Jung, Time, and Ethics

Ladson Hinton

Evil is, then, nothing more than the denial

of life's trauma and as such, the nostalgia
for non-existence, that is, the nostalgia for
a timeless existence, which, since it was
never given or experienced, means nothing
else but the nostalgia for nothing itself.
John Manoussakis (2017), The Ethics of Time

Introduction and Genealogy

The connection of time and ethics is ancient, but not familiar to most contemporary thinkers. A

reflection on Jung and time and ethics is even less common. I will begin with some perspectives

on temporality in order to orient the reader, and then focus on Jung's theories in that context. I

will begin in our beginnings, with a brief genealogy of temporality and the emergence of the

human.

It is temporality that most clearly distinguishes homo sapiens from the higher primates.

Leroi-Gourhan points out that the great break between our human ancestors and other mammals

came with bipedalism--erect posture (Audouze, 2002, p. 298). This freed the hand and mouth,

and opened room in the brain case for more complex motor structures, including areas involving

language and memory. Recent studies have shown the crucial importance of diet in the increase

of hominids' brain size. Bipedal posture and tools and weapons facilitated a richer, meatier diet

that stimulated brain development (DeCasien, Williams & Higham, 2017).

Bernard Stiegler describes technics, as a process of exteriorization: the pursuit of life by

means other than pure biological life (Stiegler, 1998, pp. 16-17).1 Anticipation, and the

1
'Technics,' refers here to technical practices as a whole; 'technology' refers to the
amalgamation of technics and modern sciences.
stimulation of foresight is embodied by tools, which functioned like mirrors of memory. Stiegler

asserts that the relation of being and time only developed within the horizon of technics (ibid.,

pp. 134-135). 'Internal' and 'external' were comingled from the beginning of culture.

The first clear sign of awareness of temporality was the appearance of intentional burial

practice in the Middle Paleolithic (Lieberman, 1991, pp. 162-164). The corpses were coated with

red ochre, which was strongly connected with pregnancy in the later cave art. The trauma and

mystery of death and the hope for a future was evident.

Cave art began to appear around 40,000 BC. It was clear that there was a future

expectation of return to the scene for rituals of some kind--clearly a horizon of temporality. In

that sense, creative imagination was directed toward an unknown future, employing a potent

collaboration of tools and images. Technology and cave art were highly inter-related. The

various pigments, the lamps and torches used for working deep into caves, and the technique

used by the artists showed a sophistication that would have taken a long time to develop--gifts

and memories from an unknown past of unknown ancestors.

Time and space are crucial to the organization of who we are (Blommaert & De Fina,

2006, p. 1). Culture stems largely from the awareness of future times with all their possible

dangers and the opportunities, along with the need for creating provisions for the safety and well-

being of the group. It is difficult to know when spoken language developed, but written language

developed during the Neolithic period of settled farming around 8,000 years ago. A form of

exteriorized memory emerged for cataloging stored items, and then expanded. This was a mode

of taking care of the future, of planning for a rainy day! Written memory was basic in cultural

development, and our growing dependence on technology for memory is part of the crisis of our

times (Audouze, 2002, p. 293).

Developmental psychology lends credence to a view that time sense is basic to both

speech and interpersonal memory. The development of speech may be dependent on the

emergence of a rudimentary temporal sense (de Diego-Balanger et al, 2016). In addition, it has

been consistently found that the capacity to retain past events as interpersonal and specifically

temporal seems to emerge around 4-5 years of age. Before that consciousness is mainly spatial

(Tulving, 2005, p. 32).

An increasing capacity to remember interpersonal events is crucial to the development of

ethical awareness--the effect of our actions upon others, the capacity to recall and take

responsibility for what we have done and how we have been--our traumas and triumphs. One

would assume that this developed on the ground of pre-existing practical habits of care and

survival such as one sees in other animal species that lack a developed sense of time (Cortina,

2017).

After a slow development over 2-3 million years, there was a profound acceleration of

culture and technics in the Upper Paleolithic. It is important to note that technics evolves more

quickly than culture (Stiegler, 1998, p. 15). Upon such a basis, Stiegler has developed a theory of

epiphylogenesis, which is the idea that increasing retention of the past by means of early technics

had the effect of strongly accelerating the process of technological and cultural evolution. That

is, such 'retentions' became, in turn, a reflexive stimulus for evolution, constituting a dramatic

break from the simpler manifestations of mere biological and cultural evolution (ibid., pp. 139-

140; pp. 175-177).

Both neuroscience and psychoanalysis have demonstrated the constant augmentations

and revisions of memory that are part of expanding human identity (Edelman, 2005, p. 99;

Green, 2017, pp. 77-82). A sense of conscience, of debt to unknown ancestors, is part of the
human condition, a part of our thrownness into the world (Stiegler, 1998, pp. 258-259). We

emerge into the world in debt to those on whose shoulders we ride. This contributes to a sense of

care for our world, the basic ethical stance for being-in-the-world (ibid., pp. 46-47; Heidegger,

1967, p. 274). If we evade our debt to our ancient heritage, we suffer the fate of Narcissus, who

could only survive if he never knew himself, only took from life and never immersed himself in

time, never accumulated memories. He could only be echoed in the present.

