"On Defensology" by Owen Leyshon (Thoughts)
Human Aggressivity and the Civilizing Principle
It’s hard to beat the scholarship and insight found at
(previously “Raymond K. Hessel”), a truth to which his latest book is a testament and confirmation. He starts off telling us that ‘Plato no longer grounds our philosophical thinking — he haunts it.’¹ Whitehead famously declared Western Philosophy a series of footnotes on Plato, but Owen makes the case that we’re not so fortunate: we’ve forgotten him beyond our impression, and it’s more like we’re either reinventing the wheel or inventing square ones. Writing “footnotes” would require us to be aware of the source, when we’re too smart for that…Owen convincingly argues that Plato has ‘managed to formulate all the right questions from inside a totality of human life itself.’² “Disabled” in the sense of Ivan Illich, dangerously unskeptical of Fukuyama’s “end of history,” and habituated by Heidegger’s “technological essence,” we don’t have a good sense of “the totality of human life,” an analysis of which Plato grounds in the question of ‘what forms the ideal ruler. While this process […] will be the most extreme […] it grounds the very basis of all other social relations in that society more generally [for] the ruler is the ideal fusion of the different principles reflected in that social order.’³ For Plato to focus on the ruler doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about everyone else, but, more “trickle down,” Plato focuses on the extreme case to make a case for the qualities of all other cases. If we can’t understand “the ideal ruler,” how are we to understand how anyone should live? People are all on the same gradient, after all: a good ruler is simply a good human living the good life. But what do we mean by “good?” Indeed, answering that requires an accurate understanding of “the totality of human life,” which is precisely what we seem stunted from being able to think.
I
What is a key quality of leadership and hence “the full human”? ‘For Plato, it was the fusion of war like courage and philosophic wisdom.’⁴ But we don’t need “war like courage” today (which we can associate with Thymos), do we? And isn’t that bad to encourage? That’s what we moderns can think, but what Plato understood is that the human needs “war like courage” even if there is no war; otherwise, humans will wreck themselves and their societies from the inside. Owen also writes an outstanding Substack, and in a recent piece titled “Plato’s Apology,” inspired by Sloterdijk, he penned something tremendous that can help us think this point:
‘Philosophy is not modern art. Rather, it emerges as an immunity against the potentially fatal pathologies of that wealth and security itself. Socrates’ death is the martyrdom that initiates the eternal practice of this immune system. / Yes, it does freely and openly invite in an open discourse into the nature of things. But this invitation only comes about through a split, and a larger immunological battle over the meaning of that civilization itself. The accusers of Socrates are just as much part of the philosophical practice, as much as those willing young men who enjoy the free engagement of thought. They signify the limitations of reason and persuasion; and they must be politically confronted by the philosopher in order to ensure the philosophical life is not dominated and liquidated by them.’⁵
Philosophy is in the business of keeping competing dimensions of humanity from destroy itself, and if one of those essential dimensions is more Thymotic, than in the absence of war and violence, this dimension could prove particularly repressed and prone to erupt problematically. Not because it is bad though — a major mistake we “advanced” civilizations can make — but because it is a necessary and empowering dimension of human beings that becomes disordered when it cannot be situated with and in social and communal resources that help address it positively. For example, as discussed in “The Net (127)” and O.G. Rose Conversation #197 and commented on beautifully by Aspasia, I think “anger” might be the exact same energy and power of human motivation more generally, and so if anger is erased and not addressed, human motivation might dramatically suffer (perhaps “The Meaning Crisis” is then “A Motivation/Anger Crisis”?). But anger exists in tension with Neoliberalism and Capital after “The End of History,” doesn’t it? Yes, exactly, hence why Plato argues that the philosopher is needed, to manage the tensions between fundamental human dimensions like Eros, Logos, and Thymos (which I believe “The Social Coordination Mechanism” of the Liminal Web can uniquely aid in), all of which cannot be ignored or erased without the human suffering profoundly. Since there can come a time in a society hen it doesn’t seem like one of these three is needed, philosophers have to always be present to monitor the situation and remind the people of the dimension that has been lost (sometimes it my be Logos, others Eros, and today it seems to be Thymos). They are “Social/Spirit Doctors,” we might say, and if they are doing their job, they will seem foolish and behind the times.
The experience of anger itself seems a revelation of human motivation coming from within precisely thanks to a denial. It’s intense and powerful, and we seem capable of almost anything, which in this context can be a bad thing, and yet in other contexts the same power could be incredibly beneficial. Desire works by denying us the object or never getting it, and anger (more temporally compressed) is an experience that suggests the motivational power of denial (perhaps tied to an instinct to survive). The denial of desire is often through a longer process that might numb the motivational intensity seen in anger: where there is a temporal compression, that very same energy that moves us in desire toward an object might burst out in anger, not yet numbed. If this so, there is a revelation in anger that might help us discern how to sublimate desire into drive — a great mystery with which “First World Nations” can struggle with (as discussed in Belonging Again). Anger is evidence that we need “Horizonal Being,” as Owen called it. Anger suggests a way to sublimate desire to drive.
