WEBVTT NOTE 12. Psychology and Thymology 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.720 Chapter 12, Psychology and Thymology 2 00:00:05.720 --> 00:00:12.880 1. Naturalistic Psychology and Thymology 3 00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:18.560 Many authors believe that psychology is basic to the social sciences, even that it comprehends 4 00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:24.940 them all. Insofar as psychology proceeds with the experimental methods of physiology, these 5 00:00:24.940 --> 00:00:30.200 These claims are manifestly unwarranted. The problems investigated in the laboratories 6 00:00:30.200 --> 00:00:34.900 of the various schools of experimental psychology have no more reference to the problems of 7 00:00:34.900 --> 00:00:40.700 the sciences of human action than those of any other scientific discipline. Most of them 8 00:00:40.700 --> 00:00:46.940 are even of no use to praxeology, economics, and all the branches of history. In fact, 9 00:00:46.940 --> 00:00:51.420 nobody ever tried to show how the findings of naturalistic psychology could be utilized 10 00:00:51.420 --> 00:00:53.620 for any of these sciences. 11 00:00:53.620 --> 00:00:58.660 But the term psychology is applied in another sense, too. 12 00:00:58.660 --> 00:01:04.500 It signifies the cognition of human emotions, motivations, ideas, judgments of value and 13 00:01:04.500 --> 00:01:11.060 volitions, a faculty indispensable to everybody in the conduct of daily affairs and no less 14 00:01:11.060 --> 00:01:18.940 indispensable to the authors of poems, novels, and plays as well as to historians. 15 00:01:18.940 --> 00:01:24.460 Human epistemology calls this mental process of the historians the specific understanding 16 00:01:24.460 --> 00:01:28.100 of the historical sciences of human action. 17 00:01:28.100 --> 00:01:30.380 Its function is twofold. 18 00:01:30.380 --> 00:01:36.000 It establishes on the one hand the fact that, motivated by definite value judgments, people 19 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:41.580 have engaged in definite actions and apply definite means to attain the ends they seek. 20 00:01:41.580 --> 00:01:46.420 It tries, on the other hand, to evaluate the effects and the intensity of the effects of 21 00:01:46.420 --> 00:01:50.860 of an Action, its bearing upon the further course of events. 22 00:01:50.860 --> 00:01:56.020 The specific understanding of the historical disciplines is not a mental process exclusively 23 00:01:56.020 --> 00:01:58.620 resorted to by historians. 24 00:01:58.620 --> 00:02:02.840 It is applied by everybody in daily intercourse with all his fellows. 25 00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:06.300 It is a technique employed in all interhuman relations. 26 00:02:06.300 --> 00:02:12.140 It is practiced by children in the nursery and kindergarten, by businessmen in trade, 27 00:02:12.140 --> 00:02:15.980 by politicians and statesmen in affairs of state. 28 00:02:15.980 --> 00:02:20.700 All are eager to get information about other people's valuations and plans and to appraise 29 00:02:20.700 --> 00:02:23.020 them correctly. 30 00:02:23.020 --> 00:02:29.220 People as a rule call this insight into the minds of other men psychology. 31 00:02:29.220 --> 00:02:34.180 Thus they say a salesman ought to be a good psychologist and a political leader should 32 00:02:34.180 --> 00:02:37.060 be an expert in mass psychology. 33 00:02:37.060 --> 00:02:41.940 This popular use of the term psychology must not be confused with the psychology of any 34 00:02:41.940 --> 00:02:44.640 of the naturalistic schools. 35 00:02:44.640 --> 00:02:50.580 When Dilte and other epistemologists declared that history must be based on psychology, 36 00:02:50.580 --> 00:02:55.760 what they had in mind was this mundane or common sense meaning of the term. 37 00:02:55.760 --> 00:03:00.200 To prevent mistakes resulting from the confusion of these two entirely different branches of 38 00:03:00.200 --> 00:03:06.400 knowledge, it is expedient to reserve the term psychology for naturalistic psychology 39 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:11.880 and to call the knowledge of human valuations and volitions, thymology. 40 00:03:11.880 --> 00:03:17.320 Some writers, for instance, Santayana employed the term literary psychology. 41 00:03:17.320 --> 00:03:23.240 However, the use of this term seems inadvisable, not only because it was employed in a pejorative 42 00:03:23.240 --> 00:03:29.280 sense by Santayana as well as by many representatives of naturalistic psychology, but because it 43 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:33.400 is impossible to form a corresponding adjective. 44 00:03:33.400 --> 00:03:40.080 Thymology derived from the Greek thumon, which Homer and other authors refer to as the seat 45 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:45.240 of the Emotions and as the mental faculty of the living body by means of which thinking, 46 00:03:45.240 --> 00:03:49.440 willing and feeling are conducted. 47 00:03:49.440 --> 00:03:54.380 Thymology is on the one hand an offshoot of introspection and on the other a precipitate 48 00:03:54.380 --> 00:03:56.640 of historical experience. 49 00:03:56.640 --> 00:04:00.280 It is what everybody learns from intercourse with his fellows. 50 00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:04.920 It is what a man knows about the way in which people value different conditions, about their 51 00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:06.920 The Theory of Money and Credit 52 00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:41.040 The Field of Thymology is precisely the study of these phenomena. 53 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:46.440 The distinction between naturalistic psychology and physiology on the one hand and thymology 54 00:04:46.440 --> 00:04:53.160 on the other hand can best be illustrated by referring to the methods of psychiatry. 