Phronesis: the ethic of 'practical wisdom'

In this reflection on Jung and Ethics, I will favor the lens of 'virtue ethics,' an approach that

emphasizes personal character and that tends to become more apparent with time (Hursthouse &

Pettigrove, 2016).2

The most common way that one falls short of virtue is through lacking phronesis, or

practical judgement (Colman, 2013). One may reflect on Jung's life and ideas in multiple ways,

and those ways often seem contradictory. However, the practical effect he had on people’s lives,

and the inspiration he provided for both individuals and the broader culture, make his life and

ethos significant. Early on, he advocated immersion in experience along with a deeply ethical

dedication to the quest for consciousness, and he maintained that stance throughout his life. A

temporal perspective is most useful in reflecting upon how all the dimensions of his ethos

emerged.

2
As an example, a virtuous person would be someone who is kind across many situations over a
lifetime because of their character and not because they want to maximize utility or gain favors
or simply do their duty. 'Virtue ethics' deal with wider questions such as how one should live,
what is the good life, and what are proper family and social obligations (Athanassoulis, 2017).
In this writing, I will view 'morals' as normative social customs and practices, and 'ethics' as the
philosophy of that realm of human experience, including the broader dimensions of good and
evil. In practice, morality and ethics are often not clearly separable.
For Plato, speaking through the words of Socrates, it often comes across that, to live well

ethically, one should base one's decisions on epistêmê, or 'scientific' knowledge, grounding one's

actions on an intellectual grasp of the Idea of the Good itself (Kirkland, 2007, p. 127). This

provoked Aristotle to bring a charge of intellectualism against Platonic ethics (ibid.). The

implication of that approach to ethics could be a preference for the Good above existence itself,

including the life of the body; at the extreme, one could see that as an apprenticeship for death!

(Goodchild, 2010, p. 24). Aristotle attacks not only Plato's view of the role of the abstract and

general idea of the Good, but also what he sees as an attempt to ground ethical judgement solely

in epistêmê. He systematically distinguishes the practical region of human understanding from

the theoretical.

According to Aristotle, character, not intellect, is the core of ethical virtue. It is a matter

of prudence or practical wisdom, not knowledge (epistêmê), for it is concerned with the

particular, the singular character of the thing having to be done in any situation. In contemporary

terms, one would say that the life of the mind and body escapes representation (Goodchild, 2010,

p. 25). For Aristotle, epistêmê is a way of conceiving universals--absolutes that are actually

everywhere and always the same, and thus atemporal (Kirkland, 2007, p. 128). He tells us that

phronesis attends principally to the particular available means, which are within time, the basis

being provided by the agent's quality of character. Phronesis derives its enigmatic power from its

complete immersion in time, in the past, present and future (ibid., p. 130). This complexity lends

a basic imprecision to ethics.

In the ethical context, Aristotle asserts, one must look to the kairos, 'the right or

opportune moment.' This is the good that manifests in time. However, the kairos in any situation

cannot be judged with absolute precision because it reflects the desire to bring about this or that
result in the future. However, the future is hidden from us. "Phronesis must therefore be

understood as a power by which one looks properly toward what does not appear, toward what

remains hidden because [it is] in the future, and makes good ethical decisions precisely by doing

so" (ibid., 131). Ethics, and life itself, both have a strongly future-oriented quality.

Temporality is a kind of intrinsic limitation, emphasizing the finitude of ethical

judgement, situated between a past that can never be totally known and a future that can't be

predicted. That is, one cannot overcome these temporal limits because we must acknowledge that

phronesis is bound both to a particular past and particular future possibilities that we can only

partly know (ibid., p. 134).

Deliberation with others is crucial in the process of 'looking to the kairos.' Thinking in

itself is a virtuous act, in Aristotle's view (Goodchild, 2010, p. 30). This process would be

endless, except that kairos appears in a fleeting moment that cannot be anticipated, but when

action must be taken. To await that moment requires courage (Kirkland, 2007, p. 136). One

could, with Deleuze, call this a 'transcendence in immanence,' or a kind of 'transcendental

empiricism' (Smith, 2012, p. 153). To attain the necessary virtue requires grounding in everyday

life (Kirkland, 2007, p. 137).

On the one hand, Phronesis seems to describe an intensely dialogical process, and that is

sometimes present in Jung's approach. On the other hand, he often seems to value epistêmê, the

archetype or archetypal. Sometimes that attitude is pronounced, and comes across in an

authoritative pronouncement of 'truth,' the archetype as 'truth', in contrast to the murkiness of

everyday life. Jung had a great curiosity about ideas and cultures, and he often conveyed a

generous and dialogical spirit. That seemed to increase with age, as manifested in his interest in

alchemy. This dichotomy in his thinking between epistêmê as archetype and phronesis with its
richly dialogical spirit can be confusing, and this confusion often seems to derail Jungian

discourse and its underlying ethos.

