Psychology as Ethics

Reading Jung with Kant, Nietzsche and Aristotle

Giovanni Colacicchi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000180114
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Through his clinical work and extensive engagement with major figures of the philosophical tradition, Jung developed an original and pluralistic psycho-ethical model based on the cooperation of consciousness with the unconscious mind.

By drawing on direct quotations from Jung's collected works, The Red Book, and his interviews and seminars – as well as from seminal texts by Kant, Nietzsche, Aristotle and Augustine – Giovanni Colacicchi provides a philosophically grounded analysis of the ethical relevance of Jung's analytical psychology and of the concept of individuation which is at its core. The author argues that Jung transforms Kant's consciousness of duty into the duty to be conscious while also endorsing Nietzsche's project of an individual ethics beyond collective morality. Colacicchi shows that Jung is concerned, like Aristotle, with the human need to acquire a balance between reason and emotions; and that Jung puts forward, with his understanding of the shadow, a moral psychology of the Christian notion of evil. Jung's psycho-ethical paradigm is thus capable of integrating ethical theories which are often read as mutually exclusive.

Psychology as Ethics will be of interest to researchers in the history of ideas and the philosophy of the unconscious, as well as to therapists and counsellors who wish to place their psychodynamic work in its philosophical context. It will also be a key reference for undergraduate and postgraduate courses and seminars in Jungian and Post-Jungian studies, philosophy, psychoanalytic studies, psychology, religious studies and the social sciences.

Chapter 1

Morality, freedom and the ego

The Kantian legacy

[Scruple of conscience]

Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do it with pleasure.

Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person.

[Ruling]

Surely, your only resource is to try and despise them entirely,

And then with aversion to do what your duty enjoins you.

Friedrich Schiller
(quoted in Uleman 2010: 6)

In this chapter I argue that Jung’s conception of the relative but decisive freedom of the ego from the Self derives from Immanuel Kant’s¹ argument for the autonomy of practical reason. However, where Kant insists on the consciousness of duty, Jung on the other hand emphasises the duty to be conscious. First, I present Kant’s argument for the autonomy of practical reason and provide an account of Jung’s conception of the autonomy of the ego from the Self. Second, I comment on a passage in which Jung’s Kantian legacy is most evident. Third, I relate Jung’s insistence on the moral development of both patient and therapist to Kant’s insistence on moral independence and introduce the notion of ‘ethical transference’. Fourth, I consider Jung’s deployment of the ‘ought implies can’ argument and compare the two thinkers on the issue of the opacity of intentions. Finally, I discuss Jung’s contribution to the understanding of conflicts of duty – the existence of which were denied by Kant – a fundamental ingredient of Jung’s ethical vision.

Kant on the autonomy of ethics

The goal of Kant’s philosophy is to provide, no less, ‘a single theory of human experience’ (Guyer 2006: 539). For Kant, it must be understood how scientific knowledge, moral actions and aesthetical as well as teleological judgements can, in different ways, all be part of the same picture: this is the ambitious aim of his critical philosophy.² The scientific understanding of nature is made possible, according to Kant, by the fact that ‘reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design’ (Kant 1998: 109 [KrV B xiii]). As Michael Rohlf (2018) succinctly puts it, Kant argues that ‘we use our categories [the most important being the category of causality] and forms of intuition [space and time] to construct a world of experience’. Relations of causality that we encounter ‘in nature’ are indeed, as Hume had pointed out, something put there by the human mind. But Kant’s reply is that that is precisely the reason why we can understand nature scientifically.

The powers of reason are also at work in the moral domain, with the difference that if in nature our reason legislates, in the sphere of morality reason self-legislates. As Paul Guyer explains, for Kant ‘we are also free to look at the world from a standpoint in which we are rational agents whose actions are chosen and not merely predicted in accordance with deterministic laws of (as we would now say) biology, psychology, or sociology’ (Guyer 2006: 2). The fact that practical reason can provide its own laws, and hence break free from causal determinism, is indicated by the expression ‘autonomy of the will’³ (Kant 1996: 89 [G 4:440]). Kant criticises systems based on following pleasure or other principles which are external to our own reason (such as ‘God’s will’), and calls them ‘spurious’ (ibid.), because they are based on ‘hypothetical imperatives’ which tell me that ‘I ought to do something because I will something else’ (ibid., italics in the original). True morality only obeys the categorical imperative, in other words duty, which Kant defines as ‘the necessity of an action from respect for law’ (Kant 1996: 55 [G 4: 400], italics in the original). So morality is a self-consistent sphere of experience, the sphere of freedom.

But how do we harmonise the sphere of morality with the sphere of knowledge? Kant’s approach is to look at these notions from different points of view:

[We can] take a different standpoint when by means of freedom we think ourselves as causes efficient a priori than when we represent ourselves in terms of our actions as effects that we see before our eyes.

(Kant 1996: 98 [G 4:450])

According to Kant: ‘we do not indeed comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, but we nevertheless comprehend its incomprehensibility’ (Kant 1996: 108 [G 4:463], italics in the original). What Kant means, as Allen Wood explains, is that ‘we can [n]ever prove theoretically that we are free’ (Wood 2010: 263–264, italics in the original).⁴ In the context of a highly speculative discussion, Kant’s example is refreshingly simple:

If (for example) I am now entirely free, and get up from my chair without the necessarily determining influence of natural causes, then in this occurrence, along with its natural consequences to infinity, there begins an absolute new series, even though as far as time is concerned this occurrence is only the continuation of a previous series.

