You Talking to Me?

Philosophy

In May 2017, my book âConversations on Art and Aestheticsâ appeared. It contains conversations with, and photographic portraits of, ten prominent philosophers of art. They are NoÃ«l Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. The book has two main aims. One is to provide a broad and accessible overview of what aesthetics as a subfield of philosophy has to offer. The other is to stimulate new work in this area of research. In this brief paper Iâd like to say a bit more about this second objective. Current research is rarely conducted or communicated in the form of conversations, so the question arises: how can a book like mine fit with and feed into a research culture which is very much dominated by the format of the journal article?

VOL. 14 NO.1 2019 'YOU TALKING TO ME?' Conversations on Art and Aesthetics Hans Maes University of Kent In May 2017, my book 'Conversations on Art and Aesthetics' appeared. It contains conversations with, and photographic portraits of, ten prominent philosophers of art. They are Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. The book has two main aims. One is to provide a broad and accessible overview of what aesthetics as a subfield of philosophy has to offer. The other is to stimulate new work in this area of research. In this brief paper I'd like to say a bit more about this second objective. Current research is rarely conducted or communicated in the form of conversations, so the question arises: how can a book like mine fit with and feed into a research culture which is very much dominated by the format of the journal article? The first thing to note is that, despite the obvious differences in presentation, there are also strong similarities between the discussions that take place in philosophy journals and the discussions laid down in my book. The same basic sequence-X defends a claim, Y formulates objections, X responds to objections- is really at the heart of both. Moreover, it's not too much of a stretch to see the debates that take place in philosophy journals as ongoing conversations between scholars. Looked at it this way, it is not the incongruity but precisely the continuity between the two formats that appears striking. In addition, the conversational format has You Talking to Me? 123 some distinct advantages over the more familiar format of the journal article. I'd like to highlight six ways in particular in which this collection could prove a unique and useful resource for further research. First, in today's academic culture where scholars are prompted to publish separate essays, rather than present grand philosophical systems, it is easy to lose sight of the underlying ideas and overarching themes that hold their work together. The conversation format has made it possible for me to ask authors directly about the overall coherence of their work. And some of the answers I received were surprising. Levinson, for instance, begins by saying that contextualism-the idea that the context of creation is crucial in determining the identity, art status, and meaning of a work of art-is the central thread running through his work. But when I ask him what distinguishes his views from other contextualist views, he mentions how he tends to foreground experience and value more than other analytic aestheticians-a response I had not anticipated given that Levinson is probably best known for essays that barely touch upon issues relating to experience and value (such as 'What a Musical Work Is' 1 and 'Defining Art Historically' 2 ). Another interesting contrast comes up in my conversation with Guyer, who has devoted much of his career to the study of one of the most systematic thinkers in history, Immanuel Kant, but who reveals that he has not attempted to make a systematic contribution to contemporary aesthetics himself and that he is in fact a strong supporter of non-reductionist, pluralistic theories of aesthetic value. When I met up with Carroll and Danto, I put the question to them in 1 Levinson 1980. 2 Levinson 1979. Hans Maes 124 terms borrowed from Isaiah Berlin's famous essay 'The Hedgehog and the Fox'3, which divides thinkers into two categories. Hedgehogs relate everything to a single, universal principle, whereas foxes rely on multiple experiences and entertain a vast variety of ideas without seeking to fit them all into, or exclude them from, any one grand system. But while one might expect Danto to own up to being a hedgehog and Carroll to being a fox, they both resist this easy categorisation and go on to explain why their work cannot be pigeon-holed in any straightforward way. Incidentally, the more holistic approach of these conversations not only allowed me to probe the overall coherence of an author's work, but also to bring to light certain tensions or inconsistencies in their thinking. This is nowhere more evident than in my conversation with Danto. For example, while Danto is adamant that beauty is as obvious as blue and that we spot it immediately when it is present in a work, he also recounts in some detail how he came to appreciate the beauty of Bernini's 'Santa Teresa' only very gradually. Or consider the idea that art does not always have to be beautiful. On the one hand, Danto calls this one of the great conceptual clarifications of the twentieth century. On the other hand, he also acknowledges that a lot of medieval art is not, and was not meant to be beautiful. From a methodological perspective, readers may find it amusing to see how, after faulting Wollheim for refusing to go along with an argument from indiscernibles, Danto himself manifests a similar reluctance when I invite him to think about a painting that would be indiscernible from Motherwell's 'Elegy to the Spanish Republic'. Second, all of my conversation partners have left their mark 3 Berlin 1953. You Talking to Me? 125 on philosophy of art and aesthetics, but some of them have also done significant work in other areas of philosophy (or outside of philosophy). This work is not always acknowledged in the professional journals of our discipline. So I have taken the opportunity in this book to ask them about some of their other writings. Scruton, for example, is a notable conservative philosopher and talking to him about the possible connections between his social and political reflections and his academic work in aesthetics was quite instructive. In my encounter with Carroll we briefly discussed his experience as a critic and screenwriter as well as his book on Buster Keaton.4 And I begin my conversation with Levinson with some reflections on his not-too-well-known essay on sexual perversion.5 Third, in research articles there is seldom room to elaborate on the provenance of one's theories, even though knowledge of the early influences on an author is often helpful in understanding the views they ultimately arrive at. So, I hope the reader will find it as illuminating as I did to hear how, say, Currie was influenced by Imre Lakatos, David Lewis, David Armstrong and later on by Walton and Levinson. Or how Stanley Cavell's teaching and thinking had a lasting impact on Guyer. The book may throw up some further surprises in this respect: Robinson, who is perhaps the most scientifically oriented of all the philosophers I spoke with, acknowledges her debt to F.R. Leavis, the literary scholar who was notoriously dismissive of science in the so-called 'two cultures' debate. Carroll, who has been a vocal critic of some French philosophy in the past, talks about the influence that the French phenomenologist, Merleau‐Ponty had on 4 Carroll 2007. 5 Levinson 2003. Hans Maes 126 him when he was writing his Ph.D. And although twentieth century philosopher Nelson Goodman is no longer the central figure in aesthetics he once was, it is intriguing to see how his name still pops up in half of the conversations in this volume. Equally intriguing, I should say, are the passages where authors reveal how some of their ideas were not so much influenced but definitely anticipated by others. For instance, it turns out that one of Guyer's key insights about the relation between analysis and psychology in aesthetic theory can also be found in the work of a now largely forgotten female philosopher, Ethel Puffer. Walton, on his part, even admits to being beaten to the punch by a fictional character. Fourth, what authors do not write about can potentially be as revealing as what they do end up writing about. Hence in some of my conversations I have tried to address what might be considered blind spots in the author's oeuvre. With Korsmeyer that meant talking about the definition of art; with Danto and Levinson it meant talking about the aesthetics of nature; and with Walton I spoke about architecture and dance. Furthermore, the conversational format gave me a chance to query not just individual omissions, but also lacunae in the discipline as a whole. For instance, if you look at the leading aesthetics journals you will find many essays on beauty in art and nature, but very few that deal with the beauty of human beings (notwithstanding the fact that outside of academia the term 'aesthetics' is most commonly used to refer to cosmetics, beauty treatments, and bodybuilding). Why is that? Or why has so much been written about particular art forms, especially music, and virtually nothing about other art forms such as sculpture? And what about philosophical texts or philosophers of the past who have fallen into obscurity? As I put the question to Guyer, might there be any hidden gems out there just waiting to be rediscovered? You Talking to Me? 127 Fifth, collecting the answers of ten leading philosophers in one volume allows one to develop the sort of overview that can be hard to maintain given the constant stream of research articles. And that in turn can bring to light various unsuspected contrasts and convergences between these philosophers. Danto and Scruton, for example, could not be further apart in their appreciation of contemporary art (one considers Warhol's Brillo Boxes a work of genius, the other dismisses it as a corny joke). But it turns out they do share a strong scepticism regarding the academic professionalisation of philosophy and the relevance of science for aesthetics. Conversely, Robinson and Currie are both eager to forge closer links between scientific and philosophical investigations, but they are increasingly at odds, so it transpires, about the cognitive value of art and literature. Where possible I have asked authors to comment directly on some of the disagreements that emerged. So, I asked Scruton what he thinks about Danto's idea that Warhol's Brillo Boxes are the culmination of the history of art and I asked Robinson what she thinks about Currie's reasons for doubting that we learn anything significant from the novels she so admires. I also asked Robinson to comment on her disagreement with Korsmeyer regarding the notion of aesthetic disgust and her differences with Levinson regarding musical expressiveness. In gaining a sense of where these prominent figures stand on important issues, one also gets a better idea of the direction in which the discipline is headed. Take the question that is often assumed to be at the very heart of what analytic philosophy of art is about: the question of the definition of art. In reading these conversations it becomes abundantly clear that the question has lost much of its urgency and importance in recent years. Many of the philosophers I Hans Maes 128 spoke with simply declare to have no interest in the topic and even those who have written extensively about it in the past, like Levinson and Danto, exhibit an unmistakable weariness when the subject is broached. Questions around aesthetic and artistic value, by contrast, have become much more central now. And readers of this book will be able to track exactly how the battle lines are drawn in discussions about value (with pluralists, such as Carroll and Guyer, pitted against monistic theories of different stripes, including cognitivism, championed by Robinson and Freeland, and aestheticism, championed by Scruton). This brings us to the sixth and last advantage, namely that these conversations present an excellent occasion to reflect on the discipline of aesthetics itself-something for which the main research journals do not always allow space. What are the future challenges and opportunities for the discipline? Is there genuine progress in philosophy in general and in aesthetics in particular? (Most of my conversation partners believe that there is, though Korsmeyer and Freeland offer some caveats.) Does one need to study the history of aesthetics if one wants to do research in this area? Where do the analytic and continental approaches differ most and is there a possibility of mutual enrichment? (Almost everyone thinks the latter is the case, though there is also the acknowledgement that the divide may have widened in recent years.) How important is style in philosophy and does writing about aesthetics itself need to be aesthetically rewarding? Can aesthetics be relevant for art practice? (Carroll and Danto believe so, but Levinson and Guyer are not so sure.) How, if at all, can aesthetics benefit from current scientific research? How promising are emerging subdisciplines such as experimental aesthetics and everyday aesthetics? You Talking to Me? 129 The answers to these questions, and to the other questions I raise, will help to paint a picture of the state of aesthetics today. And that picture, I would like to add in conclusion, is not at all a grim one. In fact, the opposite is true. The field is thriving and expanding, constantly producing new theories and charting unexplored territory: from the culinary arts to video games, from musical chills to 3D cinema, from experimental aesthetics to aesthetic disgust. On the one hand, as you would expect from a flourishing field of study, research is becoming more and more specialised with increasingly sophisticated answers to the most fundamental questions as well as a growing body of work focusing on more and more specific topics. On the other hand, as I hope will be evident from this forthcoming collection, all this research activity has not made aesthetics into an esoteric or exclusive field of study, accessible only to a small elite of experts and isolated from other disciplines or from everyday concerns. To the contrary: aesthetics was and is a perfect 'hub field', as one of my conversation partners rightly pointed out. That is to say, it's a central area from which you can do almost any kind of research in philosophy and which maintains close ties with cognate disciplines such as musicology, film theory, art history, psychology, and narratology. Moreover, since any credible philosophy of art and aesthetics must take its cues from our everyday engagement with aesthetic phenomena and works of art, esoteric tendencies have little chance to develop. So, if 'Conversations on Art and Aesthetics' can help to make our prospering and accessible branch of philosophy even more appealing to a wider audience, whilst also making a modest contribution to its research culture, I shall consider my time well spent. Postscript: There is one more advantage to this sort of project that I should mention: as early career philosophers know all too well, writing a philosophy dissertation or paper can sometimes be a lonely affair. The inner dialogue that we constantly engage in when we Hans Maes 130 consider potential objections and try to think of smart replies sometimes reminds me of the troubled and isolated Travis Bickle character in 'Taxi Driver' ("You talking to me? Well, I'm the only one here") From that perspective, too, having more conversations with actual people might not be a bad thing. email@example.com ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hans Maes is Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent. He is the author of Conversations on Art and Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2017) and editor of the essay collections Art and Pornography (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Pornographic Art and The Aesthetics of Pornography (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). References Berlin, Isaiah. (1953). The Hedgehog and the Fox. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Carroll, Noël. (2007). Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor, and Bodily Coping. Malden, MA: Blackwell-Wiley. Maes, Hans. (2017). Conversations on Art and Aesthetics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Levinson, Jerrold. (2003). "Sexual Perversity". Monist 86(1), 30-54. -. (1980). "What a Musical Work Is". Journal of Philosophy 77(1), pp. 5-28. -. (1979). "Defining Art Historically". British Journal of Aesthetics 19(3), pp. 232-250.