The Emergence of Jung's Ethical Orientation

Given the above contexts, I want to focus more specifically on some dimensions of the ethical

perspective that the human being, Carl Gustav Jung, developed within his own time, experience

and reflection. I will provide some lengthy quotes because I think that is crucial in gaining a real

sense of his presence and ideas. From early on in his career, he foregrounded the 'moral factor' in

his thought, and that strongly differentiated his approach from Freud's. In fact, he held that the

moral factor was innate (Merkur, 2017, p. 17). Whatever Jung's vicissitudes, his commitment to

self-understanding was profoundly ethical, and one could call it religious in the broader sense of

the word (Barreto, 2013). He was determined to live and to think about his experience.

In 1910, the 35-year-old Jung wrote a letter to Freud, expounding critically about the

possibility of supporting a new "International Fraternity for Ethics and Culture" (Jung, 1973, pp.

17-18):

I cannot muster a grain of courage to promote ethics in public, let alone from the
psychoanalytic standpoint! At present, I am sitting so precariously on the fence between
the Dionysian and the Apollonian...

The ethical problem of sexual freedom really is enormous and worth the sweat of all
noble souls. But 2000 years of Christianity have to be replaced by something equivalent.
An ethical fraternity, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any archaic-infantile
driving force, is a pure vacuum and can never evoke in man the slightest trace of that age-
old animal power that drives the migrating bird across the sea...I think we must give it
time to infiltrate into people from many centers...ever so gently to transform Christ back
into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic,
instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and sacred myth
what they once were--a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness
of an animal. That indeed was the beauty and purpose of classical religion, which from
God knows what temporary biological needs has turned into a Misery Institute! Yet how
infinitely much rapture and wantonness lie dormant in our religion, waiting to be led back
to their true destination! ...
Just prior to the time of this youthful, exuberant, iconoclastic letter, Jung had been involved in a

'mutual analysis' with Otto Gross, a creative and troubled pioneer in psychoanalysis who was an

admirer of both Nietzsche and Freud. He was an advocate of 'free love,' and felt that

psychological problems were due to sexual repression. At times, Jung referred to Gross as his

'twin brother" (Heuer, 2001). This early letter is an example of Jung's experimental attitude

toward life and practice as a young analyst. It was also a precursor to his later involvement with

female patients.

Fifty years later, a young student studied the letter to Freud, and wrote to Jung,

questioning him about his remarks. Jung reflected (Jung, 1973, p. 19):

Best thanks for the quotation from that accursed correspondence. For me it
is an unfortunately inexpungable reminder of the incredible folly that
filled the days of my youth. The journey from cloud-cuckoo land back to
reality lasted a long time. In my case, Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my
having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand
to the little clod of earth that I am.

There are many things one could consider here about this thoughtful and honest reply, but

the crucial thing to me is the ethical perspective gained through time and memory, "The

better part of a lifetime." The profound subjective tension with which Jung had lived, and

his fierce commitment to reflect and create amidst that turbulence, was remarkable.

Whatever his vicissitudes, a sense of ethical commitment to consciousness seemed to

always be there: "...where Kant insists on the consciousness of duty, Jung emphasizes

rather the duty to be conscious" (Colacicchi, 2015, p. 43).

Jung's 'Seven Sermons' and Temporality

I will now focus on some of the specific fluctuations and evolutions of his ideas over a

broad length of time, the process that emerged in the decades between his sojourn in
'cloud-cuckoo land,' and the moving letter he wrote toward the end of his life, embracing

that 'clod of earth' that he was.

Jung himself did not construct a focused analysis of temporality, but Angeliki

Yiassemides has written a valuable elaboration of his views, employing the text, Septem

Sermones Ad Mortuos (The Seven Sermons to the Dead) (Yiassemides, 2014). This was a

philosophical poem written in 1916, but not published until 1961 when it appeared as an

appendix to some editions of Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung, 1963. pp. 378-390).

It was later found in the closing pages of The Red Book, and was the only part of that

work published during Jung's lifetime. He employs several voices in this work, and they

can seem a bit strange and esoteric if you are not accustomed to that mode of expression.

I will use them because it seems important to capture the intensity and uncanniness of his

process.

In the Seven Sermons, the Gnostic 'Basilides' is the narrative voice of the poem.

The distinction between 'Pleroma' and 'Creatura' is a core element of the text. Pleroma

indicates the totality of the divine, a timeless dimension which cannot be grasped by

humans, whereas Creatura is the realm of the human (Yiassemides, 2014, p. 6). Creatura

has qualities and is subject to change, whereas in Pleroma there are no distinctions (ibid.),

that is, Creatura is embedded in temporality.

This is the first emergence of the temporal perspective in Jung's work (ibid., p.

10). A division, more like a chasm, lies between time and timelessness. According to the

text, Creatura foments differentiation in the universe by projecting its (temporal) inner

reality on (timeless) Pleroma. One can see how this sets the stage for the development of

Jung's major ideas. There are hints of the Kantian division of phenomenon and
noumenon, or Platonic Ideas versus being a prisoner in the Cave (Plato, 1992, para. 514-

541).