(Kant 1998: 487 [KrV A451/B479])

So is the basis of morality the fact that I can get up from my chair if I so decide? This seems to be Kant’s conviction.

The duty to be conscious

‘Kant is my philosopher!’

(C. G. Jung to a student of the C. G. Jung Institute in the 1950s, quoted in Shamdasani 2003: 168)

Jung defines the ego as ‘merely one complex among other complexes’ (Jung 1921: 706), ‘the subject of my consciousness’ but not ‘the subject of my total psyche’, which for Jung is the Self (ibid.). So how can the ego be free to act, and be responsible and accountable, given that it is part of the Self? Jung’s concept of inflation, which describes two cases in which the ego loses its freedom, helps us understand how a relative dependence on the Self is seen by Jung as a condition for its freedom. At times the Self, sensing the weakness of the ego, may be tempted to eliminate the ego altogether,⁵ in which case the ego becomes incapable of action or at least its capacity to act is more or less severely impaired by an inundation of unconscious contents. At other times, the ego will try to usurp the Self’s position,⁶ and attempt to master the unconscious entirely, thus hoping to be able to enjoy a condition of greater freedom and stop feeling ‘the subtle tyranny of the Self’, to use Mario Trevi’s evocative expression. In this second case, as in the first, the ego becomes incapable of directed action and of expressing the power of the Self adequately.⁷ Hence, the effects derived from an excessively ‘confident’ ego are the same as those produced by an ego which abdicates, and that is why both psychic scenarios are covered, in Jung’s work, by the term ‘inflation’ (1951a: 47). Inflation may provide a sense of temporary joy, but it undermines moral freedom.

Jung claims that ‘[i]t must be reckoned a psychic catastrophe when the ego is assimilated by the self’ (Jung 1951a: 45, italics in the original). To avoid this, Jung recommends that ‘consciousness should be reinforced by a very precise adaptation’. He adds that ‘certain virtues, like attention, conscientiousness, patience etc., are of great importance on the moral side, just as accurate observation of the symptomatology of the unconscious and objective self-criticism are valuable on the intellectual side’ (Jung 1951a: 46, my italics). When on the other hand the ‘the self […] becomes assimilated to the ego’ (1951a: 47), Jung suggests that ‘[i]t is not a question, as one might think, of relaxing morality itself but of making a moral effort in a different direction’, in order to make room for the unconscious ‘at the expense of the world of consciousness’ (ibid.).

Jung sees ego-consciousness as invested with the fundamental role of understanding at what distance from the power of the Self it should place itself. The key to safeguard the freedom of the ego seems to be in the maintenance of ‘the right distance’ and the ‘living connection’ (Edinger 1992: 264) between ego and Self, and only the ego can take care of establishing this correct distance, and needs to be strong in order to be able to do so effectively. In the passages I have quoted, Jung uses the words ‘moral’, ‘morality’ and ‘virtues’ (and of these he mentions ‘conscientiousness’ and ‘patience’, as well as ‘attention’ and ‘effort’) in relation to the ego. Of these words, ‘virtue’ is quite appropriate in this context, since virtue can be considered a synonym of strength of character.⁸ But where Jung speaks of ‘relaxing morality’, one could perhaps use instead the expression ‘weakness of the ego’. So, according to Jung, if we want to be free, both free from the constraints of the Self and free to act effectively, we have the duty to be conscious and to develop and maintain a strong ego-consciousness. Kant’s philosophy shows that this freedom is possible.

‘A feeling of freedom’

In Transformation Symbolism in the Mass Jung writes:

The self, […] is an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is, so to speak, an unconscious prefiguration of the ego. […] [But] if man were merely a creature that came into being as a result of something already existing unconsciously, he would have no freedom and there would be no point in consciousness. Psychology must reckon with the fact that despite the causal nexus man does enjoy a feeling of freedom, which is identical with autonomy of consciousness. […] An absolutely preformed consciousness and a totally dependent ego would be a pointless farce, since everything would proceed just as well or even better unconsciously. The existence of ego consciousness has meaning only if it is free and autonomous. By stating these facts we have, it is true, established an antinomy, but we have at the same time given a picture of things as they are. There are temporal, local, and individual differences in the degree of dependence and freedom. In reality both are always present: the supremacy of the self and the hybris of consciousness.

(Jung 1942/1954: 391, my italics except in ‘a priori’)⁹

The words I have italicised, ‘causal nexus’, ‘autonomy’ (which occurs twice, once as a substantive and once in its adjectival form) and ‘antinomy’ (not to mention the ‘a priori’ at the beginning of the quotation; and the word ‘freedom’, which occurs four times in the passage), are all distinctively Kantian and indeed what Jung is stating here could hardly be more Kantian: consciousness is free and it is not. For Kant, as we have seen, it is free if we consider it from the point of view of morality, but it is determined if we look at it from ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on text references
• Introduction
• 1 Morality, freedom and the ego: the Kantian legacy
• 2 Ethics, health and the Self: the Nietzschean legacy
• 3 Character, virtue and psycho-ethical types: Aristotle and Jung
• 4 Humility, evil and the shadow: the Christian legacy
• 5 Post-Jungians on Jung’s ethics
• Conclusion
• Reference list
• Index