Harry Potter and Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Apparition, Phenomenology, Psychology, and the "self"

Intro and Disclaimers

1. This is one of those funky posts that comes out of my head in trying to work out my understanding of what I have thought is so great in Harry Potter, and usually these types of random posts that are limited in scope as far as the content covered in HP have to do with philosophical matters. Here the HP thing is apparition and the philosophical/psychological thing is phenomenology of body.

2. I'm not an expert in the field of phenomenology, and like Hargid waltzing with Madame Maxim, I will probably step on the toes of a few professional philosophers in my descriptions of what might be much finer points, especially in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. But, as a philosophy major in undergrad and having been friends with a fair number of philosophy grad students during my time as a theology grad student, and having had a share of coursework in continental post-modern philosophy even in my own doctoral course work (for instance, a course under the systematics wing of the theology department covering contemporary philosophy in relation to theology), I think I can make a stab at a general picture that at least does not do too much damage and that gets enough detail for making the comparison with the Harry Potter element I want to discuss (apparition) to be useful.

3. I hope I am not doing what I have noted some doing, a thing that I have noted as alright for them but that is not what I want to be doing here, which is to use a thing in Harry Potter simply as a springboard from which to embark on a whole different exposition of something entirely different that I have studied. I really am interested in this discussion broadening the understanding of Harry Potter's literary artistry.

4. Since the phenomenology material below centers so much on "embodiment," the reader might want to check out my comments on "body" and "flesh" in my post on Tolkien's "Incarnational imagination."

 

Phenomenology, Psychology, and the Experiential Level

Normally I would probably try to get a hook in first with the concrete details on the element from Harry Potter (apparition), but, in the present situation, because of the nature of phenomenology and a few other things, I want to get some clarifications and the presentation of that philosophical system set first.

One of the things that particularly requires clarity is that I am not officially connecting any of this with the other stuff I have been doing on body/flesh or an experiential element in Incaranational imagination and chiastic reading (the mention of my other post above is simply "you might find this interesting too"). It's not that I don't think there can be any eventual connections between those things and this, but this is a more limited application thing. The other recent work is more this broader thing I am (probably poorly) trying do of a more holistic interpretive theory of literature as such (that description would be longer, but I ran out of pretentious "philosophy sounding" phases :). I do feel like phenomenology probably presents a better philosophical system for examining art, but the present post is really just more like the traditional popular level "philosophy/theology in literary work X," in which part of the schtick is usually the concept that the author was at least somewhat familiar with the philosophical idea (say, Plato's allegory of the cave) and intended to instantiate it, because authorial intent makes things a lot easier to process when looking for "meaning" when doing it on the popular level, which is entirely fine. Obviously I'm hoping that phenomenology is a bit more interestingly connected with the HP element because it is, in and of itself, more interesting than introductory-level understandings of the allegory of the cave (maybe not the original allegory itself, but definitely the introductory level understanding of it required for popular level works). But, ultimately, what I am specifically trying to do in this post is still that more traditional "philosophy in literary work X," rather than tying the content of this post into the larger themes I've been trying to develop recently (chiastic structure, characters as the "face"/experiential level in "body" as a metaphor for literature, Incarnational imagination, etc). Basically, it's more like the "introduction to philosophy in literary work X" project than anything else: whether consciously or not, she did instantiate that thinking (phenomenology of the body) in one particular, limited thing (apparition).


Phenomenology 101 
So, the other thing to clear up is ... "what the hell is phenomenology?" I put it this way because I have heard it expressed this way in frustration by those coming from an older tradition of knowing the lines between distinct areas in philosophy like "ontology/metaphysics," "epistemology," and "logic." I'm not knocking that background, and it is actually my own. I also advocate it as a starting point and approach, rather just jettisoning the traditional categories and throwing undergrads in cold to phenomenological discussion ... which usually does not yield "help! I'm so confused!" but rather, "Oh, I get it ... the tradition is bunk and these progressive ideas are right (and others along with them, like certain moral concepts and political concepts)" with not real any actual content of thought behind it (but many nudges and winks from faculty who are looking for devotees to themselves and soldiers for their cause ... not all academics are like this, but I have been in grad school and this kind of academic is definitely not non-existent, and not even a minority). I can't make any great claims to be smarter, and I'm definitely not as well read in phenomenology as those eho work in it regularly. I do think, though, that I may have found a better way in on understanding its core deal than is usually done by the "traditional" approach that says that post-modernity is bunk or by post-moderns who say the tradition is bunk.

So, this will be my "one trick pony" on an initial "way in" on understanding phenomenology. I hope I'm not plagiarizing somebody by quoting them without citing, but I honestly can't remember hearing this from anyone, and so the default assumption is that I came up with it on my own. One of the most famous of Immanual Kant's thoughts in epistemology is the "categorical imperative." This says that there are two "worlds: the "noumenal," which is outside us, and the "phenomenal, which is the world of our impressions inside our minds. The "imperative" means that we never really know the outer world as it really is; what we know in our minds is the sensory data received but only once it is interpreted according to categories we ourselves provide and impose on it (shape is a particularly important one: think about those negative space writing things of the name "Jesus" [I've even included one below] ... whether you use positive space or negative space category in interpreting what you see makes a huge difference in what you see as being "there" objectively). This isn't "imperative" in the sense of "you had better," but rather in the sense of "you can't help but." You cannot get to the noumenal world as it really is; what you encounter will always be the sense data received from it only as interpreted through the categories that your mind has imposed.

I think there is some confusion when one hears the sort of seminal phenomenology motto "back to the things themselves" because, coming out of the tradition of ontology, many think of "things" as external objects. Kant and modern epistemology turned from thinking that we can rely on our sense data as something solid, something set and shared among all humans, from thinking that the content of our perceptions of a thing in the outside, and turned to asking questions of the validity of our knowledge: HOW do we know? how do we know that we know? How do we know that these categories hook onto external reality accurately? Some who see this as a bad idea could take "the things themselves" as a return to un-problematized metaphysics, "things" in the objective ontology sense.

But, for phenomenology, the "things" are the categories in the "mind" (including "mind" itself as a category). Kant was still looking for solid knowledge about the objective world and thought that the categories were solid in and of themselves as long as we do a verification of how they are applied to the data from the external world. The "grounds for ..." in the titles of a number of his works is about this, making sure that we have gotten everything set up right, the "grounding" for doing work of actually establishing an objective ethics using the categories in the mind ... which means that the categories remain pretty much the same for all human minds (if we're to be able to find a universally applicable ethics, say).

Basically, Kant said you can't know the noumenal world without imposing categories on it. Phenomenology says you can't even know Kant's "phenomenal" world without having imposed categories on experiential elements prior to their categorization, elements that can be observed or discovered by observing sense data that is the internal version of the external sense data from the noumenal world of which Kant spoke ... observation work that is the task phenomenology sets itself. In a way, phenomenology applies the same examination of interpretation that Kant applied to thinking about the external/"objective" world, except that it applies it to the "categories" in the mind, no longer taking their definitions to be set.

For example, the concept of "self" is not taken as a solid mental concept that is experienced in the same way by everybody (much less a a real ontological category shared by all human beings) or even experienced at all by some.

One of the places where this confusion over whether "things themselves" are objects in the external world (Kan't noumenal world) or experiential elements that are in the "mind" back beyond even the categories is the fact that there is a school of thought that calls itself "phenomenological realism" (a number in the philosophy department at the university from which I received my MA in theology are the major proponents of that school). It seeks to meld phenomenology, objective realism, and "personalism." I don't really know enough to critique that, but I was at one point talking with a really smart woman who was finishing her philosophy PhD at Fordham in her new office at a small school (College of Mount St Vincent, in Riverdale in the Bronx) where she had just gotten a job while ABD and where I was adjuncting in the Religious Ed department, which shared a big old room with offices all round and cubicles in the middle with philosophy and other liberal arts departmens, and I said something about "and then you have the whole phenomenological realism crowd trying to do their supposed thing," and she just chuckled and said she liked the "supposed" (and she was part of a set of fairly conservative Catholic students whom I knew at Fordham).

Phenomenology and Psychology
Phenomenology is, of course, intimately tied to psychology because one must ask whence come the categories that phenomenology now applies to the older traditional categories. If the concept "self" is not to be taken for granted and if its origin is to be examined in detail, and if we're talking about even more primal acts of categorization back behind the stage of "mind," that is going to be in the stages studied by developmental psychology.

Psychology is all about development of the "ego" (the "I") through experience of behavioral factors (that is, psychology proper ... as I understand it, getting into the organic side is to move into psychiatry as a distinct thing). When academics refer to the "linguistic turn," they mean the fact that, in the twentieth century, particularly in the wake of Freud, philosophy and literary studies, particularly linguistics,  as disciplines (and therefore also disciplines like theology) began to travel closely and bound up with psychology and its methods. I'll be bringing in psychology specifically at a later point in the next section, but for here, as an example of the complexities that can arise, I would note Edmund Husserl's concept of "inter-subjectivity": (as best as I can understand it) "I" am a part of "the tree" in so far as the "tree" is known by me through my intentional act of looking at it and experiencing the "sight" of it and categorizing it as "tree"; therefore, "I" as the "knowing subject" and "the tree" as the "existing subject" that I observe have an "inter-subjectivity" that cannot be dis-integrated (my "knowing" and it's "existing" are inextricably intertwined). Where the rubber hits the road with psychology is that this complicates the concept of the ego, the "I," as an independent subject in the world.

Experience as the cumulative body of many, many experiences that psychology sees as coalescing in early development is what is going to be important.

Phenomenology, and Apparition, and Psychology (in detail)

So, now I come to the guest-star of my title, a phenomenologist named Maurice Merleau-Ponty. But there is a hitch ... while I feel 100% confident that the sourcework can bear out the descriptions I will give here, I can't actually produce all of that sourcework here. I can just give the details of my encounter with the ideas and links to a couple articles that I have perused enough to know that they hold pertinent and supportive material ... I just haven't gone through enough to pin out the one formulation I really want, the one that works so well with the HP material.