It would seem that the Pleroma was later expressed by the idea of the Self, or

more abstractly, even metaphysically, as the Unus Mundus, whereas Creatura

encompassed everyday, time-bound consciousness, ego, etc. (Yiassemides, 2014, p. 10).

In Yiassemides' view, "...Jung provided a detailed account regarding the process by

which the differentiated ego strives to return to the original wholeness of psychic reality"

(ibid.; my italics). This 'original wholeness' was timeless. Creatura must accept its time-

bound nature, and in addition, seek 'participation in the...eternal reality of the universe,'

and 'return to [its] true nature' (ibid.). This is a process of individuation, seen as the

interplay of time and timelessness. In this view, there is an Eternal, timeless ground to

which Creatura may return: an ultimate, underlying foundation. In the view of Baretto

(2014), such vestiges of timeless bastions ultimately undermined the integrity of Jung's

process, as well as analytical psychology in general, because such bastions constitute a

means of 'escape' from an ultimate kenosis, a deeply dialectical emptying that could lead

to a new level of life.

Another Gnostic entity named 'Abraxas' appears later in the poem. This is "The

deity that rules over the totality of time and in whose power time is both made and

unmade," and is thus "the sum of and the liberator from the cycle of necessity, freeing

man from the cycle of time and in whose power time is made and unmade... freeing man

from the cycle of necessity... [Abraxas] is the eternally available timeless moment, the

eternal now... which brings freedom from time in both its linear and its cyclic aspects.

That is, for the Gnostics, the ultimate goal is the return to the Pleromatic state, which is
timeless. 'The object of salvation is to deliver us from the lie of time'"(my italics)

(Yiassemides, 2014, p. 11).

In this view, liberation from time is a repeatable event in the present. "The

atemporal and eternal power of Abraxas is the key to the soul's deliverance, which can be

obtained repetitively at the present moment. This seems to imply that the 'atemporal' can

dominate the flow of temporality: When time is tamed and subdued, psychic salvation is

attainable" (ibid.; my italics).

This privileging of the 'timeless' had a powerful effect on Jung's theorizing,

especially during the middle period of his life. The 'personal unconscious' became a

lesser thing, deserving only moderate interest that Jung often looked upon with a

somewhat condescending tone. He often mentioned disparagingly that Freud and

Freudians found their meaning only in the everyday and in the personal past. When the

ground of existence is timeless, everyday life--the personal unconscious--comes across as

inferior, as opposed to the 'eternal' archetypes or the collective unconscious. Strangely,

there are only two papers in the Journal of Analytical Psychology that seem to

specifically address this question, although it is touched upon throughout the Jungian

literature (Zinkin, 1974; Williams, 1963). The most common Jungian theorizing has

concerned various relationships, dimensions, and manifestations of archetypes, or the

adoption of an object-relations perspective that largely bypasses these issues.

Wolfgang Giegerich, and Michael Whan speak of the Jungian focus on myth and

symbol as the "Neurosis of Psychology' (Giegerich 2005, pp. 1-17; Whan 2015, pp. 3-7

& 2017, pp. 242-260). They hold that the myths of the past are largely dead, while

pointing out that Jung wanted to 're-mythologize' the world, and that many Jungians still
have hope for a return to a mythical, timeless place. However, they see this desire to

reverse history creates a neurosis of its own, due to the strain of sustaining a simulated

reality. Ascribing this simulation to a defensive denial, Giegerich says that our childish

dependency on dead myths must die for us to be fully present in the everyday, to have a

kenotic attitude, an openness to the temporal processes of our own times--as opposed to a

defensive quest to re-create the past, to escape, like a child wanting to return to a fantasy

of eternal delight (Giegerich, 2008; Mogenson, 2010).

The tormenting richness of our everyday trauma and turmoil, the endless process

of elaborating the enigmatic core of our memories through Nachträglichkeit, tends to get

lost in an assumed teleology that privileges the timeless as the goal. A more complex

view of temporality is required: "The past is not the passive container of things bygone.

The past, indeed, is our very being, and it can stay alive and evolve; the present is the

passage where the retranscription and recontextualization of our past continually occur, in

line with Freud's [1895] concept of Nachträglichkeit"3 (Scarfone, 2006, p. 814).

It is memory and reflection on the past that makes ethical reflection possible.

Jung's memories of being in 'cloud-cuckoo land' had enabled him to reflect in depth on

his past, and reply so authentically to the student who wrote to him. It is reflection upon

what we have done, and what we have thought, that provokes ethical awareness. The past

is not static, and does not imply a reductionistic approach to the psyche. It lies at the heart

3
Nachträglichkeit refers to the continual revision of memory due to new experiences, as well as
the discovery of enigmatic dimensions of pastness that influence--and open up--reconstructions
of memory (Boothby, 2001, pp. 198-208). This concept has been developed especially by Lacan
and the French school (Green, 2017). In Wider Than the Sky, Gerald Edelman has written of a
similar process in the neuroscience of memory (2005, p. 99ff.). The point here is that the
dimensions of memory and the 'personal unconscious,' are, potentially, almost limitless.
of ethical awareness. If clinical work has ethics at its core, as Jung was wont to say, then

the past is also at the core--and not 'archetypal' potentials.

