Why Jung Hated Philosophers

Neurosis adults the brain of every philosopher because he is at odds with himself his philosophy is then nothing but a systematized struggle with his own uncertainty he came across this letter recently where young wrote some pretty salty things about the existentialist philosophers Kierkegaard and Heidegger my interest peaked I decided to search through Young's collected works and the collections of his letters to see what else the Swiss psychologist had to say about philosophers what emerged was a fascinating picture of a man who really did not respect the existentialist philosophers and didn't have many kind words for philosophers in general the opening quote is pretty typical in theme and tone of what he has to say the first surprising thing is that in the thousands of pages of his collected works and letters there is little mention of philosophers at all he says a few nice things about Socrates mentions Plato in passing a few times and the same with Kant but despite his comment in one letter that philosophically I am old-fashioned enough not to have got Beyond can't Jung has much less to say about the philosophers before Kant than he does about those after and none of these things are particularly Pleasant he manages to hit all the major philosophers after Kant in this drive by Rampage Hegel schopenhauer Kierkegaard Nietzsche and most of all Heidegger with the exception of Nietzsche and a little bit of Kierkegaard young doesn't seem to have read anything by these philosophers Nietzsche stands out for him as a mixed bag the German philosopher was both a troubled mind and a very inspiring Muse whose influence can be seen throughout Jung's work this strained relationship between young and philosophy is all the more peculiar since he used to brag to Freud that he was Adept at philosophy and Freud wasn't in this episode we're going to explore this unusual relationship between young and philosophy in the first half of the episode we'll look at the various Slanders young had for these philosophers then in the second half of the episode I want to try and get under the mask we're going to dig down on this comment to Freud and follow up on the Queue of legendary ninja translator Walter Kaufman who saw the workings of Jung's shadow in these wildly emotional comments on philosophers I will argue that Young's disdain for these philosophers he had little to no experience with speaks to the tension in his psyche between what he calls personality number one and personality number two this theme as we'll see runs throughout his life and his work with the philosopher carrying the archetypal image of Young's unlived life Jung's attack on the philosophers fall into two categories firstly he accuses the philosophers of going beyond their proper bounds secondly he accuses them as in the opening quote of being mentally ill in the first case the philosophers grind Jung's gears by going beyond their proper bounds and being unscientific in this vein we see that Young's critique doesn't just apply to Heidegger and Kierkegaard but also the Hegel and German philosophy in general of which he writes moreover this intellectual perversion is a German National Institution in one letter he says that he considers all speculations that go beyond our current capacities as being a pretext for covering up one's own infertility and in a later letter he speaks about the need for philosophical criticism to be grounded in factual knowledge if it's not to remain hanging in midair and thus to be condemned to sterility in another letter he says that the heideggerian school of philosophers merely play verbal tricks this letter to the author of a book on Psychotherapy and philosophy he dismisses the ways such philosophers deal with death an especially delectable morsel is the way philosophers juggle with death I can't wait for the dissertation how is death possible or the philosophical foundations of death excuse these heretical fits of mine they spring from practical experience where the impotence of philosophical language is revealed at its starkest from what he's gleaned from this author he says but Heidegger clagus and Jaspers have to say in this respect has never affected me very deeply for one notices the same thing in all writers who have never had to wrestle with the Practical problems of psychotherapy they all have an astonishing facility with Words which they endow with an almost magical efficacy clagus had had to treat a single case of neurosis he never would have brought off that thick tone on the obnoxious spirit similarly Heidegger would have lost all desire to juggle with words Jung is always aspiring to the ideal of Science and philosophical criticism comes up short for him insofar as it fails to meet all the requirements of the scientific attitude where philosophy fails to meet these requirements it becomes a mere reflection of the Philosopher's unconscious subjective prejudices given the private medium of letter writing it's fun to see young dabbling in a bit of salty language in one letter he says that there is no thinking choir thinking at times it is a piss part of unconscious devils and then another great line from one of the letters he writes regarding kierkegaard's concept of anxiety the philosopher starts from the anxiety that possesses him and then through reflection turns his subjective state of being possessed into a perception of anxiety question is it an object worthy of anxiety or a pultrunery a word I had to look up basically means a cowardly act so question is it an object worthy of anxiety or a pultrunery of the ego [ __ ] its pants Young's Point here Echoes Nietzsche's line and the prejudices of philosophers from Beyond Good and Evil where he writes that most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts of all the philosophers young holds a special place in his heart for Heidegger presumably at the time that most of these