The formulation is that Meleau-Ponty summed up the importance of all the "sense" parts for the conception of the whole, especially in conceiving of the self as body (not as just having a body, but of being a body), by saying:

"There's as much of me in my little finger as there is in any other part of my body."

The obvious thing that this challenges is the usual feeling of a sense of the head as more important than other parts because it is where the brain is and the organs of sight and sound. The crux is going to be what is meant by "me."

The problem, the reason that I have to admit that those quote marks are somewhat hypothetical (although I believe it to be a very credible hypothesis), is that, as I said, I haven't been able to put my finger on where he says that. What I have is a recollection of talking with a guy I knew who was doing his MA in philosophy at the same school where I was doing mine in theology, and he either said Merleau-Ponty said that exact thing, or he was doing his own paraphrase of Merleau-Ponty's thought ... or maybe it's my paraphrase of what Kyle said interpreted as his own memory of M-P saying these exact words? Who knows. One way or another, it is what I think is philosophically sound (meaning not only that I agree with it myself but that I think it is consistent with phenomenology as a school of thought in philosophy), and so even if neither Merleau-Ponty nor Kyle said anything like it, I'm stating it because I think it true. But ... I think Kyle said it at least paraphrasing M-P (I distinctly remember the spot in the library where we were having the conversation) and that, if it was only a paraphrase, it is likely to be a pretty good one.

What I have done, though, in an attempt to be helpful to any who wind up reading this, is to find a few sources available online that look promising for researching this in Merleau-Ponty and pinning it down:

Thomas Fuchs, "The Phenomenology of Body Memory," chapter 1 in Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement, edited by Sabine C. Koch, Thomas Fuchs, Michela Summa, and Cornelia Müller (Amsterdam, NL / Philadelpia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company)

Taylor Carman, "The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty," Philosophical Topics 27.2 (1999): 205–26.

Hubert L. Dreyfus, "The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Embodiment." 

(I've studied a decent amount of phenomenology, but not as much on Merleau-Ponty specifically [more Husserl and Heidegger], and what I have encountered of it is, at this point, tucked away in notes in bins in the basement, so this is a bit of an archeology venture for me, which is easier online than on my knees in the fruit cellar looking at old grad school class notes in my own untidy scrawl, but I feel relatively confident on the ideas after just perusing these pieces, and I want to go ahead and write the post without turning it into a significant research project.)

The main Phenomenology Point 
I will pick this up again in more detail in the psychology section, but for here what I want to say is that the conception of identity, of being "me," is an embodied one and that this "embodiment" is not simply a concept of body "as a whole," but of body as the experience of operating all the parts of it together. For example, I conceive of "me" as walking down the street with my arms moving in a certain way (maybe swinging goofily, as Harry becomes especially aware of his arms walking with Cho down to Hogsmeade on the ill-fated Valentine's Day date in Order of the Phoenix, at least I think that is the scene I heard recently in audio book while driving), of myself walking duck-footed like Krum, of myself as having a smooth gait or having a clumsy gait because of overlarge feet. My concept of my body, and therefore of "me" as being a body, is of many parts working together in an operating whole (although really "living" is the most correct term, not just "operating" like a machine) ... Although, I also think we develop a concept of the whole that is more than the sum of its parts, as evidenced by the fact that we use the singular word "body," AND I think that that concept is a direct product of the operation of the whole together, of living in physical activity (see the part at the end of this post about "soul").


FINALLY Getting to Apparition

So, I have to get around to this before my reader gives up on me (including the reader that is myself writing it). The Merleau-Ponty statement is basically that the sense of "self," of "me," is every bit as much made up of the sense of my little finger as it is made up of the sens of my head as the place of my brain and, thus, my rational capacity.

The pertinent spot in Harry Potter is when Wilkie Twyrcoss tells the students taking apparition lessons about the "determination" that is one of the three "D"s  for apparition, describing it thus:

"Focus your determination to occupy the visualized space! Let your yearning to enter it flood from your mind into every part of your body" (Half-Blood Prince, p. 384 [ch. 18, "Birthday Surprises"].

In order to move the entire body, the entire "me," through space in this way, one has to take a step of sharing the movement among all the parts. If I want to move all of "me," I am going to have to think about that part called "my little finger" in the process (although, Susan Bones should have focused on her leg, which was the part she left behind when splinched herself as the first student to accomplish any apparition at all, although why she wasn't bleeding to to death like Ron is when he gets splinched in Deathly Hallows is an inconsistency, but such things happen when an author is trying to organize this many elements and events across a series of this scope).

I know this section is brief and that, since it is the only Harry Potter element I officially have, this can make it seem like I really have just used a Harry Potter element as a jumping off point for my own little esoteric exposition of other stuff I'm into. But I think this one description, when taken with the phenomenology of body material, really does connect with and sum up a bodily psychology that pervades the whole Harry Potter series and gives it a distinctive flavor. The line that springs to mind in writing this is the scene in Deathly Hallows after he has watched the "Prince's Tale" in the pensieve and prepares to walk down to the forest: "Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?" and the "He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest" leading to "He knew that she could feel the steady pounding of life against his ribs" when he is examined by Narcissa Malfoy in the forest. I love the richness of those descriptions.They remind me of one of my favorite lines by Paul Simon: "I know the reason I feel so blessed; my heart still splashes inside my chest" (from the song "She Moves On" on the Rhythm of the Saints album) ... "splashes" is simply a brilliant metaphor.

 Psychology: Construction of the Self

I put the apparition material up before the psychology material because I felt that I was making the reader wait long enough as it was for the Harry Potter content. But I also definitely want to include the psychology material, not only because I think it is necessary to fill out the picture of phenomenology, but also because it fits with what I have always seen as a psychological realism, a depth of psychological portrayal in the Harry Potter series (hopefully I will soon write another post that came to my mind while listening to Order of the Phoenix on a trip out to go biking in NYC, about how heavy the use of particularly talk therapy and dream interpretation tropes is in that book, in which post I will probably also relate the conversation I had online in the Muggle Matters blog days with two clinical psychologists who gave an excellent paper at Lumos in Vegas in 2006, which I attended, on tracing out the diagnosis criteria for certain disorders in the DSM IV to specific characters in the Harry Potter series).

The connection with Merleau-Ponty's "as much of me in my little finger" embodied concept of self is the theory in psychology that it takes a certain amount of time for an infant to develop an actual sense of self as independent and separate. I may be stepping on toes here, because I know the theory rankles some, but I believe it to be true, and I don't think that such psychological claims threaten a belief in an ontology of individualized spirit from the moment of conception ... they just note that the child would not be aware of it yet, just as the fact that our brain being the center of interpreting sensory data does not mean that that's not the case before we realize, that it's not the case from the moment we have a brain and sensory perception in the womb.

I have pondered this in relation to the "as much in my little finger" a lot, and this is my layman's expression of what I have come up with. In the womb, sensations are undifferentiated. There would not be a difference between the "outerness" of the sound vibrations of the mother's voice and an "innerness" of the tactile sensation of the feel of amniotic fluid on skin, much less a "self" as the source of the latter and an "other" as the source of the former. After birth, sensory data would become differentiated and a certain set of sensations would become grouped together as somehow different from others, as "interior" or grouped together in a singular thing called "myself": the sensation of wiggling toes, being itchy, and the discomfort of having gas all go in the "me" cluster and my mother's smile and the sound of my jerk older brother yelling his head off go in the "other" category (although the child would not have a word for it yet because he or she would not have the use of language). The point is that the concept of "me" and of myself as being embodied is made up of all these many different sensations being brought together in the "me." So there is as much of the whole of "me" in my little finger as in any other part of my body ... or in the whole. We're not aware at that age of things like "collection" and "category" or of doing an "action" called "coalescing." We just have this sense of "me" as all those different sensations coalesce into "me." And by the time we are able to have such concepts, the actual doing can't be examined: at the time when memories of doing that would have to have been made, we didn't have the concepts yet to formulate such memories ... so the memory really doesn't even exist to be examined.

Phantom Pain as Evidence
As evidence that I would present to those who are uncomfortable with this notion, I would offer the phenomenon of "phantom pain" in amputees, the feeling of sensation in a limb or appendage that is no longer there. The nerves in the foot are gone because the whole foot is gone. So, how does the amputee still feel a pain in that missing foot, supposedly carried by those missing nerves? Psychologically, I think the foot still "is" there because the "me" that was made from coalescing the foot sensations in the infant stage is still there. "I" am still here, so the things that originally made up "me" must still be here, or so says the primal part of the mind, of the psyche.

To get a little more metaphysical and classical about it, the word "psyche" from which we get "psychology" means "soul." It does not mean the "soul" that we have come to think of along the lines of "spirit" in Western Christian thought. I think that that conflation is not only fine but has a deep spiritual and theological value to it, but some might disagree with me on why, because it is based in my advocacy "bipartite" anthropology (maybe I will get around some day to writing the post that I have in seminal draft form on the bipartite vs tripartite debate and the heresy espoused by Apollinarus [and by "seminal" I mean basically just having the title "Bipartite versus Tripartite" in the draft in my blogger dashboard]).