Professional Baseball and Performance-Enhancing Drugs

Philosophy

This paper analyzes the ethics of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball from the perspective of ethical theories: Kantianism, libertarianism, and utilitarianism. It argues that none of these theories can explain why performance-enhancing drugs should be prohibited. The paper argues that virtue ethics is the best moral framework for understanding the ethical problem of performance-enhancing drugs and why their use should be prohibited.

Philosophy Now ● May/June 2014 A s a life-long fan and a former school player of baseball, my view on performance-enhancing drugs is not neutral: I think they are a scourge on the sport. As a philosopher who teaches ethics to university students preparing for professional careers, I also think performance-enhancing drugs are a serious ethical problem in the arena of professional sport. While most baseball fans agree that the use of performance-enhancing drugs should be banned from the sport, and many even think that players caught using them should be banned too, the philosophical question is, why should that be so? This question may be analyzed from the perspectives of various ethical theories – for example, Kantianism, libertarianism, and utilitarianism. However, I will argue that none of these theories can tell us why performance-enhancing drug use should be banned, and that getting to the heart of the matter requires recourse to the ancient theory of virtue ethics. Kantian Objections The most common objection to the use of performanceenhancing drugs in professional sport is that this is, basically, cheating – which implies a theft of opportunity from other players of the sport. When one player gains benefits – monetary compensation, fan appreciation, seasonal honors, statistical records, etc – by using performance-enhancing drugs, he does so by shouldering a lesser burden than players who do not use drugs. Starting with the same talent, non-drug-using players have to work harder and longer than drug-using players to achieve the same gains. Thus, drug-using players give themselves an unfair advantage. Because there are limited opportunities to gain the benefits available from a sport, they are effectively garnering added benefits for themselves at the expense of the other players' opportunities to gain those same benefits. Therefore, to use performance-enhancing drugs is not simply to break the rules, but to steal from those players who do follow the rules. The objection that performance-enhancing drug use creates an unfair playing field can be readily understood from the perspective of Immanuel Kant's moral theory. The foundational principle of Kantian ethics is the Categorical Imperative: "Act only on that maxim that you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785). In effect, the Categorical Imperative judges as morally wrong any attempt to make oneself an exception to the rule guiding one's actions (or, equivalently, to make a separate rule for oneself). Kant's argument is that only rules (maxims) that can be consistently 'universalized' respect each moral agent as 'an end in him(or her)self'. To make oneself an exception to the rule is to make others merely a means to one's ends, which to Kant is fundamentally morally wrong. What is the performance-enhancing drug-using player's maxim? He would seem to be operating with a maxim such as this: If I can gain advantages over other players by using performance-enhancing drugs, then I will use performance-enhancing drugs. Kantian theory would now have the player ask: How would things be if I were to will my maxim to be a universal law? – meaning, What if the rule I've made for myself were to become the rule for all players? If my maxim were made the rule for all players, then all players who could gain advantages by using performance-enhancing drugs would use performance-enhancing drugs. In that case, however, the advantage I've gained for myself by using drugs would be negated; for the advantage to me of using the drugs is premised on others not using those drugs – that is, my advantage is premised on my drug use being an exception to the rule. So my maxim, when universalized, defeats the purpose for which I willed it, rendering the will behind my maxim self-contradictory, and so to Kant intrinsically immoral. In order for my maxim to achieve the purpose for which I willed it, there would have to be two rules, one for myself (permitting my performance-enhancing drug use) and another for all other players (prohibiting their performance-enhancing drug use). But the other players, if informed, would never rationally consent to this dual rule that works to their own disadvantage. And to impose a dual rule that advantaged me at the expense of all other players without Professional Baseball & Performance-Enhancing Drugs Darrin Belousek considers different ethical perspectives on drugs in sport. On May 7th, 2009, Manny Ramirez was suspended 50 games for testing positive for performance enhancing drugs during his time with the Los Angeles Dodgers. their informed consent would in effect be to use the uninformed players as a mere means to my ends, a cardinal sin for Kantians. The only scenario that conforms to Kant's Categorical Imperative is one rule for all players. However, this 'fairness' objection applies only once we have established a rule prohibiting performance-enhancing drug use. On Kantian ethics, for all we have said so far, we could equally have a universal rule allowing the use of performanceenhancing drugs for all. A maxim permitting one player to use performance-enhancing drugs could be universalized to all players. While there is a contradiction in a rule permitting one player to use performance-enhancing drug if other players are prohibited from such use, there would no contradiction in a maxim permitting all players to use performance-enhancing drugs. To put it another way, as long as all players in the game follow the same rule, then whether that rule permits performance-enhancing drug use or prohibits it, it is fair either way. This begs the question: Why ban performance-enhancing drug use from the sport in the first place? – prompting the further question of whether there is a Kantian objection to performance-enhancing drug use per se. Here a Kantian might ask whether permitting performanceenhancing drug use would provide others the opportunity to manipulate a player's autonomy, or whether by a player's own drug use he would subvert himself as an autonomous agent. So, first: might a rule permitting the use of performanceenhancing drugs undermine a player's autonomy by allowing others to manipulate him as a means to their ends? Were performance-enhancing drug use permitted, players who would otherwise choose not to use performance-enhancing drugs could be coerced by win-conscious managers or revenue-hungry owners to use the drugs, or else get benched or traded. To safeguard players' autonomy, therefore, any rule permitting performance-enhancing drug use would have to stipulate that each player's contract must have a clause either allowing the player to freely opt out of team-mandated performance-enhancing drug use, or granting a dissenting player free-agent status should a team mandate performance-enhancing drug use. Second: Would performance-enhancing drug use, even freely undertaken, subvert the player as an autonomous agent? In other words, would a player, by using performance-enhancing drugs, be using himself as a mere means to an end? Unless performance-enhancing drug use would have the effect of compromising a player's autonomy by undermining his ability to rationally choose in his own best interests, it does not seem that there is a Categorical Imperative-based objection. Now, there is empirical evidence that some abusers of anabolic steroids become addicted, continuing their drug use despite negative effects on their physical health and social relations, and exhibiting symptoms of physical withdrawal and emotional disturbance when drug use is discontinued, including prolonged depression, even attempted suicide in some cases. Even so, this evidence would constitute a reason not for a blanket ban on performance-enhancing drug use, but for requiring players to moderate their drug use, and for team physicians to monitor drug-using players in order to prevent addiction, and so preserve their autonomy. So Kantian ethics cannot give us a reason to ban performance-enhancing drugs outright. The Liberty View Unqualified libertarian ethics would unequivocally favor permitting performance-enhancing drug use, without any regulations or restrictions. According to libertarian ethics, such as that espoused by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859), the individual is by nature sole owner of his own body; and each person's natural right of selfownership entails the liberty of each person to do with their own body as they want, even to their own harm, as long as this stops short of harming others. Respecting the individual's right of selfownership requires allowing the maximum liberty for each person compatible with an equal liberty for others. So from the libertarian perspective, banning performance-enhancing drug use, or even requiring drug use to be moderated or monitored, would infringe individual liberty and thus violate self-ownership. Respecting each player's natural right of self-ownership, therefore, requires that each player be free to choose for himself whether to use performance-enhancing drugs or not. As long as no player is forced or coerced to use (or not use) performanceenhancing drugs, and as long as no fraud is committed in using performance-enhancing drug (say, by dishonesty in contract negotiations), then no one's liberty would be infringed and everyone's natural right of self-ownership would be respected. Whether or not performance-enhancing drug use by players would increase the profits of owners, enhance the enjoyment of fans, promote the good of the game, or even benefit the players themselves, are matters of moral indifference to libertarian theory. Players should be free to pursue those ends, or free to ignore those ends, for it is freedom of choice that promotes what ultimately matters on this theory – self-ownership. The Utility Argument Utilitarian theory decides right from wrong based not on the freedom of the agent, but on the net pleasure and pain gained as a result of each action. The general principle of utilitarian theory, as expounded for example by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), is the greatest happiness (or benefit) principle: Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number, where happiness is the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. This utility principle says we can evaluate the morality of an action by summing up the effects of the action for good or bad, taking into account all those affected by the action. The net result of this sum is the utility of the action, which will be positive if the action generates a balance of pleasure over pain, or negative if the action generates a balance of pain over pleasure. The aim of morality is to maximize utility or happiness – pleasure and the absence of pain – by choosing from among the available options whatever course of action has the greatest utility. The utility principle can also be used to evaluate rules. Applied to the present question, utilitarianism would have us calculate the utility of a rule permitting performance-enhancing drug use, and compare that to the utility of a rule prohibiting performance-enhancing drug use. This calculation of comparative utility would need to consider various factors from the perspectives of every group affected. After summing up all the benefits and subtracting all the costs, the right rule is the one having the greatest utility in the long run. So players using perMay/June 2014 ● Philosophy Now 13 14 Philosophy Now ● May/June 2014 2012 formance-enhancing drugs could benefit in the short-term from statistics-inflating performances and financially-inflated contracts, but in the long run users could experience negative effects on for example their physical or emotional health. Their use