letters were being written in the 1930s Heidegger was coming into the fullness of his popularity young writes that Heidegger bristles the aforementioned unconscious subjective prejudices and he tries in vain to hide behind a blown up language he describes Heidegger's writing as twaddle and when a colleague of his read out some Heidegger at a conference he found it was positively comic the substance of what he read out was unutterably trashy and banal and Brinkmann could just as well have done it to make Heidegger ridiculous information then this is the first part of Jung's critique of philosophers he says the philosophy is a constant overstepping of its bounce you can maybe call this akantian hygienics he wants to keep to a scientific project of what can be known he writes that philosophy is still to learn that it is made by human beings and Depends to an alarming degree under psychic Constitution this psychic Constitution is on Young's account far too often and far too deeply neurotic for Jung the philosophies of Nietzsche Kierkegaard and Heidegger are all confessions of their own neuroticism as we saw in the opening quote young puts this confessional element much more surely than nature Neurosis addles the brain of every philosopher because he is at odds with himself his philosophy is then nothing but a systematized struggle with its own uncertainty he launches a few broadsides of philosophers in these letters Hegel is fit to burst with presumption and vanity Nietzsche drips with outrage sexuality Kierkegaard he repeatedly calls a grizzler another term I had to look up Grizzly and it turns out means the action typically of a child of crying fretfully or as the Cambridge Dictionary puts it to cry continuously but not very loudly or to complain all the time so he basically called hercu guard a crybaby of the Danish philosopher's Brilliance Jung writes that kerger guard was a stimulating and pioneering Force precisely because of his neurosis true to form he holds his harshest sentiments for Heidegger going so far as to say that Heidegger's modus philosophandi is neurotic through and through and is ultimately rooted in his psychic crankiness his Kindred Spirits closer distant are sitting in lunatic asylums some as patients and some as psychiatrists and a philosophical Rampage this Neurosis is key in the content of their philosophies their uncertainty with themselves the sense that this standard ice of Uncertain thickness and which May Crack at any moment drowning them in the cold Waters of their depths is key to their philosophies the doubt which such Neurosis cultivates in the neurotic infects their vision of their fellow humans and of the world as young put it Neurosis is a Justified doubt in oneself and continually poses the ultimate question of trust in man and in God doubt is creative if it is answered by deeds and so is Neurosis if it exonerates itself as having been a phase a crisis which is pathological only when chronic Neurosis is a protracted crisis degenerated into a habit the daily catastrophe ready for use this neuroticism is perhaps most obvious in Kierkegaard whose philosophical attitude towards God enabled him in a neurotic way to settle everything in the study and need not do it in life in the later letter Jung reflects on the use of philosophy to bypass life in Kierkegaard reflecting on the Danish philosopher's broken engagement with his beloved regime reading your detailed account of Heidegger I was once again struck by the discrepancy between the Perpetual talk about fulfilling God's Will and reality when God appeared to him in the shape of Regina he took to his heels it was too terrible for him to have to subordinate his autocratism to the love of another person ultimately Jung's attitude towards philosophers is that they are experiencing a pathological hypertrophy of intellectual intuition he applies this diagnosis directly to Niche and to schopenhar but presumably he'd have no problem diagnosing Kierkegaard and Heidegger with the same condition summarize then Jung's attitude towards philosophers is that they are overstepping the bounds of what is known and what emerges beyond that threshold says more about the philosopher than it does about the world and what it says about them is usually not too flattering what emerges is a picture of philosophers as a bunch of neurotic Mad Men spewing their unconscious prejudices on the world all this seems a little one-sided so let's take a step back now and analyze the psychoanalyst analyzing what Jung had to say about the philosophers you might say that he has a philosophical point and a psychological one the psychological one is that they're all nuts while the philosophical one comes down to the critical threshold between what can be known and what can't be known for young this question of what can be known is a dividing line between science and philosophy tension is a very personal one for young and exploring that tension in Young's psyche might just reveal why his feelings towards philosophy after Kant are so charged understanding this personal element in Young's psyche reveals an unlived life that is perhaps spilling out in Jung's emotional dismissal in the autobiographical book memories dreams Reflections young talks about the division in his psyche between what he called his number one personality and his number two personality as a child he was aware of these two personalities and their differences one was the son of my parents who went to school and was less intelligent attentive hard-working decent and clean than many other boys the other the number two personality was grown up old in fact skeptical mistrustful remote from the world of men but close to nature of the Earth the Sun the moon the weather all living creatures and above all close to the night to dreams and to whatever gold Works directly in him when young was in school and trying to decide what he would study in University he