This contradiction pervades much of Jung's writing, but evolves somewhat after

he became involved in alchemy, which seems to privilege process more than concept. In

some respects, he begins to more closely approach the mode of phronesis, a processual

view that seems closer to phenomenology. This process may begin with the most basic

primal stuff (prima materia) of life: excrement! (Jung, 1956, para. 276.)

The Personal Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious

Warren Colman powerfully and critically describes the impact of Jung's disownment of

everyday reality and temporality as a Kantian/Cartesian view of a mind "'shut up in its

own sphere,' apart from the living world" (Colman, 2017, p. 36). What was left to

Jungian psychology was a view of the world, "...as the expression of archetypal forces,

somehow apart from the realities of geography, climate, competition for resources, and

social and political conflict... [that] not only fails to address the complex interrelation

between states of mind and the state of the social world but reduces the latter to a kind of

ghost-life as if it is merely a screen for psychic projections" (ibid., p. 37). In a convincing

way, Colman's ethical purview of Jung's theory describes how privileging a set of

'archetypes' that seem 'inner,' and are 'timeless', can deeply undermine ethical concerns

about everyday human needs and activities, as well as larger temporal/historical/cultural

contexts and events. Exposition of alchemical process still retains some sense of a mind

isolated in its own subjectivity, as Colman elaborates.

To elaborate upon these thoughts, reviewing some of Jung's specific remarks

about time and the "timeless" is very useful.

In speaking about the progression of a case, Jung describes the emergence of a

'transpersonal control point (Jung, 1966, para. 216-217)

I saw how the transpersonal control-point developed--I cannot call it

anything else--a guiding function (sic) and step by step gathered to itself
all the formal personal over-valuations; how, with this afflux of energy, it
gained influence over the resisting conscious mind without the patient's
consciously noticing what was happening. From this I realized that the
dreams were not just fantasies, but self-representations of unconscious
developments which allowed the psyche of the patient gradually to grow
out of a pointless personal tie (my italics).4
This change took place, as I showed, through the unconscious
development of a transpersonal control point; a virtual goal, as it were,
that expressed itself symbolically in a form that can only be described as a
vision of God.

What is notable to me here is how quickly Jung attributes 'guidance' or change to the

transpersonal. The personal is deemed 'pointless,' and any meaningful subjective fantasies

are deemed self-representations of 'deeper' unconscious developments, via the

'transcendent function,' ‘the Self,’ or ‘God. '

That perspective would seem to undermine a sense of ethical agency or personal

responsibility, of change born from the sweat and toil of everyday life. It is as if only

something 'special' can save us, and that is a pre-existing religious or transpersonal factor,

not immanent in the everyday.

Later, he gives a similar description of psychological life (Jung, 1944/1968, para.

329-330):

...we are dealing here with an a priori 'type,' an archetype which is inherent
in the collective unconscious and thus beyond individual birth and death.
4
There is a footnote here referring to the "transcendent function" in Psychological Types, Def.
51, "Symbol."
The archetype is, so to speak, an 'eternal' presence, and the only question
is whether it is perceived by the conscious mind or not...the increase in the
clarity and frequency of the mandala motif is due to a more accurate
description of an already existing 'type,' rather than that it is generated in
the course of a dream series.
In practice...it is met with in distinct form in a few cases, though this does
not prevent it from functioning as a concealed pole around which
everything else revolves (my italics).

Again, the 'archetype' is behind the scenes at all times, seemingly directing the action. It

is 'eternal,' that is, timeless, not 'generated' from experience, but on a different plane from

temporality and the everyday. It does not seem too much of a leap to imply, with regard

to ethical perspectives, that 'the archetype did it.' This would seem to reflect and even

encourage an abdication of personal responsibility.

Jung mentions an affinity for Platonic ideas (epistêmê) in other writings (Jung,

1960, para. 274-275)

Just as it may be asked whether man possesses many instincts or only a

few, so we must also raise the still unbroached question of whether he
possesses many or a few primordial forms, or archetypes, of psychic
reaction...In Plato, however, an extraordinarily high value is set on the
archetypes as metaphysical ideas, as 'paradigms' or models, while real
things are held to be only copies of these model ideas...St. Augustine,
from whom I have borrowed the idea of the archetype...still stands on a
Platonic footing in that respect.

Here, Jung references archetypes as resembling Platonic entities, leaving 'real things' as

only copies, or perhaps simulacra (Whan, 2015). These seem set apart from time, and

phronesis. The 'personal unconscious,' the everyday, our temporal life, is then only a

copy of these eternal forms. Archetypes begin to sound almost classificatory, like a

mythological version of Psychological Types (Jung, 1936).

