Freedom: Physical, Mental, or Social?

Introduction

    Feminist discourse attempts to determine a means for women to achieve freedom through the elimination of oppression. However, the multitude of definitions for "woman", "freedom" and "oppression", the ultimate goal of freedom for women have produced several streams of feminist thought. For the purposes of this discussion, I will focus on the cooperation or opposition within social values/norms as well as the connection/disjunction between the mind and the body as gateways to freedom. My Body is My Art: Cosmetic Surgery as a Feminist Utopia, Kathy Davis discusses the validity of cosmetic surgery as a means of achieving self-determination. In order to address the issue, Davis compares women attempting to cosmetically alter their bodies in order to become more beautiful with the work of Susan Orlan, a body performance artist who uses cosmetic surgery in order to mock social standards of beauty. While Davis focuses on the conception of beauty in relation to cosmetic surgery, her discussion points to the larger issue of freedom. Women attempting to cosmetically alter their bodies to make their "outsides match their insides" are trying to achieve self-determination by emphasizing the connection between mind and body, whereas Orlan is trying to achieve self-determination by utilizing cosmetic surgery to widen the gap between mind and body. I argue that Davis' My Body is My Art: Cosmetic Surgery as a Feminist Utopia represents two esoteric views which attempt to achieve freedom through either cooperation with social norms or complete rejection of said social norms.

Mind-Body as a Gateway to Freedom

     The relationship between the mind and body is a critical aspect of the feminist goal of self-determination. This relationship can be expressed in either positive or negative terms. For example, Davis studies women of various socio-economic backgrounds who either underwent or plan to undergo cosmetic surgery in order to improve themselves. For the women discussed, cosmetic surgery presents a solution to a "history of suffering because of their appearance". For these women, such as the "successful, middle-aged business woman seeking a face lift in order to 'fit into the corporate culture,'" cosmetic surgery serves as a gateway to freedom from the social restrictions imposed on the biologically determined body. Davis makes it clear that the general attitude around the decision to undergo cosmetic surgery was not "...because their bodies were not beautiful, but because they were not ordinary—'just like everyone else'". The problem is presented as a battle between interior (the mind) and the exterior (the body) where the success of the former depends on the latter. According to Davis, the women discussed chose cosmetic surgery because of their keen awareness of their "active and lived relationship with their bodies". This emphasis on the relationship with their bodies is indicative of a strong desire to resolve the disjunction between the body and the mind. For these women, the self is defined by the body's appearance. Since the success or ease of their minds depends on the physical normality of their body, it becomes clear that for many women the body is a critical component to the self. Therefore, cosmetic surgery allows women to take control of the societal roles and successes that comprise their identities by altering their bodies. For those who view control of the bodily image (the self and how it is perceived by society) as a crucial aspect of freedom, this taking control is freeing. Cosmetic surgery symbolizes overcoming pre-determined biology. Thus, there is a strong sense of gaining the power of self-determination through technology.

    Of course, the relationship between the mind and the body emerges in differing ways as Andrea Dworkin shows in Intercourse. Dworkin emphasizes the psychological value of bodily perception by examining the act of intercourse and the symbolism within the act. Dworkin says "a human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused". Intercourse violates the body, which changes a woman's selfhood "in a way that is irrevocable, unrecoverable". This violation is psychological and violates the natural state of the female body—the intact hymen. Dworkin stresses the body as the self—but that self is valued negatively—by the vagina or a "hole". Since the vagina is a "hole" there is a need to "occupy" that "hole"—which is the role that men play during intercourse. This "occupation" is a type of dominance that is entirely destructive to the female selfhood, according to Dworkin. Dominance is a form of power for Dworkin. Allowing another to have that power over the female body/self thus represents a loss of self-determination or freedom. Dworkin's solution to the loss of self-determination is to reject the social standards of intercourse in favor of a type of intercourse that does not dominate the female body. For Dworkin, replacing male-dominated intercourse with passive intercourse allows women the ability to regain control of the self. By reasserting the rights of the female body to remain inviolate, it becomes possible again for women to reclaim a sense of self-determination. Thus, for women such as Dworkin the mind is innately connected to the experience of the body. Based on Dworkin's argument, the mind cannot be free until the body is permitted to be free or autonomous during intercourse.