of performance-enhancing drugs could increase excitement for fans through homerun races and the like, but it could in the long term also deflate interest as fans come to expect all players to turn in stellar performances. Performance-enhancing drug use could increase revenues from ticket sales for owners, since stellar performances excite fans; but it could also become difficult to sell high-priced tickets to disillusioned fans. So far, we have reached the following conclusions: Kantianism would either prohibit the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport, or permit their use with regulations and restrictions. Libertarianism would permit unregulated, unrestricted performance-enhancing drug use under conditions of free competition. And utilitarianism might permit or prohibit performance-enhancing drug use, depending on which rule would generate greater utility in the long run, which is unclear. These ethics theories, then, leave us unable to make a sure and substantive argument against performance-enhancing drug use in baseball and other sports. To make sense of why performanceenhancing drug use should be banned from the game, therefore, I suggest that we look to virtue ethics. A Virtue Perspective Deeper than reasons of fairness, liberty, or utility, are reasons of virtue. Virtue ethics shifts our attention from the question of which actions or rules are right (What should we do?) to the question of which qualities of character are best (What kind of people should we be?). From a virtue ethics perspective, as promoted by Aristotle (384-322 BC) for instance, good character guides right action: the ethical aim is to form oneself as a good person, and a well-formed person both knows how to act rightly and will habitually choose to do so. This theory says that it is the deliberate practice of various activities that forms the habits of character, for better or for worse. Accordingly, it is crucial to choose and nurture appropriate practices within every domain of human activity, in order to cultivate a virtuous character. When considering which practices we should adopt within a particular domain of human activity, virtue ethics would have us ask two questions: First, would adopting a certain practice foster habits that are formative of good character, and thus improve us as human beings, or would it tend to form bad character, and so worsen us? Second, would adopting a certain practice cultivate the standards of excellence specific to that activity, thereby promoting the good intrinsic to that activity, or would it corrupt those standards, and thus damage the good of the activity? Using these questions as leverage points, let me offer three interlocking arguments against permitting performance-enhancing drug use in professional baseball, or indeed, in any sport. First, players who take performance-enhancing drugs deceive others. Whether from the vantage point of the stadium seats or the dugout bench, a drug-assisted performance is virtually indistinguishable from an authentic, non-drug-augmented one. Lacking insider knowledge of whether this or that player has been working out in the clubhouse or getting injections at a drug clinic, fans and players are unable to tell the real players from the fakes. It all looks the same. This indistinguishability is not incidental: succeeding at the game in the eyes of both fans and other players by means of performance-enhancing drugs depends on the illusion of authenticity. The deception is deliberate. To permit performance-enhancing drug use in the game would thus foster the perverse habit of deception among drugusing players. Doping promotes duping. Second, and following on from this argument, drug use by some players casts suspicion on all players. Unless there are both regular and rigorous drug testing and serious penalties to weed out all the users, fans and players have no way of knowing which players are pumping iron and which are popping pills. So when a player is caught using them it undermines trust in all players. Thus, when a batter hits a homerun ball that sails clear out of the ballpark, everyone watching is left to wonder whether the batter has been taking hits himself. As a result, fans and players begin to suspect all pre-eminent players of having ill-gotten gains, which is a disservice to those players who succeed by authentic means. Instead of being deservedly honored, players who succeed by their virtue then suffer the same bad reputation as players who succeed by vice. To permit performance-enhancing drug use in the game would thus foster among both players and fans the perverse habit of dishonoring the deserving. Third, performance-enhancing drug use not only corrupts the character of both players and fans, it also corrupts the standards of excellence of the game, in two inter-related ways. When performance-enhancing drug use is permitted, we reward performances unworthy of honor, and compromise our ability to compare performances of today with performances from the past. This strikes at the heart of baseball as a tradition – the handing down of athletic practices that require the excellence of practitioners as the proper means of success in the game, and whose excellent performance promotes the intrinsic good of the game. Excellence In Sport Baseball, I was taught by my school coaches, is a microcosm of life. That is true in many ways, but especially one in particular. There are many activities and goals one can pursue in life, but every one of them is formative of character, for better or worse. It is therefore imperative to choose activities wisely, and perform every chosen activity well. Choosing the wrong activities, or poorly performing the right activities, will tend to produce malformed character. The "function" befitting "a good human" Aristotle thus maintained in his Nicomachean Ethics, is the "noble performance" of the right activities "with the appropriate excellence." Likewise, while sports differ from each other in various respects, each sport has a telos or end-goal intrinsic to the sport, and toward which all activity in that sport, when played properly, aims – excellence in performance. We might thus paraphrase Aristotle and say: "the function befitting a good player is the noble performance of their sport with the appropriate excellence." What about victory? Don't the players of any sport aim to win? Surely, players of any sport do desire victory. But, of course, not all players can win every contest. And yet, all players in every contest can achieve excellence in the sport, even without victory: each player can play the sport well whether she wins or not. Winning, after all, depends partly on chance factors external to one's performance and beyond one's control (wind gusts, odd hops, umpire calls, etc). Excellence, by contrast, belongs to a player's performance itself: the excellence of a performance is an intrinsic good to which victory cannot add and from which defeat cannot subtract. While players may seek the glory of victory, therefore, the end-goal of the sport itself is not victory over opponents but excellence in performance. Moreover, were players to take the pleasure of victory and the pain of defeat as the criterion of action, it might tempt one to compromise the intrinsic good of the sport (excellence) in order to achieve the extrinsic goal (victory). Authentic excellence in athletic performance is thus made evident not by the achievement of victory but by the display of virtue. The virtues of a good player are those strengths of physical and mental character honed through disciplined practice which enable a player to achieve excellence in the sport. And it is the authentic achievement of that goal of excellence in performance that is the proper criterion for judging which players are worthy recipients of the honors of the sport. Honor properly rewards virtue-in-victory, excellence-in-success, not victory or success without virtue or excellence. What, then, is the criterion of excellence? How do we know virtue when we see it? Baseball, like any sport, is not geometry. Plato believed that there is an Ideal Circle and an Ideal Triangle, each existing abstractly in a timeless reality, by which standards we can know the degree of excellence (let's call it) of the circle-ness or triangle-ness of concrete geometrical figures. But even if Plato is correct about geometry, for baseball there is no timeless ideal of the perfect performance against which to measure excellence in player achievement. There are only the magnificent plays and remarkable seasons of years past by which to measure the performances of today's players and inspire those of tomorrow. In my mind, the single season homerun record (for a 162game season) belongs to Roger Maris, whose 1961 performance set a mark that has not been surpassed through what I understand to be the proper playing of the game. Each of the recent players who bested Maris's 61 single season homeruns – Sammy Sosa (66 in 1998), Mark McGwire (70 in 1998), and Barry Bonds (73 in 2001) – have been implicated in performance-enhancing drug-taking: Sosa by the New York Times on June 16th, 2009, and by not yet being elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame; McGwire by admitting he had taken steroids; and Bonds through charges related to giving an evasive answer to a jury. The same potential for reevaluation applies to Hank Aaron's authentic career record of 755 homeruns, now statistically surpassed by Bonds' score of 762. The later performances would be compromised in authenticity if they were achieved not only by strength of virtue acquired through disciplined practice but also by bulk of muscle acquired through pills and needles. The point here is not only that these players may have stolen opportunities for setting records from other players (the fairness objection); but also, and even more pertinently, that their possibly inauthentic performances may simply be unworthy of the honors of the sport, in that they may have achieved victory without virtue, success without excellence. By not distinguishing between authentic performances and performance-enhancing drug-assisted performances, we not only reward performances unworthy of the honors of the sport, we also compromise our ability to define excellence in the sport by comparing performances with Maris's and Aaron's historic marks, or any other mark. Recognizing recent performanceenhancing drug-assisted performances as the standards for any sport effectively substitutes the extrinsic goal of success for the intrinsic good of excellence as the aim of the sport – and thus substitutes designer pharmaceuticals for disciplined practice as the honored means of success in that sport. That in turn justifies pursuit of success by still other means that undermine the pursuit of excellence. Ironically, by recognizing performanceenhancing drug-assisted homerun totals as the official records, we tacitly acknowledge that such performances are just another stop along the endless road of success by any means available. To permit performance-enhancing drug use and recognize performance-enhancing drug-assisted records, then, would reward victory without virtue, dissociate success from excellence, and thereby frustrate the end-goal befitting the nature of the sport: excellence in performance. It would thus foster corruption of the sport itself – it would end the sport by destroying the sport's end. Where other ethical theories fail to clearly explain why we should ban performance-enhancing drugs from sport, virtue ethics therefore provides the perspective needed to see performance-enhancing drug use for what it truly is in relation to both participants in the sport and for the sport itself – a form of corruption. © DARRIN SNYDER BELOUSEK 2014 Darrin Snyder Belousek teaches philosophy and religion at Ohio Northern University and Bluffton University. His scholarly writing on the ethical dimension of the financial crisis was honored with the Templeton Enterprise Award in Humane Economics in 2010. May/June 2014 ● Philosophy Now 15 Starting pitcher Roger Clemens, accused of using anabolic steroids, denied it under oath before Congress. He was prosecuted for perjury but found not guilty.