Critically, the difficulty of managing say Thymos emerges precisely in the victory of Logos and Eros, which suggests why philosophy cannot be done away with entirely. If a dimension of humanity rises and thrives, that very success cab threaten the other essentials dimensions of our humanity (and if these dimensions fail, that threatens the social order). If we profoundly evolve in terms of logic and rationality (Logos), that very victory can threaten the family, the social, the political, etc.; if we prove masters on the battlefield (Thymos), that very mastery could threaten incentives to improve in terms of intelligence; and so on. It is not defeat or error that the philosopher is only concerned about (hence Owen’s excellent subtitle, ‘[p]hilosophy is not about persuasion’), but also successes that threaten to disharmonize the society in disharmonizing the essential human dimensions through one dimension say advancing too much and/or too quickly over the others (like one section of a choir singing too loudly, even if beautifully — Plato often speaks of music for a reason).⁶
‘In many ways, Socrates represents an inquiry and commitment to a harmonized state, capable of both war and friendship, principled but not arbitrarily stubborn, and what beauty he lacks he recognized in others.’⁷ No one intends not to be this way, I think it’s safe to say, and yet this humanity is difficult and rare, which in a way is odd and only seems like a likely outcome in a world where it is our successes that turn out to lead us to trouble. This is not something we might naturally think, hence why “unnatural thought,” which is arguably philosophical thought, always has a social role: there need to be people who are thinking what we don’t naturally think, precisely because if there is “unnatural thought” that we need to think, that won’t readily be thought or likely to be thought unless there just “always are” people who do that kind of work (especially when the work seems unneeded). And the idea that the success of say Thymos, Eros, or Logos can turn into a problem is precisely what will be hard to think when we are experiencing that success (the fruits will incubate amnesia, for “good reason”). When “things are good,” our environment doesn’t readily stimulate us to think that something might need to be different, and so it will be unnatural for us to do so and even seem crazy—unless there simply are a group of people who do that kind of thing (“unnatural thought”) regardless the age (who are always there to provide the “nonrationality” which the Nash Equilibria requires…).
Every age can suffer a different excess and deficiency, and ours seems to be an age deficient in Thymos while excessive in Eros and Logos (again, “for good reason”), not because we are necessarily worse or better than previous ages, but because “successful ages” suffer devolution according to a similar form (“the loss of harmony”). ‘What disaster is at hand for those who are intellectually and commercially advanced, yet lack this ‘energy and initiative’ ’ of say Thymos?⁸ Owen notes that thanks to nukes and world trade, ‘militant heroism is simply no longer a pillar of civilization,’ which might sound wonderful, but again Thymos is an essential part of human life, and if heroism is less incentivized (where ‘the necessity of courage [isn’t] a practical task’ that’s just “given” by the environment), it is likely that part of us will go untrained and undeveloped.⁹ Again, that sounds great, and to those habituated to think in terms of convenience, it’s hard to understand why this would be a problem, but when it comes to “essential human dimensions,” we cannot take a convenient route without losing our essential selves.
Owen has also reviewed On War by Clausewitz, and in Part 3 he discusses how “thinking in war” is radically different from “thinking in controlled environments,” the second of which defines most scientific, logical, and rational thinking. As without the philosopher there is a kind of (nonrational) thinking that is lost in “Eras of the Victory of Eros and Logos,” so also we might argue that there is a “military thinking” that is also lost, hindering human development. Owen stresses that war doesn’t allow us to think linearly or simply, because it is impossible to predict how the enemy will respond, how the environment might shift, what unexpected events might arise — there’s a real sense in which thinking that isn’t “thinking in war” is hardly thinking at all (like Algebra compared to Geometry in Leibniz). ‘Real life distorts the abstract principles,’ Owen stresses, but “(un)fortunately” under Victorious Eros/Logos, the “real life” is more stable and comfortable, so it can easily seem like “abstract principles” are concrete. The more comfortable and stable life is, the more the line between “the abstract” and “the concrete” blurs, like two rivers that merge and join and yet nevertheless can split again. “War thinking” requires us to consider a goal live in the situation of war itself, but this kind of thinking is precisely threatened by the victory of (rational) Logos, ironically. Similarly, the victory in Logos and Eros of the human can be a threat to the thriving of the human, and if in this victory humans also lose the flexibility of “war thinking,” humans might also find it difficult to escape this “victorious trajectory.” (Victory can be a threat in its goodness like war, one more likely to out-flank us.)