    Conversely, some thinkers argue that the mind is far more important than the body and push for greater disjunction between the two in order to achieve freedom. Proponents of this camp include Susan Orlan, as discussed in Davis' My Body is My Art as well as Henry David Thoreau in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government".

    Orlan is a performance artist who alters her body through cosmetic surgery to parody social standards of beauty. The performance aspect of Orlan's art includes choosing symbols of beauty norms such as the forehead of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the chin of Boticelli's Venus, and undergoing cosmetic surgery which adopts these features while recording the process. The recorded process is shown to audiences in an effort to shock people into asking questions about social standards of beauty. Orlan has undergone multiple surgeries for the purpose of her art—it is both painful and dangerous. During one of Orlan's lectures of a performance, one audience member stood up and stated: "You act as though it were not you, up there on the screen". The audience member had it right in a manner of speaking—Orlan does not view herself as the summation of her bodily parts. This plays a large part in how Orlan is capable of undergoing frequent painful and dangerous cosmetic surgeries for the purpose of promulgating a radical insight on social standards of beauty. According to Orlan, the self can no longer be defined by the body and will not be defined by the body because of modern technologies (cosmetic surgery). As quoted by Davis, Orlan believes that bodies "…will become increasingly insignificant—nothing more than a 'costume', a 'vehicle', something to be changed in our search 'to become who we are'." By drastically altering her body, Orlan seems to be donating her body to society to help society prepare for the inevitable insignificance of the body. In doing so, Orlan maintains her strict sense of identity as a messenger by separating her self—the mind from the body. Orlan's view contrasts that of Davis and Dworkin in that Orlan is a proponent of denying the body to transcend the mind. This transcendence of the body allows Orlan the freedom of self-determination since the body is the site of oppression via constraining social norms.

    Thoreau also asserts that the mind is the true vehicle for freedom through self-actualization in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government". Thoreau criticizes the government as being overreaching and criticizes those who allow the government to rule them rather than controlling their own government. This is not entirely dissimilar from Dworkin's protest against the occupation of the person. Thoreau questions why people refuse to pay attention to their conscience (mind) rather than serving the state "not mainly as men, but as machines, with their bodies". Thoreau's protest is not related to feminism per se, but it is about freedom in general. It becomes clear that Thoreau considers the physical body as a part of the state when he says "under a government which prisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison". Justice is freedom to Thoreau. In Thoreau's mind, the government owns the bodies of the governed but not the minds, which is why Thoreau feels free to protest. By protesting, Thoreau shows a disregard for the body in favor of the mind/conscience as the true representation of the self. For Thoreau, the mind is the self, and the self must be defended above the body in order for the body (or other bodies) to survive.

Bodies and Minds in Society—Conclusion

    Based on the observations of Davis, Orlan, Dworkin, and Thoreau it becomes clear that not only is there a competing relationship between the body and the mind, but also between the body, mind, and society. Each thinker discussed attempts to reconcile the body and/or the mind with its interactions within society. The women Davis observes choose to undergo cosmetic surgery to achieve freedom by conforming to societal norms. One example Davis gives is a "successful, middle-aged business woman seeking a face life in order to 'fit into the corporate culture'." Others are changing their bodies not because of quantitative beauty, but because it is abnormal in reference to society's standards of beauty. Economist Daniel Hamermesh from the University of Texas found that people considered unattractive earned up to 10 percent less than their averagely attractive counterparts. Reality television is littered with make-over shows such as "What Not to Wear" and "The Biggest Loser," that are supposed to help people get the guy/girl or get the promotion/job desired. Through this view, it is easy to understand how cosmetic surgery is an effective tool for achieving a certain level of freedom to function or excel within the "real world" as is dictated by social norms. Cosmetic surgery presents itself as a worm that can wiggle around genetic predisposition and beat the system while working within it.