BUT I also think there is immense value in observing the differences between "soul" and "spirit" in the ancient languages. "Psyche" is the Greek translational value of the Hebrew "nehpesh" and is translated by the Latin "anima," and they are distinct from the words for "spirit" in those languages: the Hebrew "ruach," the Greek "pneuma," and the Latin "spiritus." "Psyche," "nephesh," and "anima" mean basically an animating life force. The medieval scholastics had epic debates on whether humans progressed through the three types of "soul -- the vegetative (which trees and plants have), the sensate (which animals have), and the rational (which only humans have) -- leaving the lesser behind as we gain the greater, or simply accumulate them and in the end have all three. My point is not to enter into any such debates, but simply to note that what defines a "soul," a "psyche," is animating a body, and that means animating all the different parts of the body whose sensory data makes up the "me" that the rational soul perceives as a unified whole. We don't sense our "body" as a whole ... we sense the feet, and hands, and knees, and bowels, and eyelids, and so on that our soul is animating. But once the holistic "me" is there in the rational soul, if that me is still here, the animal soul part of that soul expects all the parts it knows the soul of "me" animates ... hence phantom pain. I still need that part of "me" called "my little finger" in order to process being "me," and so if the actual finger is gone, I manufacture phantasm sensations, because "there is as much of me in my little finger as there is in the rest of me."

Real Steel (2011 film): Shadow Boxing, Shadow Dancing, and Joy

This film was 2011, but I probably didn't jot down that I wanted to do a post until like 2013 I'm guessing, even though I saw it in the theater in 2011. It's not a long post, just a couple things that I really liked and thought should be showcased as artistic. I liked the movie overall a lot, but then I tend to like Hugh Jackman, and I liked Envangeline Lily from her performance in Lost. Other general things are that I thought the film created and gave texture to the whole bot-boxing world well, and I loved the song "All My Days" by Alexi Murdoch and how it was used at the beginning of the film ... had a total feel to it.

So, now to the two things I thought made it stronger artistically.

Thing 1

In an extra on the DVD I think, the director mentions what he calls the "trifecta": the father, and the boy, and the robot. All three are beaten up and worn down, and the father has some sins to pay for. And they go through some kind of redemption. It's not pretty, but it's there. The father has to admit actually to the boy that he was a major ass for not fighting for him, but he does and they connect etc.

What I thought was artistic was the way they connected the father and son through the robot, and I don't mean primarily in it being the project they work on together. I mean that they each have something they do involving Atom's (the robot's) shadow mode. After the father sees the boy accidentally/goofing around making Atom dance, the father makes the boy use it as a performance hook at matches they get, so everybody sees the shadow dancing. At first, the father's shadow boxing with the bot is only private training, but when the voice recognition software breaks in the final match against Zeus, he has to do the shadow boxing as actually how they really have Atom battle Zeus. So both father and son sort of find some progress or redemption through their connection to Atom's shadow mode. The boy, I think, learns to get out beyond and stretch his wings and be confident (he says no to the idea until Jackman tells him that it makes or breaks the deal), maybe a few other things along those lines. What the father gets is a bit of redemption and rebirth, not just in the relationship with his son, but in the whole of what he is doing in lifer, his work ... boxing. And that is what thing 2 is.

Thing 2

What I love is that when Jackman is in that moment of shadow boxing in the final match with Zeus, he is smiling. You obviously have to suspend some disbelief about Atom the bot being able read Jackson's movements in order to mimic them while hunkered down in a hold-out position. But you suspend it because the payoff is so good. Jackson is not just smiling ... there is a certain joy in him from doing something that he is good at, and not just good in the way somebody does a job thoroughly, but in the way that is almost art or poetry in motion. It's easier to convey what I am talking about with boxing because Ali was well known in this way for having a certain poetry in motion in the "float like a butterfly" part of his famous "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Jackson is in that kind of moment, and he is laughing and smiling and taking a simple but deep joy in it. There's an exhilaration in doing something you have a talent for, a connection with, something you do not by "knowledge" in the "facts" sense of the word, but in the experience sense, in the "feel" sense. And after the way he has messed things up over the years, having that moment is a bit of redemption.

That is where Evangeline Lily's character comes in. When she is at that last match watching him and smiling, it is not because they might beat Zeus. Her smile comes right in conjunction with a slo-mo bit of him in that moment of enjoyment of doing his skill well, that exhilaration. The slo-mo shot makes sure you can't miss that look on his face, and the smile on her face is at seeing him be happy like that and seeing him in that moment of poetry in motion, of skill.

It's not necessarily "high" art. But it is solid art as having a good human thematic core about working to patch up our relationships that have gotten hurt along the way and about a certain mystical beauty in watching somebody do something in which they take a certain joy simply because they are good at it, because they have a "feel" for it that they have developed and honed. The dialog and the camera-work and the pacing and all that (what I have before called the techne and the scientia) are at the very least adequate ... what makes it a good film that I enjoy a lot (in addition to endearing characters and created sub-world) is the matter of the themes, the sapientia, the "wisdom."

Interstellar (film): Gravity of Hearts

So, Interstellar is another of the Nolan brothers' films that I absolutely loved from the first time I saw it. I thought the themes were awesome, I thought the acting was awesome and endearing, and I thought the sweeping scope of the "scenery" (the vastness of space and the power of the black hole) were awesome.

My interpretive reading is actually relatively simple on this one. I loved a number of thematic statements, especially the one about becoming "ghosts" for our kids (and the whole thing of the reversal of father and daughter as old woman and young man was mind-blowing and heart rending when it comes to her not wanting him to have to see her die), but my main interest for here lies with that black hole and gravity as a concept as the thing that brings him to his  daughter Murphy when she first discovers the ghost, fulfilling that awesome line about being ghosts for our children.

That endearing scene is the material texture of what I mean by the "gravity of hearts," but my main idea is going to be more philosophical and symbolic. There was once a band in Pittsburgh named the Affordable Floors (or just the Floors for short), and I used to go see them all the time in my young intense 80's kid semi-punk days. And they had this one song called "Blackout" that had a line in it that went: "Desire is only chemistry, and love a form of gravity." My reading of Interstellar is that it reverses that second half: love is not just a form of gravity; gravity is a vestige of love.

To understand what I mean here by "vestige," I have to give the source of my use of that term, which is the 13-century Franciscan St Bonnaventure. The Dominicans, who were the counterparts to the Franciscans and often thought of as there quasi-opponents (I don't buy that, but they definitely had their differences), were much more focused on Aristotle's thought than on Plato's, so while they (the Dominicans) would definitely appeal to Augustine and took him as authoritative, because Augustine is very much an arch-Neoplatonist, they did not appeal to him anywhere near as much as did the Franciscans, who were much more platonic in their thinking than Aristotelian.

Ok, so all that long historical windup and its labyrinthine grammar was just to explain that a Franciscan like Bonnaventure was very into Augustine and cited him a lot and took his thinking as his starting point a lot. Here the particular thing that he takes as a starting point is Augustine's "psychological models" of the Trinity, which are based in the idea of humanity as being made in the "image" of God. For example, and as the most fitting example for this post, just as in human love there is the lover, the beloved, and the love between them, so in the Trinity, there is the Father, the Son whom he loves, and the Spirit of the love between them. Where Bonaventure goes from that jumping off point is his own idea of "vestiges." He says that not only do we find the image of God in humanity; we also find "vestiges" of the Trinity in all the material world, triadic structures that are sort of "fingerprints" left by the Trinity in creating the material world. So, for instance, all material body's are classified by weight, number, and measure, a triadic structure that is a Trinitarian "fingerprint," a "vestige" of the Trinity.

My whole main point with Interstellar is that it uses gravity as a vestige of love as core to reality. Perhaps the best singular defense of the idea that love is a core of reality for the film is Anne Hathaway's argument for love as a different kind of logic but still a valid logic by which to make the choice of which planet to shoot for. But I think the main instantiation of my reading of love being symbolized by gravity is still that it is going into the crushing gravity of the black hole that brings him to being his daughters ghost and finding the way to get back together with her before she dies.

Inception (film): a Review and an Argument

Intro

I have to confess (as is pretty my my MO on this blog) to this post being a bit more than a standard review. It's more like (as is most of my stuff) my review that I liked a movie and some details and then an idea I based in it or saw in it or somehow connected with it and how that idea plays out. My basic review is that I loved the movie. I have also loved the the fact that Nolan has pretty much stated "no sequel," just as I am glad that Pixar has stated that about Wall-E and other movies of theirs ... "no sequel."  In order to remember the thing of "distinct beginning, middle, and end of an arc that wraps out well" it is important to have movies that stand alone and don't get sidetracked by sequel-itis. Nolan's brother, Jon, did the same thing with Person of Interest: he didn't go for loose ends that left things open for a rebirth, fizzle now and pick up a 6th season down the road. Like his brother Chris, Jonathan Nolan thinks like a movie writer who can write a strong stand-alone with a good strong arc and a clear, meaningful ending.

The Basic Initial Review

There are many great things about the film: I was totally gripped by the pathos of the "come back with me and we can be young men again together" (paraphrase), but that may also be a particularly male theme and reaction. So, I will confine my post to the major conceptual content I find to be the core.

My basic initial idea on Inception, beyond the basic review of "loved it, loved it, loved it, awesome film, awesome characters, awesome dialogue, awesome themes," revolves around the idea of dreaming as emblematic for the psychology of what we do in thinking and interpreting our world and whet yields psychologically healthy interaction in that context. It is centered on the line that Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) gives Ariadne (Ellen Page) the first time he meets her (and is giving her the test of making a maze in under a minute that can't be solved in under a minute). He draws that diagram for her with the two half-circle arrows and says something like "we are continually receiving and constructing our reality." This holds not only for dreaming but also for our waking encounter of the world and people around us. This is an idea that involves both philosophy (particularly epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge) and psychology. We do not simply receive an accurate static and thorough picture of the world around us, particularly the people in our lives. We receive a certain amount of data that is ambiguous at times, and we then construct the picture ourselves. 

If we are healthy in doing it, we are open to new data we receive correcting our incomplete at best, faulty at worst, conception of the other person. This is accented in Cobb's final interaction with his projection of his wife right before he finally lets her go. He says that this projection was the best he could do, but that it is poor, that it cannot compare to the real her with both all her foibles or eccentricities and all her little bits of beauty that would break into his world from the outside, from the real living her, if she had continued to live. That's the model of "right action" according to the film (as I read it): don't try to control the other person by pinning them down to the constructions you make of them; let those constructions be open to revision by new data in actual encounters with the real them outside yourself.