55 00:04:53.160 --> 00:04:57.840 Traditional psychopathology and neuropathology deal with the physiological aspects of the 56 00:04:57.840 --> 00:05:01.800 diseases of the nerves and the brain. 57 00:05:01.800 --> 00:05:05.240 Ideas deals with their thymological aspects. 58 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:11.160 The object of its investigations is ideas and the conscious aiming at ends that come 59 00:05:11.160 --> 00:05:15.440 into conflict with physiological impulses. 60 00:05:15.440 --> 00:05:21.200 Ideas urge individuals to suppress certain natural drives, especially such as the sex 61 00:05:21.200 --> 00:05:22.520 impulse. 62 00:05:22.520 --> 00:05:26.360 But the attempts to repress them do not always succeed fully. 63 00:05:26.360 --> 00:05:32.920 The impulses are not eradicated, merely relegated to a hiding place and take their vengeance. 64 00:05:32.920 --> 00:05:39.760 From the depth, they exert a disturbing influence on the conscious life and conduct of the individual. 65 00:05:39.760 --> 00:05:44.200 Psychoanalytic therapy tries to remove these neurotic troubles by bringing the conflict 66 00:05:44.200 --> 00:05:47.000 into the full consciousness of the patient. 67 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:52.680 It heals with ideas, not with drugs or surgical operations. 68 00:05:52.680 --> 00:05:57.880 It is customary to assert that psychoanalysis deals with irrational factors influencing 69 00:05:57.880 --> 00:06:04.880 human conduct. This statement needs interpretation in order to prevent confusion. All ultimate 70 00:06:04.880 --> 00:06:11.680 ends aimed at by men are beyond the criticism of reason. Judgments of value can be neither 71 00:06:11.680 --> 00:06:19.560 justified nor refuted by reasoning. The terms reasoning and rationality always refer only 72 00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:24.320 According to the suitability of means chosen for attaining ultimate ends, the choice of 73 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:28.720 ultimate ends is, in this sense, always irrational. 74 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:33.440 The sex impulse and the urge to preserve one's own vital forces are inherent in the animal 75 00:06:33.440 --> 00:06:35.080 nature of man. 76 00:06:35.080 --> 00:06:40.560 If man were only an animal and not also a valuing person, he would always yield to the 77 00:06:40.560 --> 00:06:44.240 impulse that at the instant is most powerful. 78 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:50.060 The eminence of man consists in the fact that he has ideas and, guided by them, chooses 79 00:06:50.060 --> 00:06:52.860 between incompatible ends. 80 00:06:52.860 --> 00:06:59.440 He chooses also between life and death, between eating and hunger, between coition and sexual 81 00:06:59.440 --> 00:07:01.020 abstinence. 82 00:07:01.020 --> 00:07:05.980 In earlier days, people were prepared to assume that there was no sense at all in the exceptional 83 00:07:05.980 --> 00:07:08.240 behavior of neurotics. 84 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:13.300 Freud demonstrated that the seemingly senseless acts of the neurotic are designed to attain 85 00:07:13.300 --> 00:07:15.140 and Definite Ends. 86 00:07:15.140 --> 00:07:20.740 The ends the neurotic wants to attain may differ from those for which normal people strive 87 00:07:20.740 --> 00:07:27.460 and, very often, the means the neurotic resorts to are not suitable for their realization. 88 00:07:27.460 --> 00:07:32.580 But the fact that means chosen are not fit to attain the ends sought does not qualify 89 00:07:32.580 --> 00:07:35.300 an action as irrational. 90 00:07:35.300 --> 00:07:40.680 To make mistakes in pursuing one's ends is a widespread human weakness. 91 00:07:40.680 --> 00:07:46.160 Some err less often than others, but no mortal man is omniscient and infallible. 92 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:52.400 Error, inefficiency, and failure must not be confused with irrationality. 93 00:07:52.400 --> 00:07:56.360 He who shoots wants, as a rule, to hit the mark. 94 00:07:56.360 --> 00:07:59.160 If he misses it, he is not irrational. 95 00:07:59.160 --> 00:08:01.320 He is a poor marksman. 96 00:08:01.320 --> 00:08:05.440 The doctor who chooses the wrong method to treat a patient is not irrational. 97 00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:08.080 He may be an incompetent physician. 98 00:08:08.080 --> 00:08:13.660 The farmer who in earlier ages tried to increase his crop by resorting to magic rites acted 99 00:08:13.660 --> 00:08:18.500 no less rationally than the modern farmer who applies more fertilizer. 100 00:08:18.500 --> 00:08:24.900 He did what according to his erroneous opinion was appropriate to his purpose. 101 00:08:24.900 --> 00:08:30.060 What characterizes the neurotic as such is not the fact that he resorts to unsuitable 102 00:08:30.060 --> 00:08:36.420 means but that he fails to come to grips with the conflicts that confront civilized man. 103 00:08:36.420 --> 00:08:42.380 Life in society requires that the individual suppress instinctive urges present in every 104 00:08:42.380 --> 00:08:44.180 animal. 105 00:08:44.180 --> 00:08:49.540 We may leave it undecided whether the impulse of aggression is one of these innate urges. 106 00:08:49.540 --> 00:08:54.540 There is no doubt that life in society is incompatible with indulgence in the animal 107 00:08:54.540 --> 00:08:57.740 habits of satisfying sexual appetites. 108 00:08:57.740 --> 00:09:01.820 Perhaps there are better methods of regulating sexual intercourse than those resorted to 109 00:09:01.820 --> 00:09:03.900 in actual society. 