    However, Orlan, Dworkin, and Thoreau all seem to agree that society is comprised of individuals that have the power to control society, yet the collective agrees to allow society control individuality, or the self. By extension, society's control over individuality impairs the ability to feel free. Orlan protests by casting off her own body and using it to mock the norms of beauty which gives rise to her assertion of freedom through individuality. Dworkin refuses to cast off the body and instead asserts that it is society that must accommodate the sovereignty of the female body. Accommodation gives rise to the freedom necessary for self-actualization. Thoreau voices a similar demand for accommodation by calling for individuals to reclaim power over the government (society) by asserting their conscience (individuality of the mind).

Each of these thinkers contains more than a grain of truth in their respective discourses. The complexities surrounding the individual in relation to the collective only become steadily magnified as a new voice or insight is added. Based on the discussions here it is clear that oppression is pervasive and all of humanity is complicit in that oppression through participation in the norms surrounding the body such as allowing and playing into the eroticization of the body via fashion magazines, cosmetic surgery, cosmetic beauty products, and make-over shows. If all of humanity is complicit in its own oppression, it appears that freedom is an unsustainable idea. In order for the collective to survive, individuals must sacrifice some liberties and cooperate with the norms that comprise the social contract. Still, Orlan, Dworkin, and Thoreau are correct in asserting that the individuals decide where cooperation and conformity is necessary. This premise suggests that the collective has yet to reach the equilibrium necessary in order for each individual to possess the optimum amount of freedom with the least possible interference with the freedom of others. It must be stressed that the seemingly oppositional ideas concerning the mind/body v. society conflict do not necessarily cancel each other out through negative values. Instead, oppositional philosophies unveil the contradictions that are in need of resolutions. By exposing the contradictions, contrary philosophical ideas provide the building blocks for current thinkers to arrange or build upon.

    
 

 

Works Cited

 

Bruck, Jan. "Research Confirms the Role of Beauty in Career Success." DW-World.DE Deutsche Welle . 4 16, 2010. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5469059,00.html (accessed 22 2010, 4).

Davis, Kathy. "My Body is My Art: Cosmetic Surgery as a Feminist Utopia ." In Feministy Theory and the Body: A Reader , by Janet Price and Margaret Shidrick, 454-465. Routledge -Taylor & Francis Group LLC-Books, 1999.

Dworkin, Andrea. "Occupation/Collaboration." In Intercourse, by Andrea Dworkin. New York : Basic Books, 1987.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Resistance to Civil Government." American Transcendatialism Web. 1999. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/civil/ (accessed March 2010).

 

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Forever a student of life: the end is the beginning

Have no fear comrades, this isn't my last post. I'm going to get those extra credit points. But I'll continue on more so because I've become addicted to blogging when I should be doing other things. That being said, let's get to the meat of things. Or the veg of things. For vegetarians. I'd hate to alienate anyone.

Candidly speaking, sometimes you're on the ball then life happens you fall off the ball. In the words of my friend Lilia, "then life happens again and the ball is on you". The ball has been on me for a while now, to be honest. And this isn't the first time the ball has been on me.

In the spirit of making things overly personal as usual, I've mentioned in previous posts that I left my last university in D.C. to attend to family matters. While I was thinking about the ramifications of leaving the life I'd established there (albeit I was already on the plane back to Texas), I remember thinking to myself, "Why is this okay for me? I love learning and I'm leaving it". The answer surprised me given how much I worship the pursuit of knowledge: I love wisdom more. Wisdom is not gained solely from "regurgitating" the information in books, as some colleagues have put it. Rather wisdom is gained largely from life experience. In the face of life and death (because nothing makes us think so strongly of life as our own mortality and the mortality of loved ones) memorizing the per capita income of Argentina or the year that Augustine was born or even the effect that the U.S. embargo against Cuba has on Cuba and neighboring countries becomes markedly unimportant. In that moment, I realized what is truly important: our relationship with God (if you believe in God) and our relationships with others. Learning was not on my list. Which surprised me.