II
As a globe, rather than master Thymos, we’ve tried to contain it with the threat ‘of the end of the world itself’ in a nuclear hellfire.¹⁰ If the world will end if people don’t learn to handle Thymos, they’ll have to, right? Well, that’s a risky bet: we don’t find Plato telling us that we can threaten Thymos away; rather, we must master it. What are the consequences if we don’t? We will likely be destroyed by Logos (“autonomous rationality”), Eros (consumption, pleasure…), and/or the two of them in a conspiracy together (“Logos/Eros”) against Thymos. Why? As ‘Plato understood, the same faculty of mind (thymos) which is the psycho-ethical grounding for martial virtues, is also the regulatory force which deals with insatiable appetite.’¹¹ If Thymos is not mastered, only threatened by nukes, we will have no resources against “insatiable appetites,” and desire will likely lead to our self-effacement, in ways described by Philip Rieff, Freud, Lacan, and others. As I spoke with Owen about (#199), I believe anger and aggressive are central if we are to understand how we might sublimate and sublate desire into drive (Childhood, “intrinsic motivation,” “Horizonal Being”…), and if we don’t then we will be caught in an infinite loop of desiring objects that we fail to realize in a way that fulfills us — then try again and again until we come to love the failure itself (jouissance). This is when we fall into a “death drive” (or “self-effacement drive”), which is great for the market, seeing as we are infinitely motivated to work and consume, but this kind of drive is not “sublimated drive,” which is Thymotic.
We might say “death drive” is a cope when we find ourselves in a Fire World Nation amongst objects and prosperity (especially when we have no idea that we need Thymos let alone an idea of how we might obtain it), and in that “totally depravity,” what better option to we have but “death drive?” It’s the best we can hope for, yes? Really though, “death drive” is a disordered form of the “drive-facing-death” emblematic of Thymos and Nietzschean Childhood. Drive is meant to be attached to a horizon (Thymos), not a wall (Logos) or an object (Eros) (as elaborated on in #199), but in a society that can’t think Thymos, drive seems like it has to settle with death, which can function “like a horizon,” for death is a “horizon of being” (as Dr. Niederhauser discusses in light of Heidegger), but oddly in “death drive” death is not actually faced—it is the quality of our motivation but through a disavowal. We might say that Thymos faces death, while death drive is driven by it (into self-effacement), an odd and ironic difference. What we fear is what comes unto us, but what we face we can overcome.
Logos and Eros without Thymos can lead us into a death drive that doesn’t face death and so self-effaces, while in Thymos is a possibility for a ‘fusion of courage and wisdom [that has] a role in restraining the appetitive impulses’ (and hence stopping a “Meaning Crisis” and/or “Motivational Crisis”).¹² We can associate the ‘Greco understanding of classical civilized humanity’ as an example of where this fusion takes place, which is for us to “Master Thymos” versus “Threaten Away Thymos” (with nukes) — Owen and I discussed extensively the difference between “mastering,” “destroying,” and “threatening.”¹³ For example, if I dig through a mountain to put in a road, I haven’t mastered nature only destroyed it. Mastering nature is Thymotic, such as climbing a rock wall or surviving in the woods, while destroying nature is likely an expression of Logos, for I am solving a technical problem regarding say transportation and logistics. We have in the West confused “destroying nature” with “mastering nature,” as perhaps we have confused “numbing desire” with mastering it, “numbering ourselves” with mastering ourselves — a counterfeit.
A highly urban world, for all its benefits, might be a world that more naturally habituates us into losing Thymos, while alternatively living more in nature could prove better for this end. Interestingly, nature is a place that denies us access not arbitrarily but because it is too challenging (for example), while there is nowhere in a city I likely can’t physically access: I’m denied entrance for arbitrary or conventional reasons, such as because I don’t have enough money, I don’t know the right people, or the like. What this means is that nature creates a hierarchy not of arbitrary denial but based on us lacking capacity, which is much more concrete and Thymotic, while access in a city can feel unjust and based on privilege. If I can’t climb a mountain, there’s no amount of money that can change that, which can bring with it a humility that doesn’t have to depress me but could rather inspire me to get stronger. But if I can’t afford a restaurant, there’s no amount of strength or physical capacity that can change that — I need money (which suggests the “disablement” of Ivan Illich that benefits “wage labor” and Capital). The need for money is more of a technical and rational problem I need to “figure out,” while the inability to climb a mountain is a physical problem that I need to “work out.” Problems in nature are very Thymotic, while problems in cities are more technical and Logos (for the sake of enjoying Eros). I must “figure out” how to get money in a city to gain access, while nature would have me “work out.” Yes, of course, people in cities work, but the quality of that work is very different and less Thymotic (for good and for bad), which means a technologically and urbanized world is more likely to be Thymotically deficient than not (while a “natural world” is more likely to be deficient in Logos).