Lacan and the Benedictines

Philosophy

In this paper the author considers, by a careful reading of the Regula Benedicti (RB) and its sources, the claim by Michel de Certeau that some of Lacanâs ideas are based on Benedictine monasticism. As well as the four concepts that de Certeau identifies (analyst as monk; master; school; and work-as-speech) the author also considers whether four additional notions (desire; the uniqueness of the subject; nothingness; and empty speech)âthe latter two of which may have been mediated to Lacan by Heideggerâwhich come from the Regula Benedicti.

Retrieved from: The European Journal of Psychoanalysis Apr 16, 2023 https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/lacan-and-the-benedictines-3/ John Gale Lacan and the Benedictines Summary: In this paper the author considers, by a careful reading of the Regula Benedicti (RB) and its sources, the claim by Michel de Certeau that some of Lacan's ideas are based on Benedictine monasticism. As well as the four concepts that de Certeau identifies (analyst as monk; master; school; and work-as-speech) the author also considers whether four additional notions (desire; the uniqueness of the subject; nothingness; and empty speech)-the latter two of which may have been mediated to Lacan by Heidegger-which come from the Regula Benedicti. It is well known that Jacques Lacan's brother, Marc-Marie (François in religion) [1908-1994], was a monk at the Benedictine abbey of Hautecombe. But were Lacan's psychoanalytic ideas in any way influenced by Benedictine monasticism? Michel de Certeau has suggested that they were (de Certeau 2006). De Certeau, one of three Jesuits[1] who together with Lacan founded in 1964 the École Freudienne, had an in-depth knowledge of Freud's works which he had read in the original German and remained an active member of the Lacanian circle throughout his life, often lecturing and writing on the intersecting discourses of mysticism and psychoanalysis[2] (Ahearne 1995). These credentials alone mean that de Certeau's suggestion is worth investigating and that is the aim of this paper. Introduction: Lacan and Catholicism According to Marc-Marie, although Lacan had stopped hearing mass when he started his medical studies, he continued to believe in God and to be deeply immersed in Catholic culture (Roazen 1996) This seems to be confirmed by the fact that in 1939 when he married Marie-Louise Blondin. The wedding took place in Paris at the church of S François de Sales, 17 rue Ampère, in the 17th arrondissement. Bernard Laure-the inspirational first abbot of the Solesmes community at Hautecombe-officiated at the ceremony. In due course Lacan had his children baptised. At Easter 1953, in the midst of the difficulties at the Société psychanalytique de Paris he wrote a letter to his brother in which he claimed that his teaching belonged to the Christian tradition. He asserted that in this second half of the twentieth century everything would depend on how men dealt with one another, and this perhaps not only on the secular plane. Psychology, he added, occupied a "super-eminent" position, yet the one idea of all its practitioners was to fall away from that height and join in some great and general degradation. He himself was almost alone, he concluded, in propounding a doctrine that might at least enable the movement as a whole to preserve its roots in a great tradition, a tradition in which man could not be reduced to the status of a mere object. Roudinesco 1997: 205 In the following September Lacan wrote again to his brother 'restating the importance he attached to religion' (Roudinesco 1997: 205) and asking if he could arrange a private audience for him with Pius XII in order to talk to him about the future of psychoanalysis within the Church and 'do homage to our common father' while in Rome. In fact, so strong was his wish for a private audience that he also approached the French embassy to see if they could arrange it for him. Lacan was probably aware that his philosophically articulated work was likely to appeal to the growing number of priests who wanted to become analysts and to other Catholics who in general had difficulty accepting Freud (Roudinesco 1997). Shortly before this Pius XII had given three addresses in which he spelt out the Church's view on psychoanalysis. The Vatican at that time was under the vehemently anti-psychoanalytic influence of Cardinal Ottaviani and Agostino Gemelli (Colombo 2003) yet taken together, we can see in these three papal addresses a tentative shift toward a more open attitude to psychoanalysis (Roudinesco 1994). The first address was delivered to surgeons on 14th September 1952 at the First International Congress on the Histopathology of the Nervous System; the second on 13th April 1953 at the Fifth International Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology; and the third two days later at the International Catholic Congress on Psychiatry, Analytic Psychotherapy and Child-Guidance. The latter event was one of a series-the first having been held in 1949 at the Benedictine abbey of Bec Hellouin in Normandy-established by Maryse Choisy, the founder of the journal Psyché (Vandermeersch 2000)[3]. In the end neither Marc-Marie nor the embassy were able to arrange a private audience with the Pope and the best Lacan could manage was to attend a public audience at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the pope. He went there with Maryse Choisy and Serge Leclaire. Because Lacan was simultaneously wooing the Communist Party, Roudinesco concludes that Lacan's approach to the Church was merely an opportunistic attempt to gain powerful supporters[4]. But his brother saw it differently and was convinced that Lacan had been re-converted to Christianity and embraced once again the values of Catholic spirituality. This view is given added credibility by two oral documents which were published for the first time in 2005-the Discourse to Catholics (9 th and 10 th March 1960) and The Triumph of Religion (29 th October 1974). The latter comes from a press conference held in Rome at the French Cultural Centre. Here Lacan insists that 'there is one true religion and that is the Christian religion' and that 'the true religion is the Roman one' (Lacan 2013: 66, italics original) Lacan's monastic brotherhood According to his biographer, Jacques Lacan and his brother were brought up in a family united by religion and steeped in clericalism (Roudinesco 1997). Their mother, Emilie Baudry-Lacan, was a devout Catholic and an important influence on both her children. They were educated at the fashionable Collège Stanislas on the rue Notre Dame des Champs, a private school founded in 1804 by Père Claude Liautard. It was a school run by the Jesuits and was in vogue with upper middle class Catholics[5]. Here Lacan is said to have excelled, among other things, in religious studies (Roudinesco 1997). Marc-Marie had felt called to the priesthood from an early age and made the decision to become a monk in 1926 while reading the Rule of St Benedict (RB) but was dissuaded by his brother (Roudinesco 1997). His mother however supported his decision and Marc-Marie finally entered the monastery of Sainte Marie Madeleine, Hautecombe in 1929[6] (Roazen 1996). It seems likely that the edition of RB that Marc-Marie read-and that given their closeness Lacan himself may well have read-was one that had been published the year before by Librairie Dardel in Chambéry. It was the work of Bernard Laure and contained the Latin text of RB with a French translation by Prosper Guéranger, the founder of Solesmes, followed by Dom Laure's commentary[7]. There were some photographs, including one of Hautecombe and additional information for oblates (Laure 1925). Marc-Marie was clothed on 14th January 1930. He made his solemn profession on the 8th September 1934, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, studied philosophy at the Institut Catholique in Paris and was ordained a priest four years later on 1st May 1935[8]. For the rest of his life Marc-Marie published articles and contributed to books on theology and sacred scripture[9]. Lacan and his brother were always very close, read everything the other wrote and were said to be 'intimately acquainted with one another's work' (Roazen 1996: 326). Although their long correspondence remains unpublished (Roudinesco 2011), in an interview with Paul Roazen in 1994 Marc-Marie recalled that in 1922 when Jacques was 21 and he 14, they both decided that the aim of their life was to be the same (Roazen 1996). Namely, the search for truth (Sédat 2010). In 1932 Lacan dedicated his doctoral thesis to his brother. The dedication read 'To the Reverend Father Marc-François Lacan, my brother in religion (en religion)' and was published in the same year by Le François, Paris (de Certeau 2006: 59). While being sure that Lacan knew exactly what he was saying, de Certeau points out how strange it was to refer to MarcMarie as his brother 'en religion', an expression usually only ever used by one religious of another and not of a sibling (de Certeau 1987: 188). Apparently everyone had been surprised by the dedication, especially the surrealists with whom Lacan had been involved and in the second edition of his thesis, published by Seuil in 1975, Lacan changed the dedication to read 'To my brother, the Reverend Father Marc-François Lacan, Benedictine of the Congregation of France' (de Certeau 2006: 242 n.47). De Certeau considered that the original dedication points to some kind of shared Benedictine brotherhood, a precise identification, which Lacan felt existed between him and his brother (de Certeau 2006)[10]. The desert, the monk and solitude According to Roazen Lacan thought of the psychoanalyst as a 'solitary being or a monk who in past times ventured into the desert' (Roazen 1996: 328). De Certeau echoes this motif in relation to Lacan's thought. In Lacan's circle, the "monk" (monos) and the ascetic of speech which he upholds (with humour, even with a ferocious irony found in monastic speech patterns)[11], the founder of a "congregation"[12] in a desert labelled as "worldly," all gather together the practitioners of a desire whose truth can liberate those alienated from their identity. Even the militancy of the spiritual warriors of other times (at war with which demons?)