Fast forward four years and I found myself in a similar boat, trying to choose between my institute of learning and making the most of relationships before their mortal end. My Aunt passed away last week, a friend of the family passed away over spring break, and my grandmother barely pulled through around Easter. But my pull here was stronger. Which led me to ask myself: "what changed?"

The answer is in philosophy. Religious beliefs aside, I've been looking for more. An answer to how to lead a good life. Through Plato, Aristotle, and the Presocratics (note I'm not such a fan of the atomists or the sophists), I feel that I've gained more tools to do so. The fact that PHI 3310 is ending is bittersweet; I'm excited to continue my journey up the philosophical mountain but I'm going to miss all the comrades that have challenged my thinking or presented new views of old topics or shocked me into wondering why I'm offended or reaffirmed that I believe what I believe for a valid reason.

I'm also going to miss the patience of Dr. Bowery, and the analytical eye of Mr. Carson while we collectively attempt to figure out what we believe in the face of others' prescriptions for leading a contemplative life. I'm a little relieved that perhaps the class will forget some of those ridiculous questions that I've asked or toes that I've stepped on. I'm exceedingly grateful that through our blog postings and delightful class discussions, we have all gotten to see some sort of essence of ourselves and of others. As strange as this sounds, my classmates and instructors have instilled in me a new found hope for the state of the world. Watching others grow while growing alongside them is an earth-shaking experience. I'm going to miss those "ah-Ha!" moments as the lightbulbs go off in our heads. Or those subtle little thought bombs or blatantly obvious contradictions are poured out in front of us. Most of all, I'm going to miss this class because for the most part, we struggled together up the philosophical mountain and have tried to apply that wisdom to our own lives.

There is no more valuable lesson than how to live well. Forever will I be a student of this lesson.

"An unapparent connection (harmonia)is stronger than an apparent one." --Heraclitus

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Thoughts on the Nature of Man

A while back, I was asked what I believed the nature of man to be. Despite the fact that I feel poorly equipped to answer so large a question and I'm still in the process of developing my ideas—I'll take a stab at it. In order to do so, I'm going to consider what some influential philosophers have said about the nature of man; the ones that struck a chord with me, at least.

Hobbes argues that man in the state of nature is nasty and brutish, purely driven by self-interest and constantly at a state of war with one another. Thus enter civil society: civil society exists to protect man's property and to protect man from one another. Perhaps man would be cruel to one another for the purpose of survival, but that assumes that resources are scarce. Locke argues that until resources become more limited, man will be less inclined to war with each other. Locke also agrees that man is bad, but he also believes in tabula rusa, or the concept that every man is born as a blank slate. For Locke, little is innate (except for predispositions, which I think is a contradiction but we'll put that aside) and everything must be learned. The concept of tabula rusa suggests that Locke believes man is not born bad, but made to be bad by society. Nature versus Nurture, anyone?

What of man's goals? Aristotle, Hume, and Plato all argue that the ultimate aim of humanity is to be happy or attain some measure of happiness. Kant says that happiness is some sort of fringe benefit of being moral, but it isn't exactly the highest aim in his view. Okay, so I'll accept that for now: man wants to be happy. That seems reasonable enough.

I suppose the next question should be whether or not the innate nature (if there is one) of man affects man's ability to receive happiness.

Phew. That's a big one. If man is innately bad and exists in a state of nature (i.e. war with one another), and this means the bad humanity spends all its time fighting for survival, then happiness is no longer the end goal of man, survival is. One could argue that man wants to survive in order to have a shot at happiness, but if one is in a state of nature where the only victories are war related, then man knows no conception of happiness. This idea appears to reinforce Locke's idea of tabula rusa in that man is not necessarily innately bad, but taught to be bad (at least for now, while we're talking about Hobbes' conception of state of nature). Unless survival is a form of happiness, it's possible that happiness is not the highest aim of mankind. If it's not true in every situation, then how is it true at all? But that assertion is dependent upon the assumption that truth is objective. Which may not be the case.

