Physics of the Soul, or, the Machinations that animate the body

PHYSICS OF THE SOUL Or, the Machinations that Animate the Body

THOMAS MEIJER SEMINAR PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

PHYSICS OF THE SOUL

The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A soul inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.

~ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p.30

INTRODUCING SOUL INTO THE BODY The soul is a mysterious concept. The question whether the soul exists or not runs parallel to the problem of defining it: the discussion surrounding it can stretch on into infinity, while never the twain shall meet. Those who deny its existence oft do so based on some metaphysical notion that is juxtaposed to that held by those who would subscribe to its existence. The denial of a property attributed to the soul that there is an incorporeal aspect of the body which is responsible for informing it with animation is usually based on some hypothetical quality of matter that would enable the explication of everything in terms of the mere functioning of matter. This however, is an hypothesis that runs on equal footing with the hypothesis of soul, but in the other direction. As both hypotheses try to explicate the mysterious motion of being in terms of an as of yet unknown property, be it material or ethereal. But stripped from all the ideological squabbling, both depart from a single mystery: the force that animates.

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY !2

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This animation is the quintessential problem. Back when the elements still represented the four phases of matter earth, water, wind and fire, the fifth essence, the aether, the soul, was the force that bound the elements together as they transformed from one into the other. This ephemeral quality of existence that there exists a power that creates and destroys as it forces the elements into a complex itinerary of myriad configurations is the basic problem the notion of the soul is concerned with: the breath that animates matter. The problem of delineating the precise nature of this notion is of secondary importance whether it is the eternal incarnate or a mere epiphenomenon of the function of matter since the attribution of these secondary properties tend to obfuscate the central notion with all kinds of hypotheses, fantasies and fairy-tales that have infused it with all kinds of religious or scientific dogma.

We could boil this conundrum down to the following question. Which is of most importance: the substance that is moved (matter) or the movement that moves (soul)? This dilemma traces one of the schisms that have divided our intellectual history since its onset. While the dispute has taken on many different names throughout the ages, it is still basically the same battle from the same trenches, though these trenches have been dug and dug again in every epoch, with new tools and new concepts every time.

One of the great grandfathers of this history, Parmenides, was quite prophetic in differentiating the two ways of knowing: mortal knowledge (focussed on the things appearing and disappearing) and immortal knowledge (focussed on things eternal). Those who followed in his footsteps often went on either way, defending the ideal way or the real way. The 1

grandfather of the first way was Plato, exemplified by his preference of the

According to Peter Kingsley, in his study of Parmenides: Reality, the idea that he only approved of eternal 1knowledge and the unshaken heart of persuasive truth while categorically denying the existence of movement, is due to both the loss of a large part of his work (mostly concerning the belief in appearance) and a too hasty an interpretation of that which still remains of the text which results according to Kingsley in a failure to appreciate the purpose of Parmenides logic and how the deceptive nature of appearances functions in the scheme of things. It should also be noted that this age old dispute is never clear cut and that the basic dualism often comes intermingled. For instance, one of the most classic instantiations of dualism: Cartesian philosophy, can quite easily be constructed as monist when reviewed with a focus on the problems of the passions and representation, as they represent the border crossings of both extended space and our cogitations. Cf. Descartes Meditations, AT VII:81 (following the editions of Adam & Tannery).


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ideal above the real and the corresponding sentiment that the soul has become trapped in the body.

The idea that some eternal principle has become incarnated in the mortal body giving it its animation with the infusion of its breath, is one of the basic notions that could be given to the concept of soul. Again, central here is the problem of animation. The secondary metaphysical property of eternality attributed to it could be left aside. Especially since the mysterious animation from inside is accompanied by a corresponding force from without, informing the movement of the body equally well.

The notion of the soul is in many languages related to that breath. In Greek there is , psyche; in Hebrew there is , neshamah, which both mean breath as well as soul. The breath of life hits the spot because at the 2moment of death an organism stops breathing. Breathing is a movement from without to within and out again. But it is not only air were breathing. The flora and fauna that were offered to take in and excrete out again is a similar kind of movement. All of lifes processes have specific ways of processing the flux between the inside and outside. This exchange is what we call the metabolism. The different ways in which these movements transpire characterise different organisms and thus different souls and their specific ways of moving the material flux that is their body.