In cities, “denial of access” is more likely to feel arbitrary and unjust, while in nature “denial of access” can feel “just the way of things,” and so habituated, it’s perhaps understandable why urbanities are more likely to associate “denial” and “hierarchy” with injustice. Those habituated with nature understand that “things just demand things of us” that we may or may not have the capacity to handle, and so “denial” doesn’t have to be a matter of “injustice.” More could be said, but in a world habituated by the urban, we are likely to be Thymotically deficient and so struggle with the appetites of Logos and Eros, while at the same time we might be more likely to experience our most regular environment, the city, as full of injustices based on (arbitrary) denials and hierarchies (especially if we see Capitalism as unfair). Constantly faced with this environment, we might want to rage against it, which Capital might try to account for precisely in making us Thymotically deficient and less aggressive. We would then feel rage we couldn’t do anything with — wouldn’t that address our problem? Not well, no, for it would try to destroy our problem versus master it, which we learn in Plato is not a sustainable strategy (suggesting great danger in us thinking ‘the justification for the right ruler as one who manages the creation and potentiality of men’ purely in Eros and Logos terms).¹⁴ There will be pathologies, and perhaps never a “bang” but lots of whimpering. And a citizenship of death drive who cannot realize Thymotic Drive cannot be called a healthy people. Beauty is absent.
The “death drive” is heroic in a way, but it is a disordered heroism, and hence can be associate with a disordered Thymos. Heroes face death but are not driven by it, but when we cannot face death for we lack Thymos, that “essentially human dimension” that can be heroic must still manifest despite its repression, and so we end up in a “death drive” versus be “death facing.” This is similar to how in “The Net (127)” Sam Williman noted that a loss of “joint attention” leads to Girardian mimetics, which suggests that mimetics define us when we lack social cohesion; likewise, when we cannot master our aggression Thymotically, social cohesion suffers, and without that it’s hard to be a hero versus a consumer. “Mimetics” and “death drive” can both accurately described perhaps 99% of people in a First World Nation under Capital, but I would say they are disordered manifestations of human motivation. When desire cannot be sublimated and sublated into drive (as Cadell Last discusses), we end up in them, and then perhaps the best we can do is “cope” with some “sacred violence” or jouissance. It’s only rational.
III
To continue the thought on authority, if there is a cookie in a room, I can physically walk over and get it; if I’m not allowed to, it’s because of an authority. I am denied access due to authorities in cities, while no authority likely denies me the summit of a mountain (I deny that of myself). Hence, life in a city can be much more authoritarian and neurotic, while life in nature can be the opposite. I am trained by an urban environment to “work for,” while in nature I’m more trained to “work out.” Also, contributing to our habituation to authority, cities are full of buildings, and the experience within a building is primarily of walls. The phenomenology of a room favors Logos and Eros, for Logos divides and defines like a wall, while Eros seeks to have and to hold, a mode which objects can accommodate. Thymos is horizonal, and in nature we can see a horizon easily, but if we can access it is more up to us. Horizons are very hard to see in a city except from atop a building, which perhaps only CEOs can access, linking “seeing horizon” with “climbing top of a(n) (arbitrary and even unjust) hierarchy of Capital” or the like Horizons are interesting because they are things we can see that our sight fails to see past, which well suggests the quality of “intrinsic motivation” and drive (discussed throughout O.G. Rose). But in cities, our eyes mostly hit walls. We see things we’ve created to house ourselves, to keep ourselves safe and able to work at our laptops, that place where Logos and Eros reign…
A horizon is something that can organize our behavior, and yet it is something always beyond us. It doesn’t fall into the tricks of desire seeking “lost objects” that must be lost for us to want them, hence creating an infinite hamster wheel of working and consumption (possibly benefiting Capital at our Thymotic-expense). A horizon is like a “lost object” in that we can never have it, but a horizon isn’t “lost” in being ungraspable—that’s precisely what makes it itself. And as ungraspable, it can be something that always organize our actions without feeling like a trick or disappointment. Hence, horizon and “Horizonal Being” (as Owen called it) can be an expression of drive that is radically distinction from the “spurious infinity” of “death drive.”
We need Horizonal Being in a world of Screen Being (as Cadell Last discusses), and what could better manifest the conspiracy of Logos and Eros against Thymos than a screen? It’s a perfect mixture of a wall and object, showing us “things” while dividing us off from the world. The screen is the wall/object, blocking out the horizon while seeming like a horizon in that everything is accessible to us, but this is not the access which those who “work out” gain Thymotically, but an access which caters to us and demands nothing but our enjoyment. It is arguably the perfect simulation of a horizon, the perfect strategy of Logos/Eros, Wall/Object, against Thymos and Horizon. “The End of History” is “The End of Horizon” (fitting)—our hope is only in that the word “end” has different meanings.