As I will say below as well, in the section on "different goals," I think this is part of the sapientia ("wisdom") of the film, the theme: it shows us that we should be open to the new data that adjusts our picture of the other person (see my post on Whiplash for the my basic setup on sapientia in relation to techne and scientia)

"Dream Think"

I'll say a word here about the issue of "dreaming" in the film as emblematic of waking interpretation of our encounters with others in real life, bringing in a concept I came up with on my own a few years before the film even came out. I think this concept helps explain why a movie like this can be seen as dreaming being emblematic for conscious thought because it says that there is a real place in which we cross over and meld the two. "Dream Think" is my term for processing dream material right when waking up from a dream, when you're still in that muddled state of "awake" but on the borderland of "asleep."

In 2007 I had hypomanic episode during my first spring in NYC and doctoral studies. It actually hit right during the three weeks known as "paper season" and I turned in 35 pages on a 20-page assignment ... I was feeling grand (immediately after, at the three-week checkup, the doctor who had me on the SSRI that gave rise to it pulled me off that med because that is dangerous, and I am very grateful for being in the hands of a skilled doctor at that point).

The other thing that happened was that I was dreaming rapid-fire, and I was recording them right after waking. What I noticed, and what gave rise to this theory, was that the details actually came to me and came into clarity in the actual writing down. Just to give a little detail on this type of dream recording for analysis in talk therapy, what you pay attention to the most is the tone and associations: if the hues of light in a room remind you of one place in your childhood and the shapes of walls and door and hallways etc remind you of another, there is probably an emotional connection between them for you, maybe one that you hadn't realized before, that they both connect to an emotional issue for you, of if there is a person in the dream that is not decidedly one person whom you know but reminds you a little bit of a couple different people, those people in your life are probably connected to the same emotional issue for you (and usually that emotional issue shows up in your dream reaction to the dream person). It was those details that were being kicked out of my brain while recording dreams, and sometimes new little segments and plot elements were materializing.

This is what gave rise for me to the idea that, even though you're officially awake now, your still sort of dreaming because that part of your mind that operates in overdrive while dreaming, making free associations between peoples and places based on the emotional elements with which they both connect for you, that part is still operating right after you wake up, which is why, if you want to "remember" a dream best, record it right away because that is when you have the most conscious access to the part that made it ... and is still making it in those minutes when you have just woken up. This is what I call dream think and I offer it here as support for the statement that it is legitimate to see dreaming and its active construction of pictures as a particularly good analogy for what we do in "conscious thought," and that statement then buttresses my position that what this film examines about dreaming is a valid path for talking about waking interaction with the external world and others.

An Objection Observed and a Difference in Goals

I watched Inception once with a friend and his wife, and she had the objection that she did not think the movie did a fair service to mothers because what Mal (Cobb's wife) does in going down into dream space for so long without her children, without wanting to share with them, without being concerned about taking care of them, is not what a good mother would do. In a moment, I will give my response to that objection, but first I would like to note that I am immensely in her debt for raising it because, without hearing it, I would not have come up with the fuller reading that I describe below, which I think is a much richer reading.

My rebuttal, though, is that we are operating on very different ideas of what the goal of the film is or should be. My friend's wife is looking, I would say, for a role model to be provided, that that is the sapientia she looks for in the film. While I would agree that it is often a more important question than is taken into account by some, especially because viewers/readers of a certain age will look for role models, this is only to say that it might be a good idea to make sure of the maturity of your young viewer before they go watch (a prudent idea anyway when it involves a film that contains suicide), to get a feel for whether or not they can process the difference between role-model thinking and criticism thinking (which is what I am about to say I think the real sapientia of this particular film is ... not that there is not a thoroughly legitimate place for role-model films, but that I think there is also a legitimate place for the criticism, in the pejorative sense of the word, model).

What I think the real goal of the film is is criticizing what it portrays Cobb as having done (to be described below), and I think the sapientia of the film is the moral "try not to do this." Ultimately, the project of the film is about Cobb himself, not Mal, although his interaction with her is central to what the film is saying about him. I think that, at the end of the day, the films sapientia is about learning from regrets, rather than about providing concrete, positive role models.

I also think it is about accepting forgiveness and healing, as well as accepting the natural consequences and living with them, especially the ambiguity.

The Final Reading and Review

The Hidden Inception:

My new reading, on top of and in addition to the one above, is that the issue is what was incepted into his wife's mind and that there is a hidden, deeper inception that is not mentioned. The film is clear about the one that is the "how I know inception is possible ... I did it before": he places the spinning top in the safe and it is always there deep in her mind bothering her because its continuing to spin means the world she is currently operating in is a dram and is not real. When he finally reveals this and puts it into propositional ("thought") form, it is "your world is not real."

However, I would argue that there is a deeper inception, one that is an experience but that could also be put into propositional form. For this, I have to go to the details I examine in my post on Pixar's Inside Out. But I should clarify that I am not claiming any "source relation" between the two films in either direction (although, as I say in that post, being as Inception was 2010 and and Inside Out was 2015 and given certain striking similarities in what I will call the "landscape" in the two, also detailed more in that post, and psychology as a common topic, I would not be surprised if Inception was a bit of the inspiration for certain aspects of Inside Out). For one, for "source relation" to be of advantage in my argument here, the historical situation would have to be reversed: Inside Out would have to be the earlier film, which it isn't.

I am simply using my observations about Inside Out to try to explain what I think is a valid point about feminine psychology that impacts my reading of the Inception (and I am REALLY hoping I don't tick off female readers, and I am trying to tread, not lightly [which can all too often be condescending and arrogant], but concisely and conscientiously, so as not to do so ... not just not to get busted, but not to do it in the first place).

In that post, I basically say that I think certain elements, particularely the mother's lead emotion being sadness, point, by way of the issue of postpartum depression (as a general thing that always happens to some degree or another, rather than the specific cases of actual depressive episode of this type), to the conclusion that becoming a mother gives rise to a fundamental shift in psychological self-conceptualization for women. Where that goes for here is that the "hidden inception" of which Cobb was guilty directly interacts with mother-identity and produces a profound psychological dissonance that leads to Mal's suicide.

Basically, because she was already a mother at the time of the central dreaming act (down enough dream layers that a couple hours turns into 50 years by way of the dream-time mechanism that the film establishes as part of is "physics") she goes into that act after already having her self-conception so radically changed and now centered around being mother to her children. What Cobb incepts is an experience, although one that I will say can be put into propositional form. The experience is fifty years of growing old with him down there without it involving all the things that defining living life as a parent: teeth under pillows, highschool graduations, first loves, first losses, first jobs, marriages, grand kids, and many others. This experience would be greatly dissonant with the self-conceptualization as a mother she already has at the time she enters that dream state, and I think it is at least between the lines that this dissonance yielded her break with reality in which she committed suicide (how consciously or not on the part of the film makers it is placed between the lines, I am not sure, but that doesn't keep it from being real).

The possible propositional form that would encapsulate this experience is the same proposition Cobb actually statedly incepted, but applied elsewhere. When he put the top in the safe still spinning, the idea he says it incepted was "your world is not real," meaning the world they had created together down in the deepest dream space. But when he put the experience in her of growing old without it involving her children, he also incepted "your world is not real" applied to the "world" of her being a mother of her children

The Manipulation:

So, if the experience is so dissonant, and if we are not going to necessarily impugn Mal as a bad mother (or the film makers as presenting a bad role model), how did Cobb get her to do it? The manipulations I am about to describe are hypothetical (although I will give a detail with the first that makes me think it is more possibly intentionally there by the film makers), but I believe they are entirely plausible, maybe even probable, within the frame world created in the film. I mean them as part of the defense that, while we're not looking to Mal as a role model, it does help this reading to not impugn her, to see her choice as understandable for a young married mother, even though it is revealed later to have been very inadvisable.

Both of the two that I will detail now are things that I think it is plausible to guess that Cobb may have manipulated to get Mal to do the 50 years with him. He admits that he was the one pushing exploring the dream-within-a-dream construct (I always wonder if there is a hat-tip to Princess Bride in that, or maybe even an allusion to the marriage/family itself idea presented in the fact that the impressive clergyman gives his classic homily in the context of a sham wedding).

Before detailing them I also have to add (and hope I don't really piss any women off) that women are more empathetic by nature than are men. At least most tend to like being supportive by liking their husband's friends and worlds. I'm not saying at all that it's a bad mark if a woman is more independent in the "liking" department or more disposed to a situation of "you have your hobbies and crowd and I have mine ... but we love each other's company and being married to each other," just noting what seems to me like a general tendency that makes Mal's actions understandable as a wife and mother. I think the empathy may also help explain why, by the end of the 50 years, he is the one who has to do the inception to break her out of the dream world because she is the one who has become attached. Sticking with the mother issue ... women are much more adaptable than men (and much stronger really) and able to accommodate, even accommodating another human being inside their body for nine months (I love that FB meme that has the kid say "you're invading my personal space" and the mother saying "you invaded mine for nine months").

The "Date Night" Principle:

Married couples with young kids know what "date night" is. Parents occasionally need a breather from direct involvement in the hands-on of caring for their kids needs, particularly their psychological needs, and very often it involves the need to go someplace and rediscover a little of their own interaction that was the basis for them getting together in the first place, to focus for an evening on the community of two, which is actually even necessary for the health of the community three, four, five, six, etc because that growing community began with and is based in the community of two, even though each child's life goes beyond it by being new and wonderful and completely unique.