[13] and even their rebellious freedom from public authorities are indices of the Freudian School of Paris. De Certeau 2006: 59 In the Christian monasticism of Late Antiquity, which forms the backdrop for RB, the desert (er?mos) was already a literary representation, one informed with biblical resonances (in cuius regni tabernaculo si volumus habitare) (RB Prol. 22). That is to say, the desert was not so much a matter of geography but a trope for a certain kind of distancing and withdrawal from social relationships, particularly marriage (Goehring 1993). The political isolation of anach?r?sis (disengagement), specifically the bodily solitude of celibacy (Guillaumont 1972), is signified in the confusing array of Greeks words used for monk-e.g. monachos and its Syriac equivalent ???d?y? (Gribomont 1955), apotaktikos, anach?r?t?s, koinobi?t?s (Goehring 1992) and monazontes (Lambert 1924). This proliferation of terms has proved a minefield for scholars over the last fifty years. The arguments have been usefully summarised by Judge (1977) and Choat (2002). We find a parallel development of terminology in relation to er?mos (desert) in which political and theological agendas are apparent[14]. The 'myth of the desert', to use Goehring's expression (2007:400) as a figurative description of monastic seclusion with its rupture of familial ties, was inspired, in part at least, by what was thought to be its proximity to the demonic (Guillaumont 1975). There are two closely related aspects of this association that have particular relevance for our inquiry. Firstly, the role and function of the imaginary father (abba; Coptic apa), idealised and politicised as a holy man and healer (Bieler 1967; and Brown 1971); and secondly, the re-introduction of unconscious elements that were excluded in the imaginary father. The demons function to generate compulsive thoughts (logismoi)[15], hallucinations[16] and other psychic material. Thus we find in Athanasius's Vita Antonii (Bartelink 1994) Antony of Egypt, the idealised or imaginary first monk, 'grappling with his own personality' through a form of introspection that bears some resemblance to the inward turn of psychoanalysis (Brown 1978: 89). In fact, Anthony's biographer sums up the saint's conversion to monastic life simply by saying that he began to pay attention to himself (prosech?n heaut?) (Bartelink 1994: 136). It was precisely this monastic attentiveness ( prosoch?) that Foucault (2012), following Pierre Hadot (1987), identified as one of the psychoanalytic topographies in the tradition of spiritual exercises.[17] The master and the authority of discourse Most commentators suggest that Lacan's notion of the master (maître) comes from Alexandre Kojève's legendary lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind which he delivered at the École Pratiques des Hautes Études between 1933 and 1939. These lectures had a formative influence on a number of intellectuals including Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean Hyppolite and Georges Bataille as well as on Lacan[18]. However, de Certeau also sees in Lacan's concept of the master, 'according to the rules which characterize spiritual guidance', Benedictine features particularly in relation to the way in which 'the abbas...holds the authority of discourse' (de Certeau 2006: 59). RB in explicitly contrasting the life styles of four different kinds of monks, refers to one kind as sarabaites. The term is found in Cassian (Conl. 18.7) and may correspond to Jerome's remnuoth (Ep. 22: 34; cf. Horn 1994)[19]. Both are pejorative terms and could derive from the Coptic but this is by no means certain[20]. Sarabaitae are described as taeterrimum (wretched) because they do not recognise the leadership and authority of the seniores, and have not learnt through the experience of living under a rule[21] ( experientia magistro) (RB 1.6). The prologue to the RB begins with an instruction to listen to the praecepta magistri, the teachings of the master (RB Prol.1; cf. also 3.6; 5.9 and 6.6). This may be a reference to the earlier Regula Magistri as the majority of the prologue is taken from that source[22] and while magister (master) is an important term in the Regula Magistri where it is almost the equivalent of Christ or God-suggesting that the rule is the result of divine inspiration-it is not Benedict's preferred expression. Benedict is more subtle and suggests that the abbot holds a position somewhere between that of a master, whom he characterises as stern (dirum magistri) someone prone to scold his disciples (corripiat), and a tender and affectionate father ( pium patris), though he seems reluctant to call the monks filii, sons (RB Prol.1; 2.24, 25). Certainly, the dialectic of master and disciple as we find it in the RB is one of teaching and listening. For Benedict, disciples keep silent (tacere) and listen (audire), while the master is expected to teach (docere) a doctrine characterised by a certain wisdom (sapientiae doctrinam) (RB 6.6; 2.4; 64.2). In this sense de Certeau is surely right that the abbot in the Benedictine tradition does indeed hold 'l'autorité du discours' (de Certeau 1987: 188). However, like the spiritual masters we read about in the numerous collections of Apophthegmata, Benedict's abbot does not just teach verbally. In fact, his doctrine must be conveyed more by what he does than by what he says (factis amplius quam verbis) (RB 2.12). All the titles used to describe the abbatial metaphor in RB-magister (master RB 2: 24; 3: 6), doctor (teacher RB 5: 6), pastor (shepherd – RB 2: 7, 32, 39; 27: 8; 63: 2), pater (father RB 2:24; 33:5)-are also used by biblical authors to describe God or Christ. This suggests that the abbot does not merely perform a symbolic function-as he does, for example, in giving the monk a new name and inscribing him into the law (lege divina RB 64: 9), through his teaching ( doctrina RB 2: 6)-but also an imaginary one. According to Saroglou (1997), that the spiritual father (pater spiritualis RB 49: 9) is a metaphor is made explicit in the way the abba, as we encounter him in the literature of primitive monasticism, always refers beyond himself to a divine paternity. This is made explicit in RB where we are told the abbot 'is believed to hold the place of Christ in the monastery' (Christi enim agere vices in monasterio creditur RB 2: 2). The abbot teaches not by repeating a set of abstract doctrines but by interpreting biblical texts, in the light of monastic tradition, adapting and varying his approach to each subject (RB 2.23). Indeed, the ability to understand 'the precise individual physiognomy' of the disciple is one of the characteristic qualities that RB inherits from the tradition of the desert abbas (Kardong 1996: 67). Work, school and speech De Certeau sees in the theme of the opus Dei (the work of God) as we find it in RB a concept of work as speech-'la définition d'un "travail" qui est essentiellement "parole"' (de Certeau 1987: 188)-which parallels some aspects of Lacan's ideas on speech in psychoanalytic discourse. In Lacan's lexicon, psychoanalysis represents an 'ascetic of speech' (Lacan 1988: 126) in its resistances as well as in its discourse in which listening and silence necessarily interact. For the analyst, this also amounts to a form of discipline in speech which is not without its parallels in Benedict (e.g. RB 7.56). De Certeau also sees this ascetic of speech mirrored in the notion that literature is an exercise (lectio). In Basil opus Dei refers simply to monastic life (Hausherr 1947) but Benedict only ever uses it to refer to the liturgy. However, although a large section of RB is devoted to liturgical arrangements (chapters 8 to 20), the only phrase in that section which suggests the motif of work-as-speech appears in the title of chapter 16 (qualiter divina opera per diem agantur). This may be because RB integrates early and later traditions in relation to the liturgy. Liturgical speech in RB amounts to a meditative recitation of the psalms and canticles, and listening to the bible and patristic commentaries being read aloud. Here Benedict repeats earlier monastic practice in which the repetition and committing of biblical texts to memory flowed over from formal psalmody to create a climate of continual, almost unconscious, reflection. The work (opus) is not what the monk does in the liturgy (reciting the psalms) but what is done in the monk by God as he opens his mind attentively to the text (RB 48.13). This is fundamentally a 'work' through which the monk passes. A process of which he is largely unaware because it is unconscious. This comes quite close to Freud's notion of Durcharbeiten. Meditation[23] is perhaps the key concept here for it links psalmody- opus ( Dei) as speech-with private reading (legere) as opposed to liturgical reading of scripture (RB Prol. 9; 48.1). Meditation was equated with gnosis (Chadwick 1950) and was seen as the indispensable background to contemplation ( the?ria). This idea was inherited from Stoicism (Roques 1953) where the exercise of reading was seen to provide nourishment for meditation because of the unique change in perspective and transformation in thinking that reading can bring about (Hadot 1987). As forms of meditation, opus Dei and lectio divina could be seen to intersect with psychoanalysis, which Lacan described as '[a form of] contemplation...the ideal and unique subject of theoria' (Lacan 1991: 222-3). When he founded the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP) Lacan seems to have chosen the term école (school) rather than association or society for specific reasons. Evans says this was in order to emphasise the fact that EFP was a means of psychoanalytic training or formation 'centred around a doctrine' and that this would be very different from either the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP) from which he had resigned, or from the International Psycho-Analytical Association (IPA) which he considered had become like a church. Quite how Lacan thought the IPA had come to resemble a church is hard to know except that he thought it dominated by a hierarchy of important people (Evans 1996). According to de Certeau, the position that the student occupies in the psychoanalytic école demands a certain 'ascetic of speech' with its double connotation of withholding and training (de Certeau 2006: 59). It is a position characterised by what Lacan calls 'a long subjective ascesis' (Lacan 1984: 85). Presumably this simply refers to the student's own analysis. Although of obscure origin the Greek word ask?sis (ascesis) by Plato's time had come to mean training, particularly physical training that involved a struggle (Lampe 1961). But during the first centuries of our era the term came to be synonymous with the spiritual training of monastic life (Leipoldt 1961) and it is hard not to hear a monastic resonance in Lacan's choice of words (Olphe-Galliard 1937). However, in RB although the monastery is described as a school (schola) this is not in contradistinction to the local church. On the contrary, the two figures, church and school, run parallel with one another specifically in relation to the master-disciple dialectic. For Benedict the abbot, as the bishop, is described as a shepherd (Latin, pastor ). Both bring the institutions of church and monastery to life. Indeed, de Vogüé argues precisely that 'le monastère est une Église' (de Vogüé 1960: 75). The sexual foundation of desire The concept of desire is at the heart of Lacan's work[24]. He considers it to be of the essence of the subject and thus at the centre of psychoanalytic treatment. Here the analysand is brought to recognise and articulate his desire which is entirely sexual and distinct from his demands (Lacan 2006). Although desire is not identified by de Certeau as a point of connection between Lacan's thought and the teaching of RB, there does seem to be a certain correlation. In RB desire (desiderium) is situated at the core of the subject and thus it is considered key in monastic life which is seen as a turning (conversatio) of the passions towards the divine and the good of others. Here desire is also distinct from the subject's demands (voluptatibus) and fundamentally sexual in character (RB 7: 23; RB 5: 12). Yet this is not limited to specifically erotic desires ( desideria carnis). In fact, in an interesting passage Benedict's redaction of RM serves precisely to bring out the sexual foundations of spiritual desire-concupiscentia