Similarly, the natural bodies of living organisms are not the only entities that can be described in terms of the specific ways theyre mediating the material flux that composes them. Families, tribes, cities, nations and corporations are all entities that are characterisable by the specific ways that they inform a within and a without in between the parts that compose them. Thus considered the power of animation is implicated in the social anatomy just as it is in the corporeal anatomy. The vital principle informing the incorporation of these social entities is a breath just as mysterious as the soul inside our bodies. Thus we can speak of a soul enveloping the body from without just as it is informing us from within: both are part and parcel of the animation that informs being with its form and motion.

The Germanic soul, Seele and ziel have been related to breath too, but these connections are dubious at least and 2there are many other contenders. See www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/ziel [1.2.2015]


PHYSICS OF THE SOUL

Now, the study of this micro-physics presupposes that the power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to appropriation, but to dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functionings; that one should decipher in it a network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess; that one should take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a territory. In short this power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the privilege, acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions - an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who are dominated. Furthermore, this power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who do not have it; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it has on them.

~ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p.26

ENVELOPING BODIES IN SOUL The human body is not only an assemblage composed of organs, cells and enzymes that inform the body from inside with the processes that enable its metabolisms; the body itself is assimilated too into the ecosystems surrounding it and is as such interwoven into natural, social, cultural, lingual, familial, economical, political and geo-political factors; thus forming habits, families, organisations, institutions, corporations and nations. The ways in which these factors are engaged with determine the form of the institution that is generated from these relationships. This


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implies that for a certain institutions to exist specific types of relationships and habits are required that enables the institution to exhibit the required functionality.

Where agriculture required knowledge of the seasonal calendar in order to know when to reap and when to sow; industrialised society requires the internalisation of the clock by the minute. In order for a factory to exist with a production line that is sequentially departmentalised into different subroutines; wherein each labourer is to an extent interchangeable like the cogs in a machine the human bodies making up this apparatus must be informed with the regimentation of the clock so production can be relayed into different shifts performing the same minute manoeuvres that are incorporated into the totality of the production process.

The machine here is dictating a rhythm to the life of the body. Not only is the ticking of the clock internalised, so too are we enveloped by the pulsating rhythm of the engines that power the production lines. Thus society comes charged with an animating force that informs the bodys movement in a specific way so it can function properly within the societal apparatuses.

Where the breath of the human body continuously exchanges air from without to within, so too are human bodies exchanged inside institutions. And just like our lungs are trapping the oxygen from the air into our life processes, so too are the societal apparatuses trapping human bodies into its production processes, relegating their potential capacity for performance in line with that of the system.

Foucault introduces the very interesting idea of the Kings Body, wherein he differentiates the corporeal king, the human being of flesh and bones [Monarch] the nth as opposed to the king that pervades the throne, the crown and the surrounding court and state apparatus. As the king dies, the King reincarnates in the progeny that replaces him. This surplus that pervades the throne, this non-corporeal duplication, is what Foucault calls a soul. His position as king is granted because he is recognised as such in 3

the rituals that surround the throne. Thus the king becomes a kind of

Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p.28-9.3


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avatar of the higher power that pervades the throne, which is what grants him his power. But it is not only the king that is thus subjected to this virtual kind of duplication. The condemned man too as he fails to conform to the customs required of him is deemed a pariah that should be punished, subjected or reformed. Here too there is a virtual entity, an ideal character, to which the actual human body is measured and judged. These duplicate bodies, these virtual templates, and their corresponding practices are the elements from which the body politic is made:

One would be concerned with the body politic, as a set of material elements and techniques that serve as weapons, relays, communication routes and supports for the power and knowledge relations that invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge. 4

The history of the disciplinarian techniques is what Foucault considers to be the micro-physics that compose the genealogy of this soul. The soul is the present correlative of the technology of power that reigns over the body. Just like the notion of the soul that is the vital principle on 5

the inside of a living organism, this notion of the soul is a principle of animation too. But rather than coming from the inside, it reigns down upon the human body from without, imprisoning it.

Interestingly, Foucault stresses that this power is not something that can be possessed by somebody. It is not something that can be appropriated as property. It is rather something that is exercised, something that expresses itself as a set of dispositions, manoeuvres, techniques and functionings: a network of relationships, of strategic positions, which are effected by the power of the soul which dominates the body. Even in case of the king which as absolute monarch has the 6

appearance of being in possession of power, is rather someone who is possessed by power, who is enveloped in a scheme of machinations that make him into a king, that enables his sovereignty, but which is itself and effect and function of the system surrounding him that invests him with it.