My point is that "date night" is a valid principle, even though a 50-year-long date night is not right, and that becomes obvious in what happens, in the fact that it leads to Mal's break with reality. But date night as a principle is healthy. But, Cobb would argue, we're not actually doing 50 years, we're doing only a couple hours. A woman, being empathetic and supportive (but by no means "weak-minded") and actually wanting date night time with her man, might easily buy this with the thought that "I will be able to adjust back from it" (although here it proves to be an unrealistic expectation).

The " Investigate First" Principle:

A second possibly manipulated means comes from something my friend's wife initially said about a mother's desire to share things with her children, not go off and get lost in enjoying things they might not even share with their kids (and I take her word for it because they have a number of children and she is a wonderful mother to them, her daughters are particularly fun and interesting to hang out with and talk with because they learned from her example of being interesting and interested in a lot of things with them). But the children in this story are young, Cobb might argue, and so we don't know how their minds will react, whether they will be able to re-adapt from dream to reality, so we need to investigate first, right? We need to check it out, even push the limits on it, to test the waters in which we will swim with our children eventually.

This is yet another possible/plausible ploy by which he could have gotten her to do the 50 years.

However it did or did not happen, Cobb got her to do it, and I don't think it is necessary to impugn her character as a mother to explain how. I think there is enough detail in what is there in the film to accept the other plausible explanations. For instance, the fact that when and where she commits suicide is on the anniversary get away that has a strong flavor of "date night" to it, and something like that can be an allusion.

The Cost:

As I hinted at above, I think accepting forgiveness in the form of letting go and moving on, as he does with his construct of his memory of his wife in his head, is part of the theme of the film. But that doesn't erase effects and costs. And Cobb's cost is that top still spinning at the end and then maybe wobbling like it is about to topple ... or maybe just a in off-handed wobble that doesn't stop it from continuing to spin forever. The cost he must continually bear for introducing a dangerous ambiguity that became a dissonance that became a suicide is that he must live in that same ambiguity the rest of his life.

In a college commencement address he gave, Nolan seems to paint Cobb as "not caring" anymore. That's not how I took that scene, or at least I think there are other interpretations that work at least equally as well, and I think, better (and while I don't agree entirely with "new criticism," I do agree with it's eschewing conscious authorial intent at least the core criteria of interpretation ... even as great a mind as a Nolan can get it wrong sometimes, even interpreting what works in his own piece of art). I think that the ambiguity of the still spinning top is Cobb's punishment, or maybe just the natural consequence, he has to suffer  because of what he did. And I think that what Nolan characterizes as "not caring" is really simply accepting that that ambiguity is what he has to bear but not letting it stop him from living what life there might be. It is almost as if to say, "whether it is really my children I am interacting with or not, it is true that it might be my real children, and so, as long as I have to bear the ambiguity of not knowing, I am going to live as if it is really them so that, if it really is them, I have done right by them by being there for them as a father ... and to a certain extent, that is all I can do, so to a certain extent, it doesn't matter whether the top is real or dream because I am going to act the same either way."

But I also think that that spinning top carries a larger meaning for the viewer who has not even committed Cobb's particular sins, maybe just the fallout of the Fall. The fact is, in this life, none of us are ever entirely out of the woods on anything. That's just the nature of the beast of living in a fallen world, and you have to do the best with it you can in muddling on. There will hopefully be joy at the end, and there can be joy along the way, but you're going to wind up crushing that joy along the way if you try to pin it down and control it (if your wife says "50 years is too long of a date night; it will affect me much more drastically than you because I am a mother" ... listen to her). For this life, you are still always in the state of both receiving and constructing, and you have to be content with a bit of ambiguity on which is which while still trying to move ahead with doing good and engaging others and the world in charity.

Another universal point of the spinning top might also be: you're never entirely done healing in this life.

A Final Caveat:

When I first started picking around on some things about interpreting Inception, I came across a bit of fluff detail that there is a song that plays in the background in the final scene that is from another movie where everything winds up being a dream the whole time, and that this musical allusion means (it was claimed) that this whole movie has been one dream from the start. I don't buy such esoteric cryptic "source relation" thinking as adequate for a good film. A good film is complete in itself in its basic plot. Some source allusions may tease out the identities of certain elements ("Nurmengard" sounds like "Nuremburg" and this allusion hints at the nazi-esque quality of Grindlewald's reign of terror in Harry Potter, etc ... they definitely get more complex than just that, but I think the one under consideration is of another quality altogether), BUT the basic plot itself, when the film/narrative is good, is contained within the narrative itself, not borrowed esoterically from another work.

If the movie purports to be real time at the outset, then, unless the ending clearly shows that to be false, it is true. By this I mean the fact that the movie starts in real time, not whether it ends in real time, because the spinning top at the end could mean that, while he started in real time, he got stuck in dreamtime and is there ever after. The top proves nothing about the opening claim (which it would have to do in order to put the whole film in dreamland).  And any appeal to another film to firmly establish a reading that everything is a dream is, IMHO, complete bunk, regardless of any songs in common and what little nuance the film makers might want convey by those (simple "hat tips" are possible too).

I know that, in Nolan's own statement about the ambiguity, one might be able to say that Cobb's point is to accept the ambiguity and not obsess about it, but a theory that solidly places the whole thing in dreamland then, in that very action, erases the very ambiguity itself. The end of Terry Gilliam's Brazil was depressing as hell, but one thing that it was not was ambiguous ... John Price's character is clearly in lala land (it always amazed me how they totally reversed that movie when they edited it for TV just by removing the last minute or so ... from unambiguously actual physical escape to unambiguously mental break with reality). This theory of the other movie and its song making Inception all a dream from start to finish would not only be equally depressing as hell, it would make the film a much cheaper quality of art than was Brazil, possibly even to the point of calling it ineffectual where Brazil was at the very least effective in constructing its world and its conclusion.

Just for explication, an actual revelation of "you weren't where it was said that you were in the beginning" would be that, by midway through the Matrix, the viewer has clearly been told that Neo's and the viewer's opening belief that he was in the real world, versus the Matrix, was mistaken (there was a question between Matrix 2 and 3 of whether the evidence in 2 led to the conclusion that there is no real world at all, whether the fact that he could control the machines in the "real world" meant that they were still in the Matrix and could never get to any existence outside it ... but the 3rd movie cleared that up ... well, not entirely, in that it doesn't explicate as fully as you would want in sci fi how his organic consciousness evolved so as to be able to control the machines with nothing but air and space as conduits, but it is clear in movie 3 that there is a real world and that they were in it in that scene at the end of movie 2).

Flotsam and Brettsam
(some original ideas that didn't fit so easily into this presentation)

danger of inception (mine: at play in the fields of the Lord)

 And, as with his comments on the dreamer having to, in a sense, own the concept in some way in order for it to stick, he got his wife to own that concept by accepting his argument and proposal to stay down there that long (in dreamtime years, at least). Whether or not it is rational for her to say that it was her idea is entirely the wrong question. She will do it no matter what, in the way that children interiorize tension between their parents and blame themselves, "owning" it.

Inside Out (Pixar) Review

I'm not really sure what else I can say about this movie by Pixar except that it is amazing. I think it ranks up there with what I call their "top trio": Incredibles (2004), Wall-E (2008), and Up (2009). I love all their stuff, but those three have always been their top tier to me (well, at least since 2009) ... and Inside Out has joined them. But it's also the kind of film that I don't think lends itself to a "thumbs up or thumbs down" rating based on examining a checklist of "issues" for films ... if you get it, you get it, and if not, you're probably not going to be convinced by exposition.

The main thing is that they managed to bring their brand of endearing characters and world-crafting into interaction with very insightful psychological commentary. And I don't think that it's easy to have such a direct depiction work out. I love a lot of M. Night Shyamalan's stuff, but I didn't think that Lady in the Waters worked out well (although I did also get a bit annoyed when people online were dissing it with high ethical-esque language like "holding to a higher standard" etc ... if you come out with as many strong ones as he did in a row doing all of it yourself, you deserve a sleeper or two, and half the hype is created by an audience who gets as hypo-manically excited about somebody doing all the jobs as does that person who is doing them does [MNS writing and directing and producing], so half the "hype" that the person "ought" to live up to was made by the critics/audience in the first place anyway) ... I didn't think doing a story directly about story worked too well, but I thought that was a very tall order to begin with, like Shyamalan bit off more than could realistically be chewed by anyone, but Pixar does seem to have made a great movie that is more directly (on the page) about one of the core elemental arenas that operates in film, human psychology.

I simply want to note only a couple of things here, and both of them relate in one way or another to a similarity between this film and Chris Nolan's Inception (2010).

Thing 1

The first thing is the structure of tiers, and this goes to being well-grounded in understanding human psychology. The number of levels isn't necessarily important. It is mainly that there are levels or tiers at all and that there is a dark and chaotic (Inception) or forgotten (Inside Out) place at the lowest level. Inception was 2010 and Inside Out was 2015, so there may have been some intentional modeling, but I would argue (vigorously) that it is not the type of modeling that becomes derivative. In Inception, they go down into a third dream layer (the car-chase / falling van with Yusuf left behind to drive and make the kick happen is layer 1, the hotel room with Arthur left behind to make the kick happen is layer 2, the snow fortress with Eames left behind to engineer the kick is layer 3) and THEN down into uncharted dreamscape (the crumbling city on the shore) and then EVEN FURTHER into the final layer, where Cobb finds Saito as an old man.The schema is relatively simpler and has fewer levels in Inside Out: The control center, the level of the islands with the longterm storage and other operations behind them (dream production and its entrance into the scary side of subconscious, abstract thought, etc), and finally the bottom level, the place of lost memories, Bingbong's final resting place.

I should take care of one clarification here for this first point: those deepest-down levels are not synonymous with the subconscious (Freud actually preferred "unconscious") that takes our hopes and our fears and the images form our experiences and turns them into our free association dreams. Those dreams are mostly productive in relation to their recognition by the conscious (in fact, I believe, and I have asked trained and practiced therapists about this and they loosely agree, that the free association process carries through into the "remembering" of the dream when first waking up, that in a sense, we're still "dreaming" then, still constructing it while "remembering" it). Rather, in terms of real world psychology, getting lost in those deepest-down levels, as Cobb and Saito or Joy almost do, is fully catatonic state.