110 00:09:03.900 --> 00:09:09.520 However that may be, it is a fact that the adopted methods put too much strain upon the 111 00:09:09.520 --> 00:09:12.040 minds of some individuals. 112 00:09:12.040 --> 00:09:16.960 These men and women are at a loss to solve problems which luckier people get over. 113 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:21.020 Their dilemma and embarrassment make them neurotic. 114 00:09:21.020 --> 00:09:25.680 Many spurious objections have been raised to the philosophy of rationalism. 115 00:09:25.680 --> 00:09:30.800 Various 19th century schools of thought completely misinterpreted the essence of the rationalist 116 00:09:30.800 --> 00:09:32.540 doctrine. 117 00:09:32.540 --> 00:09:37.760 As against these misinterpretations, it is important to realize that 18th century classical 118 00:09:37.760 --> 00:09:42.880 rationalism was defective only in the treatment of some subordinate and merely incidental 119 00:09:42.880 --> 00:09:49.920 issues, and that these minor deficiencies could easily lead undiscerning critics astray. 120 00:09:49.920 --> 00:09:54.200 The fundamental thesis of rationalism is unassailable. 121 00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:56.360 Man is a rational being. 122 00:09:56.360 --> 00:09:59.780 That is, his actions are guided by reason. 123 00:09:59.780 --> 00:10:06.020 To the proposition, Man Acts is tantamount to the proposition, Man is eager to substitute 124 00:10:06.020 --> 00:10:11.660 a state of affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that suits him less. 125 00:10:11.660 --> 00:10:16.000 In order to achieve this, he must employ suitable means. 126 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:20.420 It is his reason that enables him to find out what is a suitable means for attaining 127 00:10:20.420 --> 00:10:24.300 his chosen end and what is not. 128 00:10:24.300 --> 00:10:29.340 Rationalism was right, furthermore, in stressing that there is a far-reaching unanimity among 129 00:10:29.340 --> 00:10:35.660 Among people with regard to the choice of ultimate ends, with almost negligible exceptions, 130 00:10:35.660 --> 00:10:40.100 all people want to preserve their lives and health and improve the material conditions 131 00:10:40.100 --> 00:10:42.020 of their existence. 132 00:10:42.020 --> 00:10:48.020 It is this fact that determines both cooperation and competition among men. 133 00:10:48.020 --> 00:10:54.500 But in dealing with this point, rationalist philosophers committed serious blunders. 134 00:10:54.500 --> 00:11:00.240 In the first place, they assumed that all men are endowed with the same power of reasoning. 135 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:05.680 They ignored the difference between clever people and dullards, even that between the 136 00:11:05.680 --> 00:11:11.960 pioneering genius and the vast crowds of simple routineists who at best can espouse the doctrines 137 00:11:11.960 --> 00:11:17.920 developed by the great thinkers but more often are incapable of comprehending them. 138 00:11:17.920 --> 00:11:23.360 As the rationalists saw it, every sane adult was intelligent enough to grasp the meaning 139 00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:46.460 The second shortcoming of rationalism was its neglect of the problem of erroneous thinking. 140 00:11:46.460 --> 00:11:51.540 Most of the rationalist philosophers failed to see that even honest men, sincerely devoted 141 00:11:51.540 --> 00:11:55.120 to the Search for Truth, could err. 142 00:11:55.120 --> 00:12:00.180 This prepossession prevented them from doing justice to the ideologies and the metaphysical 143 00:12:00.180 --> 00:12:02.340 doctrines of the past. 144 00:12:02.340 --> 00:12:07.300 A doctrine of which they disapproved could, in their opinion, have been prompted only 145 00:12:07.300 --> 00:12:09.780 by purposeful deceit. 146 00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:14.660 Many of them dismissed all religions as the product of the intentional fraud of wicked 147 00:12:14.660 --> 00:12:16.220 imposters. 148 00:12:16.220 --> 00:12:21.600 These Shortcomings of Classical Rationalism Do Not Excuse Any of the Passionate Attacks 149 00:12:21.600 --> 00:12:24.780 of Modern Irrationalism. 150 00:12:24.780 --> 00:12:27.800 2. 151 00:12:27.800 --> 00:12:32.260 Thymology and Praxeology 152 00:12:32.260 --> 00:12:36.660 Thymology has no special relation to praxeology and economics. 153 00:12:36.660 --> 00:12:41.840 The popular belief that modern subjective economics, the marginal utility school, is 154 00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:51.640 The very act of valuing is a thymological phenomenon. 155 00:12:51.640 --> 00:12:57.680 But praxeology and economics do not deal with the thymological aspects of valuation. 156 00:12:57.680 --> 00:13:01.960 Their theme is acting in accordance with the choices made by the actor. 157 00:13:01.960 --> 00:13:05.840 The concrete choice is an offshoot of valuing. 158 00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:11.680 But praxeology is not concerned with the events which within a man's soul or mind or brain 159 00:13:11.680 --> 00:13:18.200 produce a definite decision between an A and a B. It takes it for granted that the nature 160 00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:24.960 of the universe enjoins upon man choosing between incompatible ends. Its subject is 161 00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:31.360 not the content of these acts of choosing, but what results from them. Action. It does 162 00:13:31.360 --> 00:13:37.760 not care about what a man chooses, but about the fact that he chooses and acts in compliance 163 00:13:37.760 --> 00:13:43.760 with a Choice Made. It is neutral with regard to the factors that determine the choice and 164 00:13:43.760 --> 00:13:49.700 does not arrogate to itself the competence to examine, to revise, or to correct judgments 165 00:13:49.700 --> 00:13:57.440 of value. It is vert frei. Why one man chooses water and another wine 166 00:13:57.440 --> 00:14:04.520 is a thymological, or in the traditional terminology, psychological, problem, but it is of no concern 167 00:14:04.520 --> 00:14:07.840 to Praxeology and Economics 168 00:14:07.840 --> 00:14:13.160 The subject matter of praxeology and of that part of it which is so far the best developed, 169 00:14:13.160 --> 00:14:21.360 economics, is action as such and not the motives that impel a man to aim at definite ends. 170 00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:24.040 3. 