Ibid. p.28.4 Ibid. p.29.5 Ibid. p.26.6


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This investment is a function of knowledge, of the act of recognising something as something; of recognising the king as king and thus act accordingly. Similarly, the bodies of the populace that are not properly subjected and do not function as a productive element of the political anatomy, are in need of torture, exclusion, execution, punishment, correction and all the other possible forms of disciplinary action in order to reintegrate them as functional parts of the political anatomy.

Thus the entire body politic is made up of different types of model citizens that represent the ideal forms of disciplined bodies: bodies which have been properly subjected to the soul of society, once they have incorporated the proper ways of acting and judging. The history of which reveals a genealogy of the political anatomy with a sequence of different ideal typical characters and their corresponding networks of relationships and techniques of enforcing them. Where we once had a king we today have the CEO, who reigns over his company from a throne invested by the shareholders. Similarly, we have the gradual evolution of the peasant, civilian, proletarian and consumer, which are all different ideal typical persona that suit the different political anatomies that have evolved throughout the ages, as they have been subjected to different types of power-knowledge and their techniques which have enforced the different ideal-typical schemes. These are the machinations that have animated the human bodies in their image, informing them with some form of power. The Knowledge that incorporates these forms and is thus informing the body politic could be considered as a kind of spirit, the dynamics of which could be understood as the physics of the soul.


PHYSICS OF THE SOUL

KNOWLEDGE: THE INTERFACE BETWEEN BODY AND SOUL When our subjectivity is subjected to some form of discourse that engraves ideal-typical pathways in our social operating system, our functioning within the political anatomy is altered. The idea of the soul animating the body and giving it its shape from within thus finds its supplement from without in Foucaults provocative notion that the body is imprisoned by soul.

Ever since the time of the Greeks one of the ideas of civilisation has been that a virtuous order of the soul furnishes the standard for the right order of human society. Being virtuous means that ones conduct is informed with some notion of excellence in the way one handles oneself in public life. Crucial here is phronesis, which is knowing how to judge a situation and act aptly. This leads to a life which of proper function and purpose which is the fulfilment (energeia, ) of ones potential. This 7is achieved through education. Aristotle wrote:

Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education.

Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with pleasures and pains. This is indicated also by the fact that punishment is inflicted by these means; for it is a kind of cure, and it is the nature of cures to be effected by contraries. 8

What is important for us here is that from its onset, civilisation has expressed a correspondence between knowledge, the order of the soul and the order of society and the necessity of enforcing that order with discipline and punish.

Throughout history, this correspondence has always been grafted unto some kind transcendental ideal: be it the idea of the Good, God or the law of Nature; the ideal set the standard (both pompously and pretentious as well as sincere). But with the onset of postmodernism, is was precisely this

Note that in these concepts of potentiality and actuality, of dunamis () and energeia () have their 7corresponding version in physics, where potential energy is the force, or power, of something. But at the same time, there are the same words used in the realm of politics: power, ,dynamics, the Potentate, to act, etc. Now the question is whether this correspondence of the language between the ethico-political and the physical is merely metaphorically, or metaphysically. But that might be a too far reaching question for current time and space. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.3.8


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ideal that was pushed from the throne, unmasked to reveal the play of power underneath, deemed by Nietzsche to be human, all too human.

With the Aristocracy no longer armed with an unambiguous notion of arte, of excellence, used to engineer and maintain the political order and to justify it by referencing this transcendental ideal; we are left with a will to power. No longer do we subject the order of our society to a transcendental ideal. Is is rather the mundane (though exponential) growth of power and wealth.

And what we are left with is perhaps the technocratic self-referentiality of power. Where the powers of the state are growing for the sake of the power of the state, in a similar way that capital is invested solely for the purpose of the growth of capital, often without recourse to any ideal outside of it, nor consideration for the often very real consequences. Meanwhile the panoptic capacities of the state are growing at an exponential rate increasing the information that that state has of their constituents a thousandfold. There is the explicit wish to know everything of everybody. Which is in effect realised today, as virtually all types of 9

electronic communication are tracked and analysed, with the government structurally hacking into our communications and computers, as revealed by Snowdens leak of NSA documents. 10

Nonetheless there is a very specific and particular vector pervading the contemporary dynamics of power, even though this is not explicitly expressed as ideal. It pervades the machinations of the political anatomy, while it escapes ones grasp if not critical of the powers that shape the world.

As Ill attach this document to an email and send it to the relevant recipients, it will be scanned by Google, analysed in its content, in turn influencing the commercial offerings that spring up around the internet.

