The mysteries of the Egyptians are mysteries to the Egyptians themselves
The title for this short reflection comes from a comment Hegel once made. A comment that offers a precise formulation of the double enigma of the human subject.
In order to unpack it let us take the example of being in a marriage. Imagine that distrust and distance has slowly entered the relationship, causing a fissure. From ones embedded position within the marriage the actions of the other may strike one as an enigma. In response we may begin to question them about why they are acting in the way that they are. All too often we can become obsessed with questioning our partner about why they said a certain thing, or why they said it in a particular way. Or we may seek to interrogate them about why they wrote a particular email or why they are flirting with a specific person etc.
The underlying presupposition here is that the mystery of the other is not a mystery to the other (i.e. they understand their action, but we do not). As a result of this presupposition, questioning our partner can lead to anger and depression as our attempts to understand seem constantly frustrated.
Yet we must remember that the enigma of the other is also an enigma to the other. If our husband or wife, in the above example, knows why they act in a certain way, it is only because they have had to do the difficult work of reflecting upon their own actions and working out what they mean. Like a detective at the scene of a crime we arrive too late, not only to the others actions, but also to our own. And it is from this post-event location that we must piece together what took place and why.
In short, if we find ourselves getting frustrated by the enigmatic actions of those we love we must remind ourselves that our own actions are just as mysterious and require just as much hard work to decipher.
Indeed our conscious descriptions of why we act in a certain way can be deeply deceptive and the very thing we must ignore in order to penetrate to the reality of why we act in the way that we do. Our conscious rationalisations can be nothing more than the false alibi that we must expose in order to discover the truth.
Tags: Hegel, mystery, Peter Rollins, rationalisation, relationships
May 14th, 2009 at 3:20 am
I always felt that trying to figure others out is almost impossible given that I have a hard enough time trying to figure myself out.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:24 am
“All too often we can become obsessed with questioning our partner about why they said a certain thing, or why they said it in a particular way.”
There was me thinking only women did this…
Great post Pete
May 14th, 2009 at 4:06 am
Nice. What I was trying to get at in the recent series of posts I did on ‘bad faith’ was that it is not entirely a mystery. It is both mysterious and knowable at the same time.
Which on a philosophical level may be of interest. But at a relational level means your partner can always have a go at you because YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. Lol.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:19 am
Hey Kester. I agree. This is why often when someone is discovered in infidelity the response of the betrayed is, ‘I knew it’. This is not to be interpreted in the common sense way of saving face (’I really knew all along, I was not a dupe’), but rather as the coming to know what one already knew without knowing it (or refusing to know it). I would say that behavior can be interpreted, however not in the standard manner, i.e. it is not simply a case of bringing some unconscious knowledge to the conscious level.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:48 am
BTW I should clarify. I don’t mean that the person always knew that the affair was taking place in the above example. For instance, someone could find out that their partner was having an affair, have the experience of ‘I knew it’ and then later find out that the information was false (their partner had been faithful). This does not however mean that that the ‘I knew it’, was a fake, if interpreted correctly. One must get beyond interpreting such things as referring to an historical event and see them, as Freud showed, in terms of a psycho-historical event. The experience of ‘I knew it’, points to a trauma that is experienced as dwelling in the past.
To complicate things more, this trauma, while experienced as dwelling in the past, could be said to be brought into existence in the present and then projected onto the past. It thus comes into existence now as a past trauma that must be dealt with.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Sounds like Sartre’s bad faith.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Hey Dan
I think there are two ways we could approach the ‘I knew it’ bar the common sense one. The first could be described as the Satreian one whereby we did not face up to the hints that were present in the situation and rather attempted to keep the situation as it was presented in its manifest sense. Here the ‘I knew it’ represents the moment when one admits to the hints.
The second is more Freudian and is the idea that the ‘I knew it’ is actually not the result of some hints you perceived already and suppressed, but rather is an insight created in its moment of articulation and then retroactively imposed on the past in such a way that you understand the events of the past differently (like remembering your mum crying while peeling onions and yet realising later that the tears were actually her mourning and not caused by the onions).
Anyway, I think my above comment blurred this distinction in an unhelpful way.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:09 am
[...] MacLennan, motivation, Pete Rollins, self-deception by Dan Why do we do what we do? Do we know? Consider: “In short, if we find ourselves getting frustrated by the enigmatic actions of those we love [...]
May 14th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Good stuff. Loving the stuff in TMOC about the close connection between Christianity and psychoanalysis.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Fascinating.
I’m going over both senses that you present I’m in turn comparing it to a practical case: the recent breakup of a friend’s marriage. It was an event that came initially as a shock to the people who knew him, but the more that I (and others) examined it, the more we perceived that there were warnings. Now I’m wondering if these were things I *knew* but suppressed or if I am now creating meanings of events that I’m retroactively.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:36 am
D’oh, that last sentence should read, “Now I’m wondering if these were things I *knew* but suppressed or if I am now creating meanings of events retroactively.”
May 15th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Hi – as a relatively new visitor to this site could you tell what TMOC is (KB’s last comment) – I am really interested in the relationship between Christianity and psychoanalysis. Google gave me Telecom Management and Operations Committee, The Mark of Cain and the Triumph Motorcyle Owner’s club. I somehow don’t feel it’s any of those (or the True Meaning of Christmas, either). Thank you!
May 15th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Hey John… he was talking about the book The Monstrosity of Christ. It is an important new book consisting of a dialogue (of sorts) between Zizek and Milbank. A great book.
May 16th, 2009 at 4:16 am
Hey guys,
I saw you guys were talking abuot the connections Zizek makes between (Lacanian) psychoanalysis and theology. In a somewhat similar vein Winquist’s book Epiphanies of Darkness explores the connection a theology of darkness and classical psychoanalysis especially Freud’s theory of dream-work. Pretty fascinating radical theology from the eighties. Also, as I’m sure you guys know Crockett (who was a Winquist’s student) carries on the radical theology tradition of Winquist in his book Interstices of the Sublime
May 16th, 2009 at 4:45 am
Also, I just remembered that I read another fascinating book on Kierkegaard, Lacan, and the Eucharist by Marcus Pound called Psychoanalysis and Trauma. Check it out
May 16th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Thank you!
May 16th, 2009 at 11:00 am
TMOC sounds interesting, as though it would be an extension of some of the themes of The Fragile Absolute.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:08 am
[...] BLOG RESOURCES ABOUT PETER SPEAKING SCHEDULE « The mysteries of the Egyptians are mysteries to the Egyptians themselves [...]
September 7th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
[...] an old Hegel quote: “The mysteries of the Egyptians were mysteries for the Egyptians themselves”, meaning that while historians and anthropologists are sitting around wondering what the Egyptians [...]