171 00:14:24.040 --> 00:14:28.440 Thymology as a Historical Discipline 172 00:14:28.440 --> 00:14:31.960 Psychology in the sense in which the term is employed today by the discipline called 173 00:14:31.960 --> 00:14:38.140 Psychology is a natural science. It is not the task of an epistemological treatise dealing 174 00:14:38.140 --> 00:14:43.200 with the sciences of human action to raise the question as to what distinguishes this 175 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:48.320 branch of the natural sciences from general physiology. 176 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:53.600 Psychology in the sense of thymology is a branch of history. It derives its knowledge 177 00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:59.680 from historical experience. We shall deal in a later section with introspection. At 178 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:04.560 At this point, it suffices to stress the fact that the thymological observation both of 179 00:15:04.560 --> 00:15:09.760 other people's choices and of the observer's own choosing necessarily always refers to 180 00:15:09.760 --> 00:15:13.960 the past in the way that historical experience does. 181 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:18.680 There is no method available which would produce in this field something analogous to what 182 00:15:18.680 --> 00:15:23.560 the natural sciences consider an experimentally established fact. 183 00:15:23.560 --> 00:15:28.680 All that thymology can tell us is that in the past, definite men or groups of men were 184 00:15:28.680 --> 00:15:34.920 for valuing and acting in a definite way. Whether they will, in the future, value and act in 185 00:15:34.920 --> 00:15:40.760 the same way remains uncertain. All that can be asserted about their future conduct is 186 00:15:40.760 --> 00:15:45.640 speculative anticipation of the future based on the specific understanding of the historical 187 00:15:45.640 --> 00:15:51.680 branches of the sciences of human action. There is no difference in this regard between 188 00:15:51.680 --> 00:15:57.880 the thymology of individuals and that of groups. What is called Volcker psychology and mass 189 00:15:57.880 --> 00:16:01.280 Social psychology, too, are historical disciplines. 190 00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:06.100 What is called a nation's character is at best the traits displayed by members of that 191 00:16:06.100 --> 00:16:08.240 nation in the past. 192 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:13.760 It remains uncertain whether or not the same traits will manifest themselves in the future, 193 00:16:13.760 --> 00:16:14.760 too. 194 00:16:14.760 --> 00:16:19.020 All animals are endowed with the impulse of self-preservation. 195 00:16:19.020 --> 00:16:22.480 They resist forces detrimental to their survival. 196 00:16:22.480 --> 00:16:27.840 If attacked, they defend themselves or counterattack or seek safety in flight. 197 00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:33.220 Biology is in a position to predict, on the basis of observation of the behavior of various 198 00:16:33.220 --> 00:16:39.780 species of animals, how a healthy individual of each species will respond to attack. 199 00:16:39.780 --> 00:16:45.080 No such apodictic forecast concerning the conduct of men is possible. 200 00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:50.680 True, the immense majority of men are driven by the animal impulse of self-preservation, 201 00:16:50.680 --> 00:16:52.680 but there are exceptions. 202 00:16:52.680 --> 00:16:57.480 There are men who are led by definite ideas to choose nonresistance. 203 00:16:57.480 --> 00:17:03.640 There are others whom hopelessness induces to abstain from any attempt to resist or to flee. 204 00:17:03.640 --> 00:17:10.320 Before the event, it is impossible to know with certainty how an individual will react. 205 00:17:10.320 --> 00:17:15.200 In retrospect, historical analysis tries to show us that the outcome could not have been 206 00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:17.880 different from what it really was. 207 00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:22.840 Of course, the effect is always the necessary resultant of the factors operating. 208 00:17:22.840 --> 00:17:27.320 But it is impossible to deduce with certainty from thymological experience the future 209 00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:32.000 for Conduct of Men, Whether Individuals or Groups of Individuals. 210 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:37.320 All prognostications based on theymological knowledge are specific understanding of the 211 00:17:37.320 --> 00:17:42.920 future as practiced daily by everyone in their actions and especially also by statesmen, 212 00:17:42.920 --> 00:17:45.760 politicians, and businessmen. 213 00:17:45.760 --> 00:17:51.160 What theymology achieves is the elaboration of a catalogue of human traits. 214 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:56.560 It can moreover establish the fact that certain traits appeared in the past as a rule in connection 215 00:17:56.560 --> 00:18:12.600 4. 