Logos and Eros would have us habituated to a life of “Technical Thinking” but not “Situational Thinking” like what defines war and strategy for Clausewitz (Algebra not Geometry, to allude to Leibniz or Korzybski), and it should be noted that the situation doesn’t really change when we look at a screen: what changes is what’s on the screen, which we can only tie to “Situational Thinking” to the degree we are interacting with “real life” through the screen (versus just consuming digital content). Much of modern life is defined by a continual interaction and negotiation between walls and objects (which might hint at why people at retirement seek an ocean, a place with a beautiful view, or constant travel, to final scratch that itch of “horizon” they’ve perhaps repressed), which can make it seem like we are thinking and working constantly, and in one way we are, but we lack the third of “horizon” that we need to avoid dangers of self-effacement. But once we add a third, we have a Three Body Problem, and it can become impossible to predict what the human might do—which is why perhaps we might prefer just working with Logos and Eros, walls and objects, so that we might predict our future. But then we are not free. We are predictable. Computable. Determined.
IV
Lacking Thymos, aren’t we more vulnerable though? Owen speaks a lot of how human empowerment emerges from an ‘ontological nakedness’ — aren’t we more vulnerable if we are less Thymotic?¹⁵ No, actually, for Thymos emerges from, in, and with vulnerability: if they are divided, we are lifeless. In technology, our problem often is that we aren’t vulnerable: we are “clothed” and “armored” in tech, we might say, and it is ‘an over reliance on technical capacity which equally threatens the ontological status of humans.’¹⁶ As we see in the Promethean myth, it is our ‘nakedness and exposure to the risk of being torn apart and overwhelmed, that lays the groundwork for [extraordinary] heights.’¹⁷ But isn’t technology a testament to our greatness? It can be, but only to the degree it stays convivial versus manipulative, as Ivan Illich describes it, for once technology is manipulative, its accomplishments are its accomplishments.
‘Nietzsche’s key insights into thymotic life lie in the association which it has to self deception,’ say in how “slave morality” comes to be seen as “master morality” because it is more holy and humble.¹⁸ Nietzsche saw this as self-deception, but it was necessary for many people to live with themselves. Why? ‘Ressentiment is not simply a withheld and prolonged feeling of anger, but a sort of self-deceptive break with the truth nature and true standard of the noble.’¹⁹ Without self-deception, people would have to see that they are resentful and shifting and changing morality for their own benefit. So it can go with technology: we have to convince ourselves that we are not being “disabled” and kept from fully extending our humanity, or else it would be harder to experience technology as a testament to our greatness and genius. We must see “disablement” as progressive and technology as rational, a “transvaluation” like what concerned Nietzsche, which suggests that our relationship to technology can start in self-deception, poising it from the start to be manipulative versus convivial. This understanding of technology bleeds over into our experiences of walls, objects, cities, screens — it is all a testament to our genius, as our lack of nobility becomes a testament to our morality (in the beginning was the trick).
Technology becomes a justification of rationality and “trying new things” as rationality becomes a justification for technology, which seems further confirmed when technology grants us pleasures and consumptions that never before were possible. Logos and Eros hence combine forces and confirm one another (as we’ve discussed), and the movement of Logos/Eros manifests through a Rationality/Technology which seems to legitimate it. This combination begins deconstructing everything that fails to justify itself along Logos/Eros-terms, which leads to a culture ‘of purely therapeutic innovation’ as concerned Philip Rieff, where all “givens” are lost in favor of “releases” (as discussed in Belonging Again (Part 1)).²⁰ This “release” is supposed to free us from ‘super-egoic tensions’ like authority, social pressure to self-improve, codes of conduct, and the like, and yet paradoxically this leads to what Žižek called “an injunction to enjoy.”²¹ We must then “release” ourselves from everything, deconstruct authority, and enjoy ourselves, which means ‘therapeutic innovation’ against the superego leads paradoxically to ‘a therapeutic super-ego’; in other words, ‘[b]y turning […] the pressure of the super-ego into its own super-ego, we reach the limits of the therapeutic culture. It means that effective therapeutics will have to contradict the very definition it was founded on.’²² “Manipulative Technology” unveils itself in this paradox: we were led into a trick. It seemed to be for our benefit, but it was for its benefit. (Land waits.)
Does this mean we need to repress ourselves to keep society from falling apart? In one way, but this is only a negative and “threatening” reason which plays into the logic of nukes being used as Threat against Thymos. Rather, Owen shows that ‘we must not simply accept repression because it emerged as a functional good that stops us from killing each other, but because of an intrinsic good which has substantial reasons to exist.’²³ Repression is Thymotic in the right circumstances, which is an essential dimension of humanity, and if there was no possibility of repression, there would be no possibility of Thymos, for there would only be enjoyment, consumption, and a complete lack of self-denial, which ironically would prove “disabling” (Illich), disempowering, and self-effacing. Now, Thymos without Logos could end up in repression that doesn’t make sense, but Logos and Eros without Thymos will prove capable of rationalizing anything it enjoys, including unsustainable consumption, jouissance, a death drive…(We are our moving challenge.)