Moving on, if we consider man in civil societies (or societies, period) then perhaps happiness can be an end goal. Hmm. Problem: agrarian, hunter-gatherer, nomad, and pre-industrial (third world) societies—everyone works hard, and everyone works. The aim of the work is to provide for basic human needs. Oop, there's survival as the main motivator again. However, a professor and I were discussing third world countries. He said that in third world countries Heaven is more richly imagined than it is even thought of in developed countries. Heaven=happiness. So maybe survival is an effort to get to happiness after all—for those that believe in an afterlife.

In developed countries such as the U.S., work is spread out and distributed. We import our raw material, which means that the third-world does most of our strenuous labor. Less work+more product=lots of leisure time. This is similar for Hume, Locke, Aristotle, and Plato. They were all well off and aristocratic. They had the time to peruse what it means to be happy and ethical and the funds to sustain their lifestyles.

Interestingly enough, it appears that the general consensus (including Kant) agrees that happiness is bestowed upon the ethically moral people. So this is why man's innate nature is important. If you start out bad, you have to work pretty hard to become moral. If you start out good, you have to work pretty hard at not becoming bad. If you start out neutral, it's all about the luck of the draw and whom you are born to, where you are born and when you are born. Which do I pick? Neutral. To an extent. Apparently I'm a compatibilist.

I don't believe that man starts out bad. Science tells us that children begin their socialization process almost from the minute they are born. Even so, there are arguments that the food the carrying mother consumes affects the disposition of the child, or the music that the mother listens to affects the personality, and Native American tribes hold off on naming children until their personalities are clear so the name, the label, does not hamper the true spirit of the child. Native Americans call it true spirit—but Locke refers to tabula rusa in connection with the mind. This just got complicated. I'll acknowledge that man has both a spirit and a mind. The spirit must account for the emotions. The mind must account for reason. They affect one another.

Example: a psychologist back in the early 1900s hypothesized that a chimp could take on human habits. The chimp certainly did start walking upright, eating neatly, wearing clothing, all that good stuff. But the psychologist raised the chimp alongside his son. What he didn't count on (and what prompted the end of the experiment) was that his son began to take on some of the characteristics of the chimp.

Clearly both the son and the chimp were influenced by their environment and their socialization process. From the experiment, you can't really tell if it influenced the spirit of either the son or the chimp (if we assume that animals have a spirit of some sort). My point is, how you really separate nature from nurture? No one can clearly distinguish between the beginning and the end. Society doesn't even agree on when life officially begins. So how are we supposed to agree on the nature of life?

Kant on the other hand, argues that reason is the fundamental nature of man or dominant trait. He's similar to Aristotle in that manner. Kant bases his entire formulae for the universal moral law on the presupposition that all man has reason. Aristotle claims that it is reason that separates humanity from animals. Aristotle also believed that women, workers, and slaves could hardly be ethical because they don't possess the necessary faculties to do so (i.e. reason). I hold that Kant is wrong. There are members of humanity without the common rational abilities that Kant speaks of. This makes rationality less "fundamental" to human nature.

Plato, Hume and (and sort of Locke) weigh emotion in as a bit more heavy than reason. None discount the faculty of reason. Hume argues that behavior does not take place until people have emotionally invested in it. This I can agree with. Besides the disorders or diseases that cause people to have involuntary movements or exclamations (Tourette's Syndrome, Parkinsons, etc.). I also believe that this emotional investment in behavior is rooted in how people love as well as what people love. Ultimately, people are not just fighting for survival in every instance, but fighting for some sort of love. Love of life, love of family, love of person, love of country, love of freedom, love of knowledge or love of wisdom, etc. Love is a form of sentiment, but it's not the sentiment that defines humanity—love defines humanity. Perhaps this doesn't remove humanity from animals enough to satisfy some. But perhaps humanity's real difference from animals is our capacity to love in an infinite number of ways. Wishy-washy, perhaps. However, one can't base the fundamental nature of humanity in purely reason because it excludes those without the normative standard of reason (as we define it). Nor can we base the fundamental nature of humanity in purely sentiment or feeling because it excludes the capacity for creativity, for innovation, for pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.

