Shakespeare talk shop as playwrights who have a theatrical conception of the self and self-consciousness, including playing a role (acting the part) as ones true identity and yet being different from what one plays. Is it always possible to keep apart who one plays from who one is? Hamlet can be part of this dialogue as can Claudius, even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, not to leave out the possibility that Ophelia or Gertrude may have important perspectives on this. NOTE on footnoting and source-citing format. Use Chicago Manual of Style, author-date format for notes/citations of sources.Make sure you reference, through proper footnoting, the passages you quote. When quoting from the play Hamlet use the standard act, scene, line system: as in:How all occasions do inform against meAnd spur my dull revenge. (4.4.3435)Plagiarism warning: I am extremely strict on plagiarism. Know the difference between your writing and someone elses. Please dont ignore this serious warning. 1) “The play’s subject … is neither mourning for the dead nor revenge on the living. … All that matters is Hamlet’s consciousness of his own consciousness, infinite, unlimited, and at war with itself.” (Harold Bloom, Library of Congress lecture, 2003) Develop your essay as a response to Harold Blooms assertion. What specifically might Hamlets consciousness of his own consciousness mean? Draw evidence for your idea of consciousness of consciousness from specific passages/lines in the play and your interpretation of them.2) You are a master psychologist representing one of the schools of psychology we have heard reports on (psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, existential psychology, feminist psychology, family systems, cognitive-behaviorist approaches). Hamlet is one of your patients, your greatest patient. You are writing up The Case of Hamlet and you have run into a problem: theres something about the nature of his mind that is resisting your general theory of the mind. What in Hamlet is so challenging to your previous theory? Now, what are you going to do about it? What previous conception of the human mind do you feel you need to revise in order to account for Hamlet? Draw evidence and support for your point of view from the play, specific lines that you interpret.
3) The nocturnal consciousness that the narrator describes in the Overture section of Swanns Way (In Search of Lost Time) seems at times to swim through the fixed coordinates of time and space and self that mark our ordinary, daytime consciousness. There are moments when the narrator doesnt know what room, of the many in which he has lived, hes waking up in; or he doesnt know what time of life he is occupying, his childhood or is it much later? or which self belongs to a particular room or a particular time of life. Then, memory seems to come to his aid. Select a specific passage or two in our Proust reading that can serve as the basis of your reflections, and write an essay on night consciousness or twilight consciousness in Proust. 4) Hamlet seems to be a character who has great self-knowledge and yet also a great lack of insight into himself. Discuss the border (if it is a border) between what Hamlet knows about himself and what about him eludes his consciousness. It seems that he is, paradoxically, aware of what he is not aware of. Using your reflections on Hamlets problems of self-knowledge as your model, say what impedes all of us from knowing what we are. (You might want to change the emphasis to: what makes it impossible for us to flee from self-knowledge.) Draw evidence and support for your point of view from the play, specific lines that you interpret. It is possible to direct this same question to Garcin (or Inez) instead of to Hamlet.5) Does Hamlets attitude toward death change in the play? Draw evidence and support for your point of view from the play, specific lines that you interpret. Whats the significance of the change?6) Compare Prousts treatment of the relations of mind and body (in apposite passages of Overture) to Descartes treatment of it in passages from The Meditations that we have read. Or: Compare Prousts treatment of the problem of not knowing whether I am dreaming or awake with Descartes examination of the same question (in passages from The Meditations we have read).7) Consider the following quotation from an essay by the philosopher Robert Pippin.They (philosophers such as Nietzsche and novelists such as Proust) want to say something like: Any settled piece of self-knowledge or presumed fixed commitment or ego ideal is (…) always, necessarily, provisional, in constant suspense, always subject to pervasive doubt. The reality of such a self-image, what turns out to confirm it, is not fidelity to an inner essence but is ultimately a matter of action, what we actually do, a matter of engagement in the world, as well as in a
way, a kind of negotiation with others about what exactly it was that one did.(So, to determine that something is true about myself is much more like resolve than discovery.) —Pippin, On Becoming Who One Is (and Failing), p.309 Apply these insights concerning doubt about what/who one is and the role of action, and negotiation with others concerning what one did, and apply them to Garcin (or to Estelle, or to Inez) or to Hamlet. 8) Write your own Hamlet soliloquy which might bring out a problem we have discussed in this course (it should be one that fits Hamlet, his predicament and sensibility, not one you totally impose.) Be sure to say where in the play this new soliloquy would go. And then write a concise analysis of this soliloquy for our understanding of the problem of Hamlet, his incapacity to perform his revenge.9) Consider the lines in Hamlets soliloquies where the question of his being a coward comes up (here are some obvious places: 2.2.598607; 3.1.7891; 4.4.4168). Here, doubt concerning what and who one is, is demonstrated. What are the different senses of being a coward in Hamlets mind? Is he one? (You can substitute Garcin for Hamlet.)10) Interpret some of the Emily Dickinson poems concerning consciousness of death, or a state beyond death that has an essential relation to consciousness before death, and develop a thesis on the subject of death as a limit that defines all human self-consciousness. (It is possible to substitute Infinity for death, but, hey you are on your own on this one. You would need to consult other relevant poems by Dickinson.)11) Gather what you consider to be the salient details of young Marcels repeating obsession with his mothers goodnight kiss. (Draw the details from specific passages in Overture) and then precisely summarize Freuds understanding of the compulsion to repeat ** in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. What challenges to Freuds theory do you see in this particular case? Revise Freuds theory as needed and give support for your proposed revision.** Recall that a key characteristic of the repetition compulsion is that one is constantly repeating un-pleasurable experiences. This is what distinguishes this compulsion from almost all other neurotic symptoms/conditions: the latter are motivated by drives seeking fulfillment (pleasure) but which are thwarted by the need of the ego (the I) ,as defense, to repress them. The compromise between these two systems creates the neurosis: the compromise between the system seeking pleasure and the system doing the repression, which is guarding against the un-pleasure that would result if , say, a perverted pleasure were acted upon and then one had to withstand judgment and condemnation for it. The pleasure principle still rules this sort of neurosis. This is not the case for repetition compulsion. In this kind of