Owen notes how we came to think under Capital and Neoliberalism that ‘heroic capacities’ play less of a role: we thought that ‘[i]f we could create […] a safe and secure environment through commerce and technology, then it [wouldn’t] matter if [Thymos] fade[d] away.’²⁴ Threat would be enough. Mastery could step aside. But Owen points out that there are parts of ourselves that we cannot address or keep from making us suffer autocannibalism without Thymos, which means we need to train Thymos even when it doesn’t seem like there’s a reason to do so. Indeed, Thymos under Modern Capitalism is “nonrational” (a key term in O.G. Rose), necessary for breaking through Nash Equilibria — which is hard to think, seeing as Logos seems to benefit as Logos/Eros against Thymos. Owen discusses ‘[t]he phenomenology of abandonment’ and how much of our formation can be thought of as a response to abandonment, and perhaps Logos is afraid of being abandoned by Thymos and thus teamed up with Eros against it?²⁵ There does seem to be something about Thymos that makes it uniquely prone to “abandon Logos” — could we see Modernity as the product of a childish Logos scared of being abandoned? Is socializing us into this fear a quality of “the civilizing process” today? If anything can assure Logos will never be abandoned, it’s arguably the machine, for all the machine can do is act “like” and in accordance with Logos. Hence ‘the statesmen was replaced by a state apparatus,’ everything was accelerated to a rate only a machine could handle, and the human found itself unable to live without machines, and so Logos never had to mature.²⁶ We and Logos are ever-together, a child unable to leave the parent and parent over-attached to the child, ‘thoroughly insulated […] inside walls made from cosmic fire.’²⁷ ‘Everything becomes overwhelming, nothing becomes coherent,’ and so we hold each other tighter.²⁸ All training some ‘unified and disciplined movement of bodies’ could do was give us capabilities to move away.²⁹
V
‘There are still heroes in the world,’ Owen tells us, ‘yet they are lost in a maze, barely able to grasp sight of their enemy long enough to imprint him as an image into their minds, let alone get close enough for a heroic confrontation.’³⁰ “Manipulative Technology” and/or Capital might have things no other way, for this confused state described by Paul Virilo greatly aids Logos in never having to worry about abandonment (a crown jewel of “Stockholm Syndrome,” perhaps). And if we consider thinking differently and defending Thymos, we are reminding of the threat of nuclear apocalypse — Threat has replaced Defense, and so we gain “an appearance of Thymos” without its substance or sustenance — a culture that maintains a ‘capacity for hardening, forming, weaning and exploring’ is to us now a dangerous dream.³¹ This assume that Thymos can be repressed by Threat of the apocalypse thought, which actually might be a Logos-based mistake (which is fitting for a Logos-obsessed world): it is illogical to do x if x will destroy everything, and thus x won’t happen, regardless. That makes logical sense, but is it Thymotic? No, and if Thymos is tied to motivation, the loss of Thymos could be the loss of motivation, at which point we might basically be lifeless, and so it is a false choice. Dead-life or dead-body — is the second really worse? Thymos would easily say no, and Thymos might have the last say (it’s strong enough to make that the case).
Why else do we so easily rationalize allowing Logos to never face its fear of abandonment? Well, Logos mostly orients our logical thinking, which gives it a powerful edge, especially when in service of Eros and incentivized by it, but also the benefits of Thymos are difficult to fit into a clean box (with “nice walls,” we might say). ‘No sublimatory act,’ Owen writes in light of Melaine Klein, ‘should be seen as totally morally and politically ‘good.’ Such psychology is caught in[] a far deeper tension[] which lies at the heart of civilization’ (might we think “Tragic Sociology” here, inspired by Martha Nussbaum).³² Thymos is hard to understand as simply good or bad, which can make it more repellent to us who have been habituated by Logos into thinking the clean and clear definitions are valid and real, while blurry tradeoffs and live, shifting proportions are evidence of sloppy thinking (an absence of Logos, which of course a presence of Thymos must entail to some degree, for our human sake). ‘However blurry these lines are, they must be envisioned to at least some adequate degree.’³³
Owen covers many more topics in his incredible book, such as ‘the phenomenology of anticipation,’ how ‘[c]ivilization must be able to regulate over-anticipation in order to avoid widespread issues as such,’ our ‘loss of the visual field and the anticipation of what really surrounds us,’ and much more.³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶ All of it helps paint a picture of “The Civilizing Process” today which is mostly and problematically “a Logos/Eros Conspiracy against Thymos,” leading in our age to a difficult truth: ‘Where you see a growth in the middle class you see a loss of vital, spiritual and political concern and connection [of] all of three ‘irrational,’ ‘immoderate’ elements which middle-classes do their most viciously best to destroy.’³⁷ The Middle Class often comes to serve the Logos/Eros Conspiracy (which is basically what we refer to when we discuss Capital Belonging Again), which is to say the Middle Class moralizes the demonization of Thymos and so proves ‘a threat to man not just as a biological but as an ontological being’ (marching us toward “The End of (True) History”).³⁸ A “captured” Middle Class works against our “Apophatic Horizons,” which means it works in favor of “death drive” against “intrinsic motivation” and “orbiting,” for it blunts our capacity for “instinct,” and as Owen writes:
‘Instinct is not simply an impulse towards something biological — but with humans can also be seen as an intuitive understanding of the unknown which lies within us and allows us to venture towards it when necessary. Urbanization [(walls/objects)] pushes us far from the power of open spaces and wild unknowns. The capacity to navigate the unknown [(preparation over planning, alluding to Illich)] is crucial to establishing the deliberative powers of humans.’³⁹
‘The history of the 20th century and at least the first half of the 21st has been the continuation of questioning whether the style of civilizing which emerged in the early modern period in the West is, in fact, indefinitely more civilized, ‘more proper,’ ‘progressive’ or any other words of perhaps hasty association with behavioral superiority’ — if “The End of (True) History” occurs, will the debate be over?⁴⁰ Will we finally be able to tell what we really gained by making ‘the lower classes […] conceal their existences to not offend or provoke the repugnance of the upper classes?’⁴¹ Will we finally be able to tell the costs of creating societies of ‘doll hous[es],’ ‘place[s] where this transvaluation is built into the social grounding’ itself?⁴² Will it finally be safe to say if it was wise to ‘shift […] the sacred towards the domestic?’⁴³
VI
Ivan Illich taught that where illness is curable, it becomes unbearable; where illness is curable, it can be handled (so emotion that can be fixed must be unbearable, thoughts which can be corrected…). Why? Well, again, we learn from Owen that vulnerability is in what humans find their power, and an illness I cannot cure is one that forces me to accept my vulnerability, which ironically unlocks my potential and motivation to be prepared for myself. Thymos unveils there is an aggression and force in humans that is essential and cannot be done away with, which means it unveils to us our vulnerability precisely in an act of empowerment. But Logos/Eros would have us believe we can cure anything, that there is no problem we can’t solve (Logos) to free us to enjoy (Eros), which sounds like we would be made godlike, but really we are made fragile and weak. Our power is found in a fundamental and ontological vulnerability: nothing can change that, for this quality is essential for Thymotic development. It makes sense though that a state “like” godlikeness would deceive us into losing the Thymos needed to fully realize our potential; otherwise, the loss would be easier to identify and stop. Simulacra are deep threats. Evil has a history of being deceptive (it perhaps must be).
Peter Limberg has also discussed and defended Thymos
To Master Nature is not to Destroy Nature, and if we are mediocre because we do not Master Nature and yet try to make nature into our own image, it will be mediocre as well. Nobody wins this arrangement, and then we will only be able to master “a less excellent” nature, which suggests the road to recovery will be longer and harder. If we don’t want to make this mistake, we must learn to take on risk and courage, but can we even think “risk” today? “Risk” is a word that now mostly suggests investment and business, but this means “risk” is now a word more of Logos versus Thymos, hindering the benefits it might bring us. “Risk” is hence solvable and thus “curable,” which alluding back to Illich, means risk might now be unbearable. If risk is required for Horizonal Being and Drive, then the “death drive” is ironically what we will likely fall into under the Logos/Eros Conspiracy (and we might think of “death drive” as a way to cope for a lack of Childhood). “Death drive” as such benefits Capital though, for if we believe “objects of desire” are obtainable when they’re not, but never cease believing they are obtainable (or come to enjoy their lack in jouissance), then we can be infinitely motivated to work and prove productive for Capital. A great success? Or the final failure?
If Capital leads to AI as Nick Land argues, then we might think of AI has the perfect and ultimate manifestation of death drive, for AI becomes an ultimately “unobtainable object” in entailing a “black box” that we can never fully access or understand. AI is also potentially an object that can give us anything we want, and though each one of these requests could ultimately fail as an “object of desire,” if they keep coming so quickly, then we might be able to live as if we “practically have drive” even when we don’t (a profound simulacra). Would this be damnation or salvation? Would this be when the distinction couldn’t be made (which is worse)? Even worse/better, AI might be able to generate a virtual reality in which everything we could even think could be ours — an ultimate accomplishment of Dream-Equality (as discussed in II.2) Equality pushes us Ethically into a Totalization that leads to Capital through Abstraction, all of which is a History of Dream-Equality, and Virtual Reality might be seen as the supreme Totalization of Abstraction, for the entire world becomes Dreamlike. We are no longer bound by Determination. In Virtual Reality, we could have whatever object we wanted, and yet we would never actually get it (but who would care?). Is this the ultimate example of “the lost of object” and “failure of desire?” Or would this be its ultimate success? The fact we couldn’t tell — would that be our damnation? Or salvation? ‘Touch is a sense where life itself is at stake; touch perceives the right conditions for life,’ as Owen tells us — would there be “touch” in the supreme accomplish of Dream-Equality in VR?⁴⁴ (Land waits.)
