Plato, Spinoza and Jung’s Contributions to Realmatic Theory

[Confused]

Much Ado About Nothing

William Shakespeare, 1599

 

 

[DISCLAIMER: I did not study philosophy in school and took just one basic psych class. (On the plus side, I did sleep at Holiday Inn last night…) Please feel free to correct or refine anything (everything?) I say. And burn a prayer for used book stores!]

 

Brandon has cited Plato, Spinoza and Jung  as important influences in developing his Realmatic Theory. Despite this post’s epigraph, I really do think that understanding the Cosmere and the Shards requires some understanding of that influence.

 

Introduction:

 

Before embarking on this discussion, however, permit me a brief digression about the modern literary attitude toward an artist’s “philosophical influences.” If you’re not interested, just scroll down to the “Summary.”

 

In a 1927 essay, T.S. Eliot says that the poet’s task is primarily emotional, not intellectual. He compares Dante’s The Divine Comedy – reflecting Thomas Aquinas’s highly structured philosophy – with Shakespeare’s plays, mirroring the English Renaissance’s more muddled sensibilities.

 

Eliot argues that Dante was not greater than Shakespeare simply because the ideas of early 14^th century Italy might be “greater” than the ideas of early 17^th century England:

 

“[shakespeare’s] is equally great poetry, though the philosophy behind it is not great. But the essential is, that each expresses in perfect language, some permanent human impulse.”

 

Eliot concluded in a much-quoted statement: “The great poet, in writing himself, writes his time.” (T.S. Eliot, “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca,” reprinted in Selected Essays of T.S. Eliot, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,1964, p. 117.)

 

Our “postmodern age” is characterized (ironically) by a breakdown of belief in the efficacy of theory and “big picture” solutions. Brandon himself says he is a storyteller solving his characters’ emotional issues; the Cosmere stuff is just background. But our “times” do show up in the multiple intertwined idea systems underlying Brandon’s conception of the Cosmere. Brandon expressly acknowledges Plato’s, Spinoza’s and Jung’s contributions to his “mashed up metaphysics” (as well as Asian spirituality and other influences). And that’s why I’m talking about these dead guys…

 

Summary:

 

Plato fostered the concept of “dualism” – the difference between the world we see and the ideal world that “is.” Spinoza thought everything in existence is one “substance” governed by one set of rules. Jung imagined a “collective unconscious” with specific archetypes. And, if you’re still with me, I’ll highlight what appears to be a literary influence on Brandon, John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

 

Plato:

 

Plato’s concept of an unseen “ideal” reality underlies the whole structure of the Cosmere. That is what the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms are – alternate unseen realities. Plato’s “dualism” has dominated Western philosophy for 2,400 years and is one of the foundational pillars of Christianity (Heaven versus Earth).

 

Plato addresses dualism in the opening passages of Book VII of The Republic, the “Parable (or Allegory) of the Cave.” People have lived their entire lives in a cave; their only knowledge of the outside world are shadows flickering on the cave wall and the echoes of distant sounds. These people have no concept of the “real world” the rest of us “know”; the shadows and echoes ARE their “reality.” Plato’s point? We cannot see beyond our own shadows to the “true,” the ideal reality.

 

ASIDE: [if you’re not interested in philosophy, skip it.]

 

Platonic dualism has fallen out of favor with certain American philosophers since the late 1800s. They prefer the philosophy of “Pragmatism” first espoused by men who personally witnessed the carnage of the American Civil War. These men sought a worldview that accommodated the fact that both sides to a conflict can believe with equal fervor they are right. Pragmatism was their answer. They explicitly rejected Platonic dualism, which in their view encouraged each side’s self-certitude (“God is on our side,” etc.).

 

To a pragmatist, a belief was “true” not because it reflected an ideal established in an unseen reality. Rather, “truth” was measured by the belief’s “cash value” (William James’ phrase). Did that belief improve that person’s life – materially, emotionally, spiritually…in whatever ways matter to that person. In an uncertain world, which beliefs are useful and which are not? Pragmatism’s critics label this approach “relativism,” since (they claim) it adheres to no fixed set of ideals or values.

 

The neo-Pragmatist Richard Rorty (who died in 2007) characterized the Pragmatic response to dualism as follows (my interpretation, not Rorty’s words): Pragmatists do not reject the possibility that something is as others believe it to be. They simply embrace the certainty that humankind will never discover the truth of it. Therefore, rather than to rely on external authority, whether labeled “God” or “Reason,” Rorty argued that humankind should decide by consensus how best to govern its behavior. As an avowed atheist who married and had children with a devout Mormon, Rorty clearly lived out his belief in human consensus (as did his wife).

 

Plato’s theory of “forms” also appears in The Republic (first in Book V, but principally in Books VI and VII), but he continued refining this theory over his lifetime. The theory of forms is an adjunct to dualism and states that every object and idea in our world exists in ideal form in the alternate reality. All horses, for example, are based on the form or idea of “horse” existing elsewhere. Plato and his forms thus give us Brandon’s Spiritual Realm.