Thing 2

The second point to make  has to do with the issue of motherhood. The Inception material is detailed in my post on that (which is on its way), and that is actually the main reason for my noting this in Inside Out (because it helps the thesis in my Inception post), because it's not the central theme in Inside Out because it has to do with the mother, rather than Riley.

But it helps to spell it out here: Why is the mother's lead emotion sadness, when the girls lead is joy? We clearly see that the mother's lead is sadness the few times that we hop inside her head ... so, why? I think the reason is postpartum depression. I'm not saying that she is struggling with PPD at the time of the film or that she must have gone into episode after Riley's birth. I am aware that the term is usually used primarily for actual depression episode of this type, and I don't in any way want to lessen the seriousness of that issue, but, as the wiki article notes, many women experience "mild symptoms," and I would hazard a guess and make a claim that all do, to whatever varying degree. Most often, the depression normalizes and integrates again into a healthy psychological flow and functionality (probably sometimes it's presence was hardly noticed even before normalization). But sometimes, from whatever specifics cause PPD (about which there are a lot of questions) there is difficulty with that process of normalization and the new mother has PPD episode and, like all with difficulties (like myself with BP2), to some degree or another, medication or therapy or both are needed to get that normalization back on track.

My point here is simply that, if (in Pixar's Inside Out world) sadness takes the lead in the mother's psychological functioning and this is because of postpartum depression, this means that motherhood defines women to an immense degree on the psychological level. This is not just the "traditional" reading of female gender as defined by motherhood in some quasi-ontological way. It's saying that psychologically, on the level of self-conception and psychological functioning, becoming a mother impacts a woman so strongly that her lead emotion becomes sadness because of postpartum depression, it actually switches from joy. It's a sadness that normalizes and integrates well with the other 3 emotions, particularly joy, in a healthy functioning psyche, but it is still significant that the lead emotion is now sadness. The shift in lead emotion indicates on how deep a psychological level the experience of becoming a mother impacts a woman.

The Importance of Cocoa: Endearing Characters as the "skin/face" level of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

This post examines an aspect of the new Fantastic Beasts film by jumping off from my post on a dual-layered chiastic structure in the original Harry Potter book series and what I talk about there as the "skin" or "face" level.

(Apologies ahead of time for any minor discrepancy in dialogue with the published screenplay ... I have not gotten my copy in the mail yet at the time of this writing ... although I have made sure of the spelling of Queenie's name at least in the IMDB cast list, which I assume comes from official sources like the cast list in the film credits). 

What I said in that post is that, in addition to the "skeleton" and "muscle" layers that I find in two chiastic substructures of the seven-book Potter series (the former in a 3-4-5 chiasm of the seven-year curriculum of Hogwarts and the latter in a 2-4-6 chiasm of themes in the "bottle fame, brew glory, put a stopper in death" borrowed from the first ever potions lesson in book 1), there is a "skin" level in the 1-4-7 structure, and I emphasized that this should not be cheapened or viewed as of lesser stature because it is equally as important as the bones and muscle because, in the matter of what we mean to each other as persons, the "skin/face" level is what we actually encounter; it is that by which our personal relations primarily happen  ... in smiles, for example, and JKR regularly speaks in HP of smiles that do or do not extend to the eyes, and I think those descriptions and others like them are what initially hook us in the writing.

(Side Note: I use "face" because, in a doctoral course on contemporary philosophy in relation to theology, we read a certain phenomenological philosopher who dwelt on the face as that by which we humans identify each other as human. I can't remember the philosopher's name without digging out the notes for that class from the buried bins of old grad school materials, which make Newt's suitcase look like a well organized house, but I do remember that one of the Jesuit scholastic students in the class actually did a paper on it and got it published, so it's a philosopher and theme that is considered relevant enough in contemporary discussion for publication in a live peer-reviewed academic journal).

In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them, I want to talk about the cocoa, meaning the scene in which Queenie and Tina give Newt and Jacob cocoa before bed, as this "face" relational aspect, and I want to claim that this type of thing is what grabs us and pulls us in first to the story (after which the bones of the narrative, the chiastic structure, and the muscles, the themes, hook into our bones and muscles and we are just that ... hooked).

A Foil: Innocence versus Coroman Strike

I'll note one other thing before going further, and that is the aspect of "endearingness": Jacob Kowalski is an amazingly endearing person (and I love the solid character development of Newt as a self-aware but at peace person using Jacob as a  foil, when they walk down the night street and Newt notes that people like Jacob, and Jacob tries to be generous and kind by saying that people like Newt to, and Newt, totally at peace with it, states that "no, I actually annoy people"). And Queenie's attachment too Jacob is equally gripping and endearing.

What rises to my mind here is a conversation recently with a friend's wife who was saying that she thinks Pixar studios is owed a huge vote of thanks for restoring a sense of innocence. Jacob Kowalski is that sense of innocence in Fantastic Beasts, and I think it grips the viewer very much, endears us to his simple joy of wonder in discovering the magical world. As a foil (but meaning the utmost respect for the scholar and the work) John Granger (www. howartsprofessor.com) has done a lot of work recently on ring composition (the full-work-scope aspect of chiastic structure) in Rowling's Coroman Strike novels (there is, according to John, a set plan for exactly seven novels), which she writes under the pen-name Robert Galbraith. Before I knew John was working on them, I read the first of them, The Cuckoo's Calling, just out of interest, because it had been made public knowledge that she was Galbraith. Quite simply put, it left me with absolutely no incentive to read the following novels (some of it has to do with gritty content and language and things that, to me, draw the material closer to that other common meaning of "adult literature" ... and I didn't even bother reading The Casual Vacancy on the ground of what I had heard in that respect about that book). Cuckoo's Calling just left me totally flat; I found no endearingness in the characters (maybe a little bit of pathos, but they are not necessarily the same thing). In short, my personal theory is that a preoccupation with proving she can write adult content after many "elites" saying HP was "pretty good ... for kids lit" made for a poor story. The structure may be there (as per John's work on ring composition), but it reads to me like a bit of a Gollum: anemic muscles and saggy skin hanging off those bones (strong in some ways, Like Gollum, but not to good effect).

The thing to me that makes the difference with Fantastic Beasts is the endearingness of the characters, which I think is greatly wrapped up in that "innocence" that makes the wonder possible (the opposite is jadedness, and all it makes possible is suspicion and tension ... these can have a place in a tightly demarcated way that makes them fall under the larger wonder, and it can be a very strong artistic development, like Snape, but if it is the overarching element, I think we soon whither in the reading).

Time for Cocoa

So, the only thing really left to do is to recount the cocoa scene itself in Fantastic Beasts for the demonstration of the effect, meaning that argument and exposition of concepts and terms in a post like this can get one only so far ... the thing that will really convince the reader is to recall the "tactile" ("skin"-level) real details that (I hope) hooked them in watching the movie.

As you will recall, Jacob was bitten by Newt's myrtlap and is having an adverse reaction, sweating and the like. Tina is in hot water with M-CUSA and it's going to be bad for her if she doesn't sort this out on her own, so she brings the two men to the apartment she shares with her sister Queenie. When the boys are tucked in (Newt only pretending), Tina brings them in a tray, saying "I thought you might like a hot drink." Jacob is all smiles (but still a bit of sweat from the bite too, of course), and so likable when he turns to Newt and says "Hey, Mr Scamander, it's cocoa" and smiles and whistle's in simple boyish natural innocent interest when he raises his cup to Queenie, who is smiling at him from the background through the open door. When the door closes, Newt takes him down into the suitcase world and gives him the stuff that will fix the reaction to the myrtlap bite,which works instantaneously. When Newt discovers that the female erumpant got out, he finds out from Jacob that central park is the most likely place and asks him to show him where it is ... and Jacob replies "well, I could take you there, but wouldn't it be kind of a double-cross, after the girls gave us cocoa and everything?" Newt, of course, convinces him to lead by surmising that the girls will obliviate him as soon as they see he is no longer sweating. And when the girls find that they have indeed gone, Queenie is crestfallen and says, "but we made them cocoa."

That line is the reason that I will be really ticked off if Jacob and Queenie are not married by the end of the five-movie series (I would love to see Newt and Tina married too, but as I said in my other post, I could see character trajectories in which they remain single and at a distance but still very fond of memories of each other ... but Jacob and Queenie are made to be married to each other) . And I love the way, when Queenie  steals Jacob away from the guy taking him to obliviate him and Jacob says "but aren't you going to obliviate me," she smiles at him and says "of course not, you're one of us now." That "us" is definitely not just the wizarding world when she gives him the same smile in his bakery at the end; that is the "us" of "I would really like the two of us to be an 'us.'" And all of the "taking care of him" details and the "him being totally fascinated by her" details of the dinner in the apartment scene are too obvious to need to be given here (she's a great character in general too: the "hogwash" line and the "ladies things" line and the little cough and the "let me obliviate this guy and she'll never hear it from me" ... she's a very well drawn and endearing character).

My argument for this post is relatively simple: Such endearing character interactions, which begin with having endearing characters in the first place, are absolutely essential ... that is the "importance of cocoa." As I said, I buy that JKR is doing chiastic structure in the Coroman Strike series, which, according to John Granger, is slated to be a set seven-book series. But without this level of the skin, the face, the endearing characters and character interaction, which for me there was none of in Cuckoo's Calling, it left me with no incentive to go further.