I imagine individuals as scales. Whatever one lacks in reason, they make up for in love. Whatever one lacks in love, they make up for in reason. Mankind's ultimate goal appears to be happiness, but the secret of happiness that Aristotle tried to tell us about: you can't be happy if you're out of balance. That seems to sum up the nature of man—trying to find that balance.

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The Source, Leibniz, Hegel and Humanity

I finally finished watching the second and third Matrix movies this morning. As I watched the voices of the Ancients emerge, I found it a bit ironic that a modern voice seemed in control of the matrix itself.

Take the source, the old guy with the moustachetee (goatee and mustache connecting-what is the word for that?). Did anyone else see Leibniz? We have the source telling Neo that the world he's fighting to save is actually the sixth world. That he'd created a few others and they all experienced the same fate. Each time the source created a new world, he tried to change it but the nature of humans couldn't be changed. The unchanging nature of humanity reminds me of the monads which leads to determinism. For the source, everything happened as it must. The source merely tried to create the best possible world by tinkering with the surroundings of the humans.

The source also seems to resemble Hegel's conception of the Absolute Spirit in that the Absolute Reality is constantly trying to return to what is already known. For Hegel, history exists as a series of actions, reactions and counter-reactions but he calls it thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The synthesis or counter-reaction becomes the new thesis or action and the chain continues on. In mentioning the creation and destruction of Zion, the source seems to refer to this type of recurrence or the Absolute Spirit. In which the humans are always trying to rediscover what is not known, but felt about the world—thus the cycle of humanity resembles the Absolute Reality trying to return to the Absolute Spirit.

Jordan touched on the subject of the nature of humanity and essentially viewed it as a tendency to conform—which suggests that humanity does not change, as if that were a part of the nature of humanity. I'm inclined to side with Heraclitus in that the only thing that doesn't change is change itself. Humanity, in my view, changes as a series of actions, reactions and counter-reactions. In terms of a metaphysical view of the world, apparently I agree with Hegel.

Examples?

Take Voltaire's Candide, a systematic mocking of Leibniz' theory of this world being "the best of all possible worlds": Leibniz had an affiliation with Frederick William I, the father of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. Leibniz reflected William I's more conservative view points and was thus put in charge of Frederick the Great's younger education. Frederick and William had a tumultuous relationship after which Frederick constantly rebelled against his father, including ideologically. Later, Voltaire and Frederick became friends and Voltaire was the classic suck-up when it came to the in-crowd of royalty that Frederick happened to live at the center of. Voltaire continuously sought out Frederick's approval, and their letters often contained elaborate pseudo-intellectual mocking of William I and all his counterparts, including Leibniz. Voltaire's writing of Candide may be largely related to his efforts to appease Frederich—thesis, antithesis, synthesis/thesis and so on. (Information comes from Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment by James R. Gaines)

My point with the example above is that people often look at the ideas alone but fail to consider the historical context of those ideas. Historical context is another point that Hegel emphasizes. He argues that philosophy is an expression of its time. In other words, philosophy reflects the ideas of the time that they are in, where they were developed, and who the ideas are exchanged with. When it comes to Voltaire, his book Candide may not actually reflect his own philosophy but may actually be a collection of brownnosing. Still, the criticisms themselves do not cease to be relevant. It is simply important to note the context so that whoever is interested may keep it in mind that new interpretations of ancient, medieval or modern philosophers will most likely not match what the corresponding author intended to say.

This disjunction between original meaning and new interpretations relates to Alan's discussion of how the writers of "The Matrix" trilogies probably did not think or intend to incorporate the ideas of tens of philosophers into the movie's plot. However, that does not make the connections any less relevant. One of the most comforting things about philosophy is that ideas inspire new ideas or a reexamination of old ideas. It's never stagnant until people decide it's irrelevant.

So don't make it irrelevant.

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