spiritali desiderare (RB 4:46; cf. RB 49: 7). Kardong comments perceptively that 'the carnal thrust of desiderium should not be suppressed' for the longing of the whole self is intended (Kardong 1996: 89). Heidegger's influence on Lacan: a monastic fugue Benedictine influences on Lacan's work may also have come about indirectly through his absorption in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger[25]. Like Lacan, Heidegger was steeped in Catholicism from his youth. But more than that it was a Catholicism impregnated with Benedictine culture. The monks of the nearby Abbey of Beuron had helped build the temporary church of St Martin in Messkirch, where Heidegger was baptised. The quiet monastic world of Beuron 'with its large library, its cowsheds and barns' deeply attracted Heidegger (Safranski 1999: 4). His father was the sexton in Messkirch and the young Heidegger was an altar boy and bell ringer. The simple round of rural life, as his biographer vividly recounts, marked as it was by the seasons and ecclesiastical feasts, itself bares a strong resemblance to the closed monastic world with its repetitive, cyclical liturgical year and daily horarium. The most beautiful time was Christmas. Towards half past three in the morning, the boy [bell] ringers would come to the sexton's house, where mother Heidegger had laid the table with cakes and milky coffee. After this breakfast, lanterns were lit in the front-door passage, and everyone went out through the snow and the winter's night to the church opposite and up into the dark bell tower to the frozen ropes and ice-covered clappers. "The mysterious fugue," Martin Heidegger wrote, "in which the church feasts, the days of vigil, and the passage of the seasons and the morning, midday, and evening hours of each day fitted into each other, so that a continual ringing went through the young hearts, dreams, prayers, and games-it is this, probably, that conceals one of the most magical, most complete, and most lasting secrets of the tower". Safranski 1999: 7 As a child Heidegger was taught Latin, free of charge, by the parish priest of Messkirch and with the help of a grant he went to the junior seminary at Constance, then to the seminary in Freiburg and finally studied theology at Freiburg University. He became a Jesuit novice in 1909 at Tisis near Feldkirch in Austria but after a couple of years dropped out due to poor health (Safranski 1999). Later as a student the young Heidegger would sometimes spend a few weeks in a monastic cell at Beuron and after the war, between 1945 and 1949, when he was under a teaching ban, Beuron was the only place he could be seen in public. Heidegger recalls how impressed he was in 1929 by the monastic liturgy of the hours at Beuron, specifically by compline, the last service of the day (Storck 1990). Compline, in the Benedictine rite, was composed of the recitation of psalms 4, 90 and 133 followed by a hymn-Te lucis ante terminum-a short reading (Jeremiah 14: 9), prayers and an antiphon to the Virgin. The psalmody was preceded by a blessing, the reading of 1 Peter 5: 8-9[26] and the confiteor. Compline, unlike the other liturgical hours, was the same every night and was sung by heart in the dark. It is easy to see why it would have made a profound impression on Heidegger. The monastic church, swathed in darkness with just a couple of candles burning on the high altar at some distance from the choir, the sound of the monks singing to Gregorian chant the Latin verses. Heidegger described the experience as deeply moving (Schaber 2002). Indeed, he wrote to Elizabeth Blockmann that it would unfold into 'something essential' (Safranski 1998: 181)[27]. That man each day walks out into the night is a banality for present-day man... Compline still contains the mythical and metaphysical primeval power of night, which we have to pierce continually in order truly to exist. Safranski 1989: 181 Heidegger's comments on compline remind us of a Johannine metaphor found in the Prologue to RB (John 12: 35). The image here is one of running (currite) so as to avoid being enveloped by the darkness of death ( ne tenebrae mortis vos comprehendant) (RB Prol. 13). Compline, Heidegger wrote, had become a symbol of 'existence being held out into the night' (Safranski 1989: 181). It was an 'immersion of existence into the night' and according to Tonning (2009) the Benedictine life, 'in its daily self-exposure to the darkness of night', to vigils and prayer, was to remain for Heidegger-in contrast to contemporary Catholicism with its emphasis on dogma-a testimony to an earlier more authentic form of Christianity (Tonning 2009: 133). 'Contemporary Catholicism and everything like it-Protestantism no less-must remain to us a horror. And yet "Beuron" [und doch wid 'Beuron'], if I may use this shorthand, will unfold as the seed of something essential' (Tonning 2009: 143-4[28]). ...the Christian eschatological tradition decisively shaped Heidegger's developing thought about authenticity, culminating in his vision of Dasein's perpetual, but ordinarily disregarded or forgotten, "immersion" in, or "face-to-facedness" with, "night" or "Nothing." Tonning 2009: 134 The theme of the immersion (Hineingehaltensein) of existence into the night was to recur several times in Heidegger's work and became intimately linked to his concept of nothingness. An 'elementally forceful negative: putting nothing in the way of the depth of existence' (Tonning 2009: 144). The more being is experienced in its truth, he wrote in the Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Eregnis), the deeper is the nothing (Heidegger 1999). He links this with the notions of reticence (a kind of silence) and lack, which he describes as a great stillness in which is found the possibility of experiencing the presence of the divine (Vallega-Nau 2001). With its clear resonance in the noche oscura of 17 th century mystical literature, the image of immersion into the night formed the basis for Heidegger's treatment of being-towards-death as we find it in Sein und Zeit. Safranski suggests that his 1929 metaphysics lecture 'Was ist Metaphysik?' is a paraphrase of the experience he had during compline, where it appears as 'Da-sein heisst: Hineingehaltenheit ins Nichts' (Being-there means: immersion into the Nothing) (Heidegger GA 9: 35)[29]. Lacan was to argue that during analysis the subject experiences a loss of being (désêtre) or lack of having (manque à avoir) precisely because this lack of being (manque à être) is at the heart of an analysis (Evans 1996). Lacan distinguished different forms of lack of object according the realms of the real, symbolic and imaginary. The most significant form corresponding to castration. Although the notion lack-of-being bears a resemblance to Sartre's formula, it clearly also resonates with Heidegger's lexis. Full and empty speech For Lacan the aim of psychoanalysis is to articulate true or full speech (parole pleine). Full speech is not saying the whole truth but it is saying as much as one knows of the truth of oneself at the time of speaking. There may at any time be as yet unknown truths lurking out of reach within oneself. The antithesis of full speech is empty speech (parole vide). This is not the same as lying but amounts to speech from the ego, where the subject is alienated from his desire. The concept of full and empty speech is generally thought to be based on Heidegger's distinction between Rede (discourse) and Gerede (idle talk) and emphasises the fact that not all speech may be authentic or useful. This kind of reticence or moderation in speech is connected to authentic being. Heidegger's Gerede and thus the notion of parole vide that Lacan develops from it, may also have its source, at least partially, in RB. Considerable emphasis is placed in RB on the dialectic of the word (verbum, eloquium, sermo) and silence ( taciturnitas, silentio). Paradoxically, silence as a limiting of speech is orientated towards listening (audire) to the word spoken in scripture and in the teaching of the abbot. But verbum also recalls the identification of the Logos with Jesus of Nazareth (John 1: 1). Within speech (eloquia, responsum) RB distinguishes between the divine word and vain words (verba vana). Vacuous chatter (murmurio) is denounced in RB (cf. 4:39; 5:14, 17; 23:1; 34: 6; 35:13; 40: 8-9; 41: 5; 53:18; 65:2). But as part of the dialectic of speech and silence in RB, the condemnation of a lack of reticence in speech, is rooted in the pagan philosophical tradition. Ancient authors consistently condemn those with undisciplined speech (adoleschia; lalia) (Schnayder 1956). This was quickly absorbed into the lexicon of the early church. We find, for example, Ignatius of Antioch being praised for his ability to do more by silence than those who use vain babble (mataia lalount?n) (Maier 2004). Ignatius writes that 'it is better to be silent (si?pan) and be real (einai), than to babble (lalounta) and to be unreal (m? einai)' (Maier 2004: 512). RB echoes this by quoting a passage from the Sentences of Sextus (Chadwick 1959). CONCLUSION According to Paul Roazen, the Catholic background to Lacan's work as spelled out by his brother, 'gives one an invaluable insight into the nature of Lacan's teachings' (Roazen 1996: 335). But is it reasonable to see in Lacan's work a more specifically Benedictine influence? Michel de Certeau considered that there were parallels between Benedictine monasticism and Lacan's approach (de Certeau 2006). But the examples de Certeau gives of various key ideas in Lacan's oeuvre that have a Benedictine resonance, are only partially supported by a close reading of RB. The notion of the Christian monk as a solitary living in the desert was partly a matter of political and theological rhetoric. The historical characteristics of monastic withdrawal were far more complex. The one constant feature of the varied monastic lifestyles that took root in the third and fourth centuries was celibacy, not solitude or withdrawal to the desert. The RB describes the abbot as a teacher (doctor) and shepherd (pastor) to his monks but the image of the abbot as a master (magister) is not favoured by Benedict. The image of the monastery as a school (schola) is not a reaction against the Church but rather a description of itself as a local church. The monastery is thought of as a congregation in which the abbot and the seniors-those who have learned through the experience of living monastic life-teach a doctrine based on sacred scripture. Importantly, in his teaching the abbot must adapt himself to the singularity of each subject. The Benedictine approach to the liturgy (opus Dei) does not imply a notion that work is speech but rather that an inner process takes place, similar to Freud's notion of working through (Durcharbeiten), in attentiveness to the text. In this sense reading or listening to words of another may bring about a change in perspective and a transformation in thinking. In RB desire (desiderium) is understood to be constitutive of the subject, sexual in character and distinct from the subject's demands (voluptatibus). In two of Heidegger's ideas we also seem to find a Benedictine influence. Firstly, the notion of nothingness, which he based on his experience attending compline at Beuron Abbey and which may have contributed to Lacan's notion of lack of being (manque à être). And secondly, his concept of inauthentic speech (Gerede) which informed Lacan's notion of empty speech (parole vide). While Lacan repeats and re-phrases some of Freud's views on religion as a delusion, he also uses Christian metaphors continually and makes allusions to theological discourse. Referring, in his seminars, to Augustine, Jerome, Meister Eckhart, Anselm, Ambrose, Thomas Aquinas and the mystics–notably, Angelus Silesius, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Yet nowhere, according to Krutzen's (2009) Index référentiel , does he directly cite Benedict. However, perhaps most striking of all in his use of Christian lexis, is his adoption of the expression Nom-du Père (Name-of-the-Father) to denote a fundamental signifier, the foreclosure of which leads to psychosis.