Conclusion

On a final note, this is analogous a bit with the point of my post on the movie Whiplash and biblical studies. There I said that techne (technical prowess) and scientia (prowess with working elements such as plot pacing or psychological realism in characters etc) not enough ... you have to have sapientia/sophia, a theme (a "wisdom") that comes from beyond the merely human and connects with those (and, as I said there, you will have one, the question is whether or not you provide it consciously yourself or let others use your art to insert their own while you're inordinately preoccupied with techne and scientia). Here, the analogy is that, at least for the difference between Fantastic Beasts and the Strike series in my own interaction with them, you have to have not primarily the psychological realism bur rather the endearingess and grippingness of characters before things like the chaistic structuring or even "serious themes" have something to work with. I have actually even said in my initial jot-down numbered list of ideas from three times watching Fantastic Beasts that I think obliviation as an erasing of the source of the wonder from the no-mage memory may be the "no-mage interaction" version of the willingness to kill in the pursuit of right that is possibly the films heavy theme, which would make this whole thing of Kowalski's wonder and endearing character hook directly into the heavy thematic literary content. That is the importance of cocoa.

Whiplash (the film) and Biblical Studies: The Danger of Ignoring Sapientia/Sophia

Whiplash

I have to say within the first x number words that this post gives a review (of a certain kind) of the film Whiplash, starring J. K. Simmons and Miles Teller, otherwise people who stumble on it from a google search might not realize that it reviews the film. (Even after reading it, they might still say that is is a crackpot review or that it is totally not the kind of review that should be written etc, but at least at the outset they know that it does address the film, rather than, say, physical whiplash as a metaphor for something in biblical studies, in which case, any time spent delving into the post might be seen as wasted time, indeed stolen time).

However, my review of the film is not simply that. Rather, the review is the first or introductory element in the larger post, which fits into my growing theory of "Incarnational" imagination or literature that I have begun developing in my two recent posts on Tolkien and my post on a dual-layered chiastic structure in the Harry Potter series ... yes, I know, a diverse, some might say scattered, body of works through which to develop the theme, but that is how my mind works. This film, however, does represent an instance by which to bring a work that is straight-up contemporary drama into that mix (and the biblical studies part of the essay brings in more "scientific" literature, as I critiqued that aspect as well in the post on "Tolkien versus Shakepseare").

My basic review of Whiplash is that the film is a very tough piece of drama and focus on the quasi-mystical aspect of performance in music (in particular, for this film, jazz) ... that "feel" and the "getting it" that can't be quantified or pinned down to describable technique (I lived for a bit in a group boarding situation with, among others, one good friend and two guys who played violin semi-professionally - the one taught it in a local center and the other returned to work on an MFA in performance after finishing his MA in philosophy - and one day I told my good friend that I thought the two guys were really good when I would hear them practice in their rooms, and my friend replied "have you ever hear Anthony's friend John Henry play? you would notice the difference," and then one day I could only hear somebody downstairs playing and I thought "that's not Anthony or John Michael, that must be John Henry," and so I snuck downstairs supposedly for a drink and saw that it was indeed John Henry test driving a new violin Anthony had gotten, and I could hear the difference in playing ... that guy had a touch; he was caressing sounds out of that instrument that I had never heard in that house before, AND supposedly he only played casually anymore because working on it professionally took too much out of him and impacted his health, which I mention because it resonates a lot with what unfolds in Whiplash)

So, my review is that the film is strong, very strong, on the drama front. But the second half of my review is that I have a problem with the film on the level of what it supports that makes it such that I cannot give a positive review for it overall. My problem with the film is on the ethical level: I think that it puts forth an "ends justifies the means" ethic, and this is the important part, even when the means involve a direct contribution to a person committing suicide.

I cannot take the space here to recount all the details; the reader will have to already have seen the film Whiplash or go and watch it. The important details are that (1) Fletcher's (J.K. Simmons' character, the music instructor) instructional method is brutal (this is the means) in an attempt to produce, out of the pain, that one great performer (the ends) and that (2) that method has directly contributed to a previous student committing suicide. Bur before I go further, I will dispense with a red herring (the common term for an issue that might be raised that distracts from the main argument but, in reality, has no impact on it). This particular red herring is one that examinations of drama are particularly drawn to because of the inherent "realism" criteria for drama. The supposed objection is that the suicide cannot be laid at Fletcher's feet because it is unrealistic that his teaching method would single-handedly cause the suicide or even be the major factor in it. The real question, however, is not what would be most like "real life" but what the film itself portrays as having been the case, and I would argue that the film portrays Fletcher's method as concretely interacting with psychological conditions in the former student in such a way that the method really did contribute substantially to the suicide. Somebody may be able to argue against my reading of the film and say that my claim of what the film portrays is not correct, but one cannot claim that the "real life probability" issue nullifies the blame even if I am right about what is portrayed. The question is the statement that the piece of art makes, not whether the statement accurately hooks onto reality external to the piece of art.

The"ends" and "justifies" parts of "ends justifies the means" comes in the final scene in the film, the performance at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (and, oh, was there a twinge of nostalgia in my heart ... I spent so much time in and around that part of Manhattan, a block or two from Fordham's Lincoln Center campus, Broadway, Columbus, and 65th, that it became no longer just "visiting" that area ... it was part of where I lived and breathed and had my being for seven years). That awesome drum performance by Andrew (Miles Teller's character) is the culmination of the film: Fletcher holds him and slowly builds the speed and intensity in a crescendo right to the final screen blackout. Andrew is in the zone of the performance and there is resolution of the conflict with Fletcher. When Andrew first kept playing, Fletcher turned around with that "WTF!" look but then saw what is happening, that perhaps the moment of the long-sought great performance, the one mystical moment that makes it all worthwhile, is finally here, and he jumps right into directing Andrew's performance. I would argue that only somebody thoroughly inept at reading a film could see this as anything other than the great "happy ending."

But, of course, as I have stated, I think the message is clear that that happy ending justifies even something like a former student's suicide as part of the path to it, that that ends justifies means that are distinctly prone to such a thing. And I have a problem with that.

Three Elements: Techne, Scientia, and Sapientia (Sophia)

The real content of this post, though, concerns three things that I see as always elements in a piece of art like a film. To the first I will assign the Latin term techne, by which I mean technical prowess, in film, prowess with shooting and editing, lighting, camera angles, CGI, and the like. The second I will call scientia, by which I mean (for film) the arts of story-telling such as plot pacing, character exposition, dialogue crafting, use of score/music, and the like. The last I will call sapientia, which was most often used to translate the Greek term sophia, which means "wisdom." In film, I mean by this term the themes of the piece, what is actually said using scientia and techne.

(Please note: all three of these terms are used by medieval scholastic philosophers and theologians in discussing knowledge. I am not using them in that sense here; I am rather borrowing and adapting them to the issue of "art" in the modern sense. But I do believe that the analogy is apt because the medieval use is fitting for such an analogy; I'm simply not going into that original sense. For my discussion, the terms mean what I have just described.)

My main point for Whiplash is quite simple: good techne and good scientia are not good enough; there must be good sapientia. And in this film I see a bad sapientia (a bad "wisdom") stated: the ends justify the means. If if the means distinctly lend themselves to concretely and substantially contributing to a suicide, they are justified if the end produced is the mystical performance moment or the truly great performer (although, notably, not the one who committed suicide). And with this I disagree. And so, no matter how impressed I am by the camera work or the pacing and dialog etc (with the techne and scientia), I have to give the film a negative review (but hopefully one in which I am laying all my cards on the table so that what exactly I am saying is clear and concise).

Sapientia Happens

But I have a further point to make on these three things, tehcne, scientia, and sapientia: the third always occurs. It is not simply that one should try for it; it is that it is unavoidable whether one consciously tries for it or not. It is not that there should not be "art for art's sake"; it is that there never is art for art's sake, techne and scientia for their own sakes.

I may get myself into hot water here with some (as practicing a "hermeneutic of suspicion"), but I am going to liken sapientia to rhetoric and echo the idea that a friend once told me a post-modern philosopher (whose name I cannot remember) put forth: all thought is rhetorical in the first instance. This means that not only is all speech made to external parties rhetorical, seeking to convince them of a particular point, to persuade them, but even the first instance of internal thought in any propositional or predicative form is aimed at persuasion. One might ask "well, who is the thinker trying to convince?" They are trying to convince the only person they can convince by internal thought, and I think the person who remains (in a fallen world) the most important to convince all the way through any communication process even with others ... themself. "Thought" in the sense of propositional content is really only an interpretation of prior, more raw sense impressions, in this case, internal "sense" impressions of what is true in reality, often what is logical, an interpretation and spinning aimed at convincing ourselves that what we want to believe is the case is actually the case. There is no action without motivation, and "thought" in the sense of propositional content, is an act ... thinking is an intentional action, and it always has a motive. Art is also an intentional action and always has a motivation to convince somebody of something

At the end of the day, not even "objective science" (description solely for the sake of description) is possible; it is, ironically, a myth, in the pejorative sense of the word (there is a positive sense, but that's a discussion for another day). One can look at my comments on "science" in relation to drama in my post on Tolkien versus Shakespeare and do some comparing to see what I think of the idea of "pure drama" ... it's what I called "skewed drama" ... and impossible.

My point with something like a film, especially the advice I would give to young film makers, is not to become so wrapped up in techne and scientia that you forget to be concerned about sapientia/sophia because somebody is going to come along and fill that in in your film no matter what, whether it is only the audience themselves or somebody like screen writers or producers who know how to get what they want in a film to influence audiences with certain ideas. The sapientia, the thematic statement, is always going to be there no matter what because the audience is always hardwired to look for it (if you or the producer really don't provide it for them, they will make it up for themselves) ... that is simply the basic definition of communication ... it is always "something" that is communicated ... and communication is what we are hardwired for as, to quote Aristotle, "social animals" (not to put it too tritely, but "communication" is how "community" happens)

(Side note: I should close out this section by addressing the concern of my possible "hermeneutic of suspicion." I think it is unavoidable, but I don't think that it is all that there is. It seems to me that there has been far to much demonstration to deny that, from the moment we are able to conceive of an "I," a "me," we are psychologically hardwired to protect not just that "me" as a physical self, but that very concept of "I/me" ... to see ourselves as a good person, a productive person, a person with insight into the real situation. In communicating with others, I think it is undeniable that, to a certain extent, we seek to convince others of our insight so as to have them as "props" in this little film we each have of our "self." This sounds like a very jaded and suspicious thing for me to say. But I think it is just a part of what it is to be a self-reflexive psychological being, at least in a fallen world. The question is whether it is all that is possible. And think the answer is "no." I think altruism, true openness to "the other," as post-modern thought likes to put it, is possible alongside the drive for preservation of the "self-image" as good.)