216 00:18:12.600 --> 00:18:16.320 History and Fiction 217 00:18:16.320 --> 00:18:20.280 History tries to describe past events as they really happened. 218 00:18:20.280 --> 00:18:23.200 It aims at faithful representation. 219 00:18:23.200 --> 00:18:28.400 Its concept of truth is correspondence with what was once reality. 220 00:18:28.400 --> 00:18:32.680 Ethic and dramatic fiction depict what is to be considered true from the point of view 221 00:18:32.680 --> 00:18:38.040 of theymological insight, no matter whether the story told really happened or not. 222 00:18:38.040 --> 00:18:42.960 It is not our task to deal with the effects the author wants to bring about by his work 223 00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:47.240 and with its metaphysical, aesthetic, and moral content. 224 00:18:47.240 --> 00:18:50.640 Many writers seek merely to entertain the public. 225 00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:53.080 Others are more ambitious. 226 00:18:53.080 --> 00:18:59.200 In telling a story, they try to suggest a general view of man's fate, of life and death, of 227 00:18:59.200 --> 00:19:04.880 human effort and suffering, of success and frustration. Their message differs radically 228 00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:09.320 from that of science as well as from that of philosophy. 229 00:19:09.320 --> 00:19:15.640 Science in describing and interpreting the universe relies entirely upon reason and experience. 230 00:19:15.640 --> 00:19:21.120 It shuns propositions which are not open to demonstration by means of logic, in the broadest 231 00:19:21.120 --> 00:19:31.120 It analyzes parts of the universe without making any statements about the totality of things. 232 00:19:31.120 --> 00:19:37.120 Philosophy tries to build upon the foundations laid by science a comprehensive worldview. 233 00:19:37.120 --> 00:19:46.120 In striving after this end, it feels itself bound not to contradict any of the well-founded theses of contemporary science. 234 00:19:46.120 --> 00:19:53.560 History Science. Thus, its path too is confined by reason and experience. Poets and artists 235 00:19:53.560 --> 00:19:59.400 approach things and problems in another mood. In dealing with a single aspect of the universe, 236 00:19:59.400 --> 00:20:05.240 they are always dealing with the whole. Narration and description, the portrayal of individual 237 00:20:05.240 --> 00:20:11.960 things and of particular events, is for them only a means. The essential feature of their 238 00:20:11.960 --> 00:20:18.560 Our work is beyond words, designs, and colors. It is in the ineffable feelings and ideas 239 00:20:18.560 --> 00:20:22.800 that activated the creator and moved the reader and spectator. 240 00:20:22.800 --> 00:20:30.000 When Konrad Ferdinand Meyer described a Roman fountain and Reiner Maria Rilke a caged panther, 241 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:35.200 they did not simply portray reality. They caught a glimpse of the universe. 242 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:40.720 In Flaubert's novel, it is not Madame Bovary's sad story that is a primary concern. It is 243 00:20:40.720 --> 00:20:45.040 is something that reaches far beyond the fate of this poor woman. 244 00:20:45.040 --> 00:20:50.080 There is a fundamental difference between the most faithful photograph and a portrait 245 00:20:50.080 --> 00:20:52.400 painted by an artist. 246 00:20:52.400 --> 00:20:58.120 What characterizes a work of literature and art as such is not its reporting of facts, 247 00:20:58.120 --> 00:21:03.440 but the way it reveals an aspect of the universe and man's attitude toward it. 248 00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:07.600 What makes an artist is not experience and knowledge as such. 249 00:21:07.600 --> 00:21:12.600 It is his particular reaction to the problems of human existence and fate. 250 00:21:12.600 --> 00:21:18.720 It is erlebnis, a purely personal response to the reality of his environment and his 251 00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:20.520 experience. 252 00:21:20.520 --> 00:21:25.920 Poets and artists have a message to tell, but this message refers to ineffable feelings 253 00:21:25.920 --> 00:21:27.880 and ideas. 254 00:21:27.880 --> 00:21:34.040 It is not open to utterance in an unambiguous way precisely because it is ineffable. 255 00:21:34.040 --> 00:21:39.580 We can never know whether what we experience, erleben, in enjoying their work is what they 256 00:21:39.580 --> 00:21:45.440 experienced in creating it, for their work is not simply a communication. 257 00:21:45.440 --> 00:21:50.120 Apart from what it communicates, it stirs up in the reader and spectator feelings and 258 00:21:50.120 --> 00:21:53.840 ideas which may differ from those of its author. 259 00:21:53.840 --> 00:21:59.280 It is a hopeless task to interpret a symphony, a painting, or a novel. 260 00:21:59.280 --> 00:22:04.660 The interpreter, at best, tries to tell us something about his reaction to the work. 261 00:22:04.660 --> 00:22:08.880 He cannot tell us with certainty what the creator's meaning was or what other people 262 00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:11.060 may see in it. 263 00:22:11.060 --> 00:22:16.940 Even if the creator himself provides a commentary on his work, as in the case of program music, 264 00:22:16.940 --> 00:22:18.920 this uncertainty remains. 265 00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:23.300 There are no words to describe the ineffable. 