[30] It may be worth noting in this context, that in his commentary on RB Dom Laure had written that the 'nom de Père' is the most beautiful title for the abbot (Laure 1925: 35). 6 November, 2016 Bibliography: Ahearne, J. (1995) Michel de Certeau. Interpretation and its Other (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press). Bartelink, G.J.M. (Ed.) (1994) Athanase d'Alexandrie. Vie d'Antoine (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf). Bieler, L. (167) ????? ????. Das Bild des 'Göttlichen Menschen' in Spätantike und Frühchristentum (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft). Brown, P. (1989) The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press). Brown, P. (1971) The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity. Journal of Roman Studies LXI: 80-101. Chadwick, H.: (1950) John Cassian. A Study in Primitive Monasticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Chadwick, O. (1959) The Sentences of Sextus. A Contribution to the History of Early Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Choat, M. (2002). The Development and Usage of Terms for »Monk« in Late Antique Egypt, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 45: 5-23. Colombo, D. (2003) Psychoanalysis and the Catholic Church in Italy: The Role of Father Agostino Gemelli, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences 39 (4): 333-48. De Certeau, M. (2006) Heterologies. Discourse on the Other, trans. by B. Massumi. Theory and History of Literature Volume 17. (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press). Edmundson, M. (2007) The Death of Sigmund Freud. Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism (London: Bloomsbury, 2007, 168). Evans, D. (1996) An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge). Foucault, M. (2012) Du gouvernement des vivants: Cours au Collège de France (Paris: Éditions du Seuil/Gallimard). Goehring, J.E.: – (1992) Through a Glass Darkly: Images of the A??????????(??) in Early Egyptian Monasticism Discursive Formations, Ascetic Piety, and the Interpretation of Early Christian Literature 2: 25-45 (ed.) V.L.Wimbush. (Atlanta: Scholars Press). – (1993) The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt Journal of Early Christian Studies I: 281-96. – (2007). Monasticism in Byzantine Egypt: Continuity and memory Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300700 390-407 (ed.) R.S. Bagnall. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Granel, G. and Weber, S. (1991). Lacan avec les philosophes. Bibliothèque du Collège International de Philosophie. Gribomont, J. (1955). L'Exhortation au renoncement attribuée à saint Basile Orientalia Christiana Periodica 21: 375-98. Guillaumont, A. : – (1972) Monachisme et éthique judéo-chrétienne Judéo-Christianisme. Recherches historiques et théologiques offertes en hommage au Cardinal Daniélou. Recherches de Sciences Religieuses 60: 199-218. (Paris: Beauchesne). – (1975) La conception du désert chez les moines d'Egypte, Revue de l'histoire des religions 188: 3-21. Hadot, P. (1987) Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Études Augustiniennes). Hausherr, I. (1947) Opus Dei Orientalia Christiana Periodica XIII: 195-218. Heidegger, M. (1956) Logos, La Psychanalyse I: 59-79. Horn, J. (1994) Tria sunt in Aegypto genera monachorum: Die ägyptischen Bezeichnungen für die 'dritte Art' des Mönchtums bei Hieronymus und Johannes Cassianus Festgabe für Wolfhart Westendorf zu seinen 70. Geburstag 63-82 (ed.) H. Behlmer. (Göttingen: Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie). Judge, E.A. (1977) The Earliest Use of Monachos for Monk (P.Coll.Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 10: 72-89. Krutzen, H. (2009) Jacques Lacan. Séminaire 1952-1980. Index référentiel (Paris: Economica/Anthropos). Lacan, J.: – (1985) Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis (trans.) A. Wilden. (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press). – (1988) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954 (ed.) J.-A. Miller, (trans.) J. Forrester. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). – (2006) Écrits. The First Complete Edition in English (trans.) B. Fink. (New York, London: W.W. Norton). – (2013) The Triumph of Religion preceded by Discourse to Catholics (trans) B. Fink. (Cambridge: Polity Press). Lambert, A. (1924) Apotactites et Apotaxamènes Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie I (2): 2604-26 (eds.) F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq. (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané). Lampe, G.W.H. (1961) (Ed.). A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: The Clarendon Press). Laure, B. (1925) Règle de Patriarche Saint Benoit. (Cambery: Librairie Dardel). Leipoldt, J. (1961) Griechische Philosophie und Frühchristliche Askese. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag). Maier, H.O. (2004) The Politics of the Silent Bishop: Silence and Persuasion in Ignatius of Antioch Journal of Theological Studies NS 55 (2): 503-19. Olphe-Galliard, M. (1937). Ascèse Dictionnaire de Spiritualité I: 938-60 (Paris: Beauchesne). Otto, H. (1993). Martin Heidegger: A Political Life (trans.) A. Blunden (New York: Basic Books). Roazen, P. (1996) "Lacan's First Disciple", Journal of Religion and Health 34 (4): 321-36. Roques, R. (1953) Theoria et praxis chez les stoïciens 1811-12. Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesne). Roudinesco, E. : – (1993) Jacques Lacan. Esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'un système de pensée. Paris: Fayard. Eng. Trans. by B. Bray, Jacques Lacan (New York: Columbia University Press). – (1994) Histoire de la psychanalyse en France.2 1925-1985 (Paris: Fayard). – (2011) Lacan, envers et contre tout (Paris: Seuil). Sédat, J. (2010) Preface to Marc-François Lacan. Dieu n'est pas un assureur. I: Anthropologie et psychanalyse 7-25. (Paris: Albin Michel). Schaber, J. (2002) Te lucis ante terminum: Martin Heidegger und das benediktinische Mönchtum Edith Stein Jahrbuch 8: Das Mönchtum (Würzburg: Echter Verlag). Schnayder, G. (1956) De antiquorum hominum taciturnitate et tacendo. Travaux de la Societé des sciences et des lettres de Wroclaw. Series A (56): 33-51. Saroglou, V. (1997) Structuration psychique de l'expérience religieuse. La function paterbelle – Études de cas dans le monachisme ancient. (Paris and Montreal: L'Harmattan). Stork, J.W. (1990) Martin Heidegger/Elizabeth Blockmann: Briefwechsel 1918-1969 (Marbach: Deutsches Literturarchiv). Tonning, J.E. (2009) "Hineingehalten in die Nacht": Heidegger's Early Appropriation of Christian Eschatology Phenomenology and Eschatology 133-51 (eds.) N. DeRoo and J. Panteleimon (London: Asgate). Vandermeersch, P. (2000) The failure of second naiveté. Some landmarks in the history of French Psychology of Religion, Aspects in Context. Studies in the History of Psychology of Religion 235-79 (ed.) J.A. Belzen. (Amsterdam: Rodopi). Notes: [1] Roazen mentions that Marc-Marie thought Denis Vasse, a Jesuit, Lacan's pre-eminent follower. [2] De Certeau's published works include (1970). La possession du Ludun. Paris: Gallimard; (1975). L'Écriture et l'histoire. Paris: Gallimard; (1980). L'invention du quotidian 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard; (1982). La faible mystique I: XVIe-XVIIe siècle. Paris: Gallimard; (1987). Histoire et psychanalyse entre science et fiction (ed.) L. Giard. Paris: Gallimard; and (1987) La faiblesse de croire (ed.) L. Giard. Paris: Seuil. [3] Maryse Choisy [1903-1979] was a journalist who had been briefly treated by Freud and later analysed by René Laforgue. She converted to Catholicism following a meeting with Teilhard de Chardin in 1938. After her conversion she devoted herself to bringing about a rapprochement between Catholicism and psychoanalysis. Psyché, the journal she founded in 1946, was subtitled 'an international review of psychoanalysis and human sciences'. The first issue of this monthly review appeared in November 1946 and was followed by another 120 issues until 1963. The idea for the review took root among a circle of intellectuals, poets, writers, philosophers and theologians that she brought together in 1945. Contributors included Françoise Dolto, René Laforgue, André Maurois, Teilhard de Chardin, Georges Dumézil, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Marie Bonaparte. [4] Rather paradoxically Roudinesco was later to suggest that Lacan would have wished for a Catholic funeral (qu'il eût souhaité des funéraillles catholiques). Cf. Roudinesco (2011: 175) and an article published in the influential French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur for 17th November 2011 entitled Lacan, L'Eglise et l'imparfait du subjonctif. [5] Other famous alumni of the Collège Stanislas included Anatole France, Jacques Cousteau and Charles de Gaulle. [6] Hautecombe had been founded by the Cistercians at the beginning of the 12 th century. It was suppressed in 1793 but re-opened in 1826. In 1922 the Cistercians left, handing the monastery over to a community of Benedictines of the Solesmes congregation who were then living in Marseille. [7] Guéranger, a secular priest, had founded the Abbey of Saint Pierre de Solesmes in 1833 at Sablé par Sarthe. It became the mother house of the congregation of France and founded houses throughout the world. It excluded all external activities (e.g. running schools or parishes) and developed a compelling reputation for scholarship, particularly in the fields of musicology and liturgical history, in a self-conscious attempt to reproduce the spirit of the Congregation of Saint-Maur which had been founded in 1621. The congregation, of which S Germain des Prés in Paris had been the mother house, was suppressed by the revolutionary government in 1790 and finally dissolved by Pius VII in 1818. From 1672 onwards its monks devoted themselves largely to historical and literary works, many of which are monuments of scholarship and the congregation produced a long line of scholars of exceptional ability, notably Dom Luc D'Achery [1609-85], Dom Jean Mabillon [1632-1707], Dom René Massuet [1666-1716], Dom Charles de la Rue [1684-1740] and Dom Bernard de Montfaucon [1655-1741]. Cf. Knowles, D. (1969). Christian Monasticism. London: Weidenfeld and Chavin de Malan, E. (1843). Histoire de D. Mabillon et de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur. Paris: Debécourt. [8] Roudinesco says that 11 th September 1981 was Marc-Marie's fiftieth anniversary ' de son entree dans les ordres' (Roudinesco 1993: 526). It is unclear what she means. According to Matthieu Vassal, the archivist at Ganagobie, Marc-Marie was clothed on 14th January 1930, made his solemn profession on 8 th September 1934. [9] Most of Marc-Marie Lacan's work was published in the Bulletin de l'abbaye d'Hautecombe to which, between 1942 and 1990, he was a regular contributor. But he also had a number of papers published in other journals including the Revue grégorienne, Lumière et Vie and Recherches de Science religieuse, and contributed to a number of collected works notably in 1962 to the widely translated Vocabulaire de théologie biblique (eds.) Xavier Léon-Dufour et al. Paris: Editions du Cerf. In 1992, towards the end of Marc-Marie Lacan's life, the community left Hautecombe. After spending some time in the Paris house of the Solesmes congregation-the L'Abbaye Sainte Marie, 3 rue de la Source (always known simply as La Source)-they moved to Notre Dame de Ganagobie in Peryuis near Marseilles. [10] Marc-Marie was upset not to have been able to administer the last rites to Lacan when he died (Roudinesco 1997). However, once he heard the news of his brother's death he did manage to come to Paris and say mass for him, two days later, on 11th September 1981 in the church of S François de Sales. In his homily he said that while the Church and the gospel were not essential to Lacan's oeuvre , his entire work was steeped in Catholic culture (Roudinesco 1997). [11] Benedict, in common with monastic tradition, is suspicious of humour and particularly laughter ( risus; scurrilitas). It is a tradition largely inherited from Antiquity. See RB 4.54; 6.8; 7.59. 