 

Kurkistan has done a fantastic – and persistent – job conceptualizing the Spiritual Realm in terms of Plato’s forms. He was one of the first to point out how magic works in the Cosmere, through the manipulation of Spiritual Realm connections. Check him out, beginning with this thread.

 

Despite my admiration for his work, I don’t agree with some of Kurkistan’s conclusions Since he wrote the linked post in 2013, I’m not sure Kurkistan himself would agree with them. As one example, he now rejects the idea that Spiritual Realm connections are the sole source of magic in the Cosmere.

 

I also think Kurkistan himself would say that the cited post overly restricts the means by which a Spiritual Realm ideal form can be created. He states forms arise from “the massed Cognitive perceptions of large numbers of sapient…beings.” It seems to me a form can also arise from the mind of ONE sapient being. For example, the person who invented the wheel created the Spiritual essence of a wheel through the invention process. His fixed and separate “wheel” idea caused the wheel to “think of itself” as a wheel. Without Spiritual Realm connections between the wheel’s essence, the Powers of Creation (Gravitation, Friction, e.g.) and other ideal objects such as the planetary soul itself, the wheel’s inventor could never have actually made the wheel. Only after the wheel was seen and imitated by others was there a “massed Cognitive perception” of it. The same would be true of every novelty or invention, including the development of language itself. And, of course, in this post I posit that the entire Cosmere first existed as an idea in the mind of whatever “God” created it.

 

Baruch Spinoza:

 

Brandon has said that the Cosmere consists of everything in our universe – energy and matter – plus investiture. He’s further said that all of it is changeable from one state to another. Sazed/Harmony’s quotes in the hyperlinked post evidence Brandon’s conception of the Cosmere.  These ideas come from Spinoza.

 

Spinoza equated God and “nature,” claiming they were the same fundamental substance governed by one set of rules. Spinoza believed everything in the universe was one substance. There was no concept of matter (or energy). Everything was made from the same stuff, changeable in form and function.

 

Brandon parts with Spinoza in some key respects. While the Cosmere contains both a Physical and Cognitive Realm, Spinoza objected to the “mind-body” dualism espoused by his near contemporary Rene Descartes (the “I think, therefore I am” guy). Because everything is one “substance,” including the mind and body, there should be no disjunction between thinking and being, as Descartes claimed.

 

Spinoza also believed strongly in “determinism” – the idea that the future follows inexorably from the past and present with no variation. Brandon prefers the quantum mechanics approach of an uncertain future based on probabilities.

 

Carl Jung

 

Brandon has said Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious inspired his idea of Parshendi non-verbal communication. Presumably he meant that the spren bonded to a given Parshendi form enabled the common “chanting” and mass communication of the Parshendi.

 

Jung, like Freud, distinguished between the conscious and unconscious minds. While Freud conceptualized the mind in terms of an id, ego and superego, many of the processes of which took place in the unconscious, Jung conceptualized the unconscious mind as consisting of two components: the personal and the collective.

 

The personal unconscious reflects our individual experiences, but the collective unconscious is shared by the common culture. The collective unconscious is a place of “archetypes” – common cultural memes, often from myths and legends – Water, Mother, Hero, etc. Jung himself acknowledged the commonality between his “archetypes” and Plato’s “forms.” (“Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” reprinted in The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung, Modern Library Edition, 1995, p. 360.) While these archetypes resemble Spiritual Realm ideals, the collective unconscious itself looks like the Cognitive Realm.

 

Sometimes I think Brandon’s metaphor for the Shattering is an emotional breakdown. Adonalsium “lost it” and his emotions went flying in all different directions. Each of the Shardworlds represents a ganglia of neurons thinly connected to one another through the Cognitive Realm. The Cosmere’s narrative is about reintegrating Adonalsium’s personality. (Not by recreating Adonalsium, but by unifying the disparate cultures the Shardworlds represent and restoring humanity’s “oneness.”)

 

John Milton’s Paradise Lost:

 

I may have found an unacknowledged influence on Brandon – John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

 

It’s hard not to notice the similar language used by Brandon and Milton. Check out the following passage. (Each of the following quotations is from J. Milton, Paradise Lost, The Odyssey Press, Inc., 1935 – another cheer for used bookstores!.)

 

                                    “The Sulphurous Hail
Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid
The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice
Of Heav'n receiv'd us falling, and the Thunder,
Wing'd with red Lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn,
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light…”

 

Book I, lines 171-181 (emphasis added).