! Even though old laws like the habeas corpus prohibit that, government have done so anyway, and now try to 9make the laws so it is fully legal. The amount of reference here is astounding. With the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden and the myriad of 10publications from Glen Greenwald about it in both the Guardian and his new web platform the Intercept. Recently though, Nafees Ahmed, investigative journalist, uncovered that seed funding of Google came from groups that are strongly related to the pentagon, the CIA, and the private contractors working for them: How the CIA made Google https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e


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Exemplifying at the same time that the nature of societys constituents are approached as being consumers, while also revealing that the systems of our virtual representation have a profound and very real impact on the order of our society. The analysis of the content of our communications have 11

become grounds for the exclusion from the political body, even without ever having committed a crime. Because of this the current fad of freedom of speech in the media post-Charlie Hebdo is totally ominous, in a cynical way. As Manning, Snowden and Assange are persecuted for the 12

revelation of secret government policy. Which, if government accountability is in any way important to to ideal of democracy, bodes even worse for the current state of the political anatomy.

The man whom Foucault invited us to free, has been enveloped in the effects of a subjection even more profound than Foucault could have envisioned: that the panopticon he recognised as an ominous symbol representing the change in the techniques of subjection employed by modern societies, would find such an all pervasive instantiation in the internet. Once it was heralded as one of the most liberating and emancipatory technologies to have been invented, is now revealing itself to have turned the panopticon inside out, virtually enveloping the entire world with its all spying eye.

The troubling conclusion to be drawn from this is that the mastery that power exercises over the body and which enables its soul to inhabit our body, is running amok. The interface between public and private space is dissolving, leading to a world where increasingly public matters are treated as the concern for private corporations with healthcare, water

As Foucault died before the fulfilment of the internet, he might not have realised that systems of information 11is possibly a more suitable notion to denote the role of knowledge in the dynamics of power and the physics of the soul. But this question might actually be a book in itself.

Ironically, after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the world wide rally in support of the sanctity of free speech, 12multiple people in France have been arrested for posts in social media which were supposedly supportive of terrorism. Cf. Glenn Greenwald: France Arrests a Comedian for his Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the Wests Free Speech Celebration,The Intercept, 1.14.2015, firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/14/days-hosting-massive-free-speech-march-france-arrests-comedian-facebook-comments/ [1.2.2015]


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supplies, and even justice departments becoming privatised the system is infringing ever more directly into our life world. 13

The surprising conclusion would be that the effects of what might be dubbed the totalitarian technocracy necessitates us to think of it in terms of a profound spiritual crisis in which the soul of our political anatomy is undergoing a rapid and fundamental transformation which is subjugating and incorporating the bodies on a scale never before seen

Breathing life into the panoptic Leviathan within our souls.

Not only have prisons been privatised, so too now have certain parts of the justice departments with the rise 13of arbitrage-tribunals that have been included in international trade-agreements, without any democratic recourse. Cf. Robin Broad & John Cavanagh, Meet the Company Suing El Salvador for the Right to Poison Its Water Foreign Policy in Focus, 3.9.2014 fpif.org/meet-company-suing-el-salvador-right-poison-water/


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BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.3,trans: W.D. Ross.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html Descartes, Ren (1641): Meditations. Foucault, Michel (1975): Discipline and Punish, the Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan,

Random House NY, 1977. Kingsley, Peter (2003): Reality, The Golden Sufi Centre, 2010.

ARTICLES Broad & Cavanagh (2014), Meet the Company Suing El Salvador for the Right to Poison Its Water Foreign

Policy in Focus, 3.9.2014 fpif.org/meet-company-suing-el-salvador-right-poison-water/ [1.2.2015]

Greenwald, Glenn (2015): France Arrests a Comedian for his Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the Wests Free Speech Celebration,The Intercept, 1.14.2015, firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/14/days-hosting-massive-free-speech-march-france-arrests-comedian-facebook-comments/ [1.2.2015]

Korteweg, Ariejan (2013), Reportage: de liberaal in Rutte verzet zich tegen visie, De Volkskrant, 3.9.2013 www.volkskrant.nl/dossier-kabinet-rutte-ii/reportage-de-liberaal-in-rutte-verzet-zich-tegen-visie~a3502974/ [1.2.2015]

IMAGERY p.1 Paula Braconnot: p.4 Ben Sac: untitled, 0.05 Staedtler pigment liner pen. p.8 Unknown.


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Physics of the Soul, or, the Machinations that animate the body