Further (Jung, 1959, para. 3-5):

A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly
personal. I call it the personal unconscious...But this personal unconscious
rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience
but is inborn. I call this the collective unconscious...'Archetype' is an
explanatory paraphrase of the Platonic eidos...it tells us that so far as the
collective contents are concerned we are dealing with archaic or--I would
say--primordial types, that is, with universal images that have existed
since remotest times (my italics).

The reference to Plato is repeated, and the 'personal unconscious' is obviously viewed as

inferior by comparison (see page 5-6 of this writing). That would seem to be the position

of the inmates of Plato's Cave! Archetypes are the 'deeper' part of psychological life.

Again, the real action is not in the realm of personal experience.

And, finally (Jung, 1968, para. 81):

...This 'personal unconscious' must always be dealt with first, that is, made
conscious, otherwise the gateway to the collective unconscious cannot be
opened.

Here, the 'personal unconscious' is an apprentice-piece at best, only a preliminary

gateway on the path to the 'real stuff' behind the scenes. Everyday life, to repeat Colman's

rich description, becomes a sort of ghostly presence, an inferior sort of reality. From this

perspective, temporality, the realm of the human, pales in comparison to the timeless

archetypal dimension. The everyday world of temporality, in its messy fascination, its

wars, its loves and hates, is not the true scene of action. This negates the ethical point of

view.

Jung sometimes discussed archetypes as hypothetical, "irrepresentable" factors

that were also, perhaps, elements of brain structure (Jung, 1960, para. 29). However,

many of his pronouncements carried the ring of an authority that 'knew' when those

elements were present in psychological life. A notable--and regrettable--instance of this

attitude was his essay, "Wotan," published in 1936. In this essay, he portrayed the

phenomenon of Nazism as a manifestation of the "Wotan archetype" (Jung, 1936, paras.

389 & 385). This seems to undermine consideration of real-time historical events and

responsibilities (Colman, 2017, p. 36). His views appear especially poignant in the face

of the sufferings that the Nazis were, as Jung to some degree notes, already inflicting on

Jews and other minorities in nearby Germany. Even more alarmingly, he also stated that

those evil excesses, though dangerous and regrettable, might actually represent a reculer

pour mieux sauter, a sort of cultural regression in the service of cultural evolution.

I don't think that Jung was a Nazi sympathizer, but I do believe that 'archetypal'

thinking can at times result in a dulling of ethical vision. How can an 'archetype' express

the reality of a concentration camp, or to of the lesser evils that abound in life? Such a

view all too easily serves as a lofty resistance to the very necessary "thick description" of

the brute reality of personal and historical suffering--the torments of everyday life,

whatever the setting (Hinton, L. 2015; Hinton, A., 2016).

Oedipus and Time

Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, probably the best-known story in the psychoanalytic world, is a

moving and multi-dimensional depiction of the connection between ethical awareness

and time. John Manoussakis has written a thought-provoking set of reflections on

Oedipus (2017, pp. 68-75). In his view, ethical stories are clearly based on the intricacies

of time, but he points out that, in most discussions, interpretations are modified to sound

as if they are simple before and after events. The substance of the everyday is redacted.

Manoussakis' perspective on Oedipus reveals the many layers of ethical situations that
require time to unfold, time for the reflection on the past that is necessary in revealing

their truth.

In the opening of the play, there is an awful plague affecting the city of Thebes,

where Oedipus has become the ruler. Sophocles implies that it is a political disease, a

moral disease. Something is rotten in the city of Thebes. The city is sick, and the

spectator of play knows that, beneath appearances, Oedipus is also sick. The devastating

crisis is the result of a history of multiple expulsions of otherness, of enigma: first

Oedipus himself as an infant, due to the dire prophecy that he will murder his father and

marry his mother, his accidental killing of his father, and finally the expulsion of the

Sphinx through Oedipus' clever use of reason. Oedipus strongly identifies with his role as

the man who vanquished the Sphinx, and had thereby become the ruler of the city. He

publicly preens himself for his exploit.

Very insightfully, Jung pointed out in 1916 (Jung, 1956, para. 264), "Little did he

know that the riddle of the Sphinx can never be solved directly by the wit of man."

However, he then seems to adopt a rationalistic view of Oedipus' dilemma. 5 Jung

speculates that, "those tragic consequences...could easily have been avoided if only

Oedipus had been sufficiently intimidated by the frightening appearance of the of the

'terrible' or 'devouring' Mother whom the Sphinx personified" (ibid., p. 181) (my italics).

He discusses the symbolism of the Sphinx, usefully differentiating his own theories from

what he saw as Freud's emphasis on the narrower dimensions of sexuality and the incest

taboo (Jung, 1961, para. 565).