60; 43.2; 49.7. Cf. Geisel, S. (1991). Zum Verbot des Lachens in der Benediktusregel Erbe und Auftrag 67:28-34. [12] De Certeau implies correctly that the monastery is described as a congregation rather than as a community (RB 2). The image of that of a sheepfold guided by a shepherd, rather than that of a community, the Latin congregregatio coming from congregare 'to flock together' with its origins in grex, gregis (flock). Both grex (RB 2.8, 32; 27.9; 28.8; 63.2; 64.18) and ovile (Rb 1.8) and used by Benedict as mages for the monastery. Others include acies (battleline) RB 1.5; corpus (body) RB 61.6; officina (workshop) RB 4.78; schola (school) RB 1.8). [13] On the military theme see Mohrmann, C. (1994). Études sur le latin des chrétiens 3. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. [14] Cf. Griffith, S.H. (1993). 'Monks', 'Singles' and the 'Sons of the Covenant': Reflections on Syriac Ascetic Terminology ???????: Studies in Honor of Robert Taft S.J. 141-60. (eds.) E. Carr, S. Parenti, A.-A. Thiermeyer and E. Velkovska. Studia Anselmiana 110. Analecta Liturgica 17. Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo. The first use of monachos for monk appears in the Gospel of Thomas (Judge 1977). On the Gospel of Thomas see Harl, M (1960). A Propos des Logia de Jésus: Le sens du mot MONA??? Études Greques 73 (Fasc. 347-348): 464-74; on the changing use of the word monachos see Wilkinson, K.W. (2010). Some Neologisms in the Epigrams of Palladas Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 50: 295-308. [15] Cf. Perhaps the best known sources are the Praktikos and the Peri Logism?n of Evagrius Ponticus. The former work, which deals with the ascetic life in general has much to say about disordered emotions and compulsive thoughts cf. Guillaumont, A. and Guillaumont, C. (Eds.) (1971). Évagre Le Pontique. Traité Pratique ou Le Moine. Sources Chrétienne 170 and 171. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. The latter demonstrates, probably more clearly than any other of the author's works, his deep psychological insight, something brought out by Géhin and Guillaumont in their introduction, cf. Géhin, P., Guillaumont, C. And Guillaumont, A. (Eds.) (1998). Évagre Le Pontique. Sur Les Pensées . Sources Chrétienne 438. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. [16] Apophthegmata Patrum Nicetas 312B; Poimen 114: 352 AB. [17] It is worth pointing out here the small volume by Jean Allouch (2007). La psychanalyse est-elle un exercise spiritual? Réponse à Michel Foucault. Paris: EPEL. Allouch's work is greatly influenced by Lacan whose seminar he attended. [18] Kojève (Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov, to give him his original name) was a Russian émigré and a nephew of the painter Kandinsky who had fled to Germany in the 1920's. He studied under Jaspers at Heidelberg where he was awarded a doctorate. His interpretation of Hegel was much influenced by Heidegger. Hegel's philosophy was particularly important in Lacan's de-centering of the subject, defined in relation to the desire of the Other and in the formulation of the mirror stage, cf. Birksted-Breen, D., Flanders, S. and Gibeault, A. (2010). Reading French Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge. [19] Cf. Guillaumont, A. (1995). Les remnuoth de Saint Jérôme Christianisme d'Egypte. Hommages à RenéGeorges Coquin. Cahiers de la Bibliothèque Copte 9: 87-92. Paris, Louvain: Peeters. Also Blanchard, M.J. (2007). Sarabaitae and Remnuoth. Coptic Considerations The World of Early Egyptian Christianity 49-60. (eds.) J.E. Goehring and J.A. Timbie. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Horn (1994) argues that Jerome's antipathy to the remnuoth sprung from a clash between city dwelling monks and the ecclesiastical authorities. The ensuing invective drove a perception that the 'true monk' only dwelt in the desert and was not to be associated with the apotactic movement (Lambert 1924). However, Choat (2002) is highly sceptical of this interpretation and calls for more plurality in understanding the development and transition in monastic terminology. [20] Kardong (1996: 38) takes it for granted that the word comes from the Coptic sar (man of) and auet [sic] (he community). But a number of other Coptic derivations have been suggested man of the neighbourhood or man of the city-quarter. Cf Choat (2002); Horn (1994); Morard, F. (1973). Monachos, moine. Histoire du terme grec jusqu'au 4e siècle Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 20: 332-411. [21] On the complex historiography of monastic rules, which were not originally written, and their relation to abbatial authority see de Vogüé, A. (1971). Sub regula vel abbate: A Study of the Theological Significance of the Ancient Monastic Rules Rule and Life: An Interdisciplinary Symposium (ed.) M.B. Pennington. Spencer, Mass: Cistercian Publications. [22] On the background to Regula Magistri and is relation to RB see de Vogüé, A. (1960). La communauté et l'abbé dans la règle de saint benoït. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer esp. 27-37 where the author summarises the various arguments concerning language and priority. [23] In early monastic literature meditation ( meletan in Coptic) meant the audible repetitive recitation of texts. See Bacht, H. (1955). 'Meditatio' in den ältesten Mönchsquellen Geist und Leben Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik 28: 360-73. [24] The Standard Edition of Freud's works translates Wunsch as wish ( voeu in French) whereas Freud's French translators use désir rather than voeu. In Lacan's lexicon the notion of desire comes closer to Hegel's Begierde-the relationship between consciousness and the self-than to Freud's Wunsch. On Lacan's appropriation of Hegel's Begierde as distinct from Wunsch or Lust see Roudinesco (1986). [25] In 1956 Lacan translated the second, 1954 version, of Heidegger's essay 'Logos' which was a commentary on Fragment 50 of Heraclitus. The translation subsequently appeared in the review La Psychanalyse (Heidegger 1956). He also made a considerable effort to get to know Heidegger personally. Lacan's admiration was not entirely reciprocated as Heidegger did not appreciate Lacan's thought. A fact illustrated clearly when Lacan sent Heidegger a signed copy of his Écrits. In a letter to Medard Boss, Heidegger wrote: 'You too have no doubt received Lacan's large tome (Ecrits). Personally, I haven't so far been able to get anything at all out of this obviously outlandish text.' A few months later he wrote: 'I enclose a letter from Lacan. It seems to me that the psychiatrist needs a psychiatrist' (Roundinesco 1997: 227, 231). In 1955 Lacan went to Freiburg with to visit Heidegger with Jean Beaufret, a French philosopher who was analysed by Lacan and who had introduced him to Heidegger's work (Otto 1993). Later that year Heidegger and his wife came to stay with Lacan in France (Roudinesco 1997). [26] Tonning suggests that the central text for compline was 1 Thess. 5: 1-5 (Tonning 2009: 142 n. 35). But this was not the case in the Benedictine liturgy at the time Heidegger visited Beuron [27] It is probably fair to say that, after that with Hannah Arendt, Elizabeth Blochmann had one of the most important extramarital affairs with Heidegger. As we know Heidegger had an open marriage and his wife Elfriede both knew about his affairs and conducted her own. Elfriede Heidegger and Elisabeth Blochmann were friends and former class mates. The story is well documented in the 1989 edition of their letters, starting in 1918. [28] Letter from 12th September 1929. Cf. Storck 1990: 33. [29] When he read Heidegger's What is Metaphysics in 1952 the poet Paul Celan underlined 'How stands it with the Nothing?' Felstiner notes that he found the paradox of emptiness and pure Being in Jewish mysticism. 'The Righteous stands in the Nothing...The Nothing is the Nothing of God'. Felstiner, J. (1995) Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew 181. New Haven and London: Yale University Press; cf. Scholem, G. (1959). Die Lehre vom 'Gerechten' in der Jüdischen Mystik Eranos-Jahrbuch 27: 237-97. [30] Roudinesco goes so far as to suggest that Lacan based his interpretation of Freud on the two of the great myths of mysticism and the Trinity (Roudinesco 1997). Bio: John Gale is a philosopher and psychoanalyst, the president of the International Network of Psychotherapeutic Practice (INPP), a director of ISPS (UK), and of The Consortium for Therapeutic Communities. He is also a member of the advisory panel of the Community of Communities programme at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Formerly a Benedictine monk he lectured in philosophy and patristics before leaving the priesthood. In 1993, with two colleagues, he founded Community Housing and Therapy (CHT), which developed a Lacanian treatment programme for psychosis. For a number of years he sat on the boards of The Homeless Fund and of the Association of Therapeutic Communities. He was Deputy Editor of the journal Therapeutic Communities for seven years, and is a member of its International Editorial Advisory Group. He is also a member of the scientific committee of the journal Avances en Psicología Latineoamericana and of the reviewing panel of the British Journal of Psychotherapy . He has edited a number of books and has published over 25 papers. John's interests span philosophy, psychoanalysis and spirituality, and the main references in his work include the notions of language, silence, tradition, absence, mysticism and madness. Foremost literary references in his work are Stoic and Neoplatonic writers, monastic texts from Late Antiquity, the work of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Pierre Hadot, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, and the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Publication Date: August 24,