266 00:22:23.300 --> 00:22:28.100 What history and fiction have in common is the fact that both are based on knowledge 267 00:22:28.100 --> 00:22:34.020 Research Concerning the Human Mind. They operate with thymological experience. Their method 268 00:22:34.020 --> 00:22:39.820 of approach is the specific understanding of human valuations, of the way people react 269 00:22:39.820 --> 00:22:45.980 to the challenge of their natural and social environment, but then their ways part. What 270 00:22:45.980 --> 00:22:51.980 the historian has to tell is completely expressed in his report. He communicates to the reader 271 00:22:51.980 --> 00:22:58.860 all he has established. His message is exoteric. There is nothing that would go beyond the 272 00:22:58.860 --> 00:23:06.140 content of his book as intelligible to competent readers. It may happen that the study of history, 273 00:23:06.140 --> 00:23:11.320 or for that matter also the study of the natural sciences, rouses in the mind of a man those 274 00:23:11.320 --> 00:23:16.340 ineffable thoughts and views of the universe as a whole, which are the mark of the empathic 275 00:23:16.340 --> 00:23:18.700 grasp of totality. 276 00:23:18.700 --> 00:23:23.540 But this does not alter the nature and character of the historian's work. 277 00:23:23.540 --> 00:23:29.860 History is unconditionally the search after facts and events that really happened. 278 00:23:29.860 --> 00:23:33.420 Fiction is free to depict events that never occurred. 279 00:23:33.420 --> 00:23:37.760 The writer creates, as people say, an imaginary story. 280 00:23:37.760 --> 00:23:40.780 He is free to deviate from reality. 281 00:23:40.780 --> 00:23:46.740 The tests of truth that apply to the work of the historian do not apply to his work. 282 00:23:46.740 --> 00:23:48.720 Yet his freedom is limited. 283 00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:53.000 He is not free to defy the teachings of thymological experience. 284 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:57.580 It is not a requirement of novels and plays that the things related should really have 285 00:23:57.580 --> 00:23:58.580 happened. 286 00:23:58.580 --> 00:24:01.360 It is not even necessary that they could happen at all. 287 00:24:01.360 --> 00:24:07.380 They may introduce heathen idols, fairies, animals acting in human manner, ghosts and 288 00:24:07.380 --> 00:24:09.260 other phantoms. 289 00:24:09.260 --> 00:24:14.420 But all the characters of a novel or a play must act in the thymologically intelligible 290 00:24:14.420 --> 00:24:20.740 way. The concepts of truth and falsehood as applied to epic and dramatic works refer to 291 00:24:20.740 --> 00:24:26.780 thymological plausibility. The author is free to create fictitious persons and plots, but 292 00:24:26.780 --> 00:24:33.100 he must not try to invent a thymology, psychology, different from that derived from the observation 293 00:24:33.100 --> 00:24:34.100 of Human Conduct 294 00:24:34.100 --> 00:24:42.620 Fiction, like history, does not deal with average man or man in the abstract or general man, 295 00:24:42.620 --> 00:24:48.900 but with individual men and individual events. Yet even here there is a conspicuous difference 296 00:24:48.900 --> 00:24:56.220 between history and fiction. The individuals with whom history deals may be and often are 297 00:24:56.220 --> 00:25:01.340 groups of individuals, and the individual events with which it deals are events that 298 00:25:01.340 --> 00:25:09.460 The single individual is a subject of the historian's interest primarily from the point of view 299 00:25:09.460 --> 00:25:15.540 of the influence his actions exercised upon a multitude of people or as a typical specimen 300 00:25:15.540 --> 00:25:18.920 representative of whole groups of individuals. 301 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:22.780 The historian does not bother about other people. 302 00:25:22.780 --> 00:25:29.020 But for the writer of fiction, it is always only the individual as such that counts. 303 00:25:29.020 --> 00:25:36.200 No matter what his influence upon other people or whether or not he is to be considered typical. 304 00:25:36.200 --> 00:25:40.200 This has been entirely misunderstood in some doctrines about literature developed in the 305 00:25:40.200 --> 00:25:43.000 second part of the 19th century. 306 00:25:43.000 --> 00:25:47.420 The authors of these doctrines were misled by contemporary changes in the treatment of 307 00:25:47.420 --> 00:25:53.400 history while older historians wrote chiefly about great men and affairs of state. 308 00:25:53.400 --> 00:25:59.840 American historians shifted to the history of ideas, institutions, and social conditions. 309 00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:05.200 At a time when the prestige of science far surpassed that of literature, and positivist 310 00:26:05.200 --> 00:26:11.600 zealots sneered at fiction as a useless pastime, writers tried to justify their profession 311 00:26:11.600 --> 00:26:15.440 by representing it as a branch of scientific research. 312 00:26:15.440 --> 00:26:20.740 In the opinion of Emile Zola, the novel was a sort of descriptive economics and social 313 00:26:20.740 --> 00:26:27.820 Social Psychology to be based upon punctilious exploration of particular conditions and institutions. 314 00:26:27.820 --> 00:26:32.980 Other authors went even further and asserted that only the fate of classes, nations, and 315 00:26:32.980 --> 00:26:38.140 races, not that of individuals, is to be treated in novels and plays. 316 00:26:38.140 --> 00:26:44.780 They obliterated the distinction between a statistical report and a social novel or play. 317 00:26:44.780 --> 00:26:49.940 The books and plays written in compliance with the precepts of this naturalistic aesthetics 318 00:26:49.940 --> 00:26:52.500 The techniques were clumsy pieces of work. 319 00:26:52.500 --> 00:26:57.340 No outstanding writer paid more than lip service to these principles. 320 00:26:57.340 --> 00:27:01.700 Zola himself was very restrained in the application of his doctrine. 321 00:27:01.700 --> 00:27:08.540 The theme of novels and plays is individual man as he lives, feels and acts, and not anonymous 322 00:27:08.540 --> 00:27:10.580 collective wholes. 