5
Jung has a deep insight here, but then seems unable to stay with the idea that there is an
enigmatic core of life that lies at the heart of human existence, and is ultimately untranslatable.
(Hinton, 2009).
In 1958, Jung returned to the question of the Sphinx, pointing out that, "Oedipus

did not use his intelligence to see through the uncanny nature of this childishly simple

and all too facile riddle, and therefore fell victim to his tragic fate, because he felt he had

answered the question. It was the Sphinx itself that he ought to have answered and not its

façade" (Jung, 1936, para. 714). This was a profound insight into the enigma of the

Sphinx, but he then proceeds to connect it to the 'anima,' a "mediatrix between the

unconscious and the conscious." The goal of justifying his theory overrides the raw truth

and necessity of the process of time, the humility of realizing that hindsight is not

foresight. There is even a hint of arrogance in Jung's depiction, when he criticizes

Oedipus' naïveté vis à vis the Sphinx. As is so common with Jung, he describes an

enigmatic dimension of life, but then obscures its impact with a profusion of

amplifications which seems to privilege 'knowing.'6

To continue the story: Oedipus had ostensibly liberated the city from the Sphinx's

enigmatic presence, from her otherness. This is ironic because he had himself been a

terrifying enigma that had to be extruded from the city, because of the dire prophecy that

he would kill his father and marry his mother. He had been put out to die as an infant--but

he only comes to know that with time. The expulsion of otherness, out of fear of chaos,

dominated the history of Thebes. Typically fearing instability, the chorus begs Oedipus,

their ruler, to always remain the same, apart from time and change.

Clinging to recurring sameness, otherness is excluded, and there is no diachrony

that could disrupt but renew life. Within synchrony, time does not flow--there is

stagnation and pollution in the form of a plague. Ethical taint creates a mood of miasma.

6
In many ways, Jung was a man of his times. "For the philosophical tradition of the West, all
spirituality lies in consciousness, thematic experiences of being, knowing" (Levinas, 1998, p. 99).
The past cannot be past without truth and reflection. As a result, there is only a recurring

present, and a mood of monotonous, deathlike synchrony pervades the city.7

The Sphinx, in her enigmatic presence, had been a reminder of the uncanny nature

of transitions, which usually involve acknowledgement of primal loss as well as new and

unknown horizons. What is crucial for the Oedipal drama is ethical re-reflection on the

past that is not past, that has remained an 'Unpast' polluting the present and future

(Scarfone, 2006, pp. 807-834).8 Vanquishing the Sphinx's enigmatic reality resulted,

paradoxically, in the re-emergence of the massive, unacknowledged "dim past" of

Oedipus and Thebes in the form of a plague, mightily disrupting and terrifying the city

(Manoussakis, 2017, p. 71).

The sage, Teresias, enters the stage exactly where Oedipus will later exit it. He is

blind, led by a child, and knows the truth. As this thread to the future appears, Oedipus

asks the terrifying question about his past, about his parentage: "Who are my parents?"

Tiresias answers, "This day shall be your parent and your destroyer" (Sophocles,

1994/429 BC, p. 367). The crucial, diachronic question could not be articulated until

Teresias had appeared in the present as the harbinger of a possible future (ibid., p. 72).

The question about Oedipus' beginnings signals the traumatic end to his imaginary,

6I use 'synchrony' here as describing a unified, unchanging self or culture--something timeless.

In the early part of Oedipus Rex, both Oedipus and the Chorus equate the stability of his health
with the stability and health of Thebes. They ask him to be unchanged, and he reassures them.
'Diachrony' is the intrusion of otherness, of new truth, into the same, offering the possibility of
a restoration of the flow of time. The initial picture is of a mood of dread and fear, trapped in a
lifeless synchrony, anticipating the diachronic, disruptive events to come--in time. One could
call synchrony pre-ethical because without a temporal horizon there is no way to ascribe an
ethical value to an act (Manoussakis, 2017, p. 69).
8
By 'Unpast,' Scarfone indicates experiences that have not acquired a quality of pastness, but
are not 'timeless' (Zeitlos).
narcissistic self. At first he violently rejects Teresias, banishing him from the city. But the

seed of truth has been planted, and the progression toward knowing terrible truths soon

follows.

Oedipus had been a rationalist, a man who could think the enigma but not live it.

His illusion had been to believe that thinking the enigma would solve it: Cogito ergo sum.

The truth of time proves otherwise. It is only after he has fulfilled the original Delphic

prophecy that he can know his criminality, through time and reflection (ibid., p. 74). The

Unpast can then become truly past, and wisdom can emerge, born out of terrible truth.

The Oedipus story is a dramatic instance of how living an engaged life can enable

a re-collection of the self from the Unpast, through time and narrative memory

(Manoussakis, 2017, p. 83). We lack foreknowledge, and that fact is intrinsic to the

human condition. Our dearly-won wisdom comes through phronesis, not only through

clever logic and reason. Oedipus is not merely a man who killed his father and married

his mother, but something more profound that penetrates to the core of the human

condition. It requires time to reveal the nuances and multi-dimensional truth of human

actions. The good is a temporal process, a complex process that is never complete (ibid.,

n. 25, p. 181).

