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Article Excerpt
As conscious beings, we are confronted with what we might call the problem of self-understanding. Self-understanding is a problem for us because we generally want it, and cannot always (if ever) be sure that we have it. We recognize that we may be "strangers" to ourselves--subtly or profoundly mistaken about who we are. We fear that we may be self-deceived or blinded by arrogance, desire, or self-love. In this essay, I will treat self-deception as a "malady" or "sickness" of conscious life, and will assume that it is something that we want to avoid. I will examine the way that self-interpretation, and attempts at self-understanding, can deteriorate into self-deception. My investigation will focus upon the contribution that fantasy and depth make to our attempts at self-understanding. A person who is actively and profoundly concerned about her mental life may be well equipped for the pursuit of self-understanding. But, for the very same reasons, she may also be especially vulnerable to selfdeception and other maladies of conscious life.
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Fantasy and imagination can enhance our understanding of the world and ourselves. A person who imagines various forms of life can make himself consciously aware of possibilities of which he might otherwise remain ignorant. By simulating a situation or way of life within his own mind, he can acquire a vivid understanding of the advantages and disadvantages associated with it. This ability can aid a person's practical deliberations by providing him with a preview of what is to come. If a person can imagine the consequences of a decision in considerable detail, then he will be able to choose with confidence and understanding. A person with a limited capacity to imagine will be comparatively less able to anticipate his response to a chosen situation and course of action. He might find himself unpleasantly surprised by the consequences of his decision, and by his own response to them. This is not to say that our capacity to imagine a way of life is a guarantee that we will achieve it and become happy. The point is just that imagination is something that can help us along the daunting and uncertain path of life. Unfortunately, our powers of imagination are finite and imperfect; that is, we can never foresee with certainty everything that will befall us, or how we will respond to what does befall us. A person may, for example, wish for physical beauty only to find himself deeply dissatisfied with his life upon acquiring it. While it is true that beauty may promote friendship and admiration, it may also be the source of considerable envy, pride, and superficial affection. (1)
The role that imagination plays in guiding our lives has not gone unnoticed by philosophers. If I live in a homogeneous society, where there are very few forms of life available to me, then I may have a difficult time imagining life any other way. John Stuart Mill argued that a society should support individuals who are eccentric, adventurous, and bold in their ways of life. By nourishing the individuality of the minority, we can expand the practical horizons of the majority. Mill believed that we can emancipate people from the tyranny of custom by exposing them to various forms of life or "experiments of living." (2) Observing another person's life may enable me to evaluate and direct my own more effectively. Shall I have a family? Shall I pursue a career in medicine? Or shall I give up all that I have and fight hunger and disease in Africa? A rich sense of what any of these three choices involves may assist me in deciding which form of life would be worthwhile or fulfilling for me. Imagination plays a critical role in this process: I must imagine how I would feel or fare in any one of these situations. Am I too selfish and unemotional to become a parent? Am I too much of a hypochondriac to survive medical school? And can I sacrifice the luxuries of home for the life of a selfless moral saint in Africa?
Witnessing the lives of real people may aid our imagination and practical decision-making. But we can also enhance our imagination through literature, film, and theatre. Reading a novel encourages us to identify with its characters and their experiences. And when the writer is particularly talented, we can understand the psychology of the characters--their innermost experiences--and the ramifications of their decisions. In this way, literature can teach us moral and practical lessons about life. We might know, for instance, that it is generally wrong to deceive others. But reading a novel can deepen and enhance a formal or abstract under standing of why this is so. In so doing, it might bring us to care about honesty, and to cherish it in our own lives, and in the lives of others. Consider Choderlos de Laclos's scandalously brilliant exploration of deception and seduction in Dangerous Liaisons. Laclos's epistolary novel tells the story of two conniving Victorian seducers whose duplicitous schemes lead ultimately to their own demise. The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, the two seducers, are rivals in a dangerous game of sexual manipulation and power. They conspire with each other through a series of letters against their various unsuspecting victims. But when they become objects in each other's schemes, they are completely incapable of mutual trust, and their lives almost systematically fall apart. At the end of the novel, through an unanticipated turn of events, the two betray each other and pay the price for their cruel and deceptive little game. Valmont is gravely wounded in a duel and makes public Merteuil's incriminating letters on his deathbed. He dies, and the Marquise is rejected by society and suffers from a severely disfiguring case of smallpox. The genius of the novel consists in Laclos's ability to reveal the topography of the deceptive mind, and its effect upon interpersonal relationships. The deceiver, as Laclos portrays her, stands beyond the code of ethics accepted by her community; she lives alone, as it were, and is incapable of trust. Merteuil, at one point in the novel, praises the life of...
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