323 00:27:10.580 --> 00:27:14.640 The milieu is the background of the portraits the author paints. 324 00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:20.520 It is the state of external affairs to which the characters respond by moves and acts. 325 00:27:20.520 --> 00:27:26.120 There is no such thing as a novel or play whose hero is an abstract concept such as 326 00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:30.800 a race, a nation, a caste, or a political party. 327 00:27:30.800 --> 00:27:38.480 Man alone is the perennial subject of literature, individual real man as he lives and acts. 328 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:44.680 The theories of the a prioristic sciences—logic, mathematics, and praxeology—and the experimental 329 00:27:44.680 --> 00:27:50.100 facts established by the natural sciences can be viewed without reference to the personality 330 00:27:50.100 --> 00:27:51.720 of their authors. 331 00:27:51.720 --> 00:27:56.060 In dealing with the problems of Euclidean geometry, we are not concerned with the man 332 00:27:56.060 --> 00:27:59.340 Euclid and may forget that he ever lived. 333 00:27:59.340 --> 00:28:04.300 The work of the historian is necessarily colored by the historian's specific understanding 334 00:28:04.300 --> 00:28:06.300 The Theory of Money and Credit 335 00:28:34.300 --> 00:28:57.780 5. Rationalization 336 00:28:57.780 --> 00:29:03.300 Man is essential in the study of history. It conveys all we can know about ultimate 337 00:29:03.300 --> 00:29:05.980 ends and judgments of value. 338 00:29:05.980 --> 00:29:11.060 But as has been pointed out earlier, it is of no avail for praxeology and of little use 339 00:29:11.060 --> 00:29:15.360 in dealing with the means applied to attain end sought. 340 00:29:15.360 --> 00:29:19.820 With regard to the choice of means, all that matters is their suitability to attain the 341 00:29:19.820 --> 00:29:21.300 end sought. 342 00:29:21.300 --> 00:29:24.360 There is no other standard for appraising means. 343 00:29:24.360 --> 00:29:27.220 There are suitable means and unsuitable means. 344 00:29:27.220 --> 00:29:32.340 From the point of view of the actor, the choice of unsuitable means is always erroneous and 345 00:29:32.340 --> 00:29:35.300 Inexcusable Failure 346 00:29:35.300 --> 00:29:40.580 History is called upon to explain the origin of such errors by resorting to thymology 347 00:29:40.580 --> 00:29:43.560 and the specific understanding. 348 00:29:43.560 --> 00:29:49.500 As man is fallible and the search after appropriate means is very difficult, the course of human 349 00:29:49.500 --> 00:29:54.360 history is, by and large, a series of errors and frustration. 350 00:29:54.360 --> 00:29:58.480 Looking backward from the present state of our knowledge, we are sometimes tempted to 351 00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:02.480 to belittle past ages and boast of the efficiency of our time. 352 00:30:02.480 --> 00:30:08.480 However, even the pundits of the atomic age are not safe against error. 353 00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:15.480 Shortcomings in the choice of means and in acting are not always caused by erroneous thinking and inefficiency. 354 00:30:15.480 --> 00:30:21.480 Frequently frustration is the result of irresoluteness with regard to the choice of ends. 355 00:30:21.480 --> 00:30:28.380 Wavering between various incompatible goals, the actor vacillates in his conduct of affairs. 356 00:30:28.380 --> 00:30:32.580 Indecision prevents him from marching straight toward one goal. 357 00:30:32.580 --> 00:30:34.780 He moves to and fro. 358 00:30:34.780 --> 00:30:38.380 He goes now toward the left, then toward the right. 359 00:30:38.380 --> 00:30:40.980 Thus, he does not accomplish anything. 360 00:30:40.980 --> 00:30:45.380 Political, diplomatic, and military history has dealt amply with this type of 361 00:30:45.380 --> 00:30:49.080 irresolute action in the conduct of affairs of state. 362 00:30:49.080 --> 00:30:54.700 Freud has shown what role in the daily life of the individual subconscious repressed urges 363 00:30:54.700 --> 00:31:01.160 play in forgetting, mistakes, slips of the tongue or the pen, and accidents. 364 00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:06.440 A man who is obliged to justify his handling of a matter in the eyes of other people often 365 00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:08.800 resorts to a pretext. 366 00:31:08.800 --> 00:31:13.760 As the motive of his deviation from the most suitable way of procedure, he ascribes another 367 00:31:13.760 --> 00:31:16.760 reason than that which actually prompted him. 368 00:31:16.760 --> 00:31:21.120 He does not dare to admit his real motive because he knows that his critics would not 369 00:31:21.120 --> 00:31:24.600 accept it as a sufficient justification. 370 00:31:24.600 --> 00:31:30.020 Rationalization is the name psychoanalysis gives to the construction of a pretext to 371 00:31:30.020 --> 00:31:34.060 justify conduct in the actor's own mind. 372 00:31:34.060 --> 00:31:39.280 Either the actor is loath to admit the real motive to himself or he is not aware of the 373 00:31:39.280 --> 00:31:41.800 repressed urge directing him. 374 00:31:41.800 --> 00:31:49.160 He disguises the subconscious impulse by attaching to his actions reasons acceptable to his superego. 375 00:31:49.160 --> 00:31:52.260 He is not consciously cheating and lying. 376 00:31:52.260 --> 00:31:56.860 He is himself a victim of his illusions and wishful thinking. 377 00:31:56.860 --> 00:32:00.780 He lacks the courage to look squarely at reality. 378 00:32:00.780 --> 00:32:06.080 As he dimly surmises that the cognition of the true state of affairs would be unpleasant, 379 00:32:06.080 --> 00:32:10.880 undermine his self-esteem, and weaken his resolution, he shrinks from analyzing the 380 00:32:10.880 --> 00:32:13.720 The problem is beyond a certain point. 