On the Care Path
1.9 Movement and Desire
Research on human life—the defining feature of which is the fact of being in move- ment or, rather, of orienting itself by moving toward something that is meaningful for life itself—thematizes not just the formation of the three abovementioned incli- nations but the very essence of movedness. What is it that drives man to choose one kind of life over another? “It is apparent to be sure that these two are movers, either desire or mind ... both these therefore have the power to move according to place, mind and desire” (Arist., De anima 3, 433a9-15). What is meant by mind here is the intellect which reasons with a practical end in sight and which therefore differs from the theoretical mind with respect to its aim.17
According to Aristotle, therefore, what underpins the various expressions of the movement of life is the integration between desire and discernment. Life moves by approaching one thing but avoiding another. The structure of desire determines not only the possible sphere of action, pursuit, or avoidance but also one’s perceptual orientation. The object of desire, in other words, reveals itself in relation to desire itself; at the same time, the life which craves for, or shuns, something finds itself either pleasantly or unpleasantly disposed toward what it perceives through its vari- ous emotional forms (Befindlichkeit).
Whereas an animal realizes its existence by nature, and it is only by nature that it becomes what it can be, man is not bound to the sphere of natural instincts. Since man can speak, he can grasp through language the object of his desire, not simply as something to be craved for or avoided, but as the reason for his way of acting.
Man, that is, is capable of accounting for his actions because, in accordance with his mode of being, he is capable of discursively justifying his choices (Rede).
While desire is what determines one’s conduct in relation to existing circum- stances, the human capacity for discernment modulates the intensity of desire and the ability to control it, to the point of altering its structure. Human beings are capable of anticipating (prohairesis, verstehen) things as the reason for a certain action or choice with respect to the existing circumstances. This means that,
16 Gadamer translates this as Vernünftigkeit.
17 These sentences still echo the religious thought of the archaic age, which envisaged the struggle between blind passion and discrimination for control over the human heart as the key problem in the education of youth (Jaeger 1944).
1.9 Movement and Desire
although human beings may fall under the spell of desire, in every situation they can still choose between one thing and another, as well as determine the direction of their lives—so as to transcend mere craving—through the possibility of anticipating a given thing as the basis of their actions. This is due to the distinctly human quality of lending meaning to one’s existence, even by going against one’s immediate desires, based on the perception of time: “for while the mind bids us to hold back because of what is future, desire is influenced by what is just at hand: a pleasant object which is just at hand presents itself as both pleasant and good in an absolute sense because of want of foresight into what is farther away in time” (Arist. De anima 3, 433 b5-11).18 Taking this fragile balance between the passions, the mind and existing circumstances as his starting point, Aristotle attempts to account for how human life, in its various forms of realization, can express movement, thereby making individuals responsible for the way in which they realize their own lives and for the content they lend to their own happiness (Volpi 2008).
If life is movement, and if this movement takes shape over time as an articulation of passion and thought, then the problem which emerges is how to regulate the combination and development of these elements, not just in the formative period, but throughout one’s life. Thematizing the issue of the fragility of human life inevi- tably extends the care of self—which in the Alcibiades concerns the stages of devel- opment before adulthood—to the whole span of one’s life and regulates it according to forms of knowledge other than theoretical knowledge. It is certainly significant that in one of the most famous books of the Nicomachean Ethics, book 6, Aristotle mentions Pericles as an example of a wise man, whereas in the Alcibiades Socrates had belittled his role as a leader (Et. Nic. 1140B 5–10). Besides, if practical life—
understood as praxis—tends toward the attainment of a possible good through action, as a way of pursuing personal happiness within specific, contingent circumstances (kairos), the acting subject is accountable throughout the course of his/her life. Agents are responsible for their choices—after all, they develop their decision- making competence precisely through the choices they take and the knowledge they derive from this.
The transformation of the care of self, which Foucault traces from the Alcibiades to first- and second-century AD texts, highlighting its key aspects in relation to poli- tics, education, and self-knowledge, becomes particularly significant—although this is generally overlooked—within this new horizon which concerns the realization of human life both as a whole and its uniqueness.19
18 The issue of the relation between this possibility of envisaging the future and the capacity for discursive reasoning (logos) is a puzzle which arguably has only been solved by Ricoeur’s work.
19 That this was indeed the case would appear to be confirmed by the reception of Aristotle in the fourth and third century BC. The central role assigned to activity, understood as political rather than theoretical activity, was one of the reasons why the Epicureans—and probably Hellenistic schools in general—were so critical of the philosopher. One highly interesting testimony is pro- vided by Philodemus’ anti-Aristotelian polemic (see Berti 2009).
21
1.10 Movedness and the Incompleteness of Everyday Life If sheer presence is what defines the authentic nature of being, how are we to under- stand the movement of those entities, such as human life, which have not yet attained completeness?
It is through this incompleteness, understood as a deficiency, as an absence per- ceived as a “not yet,” that movement becomes intelligible. Transformation becomes decipherable precisely in the light of this privation (steresis), which emerges as a fundamental category of Aristotelian ontology.
Let us take the example of a log of a certain kind and a certain size. This wood carries the possibility of being employed in a certain way: it may be turned into a table, for instance. The wood has the availability to become a table: the carpenter actualizes this availability when he starts processing the log. The fact of not being a table yet, in other words, becomes present within the workshop, as the log is ready to be transformed into a table by the carpenter. This indeterminateness (aoriston) pertains to movement.
Let us suppose that at the end of his day’s work, the carpenter leaves that piece of wood, which is neither a log anymore nor yet a table, in his workshop. The wood is no longer present as it was when the carpenter first laid his hands on it: it is pres- ent at rest, so to speak; and rest is an extreme instance of the movement initiated by the carpenter. The entity present there, in that workshop (spatially), at the end of a work day (temporally), is an entity which is neither exclusively a log nor exclu- sively a table; and this way of being-there of the entity coincides precisely with movement. It is clear, then, that when he refers to this phenomenon, what Aristotle has in mind are not the carpenter’s “movements”, but rather the movedness of the table itself, which is about to be born as such, which is about to acquire a certain appearance (GA 9 1976). Movement is not a being but a how of being-there, as Heidegger argued; it is not added from the outside, but is intrinsic to the entity itself.
This unique availability (dynamis) of the log to become a table is therefore a presence which is already at work. Movement consists in this change leading from the log to the table: in the transformation of an availability already present which, by being mobilized, acquires an even higher degree of presence (energeia),20 until it attains rest in the thing produced. Movement is the presence of an ability to be (Arist. phys. Γ 1, 201 a 10 ff.).
At this stage, the problem becomes: where does movement lie? In that which moves or in what is moved? Does movement lie in the productive attitude (poiesis) or in the entity produced (pathesis)? In the mover or in the moved? In the therapist or in the patient? Aristotle’s answer is that the productive attitude and the entity produced—just like what we teach and what we are taught or the therapy we practice and the one we benefit from—are but two ways of looking at the same phenomenon of the entity-in-movement: “the potentiality for acting and being acted upon is one ... Hence, in so far as it is a natural unity, nothing is acted upon by itself; because it is one, and not a separate thing.” (Metaph. Θ 1, 1046 a 19–29).
20 Energeia here describes a being that is not yet perfect or complete but is about to become so.
1.10 Movedness and the Incompleteness of Everyday Life