was torn between studying science on the one hand and the Humane or historical studies on the other empiricism appealed to one side of him but meaning was what Drew him to the other he said the older I grew the more frequently I was asked by my parents and others what I wanted to be I had no clear Notions on that score my interests drew me in different directions on the one hand I was powerfully attracted by science with its truths based on facts on the other hand I was fascinated by everything to do with comparative religion in the Sciences I was drawn principally to zoology paleontology and geology in the humanities the Greek or Roman Egyptian and prehistoric archeology time of course I did not realize how very much this choice of the most varied subjects corresponded to the nature of my inner dichotomy what appealed to me in science were the concrete facts and their historical background and comparative religion the spiritual problems into which philosophy also entered in science I missed the factor of meaning and in religion that of empiricism science met to a very large extent the needs of number one personality was the Humane or historical studies provided beneficial instruction for number two ultimately he chose the path of science but is his career developed young was drawn more and more towards the interests of number two personality when Jung and Freud were still cozy and young was still Freud's Heir Apparent the father of psychoanalysis wrote to Young I know that your deepest inclinations are impelling you toward the study of the occult and do not doubt that you will return home with a rich cargo there is no stop in that and is always right for a person to follow the biddings of his own impulses the reputation you have won with your dimension Freud is here referring to Young's highly respected paper on schizophrenia which was called dementia precox at the time would stand against the charge of Mystic for quite a while only don't stay too long away from us and lush tropical colonies it is necessary to govern at home nevertheless Jung continued to feel a tension between these two personalities and their corresponding worlds he found that if he approached the world from the perspective of number one nature showed up as the object of scientific empirical study while from the perspective of number two on the other hand it was experienced as the numinous and ineffable realm that he repeatedly refers to as God's world in memories dreams and reflections of course these forces weren't always enemies in fact it seems that in his period of psychotic Visions between November 1913 and April 1980 but became the red book it was science that kept Jung grounded my science was the only way I had of extricating myself from that chaos otherwise the material world would have trapped me in its Thicket strangled me like jungle creepers I took great care to try to understand every single image every item of my psychic inventory and to classify them scientifically so far as this was possible and above all to realize them in actual life from this brief overview of Jung's relationship with science then we have something that's quite revealing when it comes to his comments and philosophers in what Walter Kaufman describes as Young's wildly emotional overreaction to the existentialist philosophers we see as castman observes Young's own shadow though young himself fails to catch it on this occasion his vitriol goes far beyond the proto-existentialist Heidegger or Kierkegaard as we've seen he goes so far as dismissed the entire German philosophical tradition as an intellectual perversion Jung's aggressive dismissal of the philosophers May in the end say much more about himself than about those philosophers here we may have some trace of Young's sense of an unlived life Jung chose the path of science but is he moved ever deeper into the Waters of philosophy spirituality and religion he found himself pulled apart on a cross in One Direction there was desire to be a scientist and on the other to be a philosopher the empiricism and the skepticism of the scientists always hampered his philosophical work to use ionian terminology his ego always wanted to be a scientist but his soul kept calling him to the humanities hence his words I am the damnedest dilettante who ever lived I wanted to achieve something in my science and then I was plunged in this stream of lava and then had to classify everything it was something of the insecurity of the dilettante in Young's comment under philosophers who criticized his Collective unconscious I can put up with any amount of criticism so long as it is based on facts or real knowledge but what I have experienced in the way of philosophical criticism of my concept of the collective unconscious for instance was characterized by lamentable ignorance on the one hand an intellectual Prejudice on the other it seems that Young's relationship with philosophy was a complicated one it is a shrill speaking to the tensions between number one and number two personality on the one hand the scientific propensities of number one personality hate anything that goes beyond empiricism as part of his personality which is speaking in his criticism of the philosophers is always attention with the other part of his psyche Jung's criticism of the philosophers is all the more notable since as Kaufman put it young bolstered repeatedly that he knew philosophy in general and Nietzsche in particular as Freud did not in a letter where he is asked about the influence of Hegel and his thinking he responds that it is non-existent since he never even read the man but in so far as he was aware of Hegel he writes that it was always my view that Hegel was a psychologist monkey another word I had to look up Oxford dictionary defines monkey as having failed to become what mourn might have been so it was always my view that Hegel was a psychologist monkey in much the same way as I