381 00:32:13.720 --> 00:32:19.520 This is, of course, a rather dangerous attitude, a retreat from an unwelcome reality into an 382 00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:23.720 imaginary world of fancy that pleases better. 383 00:32:23.720 --> 00:32:28.200 A few steps further in the same direction may lead to insanity. 384 00:32:28.200 --> 00:32:33.440 However, in the lives of individuals, there are checks that prevent such rationalizations 385 00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:37.480 from becoming rampant and wreaking havoc. 386 00:32:37.480 --> 00:32:42.840 Only because rationalization is a type of behavior common to many, people are watchful 387 00:32:42.840 --> 00:32:46.520 and even often suspected where it is absent. 388 00:32:46.520 --> 00:32:51.960 Some are always ready to unmask their neighbor's sly attempts to bolster their own self-respect. 389 00:32:51.960 --> 00:32:57.720 The most cleverly constructed legends of rationalization cannot in the long run withstand the repeated 390 00:32:57.720 --> 00:33:00.080 attacks of debunkers. 391 00:33:00.080 --> 00:33:05.080 It is quite another thing with rationalization developed for the benefit of social groups. 392 00:33:05.080 --> 00:33:10.280 can thrive luxuriantly because it encounters no criticism from the members of the group 393 00:33:10.280 --> 00:33:15.880 and because the criticism of outsiders is dismissed as obviously biased. 394 00:33:15.880 --> 00:33:21.240 One of the main tasks of historical analysis is to study the various manifestations of 395 00:33:21.240 --> 00:33:27.080 rationalization in all fields of political ideologies. 396 00:33:27.080 --> 00:33:31.360 6. 397 00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:39.920 The passionate quarrel of the introspectionists and anti-introspectionists refers to the problems 398 00:33:39.920 --> 00:33:44.600 of naturalistic psychology and does not affect thymology. 399 00:33:44.600 --> 00:33:49.640 None of the methods and procedures recommended by the anti-introspectionist schools could 400 00:33:49.640 --> 00:33:56.000 convey any information and knowledge about the phenomena which thymology explores. 401 00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:01.320 Being himself a valuing and acting ego, every man knows the meaning of valuing and acting. 402 00:34:01.320 --> 00:34:06.680 He is aware that he is not neutral with regard to the various states of his environment, 403 00:34:06.680 --> 00:34:11.240 that he prefers certain states to others, and that he consciously tries, provided the 404 00:34:11.240 --> 00:34:16.400 conditions for such interference on his part are given, to substitute a state that he likes 405 00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:19.440 better for one he likes less. 406 00:34:19.440 --> 00:34:24.480 It is impossible to imagine a sane human being who lacks this insight. 407 00:34:24.480 --> 00:34:29.280 It is no less impossible to conceive how a being lacking this insight could acquire it 408 00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:32.480 by means of any experience or instruction. 409 00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:37.500 The categories of value and of action are primary and a prioristic elements present 410 00:34:37.500 --> 00:34:39.720 to every human mind. 411 00:34:39.720 --> 00:34:45.200 No science should or could attack the problems involved without prior knowledge of these 412 00:34:45.200 --> 00:34:46.680 categories. 413 00:34:46.680 --> 00:34:51.560 Only because we are aware of these categories do we know what meaning means and have a key 414 00:34:51.560 --> 00:34:54.780 to interpret other people's activities. 415 00:34:54.780 --> 00:35:00.200 This awareness makes us distinguish in the external world two separate realms, that of 416 00:35:00.200 --> 00:35:07.520 human affairs and that of non-human things, or that of final causes and that of causality. 417 00:35:07.520 --> 00:35:13.260 It is not our task here to deal with causality, but we must emphasize that the concept of 418 00:35:13.260 --> 00:35:18.900 final causes does not stem from experience and observation of something external. 419 00:35:18.900 --> 00:35:22.940 It is present in the mind of every human being. 420 00:35:22.940 --> 00:35:28.500 It is necessary to emphasize again and again that no statement or proposition concerning 421 00:35:28.500 --> 00:35:34.420 human action can be made that does not imply reference to ends aimed at. 422 00:35:34.420 --> 00:35:39.940 The very concept of action is finalistic and is devoid of any sense and meaning if there 423 00:35:39.940 --> 00:35:44.160 is no referring to conscious aiming at chosen ends. 424 00:35:44.160 --> 00:35:48.940 There is no experience in the field of human action that can be had without resorting to 425 00:35:48.940 --> 00:35:51.980 the category of means and ends. 426 00:35:51.980 --> 00:35:57.060 If the observer is not familiar with the ideology, the technology, and the therapeutics of the 427 00:35:57.060 --> 00:36:01.900 men whose behavior he observes, he cannot make head or tail of it. 428 00:36:01.900 --> 00:36:06.540 He sees people running here and there and moving their hands, but he begins to understand 429 00:36:06.540 --> 00:36:12.500 what it is all about only when he begins to discover what they want to achieve. 430 00:36:12.500 --> 00:36:17.820 If in employing the term introspection, the positivist refers to such statements as those 431 00:36:17.820 --> 00:36:20.940 was expressed in the last four words of the sentence, 432 00:36:20.940 --> 00:36:27.460 Paul runs to catch the train, then we must say that no sane human being could do without 433 00:36:27.460 --> 00:36:30.420 resorting to introspection in every thought.