Some Later Thoughts: Alchemy

At age 79, Jung still held firmly to the idea that the unconscious is timeless, although his

attitude has mellowed to some degree, and there is less of a sense of a tormenting

division between archetype and everyday (Jung, 1976, para. 1572):

Through the progressive integration of the unconscious we have a

reasonable chance to make experiences of an archetypal nature providing
us with the feeling of continuity before and after our existence. The better
we understand the archetype, the more we participate in its life and the
more we realize its eternity or timelessness.

Alchemy grew in importance for him. In 1954, he describes a transition from the

'personal unconscious' to archetypal symbols, but he described the relationship between

the personal and the collective unconscious as a dissociation, more fluid, and seemingly

closer to a relationship of equals (Jung, 1967, para. 480-481):

...the symbol is not reduced...but is amplified by means of the context

which the dreamer supplies...the unconscious can be integrated and the
dissociation overcome...[through] an experience of a special kind, namely,
the recognition of an alien 'other' in oneself, or the objective presence of
another will. The alchemists, with astounding accuracy, called this barely
understandable thing Mercurius...he is God, daemon, person, thing, and
the innermost secret in man; psychic as well as somatic. He is himself the
source of all opposites, since he is utriusque capax ('capable of both').

'Mercurius' describes a general process, involving not merely an 'archetypal' realm but

seemingly involving embodiment. In any case, he seemed to shift away from the

perspective of an overexciting, somewhat inflated, 'archetypal' realm that contrasted with

the seemingly lesser dimension of the everyday, the personal. Edinger notes that the spirit

Mercurius is a "peacemaker, the mediator between the warring elements and the producer

of unity" (Edinger, 1995, p. 31).

In mythology, Mercury was unique among the gods because he could transit

between the worlds of divinities and men, and is concerned with everyday shopkeepers as

well as gods. (Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 962). The end stage of the alchemical

process is most often depicted in everyday, 'chop wood and carry water' terms, not some

dramatic transcendence (Henderson & Sherwood, 2003, pp. 159-169).

Jung saw the Unicorn as a symbol of Mercurius, and the end plate of the Unicorn

Tapestries at the Cloisters in Manhattan clearly shows, in the background, a symbolic

'royal couple' in jail, even as a lively marital festivity takes place. Perhaps this is a

warning that there is danger in a too confident view of 'unity' (Cavallo, 2010, p. 70). In

the hands of the 'Spirit Mercurius,' the thread of life is always in the move!

This presents a view of a process that is experimental and inventive, in endless

movement, yet remaining the same. "Mercurius is a psycho-logical concept [that]

contains both reality and our subjectivity within itself" (Giegerich, 2008, p. 137). This is

an evolution beyond an excited discovery of "the archetype," and represents a process

that cannot be bottled up in the form of static mythic entities and symbols. Now, "...the

history of the soul has entered a stage with which the stage of mythology is once and for

all superseded" (ibid., p. 137).

'Mercurius' has a strongly temporal sense of life flowing endlessly in all its

strangeness and variations, its past, present and future. Each time and place has its own

symbolic realm, its own temporal 'realities,' and this is our fate, our 'thrownness.' We are

stuck with whatever our time's real images and temporalities happen to be, and we are

stuck with death at the end. It is part of ethics to know this, and to also know that life is

change, and the future tends to appear in unexpected, even reviled forms. To disown or

obstruct this temporal process is to disown life itself, and that is the essence of evil. This

is what Jung seems to have learned from being tossed about, but not fleeing from, the

strange and stormy vicissitudes of his many-sided life.

A 1957 letter to Eric Neumann reflects many of his later thoughts, commenting

upon how limited we are in our capacity to foretell the effects of our actions: we can only

know about it with time (my italics) (Jung, 1976, p. 365):

I know that I do not want to do evil and yet I do it just the same, not by my
own choice but because it overpowers me. As a man I am a weakling and
fallible, so that evil overpowers me. I know that I do it and know what I
have done and know all my life long I shall stand in the torment of the
contradiction. I shall avoid evil whenever I can but shall always fall into
this hole...I am therefore like a man who feels hellishly afraid in a
dangerous situation and would have run for his life had he not pulled
himself together on account of others, feigning courage in his own eyes
and theirs in order to save the situation...for anyone who passes off his
shadow as a passing inconvenience or, lacking all scruple and moral
responsibility, brushes it off as irrelevant, they offer dangerous
opportunities for aberrations in moral judgment, such as are characteristic
of people with a moral defect who consequently suffer from an intellectual
inflation...

This powerfully conveys the perspective of the aging Jung, reflecting on his rich and

extensive memories, having been deeply engaged in all the dimensions of temporal

existence. It feels very personal and everyday rather than 'archetypal.' He takes no refuge

in transpersonal justifications or speculations. His profound honesty conveys a rare depth,

an almost excruciatingly painful awareness of the raw truth of experience, and of the

human condition. This is the sort of ethical awareness that only comes with time. His

profound declaration certainly approaches the oedipal level of tragic recollection, and the

perspective of phronesis. It provides a moving summation of the ethical life of an

extraordinary man, Carl Jung.

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