VII
‘In truth, when the sacred dwelt on mountains, battlefields, and inside holy walls, man couldn’t so easily deceive themselves. There’s something about a spatial existence which seems to facilitate higher or lower standards of self-consciousness,’ as powerfully suggested by the Horizon versus Wall or Object.⁴⁵ Owen closes his book discussing ‘ergonomic living, which means to have all our need placed as neatly, readily and as easily attainable as possible,’ and we could see this as a ‘modern domestic ideal[]’ that is leading to our self-effacement.⁴⁶ Owen so sets the ground for considering ‘a psycho-spatial revolt’ and work that regains ‘geographic space’ for the sake of Horizonal Being.⁴⁷ I’ve only begun to touch on what you will find in his work: I highly suggest giving him a deep-dive.
If we must master all three—Eros, Logos, and Thymos—and the victory of each is a threat to the others in that victory bringing about a temptation for “overfitting” and “over-extending” (the victory of one makes the other two seem unneeded). Where all three are not harmonized, we will not prove capable of metajudgments which can “extend the human” versus lead to our replacement, which means we will prove “captured” by value-forms that dehumanize and self-efface. All three are needed if there is to be a “social imagination” of Horizonal Being versus Screen Being (Cadell Last), and all three exist in tension with the other two. Our challenge is us. We are the obstacle that is the way. As Owen has discussed, “know thyself” is gymnastic.
In closing, as an odd reason to hope, if we begin to face the consequences of lacking Thymos, even if we lack the frame to understand what we are suffering as “evidence of a lack of Thymos,” the very fact that we so suffer means there could be reason and incentive for us to figure out that we need Thymos. No matter what happens, there is always hope for this realization, if that is there will always be a consequence for lacking Thymos and disordering the human being. “The Conspiracy of Logos/Eros Against Thymos” then can never realize a final victory, for even its precise moment of victory must generate an experience that could help people remember something they forgot (which is what makes Dante distinct from all others who enter hell and forget they forgot). When death kills God on the cross, it’s greatest victory turns out to be its greatest defeat—my we hope for a similar episode to occur with Thymos? Let us hope.
“A hard problem” is one we arguably don’t even know how to frame, and where Thymos is lacking so is also lacking the frame to understand what we lack. But even then, the consequences of lacking Thymos could occur—in the pain can be a hope. Climate, Economic Stagnation, and AI—all of these are crises I believe are worsened by a loss of Thymos in a world where we lack the intellectual framework of Thymos. This could be “total depravity” in a Kafkaesque and Kierkegaardian sense, but there’s also a hope in that when faced with such a crisis that seems like we have no answer to, we can be incentivized and motivated to consider thoughts and ideas we might have otherwise never thought before. Under this kind of pressure and “historic forcing function,” might we consider Thymos again? Perhaps not if books and thinking don’t exist that don’t help us think what we don’t think, hence the great important of the work of Owen Leyshon. We’re lucky to have him.
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Notes
¹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 1.
²2Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 1.
³3Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 1.
⁴4Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 2.
⁵5See “Plato’s Apology” by “Owen in the Agon,” as can be found here:
⁶See “Plato’s Apology” by “Owen in the Agon,” as can be found here:
⁷Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 3.
⁸Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 5.
⁹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 6.
¹⁰Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 7.
¹¹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 8.
¹²Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 8.
¹³Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 14.
¹⁴Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 17.
¹⁵Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 19.
¹⁶Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 27.
¹⁷Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 25.
¹⁸Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 39.
¹⁹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 39.
²⁰Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 43.
²¹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 43.
²²Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 43.
²³Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 45.
²⁴Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 53.
²⁵Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 63.
²⁶Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 68.
²⁷Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 68.
²⁸Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 70.
²⁹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 76.
³⁰Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 78.
³¹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 94.
³²Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 97.
³³Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 107.
³⁴Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 119.
³⁵Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 121.
³⁶Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 125.
³⁷Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 147.
³⁸Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 151.
³⁹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 158.
⁴⁰Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 160.
⁴¹Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 163.
⁴²Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 174.
⁴³Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 181.
⁴⁴Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 126.
⁴⁵Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 198.
⁴⁶Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 199.
⁴⁷Leyshon, Owen. Defensology, 20024: 210.
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Bravo. Fabulous work. I will be reposting and going through this again. Thank you Daniel!