Biblical Studies: An Analogy

There is no material connection between Whiplash and biblical studies. The connection is entirely an analogy done on my part. I am keeping bliblical studies in the mix, though, for two reasons. The first is that this analogical relationship is the form in which this whole set of issues and this post came into my mind. The second is that it makes the whole thing personal. Biblical studies was my official track (concentration in Old Testament) within the theology PhD program at Fordham University between 2006 and 2013 (when I officially discontinued my candidacy while working on the first chapter of my dissertation ... for a snapshot of the diss project, see my post "Once Upon a Dissertation"), and these issues were concretely in my mind all the time, not simply as the content of my studies but as the real issues of the relationship between those studies and what I believe.

In biblical studies, what I am calling techne is things like analyizing the linguistic structures and things like the use of chiastic structure in determining the boundaries of parts of the text, as well as doing the background historical research work in ancient Near Eastern materials (in the term used in the field, it takes place in the various types of "criticism": source criticism, tradition criticism, redaction criticism, canonical criticism, and so on). What I am calling scientia involves analysis of what themes are there in individual parts (say, the critique of kingship in the "Deuteronomistic History" [Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings as a hypothetical original whole] or the "Theology of the Land" in the Pentateuch) and how they interact with those in other parts.

Sapientia Level 1

I'm obviously breaking things out into more detail here because I have spent a lot more time in this material, but also because I think the Bible deserves a heavier treatment. What I will call "level 1" here is the analysis of the whole of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament (and there is a difference between the significations of those two names, but one that I think can be one of complimentarity, although, as someone who is creedally Christian, I have to see that complimentarity as hierarchical and say that I believe the Old Testament fulfills the Hebrew Bible). I'll use "Hebrew Bible" here because "Old Testament" crosses over into level 2, although, as I will describe, divine authorship is not the only construct that can operate in level 2.

An example of sapientia level 1 is Jon Levenson's Sinai and Zion. Levenson goes beyond simply the scientia of examining the Sinai and Zion traditions and their themes or even comparing and contrasting them. He goes to trying to draw out a unified theme for the whole of the TANAK (the Jewish canon, consisting of the Torah [Law], Neviim [Prophets] and Ketuvim [Writings]; hence TNK ... TANAK). But He does not try subject one to the other or to synthesize them into a whole that we as moderns would see as "consistent." Rather, his thesis is that the tension itself between them is the underlying "unified" theme (this is a very different way of looking at things, a very Jewish way ... I once heard my dissertation director say, in a class, concerning the "authority" of Rabbinic dialogue in the Rabbah literature and the Mishnah and the Talmudim that it is not any one Rabbi who is authoritative  but the very discussion itself; even when the participants disagree, the conversation is authoritative ... a claim that takes a lot of parsing for us Western moderns to be able get our heads around before we can even begin to ask the question of whether that characterization is "correct"]).

That making of a unified whole (even though the whole is precisely the tension between two poles, Sinai and Zion) is a first level of sapientia.

Sapientia Level 2

For me as (at least trying to be) a person of faith, a person with a creedal commiment, this is the real sapientia. It is the question of "what does it mean for me?" Basically, I think that there are two answers, and I think they are both always there, and most importantly over all, I think that the first must be subjected to the second, and most importantly for this discussion, I think that, just as I said it was dangerous for the young artist to neglect the question of sapientia because somebody is going to fill it in no matter what, I think it is important to be aware of ones stance on these two answers because, if one is not paying attention to sapientia level 2 at all (to either of the possible answers to its question), one will settle for only the first and, because they are not aware of even that fact, let that first one take the place of the second.

The first answer I call "my own history," and it means the answers to the questions like "how did these texts come to be within human religious institutions that have fed, down through the years, into the human religious institutions in which I was raised and that formed my own beliefs and sentiments? How did they lead to me being where I am now?"

The second answer, which I call the ultimate, is the answer to the question "What is God saying to me?" This is looking at the text not just from the standpoint of its institutional history, but from the standpoint of its divine authorship and authority ... two aspects of the same thing (as evidenced in the common root).

When I taught undergrad courses, I always tried to get them to understand that all scholars are looking for a plot: some are looking for the plot of "how does the presentation of this text flow in such a way that God is saying something to me through it; what is that plot?" while some look only for the plot of "how did the human history of these texts lead to where I am today?" But one way or another, everybody is looking for sapientia level 2 (and finding it, because that is what we do even if we have to make it up ourselves and read it into the text so that we can then "find" it there), even if they think they are being satisfied with stopping at techne or scientia or even sapientia level 1.

(Although, in retrospect, I seriously question the advisability of trying to introduce headier concepts like this to college sophomores, at least in the context of a course they are required to take ... and if you are a college sophomore who has wound up reading this post out of your own desire, I honestly seriously apologize if I have been a serious pain in the ass and difficult to follow.)

The History of Religions Approach

The "history of religions" approach is simply that first form of what I called sapientia level 2: studying how religious institutions form the texts, usually involving how surrounding religions and their concepts provided fodder. I think that, simply in and of itself, it is fine and even a necessary part of the process, at least in academic study, even as academic study that is properly "theological" and not just "historical." But it very often turns into that situation in which it supplants the "divine author" version of sapientia level 2 (in this form it also suffers from an error of putting all of the religions on a level playing field, which is problematic from the standpoint of being Christian or even Jewish, but it is also just the natural result of jettisoning the question of the divine author).

When you replace question-answer 2 (what is God saying?) with question-answer 1 only (what was the flow of human religious thought and institutions?), which supplanting I said I believe happens if you don't pay attention to sapientia level 2 at all (because sapientia level 2 is going to happen whether you intend it to or not), then you basically wind up at something like Marx's replacement of "God" with "the regularity of history," which is a very "scientism" approach and, basically, atheistic, and eventually ends in not having any motivation to read the text in the first place (even if it is only your kids or grandkids who finally realize it). Even from the "I want to know what my own story is" perspective, if that is all you are going for, you eventually realize that you can't change the past and you might not even be able to understand it enough to know whether you're about to repeat it or not, and even the "regularity of history" becomes fuzzy: if it is regular, can you avoid repeating it? and so why bother studying it? and if it is not regular, again, why bother studying it?

Just as you get sapientia in art (e.g., film) either way, and so if you neglect it you get somebody else's put in for you, so also, if you neglect sapientia level 2, true ultimate sapientia, in biblical studies, or settle for asking only question 1 of  level 2 (the sola history or religions approach), you wind up eventually getting the sapientia of atheism and abandoning the text all the way (I think this happens eventually even with the atheist who begins with the fiery motivation of saying "I am going to find out the real deal on these texts so I can show how they are wrong and use that to disavow those who used them to mess up my head," or even the softened version of "I'm going to convert them.").

Flotsam and Brettsam

(the draft "kitchen sink" of initial ideas)

The sophia winds up being there no matter what. It's just a matter of what sophia, or what sophia is let in because the scholar didn't consider the issue worth paying attention to it. The sophia advocated by especially Benedict XVI in his years on the Pontifical Biblical Commission, when still going by his birth name, Joseph Ratzinger, but also during his papacy, in his Apostolic Letter Verbum Domini, is the belief in the Bible as the Revelation of the Word of God ... basically that this is what is being studied and the reason for studying it. The alternative is the "History of Religions" approach. I am not saying that HoR technique does not have a valid use in exegeting the Bible. But I am saying that it is in error when it becomes the base philosophy in exegesis. And I am saying that, when exegetes accept the idea that they can practice the techne without any sophia commitment, this one will necessarily fill the void. This is a bit along the lines of Kant's "categorical imperative." The "imperative" there, as I read Kant, was not that "you have to do this (imperative mood); you better do this or you're not being a good thinker," as if you could do otherwise. The "imperative" is that you will (indicative mood) do this no matter what; it is unavoidable ... it is what humans simply do epistemologically. With sophia, I am saying that there will be one whether you want there to be or not. If you erroneously accept the idea that you could do the techne and scientia without the , what will happen is that somebody will come along and "take care of that aspect for you," since you didn't want to be bothered with it anyway.

The HoR sophia is basically that a history and comparison of religions from a human standpoint is all that you are doing, and the result is the idea that that is all there really is to do. That is all the Bible is, one religious book that can be compared to others solely for the purpose of seeing how we got to the place we are as a race, particularly in the religious dimension of thinking, purely from the human standpoint.

A possible other "meaning" is, not the story conveyed by the divine author, but the story of "my background." This is what I alwas said to my undergrad students.


Ultimately, I think both have to be there, but that there is, again, a hierarchy. The second must be based in the first version of it, which is "what is going saying to US?" (and this is not only ). The "us" is important because we are so defined by the communities of which we are members, and it is those communities, much more than we as individuals, that are the descendants of the communities in which the texts came to be. That history has to be taken into account because God communicated not just through individual words and grammar, but through history itself and in the history of communities of people in particular. But the "to me" is important to because I am the one reading it when applying it to my life; as I said above, there has to be motivation, and motivation happens on an individual level. The central thing, though, about sapientia level 2 is that the focus is the belief that there is a divine author and that he is the one communicating sapientia, wisdom, to me (and to us) through the text.