am a philosopher monkey here then we see that young has a lot of imposter syndrome around his philosophical side and insofar as his work goes beyond empiricism of course as we've seen with personalities number one and number two this is a tension that predated any specialization in Psychology but it is an amplifying factor and is a 67 year old who frames it in this way it seems to be a lingering sense of what could have been so when we look at these philosophers in particular Heidegger who delve deeply into what Jung describes as God's world around he is fatally attracted to and indulges in himself we may yet see Young's greatest fears for his own work that it is all in fact a neurotic projection of his own unconscious subjective prejudices the sphere is all the more real when we consider how many people have since thrown this accusation at Young but we also see perhaps one of Young's deeper desires to have what the dilettante always desires recognition one can't help but wonder whether Young's shrillness portrays a Jealousy on his part Hegel Kierkegaard and Heidegger were held in high Prestige they all made a major impact on Theology and there's no doubt that young wanted to do the same but the neurotic tension of this philosophical site with his scientific personality hampered this career path in the red book we find the line keep it far from me science that clever knower that bad prison master who binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless Cell this line perhaps speaks deeply to the shadowed tension that philosophy held for young of course all of this isn't to say that young was wrong the claims he brought against Heidegger of his wordplay is a claim that has been brought again and again in the decades since being and time was published in 1928 and his assessment of kierkegaard's Abandonment of his engagement with Regine at least to my eyes seems to have hit the nail on its neurotic head my argument is that Young's reaction to these thinkers seems to betray something about himself there's no charity with hiding her no sitting on the fence or willingness to even entertain his thoughts it's a word salad to him and that is all it will remain the fact that other thinkers taken seriously speaks to as he puts with Kierkegaard the theological Neurosis of our times rather than a potentially genuine value when Heidegger's words are read out at a conference he finds them comically confusing and then of course there's this comparison that the likes of Heidegger are in lunatic asylums as both patience and overzealous practitioners there's no will to pass over in silence that which he does not understand instead he creates it with dismissal and diagnosis which while perhaps warranted in the case of Kierkegaard who Jung seems to have read at least a little of seems rather to speak to something deeper with Heidegger of whose biography and work he knows little to nothing at the end of one of these letters he shows some awareness of this access to use these blasphemies they flow from my hygienic propensities because I hate to see so many young minds infected by Heidegger that crucial final Clause may tell us a lot it's worth noting the selection of philosophers that young attacks he doesn't go after Kant or Descartes or Spinoza though each of these might equally fall into the category of a neurotic overstepping of boundaries as we've seen young never read philosophy Beyond Kant given this hole in his knowledge young would either have to admit to be an incomplete or he could take a shortcut and dismiss the work of these philosophers as neurotic but we can't who is Central to Young's work there is no such accusation though the label is just as fitting my suspicion is that behind Young's hatred of scenes so many young minds infected by Heidegger there may lurk a mimetic rivalry dynamic we see this competitive streak in Young's letters to Freud about psychoanalysis taking over the Psychiatric Society of Switzerland and how they would take over Germany together writing your that is our cause is winning all along the line so that we had the last word in fact we're on top of the world to this 1909 letter Freud replied aren't we justifiably childish to get so much pleasure out of the least bit of recognition when in reality it matters so little and our ultimate conquest of the world still lies so far ahead the unlived life of young is reflected to him through the adulation of the public perhaps there is a sense that it should be his own works that would be much more suitable to infect the young minds and that his psychological theory should be on top of the world [Music] the worlds today and how many people feel just this way about his work through the explosive impact of Jordan Peterson on the culture I've always thought that Peterson's blindness to the postmodernist was completely out of step and spirit with young after this I suspect there may be a deeper temperamental similarity between them than I previously suspected that's everything for this episode of the living philosophy I'd like to thank David palabosian Abyssal face and all the other patrons for their amazing support of the channel couldn't do it without him if you would like to support the channel I get your name in the credits like these wonderful people get access to bonus episodes and monthly q and A's uh then head over to patreon and as ever if you have any thoughts insights or feedback love to hear from you down in the comments otherwise I should see you next time thank you for watching

Channel: The Living Philosophy

Views: 273,117

Keywords: jung philosophy, carl jung, nietzsche, existentialism, heidegger, jung existentialism, jung nihilism, kierkegaard, jordan peterson, jung, jung kierkegaard, jung heidegger, jung philosophers, jung shadow, jung's shadow, red book, jung letters, jung memories dreams reflections

Id: ohAf-GCruvk

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023