symptom formation, the constant repetition of the un-pleasure, of the past trauma, or whatever, is not impelled by a distorted or repressed satisfaction of a drive (instinct). At first glance, Marcels desire for his mothers kiss seems to be motivated by a desire for what would be a calming satisfaction. But each time the kiss occurs (look especially at what happens the evening after Swann has gone and little Marcel ambushes his mother, he gets to have her all night in his bedroom) neither kisses nor her presence seem to give him the pleasure he had conspired to obtain! ( I ought to have been happy. I was not….) And this guys later traffic with the girls and women he loves seems to confirm a case of un-pleasure. (Obviously, unless you have read much further in the great novel, you cannot agree or disagree with this.) —You may want to look at other emotions involved in Marcels desire for his mother. Such as? Jealousy of the secret pleasures he suspects she is having when she is distant from him. (This again is repetition in the larger novel; Swann feels this about the woman he is in love with, and this is suggested in a passage from our reading: …whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as himself; to him, that anguish which lies in knowing that the creature one adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not and cannot follow…)12) Is there such a thing as the essential self, some core that forms our personal Nature, similar to what tradition calls the soul? Look at the following passage from our reading in Proust for an alternate view of the self (or perhaps we should say selves, plural) which seems in many ways to harmonize with the conception of the self explored in Sartres No Exit: the idea is that the self is, in part, a social construction, a social entity:Certainly the Swann who was a familiar figure in all the clubs of those days differed hugely from, the Swann created in my great-aunt’s mind when, of an evening, in our little garden at Combray, after the two shy peals had sounded from the gate, she would vitalize, by injecting into it everything she had ever heard about the Swann family, the vague and unrecognizable shape which began to appear, with my grandmother in its wake, against a background of shadows, and could at last be identified by the sound of its voice. But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as “seeing some one we know” is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen. And so, no doubt, from the Swann they had built up for their own purposes my family had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but they contrived also to put into a face from which its distinction had been evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant in the depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during our companionable country life. Our friend’s bodily frame had been so well lined symptom formation, the constant repetition of the un-pleasure, of the past trauma, or whatever, is not impelled by a distorted or repressed satisfaction of a drive (instinct). At first glance, Marcels desire for his mothers kiss seems to be motivated by a desire for what would be a calming satisfaction. But each time the kiss occurs (look especially at what happens the evening after Swann has gone and little Marcel ambushes his mother, he gets to have her all night in his bedroom) neither kisses nor her presence seem to give him the pleasure he had conspired to obtain! ( I ought to have been happy. I was not….) And this guys later traffic with the girls and women he loves seems to confirm a case of un-pleasure. (Obviously, unless you have read much further in the great novel, you cannot agree or disagree with this.) —You may want to look at other emotions involved in Marcels desire for his mother. Such as? Jealousy of the secret pleasures he suspects she is having when she is distant from him. (This again is repetition in the larger novel; Swann feels this about the woman he is in love with, and this is suggested in a passage from our reading: …whereas, on the contrary, as I was to learn in due course, a similar anguish had been the bane of his life for many years, and no one perhaps could have understood my feelings at that moment so well as himself; to him, that anguish which lies in knowing that the creature one adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not and cannot follow…)12) Is there such a thing as the essential self, some core that forms our personal Nature, similar to what tradition calls the soul? Look at the following passage from our reading in Proust for an alternate view of the self (or perhaps we should say selves, plural) which seems in many ways to harmonize with the conception of the self explored in Sartres No Exit: the idea is that the self is, in part, a social construction, a social entity:Certainly the Swann who was a familiar figure in all the clubs of those days differed hugely from, the Swann created in my great-aunt’s mind when, of an evening, in our little garden at Combray, after the two shy peals had sounded from the gate, she would vitalize, by injecting into it everything she had ever heard about the Swann family, the vague and unrecognizable shape which began to appear, with my grandmother in its wake, against a background of shadows, and could at last be identified by the sound of its voice. But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as “seeing some one we know” is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen. And so, no doubt, from the Swann they had built up for their own purposes my family had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but they contrived also to put into a face from which its distinction had been evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant in the depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during our companionable country life. Our friend’s bodily frame had been so well lined
with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his family, that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete and living creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving some one I know for another quite different person when, going back in memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately to this early Swannthis early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one’s life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality–this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and of a sprig of tarragon.Discuss the theory of the self expounded in this passage and test it against an opposing theory: for instance, that the self is a natural, innate being, not a social construction. Which theory is right?