 

Surges, red lightning, desolations and voids? All in one passage!? It seems beyond coincidence…

 

And then there’s how the SLA morality play superficially resembles Paradise Lost and how Odium superficially resembles Satan:

1. Paradise Lost provides the back story to humankind’s fall from innocence and expulsion from Eden. (How’d ya like them apples, hey Adam?). SLA references humankind’s expulsion from the Tranquiline Hills and desire to return to that state of grace by fighting off Odium.
2. As God has bound Satan to Hell in Paradise Lost, where the Fallen Angel plots his freedom and revenge, so has Honor bound Odium to Greater Roshar (I believe). Odium has already taken his revenge, by killing Tanavast and splintering Honor. His try for freedom forms SLA’s plot.

 

ASIDE FOR Star Trek FANS --   Check out this quote:

                                    “Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.”

 

                        Ibid, lines 258-263 (emphasis added).

 

The last line is the answer to the question Ricardo Montalban as Khan asks William Shatner as Kirk at the end of the 1967 episode “Space Seed,” the prequel to the 1982 movie The Wrath of Khan. As the Enterprise prepares to beam down Khan and his comrades to an isolated planet, Khan asks Kirk: “Do you know your Milton, Captain?” And, of course, Shatner, with his usual smugness, acknowledges he does.

 

See you all on TED! (Not…)

Edited August 23, 2015 by Confused

[Kurkistan]

Thank you for the shout out, as I feel that Forms don't get enough love and attention. One concern immediately springs to mind, though:
 

 My objections mostly relate to how [Kurkistan] applies his theory to specific magical effects. For example, in the linked thread he says spren are the “pur[e]st manifestation of these Forms that we have yet seen.” Spren are denizens of the Cognitive Realm, not the Spiritual. By definition, they cannot be an ideal “form” of anything – one reason there are multiple copies of them.

I'll stick by past-me here and say that handsome devil was pretty darn firmly on point:
 
Source: (May 2014)

KURKISTAN
Are flamespren, are they all doing their own thing, or is there some Ideal of "Fire" sitting in the Spiritual Realm that they're all based on?

BRANDON SANDERSON
Each spren is based on the Ideal of Fire.

KURKISTAN
And is that sitting in the Spiritual Realm?

BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, we're using sort of a Platonic Ideal, and that concept is in force, so < sounds hesitant > "yes", but [spren] are manifestations of it. [Emphasis added]

 

Some Cognitive overlap obviously occurs, though, such as how Flamespren are seen (when measured) affecting their nature in perfect alignment with how the Cognitive realm--"how an object is viewed and how it views itself" (pg 53)--works. Spren are imperfect tokens of the Forms, then, not the Forms themselves, so I think that they are Cognitive beings that have a strong access to and dependency on Spiritual Forms, but are not just Spiritual representation of the Forms themselves..

[KnightGradient]

I think the fact that you went to friggin Paradise Lost as a source is a monument to your dedication. Upvote because I find your theories comprehensive and well thought out.

[Confused]

Thank you, KnightGradient, for your kind comments. I thought of Paradise Lost because of the WoR lines immediately before Adolin "snaps" and kills Sadeas. Adolin is described at that moment as being "irrevocably enraged" (italics in original). That called to mind the following quotation from Paradise Lost (Book 1, lines 101-109 (italics added) (yes, I am good at recalling quotes, just not very good at recalling plot lines, character development points, WoBs, etc., since I seem to be misremembering so much of the Cosmere books):

“Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?”

"Irrevocable rage" sounds so much like something spawned from "immortal hate" that I thought of Milton. These are great lines, stirring. John Steinbeck took the title of his 1930's novel "In Dubious Battle" -- about union organizing in California -- from this passage.

 

I've already written up a theory about Adolin and his future based on this similarity. He "snaps" because of "irrevocable rage"? No more hints, but I do not believe Adolin will be a Knight Radiant of any kind (sorry, Maxal)...

 

Kurkistan:

 

Based on your post below, I'm deleting my comments. I obviously misunderstood you.

 

P.S. I've edited my post in case any of you like seeing cultural references. The following linked post lists what a bunch of artists, writers, and composers might have done with Veil if they were a Lightweaver. Enjoy...

Edited July 28, 2015 by Confused

[Kurkistan]

[...]

I agree: spren ARE "manifestations" of a Platonic Ideal. BUT a "manifestation" of an Ideal is NOT the ideal itself. It is a COPY of the ideal (as a Cognitive Realm idea should be).

 

The word "manifestation" means an "outward expression," a "materialization," a "form that something has when it appears or occurs." Yes, THAT is a spren, not the ideal.

 

But your second quote above seems to acknowledge that Spren are ideas not ideals. Did I misunderstand you? Are you actually supporting my position?

 

I believe I have been misinterpreted, and think the correct question here is instead whether you're supporting my position, as I've never held that spren are identical to the Forms that they are based on. My second quote above is from 2012 in the very first theory I wrote on Forms, and postulates that spren are imperfect Cognitive tokens of Spiritual ideals.

 

So yes, when I said in the "Simplified" thread that spren were manifestations of Forms, I meant manifestations as the word "manifestations" is generally defined/understood, not that they were the ideals themselves.

Edited July 26, 2015 by Kurkistan