Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

56Demonic Texts and Textual Demonsothers. Through self-reformation, therapy, techniques of body alteration,and the calculated reshaping of speech and emotion, we adjust ourselvesby means of the techniques propounded by the experts of the soul. Thegovernment of the soul depends upon our recognition of ourselves as ideallyand potentially certain sorts of person, the unease generated by anormative judgement of what we are and could become, and the incitementoffered to overcome this discrepancy by following the advice of expertsin the management of the self. 9This self has a close relation with a particular way of thinking. GeorgeLakoff has named as objectivism the tradition of thought that could as wellbe called “classical reason” which holds that “conceptual categories are definedsolely by the shared essential properties of their members”; that“thought is the disembodied manipulation of abstract symbols”; and that“those symbols get their meaning solely by virtue of correspondences tothings in the world.” Lakoff adds that this “view of reason as abstract, disembodied,and literal is well-established.” 10 One of the central consequencesof the self being part of such a system, is that it has been perceived as an essentialand natural component of being. Our thought confronts problemswhen dealing with such experiences that do not properly fit this idea. Therational, fully autonomous self is in fact a classical ideal, and should be perceivedas an abstraction, illustrating particular needs and aims – or, a particularideology. The following comment from Aristotle’s Politics clarifies thispoint:An immediate indication of this [natural order] is afforded by the soul,where we find natural ruler and natural subject, whose virtues we regard asdifferent – one being that of the rational element, the other of the nonrational.It is therefore clear that the same feature will be found in the othercases too, so that most instances of ruling and being ruled are natural. Forrule of free over slave, male over female, man over boy, are all different,because, while parts of the soul are present in each case, the distribution isdifferent. Thus the deliberative faculty in the soul is not present at all in aslave; in a female it is present but ineffective, in a child present but undeveloped.11The subordination of emotions and all other (“lower”) aspects of subjectivityto the rational self correspond to the subjugation of slaves, womenand children by free men. The definition of subjectivity in terms of the rationalsoul is a politically motivated fundamental in Aristotelian thought. It9 Ibid., 11.10 Lakoff 1987, 586.11Aristotle 1981, 95 [1260a4-13]. – Aristotle can, of course, be approached from differentangles, and his theories are open to many interpretations. For a recent defence oflogos and Aristotle’s argument, see the interpretation in Roochnik 1990, 23-45. See alsoDerrida’s article “The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics,” whichpoints out that Aristotle’s Metaphysics and his categories can be read as expressing awarenessof the metaphoric quality of thought (Derrida 1972/1989).